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SteveDallas · 01-23-2002, 01:12 PM

Hmm.. entertainment.. well we will have the DirecTV/Dish Network merger approved this year.. or not... that's right along with the consolidation. But if you're a satellite subscriber or you've researched it, and you live in the Philly area, you know that Comcast Sportsnet is not available except on cable TV, due to Comcast exploiting a loophole in the program access laws. It will be interesting to see how this plays out as I suspect we will see more legal manuvering and programming cancelled over stuff like this.

technology.. there are signs that we may finally be stopping the regimented lockstep upgrading to whatever Microsoft releases. If our photocopier manufacturer walked in the door and told us we had to buy new copiers, even though our old ones were working fine, we'd boot em out. Yet nobody blinks at "planned obsolesence" in the computing world. Where I work we used a DOS-based accounting program till about 2 months ago. It worked and we knew how to use it, so the CFO & I decided it was silly to upgrade. We were forced to because they ended support for the DOS version, and the Windows version is bloated and overly complex. Maybe XP will finally make people take a step back and realize that a new OS announcement from M$ does not send out death rays and make their perfectly good systems stop working.

The "next big thing".... you're basically suggesting a "generational" theory of history, that whole masses of people born close to the same time are in some sense a unit because they reacted to the same events at the same points in their lives. Bob Strauss & Neil Howe developed this extensively in some of their books, especially "Generations: The Future History of America." I think this view of history has some merit (the child-centric culture of today as a reaction against the excesses of the 70s? yeah, I might buy that) but is ultimately too simplistic. By this kind of predicting, there should have by now been a big new crisis around the turn of the century (9/11 sure qualifies) and we would be led in it by a new generation of leaders (oops, Bush & Co. aren't very new are they?).

01-23-2002, 01:12 PM	#8
SteveDallas Your Bartender Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Philly Burbs, PA Posts: 7,651	Hmm.. entertainment.. well we will have the DirecTV/Dish Network merger approved this year.. or not... that's right along with the consolidation. But if you're a satellite subscriber or you've researched it, and you live in the Philly area, you know that Comcast Sportsnet is not available except on cable TV, due to Comcast exploiting a loophole in the program access laws. It will be interesting to see how this plays out as I suspect we will see more legal manuvering and programming cancelled over stuff like this. technology.. there are signs that we may finally be stopping the regimented lockstep upgrading to whatever Microsoft releases. If our photocopier manufacturer walked in the door and told us we had to buy new copiers, even though our old ones were working fine, we'd boot em out. Yet nobody blinks at "planned obsolesence" in the computing world. Where I work we used a DOS-based accounting program till about 2 months ago. It worked and we knew how to use it, so the CFO & I decided it was silly to upgrade. We were forced to because they ended support for the DOS version, and the Windows version is bloated and overly complex. Maybe XP will finally make people take a step back and realize that a new OS announcement from M$ does not send out death rays and make their perfectly good systems stop working. The "next big thing".... you're basically suggesting a "generational" theory of history, that whole masses of people born close to the same time are in some sense a unit because they reacted to the same events at the same points in their lives. Bob Strauss & Neil Howe developed this extensively in some of their books, especially "Generations: The Future History of America." I think this view of history has some merit (the child-centric culture of today as a reaction against the excesses of the 70s? yeah, I might buy that) but is ultimately too simplistic. By this kind of predicting, there should have by now been a big new crisis around the turn of the century (9/11 sure qualifies) and we would be led in it by a new generation of leaders (oops, Bush & Co. aren't very new are they?). Last edited by SteveDallas; 01-23-2002 at 01:15 PM.