Gin / Rummy: Because the flavor of Man-in-a-Can is hard to replicate

Gin & Rummy: Sake Intro

As I slipped the key in my front door whilst returning home last evening, I heard the soft landing of padded feet.  I spun to see a solemn figure standing in the shadows, dressed in the unmistakable garb of the Ninja.  As I've had no recent ill dealings with the Japanese Mafia, I was perplexed as to who would want me dispatched.  Clearly if I'm writing this you can deduce that I met no such end; but rather the figure bowed deeply, with hand outstretched, revealing a note.  Scrawled on the most exquisite traditional rice-based parchment was the following.  A character both enigmatic and meaningful, we beg to know more.  I raised my head to thank the silent messenger, but only shadow remained.

I'm in ur Facebookz Stealin' ur Privacyz!!111

Facebook is ubiquitous. It has become the de facto social networking site on the intertubes, and continues to trend upward. It offers users a suite of functionality including photos, news, messaging, games, gifts, videos, blogging, event planning and invitations, and much more. For many people it is their portal to the rest of the world and fulfills that narcissistic need we all have to varying degrees. In my own experience, much of the popularity of these kinds of sites are dependent on the evangelical recruitment of new members by existing ones. The site becomes more useful to you the more people you've converted and convinced to join. The system feeds itself. Brilliance.

Yet, I am tempted to turn my skeptical eye toward Facebook, due to its wild popularity and almost universal acceptance. Let's take a look at some of the current news relating to Facebook.

I'll let the darling Meme Molly give you a primer to the issue. In particular, Facebook has been slammed on its constantly changing privacy policies, which often cause information you freely shared with the site to end up in the hands of marketers and the general public unintended. Congressmen Charles Schumer and Al Fraken have publicly denounced Facebooks privacy policies. Accusations have been made that their interfaces are intentionally obtuse and make it difficult for you to keep your information private.

It wasn't always this way, however. Back in the day, the early adopters had little to fear over privacy concerns, but privacy creep has slowly eroded their protections. This visualization does an excellent job of illustrating the issue. If that's not enough to scare you, here are some bugaboos that might make you dirty your drawers: Five Hidden Dangers of Facebook, and 10 Reasons to Quit Facebook. In particular I like the Idiots of Ants sketch at the end of the second article.

Still not afraid? Well how about this: Openbook gives you an easy way to search public Facebook information for stuff people would probably be better off keeping to themselves, like "playing hooky" or "don't tell anyone" or my favorite "having a wank". Seriously people, the world does not need to know this shit. People get fired over this kind of thing, all the time.

What can you do to fight back? Well, the folks at the Consumerist have a couple of great suggestions. Senator Al Fraken even has some ideas. If I've sufficiently frightened you by now to leave Facebook behind then what will fill that horrible void? At the end of the Rocketboom clip you'll run into a group of endearing nerds, who claim to have the Facebook killer idea of an open source, distributed social networking site, diaspora. Also there's Appleseed, which could be available sooner than Diaspora. I hope both of these make it. We need diversity, people.

Personally, I prefer the do-it-yourself scattershot approach to distributed networking. I don't like having all my functionality under one roof. To me, linking everything to one account is ensuring that there will be a single point of failure, which is a bad idea from a software development stand-point. I like to find specific apps for specific needs, then if one thing fails, nothing else is affected. For photos I use flickr. For blogging, blogger. For events and invites, evite. Email, IM, and Twitter serve me just fine for messaging, although I have a few choice words for Twitter which I will get into on another post. For professional networking I use LinkedIn. Of course, Google covers just about everything else I need.

I think I've said just about everything I need to about this. I turn it over to you all now to discuss. What is it you like about Facebook? What do you hate? What would convince you to leave?

Gin / Rummy : Latest Teaser

A brick with this wrapped around it was hurled at me this morning from the driver of a black van with darkened windows, that slowed down just long enough for me to recognize the middle finger of a certain Mr. Nice Guy....

I am moistened with anticipation.  And slightly concerned for my life.

Really Awkward Star Wars Tie-Ins....

There are 2 guaranteed tenets of Star Wars marketing: that anything blessed enough to be seared with the golden brand will get showered with the monies like Fat Joe in a Strip Club, and that there is nothing that Lucas will not poke with that smolderingly profitable brand.  I humbly submit two examples:

#1: Slave Leias at the Star Wars Charity Car Wash

I'm all for charity car washes (a classic trope for cheerleading squads and those that stalk them), but the addition of Darth Vader and Storm Troopers crosses it to just weird.  For some reason ladies dressed as Slave Leia in RL doesn't look that odd, but the Lord of the Sith and sidekicks standing on a street corner just looks wrong.

#2: St*r Warz Burlesque Presented By The Devil's Playground
Ok,  so the modified name gives this one away as mostly likely not blessed by Lucas, but they don't seem to mind it either. 
I find their portrayal of Chewbacca, C-3PO, and R2-D2 most disturbing. 
 
Well, this sucks pretty bad too.

source: boston.com

I'd rant about the exploitation of our collective childhoods, but what's the point.  Just go see The People vs. George Lucas when you get a chance.