Technology might be dooming us to live in the past.

This post is going to be a bit more free form (i am trying to keep myself enthused with this blog, and i tend to be a perfectionist. so with this one, i'm just going to start typing and go.)  (an edit from future me: the technology thing floats in and out. but towards the end i start getting "hippy dippy" slash political.  so like the following message i would like to quote pete holmes "because my dvd player, like many others, has a next chapter button. feel free to skip the awkward trinity neo screwing in an upside down U.")

FEEL FREE TO NOT READ IT... i mean, hell, its a huge internet out there. "float away from me. FLOAT AWAY" -dane cook

So it feels like there is some inherent quality modern technology has. this constant unyielding need to update and become better. The quandary went something like this: (when i was having a conversation with a friend of mine about gaming consoles vs. computers)
     "the issue with computers is that, company XYZ builds, fancy machine 123 in order to design and code, program 456. well it stands to reason that I the end user am going to need a machine that can emulate fancy machine 123 if i want to run program 456. A problem they fixed with game consoles. because company XYZ builds "The Fancy Machine 123" and then tells all the other company's to design and code programs for expressly, fancy machine 123"

or so I thought. now here is where i start getting biased, because i play microsoft's xbox. have since xbox continued into 360. and then into the 360 slim. (believe me it was not a happy and fun evolution, and i am SO effin close to writing them off completely (the way i did nintendo) but that is another blog for another time. its title "hey microsoft, could you dim the lights... WHEN YOU ARE MAKING THE SEX TO ME!?!?!")

     just look at that process. 'xbox' to 'xbox 360' to 'xbox 360 slim'. game developers used to let there tech waft, age, cure, and ferment, before improving. You had the Nintendo Entertainment System (or NES)(in the U.S.) then you had the SUPER NES then the nintendo 64, then the WII... Its not as if they released the NES the NES2 and then just kept overhauling it "throw out those old NES2's and get the new NES3, while your in the store be one of the first to pre-order the NES4"

     But yet that is exactly what we see with the 360. (the one saving grace is they have only had me buy anything new twice, as when my 360 ate it's motherboard, they fixed it. but as that motherboard started creaking and shaking each time i tryed to play skyrim or batman arkham city, i knew i would have to buy a 360 slim. (another topic for the other blog... HOW THAT SLIM, THEN ATE MY HARD DRIVE) ...but back to the point.  did you guys catch it... i had a perfectly serviceable/usable fancy machine 123... but somewhere along the line, company XYZ started using the fancy machine 1234 to design, build, and program the games that i would be playing on my 123.

   To en-nutshell-ificat everything. In much the same way that hollywood "installed" a "developmental slack"  (it takes so much time and money to make a movie, that the movies that are coming out NOW, are already dated by at least 3 years (and three is a VERY short example)) so as that. we are all living in the past. as technology only gets faster and faster. we start to see the holes in the "developmental slack" in the line. I'm on apples itunes version 10.something.whocaresanymore.1.5.3.7.8.FTW. and yet EVERY time i open itunes. it gathers the same "gapless playback information" for the same 1168 tracks.

    Instead of making a piece of tech. letting that tech live and breed in the wild for a few years. AND THEN cannibalizing the bits and pieces to make the next piece of tech. They (as in THE MAN... man) put a piece of tech out there for the mindless hoards (thats you and me btw) to nom on, while they are back at the lab trying to figure out there next move... before us mindless hoards even have a chance to tell them what the tech needs... and therefore what there next move should be (as in what next move we are likely to buy)

    lets follow apple.    apple creates the iphone/ipod touch. (which came first doesn't matter, i'm getting to that) they make an ipod touch and then go... well damn, this would be great as a cell phone. "well go ahead and put it out there, they will eat that shib up, and then they will come back and by the same piece of tech, that now has a cell antenna, and a mic, and a speaker."  ...damn, you know what would be great... if we made this thing friggen huge.  ...well put the phone out there, and those fools will eat it up, while we build the ipad.  "hey buy this ipad, sure it cant do half the things your iphone or ipod can do, but eff you, you are a stupid consumer" ...damn, you know what this ipad really needs, its own antenna so you can take the internet everywhere...  

and so on

...if they could just "play the game" the way the laws of supply and demand dictate it should be played. my itunes would determine the gapless playback ONCE... and then it would be done.


      I trace the beginnings of microsoft's ends back to this, "developmental slack".  and as i am such a fan of movie and general pop culture quotes, it fits in with a great monologue by a man named Bullet Tooth Tony, from a flick called Snatch. (I'll paraphrase and summarize as tony is a big brash authentic MAN, and as such uses big brash authentic MAN words and phrases, that can very often be misconstrued.)    "[...] Now, dicks have drive and clarity of vision, but they are not clever. They smell [profit] and they want a piece of the action [...]"   ...remember back when apple had microsoft "on the ropes" and microsoft whipped out a desperate and wild hay-maker, it called vista.  ...remember how terrible and aweful vista was (i do, my computer runs vista, and i can't afford, to fix or upgrade.)boo hoo) my point being, microsoft was playing the game. it put a thing out there, let it breath let it stretch its legs, and then figured out what needed to be "naturally selected" out and what needed to be "evolved" in. Then they smelled some of that sweet sweet illustrious [profit], and they wanted a piece of it for themselves "But you've got your parties muddled up. There's no [profit] here, just a dose that'll make you wish you were born [someone else]. Like a [foolish company], you are having second thoughts. You are shrinking, and your two little [computer company's] are shrinking with you. And the fact that you've got "[vista]" written down the side of your guns... And the fact that I've got "[apple]"... Written down the side of mine... Should precipitate your [company's gusto] into shrinking, along with your presence. Now... [EFF] off!"

     OK a little clarification, i am a little up the butt of apple to date. But that is not to say that they are doing it "right" only that they are doing things "righter" than microsoft. From the very beginning, apple understood who they were marketing to. youth. they managed to keep the whole "hippy/flower child" thing alive and well in there ad campaign and even there design. As a company you could say that apple was saying "hey guys (not kids, they don't talk down to "people") isn't it great to come up with your own ideas." by saying "think different." The biggest and most helpful principle in magic shows, is also true for the types of manipulation AD campaigns use. 'Nothing fools you better than the lie you tell yourself.' It is so amazingly simple and effective. Think of the best kind of magic tricks. "up close" or "street" magic. because most of it doesn't need words. a man approaches you with a deck of cards fanned out for you. instinctively you reach for one, to see what it is. then you return it to his deck. he does some neat moves or shuffles or sounds, and bam, there is the card you picked. You are astounded, if even for just a few moments, your brain shuts up and just sits there, in awe. you haven't felt like that since you were a kid.
      because you told yourself so many lies. think about it like this. that same situation. only the guy comes up "pick a cark, pick any card that you randomly choose, of which i couldn't possibly know, because you are now randomly picking it." you pick it look at it. "now please return your card, THAT ONLY YOU COULD POSSIBLY KNOW, into this incredibly shuffled and impossibly tangled mixed up chaos that is my deck of absolutely normal cards." then proceeded to explain all the different ways that he is mixing them up more and that it would be absolutely impossible to just pick the  next card off the top of the deck and have it be the card that you picked at the start. but derned it if that isn't what happened.
     your brain would IMMEDIATELY give up. thinking "pshhhhhhh there is OBVIOUSLY something going on here that you could probably figure out..." as appose to the childlike splendor of when they guy said nothing, and without even thinking about it. your brain just tells you all of those things "i just randomly picked that, there is NO way i just picked a card that he wanted me to pick, i just randomly picked a spot for my random card in his OBVIOUSLY shuffled and mixed up deck of cards..." and so on.

     Now, knowing what you now know. Do you still wonder why douche-nozzles like "pickup artist" Mystery (Erik von Markovik) Have such luck with the lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllladies? or even the "chicks dig jerks" adage/cliche. Its because these jerks have nothing to say... so the gals on the other side of this "trick" start telling themselves all these lies.

AD's, political speech's, doctors, scam artists, jerks, and even unknowing decent people, ALL use this. 





.....back to the technology thing though.  and admittedly i don't have much more steam for it, but. How can people live and interact with "the here and now" if company's get to decide what is here and now. microsofts windows floundered so hard because it saw what was good/working for apple... and thought that it would be good/work for windows... but it didn't it almost IMMEDIATELY fell right on its face. because apple had there whole companys life to work out all the kinks (most of the kinks) of the OS... microsofts windows, just a few years of that developmental slack it had built up... result.  ...windows 7, a premature melding of windows xp's solid proven system. and vistas "new hotness"  (also eating up whatever developmental slack, they had left.) so they went on to debut crappy half cocked think after crappy half cocked thing.   ...i'm looking at you Microsoft Surface... (and don't think you shook me by making a tablet calling it the same thing, and thinking i wouldn't notice that you tried to sell a big freakin' table that had a touch screen.)

 

Parody video that explains whats wrong with the surface.

  


(edit from future me: thats basically where its done. a nice funny video... past me wanted to drone on and on about some crap that i'm sure you don't care about... but all the same. if you want... feel free to read on... you were warned and reminded though... you could have just floated away to something else on the internet.)

 (believe me, I more than most, understand the trivial nature of even uttering the next thing... but since utterances cost nothing on the internet... here go's literally/figuratively/understandably nothing)

   If we all said no, if we all refused to buy the next thing. Issuing one collective statement "We are no longer going to take part in something, simply because it is new. But rather we are going to make due with the already wonderful ______________ that we currently have. Until it is either broken or legitimately improved upon."  Think about it, if we said that to our bullpucky "two party" political structure. or our movie industry that just keeps churning out "zoo keepier"s "good luck chuck"s and their ilk. or our school systems... oh sweet heyzeus jeebus christo on crutches wouldn't it just be utopian, if we as a nation told our government to fix the schools or kiss taxes goodbye...     hot sweet sexy truth and absolving salvation, would that be something.   "hey capital U capital S, Uncle Sam. Pay our teachers, so that they care about our children. Fix the curriculum, so that our children reach adulthood and actually understand how this country and society works. furthermore how to navigate it, so as to gain employment.    ...OR we stop voting... and expose your fraudulent shill of a democracy, for the secret society of an electoral college that it is."


    while i am speaking in triviality's. while i am saying things that are so true and so amazing, that your brain cant help but jump in (much like the magic trick) and discredit them. here are some more

    all wars are civil wars.
    there is no they.
    you are infinitely more than just thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
    humanity is doomed to extinction because we cannot unite to solve problems like hunger or poverty... much less getting off this rock that will someday burn away to a husk.  
    if you want to end the war on terrorism, build schools. because terrorists are confused ignorant people. that are led around by the people they respect. (not too unfamiliar to our country and its criminals eh?) 
    stop feeding a demand that isn't there with a supply that we don't want; car company's, cell phone manufactures, ...and so on
    modern medicine can cure cancer and treat aids because pharmaceutical company's charge money for there products. until our government has extra money laying around for cancer research, it will be FOR-profit. get used to it
    our government would have schmabillionjillions of extra money laying around if we ended even 3 of the wars we are currently in.
    PSA's don't work.
    second hand smoke doesn't kill
    it is neither/both half full or half empty... there is a glass with fluid in it.
    inals because there are police because there are criminals because there are police because there are crim
    "if a guy cuts you off on your way to work. By dinner time, if you are still angry about it... maybe YOU'RE the asshole."  -some comedian that it kills me that i can't remember, so as to give proper credit
    woman are statistically worse at spacial reasoning, and thus, will have a statistical prominence when it comes to bad driving. (i sterilized that as best i could/come on girl you know i love you)
    

last but not least


      There are ONLY two solutions to the "bullying" problem. 
            Solution One. The community/click that the bully is a member of. Unitedly says "WTF BRAH!?! NOT COOL MAN... NOT COOL!"
            Solution Two. A bigger bully.

again, wouldn't it just be divine if we could turn the world into a community... as appose to a click of bully's trying to bully one another into what they want... not even bullying into whats best... so as to hide behind some "ends justify the means" argument. just bullying to get what they want...
       

The Problem I have with most prosthelytize-ers

     Ok so, Its been a long while. (hey I never said I would be posting with any kind of regularity) But as with my last post, I stumbled across another vexing perplexity on, you guessed it, THE INTERNET...

    It all starts off innocent enough, me wandering through the backwaters of  CRACKED.com. When out of the blue, where there are usually 'pretty good' ads trying to sell me a t-shirt or drug paraphernalia. I saw this...

Yeah I use Google as a spellchecker. So What

     "...actually, yes..." a phrase that made this article, impossible for me to resist. Once clicked the ad took me to this article. Which starts off promising, "Is Jesus God? Did Jesus ever claim to be God? See proof from the life of Jesus Christ and why it's not blind faith to believe in him." Why it's not blind faith? Count me in SO hard.
      But then it almost immediately drops the ball;

It is impossible for us to know conclusively whether God exists and what he is like unless he takes the initiative and reveals himself.
We must scan the horizon of history to see if there is any clue to God's revelation. There is one clear clue. In an obscure village in Palestine, 2,000 years ago, a Child was born in a stable. Today the entire world is still celebrating the birth of Jesus, and for good reason.

 Whoa whoa... the ad said "Prove that he's god." and it promised logic, and intelligence. Then immediately uses the bible as the proof. Now let me be absolutely clear, I am anti-bible. NOT anti-god/jesus/religion(to cover any and all deities/prophets thereunder) No I am railing against the prosthelytizing used by this website and the author of the article. Much like my previous post (and indeed, my general style) I don't like people trying to lead others about by the nose. So please don't see what you are about to read as anti christ or anti god. Believe what you want to. That's what leads to complexity, differences, and out of complexity comes order, thus intelligence. I am nothing if not for propagation of human intelligence.

       But that leads me to my point/s about this specific article. Logical fallacy. Basically a thing that seems true so it is accepted as such. You know what? logicalfallacies.info said it best

(1) All men are mortal.
(2) Socrates is a man.
Therefore:
(3) Socrates is mortal.
It is simply not possible that both (1) and (2) are true and (3) is false, so this argument is deductively valid.
Any deductive argument that fails to meet this (very high) standard commits a logical error, and so, technically, is fallacious.

      If articles had drinking games, one for the proof jesus article could be, drink each time you spot a logical fallacy. It's not hard. Most of there argument/paragraph thingys hinge on one. Such as "We're told that." and "Few, if any, hold this position"  

Thus, to know him [jesus] was to know God. To see him was to see God. To believe in him was to believe in God. To receive him was to receive God. To hate him was to hate God. And to honor him was to honor God.

      Its debatable whether that last quote from the bible would qualify but this is my blog. So from here on, it will be considered as one. A lot of this article seems to revolve around a theory put forth by some cat named C. S. Lewis in a book he wrote 'Mere Christianity' the article quotes (presumably him) as such,

“As we face the claims of Christ, there are only four possibilities. He was either a liar, mentally ill, a legend, or the Truth.”

      For those playing the home game, you should drink. "there are only four possibilities." I could come up with more than four, and only about half of them would be the devils advocate. ("why not an alien illuminati crossover") The chief argument, they aren't open to the idea that there is no god. They take it as granted that obviously god exists, and this guy is talking about being his son, so the only thing needing to be argued is whether or not he is the guys son. Now I am not saying that there isn't a god, just pointing out that he ("heyzeus") could have been truthful and sane, and still not the son of god.

      How could J-dawg be seen as truthful if he said he was the son of god. but there wasn't a god, or there was a god but he didn't have a son? I hear you ask... It's a deep philosophical debate (ripe for another post maybe) that boils down into the "if god created us, then naturally we are all his children" principle. (but you can't really start that argument without talking about the "why would god allow hate, pain, and suffering" debacle ... and again, that's not what this post is about)

so backward to the point...

      These guys put out an AD on a popular website, while knowing they were fighting an uphill battle. So they took the underhanded route. They started misleading people. "Are there any logical, intelligent reasons to believe in jesus?" I'm sure there are. But not in the article. They require, for you to believe that they are presenting a rational intellectual argument for belief. As a prerequisite, that you also believe the bible to be true. Evidence for such can be found in there citation section.

     I am sorry but isn't that behavior what got scientologists put at the top of the ridicule pile. Endless rhetoric about who is god, how he operates, and furthermore how to get on his good side. ALL based around A STACK OF PAPERS BOUND TOGETHER. Not sane rational thought, not intense philosophical debate that arrives at the conclusion of, not even a decent argument based around history or archeology. But a collection of story's and short story's. Popularly known as The Bible.

Jesus was not a liar, or mentally disabled, or manufactured apart from historical reality. The only other alternative is that Jesus was consciously being truthful when said he was God.

(drink)

        They go on to talk about how easy it is to make claims, talking about how anyone could profess that they are the son of god. They say that you must have credentials to substantiate the claim. But when talk'n bout' our main man christ-esus (poor attempt to bring snoop d's "izzle" mechanic into religi-zzle) they make us drink again by saying

But when it comes to Jesus of Nazareth, it's not so simple. He had the credentials to back up his claim. He said, "Even though you do not believe me, believe the evidence of the miracles, that you may learn and understand that the Father is in Me, and I am in the Father.

       He had the credentials of saying "nah uh, i'm totes the son of god, cuz i so totally performed miracles and stuff so like i'm not only the son of 'm, but I AM HIM." It just undermines the whole spirit of religion/faith and even the bible itself.

to wrap it all up (for now)

        The bible is a great source to derive even greater moral lessons. But it isn't (or at the very least SHOULDN'T) suppose to be an exact iteration with which we are to live our lives. Hell, its the main reason there are churches in the first place. (pun intended) To help others understand the moral point of what the bible tells us, not the textbook definition of its words. (another topic that I am sure will be another post of mine someday "Reasons why people who think the bible condemns homosexuality as being an abomination are tragically uninformed regarding definitions of words"   ....just need to work on the title)

      I leave you with an excerpt from the email I sent them following the "questions and comments" link at the bottom of there page. (that's the link if you want to join me in commenting or questioning them.) Where I build on that "point of churches thing" by referencing the danger in letting the people and not the book talk to you.

...even after reading your "short" article, I still have no choice but to mark you guys off as just a bunch of unfortunately misguided (if not incredibly foolish and self deprecating) BLIND follower fideist jerks... no better than the poor confused middle easterners, who after being told 'that it is gods will that the infidels are to be smote' strap bombs to their chests and murder people. Only difference, the terrorists don't annoy people with huckster internet LIES.

maybe a touch dramatic. but still applicable.

Misguided Effort On The Internet

     I recently decided to try "Google+" Google's new "facebook" essentially. All went fairly well, finding a photo for my profile, adding friends to follow, and so on. It was going swimmingly until I made it to my main hub. The home screen if you will. You see, if you don't have enough friends, Google+ will automatically populate your page with things that are "trending" on Google+.

     This was one such post CLICKY DEH LINK

     All Well and good, accept for the small fact that it sent me into an outright tizzy. Jake has his head in the right place. His end goal/mission statement, is one I can get behind. ...Maybe it's inherent to the internet. Maybe Jake didn't have time to put forth a well thought and respectful statement. But somehow or another Jake came off very self aggrandizing. Snobbish even. Jake is not alone in this though. (I'm sure as the months wear on, you'll likely notice that I have the same problem.) It's the internet populace that I have the problems with. (so lets not trash poor Jake too hard)

 Lets start with his post, as it is the example that led me to posting this.

"Food that is processed, man-made, and fabricated isn't eaten by animals..."

     In a certain sense, I really do see what he's doing. It is a part of the "Tell a man that there are 1,876,234,564.7 stars in the night sky, he'll believe you instantly. Tell a man that paint is wet or his plate is hot, however..." theory of mine. The statement he makes, only seems true. Due to the fact that it is far more easy to believe, than to test. It is made all the easier by the "photo evidence." (I'm not here to tell you about how misleading photos can be, just do a quick google for "can I trust before and after photos.")

"Next time you think about spending a few bucks on fast food, try buying some groceries, and putting that money towards a healthy home-cooked meal."

      Again, I'm all for the message, but the wording is where he loses me. The internet is just littered with people espousing statements like this one. Almost all of them are filled with assumptions, presumptions, and disdain.

Using Jake's statement as an example.
          "Next time" "think about" "few bucks" "fast food" "try" "healthy home-cooked meal"

      They are all used in a diminutive sense. As if to say "I have the means and the know how to go to whole foods. To buy expensively organic. To then take them to my home, where I will then eat healthy... so why don't the rest of you do that. I mean its SO SIMPLE."
      Jake, and really the whole internet, has fallen prey to assuming everyone in the world has the same feelings, thoughts, and outlook that "They" do. (not even mentioning the extra income needed, or HOUSE for that matter) What about people that have a half hour for lunch. People that have no home. People that don't live near "healthy grocery" stores. People who enjoy fast food. What about them Jake/internet?

      It feels to me as though there are enough people on the internet trying to sway peoples opinions to their own. So I have decided that I am going to try not to do the same. I'm going to try living to let die. Going to try letting the people who surf the net reach their own conclusions, and furthermore, doing with it what THEY want to.