meta link: the ghost in the room by syne

meta: the ghost in the room, or, why modesty is a dirty fucking word by synecdochic - regarding women, modesty, the imposter system, and being, you know, awesome and knowing it.

Okay, normally, I wouldn't caveat for like, "do you want your day to possibly start to suck", but I'm warning for reading two of the posts syne links to for context may kind of make your day suck, because let me tell you, I don't do well with unsettlingly pointed thoughts about how if you are really awesome, you a.) would be acknowledged for it by like, magic and stuff and b.) you shouldn't like, want to be acknowledged or something? The posts are marked so as not to stumble unknowingly. I totally own I realized what I was going to read so yes, that was my fault, but I seriously, seriously didn't get my first instinct was to wonder, and this is not the first time, is there anything on this planet about ourselves that women aren't supposed to erase. My second was to like, act crazy. My third was to read syne's post and see if that made me feel better. I think it will. Just not right now.

There's only so many ways you can use a short skirt analogy without it becoming tired and better used for the humor value, but seriously, my accomplishments now have too short a skirt and need to be a bit more modest? I mean, think about this one; we are like, three thousand something years from the apocrypha that the best reputation a woman can have is that no one knows she exists (paraphrased).

Tell me someone else is having a better day? Seriously, lie to me while I run get a Pepsi and ponder the ways of the universe. I blame the lack of coffee; I was never this unsettled when my caffeine came in brewed form.

all your data belongs to the one of the internet (blessed be the trunk and all its branches)

To take a break from quiet paranoia for a bit (my paranoia is very paranoid but it's quite exhausting):

The real reason why Steve Jobs hates Flash by Charlie Stross (thanks to anatsuno for the original link)

I call it Our Dystopia: How Bladerunner and Neuromancer Weren't Quite Depressing Enough So Let's Mix This In and Really Lose the Will to Live, because halfway through comments, I was already like, thinking of stocking up on spare 1TB drives and spray-paint my keyboard in various (and tastefully renegade) shades of green for my inevitable escape to the underground (in the jungle?) clutching my hard drives to my chest while being chased by G4 and G5 mobile's Everpresent Eye trying to steal my data from my cold, dead fingers.

I quibble politely with this:

That's the time scale in which they expect the cloud computing revolution to flatten the existing PC industry. Unless they can turn themselves into an entirely different kind of corporation by 2015 Apple is doomed to the same irrelevance as the rest of the PC industry — interchangable suppliers of commodity equipment assembled on a shoestring budget with negligable profit.

And.

If you're using an iPad in 2015, my bet is that you won't bother to have home broadband; you'll just have data on demand wherever you are. You won't bother yourself about backups, because your data is stored in Apple's cloud. You won't need to bother about software updates because all that stuff will simply happen automatically in the background, without any fuss: nor will worms or viruses or malware be allowed. You will, of course, pay a lot more for the experience than your netbook-toting hardcore microsofties — but you won't have to worry about your antivirus software breaking your computer, either. Because you won't have a "computer" in the current sense of the word. You'll just be surrounded by a swarm of devices that give you access to your data whenever and however you need it.

Clarification:

It is 2010 and I can't download a song from Amazon on my G1 unless I'm standing in just the right part of the parking lot on one leg while humming Whataya Want From Me backward (all roads lead to Adam Lambert; he's magic). I live in Austin--you're saying in five years--five years--the current disgraceful state of wireless global networking will not crash and die when I need Jason Derulo's new single like now? That's like saying in five years I can finally give up the flesh and the tyranny of individualism and join the One of the Net, All Seeing, All Knowing, All Surfing (May the Oneness Last Forever).

What I'm saying is, you think in five years mobile access is not going to make me curse the name of all who own iPhones for stealing my bandwidth? Stop raising my hopes here, okay? That's just like, cruel.

(On the inevitability of All Our Data Belongs To Big Network Drives in five years: did I ever mention that we had a major data center that required a firehose once to avoid overheating? Yeah. Call me when no one is standing anywhere holding a giant hose with an embarrassed expression. Maybe then I won't laugh too hard.)

(PS: Swarming. I love that word.)

get out of my undewear drawer now

For those with Facebooks that haven't seen the new and improved personalization Facebook has started and opted everyone into, please go here for the explanation and a step by step on how to opt-out if you're not into that sort of thing.

...at some point, I am going to snap and rant about the fact that 'this is the internet' holds water just as much as 'boys will be boys' and 'that's the way things are'. Just not today. This is the internet. I'm going to write porn now. As God intended.

ETA: How to Restore Your Privacy on Facebook. That was was lowering. I thought I'd reset all of mine, and here I am proved wrong.

If you're not sure you got everything, read it. I went methodically every damn page and I still missed a page.