Who writes these things?

From an email today, that should have been diverted to my spam box:

Hello dear how are you,my name is loveth, i want to be in love relationship with you i like your profile i will like you to contact me through my email address below (****************@yahoo.co.uk) so that i can tell you more about me and send you more of my pictures, please i have a suitable and vital thing tell you, Please do not write me back on this site, write to my email address (****************@yahoo.co.uk) so that i can reply you back Thanks yours new friend Loveth. [love] [hug]

Seriously? It did make me laugh though, it's been a while since I have gotten one of these emails...that Nigerian Prince finally gave up.

They Might Be Onto Something Here...

Disorder | Rating
Paranoid: Low
Schizoid: Low
Schizotypal: Low
Antisocial: High
Borderline: Moderate
Histrionic: Low
Narcissistic: Moderate
Avoidant: Moderate
Dependent: Low
Obsessive-Compulsive: Moderate

URL of the test: http://www.4degreez.com/misc/personality_disorder_test.mv
URL for more info: http://www.4degreez.com/disorder/index.html

#Titanic2012

With the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic looming on the horizon there has been a load of television,books,movies about that fateful night making the rounds. I'll fully admit that the Titanic is one of my favorite historical "things". I'll watch almost any show about it on History or NatGeo Channel, I had a brief obsession with the movie (Give me a break, I was like 18 and went to see it with my boyfriend...there's a metaphor for our relationship in there somewhere.) I am thoroughly enjoying the James Cameron special airing on NatGeo right now and am looking forward to the Ballard special airing tomorrow night.
On the lighter side of things (yeah I know it was a tragedy, dont lecture me) the hashtag Titanic2012 was trending on Twitter tonight and I literally laughed myself to tears over a few of these tweets.
It is basically the sinking of the Titanic/Movie! Titanic if it were to happen in our tech savvy always connected world today...

Here's a few of my favorittes, and my 3 contributions:

@ErinPatricia: Congratulations! You just unlocked the Hypothermia Sticker on Get Glue! #titanic2012

@ErinPatricia: KingofDaWorld, RichGirlRose just ousted you as the Mayor of Floating Door! #Titanic2012

@ErinPatricia: string quartet on deck, wouldn't play Freebird. Lame. 4/10 Would not recommend. #Titanic2012

@maureenjohnson ‏ YELP REVIEW "Trip ended before arrival in NYC. Water very cold. Many fatalities. Terrible buffet. Would not recommend." #titanic2012

@maureenjohnson I just ousted the Giant Sea Serpent as the Mayor of the North Atlantic Ocean on @foursquare. #titanic2012

@brandg: Don't worry. Ice can't cut metal. I saw it on Mythbusters! #Titanic2012

@SVAllie: Allie just checked in at N. Atlantic ocean with 2563 other people. #titanic2012

@ebonyMckenna stupid Google maps, telling me to get to promenade deck via back stairs. Hello, gate is locked!!! #titanic2012

@SVAllie: This life boat doesn't have a recharge station for laptops or phones??? Omg. So 1990s. Lame. #titanic2012

@EbonyMcKenna Rose DW unfriended Caledon Hockley #titanic2012
@EbonyMcKenna Titanic just friended Carpathia #titanic2012
@EbonyMcKenna Can I get wifi on the lifeboats? I need to keep tweeting this. #titanic2012

@BlakeMP WebMD diagnosed my symptoms as "bouncing off a propeller on the way down." I KNEW it. #titanic2012

@literaticat Klout says I'm influential about Icebergs, Life Rafts, Survival. I say I'm influential about Elbowing a Bitch Out the Way! LOL. #Titanic2012

@BlakeMP NOBODY PANIC. Google+ will save your pictures automatically. #Titanic2012

@ixtumea You mean I can't get the internet out here? #titanic2012

RT @itsapear "@maureenjohnson Siri, where is the nearest lifeboat? #titanic2012"

@missapples22 The Titanic Broke in Half (Taken with Instagram) #titanic2012

@maureenjohnson Terrible valet service. I think someone had sex in my car. #titanic2012

@BrittaniMai "Is it so hard to make a decent salad on a damn boat? I repeatedly asked for Romaine Lettuce but all they had was Iceberg. " #titanic2012

@Whitnage Yelp Review:Class divisions not strictly enforced. Lost my fiancée,diamond necklace,&coat to a 3rd class chap.Do Not Recommend #titanic2012

There are about 100 more...search the hashtag if you wanna read them all :)

Conversations With...Natalie

The Walking Dead Season 1 and 2 Spoilers abound...you've been warned.

After sitting and watching an episode with me on a Sunday night at D's Bar in Monroeville, Natalie loaded up seasons 1&2 of The Walking Dead and gave it a watch...and then started texting me over the course of a few days.

Nat: I CANNOT HANDLE THIS SHOW! IT'S FREAKING ME OUT!

Me: Ahahahahahahaha! I love you
Me: What part?

Nat: Ok Season 2 opener, the car graveyard...
Nat: omg little girl!!!!

Me: it gets better!

Nat: GROSS GROSS GROSS EWWEWWEWWW GROSS

Me: This might end up a blog post. keep em coming

Nat Andrea's fuck you speech to Dale is the best bitch slap i've seen since natasha told carrie to piss off in sex and the city.
Nat: OK killing dead things in a church is kinda fuckup (sic)
Nat: Ok I lied Lori's bitchslap was better
Nat: Holy shit carl got shot!

Me: Carl ruins everything

Nat: You know what's really great about this show? Little to no product placement.

Me: ikr!

Nat: That little girl tip toeing out of the barn was by farthe most disturbing and saddest thing i've ever seen
Nat: .....so shane isn't a problem anymore?
Nat: Why did you make me watch this fucking show?
Nat: OMG A NINJA!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Nat: OMG WFT?? Whens season 3?

Me: october

Nat: Dammit I want to see the ninja again!

Me: you could borrow the 48 issue compendium blake got me, but it might spoil you for season 3 stuff

Nat: nah sokay

Me: Her name is Michonne...unless they change it :)

Nat: Female ninja?! Badass!

This is only a test...

Posting from my iPod.

Mandatory Update.

I suck at this. Posting, updating, anything-ing here in a timely manner. I just don't have the motivation to do it...to do anything really. I feel like Im stuck in a huge rut and haven't gotten the kick in the ass yet to get out of it. I sleep, wake up, go to work, come home, sleep. Lather, rinse, repeat. Occasionally I see my Nieces or hang out with friends but its just a rambling repeating series of SSDD. I sleep too much, eat too much, I was drinking way too much but have tried to curtail the excess imbibing. I just feel like Im floating around in a big empty ocean. It's depressing. I need a change, something, anything, I don't know what.

The Great American Firewall.

Taken from GIZMODO.COM

(Original article with embedded links can be found here...go...read...educate yourself and do something about it.)

What Is SOPA?

If you hadn't heard of SOPA before, you probably have by now: Some of the internet's most influential sites—Reddit and Wikipedia among them—are going dark to protest the much-maligned anti-piracy bill. But other than being a very bad thing, what is SOPA? And what will it mean for you if it passes?

SOPA is an anti-piracy bill working its way through Congress...

House Judiciary Committee Chair and Texas Republican Lamar Smith, along with 12 co-sponsors, introduced the Stop Online Piracy Act on October 26th of last year. Debate on H.R. 3261, as it's formally known, has consisted of one hearing on November 16th and a "mark-up period" on December 15th, which was designed to make the bill more agreeable to both parties. Its counterpart in the Senate is the Protect IP Act (S. 968). Also known by it's cuter-but-still-deadly name: PIPA. There will likely be a vote on PIPA next Wednesday; SOPA discussions had been placed on hold but will resume in February of this year.

...that would grant content creators extraordinary power over the internet...

The beating heart of SOPA is the ability of intellectual property owners (read: movie studios and record labels) to effectively pull the plug on foreign sites against whom they have a copyright claim. If Warner Bros., for example, says that a site in Italy is torrenting a copy of The Dark Knight, the studio could demand that Google remove that site from its search results, that PayPal no longer accept payments to or from that site, that ad services pull all ads and finances from it, and—most dangerously—that the site's ISP prevent people from even going there.

...which would go almost comedically unchecked...

Perhaps the most galling thing about SOPA in its original construction is that it let IP owners take these actions without a single court appearance or judicial sign-off. All it required was a single letter claiming a "good faith belief" that the target site has infringed on its content. Once Google or PayPal or whoever received the quarantine notice, they would have five days to either abide or to challenge the claim in court. Rights holders still have the power to request that kind of blockade, but in the most recent version of the bill the five day window has softened, and companies now would need the court's permission.

The language in SOPA implies that it's aimed squarely at foreign offenders; that's why it focuses on cutting off sources of funding and traffic (generally US-based) rather than directly attacking a targeted site (which is outside of US legal jurisdiction) directly. But that's just part of it.

...to the point of potentially creating an "Internet Blacklist"...

Here's the other thing: Payment processors or content providers like Visa or YouTube don't even need a letter shut off a site's resources. The bill's "vigilante" provision gives broad immunity to any provider who proactively shutters sites it considers to be infringers. Which means the MPAA just needs to publicize one list of infringing sites to get those sites blacklisted from the internet.

Potential for abuse is rampant. As Public Knowledge points out, Google could easily take it upon itself to delist every viral video site on the internet with a "good faith belief" that they're hosting copyrighted material. Leaving YouTube as the only major video portal. Comcast (an ISP) owns NBC (a content provider). Think they might have an interest in shuttering some rival domains? Under SOPA, they can do it without even asking for permission.

...while exacting a huge cost from nearly every site you use daily...

SOPA also includes an "anti-circumvention" clause, which holds that telling people how to work around SOPA is nearly as bad as violating its main provisions. In other words: if your status update links to The Pirate Bay, Facebook would be legally obligated to remove it. Ditto tweets, YouTube videos, Tumblr or WordPress posts, or sites indexed by Google. And if Google, Twitter, Wordpress, Facebook, etc. let it stand? They face a government "enjoinment." They could and would be shut down.

The resources it would take to self-police are monumental for established companies, and unattainable for start-ups. SOPA would censor every online social outlet you have, and prevent new ones from emerging.

...and potentially disappearing your entire digital life...

The party line on SOPA is that it only affects seedy off-shore torrent sites. That's false. As the big legal brains at Bricoleur point out, the potential collateral damage is huge. And it's you. Because while Facebook and Twitter have the financial wherewithal to stave off anti-circumvention shut down notices, the smaller sites you use to store your photos, your videos, and your thoughts may not. If the government decides any part of that site infringes on copyright and proves it in court? Poof. Your digital life is gone, and you can't get it back.

...while still managing to be both unnecessary and ineffective...

What's saddest about SOPA is that it's pointless on two fronts. In the US, the MPAA, and RIAA already have the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to request that infringing material be taken down. We've all seen enough "video removed" messages to know that it works just fine.

As for the foreign operators, you might as well be throwing darts at a tse-tse fly. The poster child of overseas torrenting, Pirate Bay, has made it perfectly clear that they're not frightened in the least. And why should they be? Its proprietors have successfully evaded any technological attempt to shut them down so far. Its advertising partners aren't US-based, so they can't be choked out. But more important than Pirate Bay itself is the idea of Pirate Bay, and the hundreds or thousands of sites like it, as populous and resilient as mushrooms in a marsh. Forget the question of should SOPA succeed. It's incredibly unlikely that it could. At least at its stated goals.

...but stands a shockingly good chance of passing...

SOPA is, objectively, an unfeasible trainwreck of a bill, one that willfully misunderstands the nature of the internet and portends huge financial and cultural losses. The White House has come out strongly against it. As have hundreds of venture capitalists and dozens of the men and women who helped build the internet in the first place. In spite of all this, it remains popular in the House of Representatives.

That mark-up period on December 15th, the one that was supposed to transform the bill into something more manageable? Useless. Twenty sanity-fueled amendments were flat-out rejected. And while the bill's most controversial provision—mandatory DNS filtering—was thankfully taken off the table recently, in practice internet providers would almost certainly still use DNS as a tool to shut an accused site down.

...unless we do something about it.

The momentum behind the anti-SOPA movement has been slow to build, but we're finally at a saturation point. Wikipedia, BoingBoing, WordPress, TwitPic: they'll all be dark on January 18th. An anti-SOPA rally has been planned for tomorrow afternoon in New York. The list of companies supporting SOPA is long but shrinking, thanks in no small part to the emails and phone calls they've received in the last few months.

So keep calling. Keep emailing. Most of all, keep making it known that the internet was built on the same principles of freedom that this country was. It should be afforded to the same rights.