The Whitehawk

Around seven months ago, Digg was any tech-blogger’s “dream”. It was much faster than Slashdot, and most of the top articles in that day were influential enough to write about. I could pretty much go to Digg, press “Top 24 Articles” and just pick 4 articles out of the list and have half of my work cut-out for me.

But it pains me to see that not only do we have to have the support of friends, to join the front page, but also the approval of the “Bury Brigade”, which is the name that Digg users, and bloggers alike, have given to the tight circle of Diggers who seem to enjoy burying the topics that don’t suit their tastes, rather than promoting new types of articles, which don’t appear very often, but instantly gain their disapproval because they don’t feature half-naked women using Apple products.

I don’t frequent Digg as I used to, but back when I used it frequently, rather than just “leeching” off information from the website, I also participated and looked for upcoming articles. This became more frequent as the quality of the front page articles deteriorated, and right now it’s simply reached a state where all of the front page articles are predictable and repetitive.

It’s very simple to get your article on the front page, just get a few dozen friends to Digg your article in a short period of time and you’re there (yes, I am aware that they changed their algorithm not too long ago so it would take more Diggs to reach the front page).

Back when I used Digg, reaching the front page was the hard part, and from there onwards, people would only Digg it more, and you’d gain your few minutes/hours of “fame” (or more appropriately, traffic). Today, your article has to gain the support of your friends or Digg-buddies, and the approval of the Bury Brigade, who instead of promoting quality content “bury” any content that doesn’t fit the “trend” of articles that we see today.

After going to Digg’s front page right now and having a quick look at what their Top Technology Articles are, here are some of the things you must have in your article to gain the Bury Brigade’s approval:

• The words “Apple”, “Mac” or “iPod/iPhone” - that’s all there is to it, write an article about whether you love or hate any Apple-related thing and that’s halfway-done to Digg stardom
• A gorgeous woman using/licking/covered with a random sexy gadget (preferably an Apple product) - do I need to explain this one?
• [Insert Random Number Here] ways to do [Insert Random Tech Related Thing here] - if I named this article “10 things I hate about Digg’s Bury Brigade”, you would have come across this article from Digg’s front page
• Photoshop/Design Tutorial/How To/”No No” or “Yes Yes” lists - a lot of people who use Digg think that web usability or good design can be learned by following a checklist or an iPhone Button Photoshop tutorial
• Linux is Good / Microsoft is bad - even though most Digg users probably use Windows, anything that can convince them of how good Ubuntu is, or how you can change your wallpaper on it, AND how much better you can change your wallpaper on Ubuntu than on Windows, is definitely an instant front-page article. (ok, maybe I emphasized the sarcasm a little too much there, but you get the picture)
• Funny chain-letter-esque images - I’m all for humor. In fact, I consider myself a humorous person. But when funny 404 pages are incredibly more relevant as tech news that an article that questions Mint.com’s security, you should realize that front page on Digg doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s more relevant or a more accurate response to what are the latest tech news or articles.

Right now, the Digg front page only lists those articles that are more popular between a small group of people and approved by the large majority of them which bury any article that doesn’t suit their tastes.

But if you follow the list above you can guarantee that your articles will suit the Digg-groupies tastes. Just don’t expect on it suiting the tastes of the “rest of us” who abandoned Digg for the “selection” of articles above.

Personal Note: Although I listed it as one of the negative items, I have to admit that I happen to visit Macenstein once a month to see their Mac girl of the month. I know that most of them are just models pretending to be Mac fans, but the illusion that somewhere in the world a girl like that exists pleases my inner-geek.

I put this one under both the journal and rants, because it’s a little of both. My girlfriend and I recently broke off, or in her own terms, she wanted some “space”, so I gave her it, willingly, knowing that my space was just about to be taken from me.

There’s nothing worse than forcing a person into being with you. That is something that has always worried and plagued me, for as long as I’ve lived. It’s funny how you feel, after all of the goals that you set disappear, because your relationship ended. Surely, other people go through harsher hardships. Some relationships leave emotional scars, or babies to rise. I can’t say I’ve experienced the later so much, although I can understand, or at least relate to it a bit. But I can certainly relate to the first.

You can’t help but to compare yourself to the one who replaced you. People who’ve seen her, with him, tell me that they have no idea what she sees in him, compared to me. I know that some people will say anything they can, just to make the other feel happier, but I can’t admit that I don’t think about it myself. I don’t look at him as someone inferior, just someone fortunate to have seized the moment, but perhaps unfortunate when the future rises.

It’s funny that all of the things that we promised to each other: honesty, regardless of the consequences, friendship, even if we became separated; all seem to break as easily as the words came out of our mouths at that time. It’s funny how all the moments, the pictures, the love we shared, the love we made, the things we cherished, the people we were with, all disappear, and turn into nothingness, when compared to the pain of losing one another.

I hope that no one else ever comes to know this pain, no one else but her. What goes around, comes around. I have to believe that, or else I’ll lose my sanity. And right now, it’s the only thing I have left to lose. Everything else feels empty and meaningless.

I’m sorry if I sounded too much like a comedian with that title, but honestly, why do 99% of people immediately stop, when they go on one. And the situation is even worse with flat escalators (conveyor belts).

Today I went to the shopping mall, and I happened to get there when it had just opened. There were about 50 people, all of them eager to go in, and none of them moved an inch after they stepped on the conveyor belt. I even saw a lady shoving her purse in front of another man just to get to the conveyor belt first, and what for you might ask? So she could stand for 30 seconds right in front of him completely still as the escalator moved for her.

I’ll even go as far as saying that one day I saw someone literally running to an escalator, and as soon as he got there, he remained completely still (even though he could step up) and looked at his watch impatiently while the stairs brought him up.

Sometimes my father tells me that one day we won’t have to lift a finger to do anything (that we’ll basically become “vegetables”). Although his line of thought is a bit exaggerated, it seems that his words aren’t too far from the path that we seem to be heading to.

And then people wonder why they get fat and think that they can solve it by taking a few pills before meals.

It’s been a while since I’ve made a rant on this website, but I have been keeping quiet for far too long. After months of speculation, and bad rumors against the Playstation 3, I want to make the rant to end all rants against the Playstation 3. Rumor has it, that some people that have bought the console have actually been able to play games on it!Don’t you people realize how shocking this announcement is? For months without end people have been whining for every little reason against Sony, and now that it’s console is actually among us (us of course being, in this case, the US and Japan) some people are actually playing games on it and having fun while doing it. What a shock!

On a more serious note, some blogs need to stop exaggerating and posting every little bit of negative news they can about a popular console. There was actually an article today about how the Playstation 3 gathers dust! Please people, please forgive the Playstation 3 for being a solid object, and thus capable of being a landing spot for the small particles that float around your bedroom.

But wait, there are better rants against the Playstation 3 out there, one user claims that his Playstation 3 was scratched in 10 seconds. According to his claims, he took it out of the box, and noticed it had gathered a lot of dust, therefore he scrubbed it with his hands and it was already scratched! How many of you have ever scratched any gadget or plastic toy by rubbing your hand on it?

Thankfully not everyone is so easily eluded, one user actually read the content of the article and wrote:

is your hand made out of steel wool?!

Is the Playstation 3 that bad that people have to make an article about every little defect that a dozen of users, from the thousands of owners, have? IGN even gave the console a 10/10 rating on future potential.

The PS3’s strongest prospects, though, lay with its software. In 2007 alone we’ll be seeing an armada of promising videogames. Allow me to name drop: Half-Life 2, F.E.A.R., Eye of Judgment, Indiana Jones, Lair, Haze, Stranglehold, Golden Axe, Virtua Fighter 5, Def Jam: Icon, Heavenly Sword, MotorStorm, Warhawk, Burnout 5, Formula One, Medal of Honor Airborne, Army of Two, Mercenaries 2, Oblivion, The Darkness, Unreal Tournament 2007, Calling All Cars, Alone in the Dark, Brothers in Arms, Gran Turismo HD, Spider-Man 3, the Naughty Dog Game, NBA Street, Dark Sector, Frontlines, Grand Theft Auto IV, Killzone, Ratchet and Clank, Assassin’s Creed, The White Council, and Metal Gear Solid 4 are but a few of the 100+ PlayStation 3 games expected to ship before the end of the year… and that doesn’t even include the dozens and dozens we don’t even know about yet.

I’m not going to purchase a Playstation 3 this Christmas (it isn’t out in Europe). My money is going for Nintendo, and even they are suffering from stupid articles about people who throw their Wiimote (the controller) around the house, and are actually surprised (!!!) when it breaks stuff! (!!!!!!!!!!!). There are others who let go of the controller after swinging their arms really fast and get upset with Nintendo because the wrist strap broke…

People… the wrist strap is there so the controller will hand from your hand instead of falling to the floor if you happen to need your hands to do something else, not to stop it from flying towards your television when you swing at it like you were batting for a home run.

Next week, the Wii is coming out, and hopefully I’ll be able to play it during the weekend (if it arrives on time). In March, the Playstation 3 comes out, and if Gran Turismo ends up being a launch title I might consider getting it also. My point is, these consoles are actually working, their problems are nowhere as bad as the problems the XBox 360 had when it was released. Don’t you remember the heat complaints? Or is Sony the only company that releases defected products at launch?

Before explaining the “how”, I’d rather elucidate the readers first, on what I call the “suit and tie status”. Let’s say there’s a guy named Bob (oh come on, everyone uses Bob as a generic name for stories, and you almost certainly have an uncle named Bob too so it’s a familiar name).

On Bob’s day off, Bob puts on his average clothes: shoes, pants, and a shirt and walks into a computer store. After being ignored for 10 minutes, one of the employees finally notices (or pretends to have just noticed) that Bob was in the store. So he walks up to Bob and says the most irritating phrase shop employees can say to customers:

“Can I help you?”

Regardless of which question Bob asks he will be answered in the worst and shortest way imaginable. Unable to empty his wallet Bob leaves the store with a sad expression upon his face.

But Bob is a stubborn man, so on one of his work days, when Bob happens to be using a suit and tie, he walks back into the same store. As soon as he comes in, the clerk is alerted by the security camera that someone with a suit and tie has just entered the store and therefore proceed to put on the patented “happy employee smile” and walk up to the customer with it and change the tape in which they address Bob:

“Good morning sir, and welcome to our store. My name is Marc, and if you need any assistance whatsoever I’d be more than glad to help you out.”

This, my readers, is the “suit and tie” syndrom. Feel free to try it out in real life, it works wonderfully well.

Well today, I experienced a similar effect in the Super Market. I walked in with my laptop backpack and went to the counter for her to keep it there while I went inside to purchase some things. When I was taking off the backpack, I accidentally pulled the phone cord which was connected to my iPod Nano, causing it to fall from my pocket. I bent my knees and picked it up, and when I rose everyone was glaring at me as if they were looking at Tom Cruise.

The lady behind the balcony whispers something to me with the same glare, which I misunderstood to be “You can leave the backpack here”, but then she repeated with a bit higher voice and said “You can take your backpack with you sir”. At this moment I thought to myself “this is odd… I’ve been here like a hundred times and I’m always asked to leave my backpack outside”. I went to pickup some tissues, which were quite near the cash-registers and promptly returned. When I reached the lady in front of me stepped aside and said “please sir, go ahead”.

I thanked the kind lady, and promptly payed my tissues and left and found the clerk that told me to carry the backpack smiling back.

Perhaps if you lived here you’d understand, but this is not normal at all. I don’t feel like dropping my iPod on the floor every time I want to be attended nicely, but it’s certainly worth a shot again in the future.

[tags]iPod, iPod Nano[/tags]

I love blogging. My father is a well known journalist in my region, and ever since I was little he has always tried to push me away from pursuing his career so I wouldn’t be compared to him and because it just isn’t a good business to be in at the moment. But when the opportunity emerged to blog professionally I was really happy. And for the first months I didn’t even receive any money from blogging whatsoever. I just wrote away and tried to bring innovative, and sometimes polemic, articles to ForeverGeek.

However, ever since it was sold our audience changed from a mature one to a… well, to what I could only compare in words to blogging brats. And as all brats, if they don’t get a good twist on the ear they never shut up and run rampaging through each article with 1337 or “nigger talk” (not that I have anything against niggers) and just be plain obnoxious.

For that reason I decided to announce that from now on I will be closing the comments on further articles where things get carried away. From racists to fanboys, I’ve seen it all through the comments I get on my e-mail. Some several months old articles of mine still get comments. Most of them are people asking about updates or doubts. All the others are those discussions you usually see between 5 year olds, only with much worse language.

Perhaps in the future someone will offer a netiquette school for such internet delinquents and some sort of degree will be required to be given freedom of speech.

Hundreds of men and women suffered and were killed in the past so we could have freedom of speech. And what do we give them back?

0MG WTF!1!!!1ONE!1ONE w00tz0r s|_|x0rs my b0xx0r5

Someone with skill should make a “Every time you talk 1337 a deceased writer spins in his grave a hundred times” picture.