August 12th, 2009
I’m struck by the fact that, very often, the features that are advertised as a product’s killer assets are just lies hiding the fact that the product is crap.
- Why do I have the feeling that all these products I’ve seen in developing countries with well-known brands on them and a large “Genuine” printed somewhere are counterfeits? It doesn’t sound to me like the real brand would print “Genuine” on their products
- In the old days where operating systems were advertised as having “tons of software” for it, you could be sure that that particular operating system did not have the piece of software you needed.
- A company in France that is well known for its ads showing off their great customer service has the worst customer service ever.
- A large part of today’s adults in China show a severe lack of education and knowledge precisely because of the “Cultural Revolution”.
An equal amount of skepticism takes over me when I see today’s oh-so-hype “green” concepts and products.
I think we should all do a better job at taking how things are “sold” to us with shiny names with a grain of salt.
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July 20th, 2009
There are countless, countless examples where controlling a resource by locking people into the state you want them to stay in didn’t work. DVD encryption, DRMs, “regions”, etc., etc.
I thought the lesson had been learned, but I discovered yesterday, when I tried to upgrade an Acer desktop computer (E500) at a friend’s home from 1 gigbayte of RAM to 2 gigabytes. The motherboard supports that, but Acer locked it into supporting only 1 gigabyte. They probably hope that you’ll buy another computer instead of upgrading this one, and they’ll earn more money. Of course, I can probably find a way to flash some ROM in there to get rid if the limitation, but I just don’t have time to spend a day figuring that out. Sure, I’ll buy another desktop computer (or my friend will, rather). But it won’t be from Acer. Actually, I’ll probably not buy hardware from them anymore.
Folks, that doesn’t work, quit it. Does. Not. Work.
Update from 2009.0809: A few days ago, Apple did the same thing by locking people out of the Google Voice application for iPhone. People will find ways to install it, or will move away from the iPhone. Once again, in the long term, locking will not work.
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July 10th, 2009
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May 18th, 2009
As some of you may know, a new law (”Hadopi”) has been voted in France that allows private companies to monitor illegal downloads of their copyrighted content, log the IP addresses, ask the Internet access providers for actual names, and then start doing stuff like sending email and disabling your Internet connection for up to a year (while you still continue to pay for it).
As an effort to try and show how absurd this law is in today’s world I put up a fake page (in French) selling the “Hadopi router” that automatically cracks passwords of the nearby Wifi networks and connects to them to download torrents.
It’s a dumb joke, but I think it does point out a little bit of the absurdity of the law Comments and suggestions welcome!
Posted in GNOME/Ubuntu, General | 4 Comments »
April 29th, 2009
After having gone to GUADEC in 2006 and having missed the two following conferences, I am glad to be back and to attend the Desktop Summit in Gran Canaria! I’ll be attending events on the 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8th of July. Long time no see!
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March 11th, 2009
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February 20th, 2009
Programming tools like Eclipse assist your geeky typing by automatically adding closing brackets and ending quotes for you when you type the opening ones. This gives you extremely bad habits and you end up leaving all kinds of doors open.
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January 25th, 2009
Now I am not saying it is always that bad, but frankly, I could have taken this photo in many (if not most) car interiors in any Chinese large city:
Note the lucky charm (top right), but no belt (also note that this is a fancy car that belongs to a very wealthy family).
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January 3rd, 2009
… would probably require some way of preventing your head to move at all, but wouldn’t that be neat, and a great way to keep you relaxed?
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