Also a developer’s “cool toy” (or cool feature) may indeed be ephemeral junk if it doesn’t do anything for the customer and/or destabilizes the product. Alan Cooper critiques engineer-driven development in “The Inmates are Running the Asylum,” which I recommend, despite some flaws.

It’s funny that you mention TurboTax, as that product is causing me much grief lately. It gives me a blue screen crash whenever it attempts to bring up a certain dialog. I installed it on another machine and observed that the dialog is far more elaborate than it needs to be, and is probably calling some obscure, buggy API function on my graphics card that results in the crash. Not sure whether to blame development, QA, or marketing for that one — probably all of them to some extent.

First I have to say that I have added you to my blog subscription list as I enjoy your writing style into profound topics.

On glasses, I do not have to wear glasses; however, I have often been under the assumption that glasses make your eyes worse. At best the constant act of wearing them will get make your eyes get comfortable wearing them and make it harder to see without them.

Really I am just commenting to let you know that you have someone reading your posts so that you will fill further desire to follow through with your goal.

I enjoyed your post about sugar.

Nine months ago, I reached the same conclusions as you did in the post about carbs. I then eliminated *all* carbs and have not had any fruit or vegetables since then.

For nine months, I have eaten only meat, which includes beef, chicken, turkey, pork, and fish. My favorite is beef and I usually eat a ribeye steak everyday, as well as hamburgers.

In any case, I have noticed concrete positive results already. Examples include: I have rock-solid stable energy throughout the day (because my blood sugar level is constant), I no longer have allergic reactions to plant pollens, superfluous body fat has melted away, I am more alert, fecal elimination is much improved (it is a myth that we need to eat fiber), and I have a more stable mental state. There are other positive discernable benefits, but those are the ones that came to the top of my head.

I also expect that the elimination of carbs will keep me healthy for longer, such as the positive effect you mentioned about glucose and cancer.

If carbs are objectively bad and are “poison,” as you suggest, then why eat *any* at all? That was the question that I asked myself nine months ago and the answer caused me to eliminate all carbs. That is why I eat only meat and drink only water. That is certainly way outside the “mainstream” of our society, but it has given me robust health and, hopefully, will continue to do so well into old age, which, by the way, makes “retirement” a prospect much more appealing than sitting by a window and watching your body and health waste away. If I ever choose to “retire,” I look forward to many active years of enjoyment.

Keep on!

In the software world, how about those horrible toolbars and other kinds of adware / spyware / malware (almost all for Windows) that trick the user into installing them and then never go away. Or, the fact that TurboTax takes a long time calculating your taxes to make it seem like it’s doing something valuable, rather than returning the result instantly. Who wants to be the developer who was told by a bad marketer to write a junky toolbar or cripple a program to make it seem more valuable? That is the kind of marketing driven junk that I object to. Cool toys != ephemeral junk.

“…ephemeral junk driven purely by marketing.”

Please don’t smear marketing this way. Rational marketing is a legitimate and valuable pursuit, which seeks to (1) determine what potential customers need; (2) get the firm to develop products that meet these needs; and (3) let customers know that the product exists and indeed meets their needs.

Specifically in the realm of software, “ephemeral junk” is at least as likely to be created by a developer building something solely because he thinks it’s cool (irrespective of market needs) as it is by a developer following a marketeer’s guidance.

(Note: I’m a developer, not a marketeer. But I understand and appreciate the value of division of labor in general and of marketing in particular.)

To me, Breezewood is a delightful confection of capitalism, showing the creative vitality of trade. Although the urban sprawl folks might consider Breezewood an eyesore, to the weary traveler Breezewood is more like finding a fountain in the desert.