Please, let me poke my eyes out...

[Trevor Smith]

On Fri, 15 Sep 2000 14:32:10 -0700, Steve Lamb wrote:

>    As I said TBUDL is having an HTML Email discussion as well.  This came to
>light.  I do believe this is the 7th sign of the internet.
>
><http://www.incredimail.com/english/index.html>

Oh My GOD. I have seen the face of Satan and lo, his name is
IncrediMail.

You know what? For YEARS I have been irritated (and told anyone who
would listen) about the ridiculous treatment of computers in movies.
I'm hardly a computer expert but every time Hollywood screen writers
(or whoever is in charge of details like this) touch a scene with
computers in it they make it so ridiculous or childish that anyone
who has ever *SEEN* a computer must know that it's just plain wrong.

In Jurassic park, for instance, we see the little 14 yr old girl sit
in front of a computer and say, "This is Unix. I know this!" and she
proceeds to unlock doors or lock doors or turn on power or something.
But on the screen we see some sort of 3D flythrough with ridiculous
effects, etc. What a joke. Yes, I'm sure Jurassic park's computers
were state-of-the-art, but what Unix geek is going to spend time
adding 3D flythroughs to a program meant to control building lights
and heating, etc.? Get real.

And of course there's the ubiquitous
exploding/flying/dancing/singing/talking/puking/whatever "new mail"
animations that apparently every computer in the world produces every
time an email arrives (or so Hollywood would have us believe).

Well I just went to the site above and among MANY things that horrify
me, we have:

"3D Effects : Feel the thrill of youremails being sent and received,
just like in the movies."

No! NOOOOOO!!!!!!! It has finally happened. That's it, I'm going to
eat the Ice-9.

Other problems with this service:

"IncrediMail Notifiers will let you know that you've got new mail
even if your email program is closed"

Hmm... That sounds great. Pretty soon we won't even need to open our
email programs to get viruses.

"your contacts will not only appreciate your creativity, they will
also be impressed."

No comment needed.


-- 
 Trevor Smith          |          trevor@haligonian.com
 PGP public key available at: www.haligonian.com/trevor