What Pisses Me Off About the Internet Right Now

Usually I’m pretty mum when someone makes a mistake talking about technology stuff. After all, I’ve been one to make numerous mistakes even when I’m 100% sure I know my stuff, so I try not to bash on people when they’re wrong on a tried, tested and true fact. When it comes to opinion, however, I’m a little flaky admittedly. Don’t ask, I don’t know why. But here are the things that piss me off about people on the Internet right now:

• Idiots Overfurious About Japan winning the Women’s World Cup
  First of all, let’s be real: you didn’t care about the Women’s team until you heard about the Miracle with Brazil. Trust me, only two of you who read this probably cared. And if you did claim to care, you really wanted just to see Alex Morgan or Hope Solo (I can’t blame you). I’ll admit it myself: I didn’t care until right before the Wambach header…which I happened to be in the shower at the time and had to run out with only a towel on (I don’t apologize for any imagery you’ve conjured up at this point). But what’s more frustrating is all the ignoramuses and just plain nasty people who are “pissed off” that people are congratulating Japan because of Pearl Harbor and then going on to say that they deserved their Tsunami earlier in the year. I almost don’t want to dignify them by doing this response, but something tells me I should. The United States fought valiantly, and yes there were some times where we should have had the lead. But where we didn’t take advantage of the opportunity, Japan’s team did. And come on…Pearl Harbor was more than 50 years ago, they already paid the price with at least 100,000 lives in the atomic bombings of Fukushima and Nagasaki (remember those?). And then, of course, the great tsunami and earthquake of March. For all I know, I should be pissed because the Japanese people committed horrific atrocities on Koreans from the time when people said the year was “hundred” rather than “thousand”, and that persecution reared its ugly head again in WWII when they almost eradicated Korean culture and language. But you don’t see me saying that they “deserved” a tsunami/the atomic bombs, right? So grow up if you have even an inkling of that thought.
• You probably have an “Android” phone, not a “Droid”
  This one’s really effing simple. Droid is simply a product name branded by Verizon. I actually don’t blame people THAT much for confusing it, but it’s really not that hard. All Droid products (Droid Bionic, Droid Incredible, Droid X, Droid 2, whatever) are Android products, but not all Android products are “Droids”. I try not to quip about it IRL but sometimes if I’m in a pissy mood I can’t help it.
• Google+ won’t kill Facebook yet.
  Facebook caused an exodus out of MySpace because people were hating sparkly/annoying backgrounds and people also wanted something cleaner out of their social profiles. Sure, Facebook has become more littered lately with spam/spyware links, and FB chat sucks, but Google+ isn’t exactly awe-inspiring either. Sure, “hangouts” and “huddles” are cool, but I think Facebook has managed to rewire our brains where we don’t mind sharing some things to a lot of people. If we really want to keep it private, we send a “Message” or, hell, text it. Google+ is exactly trying to be what Facebook was to MySpace: a clean place with minimal crud. But the problem is that Facebook isn’t today’s MySpace. Not by a long shot. And, yes, while group video chat isn’t possible in Facebook, it probably will be very soon. Circles? OK, it’s cool to see them visually…but if you have upwards of even just 300 friends, circles become kind of constrained. Not to mention, this feature was available in Facebook all along called “Lists”…not nearly as graphically intuitive as Google+, but still the function exists. Oh, and not to mention, while Google+ is GREAT for sharing info just for a small group, it’s not really good for sharing info to just one person; you can’t even write on someone’s wall when you go to their page. You have to, on your Stream, type “+[insert name here] and then insert the link”. What is this, MS-DOS? Seriously? But anyway, Facebook and Google+ are about to do the same thing that Microsoft/Apple/Google have done for the past five years: copy off of each other. And in the end, that’s good for everyone. But unlike operating systems/phone operating systems, in the words of the prophecy in Harry Potter: “neither can live while the other survives”.
• iTunes/Pandora and Spotify are Apples and Oranges…that could be grafted together
  This statement I can understand if you disagree with me on. If you don’t know, Spotify is basically Grooveshark on steroids. Direct integration with Facebook + free music (ad-supported) all around. While it’s COMPLETELY free for now, very soon it’ll probably be limited in terms of bandwidth used per month. But it’s all legal and no need to worry about it crashing down any time soon. Some places are dubbing Spotify the “Pandora” or iTunes killer because of its “price” and “social networking panache”. Pandora, however, was never meant to include full social networking; it was simply meant to give you new choices of music that are very similar to what you currently like. It’s a sort of magical music discovery hat if you will. Spotify is much more “manual”, meaning you really need to just scrutinize each of your friends’ public playlists and see what you like out of them. It’s still Music Discovery…but it’s not automagical. And as for iTunes? Well, iTunes obviously allows you to carry your songs wherever you go. Spotify does too…kind of. It doesn’t allow you to take it on the go if you’re not a paying member (aka at least 5$ a month). But if you do pay, you can take it with you (don’t ask me the details still trying to figure it out). It’s up to you, if you’re on the “right” side of the music law, to see which one’s more cost effective for you.

OK, finally done. I’ll see y’all in 2.571 weeks. Or whatever the days are until Aug 5th.