Showing posts with label 1984. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1984. Show all posts

Monday, February 7, 2011

Xoom ad

You know what?
Actually the xoom ad that Motorola aired during superbowl is actually not that anti apple.
Well, ok, it is, but it never says the name or show the fruit, and if you use the white buds that come with the iPod, well, you might be a robot, those thing sound like shit.

Motorola struggles mightily and rarely comes out with great hardware, the droid was the last time we regarded Motorola's design with something tantamount to respect, so I believe we can understand why they want to pick a fight with apple, but what I don't get is how the hell they think they can get something out of calling the apple loyalist soulless drones , I already spoke about about this, people with ideals when buying hardware are few and actually not so prone to expend money on day one and only because this is the "anti iPad". so I think this ad is cool only because it reminds us of how far is apple from the company they believed they were back in 1984 when Ridley Scott directed that legendary promo (that was never aired again for copyright infrigement of Orwell's work)



The xoom is going to cost $800 (USD) so they have an uphill battle and that is only against the original iPad, if apple remains loyal to it's tradition we''l have a new ipad at the same price point in a few weeks.

Are the fandroids coming to Motorola's rescue? I don't think so, most Android noisy fans do not own top of the line terminals.

Friday, January 1, 2010

Crónica del pájaro que da cuerda al mundo / ねじまき鳥クロニクル

Pues fue toda una odisea, en las 903 páginas que componen la crónica del pájaro que da cuerda al mundo es fácil perderse, a veces hay que hacer una pausa (es cosa de segundos, pero cuando quieres seguir leyendo es angustiante) y redibujar el mapa de las relaciones entre los personajes, después de todo es un relato que se expande más allá de las islas de Japón, toca territorio chino, mongol, ruso y algunos otros más.

Todo inicia con el japón de las ambiciones expansionistas, ese Japón que se sentía como el único que podía hacerle frente al occidente y quería que las demás naciones asiáticas se le subordinaran para que también quedarán libre de la influencia occidental, pasamos en diferentes ocasiones por Manchukuo, el éstado títere de Japón que era la antesala de segunda guerra mundial, como ya lo comenté en alguna ocasión.

Los que acusan a Murakami de ser un one trick pony podrían encontrar en ésta novela muchas de las constantes de su obra, el personaje pulcro, metódico y eficiente, el joven sin oficio ni beneficio pero más consciente de que no quiere ser un zombie, el sexo, el sexo más que casual, como destinado a ocurrir, con todo y sus descripciones , la música, las referencias a la cultura pop, al baseball (o yakyu) que es tan popular por allá, y puede que tengan razón, pero es el como lo enlaza lo que le ha hecho un autor tan popular y reconocido, no hay nada veraz o muy explicado en el como ocurren esas trasiciones entre planos, lo que es real, lo que es imaginario, lo que ocurre en sueños, pero todo está conectaod y asistimos mudos y devorando páginas a lo que Murakami san no está contando.

No quiero hablar mucho de la obra, porque con la intro es más que suficiente, e incluso me parece que cuenta mucho.

El personaje de la obra es un hombre de 30 años que se ha dado cuenta que el trabajo que tomo desde que se caso seis años atrás no le llena y decide parar para investigar que es lo que lo apasiona, mientras lo piensa se encarga de las tareas y del hogar y su esposa la (aparentemente) noble Kumiko va a ganrse el pan y le dice que no tiene que apresurarse en encontrarlo, y es entonces que desaparece el gato de casa, y al iniciar su búsqueda, el señor pájaro-que-da-cuerda comienza a entrar en contacto con personajes más y más extraños.

Una cuestión que cabría aclarar para los que lo lean, es que si, en Japón pareciera que algunos cargos politicos son hereditarios.


Wednesday, November 14, 2007

How much is your privacy worth?

Online advertising

Free services in exchange for information

The market has spoken; lots of netizens are willing to give away information in order to get online services instead of paying a subscription or monthly fee.

This business model needs to collect information in order to make better or more specifics ads and the way to do that is track the user to see what he is doing online, what he likes, to try and guess what he would be most likely to buy as an impulse like in the cashier at the supermarket.

But this raises disturbing doubts about privacy , I’ve always said that Google has already too much information about us, our friends and everything else to keep their “no evil” promise. And now that they’re going after Social networks with their OpenSocial and that this upstart Facebook is about to release a new advertising model that will rely on the information on your profile our information is out there ready to be grabbed by the highest bidder.

This might be less important depending on where you live, most web enterprises focus only in the United States and Europe so everyone else is left out and their info is not safe but no as interesting as their American or European peer’s to an online advertiser.

So this is the future, akin to George Orwell’s 1984 Big Brother is watching, because as we know, Huge corporations like Google and Microsoft are not the only ones collecting data for different reason and I think than Online advertising is the least of our worries.

Another problem rises with Social Networks, the goal of these networks is to meet people trough common interests and background, but if you are a member that keeps their info secret or only available to the people you already know you are ruining the purpose entirely.

It is easy to avoid cookies storing in our browser’s cache but how many of us actually do it?

I don’t like online ads but I see them as a necessary evil that allows some of the services I use to exist.

What I would really like to see these guys do in order to transform me into a better online customer is to make shopping online more secure so we avoid our nightmares with 14 year old hackers usisng our credit card numbers.