Posted on 06/16/2009 6:10:11 PM PDT by GAB-1955
I bought a Commodore 64 computer in the 1980s for $600 I could scarcely afford, only to see the price of computers drop and my 64 become useless. I bought an HD radio for $300, and I find I merely use its excellent speakers for listening to classical music on demand on the Internet. The stations I want to hear aren’t powerful enough to receive reliably at Chez Cubicle. (That means YOU, WAMU.)
I learned early adapters get burned. Wait two years… even three years…So I haven’t bought a DTV converter box yet. I will, but only after the local broadcasters shake out the problems they have pumping out a reliable signal. I hope this is done before football season.
“But Pookie, look at all the television you’re missing!” Such as what if we’re being over-entertained? We aren’t thinking critically. We aren’t reflecting. We are in a constant cycle of action-reaction-thrust-parry-riposte-remise-counter-remise. It happens at work. It happens in sports. It happens in politics, which is a blood sport.
The Letterman-Palin controversy is a very good example. ...
Has some good articles. Thanks for posting.
I also agree, it’s time to let the Palin-Letterman issue go and focus on what 0 is doing to tear our country apart in such a rapid pace and how to stop him.
We obviously cannot rely on the inept leadership in our GOP.
The interesting thing about the Commodore 64 & 128 was that they WERE technically superior to anything on the [personal computing] market at the time (yes, even Apples); they are a clear example of the lack of good/competent management & marketing.
However, I think today we tend to suffer from the opposite corporate affliction of too much management & marketing while the technical- and practical-minded are less-valued.
Cases-in-point:
- Microsoft: Spent all the money on marketing and reneged on all the interesting/useful features that were to be in Windows Vista (WinFS, for example) and the design-philosophy (of making things that “look good” instead of “are useful/usable”) can be seen in how the system grinds to a halt when only two instances of Media Player are open & running at the same time... as well as the irritating and counter-productive “would you like to continue” pop-ups.
- Linux: If there’s any system that goes out of its way to make things less productive, it’s the Unix/Linux family of systems. They are designed in such a way as to inhibit intuitive operations (which is why EVERYONE has to use man), although they are touted as being better/more=stable than Windows their rabid fanatics completely miss the point that the OS is supposed to, in addition to enabling access to the machine’s hardware/software, do so in a way that facilitates the user. (The design-flaw/mindset of treating everything as file certainly is a big contributor.) Though, note that the “marketing” is more done by the aforementioned “rabid fanatics” than ‘traditional’ advertising.
- Apple: Yes, Apple does have some good customer support. (It was also a good alternative to the Intel architecture, but no longer is.) They started with some of the right design-principles, targeting the USERS and making things usable/effective from their perspective. However, Apple does seem to rely on it’s “hip”/”cool”/”in” appearances nowadays... just look at their PC vs. Mac ad campaign. Not only that, but they’ve mostly abandoned the interesting technologies they had going for them like SCSI or the Motorola architecture. (They might still be supporting FireWire, but may have “toned down” on that for more aggressive use of the inferior USB... I haven’t kept up the past several years.)
Oh, yeah, I learned that the hard way too. I've been lucky with computers but got burned on first- and second-generation fax machines.
The interesting thing about the Commodore 64 & 128 was that they WERE technically superior to anything on the [personal computing] market at the time (yes, even Apples); they are a clear example of the lack of good/competent management & marketing.
However, I think today we tend to suffer from the opposite corporate affliction of too much management & marketing while the technical- and practical-minded are less-valued.
Cases-in-point:
- Microsoft: Spent all the money on marketing and reneged on all the interesting/useful features that were to be in Windows Vista (WinFS, for example) and the design-philosophy (of making things that “look good” instead of “are useful/usable”) can be seen in how the system grinds to a halt when only two instances of Media Player are open & running at the same time... as well as the irritating and counter-productive “would you like to continue” pop-ups.
- Linux: If there’s any system that goes out of its way to make things less productive, it’s the Unix/Linux family of systems. They are designed in such a way as to inhibit intuitive operations (which is why EVERYONE has to use man), although they are touted as being better/more=stable than Windows their rabid fanatics completely miss the point that the OS is supposed to, in addition to enabling access to the machine’s hardware/software, do so in a way that facilitates the user. (The design-flaw/mindset of treating everything as file certainly is a big contributor.) Though, note that the “marketing” is more done by the aforementioned “rabid fanatics” than ‘traditional’ advertising.
- Apple: Yes, Apple does have some good customer support. (It was also a good alternative to the Intel architecture, but no longer is.) They started with some of the right design-principles, targeting the USERS and making things usable/effective from their perspective. However, Apple does seem to rely on it’s “hip”/”cool”/”in” appearances nowadays... just look at their PC vs. Mac ad campaign. Not only that, but they’ve mostly abandoned the interesting technologies they had going for them like SCSI or the Motorola architecture. (They might still be supporting FireWire, but may have “toned down” on that for more aggressive use of the inferior USB... I haven’t kept up the past several years.)
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