This slashdot comment from pete-classic is spot-on.

There is a more fundamental problem with advertising.
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When the users of a service pay for the service, they are the customers, and the service is the product. When advertisers pay for a service, they are the customers, and the users are the product. The service itself is relegated to a loss-leader; bait to attract users so they can be sold to the advertisers.
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This is one of the primary reasons why TV is such a wasteland, while the DVD landscape is so rich.

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every time I try to tell my myspace/friendster friends why I don’t trust the service, most don’t understand. So there it is!
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P.S.: I collect bright slashdot comments for quite a while, first by memepalm, then del.icio.us and now by twitter. it’s all about double filtering, heh?

back button troubles
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reading at slashdot about usability problems on OS apps, i remembered some nightmare cases from the company i worked with, still in brazil.
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we were building a corporate CMS, the program was getting bloated (impossible marketing promisses, lack of planning) and we reached an impasse: in addiction to the task at hand, some other tools were added - like IM, bookmarks, notes, quick tutorials - and with just a window to navigate, each new task competed for the user’s attention.
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our solution (me and another interface designer, amid a sea of 11~12 programmers) was to divide the window in frames, separating the central tasks (workflow, word processing, programming) from the peripheral ones (messages, dictionary, to-do-list, quick tutorial).
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the problem: we invalidate the back button (back what? the message? back the work at hand? back the action of sending the message? undo?). since it’s the most used feature, we had to find a solution.
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and we did: a small log window on the bottom of the peripheral tasks window, with a history of what you did, and the possibility to return to where you were, and possibly undo some features. the default would be 3 lines, but a multitasker user could change the preferences to 10, 12 lines. with a better back button than the original one, we could drawn the users to our interface and reduce confusion.
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they loved the ideas, both. sadly, they implemented the first one (the frames), but not the second one (the log window). dunno why, everytime i asked for the second feature, they answered it was easy and could be done later. i assume that the mindset of programmers works this way: if it’s hard to do, it has to be important. if it’s easy, it’s probably irrelevant. that is, a subset of loving to do hard mental jobs, is the impression of any easy job as a personal offense to their abilities.
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don’t get me wrong, i love work surrounded by technical people. they are straightforward, they love a new challenge, and if they are in a project with you, they are all to this, with no passive-agressive, competitive sabotages that some artistic people are full of. but if you get this only-hard-work feature unchecked, you soon get trapped in a bloated, neverending project, with a lot of contempt for criticism.
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well, in the end they accomplised the first feature, but never the second one. the back button was still there, confusing users. some months later, we were moving to another floor, but two programmers were busy finishing something “really important” for the client. i asked what it is, and they said “it’s a fullscreen for the system”.
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“why would they need a fullsccreen system, anyway?” (at the time, it was already know that users feel annoyed by fullscreen browsers, and tend to move away, simply. they didn’t know why the fullscreen. i asked some other people around.
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in the end, all the client wanted was to get rid of the back button. it was his solution to the problem, because we failed to offer a complete one.
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and yeah, the users complained later…

microsoft sues brazilian official for defamation, and all i can grasp from it is this cute lil’ sig:

(\(\
(^.^)
(’)')

I think the clearest demonstrator that Microsoft has held back innovation is PowerPoint. Because it is virtually installed as default on all business machines, everyone uses it. Microsoft has had little motivation to update it, so it still functions like a piece of software from ten years ago. But ask any graphic designer about it and they will free out about how impossibly sh*t it is for creating presentations, especially bearing in mind the amazing graphics computers are capable of these days. And yet where is the strong competition for PowerPoint? There isn’t one, because it is impossible to compete with the kind of product bundling Microsoft can get away with.

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from slashdot, yep.

about linus toward (from linux)
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Believe me, managing hackers is quite hard. Someone once rightfully said, it is like herding cats. And Linus is the best damn cat-herder in the world today.

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from slashdot, of course.

Free markets aren’t a naturally occuring phenomena any more than a bonsai tree.

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cara, eu adoro a slashdot!
obviamente com o threshold nas msgs nível 5, pq não sou obrigado a perder tempo com baboseiras. eu não sou um membro da comunidade, sou só o reaper.

deu no boing boing (sempre ele):
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URGENT: Tell the FCC to say no to the Broadcast Flag
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The FCC is ruling on the dread and dreadful Broadcast Flag, a technology mandate that would give Hollywood a veto over general-purpose PC and home electronics technology, in order to prevent the potential infringement of copyrighted movies on a potential national digital television broadcast network.
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Breaking PCs and VCRs and PVRs and such today, before there’s any evidence of any problem (indeed, Hollywood makes more money every single year, and just closed the books on its best year since 1959) — it’s stupid. Passing a technology mandate before anyone can point to a problem is about as stupid as eating your seatmate before the plane crashes.
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Nevertheless, there’s every indication that the FCC will make the Broadcast Flag happen — unless we slashdot them with letters telling them not to. EFF has an action center item on this, a letter you can tweak and send in to the commissioners with one click of a mouse. A Broadcast Flag mandate today will make tomorrow’s technology dependent on the sufferance of the movie studios — the companies that Business Week called “The most change-resistant companies in America.” If you don’t want these companies speccing your PC in a couple years, send a letter now — this is easily the most important thing you can do this year to safeguard your technology freedom. Tell your friends. Re-blog this. This is big, important stuff.

Hollywood is at it again, trying to control the design of new digital technologies. If the motion picture studios have their way, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will force all future televisions to include Hollywood-approved “content protection” technologies. Fair use, innovation and competition will suffer. What’s more, the “broadcast flag” technology that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has proposed is so weak that it will do nothing to stem Internet redistribution of television programs. In fact, the only people hurt by this are legitimate consumers, innovators and researchers.
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The FCC has promised a ruling before the end of October. We need you to tell the FCC that we don’t need “broadcast flag” regulations that hurt competition, consumers and innovators.

o link tá aqui (ah, em esqueci que meus leitores são tudo brasileiros, logo second-class citizens, logo não podem dar pitaco no que o império manda…)