I am sending this letter to Ben Nelson and if you're a Nebraskan you should too.

Don't support the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act

I am writing to you today as a constituent and informing you that, should you support the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), I will push against your reelection in November.  The legislation is overly broad and violates the rights of every American, while failing to intelligently update the National Security Act of 1947.

The legislation would create an exception to privacy laws allowing companies to share private and personal data for “cyber security” reasons, but there aren’t restrictions as to who can use the information and how it can be used.  The language is overly broad and not focused enough on the purpose it claims to have.

Private communications and actions will be flowing from the private sector to government organizations like the NSA regardless of if they’re an actual threat or completely legal and benign.  This could lead to innocent individuals being targeted for doing nothing more than surfing the web, placing the wrong word in an email or text message, or searching for a phrase that someone, somewhere in the new chain of invisible recipients, might find threatening to their affairs. This bill is blatantly Draconian, and does not represent the interests of the vast majority of American citizens, let alone those whose interests you've vowed to serve.

The amount of data that would flow from private companies to the government would be immense, including innocent and private information.  Outside of cases for which there are already wiretap laws in place, the government has no need to know what websites I visit, or how many hours I play on my Xbox.

I reiterate that your support of this bill will in no way be a service to your constituents, that your support of it will be indication enough of your future inability (or unwillingness) to defend the freedoms of Nebraskans, and that a vote in favor of it will move me to vote against you in future elections, encouraging all of my friends to do the same.

Email Ben Nelson
Email Mike Johanns

The problem with Lincoln

I'm a typically closed-off individual. I don't like to directly explain what's happening in my life as much as I like to observe how I feel about those things. Okay, so maybe calling myself "closed-off" is a poor choice of words. I don't talk in great detail about the things people around me are doing. I don't gossip.

That's my general rule, at least.  Something happened last night, though, that sees me breaking that rule right now, because there's an important lesson to be had out of it.

Here's the scene: I was hanging out with my friend and we decided to go to the Q.  I had been talking with a guy named Jeremy online for a few weeks since the last time I was there and we decided it'd be nice to say hello in person, so that was an item on the agenda for this visit. The other item was to drink lots of cheap beer.  So, my friend and I arrived at the Q and got our Solo cups of the stuff, and began imbibing.  After a little of my drink, I went over to say hello to Jeremy, and I made my acquaintance with him and his friend Christina.  I didn't much know what to say, but we talked about how the drag show motif is really tired at this point, and how there should be karaoke at least some time at this place and it was a rather enjoyable, if short, chat.

What I didn't mention yet is that the ex was there, sitting just a couple seats away and keenly aware of the fact that I was talking to this guy (whom, as far as I know, he doesn't know).  After I went back to sit down with my friend, out of earshot, but with a direct line of sight back to where Jeremy was sitting, the ex took the liberty of walking up to Jeremy and pointing at me across the bar while expressing (with great emphasis on the word) that I'm crazy.

I found this to be, what they call in civilized culture, a total lame-ass below-the-belt dick move that only the most gargantuan of assholes would ever do.  But instead of relating that to my ex, I watched him sit back down, then went back over to Jeremy, shrugged, and told him that the gargantuan asshole and I used to date, and that he was still bitter about the way it ended.  Jeremy spoke to me again later in the night, and we laughed about it.

So here's the lesson I want to impart on you, the gentle reader: don't be a total dick and try to sabotage your ex's attempts to make new friends.  It's really not cool, and will probably get you blogged about.

So, I bought things...

I have been in the market for a new pair of headphones for a while now, because the in-ear buds I've been using cause me marked discomfort when I keep them in for any longer than an hour (raising concerns for the long-term health of my eardrums).  And then around the time of CES, Mashable released a story about a new company releasing headphones called "Aftershokz".  I really never trust a company with the in-your-face '90s attitude it takes to put a Z in the place of an S in their product line, but this time was different, because they promised a new method of delivering sound: bone conduction.  Being as excited as I am for things that make listening to my music a more enjoyable experience, I very quickly placed my pre-order.

But then, we're all naive sometimes.  The following is the review I tried posting on their site just now (they only allow for reviews of up to 1000 characters, and this was more than double that).

I remember these lollipop holders from when I was a kid.  They were called "Sound Bites".  They had four sound clips on them, and when you gently clamped your teeth around the candy part of the lollipop you could hear one of the sound clips in your head by pressing the button.

Of course, you could hear the sound clips even if you didn't have your teeth clamped on the candy, but when you did clamp your teeth down, the sound was of a noticeably higher fidelity and apparently louder than otherwise.  I remember even alternating from biting down and opening durning a sound clip to hear the difference, and being amazed at how different the clips sounded when I was biting down.

over a decade later, Aftershokz comes around, and I spend the most misplaced $70 of my life.

Claiming to use bone conduction technology to bypass the eardrum and channel noise directly to the wearer's inner ear, Aftershokz seem like the perfect solution to the layman who can't stand the discomfort or pain of listening to earbuds on even the lowest setting for more than an hour at a time.  I honestly thought, when I placed my preorder, that these would quickly replace my current set of earbuds.  Upon receiving them in the mail on Saturday, February 25, I tested them in multiple placements with several audio sources, and became immediately disheartened.

Positioning the speakers on the connecting point of my upper and lower mandible resulted in audio of completely abysmal fidelity.  Truthfully, listening to music through these headphones was akin to listening to music generated by the speaker on a Game Boy Advance or Nintendo DS.  Vocals were tinny and bass was practically nonexistent.  Listening to music through my iPhone's principal speaker generated both higher quality and louder tones *at a lower volume.*

Conceptually, bone conduction implies that, despite generating audible noise even when not pressed against a solid surface such as bone structure, sound volume and quality should increase when those conditions are met.  So, logically, pulling the speakers away from the sides of your head (and providing air space between the two) should cause a noticeable degradation of volume and fidelity.  Yet trying this on my own pair of headphones proved ineffectual.  In fact, sound quality improved not by placing the speakers against bone, but by bringing them back so that they were situated closer to my eardrums, which flies directly in the face of these headphones' selling point.

If you are in the market for a new pair of headphones, do not believe the hype surrounding these.  I have never been more immediately disappointed with a purchase in my life.

The Internet is for porn, and rabidly ganging up on individuals

I have an acquaintance from Twitter, who works for Zipper Interactive. He is a programmer there, and while I don't believe he worked on the SOCOM series, I know that he spent a lot of hours working on MAG. Despite being a programmer of video games, though, he told me on several occasions that he doesn't play them himself. That gives him one thing in common with Jennifer Hepler.

He, however, did not receive thousands of highly public messages calling him a fat cow, a cancer on the gaming industry, a slut, a whore, or a cunt, for joining Twitter over the weekend. Jennifer Hepler did.

I'm not going to rehash the details of this weekend's events here, as Googling her name will probably give you all the details you could ask for. What I will say is that this phenomenal outpouring of rage, vitriol, and malice makes me question humanity's worth as a species. For people to make such vicious personal attacks so relentlessly astounds me, and it is one instance of a growing number which make me wonder if people have ever been able to live peacefully with one another.

The relatively immediate future

I have a feed from Dice.com for jobs in various cities, the nearest of which being eight hours away from here.  I intend to begin seriously applying for available positions in a couple months.  I'm not looking for jobs right now because I still have four months of rent to pay on my apartment lease ($1700, give or take), but I figure breaking that lease for a new job in a better town wouldn't be as painful at the two-month mark, if the pay is good.

Odds are very low that I'll be staying in Lincoln once this lease is up.  It would be a nice change of pace to end up somewhere with cool people.

I ordered Roadrunner Internet earlier this week.  Windstream was pissing me off.

Remember Nigel Thornberry?

Now you'll never forget.

How SOPA can save us from migrant workers and mediocrity

***SARCASM AHEAD***

Okay, so, I was originally staunchly opposed to SOPA from hearing about how it could give copyright holders the power to force Internet providers to block access to websites with infringing content without due process.  I use a lot of knowledge and information in my attempts to sound smart, so I tend to like the free distribution of knowledge and information.  One thing leads to another and you end up with a Josh who really wants to keep SOPA and PIPA from passing.

Then, Wikipedia went down in protest of SOPA.  And Twitter exploded.  But it didn't explode in the fun way (where it looks all cool from far away and then candy starts raining down on everyone).  No.  It exploded in one of the most flagrant demonstrations of collective human stupidity ever.

If you're too tired to click the link (I understand.  You had a rough night), it is the Twitter feed of somebody who, for the whole of January 18, simply retweeted people's snippets of outrage, confusion, hopelessness, and despair over the fact that Wikipedia -- which seems to have been the only source of information these people had -- was down.  Some of them had no idea why it was down.  Some of them had no idea for how long it would be down.  Some of them thought it was down because of a law that Congress had already passed.  And some of them thought this law that was already passed was for the express purpose of taking down Wikipedia. I can only assume that these people are from a parallel universe where absolutely no thoughts can be expressed in more than 140 or 160 characters (depending on whether you're on Twitter or your cell phone), because Wikipedia's homepage curtly answered all of these questions.  I theorize this, because "history" is the last word you will read in the first 140 characters of that page.

The most depressing fact of this all is that Herpderpedia only chronicled 400 tweets.  I haven't scoured the list for repeat offenders, but assuming there aren't any, then this is just the voice of 400 Twitter users.  Imagine how many more there were on Twitter who went unheard, or how many there were who don't have Twitter accounts.

The existence of Herpderpedia proves that we are a nation with no shortage of complete idiots.  And yet, we have so many people who seem to be unable to find work, who are reportedly overqualified for menial tasks, and who go to school, wrongfully passing their classes by wide margins because of a broken school system that lets them believe they've succeeded at something, when they haven't done the slightest amount of actual work.

So I will posit this here: Maybe we're better off without Wikipedia.  Sure, it settles countless arguments about who wrote what and when and under the influence of which mistress/substance, but it also takes the legwork out of it.  Nobody is going to synthesize their own theories about, say, Brave New World if the most compelling arguments on it are handed out to anyone with wi-fi.  We learn the most when we have to pay attention to what it is we're seeing, and apparently Wikipedia is leading (or contributing, is the more likely case) to a system where people cease to tangentially absorb information and instead zero in on the facts that are presumed the most pertinent.

And in this sort of society, I think it's safe to say that nobody is truly learning anything.  So why treat them like they are?  Does anybody remember what we did with people who didn't learn things, back in the days before the Internet?  We had them repair our cars.  We bought our hamburgers from them.  They were the ones who grew crops.  And it worked!

So yeah, censoring the Internet may sound like a really scary thing to us, because we're smart enough to know that the Internet has a lot of meaningful uses, but if breaking down the Internet has the side effect of scraping all of this out of my educated workforce, I think it just might be doing something right.

How Microsoft could increase WP7 market share

I got an iPhone 4S shortly after it released in October, and I have been incredibly happy with it thus far.  It loads applications in a jiffy, I can take calls on it without incident or hassle, it hasn't experienced a kernel panic ever, and all around it responds in a fluid and timely manner to my commands.  This all sounds like it belongs in the realm of the utterly mundane, but you should understand, I had a Motorola Droid before this.  That entails a lot of things, so let me simplify my gripes as quickly as I can: take everything I said about my iPhone and use an extreme opposite for my old Droid.

But although things are wonderful and easy-going in my new Apple-centric mobile life, in the past few months I was exposed to an HTML5 demo of Windows Phone 7's operating system, and since then I've experienced an overflow of OS envy.

If you're on a smartphone, try the demo for yourself (note that it doesn't work nearly as well on Android devices as on other hardware).  If not, take my word that the amount of polish and utility shown off in WP7 is staggering, especially when you consider that this is the same company that brought us Windows Millennium Edition, Vista, and Windows Mobile 6.  The concept of the People Hub alone is so magnificent that I'm astonished that this kind of social aggregation hasn't been done before.  Really, if our phone is meant to connect us, then why force compartmentalization onto our interactions with people?

The problem, though, is that despite the amazing potential Windows Phone 7 has to redefine our notion of the mobile OS, it is caught in the awful position of being a very late follow-up to the most maligned and stagnant operating system in phone history.  It also comes into the game years after iOS and Android, meaning that it's facing an uphill battle of numbers, both in terms of users exposed to its charms, and in the number of devices on sale from the opposing forces.

Microsoft knows this, and that's why they made the web-based demo I linked to up above.  The problem is, I checked out the demo on my brand new iPhone, and I'm willing to bet that plenty of other people looked at it on their new iDevice, or their RAZR or Galaxy S.  They're already on board with someone else, so what good is this web demo to them?

Let's go back in my own life to the summer of 2007.  I was just starting my sophomore year of college, the original iPhone hadn't been out for even a year, I was carrying a plastic, clamshell Samsung device -- which didn't even have unlimited texting -- in my pocket, and the only time I could do anything on the Internet was when I was in front of an archaic device known as a "personal computer".  Then Apple came out with the iPod Touch, described by pundits as an "iPhone without the phone".  I got one, and within the month it completely changed my life.  Suddenly, I had a fully-fledged gateway to the world wide web in the palm of my hand; less cumbersome than my Nintendo DS, and having far more real world applications.  It was the perfect companion to my Samsung phone: Now, I had a device that was, for all purposes, my personal data assistant.

It was years from that point until I finally got a smartphone in my Droid, but even after getting the Droid my iPod Touch was a staple of my pockets.  Having the ability to use an iOS device for the things that were either too cumbersome or simply impossible on my Droid was too useful to give up.

And now that I see the strength of Windows Phone 7 I'm left asking: why isn't there anything like the iPod Touch, but running the Windows Phone 7 operating system?  The iPod Touch is integral to the success of iOS in the mobile ecosystem because it gives Apple access to a market segment that Android and Blackberry don't even touch: non-smartphone owners.  I have one coworker and multiple friends who still own either the most basic of cell phones, or a feature phone, because of any number of reasons.  Maybe a data plan is too expensive, maybe they like how their current phone works just fine, maybe they're overwhelmed by how quickly new smartphones are released, or maybe don't want to be locked into a multi-year contract.  Whatever the reason, they have opted not to get a new phone, and that means they stand almost no chance of being exposed to the Android or Blackberry ecosystem.

But what's this?  A device that doesn't come with a contract?  It uses wi-fi to access the Internet?  It's smaller than my wallet, and I can play games and check Facebook on it?  It has a built in camera for photos and video?  I can carry all of my music with me?  And it's only $200?  With far less commitment on the user's end, Apple has just sold another iOS device, and the user can keep everything they love about their old phone.

Windows Phone 7 has just as much opportunity to get new users, and it needs new users.  I'm willing to bet that there's plenty of demand for a new device running Mango (aka Windows Phone 7.5) as a direct competitor to the iPod Touch.  Heck, I'd be one of the first in line for it, as long as it ran on these few guidelines:

1. It needs to run the shiniest new version of Windows Phone 7 and be eligible for the exact same updates as any other phone released in the time frame.  If the non-phone device isn't a gateway through which users can look and say, "Wow, this must be even better on phones", Microsoft will lose any upselling power it might get from this class of device.
2. It has to be cheaper than the iPod Touch.  Sell it at a nice, digestible price point like $150.  Even if this number results in a net loss on hardware sales, increasing the user base will directly increase the number of sales made in the app marketplace, which will lead to more developer interest, which will lead to  more apps,  which will lead to even more user interest.
3. It has to integrate into the user's environment.  If the device is complicated to set up, then it won't do well.  It should be as easy as possible for users to get content between their device and their computer, be it through iTunes, Zune, Windows Media Player, Winamp, or whatever else they use.  Windows Phone 7 is all about simplicity and interconnectedness; if that philosophy isn't maintained throughout the entire experience, then it might as well not exist.

It should be obvious to anybody by now that I really want to see Windows Phone 7 succeed.  That may sound really weird, especially considering that I have an iPhone, an iPad, and an iMac at home, but here's the thing: It's a damn good mobile platform.  Let alone how I feel about the history of Windows desktops, Windows 8, and any tablets that may come out for that.  Windows Phone 7 is an original idea with fantastic implementation, and if it dies out then we can all look forward to a total lack of innovation for smartphones in the near future.

Thanks for reading!

Mystery Stalker

Is the name of the achievement I just unlocked in Batman: Arkham City.

Okay...

It seems I haven't given ABC a fair shake. Pushing Daisies was... Quite charming.

Social networks and sociability

At the end of last year, I made a crucial decision for my own mental health and left Facebook.  The general atmosphere toward me within Lincoln was slanderous, threatening, and exclusionary, and my continued presence on the social network resulted in my feeling ironically detached, unwelcome, and downright unloved.

Since my profile still has relevant contact information on my info page, though, I decided not to delete my profile and instead just scramble my password and delete all saved instances of it from the computers I had previously logged in on.  I haven't received any text messages or IMs from any Facebook friends yet, but I figure that if it's really important that they get in touch with me, they'll make the effort.  If they don't try to get in touch, well, then it obviously shouldn't concern me.

Obviously, I miss some of the interactions I had on the site, but I do have to admit that my life has felt a lot more serene since abandoning it.  And, as it turns out, I'm not the only person to discover that Facebook has a negative impact on mood.  Daniel Gulati of Huffington Post wrote an article outlining some of the ways in which prolonged activity on Facebook reduces the perceived meaningfulness of our days.  In addition to driving us from close relationships to online correspondence, Gulati notes that Facebook is a place where people spend more time writing about their achievements and milestones than their shortcomings. He writes, "Accomplishments like, 'Hey, I just got promoted!' or 'Take a look at my new sports car' trump sharing the intricacies of our daily commute or a life-shattering divorce."  Some people react to such announcements by feeling a need to one-up the accomplishment, creating an environment of competition and self-evaluation that has users comparing their successes to the success of others.  So really, anyone who has Bill Gates as a friend on Facebook is entirely setting themselves up for disappointment.

Additionally, Facebook takes us out of the "now" of our own lives so that we can read about everything that's happening with our friends. "My interviewees regularly accessed Facebook from the office," Gulati writes, "at home through their iPads and while out shopping on their smartphones."  When people do this, they're less engaged with the tasks they ought to be focused on, which leads to less efficiency, less awareness of their surroundings, and a lower sense of accomplishment on finished tasks.

Granted, not a whole lot of the depressors in Gulati's article apply to the scenario that had me leave Facebook, but it is a small comfort to know that there are legitimate other dangers to spending your life on the Internet.  Who knows?  Maybe a few of my other Facebook friends will realize this and abandon their own profiles in favor of conversation over a nice lunch.

"Facebook Is Making Us Miserable", Daniel Gulati - Huffington Post

Auld Lang Syne, indeed.

I was acquainting myself with the Blogger iOS app earlier today when I tapped on the last post I had written for this blog.  Now I know that doing this immediately puts that post into a "draft" state and will likely avoid doing it again for... at least six hours.  But as I loaded that post, I got a glimpse of where I stood almost an entire year ago, and I realized something:  2011 was, through and through, the worst year of my life.

The problems I wrote about a year ago all remained almost entirely stagnant for months, and beyond them, more problems arose.  In the past year I was prescribed antidepressants, lost my best friend over a very stupid argument, fought and lost against an enormous wave of malice and cruelty from people I truly cared about, struggled against feelings of isolation and despair, gained twenty pounds and a very unflattering gut, contemplated suicide on several occasions, and told just about all of this to a therapist with whom I meet two to three times a month.  The worst of it is the hatred... I haven't cried so much since elementary school, and just like back then, it's not a single event that I'm crying about; I'm crying because there are people in my life who actually want me to be in pain, people who might be reading this right now and smiling about their accomplishment.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that I regarded my life with futility at least once a week this last year.  But then, I'm still standing, and I have to credit the new friends I made in 2011 for seeing me through the difficult times.  David, Nick, and Clint all stood by me, even when I would reiterate all of the problems I'd already told them about ad nauseam.  We started bowling together, we hang out all the time, and I can count on their company to make me smile even in the darkest of places.

And now it's 2012.  I've got a job that's on my career path, my student loans are consolidated, I'm teaching myself how to program iPhone apps, and my resolution is to publish something on the app store.

A few days ago, somebody called me an optimist, which really struck me, especially because on New Year's Eve, Nick asked me to think of a positive memory from my childhood, and I just shrugged, because I couldn't come up with anything.  I have incredible hope for the future, and a good amount of hope for the year to come. I suppose I'm an optimist of the future, and a pessimist of the past.  But in fairness, the past is done with.  Dwelling on it too much can make you wish for things you can't get back.

Should old acquaintance be forgot.  Here's to tomorrow.