Table for one: Are there any advantages to being single?

   Since I have a hard time finding a woman who will date me, if I want to do something then I have to do it alone since my friends are married and don’t have time to do things with me. This weekend I wanted to eat out. About the only positive thing about being single is a restaurant usually can seat 1 person easily or has a full service bar meaning you pass by families and couples who are waiting for a table. As I was eating I noticed I was the only person alone, there were plenty of guys with female companions on dates. I really wish that I could have a date but unfortunately that isn’t an option for me. Even total jerks can find dates but for some reason there simply isn’t a woman who is interested in me. Women simply don’t find me attractive. Most women are looking for tall men when I’m only 5’1″ which is a severe disadvantage that disqualifies me from being a choice by nearly all women. As I realized I was the only person alone I pondered if there really are any advantages to being single for the rest of my life other than being able to get into restaurants faster than couples and families.
   I can think of several disadvantages to being single and unable to find a date such as being lonely and craving a relationship with a woman and having to accept the fact that not all men are attractive and I’m one of the unlucky guys who will never get married and can hardly find a date and end up going to dinner and movies alone. While going out alone I see several couples and it gets depressing that I can’t enjoy the companionship of a woman nor will I ever have a lifetime partner who I can love and receive love from. I will never be a father so my branch of the family tree ends with me. It’s hard to live in a house when you are the only source of income. Most of your co-workers do things with couples involved so you’re never invited to any of their get together. As your friends get married they no longer have time to do things with you. There is nobody to share moments in your life with. I will always feel a need to be loved and cannot satisfy this need in any way. I cannot sleep because I think of women and wish there was a woman by my side to talk to. I always feel awkward going to dinner or a movie alone especially when I’m sitting near an affectionate couple. People assume you are gay because you don’t have a wife. The list of disadvantages is an endless list.
   Being single for life doesn’t seem to have any advantages if you look at it. Sure you can easily get into restaurants but is this the only advantage? About the only things I can come up with as advantages to being single for my entire life is I don’t have to worry about some woman being obsessed with me and stalking me like some of my guy friends have had to deal with since women don’t find me attractive and nobody stalks someone who isn’t attractive. Since I’m not in any relationship I don’t have to worry about being in an abusive relationship when my only relationship is with myself. I don’t have to worry about my wife getting mad at me for doing something since I don’t have a wife. Since I’m not married, I don’t have to worry about getting divorced and if I will be paying child support or have any visitation rights if we divorce. Perhaps I have more freedom since I can go on vacation to almost anywhere since I don’t have to worry about entertaining children or finding a romantic place or activity for my wife since I have no wife or kids. I don’t have to worry about my wife going on a spending spree and running us out of money. There just doesn’t seem to be any advantages to being single for the rest of my life.
   For all the people who aren’t getting enough sex or treat their spouse like crap, be very thankful you have someone in your life and don’t take it for granted. Not all people can get married and they end up wanting the affection of another human being of the opposite sex that they will never get. There really isn’t any advantages to being single if you cannot find any dates and I would trade places with anyone who is married and wishes they were single.

What will future archaeologists from the future think of our civilization?

   Years ago I listened to the radio show Love Line with Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew (Pinsky) since my female co-workers were listening to the show and I had to find out why they were laughing. Some of the callers were quite entertaining as they ask some sex or relationship question and Dr. Drew gives advice along with Adam Corolla. Sometimes callers ask questions or have problems that are funny to listen to such as “Does Mountain dew work as an effective way to prevent birth?”. Of course there are also the sad stories such as women calling because they are in an abusive relationship with their boyfriend or husband, women who were raped or sexually assaulted and seeking advice on what to do next, women who found out they are pregnant and are 16 and still need to finish high school, and many other sad stories. Often a woman would call asking about breast augmentations, how to lose weight when they are already skinny, etc. Often Dr. Drew would ask the question about what future archaeologists would think about our society when they find women with breast implants? Will they think that we somehow worship breasts like other cultures would worship animals such as cats, the moon, etc. They would be puzzled since unlike other things such as foot bindings, not all women of a certain country have it done to them and in some cases it appears women have implants due to disease while others are perfectly healthy females with nothing wrong with their breasts.

   In addition to being puzzled about the appearance of breast implants in some healthy women but not others and no explanation such as religious rituals, they will be puzzled by other things they find such as:

• Breast Reduction – Both men and women specimens appear to have breast reductions performed. This is puzzling especially since there seems to be some kind of obsession for females with large breasts but some women are doing the opposite.
• Bone Lengthening – Evidence is found on some specimens of mostly males who have had both their legs cut in exactly the same spot on both sides and a metal plate is inserted. More puzzling is the metal plates appear to be used to reattach the limbs but are spaced leaving a gap forcing the bone to grow a few inches in order to reach the other bone and heal.
• Growth hormones – Evidence suggests that some men were given hormones forcing them to grow taller during childhood when it appears they were in perfect health and didn’t need any kind of growth hormone.
• Eating disorders – There appears to be a lot of women who have starved to death who weighed as much as children when there isn’t any major shortage of food to explain the neglected diet.
• deformed feet from use of high-heels and height enhancing shoes – Several women specimens have deformed feet from the use of high heel shoes with pointed toes. Some men also have deformities in their feet from wearing shoes with higher heels but not as prevalent as women.
• Enhanced genitals – Men have had their genitals increased in size and women have had deformities such as the length of their labia lips clipped on one side because of a minor size difference in length for cosmetic reasons.
• liposuction – Some of the specimens, mostly female have scars in areas such as belly, legs, and other places and it appears that the purpose was to remove fat even though these specimens weren’t morbidly obese and there were no health risks associated with their weight.
• evidence of excessive sun worshiping – It appears that for some reason there was an excessive amount of sun worshiping even in areas where there are harsh winters. In fact, there is even evidence of exposure year round to the sun using an artificial light. This appears mostly done by women.

   After an analysis of the specimens and artifacts found in archaeological digs, they determine that these strange behaviors are part of the mating ritual of our society and it seems even though our society is taught not to obsess about beauty, there is evidence that our society is way too obsessed with beauty. Beauty even seemed to be correlated with social standing as evidenced by socialites appearing to be more attractive than average and had better access to these surgical procedures. It seems that there are absolute deal breakers in the mating ritual such as short men and overweight women. They are still puzzled with some of our obsessions such as:

• There is a preference by males for females with large breasts even though this doesn’t appear to be in search of females who can produce adequate milk for their offspring. In fact, a large amount of infants are not breast fed at all!
• Women find Tall men attractive and consider short men an absolute deal breaker, men prefer Short women and being a tall woman is an absolute deal breaker. Women seem to prefer taller men for protection but it is unknown why men prefer shorter women. Both sexes (especially women) will not even consider a mate who is near their height or taller. In fact some of the couples found have been men nearly 7 feet tall with a woman who are in the 4 foot range! This is evidenced with the discovery of a larger amount of short men and tall women who appeared to have lived alone and appear to have never mated.
• Thin women are attractive even if they are so underweight that they pose a risk to their health. Women who are of a healthy weight or even a few pounds over weight seem to be absolute deal breakers since several women who were average weight and above have been found alone with no evidence that they ever had a mate. There is evidence of women who have taken drastic steps to lose weight such as stopping the consumption of food or even inducing vomiting or using laxatives after having a meal to avoid the food from making them gain weight. Most women have evidence of using diet pills and they often have scales as part of their belongings.
• Fat in some areas is considered attractive but unattractive in other areas. Women are found attractive if they have a rounded buttock figure but fat in the tummy, legs, and other areas is seen as unattractive. Both men and women get liposuction in order to remove fat from some areas. For men, it is often to remove “man boobs”, while women often have fat removed from the tummy, legs, and other areas of their body. There doesn’t seem to be such a big emphasis on a mans weight.
• High heel shoes appear to be used for cosmetic reasons for women as shown by their design that exposes most of the foot and decorative design including pointed toes, long straps, etc. For men it appears they use high heels to appear taller since their shoes hide the foot and appear to conceal the high heels making them look like normal shoes. Both men an women appear to know these shoes deform their feet but they seem to wear them anyway even if their feet are deformed from previous use.
• Implants are not just used to enhance the size of a woman’s breast. Some women have had them installed on the balls of their feet (cushioning for high heels?) and buttocks. There is an injection form that is used on the lips and even the Labia to make genitals look fuller.
• There seems to be an obsession with the genitals and how they look. For men, larger genitals are preferred by women and some men have had surgery to increase the size of their genitals. Some women have evidence that they had surgical procedures to clip part of the vaginal lips because one side appears slightly longer than the other which doesn’t seem to be an absolute deal breaker but something women feel needs to be fixed.
• There seems to be an obsession for sun worshiping among women as they have evidence of constant exposure to ultraviolet rays and remains of salons and sometimes even a persons house have a device shaped like a coffin that has lights that makes artificial sunlight during the winter months.

   The archaeologists are still puzzled as they do a further analysis of their findings during an archaeological digs and discoveries. It is as if the natural body that people were born with isn’t attractive and there is some obsession to alter the body created naturally as if nature screwed up. They are perplexed with how it seems that there are so many deal breakers and it appears that it is too easy to have some kind of deal breaker. Our society is so obsessed with changing their natural body that they are willing to have risky surgical procedures done to them that are also painful and expensive. They do things that they realize will destroy their health such as not eating at all or inducing vomiting in order to avoid weight gain even if they are a healthy weight. For women there are plenty of weight loss products and pills that they use and sometimes they abuse these pills or other drugs to keep themselves thin. Why is it that women prefer tall men apparently because they believe taller men are better able to protect them but men seem to do the opposite preferring shorter men canceling out the attempt by women to increase height? Why is it that men and women are willing to live a life alone even when there are plenty of men who are short, women who are tall, and overweight women who are lonely and it would seem logical that people would realize that if they want to reproduce, they may need to lower their expectations. I think archaeologists will be confused when they find the remains of our civilization.

Is privacy a thing of the past in the United States?

   After having some dirty laundry published about me by my little stalker (See my rebuttals to shortmenareugly). She was able to find post that I made nearly 20 years ago. A lot of people probably question how on earth can there be archives of what I posted nearly 20 years ago. In the 1990′s a search engine named DejaNews obtained the Usenet (also called Newsgroups postings). You could use Dejanews to find postings on the Usenet and I believe it also searched the Internet if I remember right but it was primarily for newsgroups. Eventually google purchased Dejanews and now owns these Usenet/Newsgroup postings that go back to the 1980s! With the help of google you can look up what someone said nearly 20 years ago on the Internet.

   My little stalker also was able to find more recent information such as I am opposed to SOPA and PIPA and in 2007 signed a petition that was about the alleged abuse of the H1-B visa program that grants foreign workers visa’s to study in the USA and get on-the-job experience. A lot of people in the Information Technology field have made accusations that companies have turned them down in favor of H1-B visa holders who work for cheaper wages. Not only are companies allegedly exploiting the cheap labor costs of H1-B applicants, these people cannot simply leave a business if they are being treated unfairly by their employer like US Citizens can do. If one employer pays you a poor wage, you can always apply for another company but H1-B visa applicants are stuck with the company who hired them since they can easily lose their visa if they try to leave their employer. She also tried to use my opposition to SOPA and PIPA as basis to argue that I support piracy. I doubt anyone believes that piracy isn’t a problem but people disagree with drastic regulations such as SOPA and PIPA that give too much power to companies and the US Government that can be abused and requires Internet Service Providers to keep records of your activity online and block known piracy sites or face being shut down. Major web sites also faced the risk of being shut down based on content posted on their webpage. For example, YouTube was recently sued by Viacom for content posted by a member whose son danced to a Prince song called “Let’s go Crazy”. Under SOPA and PIPA, the US Government could easily issue a shutdown order and shut YouTube down without due process and because one of their members broke the law. This would be like you being arrested because someone used your car to commit a crime such as robbing a bank. This was bad legislation and it was scarry that both acts nearly became law. The Department of Homeland Security already has plenty of ways to shut down websites as shown in the shutdown request of Megauploads. With how easy it is to infringe on someones copyright even if you didn’t intend to infringe on their copyright, you could find yourself in trouble and have your website shut down. You could even be innocent of copyright infringement or infringing on a patent and be shut down and have to prove you are innocent in order to get your site back up! During this time, you lose advertising revenues and orders because your site was taken down until further notice.

   Effective March 1st, 2012, Google has a new privacy policy that was simplified but allows them to collect information from their various services. Keep in mind that Google owns the most widely used search engine, a lot of people use gmail or googlemail, use google maps, use YouTube that is a part of the companies owned by Google, your usage habits from the Chrome browser, information from your Android based phone, and many other companies you may not know Google is involved in. One email provider, uses Postini to block spam which is a product of google. Google is known to store your emails on gmail practically forever and as evidenced by their acquision of Dejanews, they love to archive information.

   Google isn’t the only company involved in what is now called Data Mining, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft who owns Hotmail, and other companies have seen the profit potential and now share information about their users to marketers. Even the US Government is involved in Data Mining in order to fight the “War on Terror”. Information from facebook such as everything you “like” can be shared with marketers and google indicated that information in your emails (if you are a gmail customer) and web search results can be combined with other information from their empire of sites to share information about you that is gold to marketers. Think of it, a company looking for people who are interested in a certain hobby can receive a lead list from Facebook and Facebook uses this information to post advertisements based on your likes. Sites like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and others may offer free email or a free place to publish a profile but they make money somehow and this is through data mining giving advertisers lead lists of people who would be interested in buying their products. This is similiar to the 1980s where telemarketers were collecting phone numbers and other information on people who may be interested in buying products but sites like Google and Facebook can provide much more information! In high school I used to work for a telemarketing company answering calls to products and sometimes people had minor questions about the product. In most cases we were required to collect their name, address, and telephone number to “register the call” when the actual reason was to store information about callers that could be shared with clients. In this case you could refuse to give out your details.

   Not only is your Facebook profile interesting to the marketing industry, employers, colleges, and even banks are looking at profiles of applicants. We’ve always been told not to publicly post on a social networking site photos of us drinking or comments about some party we had but employers and colleges are actually looking at not only pictures but who you associate with and comments you have made in status updates. This will result in people censoring what they say anywhere online because years later they could be looking for a job and an employer could decide based on comments you made several years ago that you are not a good employee and refuse to hire you. Banks could refuse to lend you money and even credit agencies could knock down your credit rating based on your comments and the friends in your Facebook profile. The rationale by the banks is that if you hang around with people who are not the best at keeping their financial obligations under control, you too could start to care less about your financial obligations. Most users of Facebook don’t even know the financial standing of the people who they have as friends and even if they have friends that are not good at budgeting money this doesn’t mean they will follow in the footsteps of their friends. A potential employer could see a comment you made indicating SOPA or PIPA should be stopped and decide that you are someone who supports piracy! Some employers and colleges have even asked users to give them their Facebook password or access the private section of a Facebook page during an interview. Some have even required employees and students to be friends with at least one member of management so they can keep tabs on them!

   Information from old emails opens up a whole new treasure chest of information about people. They can look at blogs you have written, the types of emails your receive such as stores you frequently shop, your friends, etc. In addition, information can be mined from these emails about the account holder and anyone who sent an email to a gmail user. Sites like Amazon send targeted ads and from these targeted ads, employers get a glimpse of what items you buy. Some people have kept their receipts stored on gmail which is even more helpful for employers, banks, and colleges. They can take a look at what you normally buy. Membership to sites such as support sites for illnesses can be among your emails meaning an employer can find out you have some illness and you would never know that they discriminated against you because they went through your emails and found you were a member of some support site for a certain health problem. All this information can give an inaccurate picture of who you really are when an employer, college, or bank are looking for reasons that indicate you are irresponsible and a risk.

   If you think the Federal Government will do something about this violation of Privacy, you are wrong! Even the Federal Government is involved in data mining to fight “The War on Terror” and I imagine other wars such as “The War on Drugs”. Under NADA that was recently passed, you can be labeled a terrorist and detained indefinitely without due process. The definition of a terrorist is broad and could easily include people who don’t support the current President of The United States, oppose certain laws, etc. This will eventually result in censorship since whatever you say or do on the Internet can be used against you to determine if you are a terrorist. In addition, Google and other providers of search engines can provide a listing of your searches to authorities and you’re interests could be red flags indicating you are a potential terrorist. In addition, Android based phones are one of the most popular phones on the market and Android is owned by google along with youtube. People who are current users of Android phones don’t have the option to “opt-out” of google without paying an early termination fee. The information on a smartphone can be a goldmine! not only can they monitor your surfing habbits, for most Android phones you need a gmail account to use Android, and information such as your contacts, GPS information, etc can be added to a profile to share with not only marketers but also the US Government. Even if you don’t have a google email account and avoid using google as your search engine, it is almost impossible to avoid google! First they own over 60 companies including YouTube. If you send an email to someone with a gmail account, the information you provided to your friend with a google account can be stored in their archives even though you do not support their terms of service or may not even know they collect information about you or refuse to join due to their privacy policy.

   Are there any alternatives to google products? Well, sort of. First you have to remember that Yahoo, Hotmail, Bing, and AOL (Who had search records breaches several years ago but didn’t have personally identifiable information), keeps track of your search habits in some way or use your mail to gather advertising information. After all, Data Mining is very profitable and hackers are also involved in data mining along with corporations and The US Government. Cnet published an interesting article titled “Privacy-Centric Alternatives to Google, Gmail, and Facebook“. Lifehacker also created an article called Going Google-Free: The Best Google Alternatives on the web. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has create a Gmail Privacy Frequently Asked Questions page. Instead of using google as a search engine you can use a number of alternative search engines including Duck Duck Go who claims not to keep records of your searches, you can also try ixquick.com or it’s relative Startpage where both allow you to access a listed website through a proxy so your IP address is hidden when you visit the site. They also claim not to keep records of your IP Address. These sites may not be as good as google but at least you don’t have to give up your own personal privacy to use them! Be sure to use TOR which hides your true IP address.

Sources:
Banks Judge you by your Facebook friends – NBC Bay Area, December 15, 2011
Colleges Seek More Access To Applicants’ Facebook Pages – Time Moneyland, March 6, 2012
Going Google-Free: The Best Google Alternatives on the web.
New Google Privacy Policy Allows Even More Access to Personal Information.
Privacy-Centric Alternatives to Google, Gmail, and Facebook

Online Dating: Is it really the place to find love in the 21st Century?

   Ever since the Internet was publicly available, the world around us has been transformed. The information posted on the Internet has a wealth of knowledge that a local library can’t provide. We can shop from the privacy of our own house even in pajamas for items that may not be available in any of our local stores. A site like Amazon has more books available that almost any bookstore plus Amazon also sells music and almost any other items. We no longer have to go through the hassle of going to a local business to buy something and if they don’t have the item in stock wait on them to receive another shipment or go from store to store to find the item. We could order this item to arrive right at our doorstep and unlike a local store, the Internet is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week including holidays. The Internet has become so convenient that most of the items we buy, the information we read, and even the news we read can be obtained from the Internet and traditional mediums such as newspapers are predicted to be a thing of the past like phone booths (sorry Bill and Ted but time travel will not be possible in a phone booth anymore),and land lines have as a result of cell phones. With the convenience of the Internet and the ability to access people across the globe it comes to no surprise that the Internet has become a place to meet a potential boyfriend or girlfriend and perhaps a lifetime partner. Unlike meeting people in the real world, you can basically enter what you want such as most women will put men who are at least 5’8″ and they can filter out all men who are under their height preference. If they were to do this in person, it would be nearly impossible to avoid all the men shorter than their minimum height preference. Online Dating is a dream come true for most people! Women can meet only men who are their minimum height preference and men can meet only women who are not overweight. We can also specify that we only want people of certain races, religions, political affiliations, etc. What about the men who have been eliminated from searches by women because they don’t meet any of their minimum height preferences, or the women who have been eliminated from searches by men because they are overweight?

   For the less than desirable people who fall through the cracks of filtering, people will never see their profile and there is nothing the filtered people can do about it! Is it an absolute deal breaker that a man falls short of a woman’s height preference but has all the other qualities that most women are looking for? Is it an absolute deal breaker for men if a woman is overweight but has all the other attributes that they are looking for in a woman. These people who have been filtered out do not get the chance to have their profile seen by others. For men, they must reveal their height in almost every online dating site and women usually are required to enter a body description through a check box listing which includes options like “thin”, “athletic”, “well endowed”, “normal”, “slightly overweight”, or “overweight”. If a man exaggerates his height or a woman calls herself “slightly overweight”, they get accused of making false statements in order to defeat the filters if someone meets them in person only to find out they are not what their profile describes them as. A body description is a subjective term, you can easily argue that someone is not “slightly overweight” claiming they are heavy or the other way around. Some women are a normal weight but see themselves as overweight or are seen by others as overweight. Some sites allow you to not answer these questions but when someone sees a profile where a height says “no answer” or body type says “no answer” they assume the worst and don’t even look at the profile plus most filters eliminate people who don’t answer these questions! When most women are looking for a guy who is at least 5’8″ or taller, it is disappointing to know that if you are shorter than 5’8″, you will be filtered by every woman and not get a single response to your profile and it isn’t even worth paying for a membership or even creating a free profile. Same thing for overweight women! In addition, you usually have to provide a picture but if you don’t, people won’t even see your profile since they usually pick photos only. Even if you provide pictures, you could end up in the search results right next to someone who is drop dead gorgeous and your profile goes unnoticed because the gorgeous person gets everyone’s attention. People have been known to enhance their photos to make them appear more beautiful by Photoshopping the image or going to Glamor Shots for a quick makeover meaning the photo isn’t an accurate representation of the person current looks. In addition, the photo could be taken when they were younger or before they changed their looks. Then there is the “About me” sections where you describe yourself but be careful, it’s a writing contest and it is easy to make yourself sound boring or even creepy! Even if you are not eliminated by the filters, your photo(s), what you say on your profile can result in you being rejected when you are limited to how much you can say about yourself and perhaps you are not the best of a writer or not good at describing yourself without making you sound like a boring person. Perhaps you are the type that people would have to meet in person in order to appreciate the beautiful person you are. In the online dating world, this is impossible!

   The world of online dating has seemed to turn people into believers in the fairy tale that they will find a prince or princess who is exactly what they want instead of someone who may not be everything they want but someone who has enough qualities for you to choose them as your lifetime partner. As the lyrics from a song from the Rolling Stones that my dad use to listen to all the time while I was growing up says: “You can’t always get what you want.” All you have to do is take a look at any online personal site to see how dreamy people are, their profiles will explain exactly who they are looking for and they won’t settle for anything less. You must be a certain height, body type, political affiliation, etc or you won’t be considered. People can even narrow down their search even more such as saying that people with a certain hair color such as Blond Hair need only apply! How can someone judge who you are by looking at a picture or two of you and reading your profile when they have never met you in person? Perhaps there is a profile of someone that you filtered out that would be an excellent choice for you even though they don’t have everything you are looking for. A person can be a good soul mate for you but not be the best of writers and sound like they are boring or a waste of time in their profile or not have all the attributes you are looking for but enough to make you happy.

   Some Online Dating sites go further and decide for you who would be a good match for you based on certain “dimensions”. How do we know the people selected as our most compatible choices really are compatible other than the site indicates they have patented their technology and claim it is fool proof. Think of it, the woman who has been attacking me for being a short guy complained that she joined a site that listed a bunch of short men as the best possible choices for her based on their patented system of match finding when she absolutely hates short men as much as the KKK hates certain races. To her it is a very important deal if some guy isn’t her minimum height preference even though she is shorter than 5 feet, she currently has a boyfriend who is 6’1″! This site is so exclusive that they have rejected people they deem to be a person who is not relationship material. In fact, I know someone who was rejected by this site! Luckily he was able to meet someone offline since it seems this site was wrong since he is now married to a woman and they get along well. Some people have accused the site eHarmony of rejecting certain people based nothing to do with these dimensions such as some people claim short men are more likely to be rejected by eHarmony regardless of how they answer their questions. With people turning to online sites more and more relying on them to choose their match, people like my friend will eventually be screwed because in the online dating world, they won’t be able to be seen by others looking for someone. For short men like me and women who may be overweight, it already appears to be a hopeless situation and we should prepare to be alone for the rest of our life!

   I personally think the entire online dating scene is a big fraud and these sites are taking advantage of singles looking to meet other singles. Most of the sites have a similar plan where you can post a profile for free but to talk to someone or respond to someone who contacts you, you will need to buy a full membership which is something like $9.95 a month or $119.40 a year or even more! Are you getting your money’s worth to a site if nearly all people who are looking for relationships with people of your gender and orientation are filtering out your profile by choosing a preference that you lack such as not being tall enough as a man or being a woman who is overweight?

   One time I joined the free membership option of an online dating site and received several responses the first day I registered but I would have to upgrade my membership to a paid membership if I wanted to read their messages or respond to them, After I upgraded to a 1 month trial paid membership and responded to these women who were supposedly interested in me, I received no response back. It was a pain to cancel since they made all kinds of restrictions and even tried to continue billing me after I had terminated my membership. I think online dating sites deliberately add fake respondents in order to get people to buy a paid membership. After all, they make no money if people have a free membership and never get a response and never upgrade to a paid membership. The free dating sites are also being purchased by the paid online dating sites which makes me wonder if they are trying to eliminate free dating sites because they pose a threat to their business model of charging people to meet singles.

   Several years ago I was a member of AOL (probably everyone has been a member once in their life) and they had a feature called Love@AOL. At first it was free and it was fun posting there but then Match.com stepped in and started offering the two levels of membership saying that by offering the paid membership option, they are doing a service to us users since spammers won’t buy paid memberships and we should all buy paid memberships and if we don’t we will be restricted to only posting an ad. I really didn’t get much spam in the first place and the few responses I did get on Love@AOL were legitimate people but unfortunately for various reasons, decided I wasn’t interesting enough for them. Why join their paid membership when I am paying for nothing since no women were interested in me in the first place when it was free? There was a free online dating site offered by my local newspaper and suddenly Match.com purchased this site and made it part of their dating site too making the same argument that a paid site eliminates spam. I read with interest a PC Magazine article Online Dating: Finding Love on the Web. In this article I read that Match.com purchased OKCupid on February 2, 2011 for $50 million. Apparently OKCupid offered a lot of free options and even a co-founder argued that you should not have to pay for online dating in a blog post titled “why users should never pay for online dating” that was taken down after the acquisition by Match.com. You can see a copy of this blog from the Internet Archive site: www.archive.org which is an interesting read. Will other free sites such as Plenty of Fish also be purchased by Match.com or other pay online dating sites? Will free sites such as Plenty of Fish decide to start charging for their services? Eventually it seems the free sites will be gone either by acquisitions from paid dating sites or deciding on their own that they can make money off of their free service and decide to begin charging for their services that they currently offer free of charge. If online dating sites are the future of dating, plenty of people will find themselves living their lifetime alone!

Valentines Day isn’t a day of celebration for everyone.

   Ever since Christmas we have been bombarded by ads on great gift ideas for our sweetheart. It seems is if everyone is trying to make romantic plans and buy gifts for Valentines Day that is a day people celebrate love. What if you are not loved at all? For nearly all people Valentines Day will be a chance to celebrate the love in their life. Perhaps people will be having a romantic getaway with their significant other. Perhaps they plan a big dinner, a romantic night, and gifts to celebrate their love.


   People who have someone who loves them should be thankful, a lot of people don’t realize there are people out there who are not loved and will spend Valentine’s Day wishing they could have a romantic dinner with a special someone or have a chance to spend quality time with someone they love. They see a romantic night as something everyone does for Valentines Day but there are people out there who have spent their Valentines Days alone wishing that they can have just one romantic night but when nobody loves you, this isn’t possible.

   The problem is not everyone can be loved and a lot of us face lonliness and rejection for the rest of the year making Valentines Day the worst time of the year since we are reminded how lonely we really are and how much we wish there was someone out there who loved us and is willing to spend time with us. Because I am socially awkward, and don’t meet the minimum height preferences of nearly all women, Valentines Day is the worst day of the year for me. For me, Valentines Day 2012 will be like the rest of my Valentines Days: A day where I am reminded how some people just aren’t fortunate enough to be loved and a life of lonliness is the worst form of punishment a person can face. A lot of people take for granted that they are fortunate enough to have someone who loves them and is willing to spend quality time with them and even a romantic dinner or night on the town with them. They never realize that there are people out there who aren’t so fortunate and are lonely. They don’t realize that there are people out there like me who simply cannot enjoy any night with a companion, especially Valentines Day. People like me have been told our entire life by others that “someday, a person will show up in your life” when the reality is, this is nothing more than a fairy tale but you always hope that it really happens but reality isn’t some story like Cinderella. In real life you could spend the rest of your life alone!

   So when you celebrate this Valentines Day with the person you love be very thankful that someone loves you! Not everyone can be so lucky and a lot of us never get the chance to enjoy a romantic night for two, especially on Valentines Day. There is nothing as painful as being unloved and lonely. A lot of things others take for granted such as spending quality time just for one night with someone who loves them is something that I am unable to achieve. Someone said how great of a life single men have but in reality, being a single guy who can’t find any women who lives him is a very painful experience especially when February 14th comes along. It’s really hard for the majority to comprehend how tough it really is for the unloved on Valentines Day. Some even make fun of us which ads insult to the pain we already feel. I’m not asking for much, just someone who loves me and is willing to spend some time with me. It’s not fun going out to dinner or watching a movie alone and I’ve had to do this for my entire life. Unfortunately if you look at the population figures, there are more men than there are women and it is a very competetive race among us men with women have the option to choose based on height and other attributes that a person is born with. All of us men strive to be loved by someone, but not all of us will be loved by a woman.

Quick update on Shortmenareugly.

   Yesterday my attorney fought an injunction filed by her attorney to remove my blog especially my rebuttals to her blog. I decided that I should not have to remove my blog or the rebuttals I made to her blog on my blog that was created because she was censoring my comments (and others) on her blog resulting in her making accusations but me being unable to tell my side of the story. After all, she is already accusing me of censorship even though she censored me and others who disagreed or questioned her side of the story by deleting posted comments from people who disagree with her and refusing to even post comments made by me and others who she knew would disagree with her. I decided that by removing my blog that is rebuttals to her blog I would be committing censorship which was the reason these rebuttals and comments people made happened in the first place. Even though she removed her blog, I have no intentions of removing my rebuttals. She was unsuccessful in her injunction but does plan to appeal. Meanwhile the criminal case against her will begin sometime next month. Since this case is ongoing I can’t reveal the charges she faces without damaging the case against her.

   I also wanted to make clear that she wasn’t forced to take down her blog by me, my attorney, or any law enforcement official. She did this on her own after being contacted by law enforcement and realizing they are investigating her blog. It’s unknown why she deleted her posts but I can speculate it’s possible she thought deleting the posts would destroy the evidence even though there were archive copies made by various sources and even if nobody created archives, WordPress can give us archives since like deleting a file on you computer, it isn’t really gone. All that the delete command does as update the disk tables to indicate that the area the file resides can now be written on since there is no longer a file reserving this space and in most cases files can be recovered by law enforcement. In the case of wordpress, the blogs are still there but are no longer displayed but for legal reasons, all websites have a retention period before deleting entries (some will retain blogs and other files and information forever – even if you delete your account). All her blogs and posts can be used against her in court.

   I also wanted to address a rumor that was posted in a 2010 blog that is believed to be another blog on Blogger.com created by this same individual that announced that I will leave Utah by June 10th, 2010. I have had a lot of people both expressing concerns that I am making a “decision based on emotion instead of logic” and some not so kind people who have to make comments such as “Don’t let the door hit your a$# on the way out” or asking why I am still here. The claim that I was leaving Utah by June 10, 2010 is false and I never made such a claim! Do you really trust someone writing in a blog? She knows very little about me other than some distorted information from her boyfriend who happened to attend the same school as me and disliked me and is biased in his opinion of me.

   Keep in mind that I’m a private person who is socially awkward and only close friends and family members will know about such a plan to leave Utah. I do thank the few who have expressed concern that I am not thinking logically to make such a decision even though this blog post and rumor are both false. I admit that I haven’t had the best of times here in Utah but all the individuals who care enough to talk to me about this have brightened a lot of dark days in my life and made living here more bearable. Without you, I doubt I could deal with the hatefull comments I continue to receive ever since there was an announcement that I am “leaving Utah and will move out by June 10, 2010.” In addition I’ve had people offering to help with my current crisis where I have been the target of this woman who has taken the hate by women towards short men to an extreme level. I may have appeared ungreatful but people like you are very helpful and your willingness to discuss my situation with me and provide support and advice through my rough times is something that I can’t think of a way to thank you for! Since I have very few friends to talk to, it’s hard dealing with being hated so much! In fact, this is why ShortMenAreUgly chose me as a target.

Thanks,

Marc

What’s the deal with social networking sites and status updates?

   I’ve grown up around computers for nearly my entire life. I grew up in the 1980s when Atari® had some video game consoles such as the 2600 and going to the arcade was a past time. I remember one day seeing someone bring a bag of quarters to play Pac Man® all night. Most stores started to add a small arcade in their store and they became more common in stores than pop machines. The thought of playing these video games at home was exciting and when my parents purchased an Atari® 400, with 16K of memory and able to tackle any game of the time I was excited to use it. I noticed an unusual game cartridge that my dad had purchased called “Basic”. I plugged it in to see what this game was all about and the only thing that happened when I plugged it in was the screen turning blue and the word “Ready.” appeared in medium white text. Directly below the word “Ready.” was a blinking cursor. I had no idea what this game was and watched my dad reading some book about this game. I found the book after my dad finished reading it and learned that Basic wasn’t a game but a programming language. I spent a lot of time programming in the Atari 400®. Of course a lot of that time was rewriting programs that I couldn’t recover from the cassette I recorded to since the Atari 400® wasn’t really designed for programming and unlike its cousin (The Atari 800®), it couldn’t handle a disk drive so you had to save programs to cassettes which was unreliable.

   As soon as the Commodore 64® came out with its 64K of RAM, I knew I had to have one and acted like Ralphie in the classic movie A Christmas Story in my quest to get a Commodore 64® for Christmas. My plan worked and I enjoyed programming with the Commodore 64® but eventually the Commodore 64® was outdated and I bought my first PC which had a whopping 1 Megabyte of RAM, a 40 Megabyte hard drive, and 12 Megahertz of processing power! Unlike the Atari 400® both the Commodore 64® and my first PC were able to handle a disk drive.

   I have enjoyed watching computers advance to the point that a lot of smart phones, PDA’s, Calculators, and other electronics are smaller than these earlier computers but have much faster processors, more memory, and can do things that I never thought would be possible in a hand-held device. I always seemed to be understand everything to do with computers such as the Internet when it first came publicly available but one thing I cannot understand is status updates from sites like Facebook® and Twitter®.

   First came MySpace® where you could find and keep up with old friends, meet new people, Add photos, and even become “friends” with a music group and learn about upcoming concerts and when their next CD will come out. Of course Classmates.com® was around before MySpace but also required a membership fee if you wanted to use all of its functions which were also available on MySpace®. On MySpace®, you could also post status updates and include music on your profile. Nothing like taking a look at someones profile only to hear music that they love but you cannot stand listening to. I always hated Internet sites that would bombard you with songs or videos when all you want to do is read from their site. Even worse is using a search engine to find a how-to site to do a basic task only to find out it is a video instead of text. It’s difficult to skim through a video for the important details. MySpace® seemed to grow outdated overnight and was replaced by Facebook®. Twitter also entered the race with the ability to post updates limited to a certain amount of characters. The traditional online search sites Google® and Yahoo® were both trying to make their sites similar to Facebook® and other social media sites. Google® is even making their own social networking site called Google+®. Most sites now have a feature where you can share their site with friends on Facebook® if for some odd reason you want to share the site with friends who probably won’t be as interested as much as you are. Even TV programs have created accounts on Facebook® and Twitter® including local news channels. Most of my friends aren’t interested in a lot of the things I read or find interesting so why would I want to share it with them? What is so important about status updates?

   It’s nice to post important things in your life but some information can be misused by total strangers. There was even a site created to raise awareness of sharing too much information by telling you who isn’t home based on Twitter® posts. People often post messages on Facebook®, Twitter®, and other social networking sites indicating that they are not home with status updates such as “I’m going to the store, be right back”, “I’ll be gone on a vacation to Hawaii for a few weeks”, etc. Strangers may find your status updates more important than your friends do. Someone planning to rob your house when you’re not home would love to know when you are not home or even on vacation for a few weeks. Other criminals such as Stalkers, serial rapists, or home invasion burglars would love to know when you are home.

   Police have always suggested that you never make it obvious that you are not home such as turning off all your lights and not letting your mail and newspapers accumulate while on vacation since a thief considers these signs that you’re not home. With a status post, a thief doesn’t have to look for obvious signs, they can just read posts from you saying you are not home. In the 1980s, the police would often come to school to teach us about kidnappings, thefts, and other serious crimes and how to avoid becoming a victim. They would tell us that when talking on the phone, never to tell strangers that our parents aren’t home. Instead, we should tell the stranger that our parents are unable to answer the phone since some bad guys (including pedophiles) have been known to call to find out if your parents are home. Nothing like a child posting a message on their twitter® or Facebook® account such as “I’m home alone, my parents went out to dinner.”

   Updating your status has become so important that former Miami Hurricanes head coach Randy Shannon had to ban players from posting on twitter® while playing a game! Players were actually posting status updates while playing games as well as posting before and after games! They weren’t focused on playing the game, they were interested in keeping up with friends. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise since people have tried posting status updates while driving cars, and almost anywhere else. Why do my friends need to know what I’m doing at every moment? What if I don’t want them to know every time I go somewhere? Do my friends really need to know every time I go to the store or when I go to the restroom? Sometimes I would rather not share things with friends. This reminds me of an old cell phone commercial where a guy is in a crowd talking to his girlfriend who is in a window above saying “The doctor said it’s not contagious.” This sparked the interest of the people in the crowd who wondered what they were talking about.

   Things that people have posted on twitter®, Facebook®, and other sites have also gotten them into trouble. For example, I remember reading about a juror who posted on her Facebook® profile a message indicating that she and the jury were going to convict someone of a crime later in the day. Some people have posted that they are going on vacation and have been caught by their employer who happened to read their post and were surprised to read that they were going on a vacation when they have been calling in sick and their boss is a little worried about them. If only Ferris Bueller had Twitter! He had to create contraptions such as using a keyboard to play sounds of snoring and rig his door so the covers to his bed moved when his parents opened the door to check in on him so they thought he was in bed. He had to come up with an elaborate scheme such as needing a kidney transplant and using his keyboard to make his voice sound terrible as he called the school to report that he won’t be able to attend school. He also had to use his trusty keyboard to create a message when someone knocks on the door to indicate that he can’t answer the door. If he had twitter, he could just post a message that he was not feeling well. Of course, he might ruin it if he also wanted to tell his friends about how much fun he was having cutting classes and going to a baseball game with his friend. His friend was trying to avoid his father finding out that they were driving around in his sports car so posting updates may defeat the purpose.

   I thought I would never find something to do with computers and the Internet that I simply don’t understand. Maybe I’m getting a little too old! I doubt I would have anything interesting to post. I doubt others would find it interesting that I’m watching an old 80′s movie such as Naked Gun while eating a bowl of Top Ramen noodles for dinner. Maybe I could tweet quotes from the late Leslie Nielsen in his movies such as “The only time I gamble is when I buy Chinese food!”, “You’re a dying breed like people who can name all 50 states!”, “Isn’t that the fault of the voters?” (a response after the mayor asks him if he realized that because of him breaking a fence to the zoo animals were running loose all over town), “Go about your business people, there’s nothing to see here” (probably would work better if I was standing in front of a fireworks factory that was on fire like the movie), and many other funny quotes from his movies.

   I’m not always doing things that my friends find interesting such as reading some news story that bores them, reading a book on computers, writing a computer program, and many other things I do that probably would bore my friends to death. Some people have a lot of action to post about on Facebook® or twitter® such as the guy in downtown Ogden who was in a hostage standoff with police in a hotel room. He left status updates and his friends even posted back to warn him where the police were. Since his profile was public, others posted comments about the crime he was committing and the police were even following his posts. Visitors to Ogden, Utah who were staying at the Marriott across the street probably never expected such action in our town! Don’t worry, we weren’t expecting this kind of action in our town either.

SOPA and PIPA: Two poorly written bills that could become law in the USA!

   To combat the problem of piracy, two laws have been considered that are poorly written and may actually pass! It’s hard to believe that here in the United States, these laws even have made it so close to becoming law. Piracy is a problem and as someone who works in the IT industry I woudn’t be too happy to create some innovative software product only to lose money from my efforts because someone was offering free bootleg copies of my software or stole my idea and is now making a profit. The issue is how far should we be able to go to enforce violations? I think people still should have the right to make a copy of a CD, DVD, Blu-Ray or whatever as a backup. Also, I think as long as you are not attempting to make a profit off of your media collection, recording music, movies, etc onto a computer and onto a MP3 player should be legal when this is technically illegal since you made 2 copies. In my opinion The Digital Millennium Copyright Act goes to far.
   It comes to no surprise that like The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, both SOPA and PIPA are supported by the Recording Industry of America (RIAA) and The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). First they were going after individuals who were involved in piracy but this probably costs a lot of time and financial resources to hunt down these people. These two groups would rather have legislation that goes after the websites and big corporations who have more money to pay out if there was a law forcing them to police their sites and be liable for copyright infringement and Piracy committed by a user. SOPA and it’s evil twin PIPA effectively will do this but also result in censorship.
   Already I am bothered by anti-piracy tools such as the Microsoft® Genuine Advantage that came with Windows XP® that insures us consumers purchase a real Microsoft copy of windows instead of a pirated copy. It’s easy to buy a real copy, just go to a reputable seller since most are authorized Microsoft Dealers. Should customers who purchased a legitimate copy of Windows be treated as if they purchased a bootleg copy or have intentions of using their legitimate copy to create pirated copies? I had an installation of Windows XP® that worked fine for 2 years then suddenly one day I was greeted by the message that my copy of Windows XP® isn’t legitimate. I had to call Microsoft and get another key even though my copy was a legitimate copy purchased from newegg.com. If it wasn’t legitimate, why did it take two years for Microsoft’s own piracy detection software to detect my copy as fake? Wouldn’t I be unable to activate my copy of Windows XP® after installing it during the phase where I must activate it with the key code that came in the box with my legitimate copy of Windows XP®? It turns out there were some “false positives” where users had to call Microsoft for a new key after their copy of Windows XP® suddenly without warning was declared to be a pirated copy as I remember a magazine at the time mention and a patch was issued. There was also a considerable debate if Microsoft Genuine Advantage® was legitimate software or spyware since it uses a listing of your hardware as a way to determine if you attempted to install your copy of Windows XP® on another machine. In my case I made no changes to my computer but for some people it was possible that if they upgraded their motherboard and other hardware, they would be greeted by this message I got and have to call Microsoft because they upgraded their system causing Microsoft Genuine Advantage® to assume they attempted to install their copy of Windows XP® onto another machine. With the people who currently use Windows XP® despite it being no longer supported by Microsoft what happens if they are greeted with this message now? Since Microsoft no longer supports Windows XP®, would they just tell the user that they cannot help them and that the only option is to upgrade to Windows 7® or Windows 8®? For people who haven’t seen this happen, when a windows copy is flagged as a pirated copy, most of it’s functionality is disabled rendering your copy of Windows XP® worthless until it is activated. It can also cause your copy of Microsoft Office® to be declared as a pirated copy and also be worthless until you activate it by calling Microsoft for a new key. For some reason they really didn’t question if I had a legitimate copy other than asking where I purchased my copy from and giving me the lecture that I should only buy from Microsoft Authorized Resellers.
   One of my installations of Microsoft Windows 7® was troublesome. I ordered a laptop with a hard disk that was only 120 MB and Lenovo®, Installed Vista® on the hard drive but also created partitions for the Windows Vista Recovery Disk (not a great place if your Hard Drive Fails) and another partition for their tools which turned out to be incompatible with Windows Vista® which was one of the main reasons I upgraded to Windows 7® after only 2 years since it was impossible to remove all the junkware installed on my laptop that was incompatible with Windows Vista® and caused Windows Vista® to become even more unstable. I decided to buy a larger hard drive and do a clean install with my upgrade edition which I have done before. This time when I entered my key after the installation, I was informed that either I had a pirated copy of Windows 7® or entered an invalid key. I checked the several characters of the key I entered and determined that I didn’t make a typo entering the key. I was puzzled since I had the old hard drive with Windows Vista® connected. I did a google® search and found that most likely the Windows 7® installation software couldn’t see my copy of Windows Vista® since like most laptop users, I encrypted my hard drive just in case my laptop was stolen. It turned out that I had to remove the new hard drive and install Windows 7® on the same low capacity hard drive that Vista® was installed on since even though I connected the old drive to the laptop, it couldn’t read the installation and didn’t consider the recovery partition to be a legitimate copy. In order to read the Windows Vista® partition, I had to boot to Windows Vista and do an upgrade install. What a hassle! So now I have to do an image copy of this hard drive when I get time to do it in order to transfer my Windows 7® installation to the new higher capacity hard drive! I wouldn’t be surprised if after I do this I get the message that my copy of Windows 7® isn’t legitimate and will have to call Microsoft in order to get a new key. All these hassles and I’m one of the customers who purchases genuine Microsoft software and have no intentions of making bootleg copies to sell to others. If I have to shell out money for what I think is an overpriced Operating System, others should have to do the same!
   The RIAA and the MPAA have been very protective of their works and have demanded changes to copyright laws because of piracy. They have even made dire predictions on the future of Movies and Music if they don’t get their way. When it was first possible to record music to tapes, The RIAA predicted that they would be run out of business in the 1980s due to piracy. When recordable VHS video tapes were available, the MPAA also predicted that they will be run out of business because of the ability to record movies which will cause pirates to run them out of business. When computers were capable of recording Movies and Music, again the RIAA and MPAA were predicting they would lose tons of money and be run out of business as a result of piracy. In fact, the reason there were recordable Music CD’s and recordable Data CD’s when recordable CD’s first came out wasn’t because they were different. In fact, the only difference between a Music and Data recordable CD was you were paying a couple of dollars to offset the losses the RIAA predicted they would lose during the 1980s from piracy. From what I can gather when recordable cassettes came out, this law was passed and it applied to CD’s when recordable CD’s came out. Of course people realized there wasn’t any difference between Data and Music CD’s so everyone bought the cheaper Data CD’s. The RIAA started to employ ways to prevent people from making copies. One example is to install a rootkit and one rootkit as part of Digital Rights Management (DRM) or what some have called “Digital Restrictions Management” was The Sony/BMG Rootkit which even had a major security hole that could be exploited by hackers and was labeled as spyware since like Microsoft Genuine Advantage® it would send information about your CD collection as part of the process to make sure you are not someone who is pirating music. DRM is now ingrained in Windows Vista and future all editions of Windows as well as Apple’s OS which comes as no surprise since both Microsoft and Apple have ties to the Entertainment Industry since Microsoft owns MSNBC and members of Apple’s board of directors hold stock in Disney. The Entertainment Industry is fighting to make it more difficult for people to pirate their content at the expense of customers who buy legitimate copies. The goal is to have all hardware equipped with DRM and Intel already is including DRM technology in it’s new Microprocessors. DRM will be embedded into MP3 players and after you make too many copies, your music or movie is rendered useless. In fact, you may have to repurchase all those MP3′s you purchased online if you buy a new computer or want to have a copy on both your computer and MP3 player.
   Prior to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), The Entertainment Industry were instrumental in passing another law that in my opinion is bad legislation. This law is The Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA). This law implements two 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties: the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty as part of Title I. One noteworthy thing about Title I is it prohibits you from circumventing DRM and other anti-piracy mechanisms. The rest of DMCA addresses other copyright issues. Title II adds protections to Online Service Providers from liability for Piracy committed by users of their service and one of these protections includes not being liable if a user creates a hyperlink to pirated content! After all, holding someone like Google responsible for the acts of some user who pirates software would be similar to holding The Ford Motor Company responsible for the acts of someone who drives one of their cars and commits a crime. Title III protects people maintaining and repairing computers from a piracy violation if they make copies of software for backups or when making repairs to a computer. Title IV contains Miscellaneous Provisions for Distance Education, Non-Profit Libraries, and who receives royalties in the event the original creator has passed away, to name a few. Finally, Title V protects certain original designs which from my understanding was created because someone found themselves in trouble because the hull of a boat they built happened to have either a copyright or patent despite it looking the same as any other hull.
   Under DMCA, some very interesting lawsuits have been filed. For example in the case RealNetworks, Inc. vs. DVD Copy Control Association, Inc., Realnetworks was sued for creating software that allowed users to copy videos onto their hard drive. On March 13, 2007, Viacom filed a lawsuit against YouTube and it’s parent company Google alleging that users were uploading shows owned by Viacom onto their site. In August 2007 Timothy S. Verner sued Autodesk who sent him take down notices for items he was selling on Ebay arguing that Autodesk was abusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by issuing take down orders for items he was selling on eBay. Stephanie Lenz posted a video of her 13-month-old son dancing to The Artist Formerly Known as Prince’s song “Let’s go Crazy” on YouTube. Universal Music Corp contacted YouTube demanding they take down the video claiming it is in violation of DMCA! YouTube removed her video but Ms. Lenz argued that this video was within the fair use provisions and requested that YouTube reinstate her video. Under law, they had to do this within 2 weeks but it took 6 weeks for YouTube to put her video back up. She went on to sue Universal Music for her legal costs since in her opinion, she wasn’t in violation of DMCA and Universal Music shouldn’t have issued a takedown request. It’s not like she posted the song itself or concert footage, it was her 13-month-old son dancing to a song written by The Artist Formerly Known as Prince! In addition, items such as Garage Door Openers and Ink Jet Cartridges are now considered copyright content!
   These takedown notices themselves are the subject of controversy. As shown in the Lenz vs. Universal Music Co. case, anything can be considered a copyright violation. Copyright holders have complained since the takedown requests don’t go far enough. They want the ability to shut down the entire web site! This is where the new proposed bills, The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) come into play.
   Under The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, a web site in violation can only be forced to remove the copyrighted content but copyright holders would like to be able to shut down offending sites. Under this broad power that is part of SOPA and it’s evil twin PIPA, if Ms. Lenz were to publish her video of her 13-month-old son dancing to The Artist Formerly Known As Prince’s song “Let’s go crazy” now, Universal Music Co. could legally have YouTube shut down! Meanwhile, in order for YouTube to be allowed to return online, they would have to prove that the video produced by Ms. Lenz didn’t violate copyright law! They also are cut off from funding from advertisers during this time, YouTube looses advertising revenue since their site was taken down and they weren’t even the ones allegedly posting the video that violated copyright law! They may be down for a while since the wheels of justice turn slowly. This appears to also be a violation of their rights to due process since legal actions were taken against them (site taken down and finances frozen) prior to a trial. Wouldn’t this be like making The Ford Motor Company or other automakers pay for what one of the drivers of one of their cars did? This would be like forcing Ford to stop selling the Mustang and not receive any revenues from buyers because someone drove their Mustang recklessly and crashed. Meanwhile, Ford cannot make profits off of their Mustang since they are unable to sell Mustangs or collect revenues until this lawsuit is settled by proving that either the person operating their car didn’t drive recklessly or that they shouldn’t be held responsible for his actions. YouTube isn’t the only site that could fall victim to SOPA regulations. Their parent company Google could be held liable if a link appears on their search results that happens to be a site suspected of engaging in piracy meaning Google would be shut down and to get their site back up, they would have to prove that the link in question wasn’t a piracy site. How are they supposed to even know if one of the millions of sites they search may be involved in piracy or violating copyrights. In fact, they could be shut down over a link to a legitimate site that has a link to a piracy site. About the only way they could control links is through censorship that countries like Iran and China have but in the case of the United States, this censorship is to protect one segment of our economy (The Entertainment Industry) who is a very powerful lobby from losing profits due to Piracy and copyright infringement. This censorship will result in people coming up with innovations such as a better version of Google, Facebook, etc. to reconsider launching such a site fearing that someone could post copyrighted material or a link to a piracy site and since they don’t have money to fight in court like major companies, having their site shut down will kill their site forever. Not only is a website shut down under SOPA, any funding for the site is stopped. Blog sites including WordPress, social media sites such as Facebook, chat sites, news sites all will have to check each link they publish very carefully to make sure they are not in any way involved in piracy or copyright infringement. Who has the time to check all these links? Most likely nearly all sites will just not post any site link that can potentially be involved in piracy or copyright violations which can be a broad spectrum of things including posting a video of someone dancing to music! In addition, Internet Service Providers will have to block IP addresses of sites that may be involved in piracy. With the broad definition of what is considered copyright infringement and Piracy, this could be almost any site. Even if a site links to a site who links to a piracy site, it could be shut down and financial support such as advertising revenues and sales frozen.
   PIPA is the evil twin of SOPA, it has the same objectives as SOPA but a different approach. Sponsors in the senate claim it will only affect foreign companies. Like SOPA, offending sites are shut down and cut off. In fact both SOPA and PIPA are quite similar. Perhaps the two laws were made similar in case one doesn’t pass and the other can be offered as a compromise even though it is basically the same law. One difference is SOPA is supported by The House of Representatives while PIPA is supported by the Senate.
   SOPA appears to be on life support but PIPA still could become law. Even if both bills fail to become law, expect the Entertainment Industry and it’s powerful lobby to try and force at least some legislation similar to SOPA and PIPA. Do we trust the Entertainment Industry who support both SOPA and PIPA and also have been instrumental in passing The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998? In addition, SOPA and PIPA don’t just protect Movies and Music, it also protects against counterfeit consumer goods and medications. Guess who is also a powerful lobbying group? The Pharmaceutical Industry! In fact, there is a special provision in The NAFTA Free Trade Agreement preventing the importation of medications from Canada or Mexico to protect US jobs. Who else has provisions in NAFTA to protect Americans from losing jobs to foreign competition that NAFTA opened up? It is scary that both SOPA and PIPA have came so close to becoming law even if they fail. Of course, the watered down laws that will be pushed by the Entertainment Industry will probably be just as bad. It just proves that money buys influence in Washington! Who would ever think such laws could even be considered by our lawmakers when censorship seems to contradict what our country stands for!

Interesting blogs on hate

   After being the subject of someone attacking me because I am short I have been a little interested in the types of hate in this world. I found an interesting site where someone actually claims that “God hates Retards” (in his own words) I didn’t read all of his rant but what I read reminds me that there is plenty of hate in this world. I just had someone who hated short men attack me in a blog! I think it is bizarre for someone to claim that Our Lord and Savior didn’t create people who are mentally challenged. They were actually created by Lucifer according to the author. I could see the person who wrote these hateful blogs about me making a statement that “God hates short men” and even claim that Lucifer created short men as an argument as to why someone who was built short which she considers a “defect” was built by God who doesn’t make a mistake. Instead she can blame Satan! After all, this is about the only way you can make any sense out of the claims by The Bible that God doesn’t make mistakes and people who feel people who are different in some way are “mistakes” or “defective” contradicts the Bible. If you were to believe that the lord doesn’t make errors then you would have to find an answer to why God created someone who is “defective” when it seems to contradict the teachings of Christ. Interestingly he even lists “defective” celebrities such as Michael J. Fox for having Parkinson’s as “a defect”.
   Speaking of “defective people”, an article picked up by a local TV station from the Associated Press caught my attention. I couldn’t find the article so I found a similar article from National Public Radio (NPR). In the article the State of North Carolina is considering compensating people who were sterilized under their Eugenics program. Surprisingly, this was happening in The United States in almost all the states and most people would only think things like this happened in Germany. People with mental disabilities, epilepsy, and other “defects” were deemed as unfit to be parents and sterilized so that they couldn’t produce any offspring. This is a scary thought! I really hope the issue of Eugenics is taught in our public schools. I could see the person who wrote the article I mentioned above about Mentally Challenged individuals being hated by God and being created by Satan being a proud supporter of Eugenics in order to get rid of the “bad genes”. I can also see people such as the lady who attacked me being a firm supporter of Eugenics claiming that short men were either created by Satan or by reading the rants from this person who attacked me, short men are the result of bad dietary habits and drug abuse. It is kind of scary that the Government was deciding who could reproduce and sterilizing people who were deemed to be undesirable. Could this happen again? As any history teacher will tell you, history repeats itself!

Do women who don’t care about a guys height really exist?

   Shortmenareugy may be extreme in her hatred towards short men but it seems most women are only looking for the “Tall, Dark, and Handsome men”. It seems to be ingrained into their mind that someday they will find a “Tall, Dark, and Handsome man” and so when a short man approaches them, they have no interests because he isn’t “the one”. I’ve never encountered the severe attack handed to me by shortmenareugly in her blog but I have faced rejection by women and it seems one of the primary reasons (especially online) is due to height. One of the first questions a woman will ask is “How tall are you?” After I honestly say that I am 5′ 2″, the conversation ends there. Women who I’ve met in person have eventually told me they aren’t interested in me and that “I will make some woman happy” and that “you will sweep some woman off their feet.” I’ve been told these things so many times that I wonder if there really are women who wouldn’t mind dating a guy on the short side. It’s hard watching women find taller men so attractive that they will throw themselves at a tall man when he walks inside the room but they don’t even know I am in the room.
   After being attacked on a blog by someone who I never even met for being short, I really hope I don’t meet up with some woman who hates short men so much that she makes hateful rants towards me in person. I’ve been turned down by women who found their tall, dark, and handsome man who was a total jerk. It’s hard to believe that I am lesser attractive than a jerk who happens to be tall! It just seems to be one big fairytale to actually believe that there are women who don’t mind a guys height. Take a look at the profiles on dating sites, in the personals on places online such as backpage and craigslist, the local newspaper and online dating sites. Every single ad from women in search of men indicate that they are looking for a guy who is a minimum height usually a guy who is at least 5’8″ as being the shortest men some women are willing to consider but the average women indicates either 5’11″ or 6’0″ as the shortest man they will consider. This includes women who are short such as one woman who was 4’8″ looking for a man who is at least 6’1″! It really is upsetting that something that I have no control over is such a big factor in if a woman finds me to be worthy of their time. I didn’t choose to be short and when I was growing up I even tried several things in hopes that I will somehow not end up short but unfortunately I found that the reason I am short is due to genetics and no matter what I did during childhood or what I ate, I would still end up the short man that I grew up to be. There was always women who say that not all women prefer tall men and that there are some who like short men but do they really exist? I’ve been in search of these women because I would really like to enjoy the companionship of a woman but I have yet to meet a woman who doesn’t consider a mans height one of the most important traits in a man and it is a dealbreaker for them if a man is short. Even a tall guy who is ugly has a better chance of finding a date than me it seems! Is it safe to say that since I am in my early 40s, I should just give up and reallize that there are no such women? If such a group of women exists, where can I find them? I’ve tried for a long time to find such women and have yet to find any such woman. Do they really exist or is it just a big fairy tale to believe that there are women out there who don’t care about a mans height? I would really like to meet these women if they really do exist but if they do exist, where can I meet them? A lot of my friends who are tall have had women who told them they were attractive and that they were interested in them but there has never been a woman that has found me attractive! I really do question if any women exists who doesn’t care about a mans height and wonder if I face the unfortunate fate of being lonely for the rest of my entire life!