Warning: Rant Post Ahead
Good evening my friends, I want to tell you about something that has been driving me crazy lately. It’s called spam, and no, it’s not the nasty stuff that is talked about in the Monty Python sketch of the same name, it’s the nasty stuff that you get in your e-mail inbox. I don’t know about everyone else, but I don’t buy random stuff just because I get it randomly in my inbox. And why, why do these companies incessantly think I am a 75 year old man with problems…. Why else would they constantly be trying to sell Viagra to me?
But getting back to the topic on hand. Seriously, why do these people do it? It’s about on the level as tele-marketers. Everyone gets annoyed, and not many people respond….
Monday, September 24, 2007
Facebook, Myspace, Cell Phones, and You
Fifty, even ten years ago youth of the world had to actually leave their house in order to communicate with their friends. Today there is a very different world where conceivably someone could never leave their house and still be almost as in touch as they would be otherwise. Why is this? Well, it all stems from the amazing advances over the past years in the field of computing. Now, I’m not going to tell you that computers are evil, or that they are destroying the youth, because they aren’t. I am however, going to explore the issue and hopefully leave you with a bit more in your brain than when you came.
There are many devices and services that all offer one thing: the ability to communicate faster and more efficiently than ever. There’s the cell phone with its texting abilities, facebook and myspace with their promises of community, and Gtalk and MSN messenger that offer a way of quickly “chatting” with people. These have evolved over the years from simple devices and chat rooms reserved for the rich or the universities into devices and services that fill every part of our lives. Facebook for example, a service which I find incredibly useful and entertaining, has become a place where people could conceivably spend their entire lives if they wished, chatting with their friends, playing games, throwing food at people, poking people, flirting, and whatever else they felt like.
This all seems well and good, but does it come at a price? Many youth have grown to where they use these goods and services more than actually speaking face to face or on the telephone with their friends. This is not inherently bad, but it poses several possible problems. The youth could not be used to dealing face to face with people, and instead become slightly reclusive. Also these activities could easily become obsessions that could take away from the rest of their lives. Granted, these are not likely, but there are many stories of youth spending more time online than they do in offline.
On the other hand these services are very useful and have greatly helped us. For instance, the cell phone has allowed us to become more mobile and able to be more productive without being tied down to one location, myspace and facebook have allowed us to keep up with friends and classmates more easily, and chat services have allowed us to talk to our friends faster and more efficiently than ever.
Now, what I am trying to say with all of this? It is very simple. I am not recommending that people stomp their cell phones, cancel their facebook accounts, or go back to the Stone Age. No, I would recommend people to always exercise moderation and never allow themselves to become obsessed with something to the point where it takes away from engaging with people in a conventional, face to face way.
There are many devices and services that all offer one thing: the ability to communicate faster and more efficiently than ever. There’s the cell phone with its texting abilities, facebook and myspace with their promises of community, and Gtalk and MSN messenger that offer a way of quickly “chatting” with people. These have evolved over the years from simple devices and chat rooms reserved for the rich or the universities into devices and services that fill every part of our lives. Facebook for example, a service which I find incredibly useful and entertaining, has become a place where people could conceivably spend their entire lives if they wished, chatting with their friends, playing games, throwing food at people, poking people, flirting, and whatever else they felt like.
This all seems well and good, but does it come at a price? Many youth have grown to where they use these goods and services more than actually speaking face to face or on the telephone with their friends. This is not inherently bad, but it poses several possible problems. The youth could not be used to dealing face to face with people, and instead become slightly reclusive. Also these activities could easily become obsessions that could take away from the rest of their lives. Granted, these are not likely, but there are many stories of youth spending more time online than they do in offline.
On the other hand these services are very useful and have greatly helped us. For instance, the cell phone has allowed us to become more mobile and able to be more productive without being tied down to one location, myspace and facebook have allowed us to keep up with friends and classmates more easily, and chat services have allowed us to talk to our friends faster and more efficiently than ever.
Now, what I am trying to say with all of this? It is very simple. I am not recommending that people stomp their cell phones, cancel their facebook accounts, or go back to the Stone Age. No, I would recommend people to always exercise moderation and never allow themselves to become obsessed with something to the point where it takes away from engaging with people in a conventional, face to face way.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Scum of the Earth: Bait and Hook Sites
We’ve all seen them, or at least heard of them. Those web sites that sell cameras at insanely low prices only to discover that they are “out of stock” or “don’t include the battery” (which they conveniently sell at insane prices). These sites are, in my mind, some of the nastiest, low scum places on the earth that need to be thrown into the lowest rung of that bad place that is also a swear word.
Let me tell you a story about these things. The other day I was shopping for a new camera (because I need one pretty badly) and I found out that the Canon HV20 was an amazing camera. After some shopping I discovered a site that sold the thing for well under half price. Excited, but also wary, I asked around and discovered that this site was one of the many sites I have been talking about, otherwise known as “bait and hook” schemes. I did a bit more research into this single site and I discovered that almost 100% of people who bought from them were extremely dissatisfied with them. Some of the complaints that I saw spoke about how this site had items always on backorder or had rude customer service people who called and tried to sell you more stuff.
How do these schemes work? Well, it’s very simple, they get you into the store (or website in this case) by claiming a very low price, and then, once they have “baited” you they proceed to “hook” you by not having the item in stock, not selling the battery, etc. Now, it is technically illegal for these sorts of sites to engage in false advertising (i.e. not actually selling the product for the price listed) but there are ways around it.
What is the lesson here? Well, plain and simple it is to look before you leap. By looking I mean to research any web site you buy from. There are many ways to do this, but the best web site I have found for technological stuff is http://www.resellerratings.com/.
Good luck, and don’t fall for any of those “to good to be true” deals, because they probably are….
Let me tell you a story about these things. The other day I was shopping for a new camera (because I need one pretty badly) and I found out that the Canon HV20 was an amazing camera. After some shopping I discovered a site that sold the thing for well under half price. Excited, but also wary, I asked around and discovered that this site was one of the many sites I have been talking about, otherwise known as “bait and hook” schemes. I did a bit more research into this single site and I discovered that almost 100% of people who bought from them were extremely dissatisfied with them. Some of the complaints that I saw spoke about how this site had items always on backorder or had rude customer service people who called and tried to sell you more stuff.
How do these schemes work? Well, it’s very simple, they get you into the store (or website in this case) by claiming a very low price, and then, once they have “baited” you they proceed to “hook” you by not having the item in stock, not selling the battery, etc. Now, it is technically illegal for these sorts of sites to engage in false advertising (i.e. not actually selling the product for the price listed) but there are ways around it.
What is the lesson here? Well, plain and simple it is to look before you leap. By looking I mean to research any web site you buy from. There are many ways to do this, but the best web site I have found for technological stuff is http://www.resellerratings.com/.
Good luck, and don’t fall for any of those “to good to be true” deals, because they probably are….
Youth Violence
It seems that every time you turn on the radio today you hear another story about a school shooting, or another teenager who gets mixed up in a gang war. Well, maybe it’s not every time you turn the radio on, but it certainly happens more than it should. But why does it happen? Why do seemingly good youth turn to violence?
One view, and one that is often touted, is that students who resort to violence are desensitized to it though video games and therefore do not see what they are doing as wrong. In the example of Columbine High School it was discovered that the gunmen often played the video game “Doom” and this is what gave them their nature of violence. But if it was this single game that brought rise to the violence than it would follow that there would be many, many more cases of youth violence. But this is simply not the case. Although there is a frightening amount, the numbers just simply do not add up if video games are to be blamed as the single reason.
There are thousands of people (many under the age of eighteen) who regularly play games equally violent, or more violent than the example of Doom. The overwhelming majorities of these people do not “take the game into the real world” and are instead perfectly happy to blow the heads of pixels inside of the computer. If video games were the culprit than there would be many more incidents of violence from those who play those games.
If video games are not to blame than what is? Another suggestion that has been brought to the table is drugs. No, we aren’t talking about the illegal kind that people take to get high, but the kind that doctors give to kids who they label as “hyperactive” or “unable to focus”. It has been suggested that these drugs have the side effect of making children irrational and prone to violence. Again, as with video games, there simply are not enough cases of violence by those who are taking these drugs for them to be the answer. They may well have contributed to the problem, but they are not the catch all solution.
If it is not an outside influence like video games or drugs than perhaps we should look inside violent youth for an answer. The first thought that comes to mind is peer pressure, other youth who compel a youth to violence. This seems like a fairly logical explanation on the outside, the youth is dared to go into school and kill a bunch of people…. But wait, doesn’t it seem slightly odd that the youth is actually doing it. Most people (if not all people) have an ingrained sense of right and wrong, enough so they won’t kill people just because their friends compelled them to it.
Perhaps then it is the students feeling that they are “left out” or rejected by there peers that drives them. This seems much more logical than the last example. A student who feels that he is completely left out by his peers and teased about it goes and decides to take revenge on those who exclude him. This is again rather plausible except for the ingrained knowledge of right and wrong that is inside of every person.
There is another possibility which I believe is the most likely to explain the acts that these students commit, and that is the lack of morality that fills our culture today. If you look at statistics the number of violent acts by youth has been on the rise as the cultural morality has been on the decline. Three hundred years ago youth had access to weapons, they had motivation, but by and large they did not. The real variable between these youth and the youth of today is not the access to dangerous weapons or the changes in the social lives of the youth it is quite simply the changing in the culture of the world. Three hundred years ago youth were instructed in morality, they were taught that there was a God who would punish them if they killed people, and they learned the proper way to relate to others. The culture had just as many violent influences, just as much peer pressure, and many of the same problems. But it had morality. That is what is missing today, and it is why there have been so many cases of teen violence. If anyone want to change this they won’t accomplish it by banning weapons on school property, they won’t accomplish it by banning video games, they will accomplish it by changing the world towards morality.
One view, and one that is often touted, is that students who resort to violence are desensitized to it though video games and therefore do not see what they are doing as wrong. In the example of Columbine High School it was discovered that the gunmen often played the video game “Doom” and this is what gave them their nature of violence. But if it was this single game that brought rise to the violence than it would follow that there would be many, many more cases of youth violence. But this is simply not the case. Although there is a frightening amount, the numbers just simply do not add up if video games are to be blamed as the single reason.
There are thousands of people (many under the age of eighteen) who regularly play games equally violent, or more violent than the example of Doom. The overwhelming majorities of these people do not “take the game into the real world” and are instead perfectly happy to blow the heads of pixels inside of the computer. If video games were the culprit than there would be many more incidents of violence from those who play those games.
If video games are not to blame than what is? Another suggestion that has been brought to the table is drugs. No, we aren’t talking about the illegal kind that people take to get high, but the kind that doctors give to kids who they label as “hyperactive” or “unable to focus”. It has been suggested that these drugs have the side effect of making children irrational and prone to violence. Again, as with video games, there simply are not enough cases of violence by those who are taking these drugs for them to be the answer. They may well have contributed to the problem, but they are not the catch all solution.
If it is not an outside influence like video games or drugs than perhaps we should look inside violent youth for an answer. The first thought that comes to mind is peer pressure, other youth who compel a youth to violence. This seems like a fairly logical explanation on the outside, the youth is dared to go into school and kill a bunch of people…. But wait, doesn’t it seem slightly odd that the youth is actually doing it. Most people (if not all people) have an ingrained sense of right and wrong, enough so they won’t kill people just because their friends compelled them to it.
Perhaps then it is the students feeling that they are “left out” or rejected by there peers that drives them. This seems much more logical than the last example. A student who feels that he is completely left out by his peers and teased about it goes and decides to take revenge on those who exclude him. This is again rather plausible except for the ingrained knowledge of right and wrong that is inside of every person.
There is another possibility which I believe is the most likely to explain the acts that these students commit, and that is the lack of morality that fills our culture today. If you look at statistics the number of violent acts by youth has been on the rise as the cultural morality has been on the decline. Three hundred years ago youth had access to weapons, they had motivation, but by and large they did not. The real variable between these youth and the youth of today is not the access to dangerous weapons or the changes in the social lives of the youth it is quite simply the changing in the culture of the world. Three hundred years ago youth were instructed in morality, they were taught that there was a God who would punish them if they killed people, and they learned the proper way to relate to others. The culture had just as many violent influences, just as much peer pressure, and many of the same problems. But it had morality. That is what is missing today, and it is why there have been so many cases of teen violence. If anyone want to change this they won’t accomplish it by banning weapons on school property, they won’t accomplish it by banning video games, they will accomplish it by changing the world towards morality.
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