Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?
Vacationing in Göynük, Turkey,
Thinking to myself:
This is how all Muslim countries should be,
Secular, advanced and free.
Logging to YouTube and reading this:
Access to this web site is banned by “TELEKOMÜNİKASYON İLETİŞİM BAŞKANLIĞI” according to the order of: Ankara Çubuk Sulh Ceza Mahkemesi, 30/10/2008 of 2008/558
No worries… Anonymizing proxies work fine.
38-year-old Eddie is convinced his digital life would be better upon meeting five types of people and showing them the unexpected negative impact they have on others:
The Under-Tagger – This guy would spend a week going through old video cassettes, finding the amazing CNN footage from 1983 he was looking for, but upon uploading it to YouTube would title it: ‘She Lied!’ and would tag it using three keywords or less, at least one of which is misspelled. The Under-Tagger assumes that since you can clearly recognize the people in the video, there is no need to be petty and elaborate on it in the title, description or keywords, and as a result of that no one can find his video even when searching for relevant keywords.
The Non-Linker – This guy would spend an hour blogging on a recent survey or commenting on an obscure news item, spewing lots of words and ideas without supplying a single link to the actual survey or the original news item. If this guy writes in a different language, say Hebrew, he would never consider supplying the English spelling of names of people or companies he writes about. The Non-Linker believes he is the alpha and the omega and thus his readers need not check out additional data on other websites.
The Voluntary Spammer – A relic of Web 1.0, this guy truly believes everything he reads in emails he receives, and feels it is his moral duty to forward them to all his friends. From a new computer virus and PowerPoint slideshows, to ladies dying from perfume spraying and cash giveaways from Microsoft, this guy assumes the newspapers do not report the big stuff, and that everyone in his contact list is interested in the small stuff. The Voluntary Spammer tends to get offended when you try to explain this to him over the phone, claiming he only wanted to help.
The Armchair Activist – This guy had joined dozens of groups on Facebook from curing AIDS to freeing Tibet, and truly believes he has done his part. Without once leaving his house or donating a buck to causes he really believes in, the Armchair Activist feels so good about himself he often tries to recruit his friends in the hope that AIDS would really be cured if only one million people click a button.
The BCC-Denier – This guy sends an invitation to his new exhibit by email, adding hundreds of people to the TO section, assuming that since all of them know him, they should all know one another. A direct result of this gross faux pas comes from recipients who RSVP by clicking Reply-All, and people who harvest email addresses revealed in the email for their weekly newsletter.
A year ago I wasted some time answering questions on Yahoo! Answers. It is a fun system that lets people ask questions and get answers from their peers. You can gain points if your answer is chosen as Best Answer by the person who asked the question, or else if it is voted as such by other members within a week.
For some reason I just got an email from Yahoo letting me know an answer I gave a year ago was voted as Best Answer. For your amusement, here is the mentioned question and my reply – apparently my answer was given close to my losing patience with the service:
They say sarcasm is the lowest form of wit – but they never tell you it will earn you credit points.
Vincent: You know what the funniest thing about Europe is?
Jules: What?
Vincent: It’s the little differences. I mean they got the same shit over there that they got here, but it’s just – it’s just there it’s a little different.– Vincent Vega (John Travolta), Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) – Pulp Fiction (1994)
I was going to write a song about my web browser.
I was going to incorporate all its great features.
I was going to mention Speed-Dial.
I was going to mention mouse gestures.
I was going to mention integrated search.
But all these would not do it justice.
That’s when I was reminded of this Pulp Fiction quote. You see, it’s the little differences that make Opera an amazing browser. Example: When you click on a download link and the dialog box opens and asks you where to save the file – in Opera, the file transfer has already started, as its developers knows it would take you a few seconds to find the designated folder, and they thought it would be neat if they could save you the wasted time.
I have tried Firefox and it’s fine, and as long as you do not use the security hazard named Internet Explorer, in my book you are one of the good guys – but after using Opera for a couple of years now, I can honestly testify it is a web browser developed by people who love to surf the net.
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