I’m going to give DuckDuckGo.com a week as my default search engine, to see if it is truly a life-altering experience.
My first few searches were promising because my search for “Ruby” did not put the Ruby Programming language at the top of the heap. I got the feeling that this search engine will be popular with regular people—people like me, when I’m not walking and talking technology.
The “ruby” search gave me a felicitous blend of locations, people, fictional characters, music, and computing options. What more could I ask for? And it did it with a clean, uncluttered UI. I like it.
It's amusing. I can't help but give it a shot to be my search engine.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must be DuckDuckGo.com.
For the past week I’ve been looking at Google AppEngine for a project I have to complete in 2 months. The appeal of AppEngine is considerable. Look at the infrastructure you get for free:
Up to 1,300,000 requests per day
Up to 7,400 requests per minute
1 Gigabyte bandwidth per day
6.5 CPU hours per day
500 MB Storage
Scaling (for when you get Slashdotted) is handled by Google.
What’s the catch?
None really, except that you have to program your site in Python or Java. And that is a catch for me, because I really hate Java. And Python leaves me cold with it’s “There’s one right way to do everything” dogma. Both programming languages are a monumentally bad fit for a free spirit like me. I’ve always subscriped to the Perl motto: “There’s more than one way.”
Python is Cool, Sort of
I really don’t hate Python. I programmed some Zope back in the early days at CareGuide.com (now defunct). I don’t mind Python’s enforced indentation, but really, what’s to love here?
Ruby, of Course
Since time is short, and Ruby fits the Right Side of my brain, I’m going to build the site with Ruby. I may use Rails; I may use Sinatra; I may roll my own. It really doesn’t matter, but the faster I get the framework up, the more time I can devote to the really hard part: the Javascript.
Still, I keep hearing that “Facebook is really not so bad if you don’t put anything personal, blah, blah”. The real problem is that Facebook and its cognitive scientists will be working Luntzian magic in forms that cannot be felt, seen, or smelt. Frank Luntz designed the Republican Contract with America in the 90′s, and we know how that worked out. His motto is, “It’s not what you say that counts. It’s what people hear.”
“Supersuasion” is a well known tool in the Advertising industry (and in the Propaganda machines of the world). Supersuasion is so effective that many of us can be influenced even though we are aware of the attempt. But it’s too late. It’s already happening. You may already know it by it’s other name: “deep framing“. Republicans (Luntz) and Democrats (Lakoff) have been wielding this Cognitive Nuclear option for decades. And we have to give credit where it’s due: Steve Jobs is equally famous for his native version of Supersuasion—his irresistible Reality Distortion Field.
Now that Facebook has hired Washington insider Tim Muris, George Bush’s former FTC chairman, as the legal storm trooper for the anticipated legal battles with the defenders of Privacy, it looks that we’re going to be spending a good deal of our time defending our privacy. If Facebook were to hire Luntz, too, it would all be over for the Resistance; we all might as well roll over and just enjoy our citizenship in Wide Open Facebook Nation.
I had been on Facebook for 2 years, but I found that Facebook was wasting my time—I was spending more time fixing my privacy settings than I was spending having heart-to-hearts with my friends. I was getting turned off, so, at the end my Facebook Life, I resorted to using Twitter to post my narcissistic navel-gazing mutterings to Facebook. That way, I wouldn’t have to log in and interact with Facebook itself.
The Like Button
The Like Button was the nail in my Facebook coffin. When Facebook began tracking my activities even when I wasn’t on Facebook, I decided to bail out. Facebook had become embedded in all of my online doings, like a silent parasite, an enormous verminous Worm, that had slowly eaten its way into my Online Corpus and was attempting to look out at the world through my eyes. It was time to rid myself of the foul Entity.
Facebook Users Don’t Really Care about Privacy
I know that 99% of Facebook users don’t care that the Worm is burrowing into them. In the field of parasitology, this is called a symbiotic relationship: both parties benefit and everyone is happy. Users are happy living with the Worm as long as they can talk to their friends easily, and the Worm goes about its business, burrowing and tunneling into the User, mining anything of value from the user’s clicks and keystrokes. The beauty of this arrangement, for the Worm, is that the User is oblivious to the Worm’s agenda. The blithe User says to those who warn it of the Worm’s intent, “Leave me alone with your paranoia. I’m happy here. Frankly, I don’t give a fig that the Worm will sell my life’s essence to the uncaring 3rd party bidders.”
Oh, but that’s not my problem anymore. Good bye Friends, goodbye Worm.
When you deactivate your Facebook account this page turns you into a Zombie member.
The Deactivate Page
The Deactivate Page is the Worm’s last chance to prevent a User from staunching the flow of blood and gaining its freedom. Take notice of the check box above the Deactivate button. Notice this statement beneath it:
Note: Even after you deactivate, your friends can still invite you to events, tag you in photos, or ask you to join groups. If you opt out, you will NOT receive these email invitations and notifications from your friends.
Even though the User has abandoned the scene, it still lives on in the Bowels of Facebook as a zombie User who can still be invited to events and still be tagged in photos of Happy Times. The Deactivate Page menacingly warns that the fleeing User will NOT receive notice of these kind attentions.
When you read this brazen attempt to sway your resolve, take special note of the all-caps NOT: it is supposed to emphasize that you, poor User, are doing something ABSOLUTELY CRAZY; that NOT is intended to invoke the common human fear: the fear of being alone, of being left on the Outside.
Push that button, CRAZY User, and you will miss a Fabulous Party.
Deactivated
Despite the final pathetic attempt to manipulate me, I managed to push the Deactivate button and I became a dead Facebook User walking.
How I Became A Zombie Profile
If you ever quit Facebook, have no fear. Your profile will live on as an active Zombie long after you are dead and buried because all of the data you have ever entered into Facebook lives on, whirling around until the end of Time on a platter on a hard disk in a building full of Database Servers. Because your data is Indestructible, your User Profile will still be invited to parties and to events, and it will still be tagged in photos—but you, the poor User who created that profile, will never know about it. How sad for you!
Life After Death
There is Life after Death, and it’s called Facebook. If you want to experience Life after Death, just click the “Like” button below.
Now that Facebook has 500,000,000 users (that’s five hundred million, kids), every time they make a change to their privacy setting, we Facebookians have to spend about 15 minutes to adjust our settings.
Facebook is making tons of money off our little conversations, images, likes, etc, so here’s a novel idea: Facebook should pay me cash whenever they waste my time.
Let’s look at the numbers: 500,000,000 x 15minutes = 125,000,000 hours of human activity that is completely non-productive. (Yes, I know that I’m assuming everyone hates Facebook’s Big Brother privacy policies as much as I do.) At $30@hr, 125,000,000 x $30 = $3,750,000,000. That’s 3.75 billion.
If Facebook was the kind of entity that really wants to do the right thing, it would send a check for $7.50 to everyone whose time was spent protecting their privacy from the sleazeballs trying to extract money from us.
Rather than wait for “the next version”, or wait for a “cheaper” imitation, I decided to get into the stream from day one. My three word review is: friggin awesome. I know, that’s really just two words. When I tested the iPad in the Apple store, I thought of my dear old mother, trying to learn how to use a computer 10 years ago, smashing the mouse on the desk. The iPad would have saved her a mountain of irritation, and made it easy for her to search for recipies.
iPad, you are the first cool computing appliance.
Happy iPadding…
Hey, you Scoffers, FUDers, Doubters and Apple Haterz, check this out.
I spent the good part of Spring Break taking a break from answering email, grading student code, and coding. Instead I merged with my alter ego (a 24-lb Pug named Taco), my Flip camera, and iMovie to create my first edited movie. Oh, I won’t post it here because this is an alleged “tech” site. If you want to see the video, check out my alter ego’s web site over at http://tacothepug.blogspot.com.
<beat>
Oh, hells bells. Why am I bothering to create fake suspense? Here it is.
