Why I Comment on Everything I see on the Internet

As a self proclaimed geek it's important that I be up to date on all of the internet happenings. Naturally I do this by browsing Reddit and Twitter, as well as news aggregates like Yahoo! and Google News.

Never 4chan though, 4chan forums are the bowels of the internet. We never go there. EVER. In fact, here's a handy infographic of the life of an internet meme/picture/what have you. (courtesy of Tosh.0)

I usually begin my troll---er I mean purveying at around step 2: Reddit.

Naturally being such a purveyor and connoisseur of internet memes I like to express my opinion on the content I happen to be looking at, and I leave a lot of comments. However not everybody likes to leave comments, or not everybody cares enough to leave a comment, and this is a terrible, horrible thing. Everybody should leave comments, even if those comments are just poorly spelled half-sentences that make no sense to anybody but the poster. After all, it's the thought that counts right?

Why do I comment though? And why should other people comment? Why it's simple Mr. Hypothetical internet questioner! I enjoy making my opinion known. I have a right, nay a duty to make sure that every single person who reads an article or watches a video knows my opinion. This duty extends to everybody who uses the internet too, I should think.

Sometimes it's not even my opinion! Sometimes I just try and think of the most offensive thing to say to the crowd that happens to read this article. Preferably I choose to enter this offensive little morsel in ALL CAPS FOR MAXIMUM OFFENSIVENESS. I ALSO INSURT AS MENY SPELING ERORS AS I CAN, BECUS THAT MAKS IT MORE PERSONL N SHIT. SUMTIM3S R3V3R71NG TO CH47 5P3AK 1S B3S7. 

Hi, I'm a troll. (Only on weekends though)

No but seriously, why do people comment on the internet so vehemently? It's dumb. Just stop. kthx.

Google Facing Copyright Infringement for eBooks (for the last 6 years)

You know, I have been wondering how Google has gotten away with digitizing books and offering full access to them for a price like they do on Google Books without facing copyright infringement lawsuits or something of the sort.

Turns out they are facing copyright infringement suites and they have been for the last 6 years. Who knew.

Now, 6 years into this litigation, a proposal drafted by has been rejected by U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin.

Google has proposed to pay royalties to the owners of the copyrights for each of the books it scanned. But, apparently, the problem is that for quite a few of the books, the owners of the copyrights can't be accurately determined, and so much of the money they'd be offering to pay wouldn't be able to go to anybody. Quite a conundrum.

Furthermore the deal would allow the internet giant to continue to digitize books while paying said royalties, potentially leading to a "universal library" of books on the internet. While this seems like a great idea, apparently Judge Denny Chin thinks this deal is "going too far" even despite the benefits that having such a large digital library would bring.

The proposal would clearly give Google a market advantage in terms of selling eBooks. Whereas other companies would be required to get permission of the copyright holder to digitize and sell eBooks, Google could go on digitizing and selling without seeking the appropriate permission.

Fair? No. And Judge Chin doesn't think so either.

I can definitely see the benefit of having such a huge library of books available online. I've used Google Books many many times to finish that last minute school paper without having to go all the way to the library. But I can certainly see the issues, and it definitely wouldn't be cool to see other eBook publishers shoved out of the market due to a near monopoly (that we all know Google could accomplish) on eBooks.

See the story on BBC News, or for more in-depth coverage check out this article on ComputerWorld

It's Elementary my Dear WATSON.

WATSON, A question answering program/machine developed by IBM, is now the new Jeopardy champion.

Last week WATSON went up against Jeopardy's two well known champions, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, who hold the records for longest consecutive winning streak and highest earning respectively. 

Not surprisingly considering that it's a machine, WATSON kicked both of the champions' butts in the competition, winning itself the $1 Million prize. 

More importantly, however, WATSON has shown us that the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) development is rapidly expanding, we're making great leaps and bounds towards a machine that we could potentially, have a conversation with in very natural language. Gone would be the days of typing things into Google to find an answer to, lets say, a computer problem. 

The IBM website for WATSON has a ton of interesting 2-minute videos about the various applications of WATSON and how it came to be developed, it's all very interesting. 

Particularly interesting would be this technology's use in the medical field, doctors would be able to use WATSON (Or some variation thereof) to assist them in diagnosing a patient, and the results would be able to be highly personalized, as you'd be able to enter all the parameters surrounding the patient's condition, hight, weight, age, medical history, etc. 

Not just plain medicine either, biomedical research, business, sociology, anthropology, customer service, and everyday things like fixing a computer problem or a car problem could be significantly aided with this technology. It sounds optimistic but there's really no end to the industries that would be drastically altered (probably for the better) by this technology. WATSON is a huge leap in the field of AI, and it's only going to keep getting better. The future is upon us.

If you'd like to learn more about WATSON check out their website, there's tons of information there about it, and make sure you watch Jeopardy every single day. Because it's the best show ever. (In my opinion).

(By the way, Sherlock Holmes never actually says "Elementary my dear Watson" in any of the Sherlock Holmes stories, just a fun fact.)

Screw You, Steve Pavlina

Let's start off by saying that I have nothing against Steve Pavlina, I'm sure he's a wonderful person, and props to him for being about to do what he does with just a blog and a few advertising spaces.

I'm just utterly and completely jealous of Steve Pavlina. This person and many others, others like Darren Rowse of Problogger.

Making money blogging is hard work, and teaching others how to do it is even harder, I might even go so far as to say it's impossible to teach people how to blog effectively enough to make money. I mean, sure there are tips you can give them to optimize what they've already got, but if they don't got it, they don't got it. There's nothing anybody over at Copy Blogger or Problogger, or Steve Pavlina's blog can do to make somebody into the perfect blogger.

There's no formula anybody can follow to get the best blog ever that's going to be read by thousands of people every day. There's no formula for the perfect monetization model for a blog. There's no advertising agency that's going to get you a fantastic amount of money for very little effort, or an affiliate company that's going to get you the biggest commission for products that EVERYBODY buys.

Nobody is going to just walk up and hand you the perfect blog and a formula for making it into the perfect money making blog. It just doesn't happen and it just isn't practical to believe so.

How do I know these things? Simple. I've read every article on every blog ever concerning making money online (not really, but I've read a lot), and let me tell you: They all say something different about the "right way" to go about blogging. Shouldn't that lead you to believe that there is no "right way"?

I mean, come on people, we live in the information age, it's so simple to be able to access millions of sites on a million subjects, you'd think that people would start to realize that the internet isn't some gold mine where anybody can make thousands of dollars every day by taking surveys and writing a blog dedicated to food and cats (I don't know, there are some weird blogs out there...you're reading one).

There are literally hundreds of books on amazon about making money blogging most of them will probably tell you the some of the same regurgitated information; promising unrealistic things if you follow their instructions, but some of them might contain kernels of useful information. And I promise if you buy these books, you'll probably learn something new, but you won't meet the goals that they place on you.

The only way for you to do that is to start Blogging and learn for yourself how to blog your own way, everybody should have their own formula.

I'm absolutely appalled by the amount of people I hear about who fall for internet schemes designed to capitalize on people's lazyness and wish for easy money, promising a perfectly monetized blog and thousands of dollars a day in income. I'm stunned, I really am.

Get a grip people. It's  not possible in real life, and it's not possible on the internet, which -contrary to popular belief- is also "real life".

If you want to make money online, with a blog or with affiliate marketing or with whatever method you happen to come across, you have to put in a lot of hard work. If you're looking to make money blogging you can't look at it like a substitute for a job, you have to look at it like a new job. It's that simple (but it's actually very complicated).

Image Attribution: scottchan / FreeDigitalPhotos