regardless of whether it is the right thing to do, what he is trying to do could be improved by being more like pagerank. i don't have an opinion on whether it is the right thing to do; i haven't given that much thought.
155 karma · joined March 11, 2009
Interesting thing to think about - good comments in the article.
for password hint: "none"
first elementary school: "root mean square"
favorite food: "spiraling out of control"
if it's important, like a bank site, there's a way to unlock your account if you did ever lose your password. i see this as using features they didn't know that they had; specifically: "disable password hints" and "disable password alternatives"
another good book on buffett which has some sections dedicated to buffett vs quants and buffett vs 'its all luck' ppl is "The making of an American Capitalist" (http://www.amazon.com/Buffett-American-Capitalist-Roger-Lowe...) -- first book I got on him, perhaps the best (got snowball, haven't read it yet).
There is so much going on, so much information coming in, so many interactions in our lives that many of our perspectives are on autopilot and if we get too buried, outside influences have too much influence on our perspectives.
I have taken time out a number of times in life, ranging from a month to two months. No friends, no family, no things to do, no internet, picked up a newspaper a few times (if you added up all of them I'd say 3 or 4) - spent most of my time outdoors, occasionally with music, and interaction with people I came across, and with no intention of keeping in touch. Works best out of country; first time was in the Himalayas, but one year I was poor and so I just went to a city a few hundred miles from anyone who knew me. The results are simple: various things that have been jumping around in your head settle, things that would have taken a year to figure out become crystal clear by week two, your life in so many ways becomes very clear, and you come out of all this with an incredible focus, energy, and just freshness.
You could do studies I suppose that figure out if this increases your overall efficiency, if it leads to better ideas, but such a study would only feed my curiosities because the value in this is more than just increasing efficiency, or improving products -- its about increasing the quality of life.
Reflection, pausing, meta-cognition, wandering into an alternate mindset are good to integrate into ones overall lifestyle, but sky diving for a weekend, or chilling out for 30 minutes a day - it seems with a busy life, as I'm guessing yours is as well - it's often like swimming against the current. It's nice to pause the current, enjoy your thoughts, paddle around some without worrying about it. It's very nice. I don't think it's going to happen this year for me, and that's unfortunate.
i also like how clear you made the advantages of the app, the testimonials, and just the overall how much information i get easily.
great job.
the way i see it is that between people, we want to communicate ideas. in order to communicate we have to meet at a shared context, and shared semiotics. the way i'm writing this is not how i would talk to someone at work. the way i talk at work is not how i would talk to my mom. the way i talk to my mom is not how i would talk with my housemate. the way i talk about a problem with a designer is not the way i talk about a problem with an engineer. the way i talk about a problem with an engineer is not the way i talk when discussing philosophy.
if you value comprehension, and you value growth, then you are in the minority of our society - especially when it comes to comprehension. it's easier to find people trying to win than to find people trying to comprehend. since you value learning and growing, you will accelerate as will others like you, beyond the understandings common in our society. your context will diverge more so from shared contexts, simply because you are internally growing. don't fret - just communicate what needs to be communicated. some people may not be interested in some of the things your interested in, and others will be. run into brilliant people with shared interests, sure it might be exciting, but you'll still need to communicate - you'll still need to meet with words, body language, and smiles - you're experience is entirely your own. we are all alone, together.
summary: Those people who like meetings for sake of meetings: "emotional drama-conflict, blaming, flirting, one-upsmanship, random outbursts, anger, and so forth. For these happy people heading for meetings, it's those the soap-opera aspects of meetings are the most exciting parts of their jobs...On the other hand, all this drama - the stuff we contemptuously call "politics" seems to be the bread and butter of the non-techies. Indeed, these people are often upset if I show them how to conduct well-run meetings, because I've taken all the joy out of their lives.
i like this guy, though. he's not marketing scum.
this leads to my question: are there terms that distinguish between what this article is promoting, this idea of marketing and the more common ideas: 'public relations'/edward bernays/manipulation? Something other than 'being cool' vs 'being a jerk'?
if not, if both are just 'marketing' - then a terms should be made to distinguish the paradigm difference.
detailed profile: http://www.intp.org/intprofile.html
Number of times I felt it did anything: 0
Number of times that I received a response which gave me the impression that at most, i gave them additional marketing information - how many people disagree with what's going on: 4
The last letter I sent, which was about Net Neutrality, went into a lot of detail on how their ideas for how to curb child pornography online would do nothing to actually deter it, how easily it is to get around their idea, how people involved in those markets make it around and aren't averse to using a little more tech, and how their ideas do threaten what does work on the net - it's openness. I made an item by item list of the perceived benefits of their change and why they won't work.
I received a generic response that my representative is working hard to get rid of child pornography on the net, and how this measure will help to do so, listing a number of the reasons that I had argued against while providing nothing more.
Conclusion: writing to politicians is as useful as writing to the mob with policy ideas.
i'm not disagreeing with you at all, this is a great advertisement, edward bernays was right - reason doesn't sell, but emotion does. he was also right about how you can manipulate the masses and protect them from their silly reasoning, by directing them through propaganda to behave as willing sheep. 'propaganda' was the term for marketing/public relations - but for marketing purposes it was rebranded....
that coercive sick spirit we all know as propaganda, those books bernays wrote that inspired third reich ministers and corporate leads in the US alike, that helped turn the white house into a PR stunt, it was tat same spirit,t he same techniques, the same understandings that lead to today's world of marketing. no stretch, no connect far away dots -- directly the same history. focus groups, emotion targeting, the psychological analysis of consumers to figure out ways to manipulate them, these are the backbones of both advertising and psychological warfare, the division quite blurry.
so yes, this is great marketing -- and damn, i hate marketing. i like businesses, i love technology, but marketing is sick, twisted, manipulative stuff
maybe im still somewhat naive but i think if your product is good enough at solving people's problems, of adding real value, you don't need much marketing - not int he public relations sense - you just need to get people aware your product exists.
my first company we had a guy who got real big into marketing, i noticed he contributed almost nothing to the company, and he didn't bring in many people, and the way he brought people in, i didn't dig it - i felt the first thing to do was repair the relationship with this person. second company, i was only 30% and the main guy was big into marketing with this other guy, they took care of that - once again they're added efforts did very little - what really sold was the innovative ideas i came up with in the software, and just the fact that was there reaching the ears of potential customers -- so marketing in the sense of getting the word out helped, but all their other efforts - the way they wrote up PR releases, their promotional give aways, did almost nothing. Maybe I've only worked with poor marketers, maybe if I met a really manipulative person...they'd show me how it can be done well.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself. No, no, no it's just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they'll take root - I don't know. You try, you do what you can. Kill yourself. Seriously though, if you are, do. " - bill hicks.. full text: http://sennoma.net/main/edits/Hicks.html
my first thought: i wonder if someone has already taken them....quietly....
Some hosting providers like SoftLayer give you a Private Net, so you can VPN into the Private Net and RDP from there (without opening up the port to the public facing IP). This makes sense if you have an office, or a # of employees.
A cheap and easy solution is Hamachi (which creates a VPN between machines). You install Hamachi on your server and your trusted machines (your desktop, whatever else) and now you can RDP using the Hamachi IP.
You can allow allow file & printer services in Windows Firewall for your Hamachi or hosting provider supplied network, and get to your files that way (easier than FTP).
LogMeIn is nice too, but you lose all the other things you can do with a real virtual network. I used to use Radmin (radmin.com), which was nice - but I prefer the virtual networks approach.
He still wraps the information, but not to the extent he does for other publications and he frequently separates the substance into its own paragraphs. It's a great blog and I recommend it.
Two other cognitive biology blogs that I recommend are http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/ and http://merzenich.positscience.com/
There's also DD-WRT (which you install onto commercial appliances, then overwrite their firmware), but I haven't tried it out yet.
Didn't upvote the article, you're absolutely right about it being fluff.