Well, at least it's honest (to a degree - IE9 might still be worthless, but I wouldn't know), and it's kind of hard to hype a line of products that everyone knows is terrible.
Still, kind of pathetic. Microsoft is supposed to be a tech titan, and instead of being successful in the competitive marketplace, they were able to get away with this for over a decade. Apparently IP monopolies don't always promote quality and efficiency - golly gee, who knew?
Is this a real commercial? If so, kudos to Microsoft. WTH are you talking about Gene, "Is this the best they can do?" This is inconceivably self-deprecating for a major brand to do. I still don't believe this is a real commercial. But if it is, my hats off to Microsoft.
(To be clear, I'm not congratulating IE, I'm congratulating their courage with this ad.)
The difficulty I'm having seeing your point is this: confessional courage is fine if they were at an AA meeting or with a minister. But is it really good marketing?
Once upon a time, Internet Explorer was notable chiefly for being head and shoulders above Netscape. Then along came Firefox, and within a couple of years only demon-possessed illiterates were using it.
What I don't like about IE9 is that the Windows 7 taskbar treats each tab as if it were a separate window. Hence clicking on the IE icon does not bring up IE; you have to hold ALT or select a thumbnail.
I remember the year I decided I didn't need to have a Mac to save money, much to the chagrin of my militantly pro-Apple family (to give an idea of what I mean one of my parents had an original IPod), and was occasionally using I.E. 7. The horror stories I could tell you..
Cruel to be kind means that I love you . Because, while I think you are mistaken, your hearts are in the right place -- yes, even you, Silas -- unlike some people . This Breitbart fellow (discussed in the link above), by all appearances, deliberately doctored a video of Shirley Sherrod to make her remarks appear virulently racist, when they had, in fact, the opposite import. I heard that at a recent Austrian conference, some folks were talking about "Callahan's conservative turn." While that description is not entirely inaccurate, I must say that a lot of these people who today call themselves conservative give me the heebie-jeebies.
The name is a misnomer. And a harmful one, because it interferes with understanding the process that is really occuring. What is really occurring is a search of a constrained program space. Let's say you want to be able to identify images of hot dogs . You begin with a plausible program for doing so, that is able to also search the space of nearby programs that might get better results on the problem. You then (in "supervised learning") provide scores that indicate how well one of these possible programs has done on solving the problem. After doing this for some time you settle upon a program that solves the problem "well enough." This is a great technique that can produce truly impressive results on a wide class of problems, such as identifying images of hot dogs. But notice that, except for the phrase in scare quotes, there is no "learning" in the description. Calling this "learning" is importing ideological baggage that just obscures what
I am currently reading The Master and His Emissary , which appears to be an excellent book. ("Appears" because I don't know the neuroscience literature well enough to say for sure, yet.) But then on page 186 I find: "Asking cognition, however, to give a perspective on the relationship between cognition and affect is like asking astronomer in the pre-Galilean geocentric world, whether, in his opinion, the sun moves round the earth of the earth around the sun. To ask a question alone would be enough to label one as mad." OK, this is garbage. First of all, it should be pre-Copernican, not pre-Galilean. But much worse is that people have seriously been considering heliocentrism for many centuries before Copernicus. Aristarchus had proposed a heliocentric model in the 4th-century BC. It had generally been considered wrong, but not "mad." (And wrong for scientific reasons: Why, for instance, did we not observe stellar parallax?) And when Copernicus propose
Wow. Just wow.
ReplyDeleteI'm always surprised when I look at Google Analytics and see there are still people using IE.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe that's a real commercial. Ohhhh my...
ReplyDeleteWell, at least it's honest (to a degree - IE9 might still be worthless, but I wouldn't know), and it's kind of hard to hype a line of products that everyone knows is terrible.
ReplyDeleteStill, kind of pathetic. Microsoft is supposed to be a tech titan, and instead of being successful in the competitive marketplace, they were able to get away with this for over a decade. Apparently IP monopolies don't always promote quality and efficiency - golly gee, who knew?
Is this a real commercial? If so, kudos to Microsoft. WTH are you talking about Gene, "Is this the best they can do?" This is inconceivably self-deprecating for a major brand to do. I still don't believe this is a real commercial. But if it is, my hats off to Microsoft.
ReplyDelete(To be clear, I'm not congratulating IE, I'm congratulating their courage with this ad.)
The difficulty I'm having seeing your point is this: confessional courage is fine if they were at an AA meeting or with a minister. But is it really good marketing?
DeleteYes, Bob, it's real. And I don't know, but all of the other commenters seem to get my point.
ReplyDeleteOnce upon a time, Internet Explorer was notable chiefly for being head and shoulders above Netscape. Then along came Firefox, and within a couple of years only demon-possessed illiterates were using it.
ReplyDeleteWhat I don't like about IE9 is that the Windows 7 taskbar treats each tab as if it were a separate window. Hence clicking on the IE icon does not bring up IE; you have to hold ALT or select a thumbnail.
I remember the year I decided I didn't need to have a Mac to save money, much to the chagrin of my militantly pro-Apple family (to give an idea of what I mean one of my parents had an original IPod), and was occasionally using I.E. 7. The horror stories I could tell you..
ReplyDelete"I didn't need to have a Mac to save money"
DeleteYes, it is possible to save money even without a Mac! :-)