Social media has come a long way in the last couple of years, mostly due to the smart phones that have become so popular, even I bought one (and am writing this post with it). However, with the rapid advances, security has been pushed to the wayside most of the time, or at least only given a passing glance.

This is apparent when you look at the phishing attacks.that keep happening on Twitter, and sites like http://pleaserobme.com/ cropping up. With so many sites dedicated to tracking your every move and people passing their personal info around like it’s candy (how many of those “I’ve lost my phone and need contacts” groups have you seen on Facebook?), I expect we will be seeing more and more criminals that take advantage of the info we publish without a thought.

In the case of location checkins via services like FourSquare, I think PleaseRobMe.com has it right. Whenever we post this info, it’s telling people that we’re not at home and plenty of people will start taking advantage of that.

Secondly, with services like Facebook, we can post all our contact info for all our friends to see. I don’t know about you, but my “friend” list on Facebook is MASSIVE. Far more than I’m actually friends with. But yet, I’ve got my address, phone number, email address, birthday, employer and much more, all available to these “friends”. Not that I’m saying I don’t trust them, but who’s to say someone I DON’T trust gets access to their account?

Then there’s multiple account access. Services like OpenID are great, but what happens if someone gets your login info? Also, do you really trust 3rd party services with keeping your Twitter or Google (more on them later) password safe?

So what should be done? First, I think I’ll be removing all that contact info from Facebook and avoiding checkins like the plague. But I’d also like to see services like Twitter give the ability to easily restrict some updates to people that are following you (or even better, to a list of people). This way we can continue to keep most updates public, but have some that are private.

I’d also like to see API keys used more so I don’t have to five out my Twitter password to integrate with a 3rd party. And as for things like posting updates, Facebook, Twitter and the like should time sessions out after a short time. Still allow the user to browse info, but not allow posting until the password is verified again. Until that time though, I’m just not going to have the sites remember me which will keep rogue posts to a min.

And with that, I’m tired and going to sleep. I’ll. Next talk about Google and what needs to happen there.

I’m not one of those people that really trusts most scientists. I mean, they’re really smart people and know a lot more about their fields than I do. But it seems that most scientists have blinders on, they don’t look beyond their lab and don’t care so much about the end results, just that they get their results.

Obviously, this isn’t the case for a lot of scientists, there’s many out there that are not only good at their jobs, but they pay attention to the world as a whole and make sure that their findings actually make sense in the “real world”, not just the laboratory. But in the world of Global Warm(cool)ing, the sad fact is that the scientists that just don’t care about the big picture are not the ones getting the attention. Rather, it’s the ones that are claiming that there’s more global warming (or cooling, depends upon the week) and that we have to stop flying, driving, manufacturing and whatever else, so that we can save the Earth.

Now, before you get the wrong picture (or to correct your view of me if you already have…), I have a healthy respect for the Earth and am all for policies and changes in our society to make it so that we don’t pollute so much. We need cleaner ways to create electricity and whatever that is is great to me provided that it doesn’t cost more than we’re paying now. Plug-in electric, hydrogen, solar, nuclear, wind, wave, etc… They’re all great and I’m glad the money is being spent to develop the technologies further. I’m especially a fan of solar power since, well, there’s a lot of that, but the whole wave power thing that’s being worked on is great too.

However, I think the Japanese and French have it right with Nuclear power. We really need to invest more in that right now because, well, it works, it’s cleaner than anything else we have and it’s dirt cheap. Plus, it’d reduce our reliance on coal, oil and hydro-electric dams, among other things. But I’m getting off-topic here. We’re talking about Global Warming and the industry it’s becoming.

With all the hype these days about global warming and what it’s allegedly doing to our environment, there’s a lot of companies out there trying to make a buck (or ten) selling consulting services, CO2 credits and anything else they can think of. For instance, back in January, some research was done by a fellow named Alex Wissner-Gross. He alleges that two searches with Google produce about 7g of CO2, or the same amount as boiling a kettle of water for tea (he’s English). Of course, this assumes that you do multiple queries per search and depends upon how in-depth it is.

Of course, it’s not mentioned until much later in the article that Mr Alex Wissner-Gross has started his own company called CO2Stats. Their purpose is as follows:

“CO2Stats is the only service that automatically calculates your website’s total energy consumption, helps to make it more energy efficient, and then purchases audited renewable energy from wind and solar farms to neutralize its carbon footprint — all for a flat, affordable monthly fee.”

Of course, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that he’s at the same time come out with this “research” about Google’s CO2 production for searches. But really, who can put a price on saving the world? ESPECIALLY when you can advertise to everybody who visits your site that it’s “green” with their nifty logo.

OK, so there’s one “scientist” that’s trying to make a quick buck, but who can blame him anyway? I mean, he’s just doing what everybody else would do and try to make a little money, right? Well, actually, yes, that seems to be the case. At least, if you really mean “everybody”.  Take the Climate Change Committee (CCC). They are a group in the UK that recently advised Parliament on CO2 emissions and advised that they should work to have emissions in the UK reduced by 80% by 2050. A noble goal to be sure, but might there be other motives there too?

According to an article by The Register, there are… To start off, there’s big money to be made in the carbon credit market. To quote the article:

“The group has its eyes on the carbon market, which it says “grew from $10bn to $34bn between 2005 and 2006″, and projects to be worth well over $100bn in the future.”

And of course, there’s many companies that are involved in this whole thing. There was a recent conference for those companies entitled ‘Cashing in on Carbon’ and again, according to the article:

“Amongst these bean-counters-turned-Gaia-botherers were representatives from IDEAcarbon, which offers carbon market intelligence, ratings and advice to governments, organisations and companies. Climate Change Committee member, Samuel Fankhauser, a former climate change economist for the World Bank, is the company’s managing director, strategic advice.”

Conflict of interest? Perhaps so since IDEACarbon’s whole purpose is to provide advice and counsel to it’s clients about climate change and CO2 credits.

Anyway, all this is to say that the next time you hear people talking about new “research”, “studies”, or “advice” on Global Warming or CO2 production, why not take a look at who it is that’s talking and see if they might have a secondary motive? Because call me a cynic if you want, but so far, all this hysteria seems to just be a way to make more money and promote their own products.

So, why is it rush hour? Where’d the term come from? I’d prefer to call it very annoyingly slow and frustrating hour, but I think that’s slightly too long… Maybe @$!* hour would work… naa, not that either. Do you have any ideas?

If I order something from say… Amazon. It will generally be shipped from California (Los Angeles area to be exact) and I live in Tucson, Arizona. So, that’s a 7 hour drive between the two. Pretty quick. Now, lets say I were to choose standard ground shipping (which is 5-7 business days for both carriers) and had it shipped via UPS. Guess when it’d get here? That’s right 2, maybe 3 business days. Because it doesn’t take very long to ship between two adjoining states.

However, if I were to choose the same ground shipping with FedEx, guess when it would get here? 5 business days. Even better is that I get to watch it sit in some storage facility (well, watch b/c of the tracking) while the days tick by. Granted, I AM getting the service that I paid for. But really, does it do FedEx ANY good to hold the package for a few days and therefore annoy customers? I think not, but apparently they do.

So, the moral of the story is that every time I can ship UPS, I do. FedEx is the bane of my shipping existence (ok, well… USPS would be if I shipped anything through them). Which is why I prefer Brown

First off, lets start with the basics. I consider myself to be a fairly good driver. Agressive, yes. But good anyway. I’ve never caused any accidents, have avoided numerous people who have tried to hit me (having a small car like I used to and driving on the interstate lends to people NEVER seeing you and trying to pull into the space you’re occupying… SCARY!), and have not had any driving violations for 5 years (I have had two tickets since then, but both were due to my registration being expired so… not driving issues).

I have hit one car once and unfortunately it was parked. In my defense, it was a dark night, black car and I was in a bad mood and NOT paying attention. So pretty much, it was COMPLETELY my fault, I admit that, but it was also an isolated incident that had never occured before and has not since.

Ok, with that out of the way, here’s what my major problem with many drivers (especially older ones…). I HATE it when they drive on the fast lane, otherwise known as the left lane. If they’re making a turn in the next 1/4 mile, ok… I can understand. Or of course, if you’re passing people, then by all means drive in the left lane. But for goodness sake, do NOT drive the same speed as the people in the lane next to you. ESPECIALLY if you’re driving at or under the speed limit. (oh yeah, that’s another thing I should have said up top. I do speed… but still I don’t get tickets for it so I guess it’s OK

This behavior is what causes people to get mad and start doing the whole finger-flipping, getting out of the car to pummel you kind of thing. NO, it’s not your fault they’re hot-heads (for the record, I don’t get mad like that, I just get annoyed and wait until I can get around while calling you nice names… ), but if you’re driving badly, then you’re certainly not helping the situation.

I was in Colorado a while ago and found out that they passed a law in Denver area that basically states that you can’t drive in the left lane. It’s reserved for passing ONLY. No ifs, ands or buts. I LOVE this law and I wish it would be passed everywhere else. Because that’s the point of multiple lanes. Letting the faster traffic move along faster than the slower traffic. Not so that the slower traffic can take both lanes and block everybody else up!!

So yeah, that’s my rant for today. If you’re one of those “bad” drivers, please think about it this way… If you were behind two people going under the speed limit next to eachother and couldn’t get past, what would you be thinking? Well, that’s what the people behind you are thinking about you… Just remember that!

AMAZING! Two blogs in one day. Well, two in one day if I finish this in 15 minutes that is and I should since this one is pretty quick…

What’s it about? Well, it’s another rant and it’s about Christians and cussing. Call me a prude, but I consider your normal four-letter words to be taboo still. And I think that as Christians, we should ALL consider them taboo too. Do they mean what they used to? No… But they do still cause people to take notice and are considered offensive. Movies can still be rated R because of the language in them (although, it does take more now than before), so why do so many Christians think it’s OK for them to cuss?

We’re meant to be the salt of the Earth. The seasoning if you will. That means we’re supposed to be DIFFERENT. It DOESN’T mean we’re to act the same as everybody else. Am I in that boat? Sure, I cuss at times. I know this, but the difference is that I don’t WANT to and I try hard not to. Sometimes it slips out (especially when everybody at work cusses all the time), but that’s just what it is. A slip, not something I do on a normal basis. Is that good? Nope, but I think that’s the best anybody can expect from anybody else (it’s all I expect from my friends…).
Anyway, just something for you to think about.

But finding one in Tucson or Phoenix that’s a good price and certified used is REALLY hard. And some of the people I’ve dealt with are, shall we say, less than honest at times. For instance, there’s a large dealership here that has a 2003 Honda Accord Coupe 4-cyl with a 5-speed manual for sale. I first looked at the car a little over a week ago and test drove it and it wasn’t too bad. However, it has one of those big-ass mufflers on it that (sadly) my generation typically put on them. You know the ones, they make a bunch of noise and piss everybody else off.

Anyway, the dealer’s story on the muffler is that an older (well, not 20′s) person owned the car and hit the original muffler and punctured it while backing up. Where he was, he couldn’t buy a normal one, so it was the choice between a chromed-out one that was really annoying, or the one that’s on the car now.

Ok, fine, I guess I can deal with that. But at $17,123 (well, I think they quoted me $17,233, but it was listed on their website for $17,123 so I was going to push that price to start with if/when I started bargining), I wanted to wait a little bit (just didn’t like that muffler and there are a couple scratches on the back bumper).

So, over this weekend I found out that they still had the car and so I went over to look at it again. I test drove it again and started talking to them about actual prices and stuff. Brought up the $17,123 and we started from there. But I found out that it’s NOT certified used (despite them being a Honda dealership) because of the muffler. Of course, THEY claim that the ONLY thing that kept it from being certified was the muffler but I’m sure that the guy doing inspections saw that muffler and said no and moved to the next car without checking anything else. I mean, would you see something like that muffler that is an automatic rejection (not a factory install, not a Honda part), but continue to do the rest of the check for the heck of it? I didn’t think so…

Anyway, that made their price about $1,000 too much because it didn’t have the warranty. I told them that and they said they couldn’t drop that much and so I said bye (well, I actually said it was $1,500 too much because it had a new paint-chip taken out of the passenger door and so that combined with the scratches on the rear bumper amounted to $500 to me).

So now we’re at yesterday (Monday). I did a search for more Honda’s in the area and that car is still available but guess what? The price is NOW $16,188 (was $17,123 if you remember). Amazing! They dropped the price by $1,000 (or close enough). Wonder why that is… But I didn’t call them or get ahold of them at that point because I figured that it didn’t hurt to wait a bit (getting bad feelings about the car as time goes on).

So last night I get an email from the salesman. He said that he’s willing to take another $495 off of the price of the car (in addition to the $400 he originally said he’d take off) because that’s how much they paid for the certification and so that would make it (according to him) $16,338 (do the math by the way… $17,123 – $400 – $495 != $16,338) .

So I was then pretty happy to email him back and ask a simple question: I’m confused… I was just looking at your website and the price quoted is $16,188. But you just quoted me $16,338. What’s the difference between those quotes?

No, I have not heard back from him yet (to be fair, I did write last night at 6 PM or so). But I’m hoping I’ll hear back from him today to see how he responds. But it makes me realize how much I really can NOT trust salesmen. This whole experience has shown me a LOT of ways that they play with the figures and try to get the most money from you (or me I guess) as possible. Yes, I knew they did that before, but I guess I didn’t realize the extent that they’d go to try and rip you off!!

New experiences. Guess those are the best way to learn

This of course doesn’t come as a surprise to me. What DOES surprise me is the number of people that don’t know this themselves, or at least don’t think about it. Journalists are people (duh!) and as such they are not perfect. This means that they can make mistakes and also report events and write articles in ways that slant things in a way that makes more sense to them. OR so that it benefits the people that they support more.

Usually, this is done without the reporter even knowing it happened. Those times are of course understandable. But there are those that will do it on purpose and without any system of checks to ensure that the information is at least valid. And THOSE are the times that the industry scares me. Whenever I am reading up on a topic that is fairly large, I ensure that I read multiple papers (online generally) to get a wider viewpoint.

I also try and get an understanding of who the paper is and what their viewpoints are overall. This gives me a better idea of what way they might slant. Put all of that together with a large handful of salt and I’ve got my unslanted viewpoint of what’s going on. Well, that’s not true because through the entire process, I’m putting my OWN slant on things because I’M human and I’M not perfect and I do have an agenda of my own.

Anyway, I guess my main point is that WAY too many people take what they read and see on TV at face value and don’t think for themselves. I guess that’s just the way the world is going these days, but it’s REALLY frustrating to see. So yep, that’s my rant. Pitiful I know, but I’ll do better, I promise!