Today I was on facebook. I saw this on the side of the page…

It got me thinking. Why bother having a facebook if you’re going to make it private?

I have this thought quite a lot. It makes me laugh every time I hear about someone bitching about privacy when they actively place their information on a website that is essentially public.

I hear about people deleting their facebook because they are ‘being stalked’. 99% of the time that will be total B.S.

A story by some attention seeking idiot attempting to make people think that they are so desirable socially that they are being followed online. I have heard this stalking story a number of times. It has always been a girl that makes the complaint… and that girl is almost always of an appearance ‘not worth stalking’.

Back in the day of myspace I would see the same sort of thing. Myspace was a site where you could create your own unique page and show it off to the world. You would then get people setting their profile to ‘private’ so that only friends could see you (thus defeating the purpose of myspace).

Here’s 3 things:
1) Most of you aren’t worth stalking

2) If someone wants to get info off you from facebook, for whatever reason… they will usually have the resources to bypass any privacy settings (think government or law enforcement agency). Your token attempts are not going to stop them.

3) The only information you put on your facebook (or any internet presence) should be information you wouldn’t mind the entire world seeing. Use the ‘grandmother rule’… if you wouldn’t show your grandmother, you shouldn’t post it.

The ultimate privacy setting lies in you preventing yourself from typing idiotic things, or uploading stupid pictures (or having them taken in the first place).

Also… fewer people care about you than you either admit or think.

(I realise that this could really come to bite me on the arse if my account gets hacked… you have permission to say ‘I told you so’)

Regards

-Simon

This is the super simple case for mandatory paternity testing. Read this article (note: I have removed the faces and family names as I don’t wish to bring attention to the people, just to the idiotic behavior).

This guy is gullible enough to believe that his wife got pregnant watching 3D porn while he was off in Iraq. While this is an extreme and ridiculous case, men are often gullible when it comes to being told that a kid is theirs.

Perhaps it is because they badly want to believe they have conceived a child. Or it may be because they do not want to face the emotional pain of having being cheated on.

Regardless, there are many men who are raising kids that are not their own. There is nothing wrong with this if they are doing this voluntarily and know that the kid isn’t theirs. However they should have a choice to either raise the kid or get out of their, not spending any time or money on the kid.

A mandatory paternity test will force many of these men to face reality. It will also weed out many cheating women who just use those men as a means to raise their offspring (while denying the men the opportunity to pass on their own genes).

A faithful woman will have nothing to worry about with mandatory paternity testing… it is just the unfaithful ones that oppose it. Which is why it will be a long time before mandatory paternity testing will come even close to law.

Of course she is suing the porn cinema which she visited to “see how a porno looked with 3D effects”. I wonder how successful she will be.

Regards

-Simon

Recently here in Australia, Coca-Cola launched a new marketing campaign. The marketing campaign revolves around having people’s names on the front of a coke bottle or can. They took 150 of the most common names and placed them on the front of coke cans.

Take my name for example. On the front of the bottle or can it would say:

Share a coke with…

Simon

Coke aim to sell 268 million bottles and cans over the next 3 months (since they launched the campaign). I think this is genius, here’s why.

There has been a huge buzz surrounding these coke bottles on social media sites. Particularly facebook. These cans or bottles are not only talked about every day, but are shown in pictures. People are doing the advertising for Coke (and having fun in the process).

One of my facebook friends even has the Coke billboard in Kings Cross as his profile picture.

(note: pictures of him, his personal details and his family name have been removed for privacy. This is to show the example of a person who has the coke sign in my news feed every time he does something on facebook).

People are searching supermarkets for bottles or cans with their name on it. Those who do not have common names joke about the fact that they are upset. Upset because they do not have a can named after them.

Many times marketing teams get it so wrong. This time I believe they have got it so right.

Regards

-Simon

Here we’re going to have another look at some of the spam comments I’ve been getting on this blog. (Our first look).

I set the blog so that I have to approve comments before they show up. This is done not to censor the comments but to avoid link bait showing up in the comments section (others promoting their site with worthless comments in order to make money).

Let’s get into it.

This was a response to my blog post ‘new technology must be economically viable.’ This comment provides zero value, is useless and shows obvious grammatical errors (which means you know someone in a 3rd world country is being paid an extremely small amount of money to post this).

How do we know this?

Let’s have a look. There is an obviously fake email address as well as their name being ‘diablo 3 release date.’ of course a site related to diablo 3 is inserted into the comment.

Obviously link bait trying to rank for that search term. I blocked out the IP for privacy and blocked the site in order to prevent promoting it.

Another one.

This guy’s (or girl’s) name is ‘Dedicated Hosting’. Of course his/her site has to do with hosting websites.

He wanted to make sure we knew that fact.

Oh.. and feel free to grab my feed.

This is the best one.

A quick look at their name.

You tell ‘em.

That’s all from me.

Regards

-Simon

So it turns out that Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore are set for divorce. Both famous actors (or actress).

Normally I wouldn’t comment on any celebrity gossip. This isn’t the type of blog and I really don’t give a shit. This case is the exception.

Well why is this the exception?

Because there is a difference of 15 years between this couple. And unlike most cases with an age difference, it is the woman (Demi) who is older.

See, in the past 5 years or so there has been this idiotic ‘cougar’ phenomenon. Some social commentators have been trying to tell us that the new craze is older women with their younger men. This spits in the face of thousands (of not millions) of years of programming.

Men find youthful and fit women attractive as they provide men with the greatest chance of passing their genes on.

The ‘cougar phenomenon’ has been promoted by a few groups. One of those groups being feminists. They are often women who are older (and therefore not desired by the majority of men). In their unwillingness to accept the consequences of their decision not to commit (and stay committed) from their youth, they try tell other women (as well as men) that 40 is the new 21.

Unfortunately reality, and what came out of the mouths of these women are 2 very different things.

Men desire young women for their ability to reproduce. While older women can be attractive, the feelings of love a man may have will not be there for the older woman.

A man will fool about with an older woman but not commit. These men may mess about with you in bed, but they don’t want to be seen with you in public. They also won’t be bringing you home to meet their mother.

Hang on Simon, Demi and Ashton were married for 6 years… what do you mean they don’t fall in love?

Okay I’ll answer that question. But first let me start off by saying that there are always exceptions to a rule. But this is a rule. Men don’t fall in love with older chicks. I don’t have time to go through every case individually.
Now to your question. Ashton would have had to gain something out of marrying Demi. Kutcher was a B grade actor at best when they married. This marriage gave him a lot of publicity which has resulted in him now (as of me typing this) being the highest paid actor on tv, now that he is staring in 2 and a half men.

While that tv show may not last without Charlie Sheen, he has still done well for himself over the past few years.

That combined with the fact that Demi still retained a fit body, meant that it was an okay prospect to marry her. A comment from the article I linked to above sums it up best.

She is an attractive 48 year old but she is still 48.

Ashton could have had any amount of attractive young girls.

While I don’t meant to pick on these 2 in particular, it is this notion that I am attacking. That notion being that ‘cougars are the new thing’.

They aren’t.

But Simon, statistically relationships with an older woman and younger man are the most successful. What do you have to say about that?

That is true, however you haven’t spoken about the reason why. Roughly 65-70% of divorces are initiated by women. The reason that this combination is the most successful in terms of relationship partnerships is because the woman is less likely to divorce a younger man. And the men are less likely to divorce in the first place. Simple explanation really.

Ladies, don’t let shows like ‘Sex and the city’ fool you. If you are young, realize that you are more attractive now than you will ever be in your lifetime. It is best to get the highest quality male possible, get him to commit and commit to him (actually forever, not until you get ‘bored’).

To the older ladies… my condolences.

Regards

-Simon.

I often get comments like this in the spam section in my blog admin dashboard.

Which of these ‘tips and hints’ is our humble commenter talking about?

Yep… a cricket post.

You’d think with a blog with a relatively low amount of traffic like mine, that I wouldn’t be getting comments like this. You’d think wrong.

I blacked out his email address and IP for privacy purposes. I also blocked out the URL that he wanted to shamelessly plug on my blog because I don’t want him to do exactly that.

What a fool… he’s wasting his life. Spewing out spammy comments in broken English which provide absolutely no value to anyone. I would accept comments with links if they provided value to the discussion. They don’t.

Glad I set my blog up so that I would have to approve comments before they show up.

Comment was deleted.

Regards

-Simon

Currently the ruling party in Australia (the Labor party) is the subject of media speculation about its leadership. Prime Minister Julia Gillard looks like she will be dumped from the leadership sooner or later (although it is no guaranteed).

I made the prediction at the beginning of the year that we would see Kevin Rudd be reinstated as prime minister (Kevin ’11) as Gillard’s political fortunes wane. My prediction looks to be correct.

Currently Labor are facing rubbish poll figures. If an election were held today (which thankfully for them it isn’t) then they would be destroyed. The latest news poll poll shows labor at 41% to the coalitions 59%.

Unlike my other 2011 predictions, this one seems to be on target (I predicted a video on youtube would reach 1 billion views).

Here is my analysis of the situation. If Labor reinstate Kevin Rudd then they will experience a immediate rise in popularity. It has been just over a year since labor dumped Mr Rudd due to his poor performance in the polls. Voters tend to have short memories.

Mr Rudd could call an immediate election with the excuse that the current situation isn’t working (the minority government). Mr Rudd would want to make the election campaign as short as possible in order to capitalise on the honeymoon effect a new (or renewed) leader gets. Labor would also have the element of surprise on their side.

While this would not win the election for Labor (barring a monumental political stuff up by the opposition Liberal party) it is their best chance to ‘save the furniture’ (save as many seats in parliament as possible).

If Mr Rudd is made prime minister then the independents (who hold the balance of power in this minority government) may choose to make the decision for him and remove their support for the labor government. They would do this because they made their political deal with Julia Gillard as prime minister and not Kevin Rudd. This would be an excellent opportunity for Mr Rudd to pretend his hand was forced (had to call an election).

An alternative situation would be that the independents give their support to Mr Abbott and the coalition. Mr Abbott would no doubt call an election as soon as possible (while likely sustaining political damage due to the difficulty of calling the election).

Another alternative would be for Gillard to continue for another 6 months or so (all the while copping the political backlash for unpopular decisions) only to have Rudd installed after that. Mr Rudd could distance himself from the decisions Gillard made (even though he initiated most of them when he was prime minister). Mr Rudd could then call the election.

But Simon, what if Kevin decides not to call an election?

Good question. Honestly I don’t think he will (or anyone who should obtain the Prime Ministership). I am just outlining what I believe to be the best political strategy since it looks like Labor is intent on getting rid of another leader.

Another more conventional tactic would be to wait until the political storm passes. Wait for a time when they are ahead (or at least not so far behind) in the polls.

We will see exactly where this goes in the coming months to 2 years.

Regards

-Simon