You’ve Been Warned

My Computer’s Still Personal

One Facebook friend told another (out of my presence, I suppose he thought) that I’m paranoid about The Cloud. Here. Read the exact quote for yourself:

image of Facebook comments about me being paranoid about the cloud
IDs blurred to protect the…ah…insolent. 😉

His opinion versus my opinion — I’ll take mine any day! 😀

And I’ll even throw in this next piece for free:

The Cloud’s My-Mom-Cleaned-My-Room Problem

This is not a short reflection on my childhood neither of my parents was the room-cleaning type but a metaphor for the set of web services we call the cloud. We all know the feeling of logging into Facebook/Tumblr/Twitter/Netflix/Pandora/Gmail and realizing that the interface has changed.

[…you really ought to read the missing guts…]

The personal computing era rose at a time when bandwidth was very constrained. Software ran locally and most individuals’ computers were not hooked up to networks. Your computer *was* personal. And when you got a new one, the first thing most people did was to customize the desktop background. BBS, AOL, and the web began to change all that, but we still thought of our computers as objects distinct from the Internet. You ran software (games, word processors, organizing tools, music players) inside your box without reference to the wider web.

Now, more and more of the computing power we use comes from a CPU across the Internet. We no longer own our digital homes. Instead, we live rent-free with our parents. There are some serious upsides to living with your parents, particularly in today’s economy. You save money. You don’t have to worry about figuring as many things out on your own. Someone else fixes all the messes. And it’s harder to make a a mess when you’re being constantly monitored.

But the freedom of usage that defined personal computing does not extend to the world of parental computing. This isn’t a bug in the way that cloud services work. It is a feature. What we lose in freedom we gain in convenience. Maybe the tradeoff is worth it. Or maybe it’s something that just happened to us, which we’ll regret when we realize the privacy, security, and autonomy we’ve given up to sync our documents and correspondence across computers.

So, no, I don’t Carbonite or Sync or Mozy or GoogleDocs or DropBox or Office 360.

I still believe in privacy and security.

I still believe in personal computers and personal local-box software.

I’m old school. 😯

I don’t live with my parents.

Go ahead. Call me paranoid for that too! 🙄

Someday a tornado is going to come out of that cloud and remind you of me.

PS: I have some Facebook “privacy” news in the hopper for my next post.

Abortion and Mental Health Problems

Dear (desperate?) Mother-in-Waiting,

Please. Don’t do this to yourself:

Study finds abortion raises risk of mental health problems by 81%

Researchers behind a new study on abortion have discovered that women who have abortions experience an astonishing 81% increase in the risk of mental health problems.

Published in the prestigious British Journal of Psychiatry, the ground breaking paper also found that almost 10% of all mental health problems are shown to be directly linked to abortion.

The analysis, conducted by Priscilla K. Coleman from Bowling Green State University, Ohio, USA, is the largest study of its kind and is based on 22 published studies, with a combined number of participants totalling over 850,000.

The results also revealed that the increased risk for anxiety disorders was 34%; for depression it was 37%; for alcohol abuse it was 110%, for marijuana use it was 220%, and for suicide behaviours it was 155%.

The fetus within you is different than an organ or a mere growth. (Removing the cyst on my jaw wouldn’t have such mental health risks associated with it.)

I know. I can talk. I’m a man. And if I were a woman, I’m not in your shoes.

But right is right, not because of who we are, but because God is.

May you know Him near.

Sincerely,
Mark

Further reading on another of my sites:

Huge Regret: I Trusted Firefox

I have been a loyal Firefox user for years. Hugely so.

Well, we reap what we so(w). Hugely. Actually, harvests are always more huge than what we sow, but that’s another (hugely important) subject.

About 23 hours ago I tried something new in my Firefox browser: creating an additional profile in a custom location. (That’s actually two new things.) Then I deleted the profile, having done absolutely nothing with it.

My payback from the world’s best browser? 🙄

Firefox deleted hundreds of non-Firefox files in the custom location, including tax and banking records. And the action can’t be undone.

I. Was. Just. Sick.

Two questions for Firefox:

  1. Why does your Profile Manager do such a stupid thing?
  2. Why doesn’t the dialog box tell us that’s what you’re going to do?

Just to be “fair,” I’ll acknowledge that if I had done even a little research online, I would have learned that Firefox does such a stupid thing.

Deleting a Firefox Thunderbird or SeaMonkey 2 profile

Warning: The folder for the profile you are planning to delete may contain non-Mozilla files, if you created the profile in a custom location see above. If you use the “Delete Files” option to delete that profile, the entire folder and all of the contents will be deleted, including any non-Mozilla files it may contain. This cannot be undone! For this reason, you should choose the “Don’t Delete Files” option when deleting a profile. If you want to delete the profile folder, you can do that manually.

(Emphasis not mine.)

But why should I assume I need to research such a thing when the dialog box doesn’t warn of it? (Emphasis all mine.)

Firefox Profile Manager

Click image to see more of the screen shot

I. Feel. Betrayed. By. My. Trusted. Browser. 😳

Will I now switch to Google Chrome? 🙄

Well, how do I know it won’t pull something just as dastardly?

Besides, it’s Google. 😯

OK. That’s enough moaning for now. I need to see how much I can restore from back-up. And then see how much of that backed up data needs updating.

PS: No, I didn’t have time to put this together. But this is my way of giving back to the Firefox community. Or something. 🙂

Seduced: He Went After Her

As I do six days a week, I went to a well-known payment processing site…and pondered the new graphic:

girl and boy kissing on a street corner a la Proverbs 7?

I thought of this right away:

For at the window of my house
I looked through my lattice,
And saw among the simple,
I perceived among the youths,
A young man devoid of understanding,
Passing along the street near her corner…
In the twilight, in the evening,
In the black and dark night.
And there a woman met him…
So she caught him and kissed him…
With her enticing speech she caused him to yield,
With her flattering lips she seduced him.
Immediately he went after her, as an ox goes to the slaughter…

Sad, isn’t it? I don’t ask that in a judgmental way. I ask it…sadly.

I still think of that when I go to that site. Sadly.

May God have mercy…redemptive, redeeming, restoring mercy…on men who seduce women and on women who seduce men. And those allowing themselves to be seduced.

And on me. I need that mercy also.

My intent is not to impugn the character of the two individuals pictured above. I’m just telling you I thought of the other two individuals mentioned in Proverbs 7.

Disclaimer: I modified the dimensions and corners of the graphic (and blurred out the text, of course).

Readiness: Having What It Takes

I don’t know Desmond Bishopnotes. I’m more interested in most supper bowls than I am in any Super Bowl. And I’m no cheerleader (though I should be a much better prayer leader) for President Obama. But this, in my estimation, is a disappointing loss:

When the Green Bay Packers visited the White House on Friday to celebrate the team’s Super Bowl title, linebacker Desmond Bishopnotes wasn’t with his teammates. He had forgotten his license on the team charter plane and without a license, there’s no getting past White House security.

Source: Packers linebacker forgets ID, can’t get into White House

It didn’t matter who he is.

It didn’t matter what he’d accomplished.

It didn’t matter how far he’d come.

It didn’t matter with whom he was.

It didn’t matter that he knew the requirements for admission.

He wasn’t ready. He didn’t meet all the requirements.

And his experience made me think of this man’s experience:

“And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment:

“And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless.

“Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 22:11-13).

Other Biblical passages fit as well. Please use the comment section below to add one(s) that come to your mind.

A Millstone for Unforgiveness?

It is very sobering indeed to consider that if I do not forgive a person who is mean to me and then sincerely apologizes seven times a day—and if this is my usual spiritually sloppy and self-satisfied habit—then it would be better for me if a millstone were hung around my neck and I were cast into the sea.

Do read the rest of Andrée Seu’s piece over at World magazine: New thoughts on not offending.

Private
Above all, love God!