I always forget…

alternateorg on April 1, 2001

What is the correct wording of the response to a client who decides he’s an art director? Is it ‘Don’t let the DOOR hit your ASS on the way out,’ or is it ‘Don’t let your ASS hit the DOOR on the way out?’

I can never remember….

Orinoco; Bad Product, Bad!

alternateorg on April 1, 2001

SO, I sent a polite email request to an address posted at MacNN.com that was meant to send my support for the MacOS X versions of drivers for the lucent/orinoco wireless ethernet cards. You see, my girlfriend and I are in need of these drivers in our *total* conversion to MacOS X…. so anyway here is the shitty canned reply that was sent back to me;

—- ,

Thank you for your comments.
They are being forwarded to Product Management.

“Our current position is that we do not intend to support Apple MacOS-X at
this time.



The reasons for this decision are as follows:



1. Apple computers, both mobile and desktops, are equipped with non-standard
built-in Airport slots and antennas since late 1999. Apple’s intention with
this approach is to have customers with an Airport-equipped Mac to choose
Airport Cards as their preferred WLAN client products.



2. We have full confidence that Apple will continue to support Airport under
MacOS-X on Airport G4s, iMacs, iBooks and Powerbooks. This allows Macs to
be fully respected clients on Orinoco WLANs.



In addition to that we will continue our support for the older MacOSes on
the Apple platform. (MacOS 7.5.5, 8.x, 9.x). ”



So, as you can see it was time to unleash some corporate ass kicking — yeah, well, maybe not, but at least I’m trying :-)…


DEAR MR. MARKETING DEPT.,


YOUR CURRENT POSITION SUCKS, HERE IS WHY;


PEOPLE NEED AIRPORT (WIRELESS 802.11) ON OLD(ER) G3 LAPTOPS THAT DO *NOT* SUPPORT APPLE BRANDED INTERNAL AIRPORT CARDS!!! THESE CARDS ARE ONLY AVAILABLE FOR A NEW OR VERY RECENT MACHINE FROM APPLE, HENCE PEOPLE’S PURCHASE OF YOUR PRODUCT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

I MEAN, ISN’T THAT YOUR PURPOSE AS A PERIPHERAL MAKER?

PLEASE DONT LET YOUR COMPANY COP OUT ON THEIR PRODUCT SUPPORT SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU CANNOT FIND ANY ENGINEERS TO SPEND A FEW DAYS OF THEIR “WINTEL” OBSESSED LIFE TO TRY AND LEARN HOW TO WRITE A LOUSY (LITERALLY) DRIVER FOR MACOS X.



WHATEVER,
NEVER EVER EVER EVER WILL I EVER BUY OR RECOMMEND ANOTHER LUCENT/ORINICO PRODUCT AGAIN.



AND CONSIDER THIS POSTED ON THE NET AND IN FORUMS EVERYWHERE.

—



OH YEAH, PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO “PRODUCT (RE)MANAGEMENT”



By the way, just to be (more of) an asshole I mailed it in ALL COPS AND BOLD and included a link to www.alternate.org.

🙂

Christopher walkin'

alternateorg on March 31, 2001

spike jonze is a god. i honestly can’t think of something he’s done that i haven’t grinned foolishly at. some of the best music videos ever made are under his belt. weezer’s ‘buddy holly’. bjork’s ‘its oh so quiet’. wax’s ‘california'(the guy on fire in slo mo). beastie boy’s frickin ‘sabotage’. fatboy slim’s ‘praise you’. he’s one of the producers of ‘jackass’. ‘being john malkovich’ was obviously brilliant. now we have this.

who knew, huh? badass Dune reference, as well, but that’s more to Fatboy Slim’s credit.

Make sure you have crappy Realplayer

Gnu-impossible-a

alternateorg on March 30, 2001


 “[The RIAA is] really looking to understand and monitor the Gnutella network so they don’t find themselves in the same position as [they did with] Napster,”

Riiiiiiight. THAT’s going to happen.

LATimes registration required.

Calling all hackers…

alternateorg on March 30, 2001

If any site deserves to be hacked, it’s this one. I don’t mean Wired, but the site referred to in the article, which I won’t even link to from here.. it’s an anti-abortion site listing names and faces of doctors on a ‘most-wanted’ list. Fuck them. Please.

Sick of all the BS

alternateorg on March 30, 2001

Sigh. Everywhere I go, there’s another person ragging on OS X… ‘Mickey Mouse interface’… ‘OSuX’.. etc. I’m sick of that bullshit. It’s easy to put X down just by looking at the package. Yeah. The fucking buttons are jellyish. The Dock moves up and down… OOOOoooOOOh.. Oh my Fucking god. It’s the end of the god-damn world. You know what? I like clicking on the jelly buttons. I enjoy using the Dock now. I even turned the magnification back on a little bit, because I like the feedback the system gives me. Don’t like the colored buttons? Use the graphite interface instead. That’s what you wanted isn’t it? Gray buttons like 9? You’ve got it.

Everyone’s all up-in-arms about ‘well the only good things about X are the things 9 had wrong with it.’ Yeah. As I recall, that’s the fucking point of releasing software upgrades. To fix what was wrong in the past. Stability was one of those issues 9 had. Unix and multi-threading fixes that. You want to know what another of 9’s problems was? It was fucking OLD. If Apple hadn’t included the Platinum interface with OS 8, you’d all be wailing for a new interface.

Use X for 5 days straight. Open up any apps you need in Classic (you might even be surprised at how few you might need, and at how fast they run) and use the damn thing for 5 days. If you feel you aren’t going to like it, hey, borrow your friend’s copy. Just use it for a second, before you start your bitching. The Finder is NICER than 9’s Finder (although still a little inexplicably slower), and the Dock actually helps me a little more than it did when I first started. I still click on the date/time in the right-hand corner sometimes, looking for the App-switcher, but X is new. It’s going to take some getting used to. So instead of bitching and moaning in comment-systems and threaded discussion groups, just fucking TRY IT. With an open mind. If you gave a flying fuck about the platform, you should, anyway. And X isn’t so far away from what you think the platform is about. You’ll see.