Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Welcome Fred!

This is a little disorienting.  I just visited "Rotten Tomatoes" dot com, I believe that it was for the first time.  In the upper left-hand corner was a picture of myself; next to it was the legend, "Welcome, Fred!"  Below that was the notice that I had fifty-seven friends, which I thought was a little high until I realized that they must mean "Facebook Friends," which is different.  Bringing up a list of these friends was the easiest thing in the world, with pictures. 

Recall that I hate everything automatic on computers, or automatic anything else for that matter.  Most of the automatic helpers are less than useless.  Like auto-start on a VCR or a DVD player, not only am I standing right there when I put in the disk, I have a remote control in my hand when I sit down.  What could be easier than initiating the display yourself?  The only single thing that auto-start does is make you go through a bunch of steps if you actually want to watch the thing  ten minutes from now.

Honestly, I hate that my computer knows anything at all about me.  Even for a Google search, I'd be much more interested to see sites listed because they were often searched by the public at large than sites that Google thinks I want to see.  Why should the computer be constantly monitoring my activity and trying to make predictions based on the information?  What good could come from that?  For me, I mean, I suspect that some good accrues to advertisers.

Maybe, maybe not, about the advertisers I mean.  Some of the results are so inapt that you wonder who wrote the algorithms.  Like last month, when after Googling the "Mecca Clock Tower" my computer for days thought that I needed information about hotels in Saudi Arabia.  Not in this lifetime I don't, sorry, not gonna happen. 

Ah, Fred, pissing off the wrong side of the ship again, are we?  Go ahead world, dish it out, I can take it.  I have always said, I don't make the rules, I just wake up in the morning like everybody else, the world is what it is.  And probably it was never really better anyway, so let's just go with it. 

No comments: