Wednesday, Jul 9, 2008
What's the real smell of Eau de Mac?? Plus: For damn sure Ken Starr has regrets; astonished agreement with Arianna.
Sep 23, 1999 | Eau de Mac
BY JANELLE BROWN
(09/15/99)
The "eau de Mac" is the smell of a Pentium being thoroughly and completely toasted.
-- Jon F. Buckley
Janelle Browne's article is off the mark. To expect an odorless environment when any new appliance/machine is first used is folly. Does she complain if her car has that "new car" smell? Does she complain when that new coffee maker smells plasticky?
-- Dennis Prunkl
Hollywood snares
BY JANELLE BROWN
(09/17/99)
There is no possibility that PCs can mimic what television does, at least not at the present time. Computers simply lack the ease of use and reliability that characterize other consumer electronics devices. A huge percentage of our population is alienated by this medium. They have the good common sense to stay away from machines that cost as much as a 40-inch TV, are unreliable and viciously user-unfriendly, have a fraction of the product life of a TV (I've had my Sony Trinitron for 15 years) and that subject people to endless (and expensive) rounds of software and hardware "upgrades."
PCs essentially evolved as office machines. They suffer from a design minimalism that is perhaps appropriate in a business setting -- if they are a bit frustrating or confusing to use, well, who cares about employees being frustrated, right? Certainly not American managers! Machines honed under these conditions make for poor home use and cannot be a substitute for a TV home entertainment center.
If Hollywood wants to produce TV-type shows for home computer viewing and consumption, I wholeheartedly recommend that Hollywood and the phone companies wrest control of the shape and format of computers from the hardware and software crowd. PCs are not going to be a good delivery system for mass-market "couch potato" style viewing and entertainment unless everyone in the computer industry, from Bill Gates on down, is disciplined by people who have an interest in PCs being a means to something else -- and not ends in themselves.
-- Leslie Farkas
Chicago
Bringing 'em back alive
BY ELEANOR STACY PARKER
(09/15/99)
I enjoyed the article on anesthesia, and felt it gave the public some comforting information. However, it is a serious omission to neglect to mention that anesthesiologists (physicians who specialize in giving anesthesia) are only half of the professionals who provide the anesthesia care discussed in the article. For over 100 years, certified registered nurse anesthetists (nurse practitioners with advanced training in anesthesia) have been giving safe and comfortable patient care, same as the M.D. anesthesiologists. We often train side by side, and do the same kinds of cases in adjacent operating rooms every day, with equally good outcomes. The frightening stories of deaths from anesthesia given outside the hospital are often from having anesthetic drugs given by individuals who are neither board-certified anesthesiologists nor CRNAs.
-- John Evans, CRNA, Ph.D.
Baltimore
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