From NewScientistTech.com:

The computing giant is developing software that could accurately guess your name, age, gender and potentially even your location, by analysing telltale patterns in your web browsing history.
…
So far it can only guess gender and age with any accuracy, but the team say they expect to be able to “refine the profiles which contain bogus demographic information”, and one day predict your occupation, level of qualifications, and perhaps your location.

The engineer in me appreciates the skill it takes to create such an algorithm.  The paranoid part cringes.  And the marketing-mind boggles at the possibilities — every day it seems like companies are getting better and better tools to learn about consumers and target advertising in a more focused manner.

Which really, I personally don’t mind.  Take such simple things as Google’s ads.  On a number of occasions while searching for something, I find a useful product or service when I glance at those ads on the side.

I think it would be completely awesome if, when I was watching TV, I could see ads about things I might actually be interested in.  Okay, I have a media center PC, so I fast forward past the commercials… but I do actually rewind sometimes to watch one if it catches my interest.  Like the Apple ads.  I don’t really like Macs, but those ads are great entertainment regardless.  But I really hate having to sit through ads for herpes medication, or Herbal Essences, or a damn My Little Pony.

Hell, if advertisers would make ads more entertaining then I might not mind them so much either.  But I suppose there’s a fine line there — I recall a study finding that when some entertaining ad was run during halftime in the last Super Bowl, only 13% of the people surveyed remembered what the commercial was even advertising.  Not a lot of bang for the buck, there.  To again bring up the Mac ads, these are the epitome of “right.”  They are entertaining, informative, and you remember exactly what they’re about.

Hmm, that went a totally different direction than I had planned when I started writing.

It’s been a while since I ranted, so I think it’s time to work the rust out.

Two friends come to me.  One says that another said such and such to her on an online chat.  The other one tells me that she said no such thing.  Silly drama, and I’m in the middle of it.  So I urge the first person to talk to the second, to figure out what’s what.  Is this propagating the drama, or helping to get rid of it?

It seems to me that the majority of drama comes about because of fear.  People are afraid to talk directly to each other about something that’s causing tension — oh, they’ll say they just don’t want to deal with it, or it’s not worth their time.  Of course they couldn’t be afraid of conflict, because they’re opinionated and strong people who would never be afraid of conflict.  But then they’ll go talking about it to a close friend, or a not-so-close friend, to get it off their chests.  And then eventually that makes its way through the grapevine to the other person, possibly in a highly exaggerated or outright distorted form.  So drama is born into the world.  But if the two people would just talk to each other face to face, it could all be avoided.

Hence it seems to me that often, drama is caused by fear.  Am I off-base?  What have your experiences been?

Been a while, so time to do some catch-up. Last weekend was Fuller‘s wedding. We went up to Nashville, stayed a night at Jared and Niquie‘s place along with Christy and the Bagwell spawn Michelle. It was great to hang out with the Tennessee crew again, and to finally get to meet the zergling. As I would expect any child of Bagwell’s to be (before age 12 or 13), she was quite well-behaved.

Due to a timezone SNAFU, we were an hour late and missed the actual ceremony *coughjaredcough*. I’m not much one for ceremony anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal — but it did suck to miss the “I do” moment. Also, it meant that I didn’t get to borrow Fuller’s Canon Rebel XT camera, which I was muchly looking forward to. Ah well, c’est la vie.

When Fuller and Brittany came into the reception, the MC announced them as, “Mister and misses Brittany Full– I mean… Chris Fuller.” This got a few calls from the peanut gallery to the effect of, “Nope, you got it right the first time!”

I took pictures of the reception and a few of the post-reception chillout at the villa.

All right, maybe it’s just that I’m a bit tipsy right now after a lunchtime outing to a sports bar/grille, but this article title, combined with the picture, has to be about the funniest thing ever.  From boston.com:

Yankees’ Wang hit hard by Rangers

Most of you probably know about the “Overheard in New York” LiveJournal group.  Well, today I was getting lunch at Subway and something made me think of that.   So this girl was getting stuff put on her sub…

Customer: Put spices on, too.
Employee: Salt and pepper?
Customer: Yeah.
Employee: *puts on salt and pepper*
Customer: Put on some spices, too.
Employee: *confused look… long pause… reaches for oregano and starts shaking it over sandwich*
Customer: *seems satisfied*

I just wanted to grab the woman, shake her sensless (which technically wouldn’t have required any shaking whatsoever), and say, “It’s called OREGANO, you twit!  It’s a TYPE of spice, just like salt and pepper are TYPES of spice!“  But I didn’t, because damned if I wasn’t hungry and just wanted to get the hell out of there.  Then just as I’m exiting the door, I overhear a guy saying, “Put some spice on.”  I stopped, went back in, stared for a minute… then decided it really just wasn’t worth it.

I hate that I have to share my precious oxygen with these people, whose brains were obviously deprived of it as a child.

Someone named “kathe” (email excluded to protect the idiotic) sent in the following inquiry via the web form on White Wolf’s site:

My husband has been casted a mind spell on him and I need to know what to do

The amusing part is that this sort of email isn’t uncommon.

I was up in Louisville last weekend, somewhat for the Kentucky Derby, but mostly to visit friends and family. For those not from the Bluegrass state, the Kentucky Derby is the Super Bowl of horse racing. All sorts of celebrities come into town (the Queen of England even attended), there’s a week-long festival of drinking and music and fireworks preceding it, and in general it’s a good excuse to party.  I would have posted this earlier, but the Internet connection at my dad’s is crappy, to say the least.

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I got some new chairs for myself and my minions, and they came in yesterday. They’re so much more comfortable than our old ones (let’s hear it for high-backed chairs!)… but some people in the office have joked that we have Star Trek chairs. Being made fun of by people who work for an RPG development company; such sweet irony. I have no idea what they’re talking about, though. These are the most normal chairs ever. Seriously.

I took a quiz today at OnTheIssues.org, to see which candidate’s views most closely match mine. The result? I apparently shouldn’t vote for anyone, because no candidate really stands for my views. Well, at least no Republican nor Democratic candidate, which were the only ones it listed in the quiz results.

I’ll probably end up voting Libertarian, but I feel bad doing that because it’s a wasted vote, and also, most Libertarian candidates seem to be nutjobs in their own right. I’m all for smaller government, but I don’t realistically think that we’re ever going to get rid of the IRS. I guess I’ll have to keep a closer watch on the candidates.

When thinking about politics, I often find myself in a philosophical quandary involving the most basic issue. On the one hand, I think that in general people should be free to run their lives as they see fit, with as little intervention from the government as possible (the Libertarian mindset). But on the other hand… a lot of people are really, really stupid, and I’m not sure they could handle that much freedom in a way that would benefit civilization as a whole.

For instance, I tend to think that reproducing should be a privilege, not a right. Honestly, some people just shouldn’t be allowed to breed. But isn’t this an inherent part of being a human? Isn’t it your god-given right to produce offspring and raise them, even if you’re not really equipped to handle it, and will only end up screwing that child up?

I never come up with a way out of that conundrum — freedom, versus protecting people from themselves. Obviously the “best way” (if such a thing exists) is somewhere between the two, but where? The cynical among you might say, “Well if people want to screw up their own lives, give them the freedom to do it.” But it’s short-sighted to believe that they would only screw up their own lives — inevitably, they would end up negatively affecting yours, too.

I could ramble forever, and end up going in circles. So to the two or three of you out there reading this: what are some of your thoughts on these sorts of things?

This post is in honor of my dog, Kayla. She has a natural sad-face, even when she isn’t trying. My ex-girlfriends tend to be more interested in how she’s doing than in how I’m doing, and she has endeared people to her who hate dogs, being their one exception to the rule. So, here’s a picture I took of her the other day, with my new camera. Click on the image for the full version.

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