Facebook goes public and will sell your soul to the devil!

borrowed this from CBS, watch their videos

I’ve seen a few people get upset over this “NEW” information on how facebook makes money and what going public will mean for you, the facebook user.

Of course there is a defaming article on Yahoo that I’m being pointed to here.   I’ll let you read the article, then come back here and see my replies.

1. Facebook is going to “sell” users for $120 each
This isn’t any different than what’s happening now.  They already sell your information for ads, google does the same.  Are you using gmail to read this?  look to the side and tell me what ads you see?  Those are personalized ads, same things you see if you just do a google search (unless you have turned off private browsing) and while on facebook those ads are supposed to be tuned to your needs, this is why I see local ads. It’s not new, it’s just that FB will make more money from it.  OK.  I was fine with it before, why would I not be fine with it now that they might make more?

2. Facebook users are about to become billboards
So basically if you “like” something it is going to be advertised to your friends to get them to like it too.  Again, that’s already happening, it’s nothing new.  I see everything my friends like, I see ads to like things my friends have liked already, not new, not unscrupulous, this is what social media is.  The idea behind FB is what your friends are doing is interesting to you, it’s a peep pressure kind of thing, my friend is playing farmville?  well I better play it too, oh look now it’s Castlewars, ooo look my brother likes George Takai, I better like that too.  This is how FB works, how it has become the site you check every day.
3. The IPO is as much a Public Relations coup as a Share offering
so FB is going public but Zuckerberg is keeping full control, he could bequeath it to his dog… he could do that now, again, nothing is changing.
I think the big thing here is that nothing is changing but prices will go up and FB will make more money, isn’t that the american dream, to make money off of nothing.  I can’t wait to see what Mark does with his millions now.  Please give more of my schools grants.  (While I may think I wouldn’t like Mark as a person, I like when he donates his money, much like I love it when Bill Gates donates his money, and these are grants I see and work with all the time.
Now when I look up information on facebook going public there are other points of view, CBS seems to like this move. (videos)  It is amusing, the ads for these videos are for Google, Facebook’s competition.

The Year of the Dragon

It is now the year of the dragon according to the Chinese Zodiac and that’s just fine by Rory and me, a water dragon to be more specific, and while that’s not nearly as cool as a Northern Furred Dragon, it’s pretty sweet.

I’m not very into the Zodiac, not for any other reason other than it just seems irrelevant to me.  I know many people who swear by it, some who plan to have their children in certain years because of it and many other superstitions that are tied to it.  I like the stories though, stories are always interesting.

I was a bit surprised there wasn’t a special Google doodle for the year of the dragon, what’s up with that Google?  No love for dragons? OK I guess there was one, but I couldn’t access it because I’m in Canada? I boo that. Google doodles should not be country specific, except when it makes sense.

What’s your favorite astrology story?  What’s your favorite Dragon?  (After Rory of course)  Share your favorite Dragon images with us today.

How was that?

Wikipedia Blacks out January 18th in protest of SOPA and PIPAAny night sweats?  Terrors?  Suddenly not knowing simple facts because you couldn’t look them up on Wikipedia?  The Anti SOPA/PIPA blackout was interesting for me at least.  I saw a few sites that said they would go black but didn’t, I attribute most of that to mistakes made in coding and one site I know believes the report that SOPA is dead.

  • There were a lot of confused people thinking we were talking about soap but spelling ti wrong.
  • Some supporters of SOPA/PIPA called us names and claimed the blackout was a gimmick
  • A lot of sites only blacked out their US websites
  • A lot of memes were created today
  • several websites had great blackout messages (I think my favorite is the Oatmeal)
  • Two co-sponsors of the bill have withdrawn their support and other backers in congress have stepped back (I refrain from giving a number because this may increase, I hope)
  • I really enjoyed this article from the BBC, it even has screen caps of all the sites that went dark (I didn’t realize I could make all my flickr images black for the day, that would have been cool)

Would SOPA/PIPA have passed if we didn’t do this today?  Maybe, maybe not.  Now we will never know since it is clear we have made a change.  It took a day of people wanting to leave GoDaddy for them to change their mind and half a day of the internet to black out to shake the co-founders, I will call this a win.  Still, let’s not think we won completely, the bills are still out there and they have supporters and lot of money behind it.

Are you ready to protest SOPA and PIPA?

In Protest of SOPA and PIPAFor the past few days I have been getting questions about my Twitter/Facebook/Google Plus avatar, why did I put a [CENSORED] bar over it?  It’s not a joke involving innuendo or anything like that, it’s a sign to protest two bills that they are trying to pass in the USA, dubbed SOPA and PIPA.  You also may have already noticed I censored this site a while ago to get people to write their congressmen and senators.  I’m an American, I live in Canada but I am still an American and a voter, more so my host is in the USA so this would effect my site in addition to my enjoyment of the internet.  The bills are written in such a way that would give the government (and private citizens and companies) the opportunity to harass innocent people and punish someone they think needs punishing when they can’t stop them with other legal means.  You’ve seen it before, the local guy who is noisy against his local government gets tickets for jaywalking when no one else gets tickets in that city[true story].

I wrote my congressman, Joe Courtney and my senators, my congressman actually sent me a letter back.  It’s a form letter telling me I don’t understand law and he is just trying to protect americans.  I highlighted the portions of the bill that I have problems with and explained why and told him if he voted for this bill then I would not be voting for him.  That was weeks ago, I don’t expect a reply.  I have not gotten a reply from either Blumenthal or Lieberman and I’m not holding my breath.  It saddens me that as a voter I’m basically told I don’t count, am too stupid to understand law and am just simply ignored.  This isn’t how the world works, people have a voice and we will make our voice heard.

How?  By blacking out the internet tomorrow.  Goodbye wikipedia, good by all those fun blogs you like to read.  The net is going dark… I’ll be fine, I have a lot of comics to read till it’s over.  What will you be doing?

  • What is SOPA and PIPA?  Why should I be against it?
    • http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa
  • How can you help?
    • http://americancensorship.org
  • Didn’t I read that Obama is going to promise to veto this?
    • Yeah because he promised to veto NDAA too, (even worse of a bill), oh wait, he signed that into law, didn’t he?
  • How do I blackout my website?

(I want to thank Tabitha Grace Smith and Mathew Wayne Selznick for helping me find tools to make blackout/strike easy for me, and everyone else trying to get the word out)

He had a dream….

You know you’ve been living in Canada when you wake up and only realize that it’s Martin Luther King Jr’s Birthday because everyone is commenting about it on social media about it.  That is truly sad, and I feel a little shame about it.

Growing up in NY we all knew King’s legacy, he was a hero everyone could look up to.  Protesting, he did it right.  He showed the world that you can make a change and be clear about your principles and ideals without confusing the message.  He got progress because people worked together and were a team, they all wanted the same thing and they went after it in a way that made them mighty.  Civil disobedience, non violent protest, these were things that helped bring the civil rights movement to progress.  If you think spitting in a cop’s face is non violent protest, you’re wrong.  Look to Dr. King as your template whenever you hold up a protest sign or stand in a picket line.

In a large part of the USA Dr. King’s birthday is not a day off from school or work, I remember being surprised when my nieces moved to VA and had school on this day, it baffled me and that was my eye opener that not everyone sees this man as great, even today :(

Are things perfectly equal and civil today?  No, but we keep working, we keep trying and we continue to follow his message, we will get there.

Now I invited you to listen to the entirety of his “I have a dream” speech in it’s entirety, not just the section we are all familiar with.