Category Archives: Technology

The Problems with Facebook & Google No One Talks About: Censorship

Business, Social Networking, Technology, Writing, , , , , , , ,

Some years ago, when the Internet was very young, I was one of the early adopters of the new technology and started building web sites for companies, organizations and individuals who wanted them. In the beginning, it was interesting in that the people who needed web sites tended to be in three categories: adult businesses, churches and social celebrities. To be honest, the social celebrity market wasn’t really launched yet, so you really relied specifically on adult businesses and churches, a somewhat unique duo of activity.

My first web site I built was for a church. So was my second one. And then members of those two churches contacted me, asking me if I could build a site for them as well, as there were no web designers around yet. It turns out that the people who contacted me were professional dominatrices, looking for new ways of attracting clientele. Not really one to care where business came from, I built their sites, and almost out of nowhere, dozens of brand new clients showed up, all wanting my business. What I discovered then, and later, was that I was one of the few web designers around they came across who just wanted payment (not the rest of what their activity had to offer). What had happened to them in the beginning of the Internet was potential clients saw a way to get free sessions from them, and then basically held them hostage (they would have control over their web sites) until they got all of their “needs” met. With me, they paid me money, and they got everything they wanted without any hassle.

This was great for me, and them, and lasted for years until I went back to school and had less time. Then I slowly pushed my clients off onto other designers I came in contact with, and slowly ended doing that sort of business. It was good to do so, too, because that’s when everyone started to learn how to do web sites, and a specialty designer like me was easily outnumbered by paint by number designers who really dirtied the whole industry. I kept a few clients over the years who knew I was a designer first, and not just a spaghetti code generator (the kind of people who used pre-packaged software that was impossible to maintain and change without continuing to use the same pre-packaged software, and it was also impossible to personally configure if you wanted to do something different than the software did out of the box).

Anyway, the reason for mentioning this is that one of my clients was an adult bookstore, and at one point, we were using a shopping cart service (before I learned to design them in php from scratch). In the middle of the night one evening, they shut down her site, deciding that they didn’t like her “pervert crap” and no longer wanted to do business with her. To them, it didn’t matter that her business had been around longer than theirs had, and that we had put a LOT of work into designing the site. They shut her down in the middle of the night because their owner suddenly “found God” and no longer wanted “smut” on his sites. The thought that he didn’t “own” her site meant nothing to him; however, his control of the shopping cart software, which configured the site’s business end, practically ended her business overnight. So I had to learn php, build a brand new shopping cart (when people weren’t doing that sort of thing yet) and then relaunch her site over a weekend during a week of tests at school. It was a nightmare, but I got her going again.

What I most remember about that incident is that the shopping cart manager wouldn’t return a phone call, and when I finally got a hold of him, he was the rudest person I ever spoke to. He really felt that he was talking to scum, so he didn’t have to address that person as a human. It was an eye-opening experience.

Years ago, I was asked to fix a woman’s business site because Google had shut her down completely. She was a pro dominant, and she knew about me through mutual acquaintances who had known someone who had done a site through me years ago, so she contacted me in the middle of the night, crying, saying that Google had just shut down her online business and she couldn’t even get anyone to answer why. She had followed all of their rules to the T, and she was in compliance with everything she could imagine would need compliance. Yet, out of the blue, they shut her down. Which meant everything that was tied to Google for her was also shut down. I tried to contact Google, and kept getting the run-around from them. Finally, I told her she could rebuild her site from scratch with a new Google account, or she could be smarter and just build her site from scratch using a non-Google tied server. So I ended up building her a clean site that had no connection to Google whatsoever. She’s still going strong today, although she’s probably not an early adopter of Google Plus for the crap they put her through.

Last night, I received a frantic phone call from a woman who said that she was shut down on Facebook a few days ago. The person she spoke to wouldn’t even give her a reason, quoting some obscure rule about “compliance with rules” and wouldn’t elaborate. Her gazillion friends are all gone, and much of the networking she designed through Facebook is now gone. She asked me if she should jump to Google instead now that she realized that Facebook is adult-unfriendly. I couldn’t give her a happy answer that she was expecting because I knew what her future would probably be with Google.

And that’s what I wanted to talk about. Two of the biggest kids on the block are fighting for supremacy in social networking sites, and they’re probably the two biggest unfriendly social networking sites around. If you’re doing anything with which they disagree, they don’t just turn their head and disagree, they shut you down completely, forcing their morals upon you because they have the power to do it. Like that shopping cart company from years before, they don’t care that there are thousands who feel as you do. Their personal desires are more important than yours, and if you don’t comply, you lose. And of course, you have nowhere else to turn, so screw you.

That’s what we have to look forward to with Facebook and Google. Now, I know the majority of people won’t ever do anything to worry about being forced out, but honestly, you don’t know that. What it means is that an organization that is trying to gain your business by promising to let you network with people like you is quite willing to shut you down if those people like you are not in agreement with what they personally think is cool, or okay. It’s like the old line of “when they came for the Polish, I did nothing because I wasn’t Polish, when they came for the French I did nothing, because I wasn’t French, and then when they came for me, there was no one left to speak for me.” Now that’s not an exact quote, but you get the idea. Years ago, when there was a huge backlash against the gay community, I was an avid spokesperson against the backlash because even though I’m not gay, I felt that if thugs were able to hurt people who were gay, there’s only a matter of time before someone starts coming after me for whatever weird things I might be into (yes, I know, being gay isn’t a choice or weird, but I’m stretching for an analogy here). For the longest time, I had colleagues thinking I was gay because I was an out spokesperson for gays, and they couldn’t understand why someone would advocate for something they weren’t personally. That’s why that misquoted quote is so poignant. People won’t speak out for others without a personal stake, and that’s why so many atrocities continue to happen in this world.

I’m just saying.

Learning to Code can sometimes be like learning to disarm nuclear weapons but harder

Computer Games, Education, Technology, , , , , , ,

A long time ago, I was learning the computer language COBOL. The first two books I went through were very simple. It was almost like learning to tie my shoes. And then the third book was like learning calculus right after learning subtraction. Nothing made sense. And everything before had almost no relevance to anything that came after.

I experienced that again today. I’ve been learning Objective C, Alice and XCode programming. It’s all been going well. As part of my learning, I’ve been following the Apple itunes demonstration lectures, and like COBOL, the first two were very simple, almost like learning how to plug in your computer. The third lecture started off with advanced algorithms that even Commander Data would have struggled with. And he went so fast, and the type was so small, and then out of the blue (due to time constraints) he decided to plug in predesigned code (to speed things up), and that’s right about the time I lost him (and it completely).

So I’m having to refigure where I am with this language, and now I’m discouraged. This happens a lot with computer languages. Something goes so easily, like they teach you how to program “Hello World” and then lesson two is how to break into the Pentagon and rewire their networks to get free HBO from the World Bank.

Having said that, I start teaching college classes again next week. I’ll try to make sure I don’t teach the same way I’ve been learning lately. I’d rather not have all of my students jumping off bridges.

I is a teacher

Education, Social Networking, Technology, Writing, , , , , , , ,

A new semester is finally about to begin. Again, I will be teaching college political science and interpersonal communication, two separate disciplines, but two fields I am qualified to teach). Strangely enough, the two disciplines really aren’t that different from each other.

While I’m looking forward to a new semester of new young (and some older) minds to educate, I’m also feeling a bit apprehensive, and it’s mainly because our country is so negative towards teachers that I’m tempted to tell America to go screw itself and stop educating anyone on anything. The money isn’t all that great, so that’s not the only reason anyone would ever teach. But whenever I read about some critic of education going all half cocked about how teachers are lazy, how they only work a short period of time and get great pay (which they rarely do), and all sorts of other insults, I want to just say screw it. It’s not worth it. If America sees education as less important than business than let’s let the market figure it all out (which to make a long story short, the market is completely incapable of handling altruistic disciplines, like education, because there is no profit in doing the right thing to make your country benefit in the long run). Altruism, which is quite often the only reason to teach, is very difficult to maintain, especially when society goes out of its way to ridicule your field and everyone who has ever gone to school is convinced he or she is an expert on teaching, even though they have absolutely no experience at teaching, or so little that they have nothing solid to contribute.

When I first started teaching years ago, I remember being bogged down by the fact that I was overly concerned that a few of my students were struggling and no one else seemed to care. Other colleagues would tell me they were lazy, so forget about them, but I didn’t feel that way, and by getting closer to them, I discovered that there was more going on with their personal lives that was actually interfering with their learning. I realized then and there that they were going to fail because everyone else gave up on them because it was too much work to care, not because it was the right or wrong thing to do. What I discovered then and there is that educators who care are quickly discouraged from caring and working harder, quite often by the system, and sometimes by the same people they educate. Yet, I was convinced that this was important to overcome, or our very reason for teaching was gone.

Years later, I found myself in the same situation with a few students just last semester. It was so difficult to try to be more available than the system allowed, yet I tried, and in the end all you get is sometimes a belated thank you from someone who may or may not have saw you as their ally rather than the person who was making their education “more difficult” by forcing them to jump through hoops no one forced them to do so in the past. A couple of students out of the blue contacted me and thanked me, which may not have been the reward that completely paid back the efforts, but it helped, and that sort of thing is the item that keeps a teacher going. However, when attacked by so many other who really don’t care and see you as the enemy (for bizarre reasons that make no logical sense), it becomes less and less likely that you’ll continue trying.

So, I go into a new semester, thinking that maybe this will be the time when I find that one struggling student who needs that certain nudge forward, and hopefully I won’t be discouraged, rejected and forsaken at the time that one person needs a little more from an educator who is doing everything possible just to make sure the trains run on time (for the sake of an Italian historical reference of competent leadership).

When you’re standing up in front of a class of students and explaining the virtues of the governmental system, as proposed by Adams and Madison, you have to bite your lip after that young student in the back row raises her hand and asks: “Do we have to know that for the test?” I remember once responding to that exact question with a ten minute lecture on the importance of knowing information, history and relevance to all sorts of connective synapses of knowledge. How Caesar understood that Alexander’s charge into India incorporated phalanx technology with the scattering of forces or how Patton understood that Caesar’s understanding of Alexander showed him how a faster tank can be stopped by a barrage of spread ammunition. To them, nuance was more important than specific knowledge, but they came to specific knowledge through understanding of nuance. Even when explaining such things, you’ll still have one student sitting there wondering, “is this going to be on the test?”

Unfortunately, teaching can be a lot like that.

Creating Apps, Programming and Just Plain Ole’ Creativity

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Recently, I mentioned that I had decided to start making apps. Originally, my thought was to program in Android, mainly because I wasn’t a fan of Apple’s nefarious walled garden. But then I started to realize that all of my Internet stuff was involved with Mac/Apple, including my iPhone and my iPad, so I ended up buying a MacBook Pro and downloading Xcode to start using Objective C to write iPhone and iPad apps. So here I am.

What I discovered is that getting started is never easy. I think this is why most app designers never end up actually designing any apps. The learning curve is freaking huge. But once you get past it, you actually start to get somewhere. But man, what a journey that learning curve has been. I could give you an Odyssey-like journey of a story, but I’ll save that for another time. I’d rather just talk about creativity and design today.

You see, I used to be a computer programmer back in the day when there weren’t a whole lot of different languages for programming. I learned BASIC and then went to school and learned FORTRAN. Right after that, I taught myself COBOL. Shortly after that, I designed my own word processor and then one of the very first databases (in the days before Filemaker and Access were even considerations). That first database housed the Asian threat assessment for the US Forces in Southeast Asia in the 1980s. People from all over the Asian allied forces visited my office during that time just amazed that I was able to take a paper filing system of known threats and turn it into something that people could use to compare cases they were working on. At the time, there was no such thing as an Internet linkage system, so if you wanted to access the database, you had to come to my office and enter the names yourself. Or they’d phone me and ask me over the phone; there was no thought of phone surveillance back then. We were really naive back then.

Anyway, I had designed this back when few people had personal computers. At the time, I used a Wang computer system. Personally, I coded on a supped up Radio Shack TRS-80 Model IV. Man, that thing was the shit back then. Now, it has less processing power than my $1.99 calculator I bought at Wal Mart.

But because I was in the military, the computer revolution quickly came and passed me by. I pretty much missed the whole thing. When I got out of the service, I had a few stints working for computer gaming companies like Maxis (working on Sim City and The Sims) and Electronic Arts, but it was pretty obvious that the programming world was changing quickly, and I was not keeping up with it.

For years, I kept telling myself I would get back into it. I created a bunch of games when I first started out, and I keep thinking that my way of coding is so much different than everyone else’s. I keep thinking I need to get back into it and develop something the way that only Duane might ever do. But I kept avoiding it and doing other things.

Then I decided to do the whole apps thing. And I’m learning. And right off the start, I’ve started to see a few things I would like to create that no one seems to be doing. And as I used to do back when I first started, I find myself wondering, why isn’t someone else coming up with these ideas, too? The self-indulgent part of me wants to say that I’m exceptional, but the cynic in me says that I’m not smarter or more innovative than anyone else. So why do I keep coming up with really bizarre ways to do things that other people aren’t? Some people look at Facebook and say, “wow, what a great idea. Wish I would have thought of that.” I looked at Facebook when I first saw it (and just a few minutes ago) and think: Why would they have stopped with that? There were so many other things they could have done with it, things that could have enhanced these social communities, but instead they created an interactive business card model that keeps you informed what other people might be doing, kind of like a boring stalker who has nothing better to do. Anyway.

So, I’m starting to think this is the direction I should have been going a long time ago. Currently, as I learn to code through Xcode, Alice and Objective-C, I keep coming up with grandiose ideas of things I would like to do. And I keep finding myself wondering, why isn’t someone else already doing this? I sometimes feel like Socrates responding to the Oracle of Delphi who claimed he was the smartest man alive, and Socrates spent the rest of his life trying to disprove the Oracle. Well, the difference is: The Oracle never said I was the smartest guy alive. As a matter of fact, the Oracle would have had no idea who I was and would have shrugged his shoulders if asked about me in the first place. At least I have an easy task ahead of me because I don’t have to disprove anyone of anything, and no government will force me to drink hemlock because I taught society’s kids to question authority. Nowadays, Socrates would have been unknown as well, competing against people like Kim Kardasian and Paris Hilton and the whole concept of being famous for being famous. But I’m kind of rambling now as this wasn’t really the topic I wanted to discuss.

So I’m making apps now. And I’m writing my first post on my iPad’s Word Press app. It might not even make it to the server. Hell, if I designed it, it would do all sorts of fun things, but knowing my attention to detail, “publish” would be the one thing I’d have forgotten, never thinking that was all that interesting to begin with. I guess there’s something to be said for practicalities. I hear they can be useful.

Finally an app for studs like me who get way too much sex

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How many times has this happened to you? You’re in the middle of a series of dates, just ran out of condoms during the last orgy you were attending with Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, and suddenly Angelina Jolie turns to you in the heat of passion and says, “Duane, please tell me you have a condom on you right now, you great big sexy beastyly man of a stud.” And you do the math, remembering that the pack of Trojans you bought that had 30 condoms in it was supposed to last all day, but you’ve already used up 20 or so during that run in with the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders when their bus broke down and only you, in your Penthouse letter-like encounter, required you to service them, which should have meant changing their tire, but you know how these things get out of hand. Anyway, as I was saying, you suddenly do the math and realize that you had planned to save one condom, but Paris Hilton kind of went nuts and then Bjork showed up and needed one to make balloon animals (or whatever the hell she was doing in the corner by herself), so you now have to turn to Angelina and say, “I might not have any condoms left.” And of course, Brad Pitt didn’t bring any, even though he knew he was bringing the two of them to a wife-swapping orgy party you were throwing this weekend, and he had all week to prepare beforehand. So, now you’re left without options.

But out of nowhere a solution has arrived. It turns out that MTV has always had my back. First there was that whole explanatory video about how video killed the radio star, and now they’ve come along and created an iPhone app that tells you where the nearest place is that you can find a condom. So, thanks to MTV, you can now make sure that you never have to say these tragic words: “I’m sorry, Angelina Jolie, but I have no more condoms.”

Technology Companies Still Don’t Understand Their Business IS Customers

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Sprint PCS is ramping up its engines to try to gain new customers because their managers realize they’re just not cutting it as the third biggest cell phone company. If you looked at them on paper, they’d have everything to sell, such as the only big cell phone service that still offers an unlimited data plan (unless grandfathered in), a great all in one wireless satellite service (Clear Wire), and they’re generally cheaper. So why aren’t they defeating everyone else?

Well, let’s look at that for a moment. I had Sprint, and I currently still have Clear as my additional service. When I had Sprint as a cell phone, the first thing I noticed is that I rarely could get a solid signal. And if I did, I’d lose it. When I went in to complain, the response wasn’t “Oh, we’ll look into that” but “They’re aware of it, and we’re waiting to hear something new”. In other words, they knew they had problems and they did absolutely nothing to fix it. I had Sprint for six months before I gave up on it. When I gave up on it, of course they wanted to charge me they’re punishment fee, even though I was dropping the service because it never worked. A smart company would have said: “You’re right. It’s our fault, so we’ll pick up the charge.” That way, I might look back at Sprint with a sense of “Hey, they at least treated me with respect.” But that’s not how I left.

As for Clear, I like it, but it’s a generally shitty service for the price that I pay. I was using it at home and at work. At work, I would sometimes lose signal for a week (and no tech person on their end could fix it, other than the classic: “Have you tried restarting your computer?”). I still have it, and I paid for the modem straight out (which means there should be no fee whenever I do disconnect), but I’ll bet you every dollar the United States doesn’t have to pay its bills that they’ll try to tack on a disconnect fee, even though the disconnect fee is supposed to pay for the “great discount” I would have gotten on the equipment, which I paid full price for because they didn’t have a deal, and I really didn’t feel like renting their shit.

So, Sprint is now having trouble gaining new customers. You might think word of mouth might be their biggest problem. The woman who works in the next cubicle over from me has had nothing but nightmares with Sprint phones and service. I was on the shuttle bus going home from work last night, and two women started a chorus of how much Sprint sucks as they discussed their lousy phone service.

Now, this could be just in Grand Rapids, but I’m suspecting that if they’re screwing it up here, they’re probably screwing it up in a lot more places. Big companies are a lot like that. I’ve hated Comcast practically every city where I’ve had them, and I’ve had them in Grand Rapids, Stockton and a few other places that aren’t coming to my Alzheimerish mind right now.

Netflix is another one of those companies that doesn’t seem to get it. Oh, they think they do, and they’re all meta-like, acting like they’re on top of things with their knowledge of psychology and how people will eventually get over their price hikes, but rather than first telling their customers that the price of new content requires more money to pay for it, they just upped the price and pretty much told everyone to either live with it or leave, and then did this sanctimonious crap about how they’re the best deal in town so either live with it or stare at the walls in silence because they won’t have Netflix to watch instead.

This is NOT the way to treat your customers, especially the ones who stuck by you all of these years when you were growing and struggling to grow. Right now, I’m royally pissed at Netflix, and when September comes around I will cancel their services completely. Not drop down to the streaming only, or the disks only, but dump them completely like a cheating girlfriend who was never really good in bed in the first place. Okay, that’s a bit vulgar. How about: Like an ice cream flavor that doesn’t taste as good as…ah, never mind. Go with the first, vulgar one. It works well enough.

It’s almost as if major companies are less concerned about public relations and more concerned with handling damage control. And if your company’s focus is always how to minimize your negativity from customers, then something’s seriously wrong with your business model. My advice there is fire all of your executives, hire a bunch of kids who have watched a lot of Elmo on Sesame Street, and start over.

Patent Trolls Not Content Hiding Under Bridges

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One of the things that constantly hinders creativity is the ability of lazy people to jump on an idea and try to leech off its creators until there’s nothing left of the innovation but a bunch of pissed off designers who figure it’s probably not worth it to continue. That’s going on right now in technology. A long time ago, US companies were innovative with some great ideas that pushed ideas into manufacturing. For years, the USA was known for quality products that you really couldn’t find anywhere else. And then a bunch of leeches started copying everything these companies were doing and distributing almost the same product but cheaper (and not as well made). This caused US companies to have to compromise on standards, and then the race downhill began. Now, if you go to buy some product in the US, it’s almost guaranteed to be somewhat crappy made, and the company that sells it to you will try to get you to pay for an extended warranty because they know you know that your product isn’t going to last long without it. Quality got traded for cheap and quick. We’ve never really recovered.

Well, now we have a new problem. And that’s the problem of patent trolls. Someone comes up with an idea, patents it, and then all innovation in that direction is forever hindered by some bottom-feeding company that doesn’t manufacture anything itself but sues companies for making products. A company named Lodsys is suing a whole bunch of companies that have done nothing other than make apps for smartphones. Claiming that they invented some obscure technology that they never produced, Lodsys has now gone out of its way to sue pretty much any company that dares to make an app for the Android and Apple app markets. Apple jumped in and decided to respond as a plaintiff on the side of the people being sued, but it hasn’t stopped this company from continuing to go after any company it thinks it can get to settle for some cash. As it doesn’t produce any products other than lawsuits (to anyone’s knowledge), they really don’t have anything to lose. Recently, they decided to sue the makers of Angry Birds, which means they see big dollar signs, and they’re not afraid to go after it.

The problem with this is that it sets up a chilling effect in the design marketplace. As someone who will be making Apple apps myself, I see this as a real problem because who in his right mind would want to create anything for a platform that is guaranteeing a lawsuit the second you actually start to make any money? If Apple and Android don’t get Lodsys to cease and desist, it’s going to seriously hinder the marketplace.

That’s what patent trolls do. They make it so that people don’t want to develop anything because what’s the purpose when some bottom-feeder is going to try to steal your money anyway? It’s a lot like the movie industry today. I have a friend of mine who makes independent films. He doesn’t make a lot of money from it because everyone in this industry is practically a bottom-feeder, from the people who do the color correction, the people who adjust the sound, the people who manufacture the commercial dvds, the agents who promise great things but really don’t do anything other than promise great things and the many “producers” who take money but don’t do anything other than promise great results before stating “Man, it’s a tough market. Perhaps if you ponied up another $16,000, I might be able to do something”, the people actually making products have less and less incentive to do so when all of the money happens to be in the peripheral service industry that doesn’t actually create anything.

Unfortunately, the solution to this situation isn’t ever going to happen because the ones who benefit from the problem is a band of lawyers who speak the same language as the people who need to be fixing this situation. Politicians and lawyers work hand in hand so that the people who create things, the designers, the movie-makers, the writers and the manufacturers, have no say so in the outcome but remain at the mercy of people who historically don’t understand the very nature of the word.

Some Thoughts on Current Events

Business, Economics, Education, Memoirs, News, Politics, Relationships, Social Networking, Technology, Television

Okay, haven’t done a recap in a bit. And I’ve been kind of busy, so here goes:

1. News of the World. Okay, I don’t know an easier way to say this, but I’m finding the whole situation with Robert Murdoch and his evil empire to be somewhat hilarious. Yes, he’s evil, and his empire is evil. And they’ve been discovered to be doing evil things. Not really all that surprised. He wants to own the world, and when you want to own the world, chances are pretty good that you don’t care who you destroy on the way to doing it. Some people are glad this has happened because they are liberals and hate Murdoch because he’s anti-liberal. I’m not like that. I just find it hilarious. I do want to add, however, that I think Rebecca Brooks, the one who lost her job because of being Darth Vader to Murdoch’s Dark Emperor, is kind of hot. I’m just saying….

2. Charlie Sheen is going to have a new TV show. I don’t care. Didn’t watch his old show. Won’t watch his new one. Next story.

3. Rebecca Black Has a Follow-up Song to “Friday”. Never heard “Friday”. Don’t care that she has a new one. Basically, someone who was ridiculed for a really bad song has managed to create a music career out of the ridiculousness and now wants to be taken seriously. But she wasn’t taken seriously before. Next story.

4. Universal pulled the plug on Dark Tower movies. Ron Howard was going to direct Stephen King’s epic series about Roland the Gunslinger. Was looking forward to it. Now, I’m disappointed. I’ll move on now….

5. Reporters Are Trying to Find out Where Casey Alexander is Hiding Out. Really? Get over it. The story of the century (or the last few months) is over. Move onto something else. Isn’t there an ambulance somewhere that can be chased?

6. Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez crashed some wedding. Supposedly, Bieber’s song was playing so loud while they were driving by that he went in and became a part of the wedding party celebration. First, I was thinking my first act as the groom would have been to deck the guy for showing up at my wedding. The second thought was to immediately not get married because my future wife decided to play Justin Bieber music at my wedding reception. And then I realized that if they were listening to the twirp, who cares? They were probably overjoyed to see him, much as I would be if Shania Twain showed up to my wedding (assuming she didn’t show up to be IN my wedding as the bride). So I really shouldn’t be commenting here.

7. The Debt Ceiling. They’ll either come to an agreement. Or they won’t. I’m going to assume that they’re still going to collect my taxes and that we’ll still be at war with countries I don’t want to be at war with. So I really don’t care. I’m not important enough so that anything I do is of any concern to them, so I”m not really concerned at anything they do either. For them, it’s a tragedy because they’re the ones with the money, and they’re the ones who stand to lose a lot. For me, I stand to go from being kind of poor to being really poor. Not going to make much of a relevant difference. I’ve stopped being significant a long time ago. Come to think of it, I never really was.

8. Apparently US students still suck at geography. This caused me to pull out a map to see if I could figure out where the US was to see how close it was to Michigan, just so I could get an idea of where this place might be. Couldn’t find it, so I assume it was probably some small country somewhere unimportant.

9. Google and Facebook appear to have changed their relationship status to “It’s Complicated”. Ironically, that’s my life status as well.

10. Number 9 was really my last item. I just like having 10 items whenever I can.

Saving Private Netflix…and dealing with cheating whores

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In the movie Saving Private Ryan, there’s a scene where Tom Hanks, playing the special ops captain who has just risked life and lost really good men, tells a young Private Ryan that he’d better do something great with his life, like invent a new brand of toothpaste or something, something to have made the sacrifices of his men worthwhile. And the young private, now grown up, asks his wife if she felt he contributed something important to the world, and she tells him he has. And all I was left thinking was, that captain played by Tom Hanks wanted something a bit more, not just that Private Ryan would make some family happy, and to be honest, I never really felt that Private Ryan lived up to the expectations that Tom Hanks’s dying character really demanded.

I’m kind of left with that same feeling when I received an email from Netflix yesterday informing me that it was going to be raising my rates 60 percent to give me exactly what I have always been receiving. In other words, rather than raise my rates AND give me a little more value, they’re giving me exactly what they always give me, and charging me more for it. Not very impressive.

And that action has caused all sorts of backlash from the community that makes up the customer base of Netflix. You see, they tried to do this a long time ago, and it failed miserably. Some years ago, they tried to raise rates BIG TIME, and most of their customers revolted. I did, too. Instead of quitting Netflix, I decided to switch from three DVDs at a time to 1 DVD at a time. The result was that I ended up paying less than what they were receiving from me before the change. A month or so later, Netflix completely reversed course, lowered their rates back to the original amount, and then people started to come back; I personally went back to my 3 DVDs a month.

Recently, they quietly raised prices on us. Not a huge amount, but enough to be noticeable. I thought about leaving but then just decided it wasn’t a big enough increase to cause me to leave. Kind of like the frog in a warm pot who doesn’t jump out even as the water slowly begins to boil. The slow burn and the slow increase of heat remains comfortable until you cook to death and die.

Well, this change is much different. They’ve decided that they want to be a mainly streaming company now, which is not what they were designed to be in the first place. There’s a whole lot of literature in Economics 101 about how a company shouldn’t change what it does best or to try to do more products than it is known for, but Netflix has always felt that it could buck the trend and win the brass ring no matter what it did. Rather than just increase rates, they’ve decided to charge people for both streaming AND DVDs, where they used to be lumped together in the past. I think they believe that people will respond by dropping one or the other, but I don’t think they realize the real implication, and that’s that they’re about to lose customers forever. I’m not talking about people getting pissed and changing their options until Netflix backs down. I mean people leaving in droves and being so pissed at Netflix that no turnaround will cause them to come back.

That’s where I am right now. I’m in the middle of watching Rescue Me through streaming, and when that show finishes its run (in other words, I get through the last season), I’m ending my Netflix subscription forever. I haven’t really watched any DVDs in a long time, having held onto the same ones for a long time, so that’s not a big deal. And I’ve never been all that much of a fan of their streaming service as most of the choices have been crap, and when I have watched something, half of the time the connection is not good enough to where I’m constantly watching a smooth experience. The continuous buffering thing gets old, and I won’t miss that.

What Netflix doesn’t seem to get is that they are not part of a necessity for most people. Television and movies is a luxury, and to be honest, I really won’t miss it all that much. Yeah, I could go find alternatives to seeing the same programming, but most of it has generally been crap. Every now and then a good show comes on that I’ll watch through its run, but quite often almost everything I watch has been a waste of time. Movies are almost always a waste of time because Hollywood has been making nothing but crap for years now, and for the five movies I’ve enjoyed, I’ve probably watched a hundred I didn’t. The odds just don’t make it worth it.

For the longest time, I’ve stayed with Netflix more out of nostalgia than anything else. It was convenient and comfortable. That’s it. It hasn’t been that useful. Years ago, when there were lots of things in my queue, it was wonderful. But years later, I’ve gone through my queue, and where I used to have blockbusters in it before, I have mostly second rate choices that were put in there and constantly pushed to the bottom of my queue so I could watch stuff that seemed more interesting. With that to look forward to, Netflix doesn’t offer a whole lot of wonderful things for the future.

So I’ll be dumping them like a girlfriend who has been cheating on me for years, and I’ve just been too busy at work to sit down and explain to her that we need to see other people. Well, the rhetorical job just told me to take my vacation, and I’m realizing I now have to spend a week with the cheating girlfriend, and the girl next door has been giving me the eye. Okay, it’s a bad analogy, and unfortunately all it does is remind me that I don’t actually have a girlfriend, and even worse, a social life. But at least I won’t have Netflix either. I’m dumping that cheating whore.

My Ipad Makes All Other Devices Obsolete

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I’ve had my Ipad 2 for a few weeks now, and let’s just say that every other device I bought before it has turned out to be useless in comparison. For the longest time, I was convinced that I would find no use for an Ipad, figuring that it was one of those devices that doesn’t really do anything I need. Boy, was I wrong. Let me explain the features that have made this device my daily technology “thing”.

1. Email. I can check both my regular email and my work email on the same device. In addition to this, it also updates my calendar with my work calendar, so that I am always able to check my schedule and not have to rely on my office computer to do so. That’s really nice.

2. News. I used to use a Kindle to read the Washington Post. Now, I read the Washington Post on the Ipad. It also means not having to lug around the Kindle every day. Even my Kindle books can be read on the Ipad, using the Kindle app (at least for now until Apple decides it no longer likes Amazon).

3. Web surfing. Yeah, that rocks on the Ipad. It rocks on my computer, too, but when you can do it all on one device, it’s great.

4. Movies/TV/Music. All of it is on my Ipad. I can watch or listen to anything I want. Some movies I couldn’t watch on the Ipad because they weren’t in Itunes. Well, I bought a program that converts them. We’re fine with that now, too.

5. Comic Books. I can actually read DC and Marvel comics on the Ipad using their subsequent apps. The price of the comics is a bit expensive, but it’s possible to do so, and one day I might just start buying them that way. Not sure yet, though.

6. Pages/Numbers and Powerpoint-like software. I’ll be able to put all of my school-teaching powerpoint slides onto the Ipad and bring it into school to do my lessons. It may takes some configuring, but I suspect it will make life much easier than trying to maintain other devices and flash drives and all that crap.

7. Apps Galore. There are many games, productivity software and so much more that are available for the Ipad. I found a drawing program that I’m starting to use to draw my Stickman comics. It’s making it so that I can do a lot of things I couldn’t do before, without having to be tied down to a computer.

Negatives:

1. It’s not my main computer. It’s not as powerful as my main computer. It’s not in a Windows environment, and yes, I hate all things Mac. I’m not one of the fanboys of Apple at all, so this part of the equation does not make me happy.

2. Can’t play WoW on it. Even though World of Warcraft is designed to practically play on an Etch-A-Sketch with such low requirements the game has, it still can’t be played on an Ipad. Nor do I think it ever will be. This means that I have to still use my main computer to play the game. Which is fine because even if the Ipad could play it, I doubt I’d get the processing power my PC gets when playing the game.

3. Apple makes the thing. Yes, that’s a negative. Apple still has its walled garden, and I fear that it’s going to end up blocking off something I like to do because Apple tends to be moronic when it comes to things like that. They’re having a fight right now with Amazon, which means I may lose my Kindle ability on the Ipad eventually. It has problems with Google, which may mean loss of access to that environment. Apple has that “can’t play well with others” problem, and because of that I’m always fearing that my device is going to be as useless as my Motorola Xoom. What a mistaken purchase THAT was.