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Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 06:43 pm
so could anonymous get on this already?
Stupid things that made me happy this week:
My Dell mini has face recognition software. People, we live in the future.
For those with webcams who have been doing this for years, shut the fuck up, I got excited. Mostly because a.) I hate webcams, b.) the point of the internet is I can be social without makeup, clean clothing, or even vaguely acceptable hygiene, and c.) well, see b, really. So this is all new territory. I currently use it to randomly log into my mini just when I get bored. Hiberate it, open the lid, watch it log me in, and cackle. Repeat eighty times.
This is in fact how I entertain myself when the servers go down. Oh please try to judge me. I can log into Absinthe the mini with my smile*!
(* Note: I don't actually smile at work. I try to keep expectations extremely low on both my appearance and my mood, so it's an event when I a.) wear eyeliner, b.) wear something that isn't a hoodie, and c.) smile. The week Star Trek came out and the week after I was a goddamn fashion plate of joy and scared the crap out of most of my coworkers, who believed the apocalypse was nigh.)
Things that scare me:
From Cracked (my obsessions are quite obsessive):
Five Reasons You Should Be Scared of Apple which I consider like, totally legit, but also, see the Number One Reason.
Wait. I can link you to the article that inspired it.
From Huffington: Forced Interaction Commercials
Voila! Finally, Apple can deal with that silly human attention span and desire not to see one more ad for a Toyota with accelerator issues--we have to interact with the commercial to get it to go away. Wait. Think about this one. Not only do you have to watch the commercial about the miracle of dishwashing detergent, you will be tested on it or something. Tested. On. The Commercial.
Okay, let me be blunt here. Before nine am and at least one cup of coffee or two highly caffeinated beverages and some mindless surfing, if you quizzed me on my name and gender, there's a good to excellent chance I would answer with syllables that don't appear in any human language.
I am going to grant, it does not specifically say 'will test your comprehension of this commercial', more than it verifies you are paying attention and will lock your system if you don't comply.
The thing is, the wet dream of corporations who handle software has been some way to make us buy teh same thing all the time. New releases every year (anything Adobe, anything Quicken, etc) aren't cutting it anymore. Making us constantly pay for the privilege of using something has been on the table for-freaking-ever, and it's not like broadband doesn't encourage the idea that rent-to-never-own is a viable and workable option. Basically, the idea is stripping out any concept of personal ownership of anything, which software and music are doing wonderfully with current technology as it stands. And in limited doses, we do in fact pay constantly for internet real estate right now--anyone who owns a website deep down knows we're really just renters of both our space and our names and the landlord can be a total dick and incinerate our stuff at a moment's notice. I mean, RL landlords can't even do that.
I have an entire rant on the recent fits sites are throwing about adblock and noscript being used (hint: go to fandom-wank now), and my ethical standards of usage (I will buy music, I will buy software, I will buy licenses, I will even buy internet real estate, because these things are important to me and I can verify amounts and times with my bank statements and credit card statements) are hitting against a serious mental block that not only is what limited space I can get free of advertising being threatened (hint: tiny space), I could not only be forced to watch it for my tech to function but verify I am watching it, and people. I don't pay full attention to crossing the fucking street, a commercial doesn't stand a chance. Think about this being added to those goddamn bluray trailers for a second that right now take magical button-pushign abilities to skip. This could be your life.
I mean, not that I am saying this is all about me, but I am saying, if they were custom designing this torture for me after I've been good faith buying my music, dvds, blurays, game consoles, games, software, televisions, vcrs, dvd players, bluray players, and more computer parts than anyone should own but a wholesaler, something has to give. It might be my sanity, but likely, it will be my willingness to do those things anymore without a court order, and trust me, I do not have enough in the way of personal wealth to feel like there's all that much I have to lose. Ooh, fine me for a million? Love to see how you collect that. I live in Austin. We have a lot of free range wireless internet that don't even involve going to a coffee shop and I know where the good cardboard boxes can be had (hint: everywhere).
This has been a message from my sheer horror when I saw the visio flow chart. Dear God.
My Dell mini has face recognition software. People, we live in the future.
For those with webcams who have been doing this for years, shut the fuck up, I got excited. Mostly because a.) I hate webcams, b.) the point of the internet is I can be social without makeup, clean clothing, or even vaguely acceptable hygiene, and c.) well, see b, really. So this is all new territory. I currently use it to randomly log into my mini just when I get bored. Hiberate it, open the lid, watch it log me in, and cackle. Repeat eighty times.
This is in fact how I entertain myself when the servers go down. Oh please try to judge me. I can log into Absinthe the mini with my smile*!
(* Note: I don't actually smile at work. I try to keep expectations extremely low on both my appearance and my mood, so it's an event when I a.) wear eyeliner, b.) wear something that isn't a hoodie, and c.) smile. The week Star Trek came out and the week after I was a goddamn fashion plate of joy and scared the crap out of most of my coworkers, who believed the apocalypse was nigh.)
Things that scare me:
From Cracked (my obsessions are quite obsessive):
Five Reasons You Should Be Scared of Apple which I consider like, totally legit, but also, see the Number One Reason.
Wait. I can link you to the article that inspired it.
From Huffington: Forced Interaction Commercials
Voila! Finally, Apple can deal with that silly human attention span and desire not to see one more ad for a Toyota with accelerator issues--we have to interact with the commercial to get it to go away. Wait. Think about this one. Not only do you have to watch the commercial about the miracle of dishwashing detergent, you will be tested on it or something. Tested. On. The Commercial.
Okay, let me be blunt here. Before nine am and at least one cup of coffee or two highly caffeinated beverages and some mindless surfing, if you quizzed me on my name and gender, there's a good to excellent chance I would answer with syllables that don't appear in any human language.
I am going to grant, it does not specifically say 'will test your comprehension of this commercial', more than it verifies you are paying attention and will lock your system if you don't comply.
The thing is, the wet dream of corporations who handle software has been some way to make us buy teh same thing all the time. New releases every year (anything Adobe, anything Quicken, etc) aren't cutting it anymore. Making us constantly pay for the privilege of using something has been on the table for-freaking-ever, and it's not like broadband doesn't encourage the idea that rent-to-never-own is a viable and workable option. Basically, the idea is stripping out any concept of personal ownership of anything, which software and music are doing wonderfully with current technology as it stands. And in limited doses, we do in fact pay constantly for internet real estate right now--anyone who owns a website deep down knows we're really just renters of both our space and our names and the landlord can be a total dick and incinerate our stuff at a moment's notice. I mean, RL landlords can't even do that.
I have an entire rant on the recent fits sites are throwing about adblock and noscript being used (hint: go to fandom-wank now), and my ethical standards of usage (I will buy music, I will buy software, I will buy licenses, I will even buy internet real estate, because these things are important to me and I can verify amounts and times with my bank statements and credit card statements) are hitting against a serious mental block that not only is what limited space I can get free of advertising being threatened (hint: tiny space), I could not only be forced to watch it for my tech to function but verify I am watching it, and people. I don't pay full attention to crossing the fucking street, a commercial doesn't stand a chance. Think about this being added to those goddamn bluray trailers for a second that right now take magical button-pushign abilities to skip. This could be your life.
I mean, not that I am saying this is all about me, but I am saying, if they were custom designing this torture for me after I've been good faith buying my music, dvds, blurays, game consoles, games, software, televisions, vcrs, dvd players, bluray players, and more computer parts than anyone should own but a wholesaler, something has to give. It might be my sanity, but likely, it will be my willingness to do those things anymore without a court order, and trust me, I do not have enough in the way of personal wealth to feel like there's all that much I have to lose. Ooh, fine me for a million? Love to see how you collect that. I live in Austin. We have a lot of free range wireless internet that don't even involve going to a coffee shop and I know where the good cardboard boxes can be had (hint: everywhere).
This has been a message from my sheer horror when I saw the visio flow chart. Dear God.
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From:But yeah, Apple is officially something I will not buy. Just seeing that flowchart made me queasy.
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From:I'll tell you right now, if an ad ever, ever, EVER makes me interact with it in any way that doesn't involve "right click/adblock" or "fast-forward," not only will the advertiser never again get a single penny of my money, but my howls of outrage will reach Biblical levels. And even though I know it'd probably be futile (I cannot BELIEVE the bullshit ads people put up with on Facebook! how the hell do humans survive without ad-blocking add-ons to their browser of choice???), I'd write some very very nasty letters. At least.
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From:We just pushed Firefox with Adblock and Flashblock built in, as a Group Policy Object, out to all the users where I work. It's like an epiphany for some of these folks.
At least with network TV you can go get a drink or take a leak or whatever. Hit the mute button! You can't do that with ads running in your viewspace that are requiring that you INTERACT WITH THEM, holy shit.
Anonymous really needs to perk the hell up on this, stop stalking people who post fake cat-abuse pics to /b/, and actually be useful for once.
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From:We install ad-blockers in our brains. (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/fancy-formatting.html) When Mr. E, who uses adblock, looks over my shoulder at my browser he freaks out at all the ads. I literally could not have told you they were there most of the time.
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From: (Anonymous) Date: 2010-03-18 12:04 am (UTC)I guess you have already seen all the ranting and foaming about Assassin's Creed's DRM? If your high-speed internet connection even for a second, you lose your current game entirely or some such?
Unbelievable. Talk about a nazi state: how is this different from 1984 I ask you?
/ranting
Sorry. Ahem.
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From:Which isn't to say that when I'm feeling particularly outlawish and like I'm a throwback to my former life, I don't seriously consider doing both of those things. But mostly, I hack and screw and spit and stay just this side of whatever behavior any large corporation is attempting to make criminal against me at any given time.
If apple gets that software patented, I give it a week until someone has figured out how to stop it. We're good that way, us geeks.
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From:I would not be reasonable about that. I would take quite a large hit in terms of functionality and/or cost, and switch to a crappier product just for the pleasure of saying "fuck you".
LJ has just added an ad to my Inbox page, which is having the effect of squeezing the posts over to the right of the screen and so narrowing the field of view. Bah. Any idea how to make that go away?
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From:Joy!
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From:If Steve Jobs were as business-savvy as I presume he is, however, he'd manipulate Microsoft into using the system, therefore pushing more people to buy Apple products as well as profiting for the use of his patent.
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From:If that happens, it's time for a third computer company to come in, one that uses the best of both Mac and PC platforms, perhaps one that actually wants its customers happy (Heaven forbid!). Or else it's the end of the technology craze because there's only so much people are willing to put up with, and this sounds like a breaking point.
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From:omg, THIS. One of the notes in #1 is why I hate downloading Apple products. I downloaded a QuickTime plug-in for Firefox or something a couple months ago, and since then every couple of days Firefox pops up an advertisement for a quicktime update I'm supposed to download, that includes downloads for Safari and iTunes checked by default. I refuse to update quicktime since those default checked downloads annoy my so much. I could just uncheck them, but seriously? Seriously?
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From:I am thinking about an Android phone though as Sony Ericsson sells them. But also HTC which is a phone I've never seen before. Nokia and Samsung is automatically out of the race as I don't like their menues/style. I don't know much about the Android though... I'll have to look into it
/Swedish
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From:But I will cut a bitch if either of them make me watch commercials and pay attention.
One of our DVD players won't let me skip the previews and ads on my Kungfoo Panda DVD, so it will play the damn previews unskipable every F-ing time my response is to shut off the TV screen until it finishes.
-Diana
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