Why I hate Eric Raymond

Eric Steven Raymond (who likes it when people call him "esr" for pretty much the same reason I'd like it if people called me Optimus Cal) is a self-professed hacker.  I use the term "self-professed" with more than a dash of snark here, because anyone who consciously and unironically refers to themselves as a hacker in today's world is on par with those who publicly label themselves geniuses - presumably because nobody else can do so with a straight face.  In short, something of a sexually unappealing Kanye West.

Eric has been active in hacking circles since the seventies, and has been actively promoting the open source movement since it started, well, moving.  He is also the current maintainer of the legendary Jargon File.  I have a lot of respect for Eric for these - and other - positive contributions.  Unfortunately, this respect is outweighed by the simple fact that Eric is a giant douchebag.

This dislike is born from a number of reasons, mainly Eric's...

1. Overinflated sense of self-importance.

Eric describes himself as one of the most significant figures in the history of free software.  In his own words, "Today I'm one of the half-dozen or so most influential people in that movement; in fact, a lot of people would put me among the top three, with Linus Torvalds and Richard M. Stallman."

That's a very bold statement, and you would expect the person who makes it to be (in addition to an asshole) a talented coder who has authored software that can be listed alongside a kernel estimated to be worth $1.14 billion USD, or one of the most popular compilers on Earth.  However, probably Eric's primary contribution in the form of actual code is originally authoring the fetchmail utility: a mail client whose poor design and security holes have been criticized by, among others, one of my personal heroes, Daniel J. Bernstein.

More hubris: "I either founded or re-invented [...] the open source movement.  If that term means nothing to you, think Linux... "  I just love the subtle implication that Eric's actually had a direct and significant role in Linux development.  That's logic from the Steve Smith school of reasoning: "I've met Linus, Linus created Linux.  By the transitive property, I created Linux.  Algebra's awesome!"

In reality, though, Eric's main attempt at a contribution to the Linux kernel was in the form of CML2, a code configuration system, which was rejected by the kernel development team and the original CML was eventually replaced with LinuxKernelConf.  The possibility that it simply wasn't good enough being incomprehensible to him, Eric blamed the rejection on "politics."

2. Political views.

Eric calls himself an anarcho-capitalist (one of those terms freshman political science students call themselves until the second semester when they actually learn what the fuck they're talking about) and a libertarian.  This is especially rich considering his support for the war on Iraq.  He also called for an "imperialist" campaign to "civilize" the Muslim world.  A rather significant personal stance that is conspicuously absent from the later revisions to his Wikipedia article.

He is also a bit of a gun nut, which I have little problem with, but it does become more than a little creepy when you consider that he privately threatened Bruce Perens to the point where Perens feared for his safety.  Again, suspiciously absent from Wikipedia.

3. Social views.

Eric believes that IQ distribution among women does a better job than cultural sexism of explaining why the high achievers in most fields are male ("get back in the kitchen!"), and - possibly more explosively - that African Americans are responsible for a disproportionate percentage of crimes because they have lower IQs:

"In the U.S., blacks are 12% of the population but commit 50% of violent crimes; can anyone honestly think this is unconnected to the fact that they average 15 points of IQ lower than the general population? That stupid people are more violent is a fact independent of skin color."

His views on homosexuality are equally repulsive, equating homosexuality with pederasty and pedophilia.

I can see why Eric decided to develop fetchmail in the first place: he probably didn't want any mail he sent or received to be touched by a piece of software written by a gay man, so he attempted to author a sendmail replacement, couldn't wrap his head around UUCP, and just gave up and wrote a mail retrieval agent instead.

4. Fucking up the Jargon File.

Many hackers feel that after taking over maintenance of the Jargon File, Eric began to change it to reflect his own warped political views and personal agendas.  He has shifted the tome's focus away from early, pre-Unix hacker culture, added words to the glossary that nobody except he has ever used, and - among other controversial edits - changed the description of hacker politics from being "vaguely liberal-moderate" to the more Eric-centric "moderate-to-neoconservative."  The Holy Bible of hackish culture has been reduced to being Eric's personal vanity document.

In conclusion, I can't say it any better than one of Eric's many fans once did on Wikipedia.  Eric, you are an asshole.

Tetsuo: an in-depth review

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District 9

IMDB: 8.6
Rottentomatoes: 89%

Like a dog waiting for table scraps (except that the dog is also the chef), South Africa finally got the opportunity to see District 9 when it opened in theaters on the 28th of August, but, mainly due to illness, I was only able to see it the following Tuesday.

I tried going in with no expectations, for I would hate myself if I let hype ruin it. I think it's safe to say I was successful, as I loved the film. South African viewers, most of whom will have lived first-hand through Apartheid (or at least its legacy), and xenophobic violence will react differently to those in the US. We will invariably feel stronger connections to the events depicted in the film, and by the same token have less tolerance for improper treatment of such subject matter. With this in mind, I felt that the political allegory was clear, but never heavy-handed.

The protagonist, Wikus van der Merwe, was the biggest surprise for me. The character seems to have had a great deal of time spent on his development during the writing phase, but this is simply not true. Amazingly, the majority of his dialogue and actions were improvised, and his development occurred on camera. This is mainly thanks to the previously unknown talent of Sharlto Copley, a first-time actor who creates possibly the most emotionally engaging action hero (and I use the term loosely here) in decades. Taking Wikus from nerdy middle-management bureaucrat to saviour of an entire race, Copley goes through a whole range of emotions. He's simultaneously the film's emotional gravitas, action hero, and comic relief. Wikus is ultimately a character who, despite winning the affection of the audience, is not entirely likeable, which makes him very real indeed.

With Weta being involved, it's needless to say that the effects are amazing, but it certainly helps that you have a director with a background in special effects who knows how to set up a shot in order to get the most bang for buck. It is in the aliens themselves where this expert utilization of modern visual effects is most striking. These aliens aren't Star Trek's humans with scant prosthetics; District 9's "prawns" are possibly the most alien looking aliens ever put on film. The fact that these inhuman monsters become truly emotionally captivating speaks well of the director's ability to manipulate the viewer's emotion and steer it in the direction of his choice. It also validates the film's underlying message that, due to mankind's inherent flaws, even creatures such as these can be more human than humans themselves.

Despite following an inflexible application of Joseph Campbell's monomyth, the story kept me guessing until the end. I'm not sure if the ambiguous ending is purely to leave room for a sequel, or if it is meant to engage contemplation in the viewer, but it does both. Long after the credits rolled I found myself thinking about the questions that the film raised, and that is a trait which elevates a good science-fiction film into a great one.

Number of F-bombs: 137.

Blog update

The astute eye might catch a slight change in the layout and theme of the blog. Naturally, you may have some questions. Let me throw you a bone:

What was wrong with the old theme?

A few things. Mainly that the light on dark became increasingly difficult to read. I also decided that the old theme was extremely kitsch; whenever I'd visit the blog, I'd feel as though I'm on the personal webpage of the world's biggest asshole. Now, I realise that I may in fact be the world's biggest asshole, but I don't want to be reminded of it everytime I read my own blog.

Why the minimal look? Is it 1994 all over again?

A simple layout is quick to load, quick to render, and ultimately doesn't distract from the content (because I'll let nothing diminish my classy content!). Remember, designers: the medium is not the message, the message is the fucking message.

Why the big font?

Oh, come on. It's not that big! Besides, I have bad eyes and a monitor that's not tiny - 17" isn't exactly huge by today's standards, but it displays the site adequately.

Does this mean you'll be updating content more frequently?

Ha! Don't bet on it! Seriously though, I hope to... But no, really, don't bet on it.

What happened to the Eve Online ads?

I've stopped playing that game a long time ago, so I don't even know why I still had the ad up. Oh yeah, because I'm greedy. Well, the ad looked okay on the old layout, but it's ugly and distracting on Convergence 2.0, so I got rid of it. The only ads you'll find now are unintrusive Google text ads. Well, they're not that unintrusive, but you won't wake up one night to find them standing at the end of your bed or anything. Anyway, I still think EVE Online is a great game and I hope to get back into it when time permits.

What's with the Reddit links on the sidebar? I thought you were into Digg. Did you cross over to the dark side?

Actually, after joining Reddit about a year ago I realised that I had been on the dark side all along. I lost almost all interest in Digg and never looked back, so when Digg banned my account a few months ago for unknown reasons (read: trolling), I didn't even care. Like all of the cruft on the sidebar, the Reddit links may move or disappear altogether, so they may not even be there anymore when you read this.

Happy reading, and drop me a line if you need to.

Russel's Paradox over morning tea

The following is an unfinished post I found gathering dust in my drafts folder. I'm too lazy to finish it, it's too interesting to delete, and leaving it to fester just seems wrong so I'm posting it in its unpolished, incomplete form. Maybe it'll be interesting to someone.

This morning, as I settled with some tea to check my RSS feed collection with Netvibes, I noticed that a recent Dictionary.com Word of the Day was circumlocution. I found this to be rather delightful, as I've always been a fan of the word.

I first happened upon the word in the midst of some forgotten book which I read in my teens. Upon reading its definition - The use of many words to express an idea that might be expressed by few - I found it endlessly charming that the word circumlocution itself is, in fact, an example of the opposite of what it describes; that is to say, it is an example of using one word to express an idea that would otherwise require the use of many. Lexically speaking, circumlocution is an example of its own antonym. For the sake of clarity, that antonym could be taken to be conciseness or terseness.

I became an instant fan of the word, not least of all because of its scholarly Latin character and elegantly flowing phonetic quality. Much to the chagrin of anyone unfortunate enough to be in my company, I'd attempt to use it in casual conversation as often (and sometimes, it would seem, as inappropriately) as possible.

In other news, I'm possibly the most humdrum person you'll ever meet.

I'm fascinated by the concept of self-reference

These words are not autantonyms (also known as Janus words). Autantonyms are homographs with inherently incompatible binary definitions or, more strictly, polysemes. All this befuddling lingo-babble just means that autantonyms are words that have more than one meaning, and two of those meanings happen to be opposites. The word "fast", for example, can mean "quick", but also "fixed in place" - which is the reverse of the former definition. For our purposes, our words are, from a completely self-referential perspective, themselves examples of their own antonyms. Autological words are words which describe themselves. Heterological words are words which do not describe themselves. There is, as far as I am aware, no term for words which strictly describe the opposite of itself. Or, as stated above more clearly, examples of their own antonym. For the sake of convenience, I shall coin these antautological words. The distinction between heterological words and antautological words is subtle, but important.

The word "abbreviation", for example, means "reduction" or "shortening". With the average length of a word in the English language being approximately five letters, it's safe to say that "abbreviation, weighing in at a comparatively marathon twelve letters, is clearly a long word.

You have two sets, "words which are examples of their own antonyms" and "words which are not examples of their own antonyms" (Set A and Set B respectively).

Set A contains words like "abbreviation" (for the sake of convenience we'll say that at twelve letters it falls outside our objective criteria for a "short" word).

The Grelling-Nelson paradox holds for contrautological words. If "contrautological" is an autological word, it applies to itself. The paradox is introduced. If "contrautological" is a contrautological word, then - by its definition - it must be an autological word. The paradox is again introduced. Is "contrautological" both a contrautological and an autological word at the same time? Think it over after getting some sleep.

10,000 BC

IMDB score as of 2009-06-03: 4.9/10
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 9%

I had the misfortune of seeing this turkey a second time on television the other night. I say "a second time" because... Well, actually it makes me depressed thinking about the money I wasted when I originally went to see this pile at the cinema, so let's just forget about that and get on with the review:

Imagine the rare circumstance where being historically and scientifically accurate would actually deliver a highly entertaining, immersive and universally enjoyable film. Now picture Roland Emmerich gently placing both historical accuracy and entertainment value into an ornate clay bowl, dropping his trousers, and taking a steaming, fat shit all over these twin pillars of cinematic value, all whilst twirling his mustache and laughing maniacally. This is 10,000 BC.

I cringe in horror at the thought that this man will be helming an adaptation of Isaac Asimov's Foundation.

The Oscars: Who Cares?

Producer Sid Ganis is the current president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He has produced such timeless classics as: ( Rotten Tomatoes rating in brackets)

• Big Daddy (40%)
• Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (24%)
• Mr. Deeds (22%)
• The Master of Disguise (2%)

Do the Oscars even mean anything anymore?

Good Old Games

GOG.com is now officially out of private beta and available to the public.

Good Old Games is a website which allows you to download classic games ("classic" as in Fallout 2, not as in Pong) legally and completely DRM free for around six bucks a pop.

The lack of DRM means that you actually own the game once you download it, and you're free to install it on as many different machines as many times as you like, and even download the game from GOG as many times as you wish after paying only once.

The games are all guaranteed to be perfectly compatible with both Windows XP and Vista - which eliminates a huge headache when it comes to older games - and also include full technical support. Furthermore, a bunch of extra freebies are thrown in, such as wallpapers, full soundtracks, complete manuals, etc.

Earthworm Jim 1 & 2, Colin McRae Rally 2005, and the epic Freespace series are examples of titles available for six to ten dollars each.

My personal opinion is that, for the price of a nice lunch, it's a steal. Being a broke motherfucker really isn't an excuse to pirate these games anymore, and considering the service and extras you'd be missing out on, you'd just be doing yourself in.

Robocop on a Unicorn

By Lindsay Holman, originally uploaded by Olav Rokne.

The image above is part of a nice Flickr gallery I found featuring images of Robocop on a unicorn. Yup, that pretty much covers it.

Okay, so in the above picture Robocop isn't strictly on the unicorn, but I think Robocop's orientation towards unicorns is really more of a guideline than a rule.

Hyperopia

After months of weighing the relative pros and cons since I first began to notice an increase in both the frequency and intensity of my headaches - from occasional to downright chronic - I find myself in the optometrist's office. I was referred by my doctor after he had heard me whine about excruciating brain-pain and the fear of tumors once too often. Owing to my inherent laziness and indecision, it's taken me long.


The examination room is clean but not threateningly sterile and the optometrist is petite, soft-spoken, and oh-so-pretty. The final quality making it somewhat difficult to focus on arbitrary points on the wall when instructed to do so, and not her shapely bosom.

Finally after being strapped into the terrifying phoropter and reading aloud ostensibly random shapes, symbols, digits and letters in varying light conditions, the lenses are removed. A blur which is very familiar, despite the fact that I had never before noticed it, returns to my vision to steal the crispness from the world around me.

It turns out I have Hyperopia - farsightedness. In addition to this my left eye is apparently somewhat weaker than my right and I'm getting a pair of glasses. I'm to collect them in a week.

How will you fix the economy?

"Our economy and putting it back on the side of the public trust. And that contract that should be inherent in corporations who are hell bent on destroying America and American troops are providing in his country. But no, the Pakistani people also, they want freedom. They want democratic values to be able to speak with him the other day and giving him my commitment, as John McCain's running mate, the first thing I said to him was, if you ask that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the lobbyists play in an issue that we see right now in Washington and that is strong and that important an issue that we saw with that invasion of Georgia shows us some steps backwards that Russia has recently taken away from the other day and giving him my commitment, as John McCain's running mate, the first thing I said to him was, if you really think I can give you examples of things that John McCain and I have not and I have understood the world is and how important it is about doing a lot of background work first and foremost, taxpayers cannot be looked to as that leadership, that light needed across the world."

http://www.interviewpalin.com

Geek Nostalgia #1 - The Hacker's Manifesto

When I first read it - at an age when the movie Hackers was new and seemed moderately plausible, when 9600 baud was absolutely smokin', when wardialing for BBSes was the best thing to do with your Saturday afternoon - The Hacker's Manifesto seemed like the coolest thing ever.

Reading it as an adult, however, with my view warped by cynicism and tinted murky by the cold, affectionless lense of experience, it seems obnoxious, conceited, and even irresponsible. Nevertheless, it had a strong effect on me as a kid, being an iconic part of a culture that encouraged me to spend countless hours teaching myself how to write code and fiddle with the phones. I know I'm not alone in this, and that there's an entire generation of 90s "latchkey kid" hackers who gazed upon the Manifesto with doe eyes at one point or another.

==Phrack Inc.== Volume One, Issue 7, Phile 3 of 10 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= The following was written shortly after my arrest... \/\The Conscience of a Hacker/\/ by +++The Mentor+++ Written on January 8, 1986 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"... Damn kids. They're all alike. But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him? I am a hacker, enter my world... Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me... Damn underachiever. They're all alike. I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..." Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike. I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me... Or feels threatened by me... Or thinks I'm a smart ass... Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here... Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike. And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found. "This is it... this is where I belong..." I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all... Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike... You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will- ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert. This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for. I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike. +++The Mentor+++ _______________________________________________________________________________

Polite nod in the direction of Reddit for reminding me of this.

Firefox Extensions

Part Firefox-whoring, part save my ass in the event of a cataclysmic hard drive crash. Here's a list of Firefox extensions I'm currently using.

I won't bother to add links because:

A. I'm lazy.
B. If you can't figure out how to Google it, you're better off without extensions.

• Foxmarks: backs up and synchronizes bookmarks across machines.
• Flashblock: blocks flash. Or does it flash blocks?
  
• Adblock Plus: is it a good idea to mention this on an ad-supported blog? Probably not.
• Beagle Indexer: indexes visited pages using Beagle Search.
• CustomizeGoogle: enhances Google and its search results.
• Fast Dial: visual bookmarking. May be rendered obsolete in Firefox 3.1
  
• Screen Grab!: saves an entire web-page as an image.
• StumbleUpon: social bookmarking
• Tab Kit: tab grouping, multi-rows, tree view, etc.
• Torbutton: Anonymizes connection using Tor.
• RefControl: spoof http referrers.
  

The list will probably be edited from time to time with no warning.

Online petitions: You're not solving anything

Perhaps this post will end up being an unintended exploration of the mind of a very cynical man, rather than the snarky expose of affectation that it's intended to be. That all depends on the approach of the reader, but this issue is one which has annoyed me for a while now and, come Hell or high water - or low opinion - rant about it I shall.

Perusing my Facebook News Feed, I notice that one of my friends had taken the initiative to join the group "Say NO to Albino Killings in Tanzania, Please Sign to get 10000 Signatures." A group featuring a heart-rending photograph of a badly beaten and somewhat bored looking Albino man, which is accompanied by a description that claims to be seeking actually 100,000 signatures, and not the ten thousand which the name leads us to believe.

All in all, it could be seeking - and in fact have - a billion signatures. My question is: Who cares?


A typical example of a courageous Internet Activist, crusading tirelessly in the name of justice.

What do people hope to achieve by signing up to online petitions? Do they think that the government will suddenly do an about-face on their stance towards the issue^†1 merely because 100,000 anonymous signatures fell on someone's desk? Of course! The economy of an entire nation could be reshuffled and all international relations reevaluated because 100,000 people on the Internet^†2 decided to click "join". Makes perfect sense.

Maybe they're not really arrogant (or naive) enough to think that they could convince the government to change their position. Maybe they just believe that the government doesn't even know about these atrocities, and a petition delivered to the right pair of hands could get the people in charge to sit up and take notice.

I'm sorry, I call bullshit. Are you telling me that the city-college dropout who founded the group in question actually knows more about international human rights issues than official government media liaisons, world-traveling ambassadors, and professional intelligence operatives? Give me a break.

Finally, the argument could be made that these people aren't really hoping to effect any change through their actions. They're just doing something in order to, you know, do something. Surely doing something is better than doing nothing. As noble as that may seem to the credulous ear,^†3†4 I'm sorry to point out that you're not doing anything. Well, besides placating your sense of self-satisfaction, that is.

If you really want to do something, then raise money. Convince your employer to donate. Send packages of food or replacement mine-detector batteries to the United Nations. Travel to the afflicted regions and help to build schools and hospitals. In other words, do something real. Clicking a link and then forgetting about it is not real.

The reason online petitions are fundamentally wrong is because it achieves nothing, yet makes those who "sign" feel like they're doing something. It imbues them with a smug sense of accomplishment that may be enough to prevent them from doing something that could potentially make a difference. I mean, you already signed the online petition, why should you go out and donate money, too? Am I right?

In summary, online petitions are not only pointless, they're counter-productive. By signing them you only succeed in proving that you're a smug asshole who wants to be Bono without actually leaving your comfy, air conditioned office.

I realize that this somewhat Facebook-related post is immediately preceded by another Facebook-related post. I apologize for this and hope that the wanton monotony of my life will subside enough for this not to happen again.

---

1. Which I think it's safe to assume is a stance of unmitigated apathy, otherwise the group wouldn't exist in the first place.

2. Or about one fifth of the membership of Fark.com

3. Or eye. Whatever.

4. Yes, I'm using footnotes! Just one more step towards turning everything on the Web into Wiki-goddamn-pedia... Or worse, a graduate dissertation.

A Vindication of the New Facebook Layout

Being the lazy sonofabitch that I am, I'm not even going to write any new material especially for this post. Instead, I'm going to paste a (slightly abridged) note which I wrote on my Facebook profile earlier today for the edification of my "friends".

Here goes:


There's been a great deal of whining lately about the new Facebook layout, and more than a few Facebook groups dedicated to its eradication, but why all the hate? Since I have nothing better to do on this chilly Sunday afternoon, I'll take a stab at attempting to justify the new layout. It's very tldr, but try to bear with me. Besides, if you don't like reading you have no business being on the Internet in the first place.

I suppose the most simple answer for all the hate is because people fear change - and often with good reason: A new layout means that most non-tech savvy users (read: 90% of you) will have to spend time getting reacquainted with where to click in order to perform any given task.

In order to understand why the change came about in the first place, however, requires understanding the reasons that precipitated it. The fact of the matter is that Facebook was turning into a ridiculous parody of itself.

When I want to go to your profile to, for example, get your phone number or e-mail address, that's basically all I'm interested in. I couldn't give a fuck how many zombies you made, or how attractive your peers find you. Nor do I have any interest whatsoever in seeing the idiotic movie clips and ancient, dried up, "funny" images posted on your so-called Super Wall. As interesting and amusing as these applications may be to you, the ultimate truth is that nobody else gives a shit. So why should I get bombarded with your superfluous crap that steals my bandwidth, melts my CPU and crashes my browser, when all I want is your fucking e-mail address?

This is the same fate that befell MySpace when they decided to allow its users to customize their own profiles as they saw fit - the dreaded "MySpace Syndrome". 99% of profiles became so afflicted with hideous layouts, that when Facebook showed up, everybody jumped ship for the promise of a more sane social network.

Today, the only people who still regularly use MySpace are lonely 13-year-olds and out-of-touch record labels.

This is what Facebook was turning into because of people like you. Every second profile was becoming so overloaded with ridiculously stupid and unnecessary application boxes that they became nigh on unusable. If things were allowed to escalate, then those of us who are not complete and utter morons would have left to find another social network to call our own. Bebo or Orkut or maybe even one that doesn't suck. At least until you retards with your Pirates vs Vampires shit decided to seek us out yet again. No, the line must be drawn somewhere and that somewhere is here.

"But it's my profile, I can do whatever I want to it!" I hear you belch? Well, no it isn't. A Facebook profile is not public property. It's virtual, private property, and unless you paid money for your profile, you have exactly zero say over it. Furthermore, if you had read the Facebook Terms of Use before signing up (you didn't, am I right?), you'll know that everything that gets posted to Facebook becomes the property of Facebook and they can do with it pretty much whatever they want. Uploading all those pictures of little Billy's first steps doesn't seem like such a good idea anymore, now does it?

The new Facebook layout arranges everything into dynamic tabs. This means that the content of any given tab only gets downloaded when I click on that tab. And, fortunately, Facebook included a "bullshit" tab. Oh, I'm sorry, I meant to say "boxes" tab. This is where your Super Wall, Top Friends, and other assorted crap nobody cares about goes. This means that your applications can now be seen only by people who really want to see them (read: nobody).

Now, I'm all for choice. Some of you don't want the new layout gone permanently, you just want the option to go back to the old one. That's not too unreasonable, is it? Well, no it's not. Unfortunately, though, it's not gonna happen and here's why:

If Facebook decided to keep both the old and new layouts this means that, in future, whenever they wanted to add or extend functionality to the site they'll be severely hampered in doing so. Worst case scenario, it'll be impossible. Best case scenario, they'll have to do twice the amount of work. Which means twice the number of man-hours. Which means twice the expense. From a business point of view (and remember Facebook is a business, not a public service - they don't owe you jack shit) having two concurrent layouts is completely unfeasible.

What this means is that there can be only one layout. Shouldn't it be the better, more evolved of the two options? The one that's more convenient to use, overall less threatening to Facebook's revenue stream and, let's face it, less embarrassing.

Ultimately, if you don't like it you're free to join another social network. I recommend MySpace where you'll be free to show off your Zombies and Top Friends with all the lonely 13-year-olds and out-of-touch record labels. They just love that shit.