Re: [VOID] Pavement

Gregory Alan Bolcer (gbolcer@gambetta.ICS.uci.edu)
Sat, 18 Jul 1998 10:34:51 -0700


> How can Silicon Valley make your skin crawl if "people are basically the
> same all over"? :-)

It doesn't; the idea that beautiful women are freaks does.

> All you Southern Californians. You get so defensive whenever anyone mentions
> *any* of the many reasons why the Bay Area is better.

Why do Microsoft employees get so defensive whenever
anyone mentions *any* of the many reasons why their software sucks.

A lot of the stereotypes that are perpetuated are easily
countered with a little reality checking.

> Don't mind me, I grew up reading Herb Caen and it scarred me for life. :-)

I was going to say something educated about Herb Caen, but I wanted
to ensure my facts were checked, but the very first page I went
to was an online eulogy that had an embedded Midi file. Ever since
Netscape 4.01 I've had trouble with embedded midi files that
lock up the browser. It's not that the stupid techo music isn't
annoying enough, but it locks up any time I stumble on some lamo
geocities page that has midi, chat, web-rings, banner ads, guestbook
and a whole bunch of other free crap including NO CONTENT.

Anways, I was just going to send Netscape a scathing email
when after doing a kill on the process, this little agent
thing pops up. I am not sure I like this, but I sent it in
and told them what I thought of themselves. I am a big fan
of reflexive software, i.e. software that is context-aware, able
to evolve, can fix itself, re-adapt to new uses and domains,
and is smart enough to know that the user is always right.
I've included the screen shots just for grins.... (dot dot dot).

Greg

http://gbolcer.ics.uci.edu/images/tmp/netscape-agent.gif
http://gbolcer.ics.uci.edu/images/tmp/netscape-agent2.gif
http://gbolcer.ics.uci.edu/images/tmp/netscape-agent3:w
.gif

>
> - Joe
>
> Joseph S. Barrera III
> {allegra,ihnp4,decvax}!microsoft!joebar
> <http://research.microsoft.com/~joebar/>
> The opinions expressed in this message are my own personal views.