I just took the Kingdomality Test. Over the past ten years or so I've taken the Kingdomality Test either three or four times (including today's test). I am a shepherd; here's what they have to say about me:
"Your distinct personality, The Shepherd is to tend to your human flock. You understand the needs of those for whom you are responsible. Shepherds are vigilant and reliable. You realize your obligation and commitment to the well being of those entrusted to your care. Shepherds are very dependable. You engender a feeling of comfort and stability to those within your charge. On the positive side, Shepherds can be empathic, caring, understanding, practical and realistic. On the negative side, you may be manipulative, close-minded and sentimentally rigid. Interestingly, your preference is just as applicable in today's corporate kingdoms."
What's your medieval vocational personality?
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
We Are Being Raped Every Day
I was chatting with a buddy today, and he gave me an analogy that I think is worthwhile: we are being raped every day of our lives by advertisers.
From Wikipedia: "In criminal law, rape is an assault by a person involving sexual intercourse with another person without that person's consent." I'll submit to you now that it is true we are not all being forced into physical, sexual intercourse. But consider this: every day (if not every hour or even more frequently) we are unavoidably subject to advertising that is meant to stimulate us into purchasing a product or service, and to effect that goal advertisments must be noticed and sufficiently pleasurable so as to cause us to pay attention and be stirred to fill a perceived need by the product or service being offered. With the exception of copulation, this sounds suspiciously like the legal definition of rape according to Wikipedia.
Advertisements are everywhere you go: all over the internet, on the TV, on the radio, on signs and billboards, in the movies, in books, on DVDs, in your software, in your magazines, in your newspapers, on your doorstep, in your e-mail, in your postal service mailbox, and even in the bathroom stalls. You can hardly do anything or go anywhere without being subject to an advertisement of some form in some way. It's invasive and it's forced since in many instances you cannot avoid them.
Advertisements are meant to cause pleasure. In some form or fashion your brain is rewarded by an advertisement that catches your interest. If your reward pathways and pleasure centers weren't stimulated by an advertisement then you'd find little to no interest in what was being offered. If you really want to get scared, find some information about "neuromarketing" and ask yourself what kind of potential this has to effect our society. Also consider the promised pleasure of receiving whatever it is that you're buying. Receiving something new or even novel stimulates the pleasure centers in the brain as well.
Studies have shown that spending money causes stimulation in the pain centers of the brain! When you pay money your brain is stimulated as if you were being physically hurt. You are being compelled to hurt yourself through the reward of pleasure. Humans, with a natural drive to seek and experience pleasure, have historically done as was natural and pleasured themselves with buying products and services. Humans have ignored the economic ramifications (pain!) of unplanned spending and the level of debt for most people is a reflection of this. I speculate this is because of the pleasure offered as the reward and the lack of forward thinking of the pain. I also speculate that if a person saw the personal, financial ramifications of their spending along side the pleasure-inducing advertisement for what they want to buy then many purchases would not get made.
In the end I conclude that advertisers are assaulting consumers with the imminent threat of pain (biochemical and possibly economic) by enticing consumers with forced pleasure through the exposure of advertisements that cannot be avoided into spending money on their products. We are being raped every day by advertisements, and most of the time we don't even realize it.
I feel like I need to take a shower.
From Wikipedia: "In criminal law, rape is an assault by a person involving sexual intercourse with another person without that person's consent." I'll submit to you now that it is true we are not all being forced into physical, sexual intercourse. But consider this: every day (if not every hour or even more frequently) we are unavoidably subject to advertising that is meant to stimulate us into purchasing a product or service, and to effect that goal advertisments must be noticed and sufficiently pleasurable so as to cause us to pay attention and be stirred to fill a perceived need by the product or service being offered. With the exception of copulation, this sounds suspiciously like the legal definition of rape according to Wikipedia.
Advertisements are everywhere you go: all over the internet, on the TV, on the radio, on signs and billboards, in the movies, in books, on DVDs, in your software, in your magazines, in your newspapers, on your doorstep, in your e-mail, in your postal service mailbox, and even in the bathroom stalls. You can hardly do anything or go anywhere without being subject to an advertisement of some form in some way. It's invasive and it's forced since in many instances you cannot avoid them.
Advertisements are meant to cause pleasure. In some form or fashion your brain is rewarded by an advertisement that catches your interest. If your reward pathways and pleasure centers weren't stimulated by an advertisement then you'd find little to no interest in what was being offered. If you really want to get scared, find some information about "neuromarketing" and ask yourself what kind of potential this has to effect our society. Also consider the promised pleasure of receiving whatever it is that you're buying. Receiving something new or even novel stimulates the pleasure centers in the brain as well.
Studies have shown that spending money causes stimulation in the pain centers of the brain! When you pay money your brain is stimulated as if you were being physically hurt. You are being compelled to hurt yourself through the reward of pleasure. Humans, with a natural drive to seek and experience pleasure, have historically done as was natural and pleasured themselves with buying products and services. Humans have ignored the economic ramifications (pain!) of unplanned spending and the level of debt for most people is a reflection of this. I speculate this is because of the pleasure offered as the reward and the lack of forward thinking of the pain. I also speculate that if a person saw the personal, financial ramifications of their spending along side the pleasure-inducing advertisement for what they want to buy then many purchases would not get made.
In the end I conclude that advertisers are assaulting consumers with the imminent threat of pain (biochemical and possibly economic) by enticing consumers with forced pleasure through the exposure of advertisements that cannot be avoided into spending money on their products. We are being raped every day by advertisements, and most of the time we don't even realize it.
I feel like I need to take a shower.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Why Terry Goodkind Is the Best Author for All Eternity
- Bilbo and Frodo Baggins had "adventures;" Richard and Kahlan led epic lives.
- The Seeker does not need a compass to guide him.
- Tava bread tastes better than lembas bread.
- Zeddicus Zul Zorander puts Gandalf to shame.
- Gratch could shred Aslan apart before so much as a growl escaped the lion's throat.
- Riding a feisty, independent, red dragon that threatens to eat you all the time is far more thrilling than riding a luck dragon.
- Polgara would never win a beauty contest; Shota would never lose one.
- Harry Potter needs a wand to cast spells; Richard needs only his instinct and anger.
- Who needs Yoda when you have the Wizard's Rules? (Yoda's advice is far less practical.)
- Voldemort is just a wizard gone bad; Emperor Jagang and the Imperial Order is truly evil incarnate.
- Oompa Loompas? Really?
- The Yellow Brick Road is a boring and predetermined path. The Sword of Truth series demonstrates a value of free will and choosing your own path--a far more exciting life to live.
- Sisters of the Dark could incinerate a wicked witch of any cardinal direction before the witch knew what was happening.
- The Force is not immune to being captured by a Mord-Sith.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
But It's An Error Page!
In truth, I cannot deny that Flash has a place on the internet as a web technology. Lots of cool and useful things can be done with Flash. What bothers me most is (1) it's often abused (think ads), and (2) it's everywhere, even where it doesn't need to be. Take this screen cap that I saved a few minutes ago.
It's an error page. The web server is telling me that something is wrong. WHY THE <expletive> DOES IT NEED FLASH?!? Granted, I didn't thoroughly scour the web page's source to see if it's trying to serve an ad, but regardless of the content trying to be served via Flash it doesn't belong on an error page. In fact, ads don't belong on an error page, either. It's an error page for crying out loud! Don't complicate it!
While I'm griping, I might as well gripe about myself, too. It seems far too often these days I'm finding something about which to gripe. There are so many things that I could let get on my nerves, and I've unfortunately fallen victim to focusing on those things instead of more encouraging or enlightening things. It's my own fault and I take full responsibility for this. What do you do to combat negative thinking and remind yourself about the good things in life?
Monday, April 19, 2010
YouTube Gripes
What's one of the most annoying things about television? Advertising. Radio? Advertising. Hulu.com? Advertising. And now YouTube? That's right... Advertising. It's everywhere, and it makes me want to /wrists.
SOME advertising on the Internet (although very little) is actually done tastefully. In fact, I'm not sure I have a problem with unintrusive advertising. Take GMail, for example, or the Google search engine. Small text ads that don't interfere with the content I'm trying to view. Admittedly, I think they have little effect on me, as I mostly ignore them and hardly ever remember seeing them. But they're there, so the advertisers are happy and the websites posting them are happy.
But YouTube has for some time put ads at the bottom of videos. DIE YOUTUBE!! It's really dumb, because they cover the bottom portion of the video, and to get rid of it I have to click something. I hate it enough to consider not using YouTube, but so far it hasn't gotten to that point (yet). I'm wondering when we'll get to the point where the bandwidth consumed by ads exceeds the bandwidth consumed by spam e-mail. I know we have a long way to go for that, but it wouldn't surprise me if spam actually had a rival in the future...
SOME advertising on the Internet (although very little) is actually done tastefully. In fact, I'm not sure I have a problem with unintrusive advertising. Take GMail, for example, or the Google search engine. Small text ads that don't interfere with the content I'm trying to view. Admittedly, I think they have little effect on me, as I mostly ignore them and hardly ever remember seeing them. But they're there, so the advertisers are happy and the websites posting them are happy.
But YouTube has for some time put ads at the bottom of videos. DIE YOUTUBE!! It's really dumb, because they cover the bottom portion of the video, and to get rid of it I have to click something. I hate it enough to consider not using YouTube, but so far it hasn't gotten to that point (yet). I'm wondering when we'll get to the point where the bandwidth consumed by ads exceeds the bandwidth consumed by spam e-mail. I know we have a long way to go for that, but it wouldn't surprise me if spam actually had a rival in the future...
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Comcast vs Net Neutrality
So apparently Comcast won a court case whereby it was determined that Comcast has the right to restrict internet traffic that traverses their network. There are at least several viewpoints on this, but I'm focusing on two in particular: (1) Comcast is offering the service, owns the equipment providing the service, and has every right to set forth the terms of use for that service. If customers don't like the terms of that service then they can get internet service from another company (if available) or do without. (2) Comcast restricting traffic that traverses their network is censorship. Everyone except the Chinese government knows that censorship is evil.
I can honestly say that I see and understand both viewpoints. Comcast wants to protect their investment and offer adequate levels of service to all their customers. In particular, BitTorrent traffic apparently places an undue stress on their network and hampers the adequacy of service to other customers on their network. The move to block BitTorrent traffic is a protective mechanism. But customers want free reign over what they can do on the public internet. The internet is public and (supposedly) largely unregulated. Paying for access to this public medium entitles people to use it as they wish within the laws of the land set forth by the government. This free reign is unrestrictive and the most desireable scenario. (Like I said, censorship is evil.)
It's a battle between what customers want and what service providers offer. Customers aren't going to do without the service, and if providers are few there isn't much choice for the customer. I see two possible conclusions that I can draw about Comcast. First, Comcast is being a dick to its customer base. It either has a god complex or some underlying motive to extort money from customers through all of this. But I'm usually the type of person to give the benefit of the doubt in most scenarios, and I will do so here. I defer to my second possible conclusion, and that is that Comcast has an inadequate infrastructure to handle the traffic generated by their customers. They've provided more offerings than they can support, and are now restricting their offerings so they can provide service to their too-large customer base.
According to Comcast's SEC filing on February 23, 2010, Comcast had a net income of $3.638 billion in 2009, an increase of 42.8% from 2008. Now with a debt of $29.1 billion I can understand that Comcast might want to spend money paying that off. In fact, they apparently reduced their debt by $3.4 billion in 2009 according to the filing. At the same time I'd like to think an investment of even part of that $3.638 billion net income in infrastructure upgrades would allow for happier, unrestricted customers more willing to give their money to Comcast for internet service. But that's just me.
What do you think?
I can honestly say that I see and understand both viewpoints. Comcast wants to protect their investment and offer adequate levels of service to all their customers. In particular, BitTorrent traffic apparently places an undue stress on their network and hampers the adequacy of service to other customers on their network. The move to block BitTorrent traffic is a protective mechanism. But customers want free reign over what they can do on the public internet. The internet is public and (supposedly) largely unregulated. Paying for access to this public medium entitles people to use it as they wish within the laws of the land set forth by the government. This free reign is unrestrictive and the most desireable scenario. (Like I said, censorship is evil.)
It's a battle between what customers want and what service providers offer. Customers aren't going to do without the service, and if providers are few there isn't much choice for the customer. I see two possible conclusions that I can draw about Comcast. First, Comcast is being a dick to its customer base. It either has a god complex or some underlying motive to extort money from customers through all of this. But I'm usually the type of person to give the benefit of the doubt in most scenarios, and I will do so here. I defer to my second possible conclusion, and that is that Comcast has an inadequate infrastructure to handle the traffic generated by their customers. They've provided more offerings than they can support, and are now restricting their offerings so they can provide service to their too-large customer base.
According to Comcast's SEC filing on February 23, 2010, Comcast had a net income of $3.638 billion in 2009, an increase of 42.8% from 2008. Now with a debt of $29.1 billion I can understand that Comcast might want to spend money paying that off. In fact, they apparently reduced their debt by $3.4 billion in 2009 according to the filing. At the same time I'd like to think an investment of even part of that $3.638 billion net income in infrastructure upgrades would allow for happier, unrestricted customers more willing to give their money to Comcast for internet service. But that's just me.
What do you think?
Friday, March 19, 2010
Search Engines: Evil Business Practices
I saw an article on MSN's web page that interested me, so I started reading it. It's four pages long, but all of the juicy details were links. (i.e. "How does she make that much money? Doing this, she's said." "Doing this" is a link.)
And to what does it link? Bing. It's a link to a Bing search. It appears as though Microsoft is submitting searches to their own search engine with the exact details of what you wanted to know. To get the details of the article one must only look at the URL of the link without clicking it. But what's the point?
I can only imagine it's a numbers and popularity game. If Bing jumped into the number one spot of search engines, it's because everyone who reads MSN articles are reading fluff and clicking links to get the real details. This increases Bing's usage counts artificially which allows Microsoft to claim they're rising in popularity.
If you ask me it's a cheap way to fudge your numbers and shows a lack of integrity when it comes to your business practices. If your search technology doesn't stand up to the competition, let it die. Do well what you CAN do, and leave the rest to someone who can do the other stuff better.
And to what does it link? Bing. It's a link to a Bing search. It appears as though Microsoft is submitting searches to their own search engine with the exact details of what you wanted to know. To get the details of the article one must only look at the URL of the link without clicking it. But what's the point?
I can only imagine it's a numbers and popularity game. If Bing jumped into the number one spot of search engines, it's because everyone who reads MSN articles are reading fluff and clicking links to get the real details. This increases Bing's usage counts artificially which allows Microsoft to claim they're rising in popularity.
If you ask me it's a cheap way to fudge your numbers and shows a lack of integrity when it comes to your business practices. If your search technology doesn't stand up to the competition, let it die. Do well what you CAN do, and leave the rest to someone who can do the other stuff better.
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