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I actually don’t have an opinion about this. Enjoy 
From David Seah: Better Living Through New Media
Posted April 23, 2007 at 0306 EDT
“I was feeling very positive on Friday; Never before has my path seemed so clear, with so many things within my grasp. It was thus with great confidence I predicted a landmark productive weekend. The power I felt on Friday, however, began to resemble more a rolling blackout by Saturday, followed by grid failure as I slipped into total couch potato mode. What happened?” [more…]
I’ve been reading your blog for some time now; I think with what you wrote about tonight, David, you’re on to something that has the potential to change your life much more profoundly than you may realize at this time.
I used to me a lot more solitary myself, and have therefore developed skills that I now implicitly use to make money and survive. Even though I’m really excited about what I do, after a while it loses the novelty factor and I decided to explore different things, such as forming closer relationships with other people, both romantic and platonic.
This proved to me much more difficult than I had initially assessed, since I found myself to be innately familiar with technology and interactions with computers or other inanimate devices. But humans, not so much.
I came to this realization again last weekend when I realized that if really put my mind to it, I can be much better at human-human interaction. I can apply some of the same principles I apply with computers: when I sit down at a computer I have this immediate sense of emporement, I feel that I’m in control and that I can do whatever I want without fear of being stopped and without the fear of failing. When it comes to computers, I simply don’t fail.
It’s strange, however, because when I sit down in front of a person and start a conversation, my feelings and attitudes are very different. I feel that the outcome of my interaction is strongly influenced by the other person, which is an element I have absolutely no control over. So I find myself in a situation where I have to submit myself to someone else’s (to me) arbitrary whim, which immediately makes me very uncomfortable. I can’t always use familiar logic to determine what I should do or say to achieve the desired response, since the response will vary from person to person and from situation to situation, even given the exact same input.
This is the primary challenge I face with other people. Over the last few years, I have made it a point to go out of my way to interact with other people, so I force myself out of my comfort zone, otherwise I really would be lonely all the time. This has worked well. Now that I have acquired more advanced skills in interacting with other people (although this still doesn’t feel ‘native’ to me), I often find myself in situations that are completely unforseen. I’m still not used to dealing with the ‘human’ element, which introduces a degree of entropy into the flow of events.
Going back to my first point, I think it is this entropy that may lead you down a path that could change your life in a much more profound way than you may want or predict at this time. When you form closer relationships with other people, you not only make yourself vulnerable to them, you also give up a certain degree of control of your life. Sometimes a great degree, depending on the type of relationship. This, especially with romantic relationships, I have found to be more of a problem for me than making myself vulnerable. Most people aren’t out to specifically wrong you, but most people are out to do what is best for them, and that may not always be what is best for you.
To sum it up, humans are extremely complex. Personally, I recognize that I am well-trained to deal with computers and I do well in situation that are logical and structured in a predictable manner. Often having a close relationship falls outside of the scope of what I’m trained to do and this has often lead to very unforseen, sometimes detrimental, but often exhilarting experiences.
Just my $0.02 
Wikipedia Administrator EssJay claims he’s a tenured professor of theology when he’s really a 24-year old with no teaching experience. Wales says, “I regard it as a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it.”
Apparently this report sparked a controversy, and it becomes apparent from the comments about this article on Digg, people are outraged that Wales dare defend such a scumbag of a liar. Well, I beg to differ.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with someone pretending to have false credentials on Wikipedia. It doesn’t have any *real* bearing on the *actual* validity of the content on Wikipedia. To put it simply, Wikipedia is defined by its thousands of contributors and users. As with any fact, its validity is based on the number of people who subscribe to the information that it embodies. That is the meaning of “credentials”. Someone is considered to have credentials if a University or some other authoritative body, such as the Internet community, endorses this person as credible.
With millions on Wikipedia, the site as a whole has credentials, simply because millions of people believe the information that it presents to be true (regardless of whether or not that corresponds to reality).
HOWEVER, Wikipedia is indeed an equilibrium of information; if some information is introduced that doesn’t correspond closely to reality, according to the millions of users, it is eventually deleted. This ONE GUY, out of MILLIONS, *cannot* tip the balance of this equilibrium, even if what he wrote in his Wikipedia articles is patent nonsense. But that’s not even the issue here! The issue, apparently, is that the information he writes about HIMSELF is patent nonsense. User pages are not part of the encyclopedia (in part for this very reason).
Please consider that Jim Wales lives and breathes Wikipedia; even though he’s a regular person and not a god, and you may disagree with his statements, as the creator of Wikipedia he ought to have at least the same credibility as Wikipedia itself. Whether his statement is productive or not is another matter entirely. Again, this doesn’t have any bearing of the *actual* validity of Wikipedia content either. Only the users do. IMHO
It seems as though many people who run or operate web sites are quick to blame their web host if something doesn’t go as expected; usually their site is slow to respond and/or the download speed for files on their site is lower than usual / expected. I’d like to shed some light on the possible reasons and implications of slow-performing sites: IMHO it’s usually not your web host’s server that is responsible for slow download times.
I hope it comes as no surprise to anyone that your web host’s server is not the only factor affecting your download times. As a matter of fact, your web host’s servers are not likely to be the cause for your slow download speeds:
If your server is overloaded, it will take a long time to respond to requests, because it has many other requests queued up. Once it answers your request, however, the actual throughput in kbps is not materially affected by server load. If you get frequent “request timed out” errors when trying to access your site, that could indicate that your server is being swamped with too many requests.
On the other hand, if you see slow download speeds, it could mean that your web host’s upstream bandwidth provider does not provide them with enough bandwidth to serve all sites at the same high speed that you’re used to. This would indicate a problem with the network, not your specific server.
Given that bandwidth is extremely cheap these days when bought in bulk, your web host should not have any trouble serving up your sites at speeds that exceed your average user’s download speed.
This brings me back to my original point: your actual download speed is determined by several factors. The most significant are your web host’s upload bandwidth and your download bandwidth. The lesser value determines your actual download rate.
In order to accurately measure your web host’s upload bandwidth in kbps for your particular site, you must measure the throughput for downloading one specific file simultaneously AND consecutively from several locations that are distributed across a wide physical area, in order to rule out
a)conditions on your machine or your home / corporate network that may affect bandwidth, as described here, and
b)traffic conditions on the Net in general that are specific to your geographical region, and
c)changing network conditions over time (so measure simultaneously from different, distributed computers), as well as
d) the impact on the server’s / network’s upstream bandwidth created by downloading a large file simultaneously from several computers (so measure again immediately, but this time, perform the download consecutively among each computer in order to adjust for this impact).
Any network engineer will tell you that even using the above techniques to rule out other network conditions and zone in on your specific your web host server’s upstream throughput, you still won’t have an exact value, since the Internet, by nature, relies on a network of millions of independent nodes, each of which has different characteristics, and therefore, it is difficult, and often impossible, to assess which node is decreasing or increasing throughput at any given moment.
As a general rule, keep in mind that traffic is usually a lot higher during the day, and cable broadband connections are known to be heavily affected by this factor. Chances are that your speeds dropped so dramatically because your ISP has pooled your neighborhood’s bandwidth with another neighborhood, thereby increasing the load on the network (since your connection was likely “too fast”, and therefore not very cost-efficient).
Lastly, traceroute / ping are not accurate indicators of throughput, they can only be effective in measuring overall network latency, but more importantly, packet loss. If you experience a high rate of packet loss or unusually high ping times, there might be something between your ping utility and your web host’s server that is causing packets to take an unusually long time to get through, such as, for instance highly impacted bandwidth on your machine or your local network due to high-bandwidth file sharing programs that might be active in your household. There are many other reasons for packet loss and high ping times, but on today’s broadband connections, available bandwidth is usually so high that it rarely has a significant impact on your ping times. If you’re in doubt, however, your ISP should be able to quickly tell you if there is a serious impact on your specific connections, and often even which application is causing the delay.
Washington, Thursday, July 20th 2006.
George W. Bush today signed into law the “No Cat Left Behind Act”, ringing in a new era of state-sponsored animal rights advocacy, unprecedented in modern history. Bush said at the signing ceremony that “each American cat has the right to a future. We oughtta make sure that all cats in the homeland are accounted for and that they receive the proper training to become become successful American citizens.” His decision was welcomed by a standing ovation from his supporters, even after he acknowledged that “… many mistakes have been made. We must be ruthless and ensure that all American cats are trained to meet a certain federal set of standards in order to effectively face the growing threat of terrorism at home and in countries that have large untapped oil reserves.”
When asked as to how Bush intends to facilitate this through the lovingly dubbed ABLCaN (the inverse acronym of “No Cat Left Behind Act”), Bush did not respond. It is evident, however from analyzing the poorly-written text of the new law, that Bush intends to divide the 50 states into arbitrarily determined “zones,” drawn up by infants, which are further subdivided into “districts” according to the density of the cat population.
The purpose of this is, according to the ABLCaN, to institute a “leader” cat for each zone, which oversees “admirals” in each of the zone’s districts who enforce certain performance guidelines for the resident cats, which are universal throughout the nation and cannot be altered. If a certain percentage of cats in a district, according to the admiral’s quarterly report to the leader cat, fall short of the specified requirements, the leader cat “re-zones” that entire district into a federally-controlled “remedial zone,” which is overseen by the “mediator cat” (see picture), which is appointed every 15 years by the leader cats.
In addition, all leader and mediator cats must adhere to a strict dress code, which resembles that of Adolf Hitler and his top-ranking generals. Additional remedial subzones are created should the number of cats increase beyond the zone’s initial capacity. The majority of subzones will be governed by direct descendants of the mediator cat, which may only breed with leader cats. Cats in remedial zones are not allowed to breed as long as they are “in the zone.” They are kept on a stringent diet and are required to perform endurance tasks that are designed to strengthen their morale and loyalty to America, as well as make them physically and mentally ready to defeat terrorists.
Cats who are deemed to be in special need of training are switched to a null diet until their performance improves. Moreover, should a cat remain in a remedial zone for longer than 90 days (or 30 days for kittens), the cat will be castrated. If a cat remains in the zone for longer than one year (or six months for kittens), the cat will be put to death.
Legal experts believe that the Bush administration pushed through this new law in order to strengthen the US cat population, since excess social funding has become available due to the sweeping success of the war on terrorism in Iraq. According to a source close to Bush, he believes that a “purified” cat population will have a “trickle-down” effect, which will result in lower taxes, a stronger economy, as well as an automatic strengthening of our borders, as potential illegal immigrants will likely be deterred by the new generation of American killer cats.
Bush’s new strategy was welcomed almost equally from both sides of the aisle, demonstrating yet another successful bipartisan effort which underscores the efficiency with which the the US government passes anti-terroist legislation after 9/11.
A small minority of extremists, most of whom hold law doctorates, predicted immediately after the new law was announced that Bush’s proposed plan will decimate the cat population to 10% of its 2006 value in the next three years and is guaranteed to eliminate the entire US cat population within seven to ten years. Those enemy combatants are currently being held indefinetely on US Military Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba , on no charges. AP.
Report by Brian Silverstein for the Associated Press. <btsilverstein@inmyholyopinion.com>
Fair Use??
12-weird_al_yankovic-dont_download_this_song.mp3
Once in a while maybe you will feel the urge
To break international copyright law
By downloading MP3s from file-sharing sites
Like Morpheus or Grokster or Limewire or KaZaA
But deep in your heart you know the guilt would drive you mad
And the shame would leave a permanent scar
‘Cause you start out stealing songs and then you’re robbing liquor stores
And sellin’ crack and runnin’ over school kids with your car
So don’t download this song
The record store’s where you belong
Go and buy the CD like you know that you should
Oh, don’t download this song
Oh, you don’t wanna mess with the R-I-double-A
They’ll sue you if you burn that CD-R
It doesn’t matter if you’re a grandma or a seven year old girl
They’ll treat you like the evil hard-bitten criminal scum you are
So don’t download this song
Don’t go pirating music all day long
Go and buy the CD like you know that you should
Oh, don’t download this song
Don’t take away money from artists just like me
How else can I afford another solid gold Hum-Vee
And diamond-studded swimming pools
These things don’t grow on trees
So all I ask is, “Everybody, please…”
Don’t donwload this song (Don’t do it, no, no)
Even Lars Ulrich knows it’s wrong (You can just ask him)
Go and buy the CD like you know that you should (You really should)
Oh, don’t download this song
Don’t donwload this song (Oh please, don’t you do it)
Or you might wind up in jail like Tommy Chong (Remember Tommy)
Go and buy the CD (Right now) like you know that you should (Go out and buy it)
Oh, don’t download this song
Don’t download this song (No, no, no, no, no, no)
You’ll burn in hell before too long (and you’ll deserve it)
Go and buy the CD (Just buy it) like you know that you should (You cheap bastard)
Oh, don’t download this song
