IKEA catalogs are the best: open to a random page, close your eyes, point your finger and now you have a name for your new D&D character.
- From a Metafilter discussion of IKEA’s unsavory corporate background (worth a read).
As far as it relates to me: I don’t care.
I don’t consider it reasonable to have an expectation of privacy when I share information with you via a third party. Anyone facilitating such an exchange is going to have a vested interest in the transaction and they’re going to do something to monetize it. That’s how free commercial websites work. If you don’t want the world to know that you spent the morning puking after drinking all night and then went to Mama’s for breakfast, there is an easy way to keep that private.
With regard to the privacy advocates: I don’t entirely trust them.
I’m not saying they’re dishonest, however, Facebook is a huge, delicious target upon which many blog entries can be posted, media appearances can be secured, books promoted and conference speaker junkets obtained. There is a lot of opportunity to feast here, and I see the usual suspects lining up at the trough.
With regard to Diaspora: Give me a fucking break.
This is a different type of monetizing going on here, and a successful anti-Facebook project will look very good on a resume, make great conversation during a job interview. I don’t begrudge them the opportunity! I think that’s wonderful. But the way I’ve seen the above-mentioned blogger type carrying on about this, I think it’s amusing that they still consider the answer to not trusting one known party with your data is to share it with another relatively unknown party.
Once upon a time I wrote an article for NewsForge titled Senator Fritz Hollings (D-Disney) avoids talking about SSSCA. It was a story about how the then-Senator from South Carolina seemed to be thanking some of his high profile donors and patrons for their support by introducing legislation that might have criminalized Linux and other Open Source software.
Recently, I’ve started to receive a lot of correspondence on the matter. Most of it kind, some of negative, but all of it bizarre. Why? Because that “once upon a time” was September 20, 2001.
I don’t know if you folks have looked at a calendar recently, but it’s 2010. NewsForge, the site it was written for, no longer exists. The company that owned it has gone through two or three name changes and at least as many business strategies since the last time they handed me a paycheck.
While I appreciate the recognition that this article has some resonance with people today, I really have nothing more to offer to you on the matter. In fact, I haven’t kept up with much in the way of the Open Source world or its inhabitants since I was laid off about two months after writing that article.
Aside from updating my Ubuntu installation as needed, I really don’t give a fat rat’s ass about what’s happening in or with “the community,” a position I reached one day when I found myself sitting in the back of a hotel ballroom listening to presumably grown and mature adults argue for six hours over printer drivers. It’s all just fandom and it’s all just wank.
Oh, I guess I do have one thing to say about that story from way back when: In hindsight the evil SSSCA probably wasn’t so much a deliberate act on Sen. Hollings’ part, so much as it was likely lobbyists searching for a technologically illiterate sponsor to introduce the bill, perhaps even aided and abetted by less scrupulous members of his staff. Politics as usual.
But… yeah. Thanks for your interest and support, I guess.
BART hooking up two trains to make a nine-car train in time for rush hour. Fremont platform.
The insanity continues. Yesterday I told you about the need to show up at Hayward’s City Council meeting tonight to speak out in support of safe access to Medical Marijuana via dispensaries. Now I’ve learned that whoever is really setting the agenda at City Hall has dragged the Police Officer’s Association in it to speak out against safe access, which might as well be a direct endorsement of illegal and violent street dealing. The POA is now pro-crime? WTF? Read the details here.
Here’s a little bit I wrote for HPRC’s blog about the city of Hayward banning medical marijuana. They’re calling it a “moratorium” so they can “study the issue” which is a steaming pantload, they already know how it works. Cowards.
Leaving the Lone Star last night, a six-foot-something Latino bear with a deep voice and engaging smile noticed me checking him out from across the street and ran over to say hi. Pretty much my idea of a hot man, it didn’t take him long to mention what he was looking for in a guy: a couple of bucks. I got in the first cab to pull up leaving him, smiling and cashless, on the curb.
I’m hardly angry or annoyed by what happened because, hey, he was cute and was engaging and even gentleman enough to open the cab door for me. It wasn’t a wasted transaction. I was pretty sure I was in the presence of a hustler and that knowledge, combined with the fact that it was 2am and I was beyond buzzed, meant that I wasn’t about to do anything with anyone.
As you can see in the menubar of my blog, I’m on Twitter. I use it to chat with friends I’ve known for years, but every time I post an update I pick up a few more followers. While they’re usually porn spammers, occasionally I’ll run across a real human being or two who thought I said something interesting.
There have been less porn spammers lately, which is a good thing, but unfortunately they’ve been replaced by people who fancy themselves marketers, life coaches and other assorted career paths for the terminally insufferable. The pile-on started about four hours after I clicked “follow” on Tony Robbins, the current guru of the overly confident. Yeah. That’s right. I follow Tony Robbins on Twitter. You got something to say about it?
So here’s this onslaught of all these shiny, happy people on Twitter and here’s what I noticed: they’re all saying the same damned things. Each and every one of them. The format goes something like this:
1. Inspirational quote 2. Link to build websites in an instant for free 3. How to get thousands of Twitter followers in five seconds 4. Where to spend your marketing dollars. Repeat at least three times a week.
But there’s no original content, save for the occasional random retweet. It’s just thousands of marketers and inspirational types saying the same thing over and over and over. On top of that, it’s all so depersonalized: These accounts appear to be automated (especially fun when you peek into their followers page and see they’re following a thousand other marketing blatherers).
So what does all this have to do with some hulking hustler outside of a San Francisco bar on Friday night? How about this: What is it that people like him understand about making human contact that people like these marketers just do not get?
All of them want me to buy their solution, but none of them want to make any effort at explaining why or offering any sort of personalization — a figurative smile and opening of the cab door, if you will. All I get is an automated demand for my attention from someone who had a program scan a few keywords. Way to make a guy feel special.
If a hustler at post-closing and probably just as drunk as I was can figure it out, why is it someone with an actual business plan to sell stuff can’t?
It’s enough to make me wish the porn spammers would make a comeback.