Again about decaying

Patrizia:

Nicely done.

I'd like you to expand a tad, if you will, on what's led this race to the bottom and how that came to happen.

Your diagnosis seems correct, I'd love to hear the etiology of this malady.

Cheers, Jorge



The greatest days of Rome were its days of decline.
(I am Italian)

It is more elegant, wise and stylish to decay than to flourish.
I too prefer constructive decay to futile progress.
It is much more stylish to live in a quiet and slightly disintegrating manor house than in a super modern and noisy condominium.
But then, one must know how to decay.
You may desire to decay, yet your splendid human qualities may keep you on the top, or else, you may overdo it and decay a shade too speedily.

The fact is that people get old and Nations get old too.
May be declining is not such a bad destiny, you even risk to achieve wisdom with it...

Have a good day
Patrizia

The latin lover's myth

Let's be honest and true, there is nothing anymore in Italy far resembling to a latin lover.
Fashions and way of living travel nowaday, as much as people do.
Every country picks up others' uses and habits as well as way of living.
Italy is getting more and more European oriented. Our language every day counts new foreing words as well as our lifestyle counts new habits.
Once Italians were famous for having good sex in bed, while the British, for example, had hot water bottles.
Now, thanks to the improvement of technology we Italians do not have water bottles, but electric blankets.
It is a pity that electricity so often fails in this country, so, no sex and no warm beds.

Il Processo contro Wanna Marchi

Quello che sto per scrivere puo' apparire altamente provocatorio, ma se chi legge seguira' il mio ragionamento non potra' che essere d'accordo con me.

A mio parere il processo contro Wanna Marchi e' altamente ingiusto e discriminatorio, in quanto colpisce una persona,che pur essendo colpevole dei capi imputateli, rappresenta solo una minima parte del sottofondo criminale dello Stato Italiano, dell'Europa e del mondo intero.(perlomeno quello cosi' detto civilizzato)

Wanna Marchi pur nel suo rozzo e ingenuo modo di vedere ha avuto un grandissimo successo perche' ha capito e saputo dare quello che la gente voleva.
Ha promesso miracoli e ha in questo modo dato una possibilita' di sognare a gente che lo voleva.
E' vero il crimine sembrerebbe meno odioso se fosse stato perpetuato colpendo stati della popolazione di ceto piu' elevato, ma quelli sono esattamente coloro che non credono in quello che lei offre, mentre la parte della societa' a cui si e' rivolta non solo crede, ma VUOLE CREDERE che i miracoli esistano e possano esistere.
E' nient'altro che quello che fanno legalmente e in modo piu' subdolo e sofisticato altri grandi imbonitori della nostra societa'.

Ad esempio i produttori di medicinali omeopatici, quelli che li rivendono e quelli che li prescrivono.
Il medicinale omeopatico e' di per se' una truffa.
Secondo la teoria di Heunemann "similia similibus curantur", il che significa che sostanze che provocano malattie, possono in piccolissime dosi curarle o prevenirle.
Fin qui nulla da eccepire.
In fondo tutta la scienza dei vaccini, la teoria degli anticorpi e' basata su questo presupposto e con grandi risultati.
Ma la teoria omeopatica va oltre.
La sostanza deve essere diluita 100 volte, poi ognuna di queste divisioni e' a sua volta diluita altre cento volte e cosi' via.
La proprieta' della sostanza resta nella diluizione perche' "l'acqua ha memoria" la diluizione "e' dinamizzata".
Ora, a parte la teoria miracolistica del fatto che l'acqua abbia memoria o che la sostanza abbia proprieta' conferitegli dalla soatanza originale grazie alla "dinamizzazione" la vera e' propria truffa sta nel vendere acqua pura al 99,99%( perche' questo e' il contenuto del farmaco omeopatico) a prezzi astronomici.
Una sola cosa e' vera: non ha effetti collaterali.
Infatti e' universalmente riconosciuto che l'ACQUA pura, incontaminata, a dosi di gocce giornaliere non ha effetti nocivi.

Altro esempio eclatante e' il "mercimonio" della Religione.
Qui non scendo in dettagli.
Ma come non si potrebbe considerare una vera e propria truffa vendere l'entrata in un Paradiso dell'oltre tomba, che peraltro non ha alcuna realistica giustificazione, in cambio di offerte, messe etc...

Quante altre truffe si perpetuano ogni giorno sulla pelle dei consumatori "ignoranti".
Promettere la riduzione del colesterolo, il dimagrimento senza sacrifici, l'eleiminazione di cellulite e affini con prodotti piu' o meno miracolistici, non sono anche loro truffe?
Promettere da parte di un politico che si creeranno milioni di posti di lavoro, che si pagheranno i debiti astronomici dello stato senza sacrifici etc., in cambio di voti, non e' una truffa?
E allora.
Lo stato democratico e civile deve punire TUTII i criminali e non solo UNA PARTE di essi, deve cioe' far si che la Giustizia non sia discriminatoria, altrimenti non si parli di Giustizia.

About equality

Equality is a notion that should be aknowledged by all humanity.
Equality means that you are just as good as the next man, but the next man is not half as good as you are.
Slowly, but inescapably, however, the whole structure is being turned upside down.
Yes, we still have an aristocracy consisting of two main branches: the old families of the peerage who look down upon the business-barons, and the business-barons and stock-exchange-viscounts who look down upon the ancient peers.
But, while people still insist on sending their children to a good school ( and a good school must not be confused with a school where they teach well); while for a few is still a serious problem how to address the eldest daughter of a viscount married to an archdeacon; while some people, having gradueted in the best Universities of Europe, still expect to become directors of breweries as their birthright; while doctors and barristers are still angry that plumbers and electricians call themselves "professional people" and while a lot of them still believe that professionals do have some prestige left, while all this goes on, the Big Businessman takes over the leading role in society with a firm hand and a quiet smile.
The great conquest by money is on.
A title will not bring in money; money will bring in the title.
The great fight is warming up everyday.
Brilliant people no longer aspire to be a part of nobility: they dream of controlling large advertising companies.
People do not boast of being descended from a long line of aristocrats, but from a long line of stockbrokers.
Talent means talent to make money. A genius is one who makes a lot of money.

Travelling

"Travel" is the name of a modern disease wich became endemic in the mid seventies and is still spreading.
It is carried by a germ called prosperity.
Its symptoms are easily recognisable. The patient grows restless in the early Spring and stars rushing about from one travel agent to another (or surfs the Web) collecting useless informations about places he doesn't want to visit, studying air routes or road routes; then he, or usually she, will do a round of clothes shops, shoe shops, summer sales, sport shops and spend three and a half times as much as he or she can afford; finally in August our patient will board a plane, train, coach or car and proceed to foreign parts along with thousands of fellow-sufferers not because he is interested in or attracted by the place he is bound for, nor because he can afford to go, but simply because he cannot afford not to.
The disease is highly infectious.
Nowadays you catch foreign travel rather as you used to cacth influenza.
The result is that in the Summer months (and in the last few years also in the winter season) everybody is on the move.
In Positano you hear no Italian, but only German; in some French parts you cannot get along unless you speak American; and the official language of the Costa Brava is English.
What is the aim of all this travelling?
Each nationality has its own different one:

1)The Japanese want to take photographs of themselves in: Trafalgar Square with the pigeons, in St Mark's Square with the pigeons, and in front of the Arc de Triomphe, in Paris, without pigeons.
The idea is simply to collect documentary proof that THEY HAVE BEEN THERE.

2) The Germans travel to check up on their guide books:
a) that the Ponte di Rialto is really at his proper place
b)that the Leaning Tower is in its appointed place in Pisa and is leaning at the promised angle.
They tick these things off in their guide book and return home with the gratifying feeling that they have not been swindled.
But why do the Italians travel?
First, because their neighbour does, secondly they have been taught that travel broadens the mind and mostly they travel to avoid foreigners.
Here in our country one is always exposed to the risk of meeting all sort of aliens.
The main aim of the Italian abroad is to meet people, I mean nice Italian people from next door or from the next street.
Usually if you meet your next door neighbourg at your front door you pretend not to see him or, at best, nod cooly; but if you meet him in London or Madrid, you embrace him fondly and offer him a drink or two; and you may even discover that he is quite a nice chap after all.

The modern Italian

If YOU want to be a modern Italian, you must be prosperous, or, preferably, rich.
But it is not enough to be rich, you must also manifestly APPEAR to be rich.
The Italians, however, are a basically modest race, so you cannot just show off.
In fact, you must hide your richness in an ostentatious, pseudo modest manner, as if you were really poor.
Some time ago it was much more difficult to be rich, but as riches were then quite out of fashion, indeed, rather vulgar, this did not matter.
It would take too long to codify the entire art of how to look prosperous and how to bahave in this age of prosperity, but the main elementary rules are this:

1) You must get a place in the country.You remark casually:"Oh, we have a tumble-down old barn in Toscany..."
If you can throw such a sentence away nonchalanly and especially if you learn to blush modestly while uttering it, you will unfailingly give the impression of possessing a ducal mansion.

2)You must become amphibious and get hold of a watercraft of some sort.
Here again you must refer to "my little barchetta in Montecarlo" with an air as though it were a yacht to put Onassis to shame.
And it is a good idea to appear at the office-especially on Monday morning- in a dark blue blazer with shiny metal buttons.

3) You must choose your friends with the greatest possible care.
Titles are out of fashion.
If you have one, keep it in cold storage: it may come in useful again in the future.
The most sought-after people are Russians, as there is a notion that every Russian is a millionaire; Italian models(female) are also very popular; Persians and Middle East princes might be used in an emergency.

4) If you happen to be a butcher or a baker you will be helped along the way of prosperity by periodical wins in the Lotto.
It is a must on these occasions to declare that your win will not make the slighest difference to your way of life..

5) Finally, in this age of prosperity you simply must play the Stock exchange.
The basic idea is that you buy shares rather cheaply, wait until they go up and up and up and then sell them.
It is no good to buy shares at a high price and wait until they go down and down and down.

I personally do not play the Stock Exchange, because it is immoral.
I lend my money, most morally to my Bank, let THEM play with it and make 120 per cent profit for themselves and pay me 1,25 % fixed interest out of which I can pay income tax and feel a virtous and useful member of the community.

Europe now

The problems Europe is facing nowaday are not only due to a lack of growth, but also to a beginning of decay.
And very often the final stroke comes from the unsuccesful answer to them,the reason being mostly on the fact that the responsibles do not know the solution because they do not want to understand the question.
Sometimes not wanting to see is like voluntarily ignore the facts.
A moment comes when your actions have to bear some kind of relation to your words.
That is what is called the moment of truth.
But that moment never comes, it is on purpose avoided.
That is one of the natural limits of a democracy.
In a country where the power comes from the votes of the citizens and the number is the discriminatory fact that decides if somebody will rule for the next period, getting the most of them becomes the purpose of every candidate.
In a theoretical democracy the winner is the best, because the voters fully understand who is the most apt to rule.
In a practical democracy the majority of the votes usually goes to the one
who is more popular, more likeable, best presented.
Presentation is almost everything, the entire question is a question of looks.
Presentation also includes a vision of the future that the voters like, that they can dream and feel entitled to have.
Voters prefer to believe in miracles than in reality.
They are first and mostly consumers of the dreams of "loosing 50 pounds without dieting or sacrifices", "getting the most out of your money, if rightly taught to", "getting something in three easy steps", being able to consume without producing, earn without working, or at least not too much and so on.

About miracles

It has always been a tricky job to keep the masses down and to see to it that the few should be able to run the lives of the many.(which in fact is the story of humanity)
It was easier in feudal times when people accepted-had to accept-the place in society allocated to them by their birth.
You could not move up or down in society and that was that.
It did not even occur to you that this ethernal law might change.
But change it did with capitalism. Now a day you can be born poor and become rich.
If you are good, if you really want it, if you try hard enough.
What they do not tell you is: if they let you.

What is journalism?

“And newspapers have to take an even more frightening step: They need to start driving readers from print to online. Yes, that means driving readers from a higher-margin product, print, to a lower-margin product, online —” Jeff Jarvis

You forget to mention the other important aspect of online publishing: the cost can be zero compared to the paper ones.
And this small detail has a dramatic effect on journalism, or at least could.
There are plenty of people in journalism who have neither got what they like nor quite grown to like what they get.
They write pieces they do not much enjoy writing, for papers they totally despise.
And the sad process ends by ruining their style and disintegrating their personality, two developments which in a writer couldn’t be separated, since his personality and style must progress together.

The hired journalist ought to realize that he is partly in the entertainment business and partly in the advertising business, advertising either goods or a cause, or a government.
He just has to make up his mind whom he wants to entertain and what he wants to advertise.
The hypocrisy of the Press begins only when newspapers pretend to be "impartial" or "servants of the public".
And this only becomes dangerous as well as laughable when the public is fool enough to believe it.

What could be more welcome than a space in a newspaper where journalists can be “impartial” or “servants of the public” or just be able to write what they want?
What could be more promising than being able to build a space where to write and be one’s own?

Why Internet Neutrality WILL win.

A detailed look suggests that the Internet is succeeding largely for the same reasons that led the PC to dominate the mainframe, and are responsible for the success of Microsoft.

While the one of the mainframe's was an expensive, but limited market, the PC was the typical mass market product, which, on one side, having an accessible price, reached the pockets and the homes of the mass, and on the other could create the huge market of software.
Like the Internet, the PC was the "dumb" infrastructure that could adapt to any need and multiple tasks when the appropriate software was produced.
Many of the factors powering the ascent of the Internet are similar to those that led the PC to displace the mainframe and were exploited by Microsoft to dominate PC software.
In both networks and computing, the end users typically care just about getting a few crucial tasks done.
However, end users are not necessarily the most important players.
In rapidly changing fields,application developers are the crucial ones, creating tools that attract users, tools that users do not know ahead of time they need.
The Internet won because it is the land of opportunities.
The rise of the PC and the Internet has resulted in a migration of intelligence towards the edges, in both networking and computing.
The result is and will be even more in the future the dawn of a new economic class: the class of small companies.
Take for example the content producers and TV broadcasting.
A PC, a cheap digital camera, the appropriate software, can produce better results than many operators and huge investments could do some years ago.
Content producing is more a matter of brain and intellectual skill than of big investments.
And the broadcasting of content is more a matter of bandwidth at the edges than of investments in frequencies or satellite bandwidth.
We will see in the near future the blooming of content broadcasted on the Internet, and we will see the economical market moving from traditional broadcasting means (TV, Satellite, cinemas) more and more to the Internet.

Nevertheless I must point it out that we are at the very early stages of this changes.
The real business on the Internet is still the "connectivity market" and the monopolistic companies that have ruled and still rule aim to keep it so.
But if History repeats, and undoubtely it does, Bill Gates should be the clear example of what the future will be.
The connectivity revenue can be compared to the Mainframe market, a slow growing, limited business.
Microsoft understood that the business was not in the hardware ( and it is not on the infrastructures) but in the software, read "content" in the Internet.
The greatest growth opportunities in telecommunications are likely to lie in services and content producing (and of course broadcasting).
And the "Internet Neutrality" in the end WILL win.

"Internet backbone traffic could in principle be carried on a single fiber strand (Odlyzko, 2003b).
The fiber glut is a major contributor to this reduction of the core of the network to a low-cost commodity.
Technology had been reducing costs in the core far faster than at the edges even in the pre-Internet days.
Even if one had to build a totally new fiber network from scratch, it would not be very expensive.
Most of that spending in telecommunications is likely to continue to be at the edges of the network.
It may also increasingly be in forms that do not produce carrier revenues, as we move to customer-owned networks. (Signs of that are the fiber strands or wavelengths that large enterprises are increasingly purchasing to reach local exchange points, as well as the WiFi and other home networking setups that residential users are buying.)
There may be more heterogeneity even in local access, with DSL, cable, and broadband all available to most users."
Cost reducing usually means a growth of competition and competition usually means the need to please the customer.
And the customer wants a "dumb" network that carries the BITS HE wants,decides and pays for.

About snobbery

The spiritual basis of all snobbery is not the claim "I enjoy it", but the battlecry "I can afford it".

It is not important what you like, it is important to like what your status (or the one you want to show) allows you to like.
And what you like doesn't even have to be good, as long as it is expensive.

Europeans and the East

It used to be easy for a European to come back from the Far East convinced of the superiority of our ways.

So easy and so common that most still do, without understanding that everything changes, also the economic world.

Maybe the Europeans in some ways are still better partly because they are better suited to the rotten, automated, money-grabbing society they have built.

But their undeniable predominance in many fields was due mostly to historic and climatic factors, including luck, but in any case was only temporary.

Between West and East I see the difference between an old country and a new one.

In the East something is happening : a new culture, a new way of life is being superimposed on the old one. An alien culture is being superimposed on the the indigenous. But this process, far from being traumatic, is slowly producing its effects.

If the people in the East have a genius for anything, it is for imitating others AND improving in their way.

The people in the East are complicated, but also very simple - almost primitive - in one respect: they idolize success.
What succeeds is good, what fails is worthless.
Success is what achieves immediate and tangible results, success is the accomplishment of an aimed-at end.
Success is fame, status, riches.

They regard western systems as closed and final until they are disproved.
They don't take notice of what is happening in front of their eyes; they believe what they have been taught.

To criticize, to try to improve, and thus to question the validity and wisdom of the accepted creed would go against their deep and inbred respect for authority.

They can think for others, they can think for the community, but they are not very good at thinking for themselves. That makes the strength of their economic world.
The individual doesn't exist for himself, only for the community. His life is his job and his job is his country. But that is also going to be their limit. Once they will have nothing anymore to copy or to imitate, will they be able as individual to think and to produce something individually new ?

Why Google was (is) so successful ?

Once we made our choice and it proved to be the right one (because Google was undoubtely the most efficient or at least it looked like) that represents permanence, something fixed and unalterable, we stick to our choices, because we are all - even the most progressive, the most revolutionary among us - extremely conservative; we all resent change, because we know that while change is life, change is also death, bringing our own inevitable extinction in its wake.

It is more difficult to dethrone a king than to get a kingdom.

No matter how good, how better, a new search engine is, to be wide spread needs to steal the customers, to dethrone a king, and that is going to be hard.

Virtual reality

I would like virtual reality to be a world that is fully objective like the physical world, but also completely fluid like the imagination.

Philosophers go further saying that the physical world doesn't really exist, that when we put a book in a drawer and close it, the book disappears and appears again when WE open the drawer.
That the book doesn't exist in itself.

My problem is that when I open the drawer, usually the book is not there, the reason being not in the fact that the physical book doesn't exist, but that I am getting more and more forgetful.
I think I put a book in a certain drawer and I didn't.
That makes virtual reality even more complicated...

How old are you?

This is a pointless question.
Few people know how old they are.
Every person has two ages: the first is the calendar age which is the less important of the two and depends simply on the date of birth (its chief purpose is to tell you when you must go to school and wheter you are permitted to watch pornographic films in public, or you must still watch them at home).
The second age is your real age, and that is of real importance.
Your calendar age changes making you a year older every birthday, your real age remains constant.
We all know serious minded, mature human beings with a calendar age of eleven and also empty headed, silly, sulking, vain children with a calendar age of 54.

Xray of my country

Italy is the country where the working class doesn't work, the ruling class doesn't rule and the middle class is not in the middle.
In the old days you were either a Communist or a Capitalist (later a Communist or a Capitalist, a Liberal and so on...)party-follower.
Our is the age in which people change allegiance for the most trivial and frivolous reasons.
In every case, anyway, whatever any party says, fails to follow it.
People know perfectly well that to judge a man by the preference for a political party is downright stupid, but they go on making such judgments.
The trouble of the Italians (and also of humanity)is that while their intellect has grown quickly and impressively, their morality and ethics are those of the cave-dweller or the crocodile.
Italians are able to create admirable devices and then use them for destructive ends.
They have remained the slaves of basic instincts such as revenge, envy, fury, vanity, greediness and so on.

Another trouble is that Italy's politicians sooner or later develop a God complex.
That is unavoidable when everyone keeps knowtowing to you, when people laugh at your silliest jokes and listen to your most trivial utterances as though they were the Sermon on the Mount, when you cannot be sacked from your job however incompetent or senile you become.
When in other words you are treated like God, then it is difficult not to believe in your own divinity.

Again about speed...

"Sure at 30 Mbps you can download DVD quality The Bourne Identity in 11 minutes, but its still going to take you 2 hours to watch it."

But 11 minutes WILL make the difference.
Even if I have a video shop very close to where I live and I do not need a car to go there, even if I do not have the hassle to find a parking, well, 11 minutes is much less than what it would take to walk there and rent it. (without considering that I have to bring it back)

SPEED MAKES a big difference...

The war of the Roses

A new, bloodying war will begin soon.
Google will offer (free) software competitive to Microsoft's. Open source everything.
We do not know yet WHO will loose, but I certainly know WHO will win.

All customers WILL.
Competition is the mother of progress, and fight usually the father of a new ERA.

24 hours with Lucy for $ 1.99

That is what Google will offer soon.
Interested?
But if you can have the same for $0.00, would you still be interested?
No, thank you, the free offers Lucy unlimited, why should I prefer 24 hours?

If I had come out with a similar idea I wouldn't have found one soul listening to me, but since it was Google it's a complete different scenario, I bet many will be enthusiastic.
May be it will be for your cell phone screen, which will make the whole idea even stupider, but then, I am not a VC...

Higher speed in your living room

. . . as we increase the speed, the real impact of the speed on what we do with it is marginal. Can your eyes tell the difference between a web-page loading in one second or 0.27 seconds. I guess not. . . . Sure at 30 Mbps you can download DVD quality The Bourne Identity in 11 minutes, but its still going to take you 2 hours to watch it.
Just so, increasing the commonly available symmetric crosscut bandwidth won't make web browsing more popular---just like commonly
available T1s didn't make UUCP more popular and Fast Ethernet didn't make Gopher any more popular.

It certainly won't make web browsing more popular, but it will make web downloading MUCH FASTER.
And THAT will have an impact on the world and economy of TODAY that most do not see (or do not want to see).

The biggest market on the Internet since Napster has been the P2P market, the most succesful companies have been the ones able to get a first seat on that business.
Even the most succesful VoIP has been the one which claimed to be a P2P (even if mostly on the name).
The spreading of Broadband has mostly been for P2P.
And that has made the fortune of the "connectivity business".

That AND the cheaper and growing storage availability will make the future of the Video on the NET.
Which won't be streamed, but downloaded and looked at on the more convenient way and time.
On TV may be, or on a big screen, or on the wall with the use of a projector...
Movie theatre in your OWN living room, comfortably sat on your couch, when and how you like it...
This looks to me a most probable picture of our future.

Speed doesn't count for the human eye, but is essential for computers communication and since the Future WILL BE COMPUTER COMMUNICATION, high speed, higher speed, WELCOME in our living room.

A cheap set top box

January 4, 2006
Google Cube: Remember Mike Cowpland?

The blogosphere has been abuzz about the idea of a Google PC for the last couple of days. Google has denied the rumor. I’m surprised that it ever had any legs, honestly. It’s a stupid idea. Microsoft has a hammer-lock on the OS market, and virtually all of the applications for PC’s are written to the Microsoft standard. Neither Apple, nor OS/2, nor Linux has been able to break that grip yet. Why should Google be any different?
Alec Saunders .log

It is a STUPID IDEA. Because you expect Google doing something the Market is waiting for.
I guess we, Internet users, already have a Hardware and it is getting more and more sophisticated.
It is our computer and we want to do everything with it.
Phoning, watching TV, Movies, listening to music, and MOST of all Surfing.
You do not need a small box, you need an always more and more complicated, more and more efficient tool.
What can a small box do that a PC cannot? Why should I buy a new device, when I already own a better one?

Somebody, some time ago understood that the future was in the Software, and since then, he proved to be DAMNED RIGHT...

Patrizia WOIP

Thoughts of the beginning of the year

I am one year older (not yet, but it will be soon).
My mind and especially my memory doesn't work as it should or as it is supposed to.
I keep forgetting things and sometimes it makes me very angry with my brain.
It is getting like those programs in the computer who think they know better than you and want to do the things you didn't ask them to do.
They try to show that a computer can do things by itself and THAT makes you uncomfortable, because, with all respect for computers, it is better they do JUST WHAT THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO DO, which is what you ask them to...
For example, if I ask my computer to go to the blogger start, it authomatically brings me to my page, and no way out...
As when I want to go to Google.com I always finish to Google.it, because I have an talian IP address.
Computers assume (programs assume...) and they shouldn't...
The same does my brain.
It puts in the memory what IT thinks is important and NOT what I decide what IS.
After many years living with me, IT thinks to know what I like to remember, but BRAINS do not KNOW that human beings sometimes are unpredictable...
I guess it is also a matter of space.
After a certain age your brain is so full, it HAS to put some order, but instead of deleting old things, it deletes the new ones.
I guess IT reasons in this way.
If something is repeated more than twice, then it has a higher priority than something you just see or say or hear once...
But then after so many years of discriminating, it overdoes and deletes everything, unless it is something essential for your survival.

Many people look at the same picture, but everyone sees different things.
That is your brain discriminating. It sees what interests you, like things that are useful for your job, your way of living and so on.
The same happens when you read a book.
Usually you remember things that others don't, and others read things that you didn't.
That is what makes a cultured person different from another.
That is what school teaches or should teach you.
Out of a book you pick up and remember what you should.
The more intelligent, the better your brain is, the most you select.
When we are born our mind is mostly blank.
A virgin hard drive in which we will store all what we see, hear, say in our whole life.
In the beginning our memory is good because our brain can store all what we like to store.
After a while the space is less and the brain has to select what is important and what is not.
And here comes out the intelligence, which in my opinion is not only what you were born with, but also depends on the development of your brain.
I explain better: you are born with a certain load of instinctive notions that you increase with experience.
The more your experience, the more your brain works on it and the more intelligent you will be.
For example, if you know well music and painting the more you enjoy an art work, because you can see in it what an other one cannot.

Anyway, I still have an unanswered question: what can I do to keep my memory?

2006 Predictions

Video will dominate.
Voice will spread, but video will be the king.
Either on your big screen or your small cell screen or your Computer Monitor.
Wi-Fi won't kill cell phones or G3, but the Internet will kill TV and the movie theather as well as traditional videorental stores.
It has been online for long, beginning with big files and lousy quality, but now, we got a very good quality and very small files.
In the meantime the storage room of our computers has cheaply and enormously grown up, the compression has hugely shrinked our files and the bandwidth has upgraded the speed of download.
Broadband, small files, good compression and quality: HERE WE FINALLY ARE.
Videos served on a silver tray.

Now the war is really beginning.
I mean the war among copyright holders and the millions of entertainment fans.
Who is going to win?