You may disapprove of these tactics, but they are more or less standard. Applying labels to one's political opponents is a huge part of politics.
I fail to see what is particularly sick about this tactic. The new meaning of santorum is fairly disgusting, but I don't think it's anywhere near as sick as attempting to brand one's opposition as traitors, conspirators, terrorists, baby killers, etc.
I especially fail to see how one's opinion on this particular word re-definition has anything to do with whether a new employee is worth hiring. Being amused by a childish bit of humor doesn't strike me as a particularly good way to judge either aptitude or character.
Smear campaigns are, in fact, standard. Swift boat veterans, Birthers, Abortion doctors as baby killers, comparing homosexuals to pedophiles are all examples of exactly this sort of behavior on the right. Similar examples exist on the left, but you can look them up yourself.
It is a new meaning. It has appeared in numerous publications, and has achieved a pretty wide spread. The fact that it was started as a "propaganda tactic" is immaterial.
Advocating pedophilia? I don't know why I'm feeding such an obvious troll. A group of people called someone who they had a (justified) dislike for a bad name and it stuck. Santorum has compared gay sex to bestiality and pedophilia, I think both of those associations are far worse than being associated with the "frothy mix". Giving someone an insulting nickname is a bit childish, but it's harmless and in this case, a response to Santorum using essentially the same tactic to attack the gay community.
Sadly, I don't think there's any way to make the public really care about this. For one thing, it's a sufficiently rare pain in the ass that virtually no one worries about what the latest nonsense from the TSA is on a day to day basis.
I also suspect many people actually do believe it makes us safer. Many others probably don't care one way or another, but if a politician were to seriously attempt to end the TSA, they would be branded as soft on terror so fast their head would spin.
Innovation isn't the only thing that leads to success, not by a long shot. Polish, ease of use, a large feature set, security, and any number of other factors can have just as big an impact on users as innovation.
People don't use Google search because it's innovative, and people don't use Facebook because it innovated and people won't make their decisions on Google+ based on its innovations.
> Polish, ease of use, a large feature set, security, and any number of other factors can have just as big an impact on users as innovation.
Not if it's something people don't need or want in the first place.
If Google have 'innovated' then it means they've created something original and new that is useful for people. Only time will tell, but my personal opinion, based on what I've seen so far is they haven't.
Well yes, if the users don't want the product then nothing else matters, but I don't see what that has to do with innovation.
I have no problem with your argument that Google+ will need to be useful in some sense to be successful, but originality is hardly necessary for that to be the case.
If what they're going for is "Like Facebook, but better!" then they certainly are going to have a difficult time convincing many users to switch, but I wouldn't say it's anything approaching impossible.
If your criteria for failure is that the company is more interested in making money than you, personally, then there isn't a successful product on the face of the earth.
Of course Google is trying to use Google+ to make ad revenue. You know, exactly like Twitter and Facebook, who you hold up as opposition to Google+.
If Google fails here it will be because they didn't make people want to use their product, plain and simple. Not because the people ultimately paying them aren't the people using their product. If that were the case, half of the web wouldn't exist.
Windows/Mac/Unix weren't the first operating systems.
Taking ideas from competitors and improving upon them is a fundamental part of business. No one actually thinks that coming up with a product concept is the same as delivering a product that users actually want.
Why would it be surprising to see him on there? Dogfooding is a good idea, but in this case, there's nothing stopping someone from using both Facebook and Google+. He'd be foolish to not be on Google+, how else is he supposed to know where he's winning and where he might lose users.
In general, a shop that wanted to make very much money off of interns would have to have them work on new code(any sizable code base is going to take a while to get up to speed on), and/or hire only excellent students (though in this case they wouldn't have the option of not paying, good programmers never have to work cheap).
This may be true, but it doesn't really address the point of the article. The argument is that modern games could take a lesson from text adventure games in engaging the players' imaginations.
I fail to see what is particularly sick about this tactic. The new meaning of santorum is fairly disgusting, but I don't think it's anywhere near as sick as attempting to brand one's opposition as traitors, conspirators, terrorists, baby killers, etc.
I especially fail to see how one's opinion on this particular word re-definition has anything to do with whether a new employee is worth hiring. Being amused by a childish bit of humor doesn't strike me as a particularly good way to judge either aptitude or character.