The fabled Google Android? It is entirely the piece of junk one ought to expect from a development process driven by committees and steered by non-creative minds. And it appears that many would-be buyers know it. — Stanislav Datskovskiy’s in Non-Apple’s Mistake
This is the single best (and short) essay I’ve read on the current state of computing that wasn’t written by John Gruber.
What’s really interesting is the author’s clarification about the fact that he “loathes Apple products”. In a conversation with George Kokoris yesterday I got a somewhat similar impression from his stance on Apple. Oddly, the design, focus and aptitude as tools that Apple products have is completely coherent with people like George who still feel compelled to keep them at a distance.
Datskovskiy also says this (as a MacBook Air owner):
Edit:
A number of people linking here seem to think that I like Apple or forgive its sins (as if Apple needs my forgiveness.) This is a mistake. I loathe Apple products, and chafe under the straightjacket of their aesthetic whenever I use one. I simply happen to despise their competition that much more. At least Apple has an aesthetic. Its works, however flawed, are the works of a person, rather than an amorphous blob.
I argue that this straightjacket that Datskovskiy describes is vital for creative minds. Freedom is of course the ideal of many Makers, but I think it’s often their worse enemy. I take fiction as an example. As a kid I fucking despised all those rules that forced me to stick to an idea per paragraph, I didn’t understand why poets were torturing themselves with rhyme schemes and extreme concision, I thought TV shows should never end or that episodes should run longer than 45 minutes. But these iron bars are often there for good reason. To keep you focused, to have you think about substance, and stop obsessing about form.
In the world of computers the best highly subjective anecdote I have is my own dad. He started “building” computers in the 1990’s with Compaqs. The only problem is that Compaqs weren’t supposed to be built. They were supposed to work somewhat out of the box. Yet tinkering wasn’t an option (and you could tell) it was an obligation. And my dad got so much into the habit of opening up the box to fix whatever was wrong with hardware or software that he spent more time disassembling his computers than actually doing what he thought a computer would actually help him do when he started.
His focus shifted so much than aside from his day job I don’t think my dad ever did anything substantial with his home computers in 15 years. The best example of this, is that now that he doesn’t have to fuck around with DOS to get Windows 3.11, 95, 98 or Me to work without, it seems that my dad doesn’t really know how to use a computer. He knows how they work, he knows the parts, but he forgot the purpose.
PS: If you think what I mean “trains run on time in a dictatorship”, fuck off.
Posted in Unsorted | 2 Comments »avr 16 2010
You may not know about him.
Borlaug’s discoveries have been estimated to have saved over 245 million lives worldwide
Do learn.
How did he do it?
By improving Nature and using Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs).
Meanwhile Greenpeace was doing this.
Posted in Unsorted | No Comments »sept 13 2009
I’ve never understood the coffee phenomenon. I tasted coffee as a kid at my aunts house I think. My cousin Émilie was crazy about it even as a kid and I always thought it smelled like burnt tire and smoke. Well it tasted exactly like that too. Everyone around me always drank coffee and touted it as a “grown up” drink.
I didn’t have many arguments to ridicule this at that age, but just like many “grown up” things it implies pretending that you like something repulsive just because everyone else tells you its good. At the time I just didn’t like it. It wasn’t a contrarian point of view. For me it simply felt like all those things branded as “adult” for some random reason: smoking, drinking wine or liquor, eating spinach, fish, snails (bet you most young Frenchies can’t stand that either) and seafood. Very few people actually like eating or drinking these things. But if you don’t, you must be a close-minded baby who’s too scared to try anything new and who’d rather drink Chocolate Milk — yes, I do.
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Posted in Unsorted | No Comments »sept 10 2009
Je viens de lire un article du bon Dave Hitt qui a du le taper en tirant sur un gros cigar et en ronchonnant sur le gouvernement qui lui empeche de fumer dans un salon avec ses potes. Il revient sur l’affaire Sicko vs. Moorewatch, le très vaguement factuel film de Moore sur les assurances maladie et le blog qui se charge de faire la lumière sur les mensonges propagés par Moore dans ses films, articles et bouquins.
Pour résumer, la femme du collaborateur principal de Moorewatch étant tombée malade, il avait pris la décision de fermer le site, temporairement ou non, pour ne plus avoir a payer de frais d’hebergement et pouvoir se concentrer sur le traitement de son épouse.
Et puis un jour, il reçu un chèque anonyme de 12 000 dollars. Pas completement idiot il se doutait à l’époque que ce chèque pouvait provenir de Moore (ce dernier étant multi-millionnaire et le sujet principal de son blog). Mais par nécessité, il se devait d’accepter le don. La santé de sa femme étant plus importante que des simples soupçons d’un « piège » qui aurait pu avoir été tendu par Moore.
La santé de sa femme commença à s’améliorer progressivement par la suite, et il ne reçu par de nouvelle de son généreux donateur. Puis Sicko sorti en salle. Et à la fin du film, Moore se pourlèche dans une séquence pétrie de vantardise d’avoir sauvé la femme de son pire énnemi blogueur (mais c’était anonyme bien entendu !) avant d’utiliser ces circonstances pour prouver sa démonstration anti-assurances santé privée.
Non seulement Moore faisait preuve d’une hypocrisie ahurissante, mais en plus il utilisait dans son film des faits non verifiés (puisque glanés à travers les articles d’un blog) copieusement démentis par la personne en question. Ce que Moore pensait etre la balle d’argent qui servirait à décredibiliser son opposant le plus vocal, nous sert surtout à cerner un peu plus le personnage.
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Posted in Unsorted | 3 Comments »mai 2 2009
