Posts by Stephen Judd
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There's something awfully paternalistic about the linux geek thing that linux is somehow better for you, in some abstract way. It's somehow better that one could potentially write a useful application rather than actually having it; it is better to have the possibility than to have the actuality.
I would just like to unpack this a little bit. Yes, it is patronising of us to expect that everyone will value freedom to share code above, say, utility :D
On the other hand, that IS the value. Not that you can write an application yourself, but that you can give and receive code. In the Parable of Stallman and the Printer Driver, the problem was not that Stallman wanted to write a printer driver, but that other people who had a working printer driver were forbidden to give it to him, and if he did fix the driver himself, he would not be allowed to give it to people who wanted it.
"Apple gives me everything I want and your freedom is irrelevant to me" is a reasonable rebuttal to patronizing Linux geeks, but let's be clear what we're patronizing you about :D
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otherwise l'm sure the billion dollar (or whatever it is) ad industry would have come up with something better
So is this ad industry rational or not? Earlier you were suggesting that they weren't interested in advertising to older people for irrational reasons, now you seem to be suggesting that they are keeping the current ratings system because it makes sense.
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I thought Damien's point was not that older people don't buy stuff, but that advertisers believe older people are not as susceptible to advertising.
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Interesting thought, Danyl.
The end of my regular TV watching came around 2000. I had just spent 6 months in the UK, watching very little TV because we didn't get around to buying one, but what I did see didn't have many ads.
Once back in NZ, I just couldn't get into the local TV any more. One reason was that my marriage was breaking up and TV seemed just stupid and remote compared to the emotional trauma I was going through -- I started feeling actively angry about the relentless cheer which I couldn't share. And the station promos and ads dominated my experience of it. All this enthusiasm, about stuff and crap and shit! It was a mental assault.
Even now, if we go and stay at my Dad's or at the in-laws', and the tv is on, I find myself unable to tolerate the ads, and I leave the room, and find something else to do, and don't come back.
I know that's how most TV is funded, and I ought to put up with them in order to enjoy the fruits of all the money that's put into programming, but I just can't.
I also wonder if multi-tasking internettery is destroying my ability to sit down and watch a programme. 2000 is also about when I started being glued to the internet at home as well as at work.
About the 1500 people -- that strikes me as quite reasonable, at first blush, except that they're the same people from week to week. On the one hand, that gives you an excellent view of the changing appeal of things. On the other hand, without a fresh sample on a regularly basis, any oddities in your original selection will never get cleaned up the way that they do in, say, political opinion polling.
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Apropos reinventing file systems: this is no invention. Palm OS and the old Newton have worked just like this for years and years. It's a good idea though! Nice to see it get mainstream traction.
Apropos the closed platform vs freedom to tinker: yes, I see how locked-down appliances are superior for most people, and I suspect it really is inevitable, and kudos to Apple for making a practical one, if it as seems likely that's how it turns out. But I'm still sad about it. Most of the people I know in the programming business have the gratifying and amazing jobs we do have because it was possible, even necessary to get in there and poke around. And now the future where kids have no idea and think computers are just magic is upon us. /me sobs with overwhelming angst and premature nostalgia.
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OK, I'm sorry I news-hateraded this thread. So let me add something relevant to it.
Apropos the stats: is it really so that only 10% of 18-49 year olds are watching the two main tv news shows? What would a typical midwinter figure be? Do we know what other tv they're watching, or are they doing something else altogether?
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PS: I would love to see an episode or two of avant-garde news. Paging Mr Lealand...
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Heh, nice one. But in seriousness, the formulaic nature of tv news is a big contributor to my loss of interest in it. The problem isn't the visual language per se -- we need that so we can understand what we're seeing -- but the stereotyped narrative that all stories get forced into, and the wider sterotyped script, the same for every bulletin, that they get forced into.
- breathless teaser about obviously trumped-up crap
- the footage from some US feed completely irrelevant to any NZ citizen which incidentally displaces a local, more important story where there were no reporters
- another teaser for the forthcoming crap in case you missed the first one
- a political story which doesn't actually explain anything about what the issues are and quotes politicians without fact checking
- a teaser for that story where by now we've let slip the only thing that might be remotely interesting about it, christ i don't know why we're even going to run that segment now
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- at last the bit that the teaser was actually for, jeeebus help us what a let down, and finally
- the story about the cute kid or animal or other heartwarming irrelevance of the day
- closing stupid forced banter, spanning the range from the twee to the arch
- fade as the presenters mug their insincere smiles in silhouette.I watch the tv news every xmas hols at my Dad's or the in-laws and get regularly reconfirmed in my decision to completely ignore it as the only information really conveyed is that the producers think we are very stupid.
Of course, they could be right.
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Just because Hitler was against it doesn't mean I'm for it. You can't trick me that easily.
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About this multitasking thing: I have had several marvellous devices (Newton and Palm) that did not truly multitask at an OS level, but which were perfectly suited to multitasking at a human level. The reason is that if you were using app A, and you then switched to app B, although A would cease executing, its state would be perfectly saved, so that when you came back to it, it would be just as you left it.
I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't the case here. It makes sense when there's no removable media (WHY do you have save things anyway? Haven't you ever wondered why your program can't just keep track of your bloody document anyway? Well it can, it's just a fossil from the old days that everyone is used to. In a properly designed world, everything up to the last moment would be saved, including your undo stack and maybe some backup versions, and you wouldn't ever press ctrl-s again. But I digress). From a UI point of view it's simple and easy. From an OS point of view it's simpler to implement, and it requires less grunt from the CPU, so it can seem zippier to the user.
We'll see. But I doubt it's as dire a problem as people think.