Are domains becoming obsolete?
This post will be a bit of speculative philosophical techy meditation, but bear with me please.
There are all sorts of problems with getting a domain nowadays. If someone is not cyber-squatting it, it might just be taken already (for a legit reason) and even if it all works well, it still costs you money. But we’re hanging on to our domains as the one and only solution for remembering websites. Why? Well, because it’s easy to remember www.alexflorescu.com, not that easy to remember 69.89.27.228, although both addresses will take you back here.
Nonetheless, we’ve seen a steady raise in the power and usage of search engines. While the first time I ever connected to the Internet I had a BOOK with websites and then went through years of carefully mastering the art of search engines to ever get anywhere, now I rarely even use bookmarks anymore. I know what the website I’m looking for *is* and I just use Google to get to it. It’s simply more convenient and faster.
I’ve seen a lot of people that don’t even use the address bar anymore. They type everything in the Google search bar that arrives by default on the Firefox homepage. Some of these users do not even acknowledge the existence or role of the address bar; they don’t know what it is, they’ve never used it, if it were removed they would not even notice it.
So then what is the remaining purpose of domains? Why bother when people won’t even remember the domain at all? Oh yes, they will most probably remember the title if anything, but they can use that to get to your website any day by just googling it and it’s the title they remember, not the domain. If these two happen to be different, the title will stick, the domain won’t (I’ve had this happen to me once).
Taking into account the complication and the security issues inherent to domains, I think dropping the whole idea altogether is something that should at least be considered. Of course, then we are faced with the problem of putting all the power to navigate the Internet in the power of a few (if not only ONE) huge corporations. But don’t be naive, we’ve already done that. Now let’s just make the best of it.
Facebook or Spambook?
Facebook has brought the ability to spam to a whole new level. Now when I say spam, I don’t mean Nigerian princes and Viagra, I mean just unsolicited emails about stuff I don’t care about, that I never wanted to get and I can’t stop receiving. It’s incredible! Here, let me explain.
Case study 1:
Let’s say I want to email some twenty people about something important. Last time I tried to do that in GMail, it wouldn’t allow me. Said something about me possibly trying to spam and to use Google Groups instead for such situations. It annoyed me greatly, but I thought it was a good feature to have. I will guess that some other major email services have similar ways of protecting against spammers.
But, then again, there is NOTHING preventing me from sending a message to the almost three hundred friends I have on Facebook right now. Will they all get emails to notify them of those messages? Most probably. If I have a group or event of sorts, then this could be up to hundreds of thousands of messages at the click of a button.
Devil’s advocate objection: It’s not spam if you signed up for it. Being in a group means you’re accepting to get all of that, so Facebook can’t do anything about it, it’s all your fault. Which brings us to the next case study.
Case study 2:
Let’s say groups and events don’t cut it anymore. I mean a group will only be joined by those who care about it, so it’s hard to use it to advertise to people who know nothing about it in the first place. How do you still get your propaganda across? Well using, friends of course. Enter… “promoters”.
I mean, if a group annoys you, you’re just going to leave it. But are you going to remove a friend from your list just because they send you messages? Probably not (note: when I say friend, I mean a real person that you actually know outside of the social networking realm). So here we are with people sending spam to their friends, as a job. The most common case of that I see is promoting for a club. At some point I used to get tens of emails each week, from friends, advertising events at clubs.
This is a list you can’t sign out of. This is a message you can’t filter out. Remove your friend and… well…you’ve removed a friend, it breaks the whole social networking idea. Keep the friend and BOOM, spam all over the place.
So, what now Facebook? Are we going to allow this to keep happening? Or are we planning to do something about it? It comes down to whether you think you will either gain or lose money through this. Since its advertisement going through your channel that you’re not directly making money off of, and it has high potential of annoying your users to the point where they will start removing friends or quitting, I think it doesn’t take too many marketing research models to figure out the answer. But would I know about that, I’m just an engineer.
PS: I’m only picking on Facebook because I’m using it and it’s popular. I think any other social network can be used in a similar manner to propagate unwanted messages. It’s a problem inherent to the business model, but not a problem that can’t be fixed.
DC’s winter (aka How *I* defeated Global Warming)
I see a lot of people wondering what’s going on with all the snow in the world recently and I especially see a lot of questioning faces around me in DC, where we seem to have had some record snowfall this winter. I would have thought the answer to be obvious, but it seems I need to explain it.
I have defeated global warming. As you surely must have heard by now, global warming is something caused exclusively by humans and as of such, what each and everyone of us does, will help. I should announce that in 2008 I changed all the light bulbs in our apartment with super-duper-energy-saving spiraled ones. It seems like a small thing to do, doesn’t it? But these efforts add up, keep that in mind! The TV told you that, so IT MUST BE TRUE! If you didn’t believe it then, now you can be sure. As anyone can easily observe, after two years, global warming is no longer a problem thanks to my diligent and precise efforts.
I know what you’re thinking now.. what would’ve happened if I hadn’t changed those light bulbs? Would there have been any snow at all in DC this winter? Would GW kids have gotten (at least) three snow days this week? Would Santa Claus ever come again? Fortunately, all of this is history now, thanks to a handful of energy efficient light bulbs, in the right place, at the right time.
Thank you, thank you all.
Thanks
Following Ovi’s example, I’ll try to compile a post to thank my friends for random small things. Some people might be terribly surprised to find themselves on this list (assuming they even read the blog, which I doubt for the most part). Well, don’t be… it’s these small things that sometimes matter so much. I tried to also put family members here, but I couldn’t, because you just can’t thank your family for small things. Everything they do is huge in so many ways. So here we go:
Thank you…
Radu, for that time when he asked me to help him program that game
Cata, for teaching me how to play whist
Tudor B., for inviting me over to show me some tricks in Photoshop
Andreas, for that time he took me for a walk in the cemetery
Mona, for letting me take pictures of her
Ovi, for giving me his battery charger
Anca, for that walk in the park..and the cake
Ana B., for dancing with me that night
Ana S., for asking my opinion about her tattoo
Mario, for that phonecall
Sandra, for the “Bad Guy” teddybear keychain
Nicole, for always passing the ball
Silvia, for her colored hand-made cards
Viv, for the egyptian eye she drew on my hand in highschool
Tudor PM, for asking me to help him with that script
Gogu, for sometimes letting me win at Need for Speed
Random girl in the metro, for asking me about my xkcd tshirt
Livia, for the letter she sent me long ago
Misu (wherever you are), for giving me my first Queen CDs
Rax, for offering me tea that evening
Angi, for showing me the “Easter Egg” on the LotR DVD
Daniel, for coming with me on that long drive
Georgiana, for the critique on that text of mine
Justin, for letting me play Halo on his XBox even though I sucked
Trevor, for making me stay on the CCDC team
Irina, for the hacker gloves
And the list could probably go on, but I’ll stop here for now. Thank you all!
Note: Image from ( http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_AGVe9K2hrnE/SbMzP9yvpVI/AAAAAAAAAnY/iU8WBjZ1WKg/s400/Deep+bow.jpg )
Real men
Although TC from TMuscle.com already wrote an awesome article about this, which I have previously referenced here, I will try my hand at this in yet another written angry rant.
I am so sick of “real men”. I don’t know who is to blame for this plague. Whether it’s the media, the arts, the growing stupidity, the technocrats, in all honesty, I do not care, but this is really ticking me off. Real men, everybody has this broken perception of what a real man should be. I mean we all know it right?
First of all, real men do not show feelings. They probably are assumed to not have them in the first place. If your manly heart vibrates to a song, to a nice piece of art or to the big eyes of a kitty, it’s time you punched yourself in the face and chugged a pint of beer to bring yourself back on track, because real men don’t have feelings.
If I write a blog (do real men even have blogs??) post about Santa Claus and throw a little bit of sentimentalism in there, I get sneers from every other male stumbling on it. If I dare at any point show emotion in say, a blog post, a facebook status or anything of the like, I get stamped as “emo” (or similar). No, you moronic wool-headed lummox, I’m not emo, I’m HUMAN. Sometimes I feel happy, sometimes I feel sad and sometimes I fell really pissed off, like now. They’re called emotions and just because you can’t deal with them and need to suppress them doesn’t mean everyone does the same.
Actually, let me stop here and correct my first point. Real men do have some allowed emotions, most important of which is anger. And because real men are suppose to be angry, they need to show it. A real man swears, a real man is violent, a real man breaks the rules, because everyone knows rules are for woosies. This translates into everything a real man does. Real men don’t listen to girly music, they only listen to angry music. Real men like action films.
“Real men drink harrd”. Yup, you know it. If you go to some party and you’re not doing shots of everything, all at once, usually being very vocal about it and ending the whole thing with a huge burp, you’re not a real man. Real men get so drunk that they need other real men to help them get home. That unless they’re true alpha males and decide to drive their drunk ass home, because they can – they know they can!
Sometimes, real men, after they get drunk, go out clubbing, but don’t make the mistake of thinking they go there to dance. Oh no no no, real men don’t dance, are you crazy? That’s for women and girly men. They go there to drink some more and of course to search for “real women” (I’ll talk about these some other time), that grind. Now in case you don’t know what grinding is, you’re not a real anything, stop reading my blog, you’ll make me look bad in front of my ever-so-important online friends.
“Real men” train. They lift big weights and drink big protein shakes. No, they don’t have diets, diets are for women. They just lift and “take protein”. Now you are definitely never going to see a “real man” in a yoga or pilates class. Real men don’t need THAT kind of crap, it’s too easy. Sure, there “cores” are pretty much non-existent and never trained and they have the posture of a terrified cornered cat, but that’s ok because real men need to get back aches every now and then so it keeps them toughened up.
Yeah, I could go on for hours and hours, but let’s cut the crap. “Real men” as our society likes to call them, are male-like creatures with suppressed emotions, no respect for others (especially no respect for women), no real friends, no true direction in life, no ability to appreciate the world or themselves and as far as I care filled with fear and unhappiness, with no future and no power. You will always find them in packs, they don’t survive by themselves. They shadow and plague the image of masculinity, of real “real men”.
Real real men are nothing you would expect them to be. They can externalize emotion and they do. They allow feelings to fill their hearts, because they are not afraid to deal with that overwhelming sensation. They respect women because they understand the ways in which they are different and they don’t fear the power that women have, because they know that they have their own (and they are equal). They love arts, they’re not afraid to listen to music that is not angry, to watch a drama or to read a love story. They’ll even read poetry and some will maybe write it.
Real real men do what they want to do, not what others pressure them into doing because they have the courage to be different and the strength to suffer the consequences of being different. They take care of themselves and their loved ones. They’re loyal and they care.
Real real men talk about their problems and ask for help when they need it. And they have close loving people in their lives to give them that help. Real real men can be happy and they usually are.
Unfortunately real real men are a dying breed and I’m afraid we don’t yet fully understand how much we actually need these men and what a disaster it is that we are seeing fewer of them everyday. By the time we’ll figure out something went wrong, it might be too late to make it right again. But don’t worry, real men will help us out… as long as we have beer to give of course.
