Posted via email from Paul L. McCord Jr.

I ran across this video that someone shared on Google Buzz this evening.  It is pretty eye opening about how fast these social networking sites have proliferated.  I can remember just about a year ago, Facebook had around 200 million members.  About three months ago I heard they had 400 million users.  Just this evening, I read on Google Buzz that Facebook had 540 million users.  This is just phenomenal.  Watch the video and read the statistics. 

You may be asking yourself why we are doing this.  The reason is the hosting cost.  Currently I host both domains through my provider at an expensive rate.  I pay extra because I like having the ability to run scripts, have xml databases, allow more traffic among other things.  Both of these domains are about to expire within a month of each other and I am unwilling to pay the extra costs for both pages.  I can move the Del City ARC page to a more budget plan with less functions and save some money.  Since my personal blog gets more traffic and I use it more, I am more willing to pay the extra rate for it.  As I said before, it will be virtually undetectable to the average user but it will save us more than 50% of the cost. If you have any questions, please post them via email to our members@delcityarc.org address.

Thanks,

Paul

This brings me to the question that has been thrown in my face in the past.  This question is “What makes your morality, to be moral for me?”  They context of the question is that since my morals are based on the Bible, then my morality is irrelevant to them since they do not believe in God.  Essentially saying that morality is relative to your standards or belief system.  These people deny my belief that something is right or wrong because I use the Bible as a gauge, or measuring stick.  If this is true then I can just as easily say to them, what makes what they say right?  You can see the paradox that develops with this argument.  To think that morality is relative is self defeating because to to believe this, the person must believe that morality is absolutely relative.  Since in relative morality asserts there are no absolutes, then the argument is self defeating.

There have been many times that I have heard these people like Leo Laporte claim they do not believe in God.  If they do not believe in God, then the Bible that speaks of HIM, is just a myth.  If this is true then a morality that is based on a Biblical view must be a myth as well.  This leads me to ask by what morality to they make this judgment on Mark Zuckerberg.  How can he be amoral if there is no standard by which to measure right and wrong?  I single out Leo Laporte probably unfairly only because he is the single voice of the “This Week in Tech” podcast network.  The reality is that the vast majority of those in the technology broadcast movement also do not believe in God so they do not have the luxury of having the Bible as a standard of right and wrong.  They typically go farther then just not believing in God by speaking against religion as a whole, virtually discounting all religions.  If there are no  immovable standards by which they measure morality then how do they make this claim about Zuckerberg?

I ask by what standard does one measure right and wrong if it is not measured against a religious standard?  This question is usually answered in essence saying that it is wrong to cause harm to others.  Who defines harm?  Who defines what is acceptable in society?  If a person does not use a religious standard that is immovable then a person’s morality is subject to change with the society.  This seems innocent and acceptable if it is looked at independent of any situations.  The problem with having a relative moral stand is that causing no harm can be redefined.  For example, the German government in the early 1940’s believed they were helping society by removing Jews from society.  They managed to convince themselves into believing that Jews were less than human and therefore their “cause no harm” belief did not apply.  These Jews were not considered people that deserved to be protected.  Since the majority of people in that country during that era thought that way, then one could say that it was moral to kill Jews.  It is dangerous to have a relative moral stand in my opinion.

If people could be convinced that one group of people are are less human than others in one society then it can happen again.  I have heard people speak that education is the answer.  They say that educating people is the answer to all the woes of the world.  This seems reasonable on the surface but then that pesky relative morality comes back in.  Education as a general term is usually seen as a good thing but more and more often it can be manipulated.  Education can and does get used as a tool to spread a belief system.  A simple omission of relevant information, and the use of rhetoric can change the meaning of things.  For example, the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.  The original intent was to eliminate religious coercion while at the same time prevent the restriction of free religious expression.  Somehow over time, the education system of the United States has managed to convince people that any expression of  of religious speech by anyone associated in the government on any level is strictly prohibited.  In addition to this, the education system has managed to convince many that there are selected groups of people that deserve preferential treatment and cannot be spoken of negatively in any way.

Again, I ask by what standard to these people teach us what is right and wrong?  By their own measure, they have no moral standing to tell me what is right just as I do not have a standing to tell them.  I for one believe in the Bible and so I do have a measuring stick by which I measure right and wrong.  My standard often conflicts with theirs.  I think it is often less honest to impose a moral standard on others when they do not have an immovable standard.  This is because the motive is often self promoting and that is why I question all this Facebook anger.  When a person posts on the Internet, they are giving their personal information on a public platform.  They have to know this and if they don’t then they should be more careful where they post their information.    This notion that Mark Zuckerberg is amoral as stated by one that does not  have an absolute morality makes me laugh.  In my opinion, anyone that does not believe in an absolute right and wrong seems hypocritical to claim someone is amoral.

The more I listened to this podcast while I was mowing the lawn, the more incensed I became.  I kept trying to make mental notes to myself so that I would remember some quotes.  I did not mention most of them on here because this post would go on forever.  I was struck that a podcast labeled “This Week in Google” spent more time talking about Facebook than Google.  I think I have made my point that I do not agree with many things they say while still listening to them.  The reason I do this is because one of my hobbies is being a technology enthusiast.  Since in our country most of these types of industries come from one metropolitan, I follow these individuals.  Honestly, I do not think it is a good idea to be in lockstep beliefs with any one person anyway.  It is perfectly acceptable to take in many opinions to shape one’s own opinion.  In the end though, my disclaimer is that I will use the Bible to measure whether or not I believe it.  Thanks for stopping by and reading my opinions.  I realize that not everyone agrees with them but hey!  We all have them

One could argue the merits of boycotting Facebook for violating the trust of their users but why?  Why do these people get so bent out of shape about this?  By definition, Facebook is a social site intended purely to share information.  Anyone that does not want their information to be spread all over the place should not be posting it in the first place.   I have been shocked at the volume of cries to leave Facebook.  I do not think I should have been shocked but I have.  Think of the irony in these claims.  A site that was designed specifically to share as much information as you have been willing to share is somehow violating the trust of their users when they do what they were designed to do.

My response to these people making these claims is to tell them not to post anything they do not want others to see…It is that simple.  If you post information online, then you have to know that it is available anywhere.  Even if  you have people blocked, there are others that are not blocked that can copy and paste your comments to the blocked person.  If you do not want someone to know it, then do not post it online.  So I will do what about 75% of the rest of Facebook users by not cancelling my account.  I do not use Facebook that much anyway but I do not feel threatened at all.  Most people do not either.  If you are concerned that much, then you may want to withhold any comments from the web because there is a possibility that it will become public knowledge.

I do understand the concern that people have though I do think it is overstated.  I think it is not that bad as people are screaming.  I will let you know if I become a victim of them.  I hope that this craziness will fade fast because I think it has just as much basis as the bogus Y2K scare back in 1999.  This should be fun to watch.

In the picture below you can see this blog directly.  In this picture you can see this very blog directly where the posts are immediate but are moved down the page as new posts are entered.  In this case, the links are also on a menu on top but it makes it difficult to have permanent information on the page.  They both have their advantages and disadvantages.

The advantage of having a static page is that you can put up links and information that is permanent and immediately visible to the viewer.  The disadvantage is that many people including myself are too lazy to dig into a site to see what is there.  People go to a page and lose interest real fast resulting in shorter visits and less repeat visitors.  The advantage of having the blog directly is that a post is available directly as soon as the visitor arrives.  As new posts are added, it moves the old ones down.  It does not have the permanent links readily available.

I have had a web site since 1996 so I have used both.  My own experience has shown my web site gets more traffic with the blog directly than when there is a static page.  I use both the statistics tool of my hosting provider along with Google Analytics.  They are pretty close in their measurements and are in agreement that a blog that gets regular posts tend to get more traffic than a static page.  The traffic is many times that of a static page.  This is the reason that I pay extra to be able to use a blog as opposed to just having a static page.  I am curious if anyone else has had similar or different results.  On one hand I would like to have a static page linking to the blog but I have found that many times people will not even waste their time clicking on the link to go to the blog.

On the other hand I have found that people according to my web traffic stats, a lot of my traffic is due to search engine results whether it be Google, Yahoo, or Bing.  My stats often show what the visitor was searching for when they clicked on my link.  This being the case, it would not seem to matter which choice I decided to go with because most visitors are not arriving by directly entering the URL directly.  Most visits are not on the front page but rather one of the links deep in the page that were found on a search engine.  My site really does not have a lot of information that would be useful to the general public yet I seem to be getting enough traffic to keep me on a mid level plan.  Having a blog really is a lot of work because a person may not always be inspired to write a big story.  This is why I have Twitter imported on the right side because I can still post small messages with my phone so that it still shows that I am around even when I am too busy to post on the blog.

I have also considered changing the domain to something that is not my full name so that I could have liberty to speak more freely.  Also I have considered using one of those “.me” or dot me domains since this is a personal site.  I am hesitant to make any of these changes simply because the search engines have already crawled the site and have become searchable.  The other side is that when you use your own name to post online, you are visible to all and not at liberty to speak the way you may want on a subject.    Whatever I do, it will be done before July 1, 2010 because that is when my domain expires. If I change it, I will post links on this domain showing where the page has gone.  I am leaning toward not moving it unless someone feels that it would be a better idea. Unfortunately my hosting service has gone up in price to make it $220.00 to renew for three more years.  This includes the domain renewal and hosting.  It has doubled since I joined them a few years ago.  I will not mention them by name because other than the increase in price, I have been very satisfied with their service.  Keep posted and I will let you know what I decide.

They follow thousands of people with the hopes the eventually they will follow back.  Once they get 100,000+ people following them, they proclaim themselves “A-Listers”.  Other than this, there is nothing special about them.  Well they eventually try to exercise this power by proclaiming revelations about companies like Friendfeed.  So far Friendfeed has only been affected because those that have 100,000+ followers make these outrageous statements over and over again.  You see… Most of these 100,000+ followers are people that have to work for a living and only get online from time to time.  They do not have time to be involved in every story that comes out.  They find themselves at the mercy of headlines.  Does this seem like a familiar theme?  This is the way the media works.  They will make an outrageous claim over and over again to a point that people just accept it as fact and not question it.

Friendfeed is an amazing tool but unfortunately it has lost many users resulting in it losing its popularity.  Soon afterward Google came out with Google Buzz which is almost identical to Friendfeed in function.  The same people that use to say that Friendfeed is dead are not telling the world about how great Google Buzz is.  I will not argue that Google Buzz is a great tool for aggregating stories and allowing personal interaction on them.  As I said, Google Buzz is almost identical to Friendfeed.  One thing that is troubling about these aggregators that I never thought about is their inherent power to give more power to those with 100,000+ followers allowing them more air time.  I have noticed that many times in these aggregators I get the same stories many many times from different people.  What ends up happening is that one person will say something and then a percentage of their 100,000+ followers will repost the story.

This seems a lot like some of the multilevel marketing schemes you see around.  I am sure you have heard of them.  They boast about leveraging the work of others to grow your income capability exponentially.  The same theory is at work here.  One person says something and then hundreds of others will say the same thing.  A percentage of each of the 100,000+ followers will also repost to a point where you reach critical mass.  An individual may hear the same story a dozen times in a single day from a dozen different people.  The notion that it must be true because we heard it from so many different sources comes into play.  The truth is that you really heard it from one source and it was distributed through syndication.  It may appear that it is coming from many sources but it is really coming from a singular source.  I use to wonder why a person would want to follow 100,000+ people but it makes perfect sense now.  The sheer audience makes your voice multiply exponentially.  You can say ANYTHING whether true or not and if a percentage of your followers repost your comment, then a percentage of their followers will also repost it.  Can you see how powerful this can be?  This self promoted, self appointed power could be used for good or bad.  It is my belief that this is how Apple gets all of its attention despite only having 10% or less market share.  It is pretty ingenious if you ask me.  Be careful what you hear and believe because many times you are hearing a regurgitated story and not necessarily multiple sources.  Many people gauge credibility based on hearing it from multiple sources.  They are unaware of how syndication works and do not realize that those multiple sources are really just one person.

Today a person can buy a hard drive the size that no one could have imagined five years ago for less than $100.00 in some cases.  I have seen two terabyte drives at Wal-Mart.  For those that are unfamiliar with a terabyte, I will have to give you a bit of computer background so you can get some perspective.  Most of us have heard the term “bit” or “bits”.  This is a term referring to a binary digit.  Binary is nothing more than a different numbering system that is based on two instead of ten.  Most of us know that our decimal numbering system goes up to nine before carrying over to another digit making “10”.  Well binary is the same way except it goes up to one before carrying over another digit.  For example you would count. 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111 and so on.  As you can see, it is based on two.  Well a binary digit or bit is the means of measuring data.  For each letter of the alphabet, or number to be expressed, it takes approximately eight binary digits of data, or a byte.  One byte is eight binary digits and is the data required to store one letter of the alphabet, or ASCII character.

As you probably remember the metric system from high school  a kilo is 1000 units of anything.  A mega is 1,000,000 or one million.  A Giga is 1,000,000,000 or one billion units.  A tera is 1,000,000,000,000 or one trillion units of something.  Since data storage is expressed in bytes, this storage of one terabyte is really approximately 1,000,000,000,000 bytes.  This is an enormous number that is difficult visualize.

Now that data storage prices have dropped so much, there are companies offering data storage remotely over the Internet.  In some cases they have services that back up your own data over the Internet in small increments while your Internet is idle.  As we have seen with services like Google Docs, and Windows Live Sky Drive, these services are becoming mainstream.  There are benefits to this because a person may have critical photos, music, or videos on their computer that would be a tragedy if lost.  By storing things remotely, it helps keep them from being lost if a person’s house catches fire or hit by a tornado.  I have been doing this for quite some time with my photos.  I have more than 20,000 photos on my computer and currently over 7,000 of them are stored on Flickr.com.

They refer to this activity as cloud computing and has become a standard term.  The problem is that I am not an ordinary person and have a difficult time seeing the Internet when people say “The Cloud”.  I have two teenage sons that often do things like pass gas as they walk through the house and then tell you that you just walked through their cloud as you walk through the room.  Since this has happened many times, I tend to think unpleasant things when people refer to the cloud.  This is not a good thing because I am around computer enthusiasts on a regular basis. find myself reaching for the Febreeze every time they start talking about cloud computing.  Am I too far gone?  I still hold out hope that one day I will get passed the trauma.  I would like to suggest changing the name so that I can engage in computer speak without thinking of toilets.  How about calling it “The Internet”?

I know that most people from more refined backgrounds are thinking to themselves about a thunderstorm, or even a Spring day when someone refers to clouds.  I guess I could use some more refinement but I am what I am.  It was destined to happen when I was an aircraft maintenance person in the Air Force for many years.  If you have ever been one you probably know what I am talking about.  Being in the military requires you to have some thick skin and have a sense of humor to deal with the long hours of working on the flight line in less than ideal conditions.  I guess I am doomed to being an unrefined Neanderthal incapable of rational thought.  I need to accept who I am.  Can I keep my computer though?

Back in December 2007 we had an ice storm that we will never forget.  We lost electricity for a week and had a lot of damage to homes, trees, and power lines.  During this ice storm the local power company discovered the pole in our backyard was old and fragile.  A month later, they came out and installed a new pole as you can see on the right.  They transferred all lines over to the new pole except for the cable television line.  With all the cable Internet problems that I have been having lately, Cox Communications have been to our home on several occasions in an attempt to troubleshoot my Internet problems.

During these visits I guess they discovered that their line was still on the old pole.  Well today a guy came out to transfer the cable line over to the new pole.  You can see the new pole on the right now has a stand off brace on the left side of it.  Also you can see where he connected some sort of a ratcheting device on the pole so that tension can be applied to the line to pull it over to the new pole.  After being on the pole for nearly an hour, he came to my front door and told me that he will be back tomorrow with some help.  He said the cable line has so much tension on the line that he cannot pull it over to the new pole without some help.  You can see this pole is on a corner with tension pulling the other way.  Also when the power company installed this new pole, they put it up behind the original pole.  With the pole further back, the wires are too short.  I sure hope he is able to pull it back tomorrow because I have been wanting to get rid of this second pole in our yard for a long time.

It is possible that our move to the new pole is a result of Cox_Will from Twitter.  When he called me on the phone a couple weeks ago, I recall him mentioning that he would put a work order in to have the cable moved over to the new pole.  It has been very unattractive for a long time to have two power poles in one backyard.  It is hard enough to mow the back yard with only one pole back there.  Also since the pole is on a corner, it has a guy wire anchoring the pole to counter the tension of the wires going in the other direction.  I can hardly wait to get the cable moved over to the new pole.  I will be calling OG&E the next day to have the power pole removed from the yard.  Thanks again, Cox!