General / Psychology / Society — 1 comment
06
Mar 06

Thoughts on Myspace

I recently found out one of my friends is getting a divorce. They’ve been married about five years and have kids. I don’t know all the details of the situation and I don’t care to know. I’m a big believer in the idea that “it takes two to tango”. In other words, no matter what the circumstances, both people in a relationship bear equal responsibility for what happens. The good and the bad. That doesn’t mean if someone is being abused or mistreated that they’re responsible for that behavior against them. On the other hand, when someone is being mistreated it is often not the first occasion or indication of such negative behavior. We teach people how we want to be treated. That sounds like a Dr. Phil-ism, but I think it’s true. On some level, if you let people treat you like crap, that is acceptable to you. You either think that’s what you deserve, or you even want to be mistreated. Anyway, I don’t believe that there’s a good guy or a bad guy in any relationship. It’s almost always the case that each party is equally responsible.

That being said, this friend’s wife met a guy on Myspace. They started emailing and contacting each other and the result is that she’s leaving my friend for this guy she barely knows. According to my friend, this guy found his wife by contacting one of her friends who is also married with children. He was looking for single women with children and found her “by mistake”. So, this friend put him in touch with my friend’s wife and they went from there, and now they’re getting divorced. It’s a big mess and it bothers me.

What kind of world do we live in where random strangers can sort through thousands of people to find someone who meets certain characteristics? Is that something we really want to participate in? I don’t think Myspace is a haven for pedophiles and sexual predators, but there is something creepy about the whole thing. A bunch of human beings on computers who distill down their personality to what bands they like, and other loose touchstones like what sports teams they root for, or what TV shows they like. Maybe I just don’t get the social network thing. I’m fairly asocial. I do think it would be naive to assume that it’s an entirely positive thing. It smacks too much of unreality, or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it just lays bare the whole grasping social equation, the desire for human contact, because we can only be ourselves when we’re reflected in others.

asides — 1 comment
06
Mar 06

dallas real estate

The Foreclosure Report: Defaults Continue To Mount In Dallas/Ft Worth: “The Dallas News has a report on foreclosures in that area. “More people are losing their homes to foreclosure than at any time since the Texas real estate bust of the 1980s. As residential foreclosures jumped 30 percent from a year ago in North Texas, the average mortgage on foreclosed houses fell to $129,000, compared with almost $146,000 a year ago.”

asides — Comments Off on Untitled
03
Mar 06

Untitled

NY Times: Push to Create Standards for Documents: “To cope with the problem, 30 companies, trade groups, academic institutions and professional organizations are announcing today the formation of the OpenDocument Format Alliance, which will promote the adoption of open technology standards by governments.” Necessary.

Jason Fried and Co. make $35,000 in 24 hours with their breezy PDF book, “Getting Real“. Great business move, but I’m drinking gallons of Haterade over this because I find 37 Signals products like “Basecamp” vastly overrated and expensive. Many of their products are marginally useful but way overhyped.

Arts / Comics — 1 comment
02
Mar 06

Wish I was in Austin for this…

March 4, 2006: Staple! The Independent Media Expo:

An event to promote independent creative media: comics, mini-comics, zines, art, and self-published literature. Building a community to encourage communication between creators and their audience. All the while having a damn good time in the Live Music Capital of the World – Austin, TX.

asides — Comments Off on Bush travels
02
Mar 06

Bush travels

U.S. to boost arms sales to India: “”The essence of this strategic partnership is to provide a countervailing influence to China … to act as a restraint on the exercise of Chinese power,” security analyst Brahma Chellaney said.”

Why I love Slashdot, from a discussion on ” Was Thomas Edison Right about DC Power?”: “Taking this a bit further, why not have an entire rack power supply that can deliver a rail of 3.3V, 5V, and 12V to each server, thus eliminating the need for a high-current DC-DC converter on the target board? I am excluding things like the exotic voltages for CPU and RAM, but still it is the 12V and 5V rails that would have to be able to source significantly more current.” Where else would you find such electro-geekery?

slang watch: “ace” – Been seeing people say things like “f*cking ace”, which I guess is like “awesome”?

General — 1 comment
02
Mar 06

“Under a Bridge With a Hobo”

I was telling one of my friends about my bike ride the other day where I woke the homeless man. He then told a NSFW story.

Continue reading →

Software / Internet — Comments Off on Wanted: Browsercam users
02
Mar 06

Wanted: Browsercam users

I need people who would be interested in using browsercam.com to join my fundable campaign. Browsercam has this promotion going where if you get twenty people together you can all pile up and get a browsercam group account for $25, which is good for one year. Browsercam is a good tool for web designers that lets you make sure your web pages look good across multiple platforms. For example, using browsercam you can see how your pages will look on Linux or a Mac in various different browsers. If you’re building websites (especially with CSS) it’s very useful.

General — Comments Off on Reasonable Google response to China criticism
02
Mar 06

Reasonable Google response to China criticism

From Computerworld: Google moving search records out of China:

Google has taken the tack of adding a “level of transparency” by indicating when results are being censored, “so at least the user knows what’s going on,” Norvig said.

On the customer protection front, Google has also resisted launching products like Gmail or Blogger in China to avoid being in the position of having to disclose user information to the Chinese government, he said.

These censorship and protection issues were part of what kept Google from entering China in the first place, Norvig said. He seemed frustrated by the widespread criticism of Google.cn’s censorship. “From 1998 up until this month, we resisted opening Google.cn for these reasons, and we didn’t see a lot of press coverage saying how courageous we were,” he said.

But political issues aren’t really paramount to most users in China, Norvig said.

“What’s important to users is access to information,” he said. “We’re giving them that, and we think that’s the most important. We’d like to give them all the information, but we just can’t.

“Some of the people want to query about democracy, but most of them just want to know about their pop stars.”

asides — Comments Off on Untitled
01
Mar 06

Untitled

Unintelligent Design: “With Mimi, we’ve captured by chance a picture of an organism that was undergoing such a reduction, evolving toward fewer genes,” says Claverie. “This guy just retained more ancestral features than others.” Biologists, Claverie says, can no longer view viruses as random assemblages of genes. “We have to confer to these guys a nobility, a genealogy. Not only a genealogy. They are very ancestral, and their ancestors are at least contemporary with ours and those of all present-day life-forms. Mimi is like the missing link.”

Media — Comments Off on Obvious: ‘Brokeback’ named Hollywood word of the year
28
Feb 06

Obvious: ‘Brokeback’ named Hollywood word of the year

‘Brokeback’ named Hollywood word of the year:

The nonprofit group Global Language Monitor placed “Brokeback” — as in the film title “Brokeback Mountain” — at the top of its list of Hollywood words and phrases that captured attention this year.

Paul JJ Payack, the head of Global Language Monitor, said the movie became a cultural phenomenon that generated a million jokes, according to Google. Overall, a Google search shows more than 38 million references to the film, although only about 10 million people saw the movie.

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