It's all just characters on paper, silly
Oct. 25th, 2001 06:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
libertangoI went to the Windows XP launch today.
The event I went to was at the newly redone, Wurlitzer-like Anaheim Convention Center.
Immediate impression: The "Bliss" background, which appears to be XP's default, with an impossibly saturated blue sky and a rolling grassy kno^H^H^H um, hill looks like nothing so much as the Naboo scenes from Phantom Menace. And I'm not even really a Star Wars geek.
The collaboration stuff in the OS is cool, but more important, to me as a support guy, is the bundled remote control stuff. Yes, these abilities have been available through LapLink or pcAnywhere for some time, but having it built right into the OS, with attendant video and/or audio chat, will probably make support worlds easier... In an all XP shop, anyway.
Biggest kreeb: You can read ol' curmudgeonly John Dvorak's take. He was right, at least at my event, where we had a District Manager try to read a pre-canned speech but stumble over about one word in twenty, followed by a pair good-meaning but horribly artificial sounding techies walk through the product. It's like what the Cluetrain folks say, guys: Speak in a human voice. That's not what you're currently doing, and it hurts against my ears.
Then again, I think the same thing about Dubya. {shrug}
*^*^*
Side tangent: I heard from a source, prolly some entertainment rag, that John Travolta doesn't learn his lines. Nope, he reads the script off a TelePrompTer.
My first response was, "What a lazy SOB... can't even be bothered to learn his lines..." (nope, no lingering animosity here... {cough})
But on reflection, I thought, "Damn... He's a hell of a reader."
We all have to put up with so many people reading badly in public. It's the bane of political figures, of course, but there's managers, product demonstrations, clubs, speeches at receptions, you name it. And I'm a good enough reader myself that it just grates on my ear.
But if Travolta can emote as well as he does while reading... well, power to him, I say. Even if the scariest thing about Primary Colors was that John Fuckin' Travolta, fer chrissakes, wasn't charismatic enough to do a credible Clinton -- someone I'd never thought of as being terribly charismatic 'til I saw that film.
*^*^*
I dunno... did my points survive the wandering there? Hmmm...
The event I went to was at the newly redone, Wurlitzer-like Anaheim Convention Center.
Immediate impression: The "Bliss" background, which appears to be XP's default, with an impossibly saturated blue sky and a rolling grassy kno^H^H^H um, hill looks like nothing so much as the Naboo scenes from Phantom Menace. And I'm not even really a Star Wars geek.
The collaboration stuff in the OS is cool, but more important, to me as a support guy, is the bundled remote control stuff. Yes, these abilities have been available through LapLink or pcAnywhere for some time, but having it built right into the OS, with attendant video and/or audio chat, will probably make support worlds easier... In an all XP shop, anyway.
Biggest kreeb: You can read ol' curmudgeonly John Dvorak's take. He was right, at least at my event, where we had a District Manager try to read a pre-canned speech but stumble over about one word in twenty, followed by a pair good-meaning but horribly artificial sounding techies walk through the product. It's like what the Cluetrain folks say, guys: Speak in a human voice. That's not what you're currently doing, and it hurts against my ears.
Then again, I think the same thing about Dubya. {shrug}
*^*^*
Side tangent: I heard from a source, prolly some entertainment rag, that John Travolta doesn't learn his lines. Nope, he reads the script off a TelePrompTer.
My first response was, "What a lazy SOB... can't even be bothered to learn his lines..." (nope, no lingering animosity here... {cough})
But on reflection, I thought, "Damn... He's a hell of a reader."
We all have to put up with so many people reading badly in public. It's the bane of political figures, of course, but there's managers, product demonstrations, clubs, speeches at receptions, you name it. And I'm a good enough reader myself that it just grates on my ear.
But if Travolta can emote as well as he does while reading... well, power to him, I say. Even if the scariest thing about Primary Colors was that John Fuckin' Travolta, fer chrissakes, wasn't charismatic enough to do a credible Clinton -- someone I'd never thought of as being terribly charismatic 'til I saw that film.
*^*^*
I dunno... did my points survive the wandering there? Hmmm...
