Ways Facebook seems to Manipulate and Lie

So Facebook is something, something very big.
I think they say that there are over 2 billion active users, people who looked at it int he last month. That's over a quarter of the world's population. it would be an understatement to call it influential.
I saw and enjoyed the movie The Social Network, had a friend at Harvard a few years before and when I asked him if it was accurate, he said yes, we were in fact that dorky as a group.
One thing I learnt from watching it is that while founder Mark Zuckerberg was admirably depicted as a cunning and able problem solver and creative mind, the movie made it plain he wasn't above being amoral and manipulative. If he wasn't so successful, we would be focused on his lawsuits and stolen ideas like we now are with Rockefeller or Carnegie's misdeeds with family, pollution, and the Pinkertons to name a few. Why would his company be any different.
I got into facebook so late it is laughable. I only have an account because I publicize a few businesses through it, and I caught up in about the last two years doing what people have been doing with it for decades.. seeing which cute women they went to school with are single again, and which ones have gotten fat, gone downhill, or became people you don't want to know anymore. Zuckerberg knew it was about sex from the beginning, and it still kind of is, as much as it's still the best place to advertise a town meeting or church mixer as well. it's a fascinating little world if you think about it, the things that exist in it side by side.
But back to the manipulation, the one thing that has become clear to me is that he plays games with subtle things to make me want to be addicted, to want to spend money with them, and to want to press more buttons on his page. Facebook manipulates my behavior! while it's seen by many as this kind of benign public service, I keep seeing craven behavior, but I feel a bit like William shatner in the old twilight zone, with the gremlin eating the engine on the wing. I see it only occasionally, and I feel like no one believes me! And there is no way off the plane if I want to keep pushing my business!
This is what I see it doing, and i'm told these are adjustments to algorithms:

When I make a move towards buying advertising, it stops giving me any positive approval, for days... facebook shuts down good things happening to me, or informing me of them, until I start spending money. It's like a casino manipulation.

Facebook gives me disapproval with the little red numbers telling me I have things I need to do ( like answer messages that aren't really to me, or don't require answers, so I can keep my li'l quick response badge!)

Facebook also uses that same red number disapproval to make me click buttons as if there are new things there, when there aren't.. keeps actions on the page high for Mr. Zuckerburg to claim he's still running a successful business.

Facebook pushes me to be more successful at producing attractive things by limiting who of my likers get to see things.. I've rarely produces something so exquisite all of my likes got to see something I posted, so I don't have access to all the people I even paid to get to like my page. I have to earn the right to speak to them every time, and usually, due to their algorithms, I am just talking to the same 30 or so people who are already loyal to my business. So even though Facebook was the hot place to spend money on marketing a few years ago, it's just making an echochamber of approval for me, keeping me in a bubble unless I boost a post. So it's making all my efforts ineffective on purpose unless I pay money.. nothing is guaranteed with facebook.
It's an endless round of approval from those you care about, but you aren't reaching anyone new!

Facebook bought Instagram when it was hot and appear to be doing the same thing with it, creating an echochamber but not really letting you spread your message the same way.

If your friends acted like this, suppressing your message, would you still be friends with them? Maybe just in that Facebook friends kind of way...?

Mark Zuckerberg is messing with you!

Why I could never live in New York Again, at least not while it's like this...

Live it up, Douchebags...

1. Government Greed    one buck for a 1 penny metro card.. get outta here... I call bullshit. Howsabout the Javitz Center Tax for every hotel room in midtown..crock o' shit.. you built it, you pay for it..
sales tax..8.875%   get the fuck outta here.. they tax people who already pay income tax and property tax to them.. they surpress trade and hurt the poor the most just to scratch an extra dime out of people. Bad Policy, institutional arrogance.

2.  Manhattan is Dead.. all the action moved to Brooklyn.. Manhattan is filled with greedy yuppies from the midwest..and the action is Brooklyn is pretentious and behind closed doors... what happened to the fun?

3. New York used to be relevant for everything.. now it's only relevant due to finance..as much as I find the English boring, London is a true international city... more melting pot than salad bowl.. New York can only be as relevant as America is, and how relevant will it be in the era of trump, in an era of isolationism..publishing and music used to be big industries in New York, but they are on the skids.. if it wasn't for Jay Z New York music would just be the Philharmonic as far as the world is concearned. TV is holding on, but even it slowly but surely moves to LA. Toronto stole movies away a long time ago. Journalism might be the last bastion of New York exceptionalism, but even there, LA seems to be gaining ( From NPR West in Culver City...) and DC will never give up it's share of the pie..

4. Speaking of Trump.. the Trump era means being from New York is an embarrassment when dealing with the intelligentsia.. he is our symbol for the foreseeable future, with the Yankees down off of a good run, and no one else set to fill in the gap.

5. Saturday Night Live is kind of a bellwether of NYC prominence, but it's been flat for years.. it's yuppie office humor more often than not.. not really connected to the mainstream, not really inspiring or bold ( OK, on occasion, on politics it still tries, but even Alec Baldwin as Trump was awkward, still kind of repulsive in being too close to home.. the last great stand was Tina Fay as Palin, but even she is too all head no heart these days.. I'll give it to them for making fun of Scientology, that was a throwback to the good old days, but it's been so flat.. the show need rejuvenation.. it's too big a deal to make it onto SNL to stay hard working once you are on there.. it was great when the black guys were really black, it was America warts and all, not Office Space the Series.). Saturday Night live was great when it led and didn't react.. the same with all of New York.

6. I hear it's actually dangerous again.. that might be a good sign.. New York was always at it's best when it took effort to live there.. you had to want it, you had to care.. maybe the permissive nature of the DiBlassio era will bring back some grit and shitty neighborhoods where they creative can supplant the established or simply the well funded. Maybe we can chase out the Olsen Twins and bring back the likes of Madonna. Say what you want about her now, she was self made in the classic NYC way back in the day...

7. Bring the Arena back.. I'm no fan of football, but when you have to schlep out of Manhattan for a football game to Jersey, who is zoomin who.. what happened with Atlantic yards? sure it would've sucked to live next door, but do we really need more condos? Who dares wins, and Manhattan stopped being audacious when it lost the stadium. it became a bedroom community of Brooklyn's..

The New New York

Porn Culture Takes Over

The Famed English Historian Arnold Toynbee once said something to the effect that borders between cultures rich and poor tend to favor the poor.... people like things cheap, think they get more for less, and the poor culture moves up the food chain influencing the rich more so than the rich influences the poor. I think we have a good example of this in the rise of what I call porn culture. Now, I'm not being puritanical, I like a little skin as much as the next guy, but I feel like in about the last 20 years I have seen the rise of fetish that has no basis in normality, the fetisization of fetish seems based on fetish... it's as if the system has gone awry, left it's roots, has no grounding in reality anymore. My thesis I guess is that the influence of Jackie Kennedy, of the days when fetish was private and not shamed, and when sexy and classy lived side by side so to speak, has evaporated to something I will call Vegas Culture, or Stripper or Porn Culture. It seems to have worked up the food chain, with the Adult Industry shepherding it that way, and invaded Club culture and now seems to be taking over things as simple as weddings and tatoo's.
I guess I am pointing out that the lines between public and private conduct are being so blurred, and it's in part due to corporate interests, and what is happening is that Fetish is in our face 24-7 as an enticement which makes it loose it's flavor but has people who want to see themselves as cutting edge or rebellious embracing things so extreme that the norm is now so open that it has lost the intimacy of secrecy. The Sexual revolution is so complete that no one knows anymore how to make love because we are all so busy fucking. You can't make money on making love.. hoochie has won over romance the same way oil won over streetcars. We all rushed into it as a way of pretending we were adult when only a few seem to know how to flirt and fiddle anymore because so many are so busy rutting rutting rutting. Hipsters are too busy exploring their mental curiosity to engage their emotional curiosity to fight this.
What caused it? good question... is it the shift of the centers of our culture to warmer climes, Florida, Arizona, Southern California, where more is revealed out of practicality? Is it the constant push of marketing for sex and sexually related products, like liquor sales, clothing lines, and the adult toy and movie industry?
Is it the broadening of the progressive spirit and a legacy of the Baby Boomers for everyone to rush towards more overt sexuality as a notion of civil rights, maturity, and coolness?
All of the above and a few more reasons I would guess.
The move for me is symbolized by brands like Vivid, Ed Hardy, Lucky, Stoli, and the Tatoo/fast cars/liquor industry, the P Diddy world of the 90's broadened and intensified, the prurient as the baseline leaving no place left to go, nothing left to imagine, plastic surgery as the norm, our barbie dreams the only remaining model of mass produced happiness.
The upcoming generation has an affinity for the culture of the early 40's, something a bit more genteel, but they do it with the assumption that any shame in sexuality is inherently wrong, which is a bit of an oversimplification of what might be seen as a deft maneuvering of the waves and shoals of human sexuality.
Can we blame Kinsey? I don't think so.. he described what was under the surface, but it was low culture that brought it to the forefront, this idea that addictions are virtues, the combination of the notion that there is no shame in being low class, and the notion that sexual health is a national virtue as exemplified by Sexual Education nationally at the age of maybe 5th grade, have led to a confidence on matters of reproduction that is a bit like a sophomoric ego, smart enough to not be dumb, but not smart enough to be nuanced about it.
The outcome is clear, the white hip hop scene of sorts, the Kardashianization of America.. the idea that icons are not classy examples of the rare air of the upper class, of refinement like Gweneth Paltrow or Katherine Hepburn, but are more likely to be exemplary of the upper class mimicking the lower class with a focus on the extremes of body type and behavior like the Kardashians, making the subversive so mainstream that it looses it's subversion, and becomes the norm for lack of any more creativity. Larry Flint pulls you down, objectifies you for our Colosseum Pleasure, but in response no one climbs up to be pulled down anymore. Perfume goes from ambrosia soaked rarity to mass produced saccharine, matching the trends with allure from truffle soaked coquettish to bubble gum flavored emptiness. From french boudoir to Hustler store Chinese shipping container cheapness in 100 years flat.
Now to be fair, what is has always been and will always be. Before the Kardashians there were other icons that portrayed the prurient above the principled, the Jayne Mansfields of the world for those of us who were too busy makin' a 9-5 to play the tease game, wanted what we wanted now, fast girls and a little bit of pleasure. The world has always had high and low, but it seems as if the low has reached up recently to gobble up the high, that the bourgeois know only the prurient now, are not tempted by the yacht culture of the refined. Sperry is being subsumed by Stiletto, the perception of ecstasy has crowded out it's true experience, and fucking has won over fornicating...it's coming out of Miami and Phoenix and Mexico and the Jersey Shore because the only ones willing to show us how it's done are the desperate and the desperate are now the new rich. Suburban kids no longer look to the wayward porn stars of the 70's who might have still had a classy background, fell out of modeling or some such thing due to a taste for forbidden fruit, but now look to the Rock Star energy drink world of Trailer Culture thrust upwards, the quick buck as the new norm, the movers and shakes hustling us all for cash with no idea how to spend it. The Icons become empty. Rolls Royce a brand but not a tradition of excellence, Ogilvy subsumed by trashy iconography.

Google Turns for the Worse..with a hand in your pocket...

The guys at google.. they are smart..
I once hung out with an MIT math PHD candidate.. he had a crush on my sister... poor guy.. I asked him what he wanted to do after graduation, and he said work for google. He said they were so far ahead it was amazing.
For years, google doesn't fuck up. They kept giving amazing products away, like this one, Blogger, and they fueled a change int he world, a real revolution that likely led to things like the Arab spring and who knows what else.. enlightenment was no further than a few key strokes away.. 7 Billion people on this earth and what must be a computer for about half of em.. even 5 years ago there was still only a computer for one in every ten. For years is was IBM and TI, then apple and personal computing began, Microsoft and it exploded and with democratic principles, re-branded mac, but then the Google era began. It seemed like computers were achieving everything we dreamed of, and all that is left is what we have left to dream or possibly even want, like self driving cars and google glasses.. but they took us to the Nth, they translated and blogged us, made the world so small, showed us every video conceivable and seemed like a benign force.. most importantly of all, they answered the questions we asked, and exercised restraint, seemed to find a balance between greed and service.. but about a year and a half ago, and I remember because I happened to be in San Fran at the time, and visiting a friend whose hubby was an exec there, I started to notice they were fucking up. But these guys are too smart to fuck up by accident.. what seems like a fuckup must have been something else.. Google was finally cashing in. This was maybe new years of 2014.
I started to notice it.. progress on the things that I needed improved seemed to stop, and my searches started to become less reliable.. it used to be I only had to search for something once.. but now, it was like the first three terms or so, usually so reliable, were things I didn't want.. I was learning, not shopping, but like Yahoo, Bing, and Ask Jeeves from 10 years ago,Google seemed to have forgotten how to fetch properly.. it would bring me what it wanted to bring me, the ball not my slippers, and it would sometimes just wander off. I might have been taking it for granted, but it's a computer not a dog, and I can't scratch it behind the ears to redeem it or save our relationship. it feels a bit powerless.
I remember when google became indispensable. I avoided the internet in college, stuck to books and libraries, had a student email address but never checked it, and when I did, months before graduation, I had 3000 messages but none were personal. I got into email and forged ahead, but I could tell a few of my more sophisticated friends, Ivy League types, had already moved on, were bored of email.. They already had facebook in their schools and everything was so public, but I was catching up, and they kept talking about something called 'Google Search'. This was in the early oughts. My dependence on books had been wise.. the Dewey Decimal System was as yet uncorrupted by commerce... truth was still truth, but yahoo and it's buddies were obvious whores.. helping me correctly about one in three times..surfing the net was an avocation, not a profession, and it yielded quirky and often times hilarious results, but it wasn't something to be trusted for serious matters... then along came google. It did what you asked it to.. like Microsoft had done to the typewriter, it destroyed the library.. it gave you what you wanted, free and consistently, and then it gave me better, better email, and then 20 other things I never dreamed I wanted but now feel I need: cloud storage, images, maps. amazing maps and geography tools, phone calls and even texting.. all for free.. it was incredible.. how much value did google create.. incalculable.. how man things did I accomplish because of it.. 10,000 emails later from me setting up a gmail account.. I can't even fathom.. I was a late adopter.. I assumed the market was competative, created parity.. that yahoo, hotmail and gmail must all be basically the same.. my girlfriend must be the same as my buddies girlfriend, not even curious. How wrong I was! someone talked me into a Gmail account and it kicked the shit out of hotmail.. not even close.. I became more sophisticated and my work improved, my life got better. I skipped Facebook entirely, never got a phone... google gave me all of that and I didn't want to venture into the world of wants from needs.. google was meeting all my needs and that was all the time I wanted to spend online, in front of hte box with lights.. the world got ahead, went to snapchat and twitter, novelized what for me just needed to be functional, and I almost felt proud to be so loyal to a company that gave me what I needed and not what it thought I wanted, but that began to change..
Again, around new years of 2014, new things seemed to go stale, not improve, and when they did improve, there were fuck ups... things weren't better often, just different, or they sucked.... they took away free texting.. does this mean I have to get a phone to keep up with the hectic Jones, who don't even answer their phone anymore because it's too time consuming to talk?
They would create things and let them go fallow.. google drive.. awesome idea, ran whole projects with it, but it sat.. it was like a government service. somehow I had paid for it, and somehow it worked for me, like roads and mail delivery.. but it wasn't so simple.. Snowdon popped out and told me I maybe should have only trusted Yahoo, even though they didn't quite have their shit together anymore.. and forget the government, corporate privacy became the real issue.. they were pimping me out for ad revenue..
I guess there are no free lunches and I should have known better, but they hid it well for so long and didn't seem to be missing meals.. they were already rich and seemed happy them google guys.. but maybe they thought all the value was on speculation, and that if they didn't try to make moves to monetize, in that american express way, from the businesses, if they didn't sell their soul to someone, it would be too late.. the next game changer would come along and it would all be for naught.. all that value and service created, just a waste of humanitarian time.. that doesn't buy a car elevator and a G-5 trip to the Disruptive Technology Convention ( yes that's a real thing, and trust me they go! and they wear lot's of silicon valley colors.. earthy toned suits, the Palo Alto Pallet, low key but truly expensive.)..
So I don't know what was worse.. knowing they were cashing in, were making an intense turn around to cash in everywhere they could but directly from me, or knowing that that greed was making them complacent, that that calling utility that I actually did pay for, was now getting even shittier, not just not improving, and that my browser seemed to reload more and more when I now have a bandwidth and monthly limit, and that cool little things like the tabs going away to make my page bigger seemed to not work anymore... it's a slow slip, but they are right.. they have me, who the fuck is even close.. I usually get out quick when it's slipping.. it's like staying with a girl because you don't have a truck to move your stuff.. but this is different.. no girl does this much for me.. blogger, drive, voice, hangout.. I'm settled down but she's distracted and in genuine, but man, it's gunna be hard to explain this to anyone.. it's subtle, but it seems like the smartest are noticing.. I don't live in a place like New York to know what the buzz is ( I live in a place that has bandwidth limits and doesn't even touch the mainland US!) but something tells me if I plugged in, they might be talking about some other bad ass thing that is filling that hole, Duck Duck Go or some other thing, but I'm here with the hoi palloi, and I do feel like years of good will are being monetized, and it's unsettling.. like a dad asking me to pay him back for college.. it just feels wrong even if it was always part of he plan.. why, dad why.. why google why.. can't you hide it like you did all these years?
Ways Google is slipping:
Google Circles was absurd... why compete with facebook poorly? it spread you too thin, nd made mefeel like you are playing with my privacy

1. Search results more and more obviously influenced
2. phone call utility sucks
3. tab hiding option gone
4. Blogger unimproved in like 3 years
5. Hangout also stagnant, and confused by circles..
6. Less reliable browser, almost your most important tool after google search
7. Translate seems to be stumped more often, and isn't getting better
8. Spell checker, again, stagnant
9. They dropped the texting service, didn't even let me pay for it
10. Why does Google Photos keep assembling stories for me? it's Single White Female creepy
11. The whole thing to foist Google Circles onto me seemed so desperate.
12. How much have they whored themselves to Constitutional Violations by private contractors and the NSA? I kind of want to know.
13. Streetview is amazing.. can't you make it actually work smoothly? If we put a man on the moon today you would have been responsible, but streetview works like a video game from the DOS days.
14. I still can't create groups with my gmail address book and do simple business things.. is this a patent issue or are you just lagging?
15. all of this becomes more absurd when you realize that google is becoming a Green utility, a car company, a glasses manufacturer, a cell phone company and who knows what else.. they are loosing track of the bread and butter, a sign of boredom and decadence at the tippy top, the same thing that happened to Microsoft when they got away from XP to Vista just to make more money in 2006. It's jumped the shark but they still make money because the same people who still love incandescent bulbs still want to play Deer Hunter on the same computer they had 10 years ago.

the Failings of Anchorage

I often find myself alone in Alaska, but about the only place I ever feel lonely is in it's largest city, Anchorage.
There is something about Bush Alaska, village Alaska, that is by definition honest. It's challenges are considerable, but it flows with a breezy ease, with courtesy and mutual concern. It is the very definition of how Alaska see's it's self.. it's how about half of the residents of the state live, to include it's two smaller cities, Fairbanks and Juneau, and it runs by a code even it's Criminals and State Troopers seem to live by, which says that you and I must recognize and respect each other, because who knows which one of us may need help tomorrow. In these places, people look one another in the eye, they speak with each other, and not at each other, and they seem both proud and humbled by the small moments of each day.
The one place in the state where it feels like people don't look you in the eye, might take you for granted, and might throw you under the bus, and walk through sliding doors like you aren't there and would be embarrassed if you acknowledged them or called them on it is Los Anchorage, Seattle North, The Rage, Alaska's bus stop, the city on the Inlet, Anchorage AK. Were it judged by the standards of any other city, it would hold up well. It's physical situation is frankly stunning.. were it not for the often sanguine weather, how many places can claim views of essentially 5 mountain ranges, including fairly clear views of the highest mountain in North America and two of it's lower brothers from 150 or so miles away, a stunning saltwater inlet with the world's second largest tidal variations, and Salmon Streams through it all. I have seen Moose less than a half mile south of downtown by Westchester Lagoon , and I just had a friend tell me about a very recent encounter with a mama black bear and 4 cubs just a quarter mile the other direction from 4th Ave over the rail yards on Government Hill. it's small enough to still be convenient, but to offer a little culture, and as the Joke goes, the best thing about it is that Alaska it's self is always just 15 minutes away!
But there it is, the one place where rules top logic, where treating everyone as a stranger is a virtue, and the reflex is fear and superiority.
 It's not that Anchorage doesn't have a lot going for it in the natural category, it's just that it feels like it turns it's back on all that.. like it's above it.. Nature is the great equalizer in the bush.. the stalker that unites the herd, but the failings of Anchorage are that it behaves as if it is not under that same threat.. as if it's above the natural laws of The Great Land.. and that is what pisses off everyone else in the state. it's why people from the bush get pissed when they get cut off in traffic.. don't you get it man, why are you making enemies? They are sure they will see you again.. where they live, if someone goes away, it's because they can't hack it, or they died. To him,  he's not making enemies.. he's gotto work out at the Alaska Club before going back to his law practice writing contracts for Conoco Phillips.. the fact that you would see it that way never even occurs to him.. In the defense of Anchorage, about half the people in the city do get it, and you notice who they are and try to meet them again.. the guy stacking in the supermarket at 11pm who says hi like it's the bush, like that's what you do when two people are that close to each other in the middle of the night, or the guy at the tire shop who once told you a funny secret about himself and that vulnerability made him human to you for the rest of your life even though you only see him every two years, but you know he remembers. Having half the people get it is a damn high number by American standards, and world standards, it's just low by comparison to, yup, you get it, Bush Alaska, where not getting it usually means you can start a clock on your either screwing up enough to die young or your moving out. I would venture to say that in most american cities, 15% of the people get it.. let's say in Florida.. maybe it's up to 30% by the time you get to Portland or some of the other nice places.. 50% is high!
A lot of the people in Anchorage remember when it was so small it wasn't an exception to Alaska rules, or came there when from the rest of the state where they learned those rules.. the people who freak you our are usually of a different category.. work or the military brought them here, and they think they get Alaska but they have left Anchorage 4 times, and each time thought a bear was going to eat them. Or they grew up in and hated bush Alaska, were told they were too good for it, and come here to show off their acculturation, which to those who get it is just an ego trip deviation from something about themselves they can't handle, not small town AK, which genuinely sees it's self as fairly accepting. There is also the sweet guy contingent who might be Alaskan by the standards of the world, they drive subies, they do cool shit on weekends, and they grew up with the best of both worlds in some of the nice suburbs, so they think they intellectually get the bush because they grew up making fun of it, but it's as distant to them as it is to the folks in Sheboygan because they think they are above it, because they did get the best of the rest of America piped into their home and brain at places like the Bears Tooth and UAA... on NPR and PBS, and think they can be some heroic intermediary between the two.. they come across like Chris McCandless to the folks in Healy.. well intentioned but just smart enough to be really stupid.. They do look tough cross country skiing in Kincaid Park, but something tells you they would be more likely to follow than lead the types from the Valley out if push came to shove in the manner of some survival epic. The common sense seems book learned, and it's all about experience in the Greater Great Land.
If you are going to run into reflexive liberalism, to self entitlement, Anchorage feels like the only place where the conditions for it can healthily grow to a level that could be dangerous, where smug finger wagging could get the upper hand on the alleged laws of nature.. where big city people can project onto small towners what in fact it is they don't really get, and it's what crawls up the spines of every muddy truck visitor that they will be underestimated for the very things they now value as reasons to respect them, for their muddy truck and open attitude that comes from fighting nature and not one another...
Anchorage, maybe we need you, for fresh sushi, live shows, and a place to feel anonymous for a change.. maybe we need your weird distancing from our openness as a way to hone us up for our first encounter with TSA and the indignities to come from any trip down to the lower 48, and maybe a bit of the impersonal, a bit of parking meter corruption is what we need to remind us what we got, but it doesn't mean we will forgive you for it, that we won't give you a hard time for being that one sister that moved away because she thought she was too good for what we had to offer.. we will, but you must serve a purpose to someone.. it's all, I guess, in the Great Land's plan...

Microsoft Jumps the Shark

It's kind of pathetic really. I am typing on another computer right now, a Google Chromebook, $250 and dropping, because I can't get my $1000 Windows 8 machine to work. I could use a Mac, but they annoy me too, and I am not smart enough for Linux. The only company that treats me like a human being, for the time being, is Google, so here I am.
What happened to the vision of Bill Gates? No matter what ideas he might have stolen from Steve Jobs 30 years ago, what made him tick, what made him successful, is that he believed in the beautiful chaos of freedom, but just like the pretensions of the west coast elite, the more they talk about it these days, the less free it gets on their watch, as the money become more important than 'the revolution'. A buddy of mine works for Microsoft. Here is his encapsulation:
"Everyone is too rich to care!"
Their new products are shit. They seem desperate, a naked attempt to be a touch screen (competing with the Ipad), a business machine (their former bread and butter), Yahoo homepage, and a gaming and entertainment platform all at once (what evolved on it's own in the case of gaming, because of Gates' libertarian view of the platform, and what they feel they should steal from Mac, who are way ahead in the case of entertainment), doing none as well as they could, nothing convenient, and everything automated that shouldn't be and everything un-automated that should.. it's all just confusion. Meetings there must be pure penury, with people reminding everyone that the computer has to be easy enough for an 80 year old grandmother to use while others try to push every idea from everyone else done badly. Everyone still there must know that everyone worth a sh$% took off like 10 years ago, leaving the retards and unambitious.
I tried to restart or shut down my 1k doorstop, but there is no obvious way to do so, other than holding the off button and counting seconds, hoping it had shut off and not just gone to sleep. It's almost worthless, so badly put together as an interface that I marvel anyone would by such a thing other than out of habit, or specific need, like some software they run that you can't run on a mac or chromebook, as was the case for me.
For all of Windows XP's frustrations, it actually worked, you could troubleshoot yourself, and the world responded, with like 600 million machines... it was the golden age I guess. We are now watching the death of an empire, and we are paying the price. The last bit of desperation I learned of was that they figured out the last thing anyone really needs them for is word processing, Microsoft Word, so they have decided to try to ratchet as much money out of that as they can until they drive the customers away there too. How quickly can I download Open Office, a freeware competitor that works better in many ways? In about ten minutes it turns out. I can thank Bill Gates for that freedom, and I can thank the company that he is now letting wallow for pushing me to it. I'd rather cure Malaria in Sub Saharan Africa than try to fix this mess too!

Observations on CNN

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