Who is right and who is wrong

I remember back in elementary school, it is cut and clear when there was a school yard fight who is the good and who is the bad. Who was the bully and who was the victim. But when you mix in politics and propaganda, this view is no longer so clear cut. I am referring to the recent riot in Iran, where the British Embassy was, for the lack of better term, violated. And as we sit and watch and discuss the outcome and criticize how the Iranian government is not handling their international affair better, we never really talk about what cause these hatred.

I only have a few analogy to our current situation. Imagine you are a teenager, and as you are growing up, your friends are all experimenting with all type of things, and one of the thing is weed. You thought about it, and brought the material to roll one up. You parents found out, and start taking away things of yours. No TV, no food, no internet, no etc... But it is very public knowledge that they are the 4th biggest smoker in town, and still smoking weed, and have a high stock pile of it. ("Federation of American Scientists :: Status of World Nuclear Forces". Fas.org. 2010-05-26. Retrieved 2010-07-30) As a teenager, wouldn't you rebel?

I don't think destroying things in an embassy is the right way of handling things, but for a country that is bullied, and hazed, I don't think there are anything we can do about this. We are making such a big fuss about college, high school, sports team hazing that is has become a very controversial subject and the punishment involves jail time. But yet we allow countries to do it to one and other and praise the bullies for doing so. This seem a big outrageous in my opinion.

When will I get what I purchased?

I always been a fan of buying things online. The convenience and the unbeatable environment of your home. You can shop at the comfort of your couch or bed, while buy things such as a car, or lawn mower. Technology has made life simpler. But there is one thing I found to be very irritating. Unlike buying grocery at the local super market or dvd at the electronic store. You get charge when you don't have anything in your hand. Actually you may get charge, few hours, few days, and sometimes even weeks before your item even left the seller's hand. I can understand the seller wants to protect themselves of fraud, simply not wanting to send things out until the check clears, but credit card transaction is immediate.

I strongly believe that there should be government regulation on when the transaction of charging your credit card should happen. This method should exclude checks and electronic banking because those does take processing time. But for credit card, I believe the charging of your card should not happen until the item is leaving the seller's hand. Such as a postal worker that will be authorizing the charging of your card. Would you want to walk around an electronic store, every time you pick something up, you'll get charge right away, and if you decided that you don't want it or the item is broken, you'll get reimburse in 5 - 10 business days? Does that even make sense?

There are little or no consumer protection against how long it takes a seller to ship out an item after they charge your credit card. Its an analogy to you going to the store, find what you want, pays in advance, and you have to wait unset amount of time before someone comes out with the item you brought. I think this type of behavior need to change.

Google Social Media Failed Again?

In the past 10 years we have seen social media come and go, became popular and disappear and re-appear and dies again, Myspace is a good example of that. They are almost the first to come into the game, millions of people flock to it, especially the sexual predators. Then comes HotOrNot, and as we all can probably tell by the name of the site what it is. But problem with them was, it wasn't free. It is almost like a precursor to eHarmony or other dating site without the research and matching by criteria. And soon we have emergence of Facebook, with targeted audience and have exclusivity. But as they evolve and move away from the exclusivity, they basically created another Myspace.

In the past 5 years, Google had made many attempted to break into the social media world, Google Social Media Attempts. Starting with Google Dodgeball. I personally have no experience with this, but from what I can understand it is basically the precursor to Google Latitude. Then comes Okurt, which has more people in the Asia's then US, so I can't comment on their success, but I definitely can comment on how horrible the UI is, and its no more than a Myspace clone. As the years move forward, we were introduced to Google Wave. The UI was clunky and the interface is slow. Within 2 weeks of using it, I lost complete interest, and seems like that was the trend for the rest of the users too. As of now, Google Wave will be turned off by end of the year. FAILED. Google Buzz was their first attempt to upstage twitter. Only problem was, Twitter was already matured, and their users are content, and their business model has been solid. So for Google to re-invent the wheel, extremely silly. I think Google need to have some of their intelligent software engineer teach their business managers the DRY method. FAILED.

Recently, Google introduce Google+. My first impression was, why so exclusive to all the nerds on the internet that doesn't grow your business model? While facebook uses Harvard as an exclusivity, but their user base includes all who has a Harvard email address. The Smarty, nerdy, suicidal, goth, preppy, beauty queen wanna be, past and current professors and so on. So their exclusivity was not limited and the diversity of people will attract others. While Google's exclusivity model is all the interested developers, beta testers, nerdy techies, and high internet usage people. I think any socialable people can see where this is going. None of those people are very socialable. Most of them are more involved with their online WOW character than real life friends. Most of those people are more worry about their ego trip, and how many friends they have, vs actually talking to any of those friends. So yes, in initial launch, you'll see a big influx of people, and lot of connections to each other, but thats about the extend of all they do. They don't go on and say, I just F**k so and so, and we done it this way. Or I just went to have dinner at Jonny Rocket and I feel like I weight a thousand pound from their oily burgers. Not too many post real life event which makes a social media. Those people on their repost videos, repost blogs, repost... How socialable is that? And for those who actually post a socialable event, it pretty much get subsided because of all those other garbage posts. not FAILED yet, but I can see the end of the tunnel for Google+.

As we see a lot of their social media comes and go, every time Google would introduce something new and cool, but never something that is wow, only Google has this. Google Wave has an instant updating and rolling conversation. Making it feel like you are in a chat room. Unfortunately, their speed and resource requirement killed that. Google Buzz, was cool because it is integrated with the rest of your Google stuff, making uploading pictures much easier. But problem is, its not something new, and a few conveniences would not make people want to convert from what they are comfortable with and have a built up user base. And Google+ is pretty advance in some of their ideas, but nothing special about it. It doesn't have friend's bday reminder, it doesn't tell people you are in a relationship with someone. It doesn't have an easy way to link up your photos or post existing photo from other sites. Facebook has all this and has these things for years. If Google want that Wow factor, they need to step up, make something new, look at their competitors and make sure they have everything that makes their competitors better. Maybe then will their users come and stay. Google+ is a great idea, but sadly it was not thought out and will be another social media failed attempt.

Lesson From a Dream

We all dream of strange things such as having super power, or some weird fantasy that you can not have in real life. But there are dreams sometimes that are so realistic that you actually lose sight of what is happening. Usually I can tell if I am dreaming. Even in my dream I acknowledge it. When I can jump 30 to 100 ft into the air and glide down smoothly. I automatically know its a dream and I should enjoy it before I wake up. But I have had dreams that is border line nightmares where I can't tell if I am dreaming. And even when I wake up, I question rather my dreams were dreams or events that had occurred.

Last night's dream really disturbed me and really rocked me to the core. When I woke up, I was confused, scared, hurt, and just plain shocked. I would not go into details, but the dream was so realistic, and definitely could happen in real life, that I completely could not tell if it was a dream. When I woke up, I had to check if Mary was laying next to me, and check the time and date just to be sure I am still who I am, and where and who is still around me. To me growing up as an only Child and having parents work all the time. Being alone is the last thing I want. So my friends and family, and my new family (Mary), defines me, tells me that I am alive. And I have to say, in my dream, I lost all that, making it the worse nightmare I can face.

My dream definitely was a wake up call to really cherish my friends and family and make sure to appreciate every moment I have. Waking up this morning to realize it was a dream felt like someone who is given a second chance in life.

Really? Aliens?

So at this very moment I am watching a documentary on Ancient building and possibility that it is built or people who built it had helped from aliens. And two statements that are a repeating theme are, "Why would people do things that are very difficult unless it is made easy by alien technology." Or "this is so difficult to do that even now we can not do it easily. So they must have alien technology help."

Let revisit the Renascence. Building huge dome, and arch are technology lost through the centuries. While ancient Roman and Greeks knows how to do it with perfection. a thousand year later, it's an alien technology. So really? anything we don't understand or can't accomplish, then that leads to it can't be done by humans? Talk about big egos.

Either way, i always keep an open minds about aliens and UFO's and ancient technology, but to draw conclusion base on our own stupidity, i really can not gad down. So to make a case and point you must give me more evident than they know more than we can give them credit for.

The good old days

So I am sitting at work having my lunch/netflix break, and I am watching "The Wood". Probably everyone is wondering where is this going? What logic and I trying to drop? Well not really any logic but just seeing how much money $1 is worth back in the days. It was like, yoo, I bet you don't have the balls to do this... I beta you a dollar. And its like its on. Definitely funny to see the good old days being portrayed.

Your Prayers goes out to... WHY?

Not to step on any religious fanatics' toes, but every time a disaster happens I read this everywhere. My prayers goes out to this, or goes to this. In reality, I wonder how many actually get down on their knees and pray for those who suffered. Regardless if a prayer is completely useless to those who just lost everything. What does your prayer do for those people? Even thousands of people get on their knees and start praying, I am very sure the destruction or devastation would still remain. I see tons of blogs, twitters, and social media having people comment on how their prayers goes out to these and those people, but when someone ask, would like you to donate to the relief effort. Well, I barely see any posting of that...

Instead of useless kind words, or meaning less prayers, I offer this to those who suffer from any recent disasters, Tornado in Alabama, or Earth Quake in Japan, stop blaming god for any disaster, and look for ways to get out of the problem you are in. Natural disaster does not happen when you stop or start praying. They are natural and random, and you are just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Lets works towards a solution instead of wasting time praying. So to all those who send their prayers out, keep them and send a few bucks out instead.