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Being Asian myself, I concur that we tend to have questionable tastes. It probably has something to do with the cultures going through an identity crisis. Thi

Being Asian myself, I concur that we tend to have questionable tastes. It probably has something to do with the cultures going through an identity crisis. This is most pronounced in car designs. Japanese and Korean cars designs generally look like they are "trying too hard", especially in the recent years in their high-end models. Maybe they are going for the funky-factor of the ricers, I don't know. British, Italian, and French cars usually look the least desperate. German and American cars are somewhere in the middle. Just my opinion.

Tichy 17y ago
My favorite notebook maker used to be Samsung (Korean I think), but unfortunately their latest line also has the piano lacquer problem. Also, all the makers have far too many options to choose from. Both seem like solvable problems to me, but perhaps they are doing well enough as it is?
plinkplonk 17y ago
"Being Asian myself, I concur that we tend to have questionable tastes. " Being Asian myself, I concur we have different tastes. ;-) Most Asian cultures(Japanese, Indian etc)have their own aesthetic sensibilities. I concur that they are different from the "default" western sense of style. I just don't think it is true Asians have "questionable" taste! NB: I am not getting into culture wars etc or claiming victimization etc, I just think that sentence is not true.
- papersmith 17y ago
  I probably should've written a disclaimer as to indicate my opinion. :) To be more specific, perhaps I should've emphasized that "modern" Asian cultures have questionable tastes, which is in direct contrast to traditional Asian sensibilities. I feel that modern Asian cultures are too busy imitating what's trendy in the west. It doesn't help the fact that instability of the past century made people lose faith in their indigineous cultures, while the western culture has evolved quite a bit since to adapt to changes of the world, thus leaving a big gap to catch up. I'd venture that the vast portion of the old Asian cultures are appreciated now-a-days merely for their exotic aspects, even by Asian people themselves. Whatever is preserved for practical reasons don't always fit in a coherent manner, there are plenty of rough edges to work out. I guess a bad analogy would be that Asian culture is like Unix, Apple is Europe, Windows is USA, China is BSD, and Japan is Ubuntu. The kernel is the philosophy, command line is the traditional culture, GUI is the pop culture, and the internet is globalization. Windows eventually took over and became more accessible over time with its killer GUI apps. For the time being, Unix lacks the ecosystem to build killer GUI apps, so they created Wine to run Windows apps. There are also plenty of native Unix GUI apps that sprang up, but most are created in response to their existing commercial counterparts, and many of their GUIs are imitations. FreeBSD has been around for a while, went through several regime changes, and is still kinda authoritarian with its userland programs. Ubuntu is later to the game, has the most success in adapting to modern GUI needs, but there's still some distance to go to catch up to Apple and perhaps Windows. Even though Unix is weak in GUI stuff, it's strong as servers, especially since the internet became popular. Sorry about the silly analogy, perhaps I need to take a nap. :)

Tichy 17y ago

My favorite notebook maker used to be Samsung (Korean I think), but unfortunately their latest line also has the piano lacquer problem. Also, all the makers have far too many options to choose from. Both seem like solvable problems to me, but perhaps they are doing well enough as it is?

plinkplonk 17y ago

"Being Asian myself, I concur that we tend to have questionable tastes. " Being Asian myself, I concur we have different tastes. ;-) Most Asian cultures(Japanese, Indian etc)have their own aesthetic sensibilities. I concur that they are different from the "default" western sense of style. I just don't think it is true Asians have "questionable" taste! NB: I am not getting into culture wars etc or claiming victimization etc, I just think that sentence is not true.

papersmith 17y ago
I probably should've written a disclaimer as to indicate my opinion. :) To be more specific, perhaps I should've emphasized that "modern" Asian cultures have questionable tastes, which is in direct contrast to traditional Asian sensibilities. I feel that modern Asian cultures are too busy imitating what's trendy in the west. It doesn't help the fact that instability of the past century made people lose faith in their indigineous cultures, while the western culture has evolved quite a bit since to adapt to changes of the world, thus leaving a big gap to catch up. I'd venture that the vast portion of the old Asian cultures are appreciated now-a-days merely for their exotic aspects, even by Asian people themselves. Whatever is preserved for practical reasons don't always fit in a coherent manner, there are plenty of rough edges to work out. I guess a bad analogy would be that Asian culture is like Unix, Apple is Europe, Windows is USA, China is BSD, and Japan is Ubuntu. The kernel is the philosophy, command line is the traditional culture, GUI is the pop culture, and the internet is globalization. Windows eventually took over and became more accessible over time with its killer GUI apps. For the time being, Unix lacks the ecosystem to build killer GUI apps, so they created Wine to run Windows apps. There are also plenty of native Unix GUI apps that sprang up, but most are created in response to their existing commercial counterparts, and many of their GUIs are imitations. FreeBSD has been around for a while, went through several regime changes, and is still kinda authoritarian with its userland programs. Ubuntu is later to the game, has the most success in adapting to modern GUI needs, but there's still some distance to go to catch up to Apple and perhaps Windows. Even though Unix is weak in GUI stuff, it's strong as servers, especially since the internet became popular. Sorry about the silly analogy, perhaps I need to take a nap. :)