:deuceweb.blog

I’m writing this to inform you of the never-ending amusement that comes from your efforts to make me add you to my “friends” list. The absolute best (and most common) ploy you attempt is creating a profile with the picture of an attractive girl, then sending me a friend request. Being male, I am compelled to see what sort of whacked-out, crazy female individual would send me a friend request, but not send a message. Oh, but your trickery does not end there, no sir.

When I get to the profile of said attractive girl, you have ingeniously used one of several methods to induce me to further my pursuit of information, including:

• A link cunningly placed in the profile’s “About Me” section, enticing me to “Click here for my nude pics!”
• Blocking the entire profile with a full-screen image that, when clicked, will supposedly allow me to view the hundreds of thousands of “adult profiles” that MySpace is so famous for allowing nude pictures in
• Encouraging me to sign up for an e-mail marketing campaign

And many others…..

I am also surprised at the apparent lack of intelligence in my fellow male brethren. If the number of friends each of your imaginary attractive girl profiles has managed to attract is any indication of common sense, the majority of my gender has little to none. Seriously, do the guys that show up as friends of these girls really think she is an actual person? Moreover, based on looking at some of the pictures for these guys, do they honestly think a real girl that attractive would randomly send them a friend request? Lastly, do they truly believe that by posting comments like “Your so hot, I wanna to bend you over” or “I bet you look better sittin’ on my face” will make the girl like them (goes back to believing she’s a real person, but whatever)?

Obviously, you have found a winning formula:

Stolen pictures of attractive girls from the web
+
MySpace Profile
+
Links to sites where people pay to see naked women
+
Men with no common sense
=
Profit

Well, I’ve figured out your shrewd little game. Your fraudulent profiles and trickery do not deceive me, and I will not be taken in by your clever ruse. It may still pay to send these out, but save yourself the time and effort of including my profile in your attempts.

Oh, and I hope you die a horrible death.

Thanks!

Joe

No Comments

After reading a headline on the WSJ homepage about GM considering a sale of their stake in the GMAC unit, I found another article with more info at Bloomberg.

According to GM’s 2004 10-K filing, the GMAC division was responsible for $2.9 billion in net income. That’s “billion,” with a “b.” In the filing for GM’s Q2 10-q, it lists the net income for the first six months of 2005 from GMAC at $1.6 billion. Both of these are occuring on GMAC revenues of $31.1 billion and $16.5 billion, respectively. Now, let’s do a little math….

For net income of $2.9 billion against $31.1 billion of revenue for 2004, GMAC provided a profit margin of 9.3%. And looking at the first six months of 2005, GMAC provided a profit margin of 9.6%, with revenues of $16.5 billion and net income being $1.6 billion.

Call me crazy, but I’m thinking in these times, a profit ratio of nearly 10% is pretty dang good. As a business owner, I would have a tough time justifying the need to spin off a division that made profits like that. Of course, this would assume that profit margin won’t be hurt by the downgrade of GM bonds that happened earlier this year, but I guess we’ll find that out later. For now, let’s just get some popcorn and watch the show as the domestic automakers continue to provide business entertainment

No Comments

Well, I’m sure nearly everyone that reads this thing knows about this, but I’m going to write about it anyway. Basically, if you are using Internet Explorer….SWITCH!!! There are several other great browsers out there, my favorites being Mozilla and Firefox. Firefox is a derivative of Mozilla, so it runs similary. You could also take a look at the Opera web browser.

The main spark underneath this posting is a thread on SlashDot. It talks about how Internet Explorer is a horrible web browser, does not follow standards, and is full of security holes.

If you aren’t convinced by Internet Explorer being full of security holes and not following standards, then you should switch for the tabbed browsing and popup blocking. Imagine browsing the internet in only one window, with links loading in the background while you finish reading one page. And to top it off, you never have to worry about popups again.

One thing that really bugs me about Internet Explorer is the non-standards compliance. If you want to see an example, check out my online resume. You’ll notice the menu on the left hand side of the screen. Now, if you look at it in Internet Explorer, and scroll down, you’ll see that the menu does not “fix” itself and follow the page down. If you view the same page in another browser (i.e. Mozilla, Firebird, or Opera), you’ll see that the menu does follow down the side and stay “fixed.” The basic reason behind this is that Internet Explorer is non-standards compliant. The CSS spec by the W3C says that when a div tag’s position is specified as “fixed” the items inside that div tag should stay in place when the page is scrolled. This is the case on that page.

Now, for those of you who don’t care about the reasoning behind how the fixed menu works, then just understand that Internet Explorer is not compliant with the standards put out by the World-Wide Web Consortium. Microsoft has time and time again chosen to not follow standards put out by many industry groups (not just in web browsers), and should not be rewarded with market share or money for doing so. Do your part to make Microsoft listen to consumers, businesses, and industry groups by switching to another, more standards compliant and secure web browser.

No Comments

I thought that maybe, just maybe, the RIAA, MPAA, and Congress might get their act together and come up with a solution to the file-sharing issue that still respects the American people and allows for fair use. But no, we have radical idiots in all these groups trying to pass a bill (pdf or text) that makes file-sharing a felony offense. You can read a summary of the bill in an article here.

Now, I am all for protecting the rights of content owners or intellectual property owners, whatever you want to call them. But are we just allowing the government to start another War on Drugs? I mean really, if the average American doesn’t care that his neighbor is trading songs, then who gets hurt here? I’ve heard all the arguments about how record companies will be “put out of business” or whatever. Personally, I think that’s a bunch of bull.

What needs to happen is for these record companies to embrace this new phenomenon. If they can create some way to capitalize on the technology, then everything will be fine. The old business model just isn’t going to work for them anymore, I don’t care how many laws are passed. If John Doe can pay his few dollars a month to access a service that lets him have whatever music he wants, then everything will be fine.

You will never be able to get rid of people that can work around the system and find ways to pirate intellectual property. The best chance these companies have is to offer a service that the regular American finds is worth some of his or her hard-earned cash. That’s all I have to say about that…

1 Comment