Websites

For a while I have been using ZoneEdit as my DNS hosting service for name resolution. To those of you who have no idea what DNS is all about here is a very short intro: DNS (domain name system) is a Yellow Book of the internet – it matches names (such as www.google.com) to internet addresses such as (8.8.8.8) . Without DNS we would have no user friendly names for websites sites.

So, this perform this basic but very important function I have been using ZoneEdit – a company providing reliable DNS service. However a while back it announced that they have been acquired by DynDNS ( a competitor providing paid services) and will be moving to paid services for majority of its users. You see, DynDNS with their ridiculous prices could not grow while companies like ZoneEdit provided the same quality of service for free. So to remove the threat – they started buying them one by one.

This is a very sad story and a proof that Facebook doesn’t help people connect with other people. It only gives one a false sense of friendship. Simon Black, a charity worker, had more than a thousand so-called “facebook friends” but they turned out to be not nearly as helpful as one would hope their friends to be. When she announced taking an overdose of pills with intent to commit suicide, none of her online or real life acquaintances helped. Some ignored the message thinking it is yet another cry for help with no action to follow. Others argued about the messages, yet some called her bluff and even encouraged to go through. The result of this last call for help was not what one would expect from true friends. Instead of calling Simon, running down the street to her apartment (some lived within walking distance) or calling local police department immediately the help, just like the friendship, was only virtual. But one can’t travel through the internet and give CPR through a computer monitor.  She died due to pill overdose, in her apartment, alone. All of those who she thought were friends turned out to be nothing close to trustworthy and helpful.

While facebook maintains that user safety is “paramount” and they offer help on the website, it is clear that the company isn’t capable of noticing any such activity. If your friend or a child is on facebook – remember that no one will help in the case of emergency. The company is interested only in making money, selling user data, providing access to advertisers and not actually connecting people and helping them strengthen friendships. Instead, this online plague is destroying the true meaning of friends – someone who can be relied upon in the moment of distress, someone who will drop all personal business to help, someone who never calls bluff at a threat of a suicide or worse – encourages to go through with it.

I’ve said it in the past and will say it again – none of the so called “social sites/networks” can replace and help create real life communication and friendships. A computer is a cold machine that does care about you or anyone else out there. Instead of creating and maintaining virtual, meaningless illusion of friends – take a stroll to your local park, talk to a neighbor, chat up someone at a bar or restaurant. You may actually find a friend and not just another “avatar” that will ignore the last cry for help.

When I tell people that they can pay only $2 per month or $6 for 3 month supply, for genuine non-prescription pet anti-flea medication they usually think I'm joking. However this is true. I haven't thought of this myself, but have stumbled upon this information when I was searching for cheap anti-flea medication online. Normally one would pay anywhere between $35-$60 for three month supply (3 capsules) of anti-flea treatments from veterinary or on-line shops. However, for people with smaller dogs - there is a way to dramatically reduce price.

Let me show you how to pay only $2 per dose, when you buy meds for your dogs
Use the "Search Amazon" box on your left to find your favorite brand of Anti-Flea medications and then follow these instructions!.

Everyone is on MySpace, FaceBook and Twitter. I can udnerstand why teenagers and musicians are on MySpace. I see why college kids are on FaceBook, but I don't udnerstand why even NPR hosts are on Twitter. The format is not useful - 140 character messages are not usefull for journalism, 140 chars is about 135 too many for teenagers who speak in LOL, OMG,l8r.

How would you like to have a free place to stay when you travel? It doesn't mater if you travel within your own country, some place just across the border or all the way around the world, too. So here is the deal - there is a website and community called "CouchSurfing" and community members all like to travel.

Most of them also offer their couches (literally) for other members of the community if they would like to visit and stay over for a few days. This is an absolutely brilliant idea! You do have to have a fully filled out profile with a lot of information about yourself, having someone vouch for you also helps a lot. The easiest way to get someone to vouch for you is to also offer a couch at your own place. That way when someone stops by (either for coffee or to stay for a day) they can write a reference that will let other users know that you are not some unfriendly creep, but a nice person who is fun. Those who stay at your place are also likely to offer you to stay at their home town when you travel.

Even though time keeping during the day is not an issue these days due to clocks in computers, cars and cell phones - I still like to have a good timepiece. And in my, very humble, opinion Citizen makes best watches. While such claims are extremely subjective, I'll try to substantiate my claim. A good watch has very simple characteristics which anyone can appreciate: accuracy, reliability, amount of care required and simplicity. Before anyone says that simplicity is a preference that some may not subscribe to, I would point out that even complex mechanisms can have simple or overly complex implementations. So for any given function - the simpler it is implement, the better. Now let's see why these qualities make the best watches!

Accuracy - Quartz movement is proven to be more accurate than simple mechanical movement due to the way quartz watches work. Mechanical watches have springs and masses that move around in order to measure time. By the very nature anything at a scale of a watch spring can not be very precise, especially when the spring's force changes as time goes by, as gears wear out, dirt gets inside and so on. In Quartz watch the quartz crystal is oscillating and thus measuring time (actually it moves tens of thousands of times per second).

Reliability - a good timepiece will work reliably for generations. Not without a degree of basic care, but many watches can work without a fault for very long periods of time (provided they have supply of energy - either human winding them up or electrical source). Many very expensive watches are fully mechanical and self winding. While this is a showcase for great craftsmanship, it also introduces a layer of complexity that tends to lower the reliability of the watch. Many of the gears are so delicate, that any kind of sudden physical shock, temperature variation, or even magnetic source can put them out of service. Lack of these delicate gears and mechanisms make quartz watches more tolerant to adverse conditions.

Drupal is one of the best CMS (content management systems) in existance. It is fast, very popular, fairly well supported, reliable, secure, and free. It is because how easy and fast one can setup a site using this CMS and because of all the avaliable modules that Drupal became the #1 choice for content management.  I've followed the project since its early versions and have always loved it. Yet, i find serveral big issues from which it suffers - and they are the same items that brought it so much popularity.

You see - all modules for Drupal are contributed by pogrammers/developers from across the globe. They write a module when they have a need for something that is not avalible from a default installation. Unfortunatelly what happens is that after a developer writes his plug-in, he often fails to maintaint it's development once he got it working, or after he gets bored with the little project. At the end - every version of drupal suffers from lack of modules when a new version of CMS is released. And what's even worse - the module that one has been using for a long time on version 5, are not avaliable for version 6, because the person who wrote it is not getting paid to maintain his software. At the end - we have a system that is only perfect if you never upgrade, or if you are a programmer yourself. This is clearly frustrating for all the non-programmers. Unlike Plone, which one can slice and dice even without knowledge of any scripting languag, Drupal is very PHP heavy and has very few built-in tools to achieve any kind of customization. Yet, it is the best system for casual bloggers who only need some basic functions.

Love it or hate it - but that's how free software works.