The Emotional History of the World...
The difference in atmosphere in the keynotes between the guy from Google and the guy from Microsoft is tangible. When the guy from Microsoft talks, there's scepticism - hostility even. There's a sense of outrage when he doesn't know what a GPL is, frustration when mentions that he things 'things built by committee' are messy. The only clap he gets is for mentioning that he hates the PowerPoint paperclip... The guy from Google gets a clap within the first ten minutes for mentioning that he likes the way that his site does search-query spell-correcting. It's immensely satisfying, but it makes you wonder what impact gut emotional reactions have had on the history even of the most ostensibly rational industries, technology and computing - ...
Comments
Please stay on-topic, informative and polite. I reserve the right to remove comments for whatever vague capricious reasons seem reasonable at the time.
It is rare in academia in the US to find that this is emotional attachment/aversement of a candidate and/or his topic/stance does not dictate how far he/she goes in a program. If your committee feels you are a fool or full of shit it often doesn't matter how well you make and support your argument.
The same could be said of many areas, as you so well point out in this case. It extends into other areas as well. I completely disagree with the dumb fuck prez we have here in the US about most anything. But even if his arguments about invading Iraq made any sense whatsoever it would be difficult to take any of it seriously since he is, in comparison, an apparat for Microsoft.
→ Posted by: filchyboy at April 25, 2003 6:24 PM
Everything that Microsoft says and does can be attributed to making more money. GPL, Open source etc make it really hard for organisations like Microsoft that produce products and not services to make money from. The Opensource ideal is about not charging for something that is infintitely copyable at almost no cost.
Interestingly, I think Google is heading toward monopoly status and their conferences my have an air of hostility about them all too soon.
→ Posted by: Matt at April 26, 2003 11:27 AM