Music Piracy Makes People Stupid

Tagged as: Entertainment, Humor, Life, Money, Rant, Read-It, Ridiculous, Tip-For-Life May 14

In an article at Yahoo! about cracking down on college music pirates, I read about one Sarah Barg, a sophomore from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It portrayed her as a girl who was just taking part in what everyone else was doing. The article wanted to put her in the role of one who is definitely not the worst (I mean she only downloaded 381 songs when others were downloading thousands!). In response to it all, Barg says

Obviously I knew it was illegal, but no one got in trouble for it

Now, I know that all higher education is not equal. And I know that maybe not all of them are as good as the University of California, San Diego, but that does not allow for such ridiculous thoughts. I think that ignorance is not a good excuse for doing wrong. The onus is on you to do what’s right. However, I think that actually knowing that something is wrong and yet still doing it speaks of some darker black.

In any case, I don’t think that it’s a matter of intelligence. I think it’s a sign of the times.

Piracy does not just affect music as I wrote in Even Worse Than At First Glance, Cheain’ Chinese, and (in regards to cheating in general) Cheaters 4 Life. Wow I did not realize that I had so many entries devoted to ranting about cheaters! But I digress.

Reasons why you shouldn’t be a (music) pirate:

1. You can afford the music (or whatever it is that you’re pirating).
• If you can’t afford it, you don’t need it.
• If you really can’t afford it, you have things that you should be doing other than listening to music anyways.
2. You can support and encourage the artists that you like to keep making music. It’s kind of like writing a blog and getting encouraged by people leaving comments. Except for them it’s people giving them money. I’m applying my energy to the wrong thing.
3. You know it’s morally wrong.
4. It’s actually against the law.

Now I admit that I’m not perfect, but I would like to think that once I knew the truth then I would change my behavior to match what I know. Not everyone is like this. But they should be. It just makes sense to have your behavior in line with your opinions, does it not? Don’t be the person who gets laughed at for coming off as stupid. Nobody wants 15 minutes of infamy.

What? Ants?!

Tagged as: Amazing, Entertainment, Learn, Pictures, Read-It, Television May 11

I really like watching The Discovery Channel. That makes me think of another show that I really have started to enjoy: Man vs Wild but that is a whole different entry.

Tonight I watched parts of Killer Ants and Ant Wars on The Discovery Channel. Of the Formicidae family, ants are infamous around the world. Now I am definitely no fan of these pesky insects, but I am most comfortable watching them from the safety of my home.

On the shows that I watched, I learned about an ant that I had not heard much of: the Siafu Ant. Apparently this is a very well-known ant from Africa. Why is it well-known? Well here are some highlights:

• They do not stay in the same place for very long, they have to up and move more than once a month. Imagine having to do that!
• They form highways before they actually move. The lead parties will stake out a new location and lay a chemical trail for others to follow. They will then clear the path of obstacles and actually create a trench for the new highway so that it will be easier for the large mass to navigate.
• There are at least 3 different classes of Siafu besides the queen and the male. They are differently sized and have different strengths. They range from the large soldier ants with crushing jaws to the small utilitarian ant that can perform any number of duties including cleaning larvae, hunting, and forming the walls of the colonies!
• They have to hunt in order to feed the millions of larvae that are produced by the queen monthly. Millions!
• To hunt, they will basically spread out along the forest floor and sweep around the area near the colony. They sense the carbon dioxide that living beings emit in order to find them! As soon as one ant encounters prey, it will release a chemical signal so that others will immediately come to help. They win by sheer power in numbers.
• Oh yes, and many of them do not have eyes. They do all of these things just using chemical signals.
• Not on the show, but reading about them online I found that they can intentionally hunt and prey on much larger (well larger than insects) animals! It’s not necessarily common, but it also definitely seems like it happens. Rabbits, vipers, and even a drunk with a broken leg were stories that I read about.

The bulldog ants are not as prominent in the world perhaps, but they are still pretty well known in their native Australia. They are large and independent ants that are in many ways opposite of the Siafu. One of the most interesting things about them is that they have venom that can cause anaphylactic shock! Apparently their venom is one of the most potent of any insect! (Of course this means that it doesn’t include snakes, spiders, etc) However, their nests are small and they will hunt almost strictly individually. However, because they are unafraid of human interaction, there can be literally once a week hospital emergencies on account of a bite.

Why??

Why do I care about all of this? Well besides the fact that it is simply amazing to see these creations doing what they do, I feel like there is so much to learn from them!

1. They are diligent in their work. You don’t see slackers messing around when they should be working.
2. They are willing to give their all for something bigger than themselves.
3. Trust is something that they can inherently do with ease.
4. Aspiration to be the greatest (although an admirable trait in some humans) is nonexistent with these creatures. We can learn to be a bit more satisfied with who we are, what we have, and so on instead of always being dissatisfied with every aspect of our lives.
5. They get their friends to help them out. Okay so that is just the Siafu…
6. But the bulldog ants are also good as they are so aptly named because they will refuse to let go once they bite. Once you get something good, you don’t let that go.
7. Don’t be afraid to up and change things around if it’s not working. When the ants run out of food, they will move. Just because you do something that you’ve always done does not mean that you are constrained to continue doing it.

There are many more I am sure. I enjoy finding life lessons where there are seemingly none. I also enjoy watching The Discovery Channel.

No Nofollow!

Tagged as: Blog, Geek, Learn, Read-It, Useful, Wordpress May 10

While reading Rory’s post on hamelife.com (which I enjoyed because it was very interesting plus my blog got a mention!) I continued surfing and happened upon this post about nofollow links.

I doubt that many of you would want to read the wikipedia article explaining what I’m talking about so I will briefly explain. Search engines (Google among them) have an algorithm that uses the amount of links to your website as a part of how to determine the important of your website (this is called your PageRank in the end). This is, in part, what is used to determine how high you are when searches are done.

However to combat people abusing the system, they started to allow you to add an attribute relationship in the links like

<a
href=”http://www.goingthewongway.com/” rel=”nofollow”>goingthewongway<a>

This would then be disregarded in the algorithm to calculate your PageRank. The bottom line is that any links that have that attribute are worth nothing for search engines.

Why is this important?

As a blogger, being read is what’s important! Search engines allow your site to be listed as “more relevant” which could allow more people to find your site and read your content. I don’t write on this blog to understand myself. I write because I like to share my thoughts and get feedback from others. So after reading the article and thinking about it myself, I realized that it definitely encourages more feedback if commenters can get something back. The big popular sites like to do fancy giveaways, but I’m not a big popular site. However, I realized that the least that I could do would be to give anyone who commented a backlink! This helps them because it ever so minutely increases their importance in the eyes of the search engine. And it would hopefully help commenters to have another incentive to leave their thoughts.

Anyways suffice to say I installed the ever so easy to use DoFollow plugin for Wordpress which removes the nofollow attribute for all user-input links (like the website that you list when you leave a comment). Happy nofollow commenting!

Career Ramblings For All

Tagged as: Internet, Learn, Read-It, Review, Useful, Work May 05

I happened on a site for Career Development a little while back (I believe from the Yahoo! homepage). It caught my eye because they had an article on helping with your resume. Now granted I already have a job, but I still remember what a pain it was to be searching for a job. At the time, I didn’t have time to read the article on doing a resume makeover, but I bookmarked the page to read at a later time. Boy am I glad that I did.

This site is run be a couple of people who have experience in corporate America. They give both their thoughts as well as their advice on topics that might be of use to those of us who are also working in some way. This ranges anywhere from the entrepreneurs to the low man on the totem pole. They have tips on resume writing, on interviewing, as well as a myriad of other topics. All of the posts are well thought out and fairly to the point (often consisting of lists). It’s especially useful reading for those looking for a job. Although the site as a whole reaches out to all of those of us who are working, individual posts aren’t always applicable. But I suppose that wide spectrum of people in the audience dictates that as necessary.

Anyways, days after initially bookmarking the page I added the site to my RSS reader. And as they say, I haven’t looked back since.

A few of my favorite posts thus far:

1. Simple Resume Tips
2. Resume Tips For Seasoned Professionals
3. Money Saving Tips

They’re having a promotion where you link to their site as well as write a review. This essentially raises your online profile by providing their readers with a link to your site, and it also raises their ranking in search engines that use backlinks as a method by which to calculate “importance.” This is fairly beneficial for both parties involved. And even though they might have gotten the idea from a certain site about how to make money online by blogging ( ), I still think it’s a useful endeavor because this site is useful for nearly everyone out there!

Cheatin’ Chinese

Tagged as: Amazing, Amusing, Entertainment, Humor, Life, Outrageous, Political, Read-It, The-News May 04

Sometimes Chinese people do good things. Sometimes Chinese people do bad things. And sometimes Chinese people sure do some stupid things.

Get this: Chinese people copied Disneyland. As in, they made a Disneyland park. Are you kidding me?!

I read an Engadget article about the fake Disneyland that got me to searching for more information. Amusingly, they have characters that closely mimic the Disney ones as well as rides that indicate how much of a fake it is. Their slogan (according to this other article) is that “Disneyland is too far.” Wow, that is unbelievable. I think that actually the most amusing thing about Beijing’s Shijingshan Amusement Park is that its website is http://www.bs-amusement-park.com. Haha you read that right, it’s the BS amusement park.

Although pretty humorous, this actually touches on a more serious issue (which was touched on at Even Worse Than At First Glance). And that issue is copyright infringement (or in this case complete disregard for copyrights whatsoever).

links:
The Standard (Chinese business newspaper) article - Touches the most on the significant copyright issues
Engadget article - Amusing pictures
Roller Coaster Database - Park information, list of rides, etc
Actual Disneyland-clone website - I don’t know Chinese (the language), but if you do then the story might get even more amusing for you