Speed it up
(Tried to post to Powder Room, but don't have permission.)
Do I want FIOS?
Brian Eno on the question "What Do You Think About Machines That Think?" (via Kottke)
My untroubled attitude results from my almost absolute faith in the reliability of the vast supercomputer I'm permanently plugged into. It was built with the intelligence of thousands of generations of human minds, and they're still working at it now. All that human intelligence remains alive in the form of the supercomputer of tools, theories, technologies, crafts, sciences, disciplines, customs, rituals, rules-of-thumb, arts, systems of belief, superstitions, work-arounds, and observations that we call Global Civilisation.
Global Civilisation is something we humans created, though none of us really know how. It's out of the individual control of any of us -- a seething synergy of embodied intelligence that we're all plugged into. None of us understands more than a tiny sliver of it, but by and large we aren't paralysed or terrorised by that fact -- we still live in it and make use of it. We feed it problems -- such as "I want some porridge" and it miraculously offers us solutions that we don't really understand. What does that remind you of?
DC blog not
Anyone have any experience with Verizon FIOS?
Cord cutting has more momentum.
new Walkman $1200
content moderation is a dirty business.
Stumped Siri's new song recognition with a Fripp album that has only been released on vinyl.
The Windows XP/8.1 debacle calls to mind the Wordstar/Wordstar 2000 debacle of the mid-eighties.
Unfamiliar with Wordstar? Exactly my point.
Wordstar ruled the word processor market in the early personal computer market. They weren't just the leader, they were everywhere. The UI was stupid and clunky, but people got used to it. When people in a business setting got a new personal computer, the package they got was: IBM PC (or equivalent); DOS (from IBM, Microsoft or Digital Research), Lotus 1-2-3, a Herculese graphics card, an Epson printer, and Wordstar. Interesting list. How many of those companies are still relevant in the personal computer market?
Wordstar decided to dump their product and move on to new technology: Wordstar 2000. This was not an evolution. New UI. New, incompatible file formats. And get this -- it's really better if you just get a whole new, more powerful computer to run this software.
Microsoft, unlike Wordstar, will survive, but they have thoroughly fucked themselves. Windows 8.1 is the Wordstar 2000 of the twenty-teens.
Adding: "Well, if I got to switch to something unfamiliar and incompatible anyway, what are the other alternatives?" That's the essense of the self-destruction of this sort of move.
Google dumps Motorola phone unit for about $3B. They previously dumped the Cable TV unit for $2.35B. They paid $13B. So they got a stack of patents for almost $8B. I still remember talking to a key guy involved in Mot's ill-fated tablet. "Oh, video really isn't important." I can't say I'm shocked that Google wanted out.
iPad, iPhone trix