So Google launched Google Health today, and basically it's about drugs, lots and lots of drugs. Google is after the 20 billion dollar drug industry's advertisement money. Basically Google wants to know what ailments you have or might think you have, and then wants to sell ad companies ad space to target you. Just like good old television you let Google tell you about problems like Restless leg syndrome, the cure for which causes gambling problems and sexual urges.

Remember facebook's beacon? You thought it was gone, but it's back and this time it's got a new name. It's called Google Friend Connect. Not only does it allow Google to keep an eye on the users, but Google also keeps the content that they contribute, as well as the user base.

This is basically Google's version of the beacon put out by facebook a while ago. It collects which sites you visit, keeps track of your friends, and what you do while you're on that site and it provides that information to Google so that they can advertise better -- just like facebook wanted to do. In return for you providing Google with this service, Google will let friends visiting your site talk with each other or comment on your site. If there was an outcry about the beacon, there should be a similar one for this product. The only difference being that they're not announcing this information to your friends -- yet (remember the news reader?)! In order to drive any traffic to your site, they have to announce the information to your friends at which point this product is just like the beacon.

Also as for the value, I can't see how this adds value to your site, as the users who are already going to visit your site can talk about it with each other. I don't see how new users are going to come to your site because of this product. Perhaps I don't understand the product well enough yet, but it doesn't seem like its adding all that much value to any given site than comments already provide -- and you control your comments and can export them anywhere. With this product it's 100% lockin, you can't do anything with the content that your users contributed to the site. It seems like a bad idea for pretty much everyone as far as I can see.

If you don't have comments on your site, may I suggest getting an Open Source CMS or a blogging tool instead. Much more value, much more control, and no privacy concerns.

As shameless plug, I am writing an Open Source social network called Social OS (Open Source). It's not ready yet, but be on the lookout for it at etopian.com. Social OS takes the majority of concerns with today's social networks and addresses them in a nice open source package built on top of a leading content management system.

With quite a bit of authoritarian non-sense going on these days a lot of people ask what you can I do? I have been thinking about this question for some time and I think I have somewhat of an answer. Combining the economics of successful startups with a crowd powered workforce, it's possible to start a successful startup.

It seems that the Rockefellers are finally stepping in to save the day. According to this article, they are raising flags of war to fight global warming and encouraging the company to invest in renewable energy -- let's hope that they are wise enough not to get lead around with boondoggles such as ethanol. More can be read here.

It seems that Microsoft these days does nothing but make idiotic business moves. At one point Microsoft thought they had the entire computer ecosystem on lock-down, but things are changing rapidly. Major threats to Microsoft include the Open Source movement and Google. Microsoft's mainstay is by far the Windows operating system. Windows these days survives often not due to the fact that it's excessively innovative or well functioning, but rather because everyone is used to it. Its 16 year+ history has a lot to do with its success.

I have been troubled recently with the potential environmental crisis that awaits us. However, I think that there is hope, even if it pervades in term of greed. The hope is that the rich, looking out for their own personal self-interest, will invest enough money to save the planet. The ultimate problem is that many of the rich wish only to get richer. Those who do not, the few that exist, tend to invest in saving the world from problems of yesteryear, that is starvation, medication, and the like; i.e. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

I was playing around with using KVM because I have used Xen and I was wondering about KVM. I have headless servers which I use to play around with this stuff and they don't have X installed on them. So I tried the standard method and that doesn't work because KVM automatically assumes that it should run SDL. The alternative is to run VNC. The version of KVM that ships with Gutsy is broken and does not properly handle VNC, therefore you have to get the latest from the repository and compile it yourself. Afterwards run the system.

I am leaving out all the steps for howto affectionados:

I remember a while back that the Drupal community had an issue with salting the password because someone thought it was more secure than storing the md5 directly into the database. The idea was absolutely ridiculous, because once the salt (or getting the salt) is known, the attack is only marginally more difficult than if you never salted your md5. Salting is only good in a limited circumstances where the salt is private and if the server is compromised then the salt is also compromised.

It is my understanding that all people are not the same and that culture and genetics influences their habits and moralities significantly. Therefore, a religion can't have a set of static moralities. Instead it can have varying norms by regions and cultures. Where we have dynamism with similar results in different regions. All practices and rituals can and should vary throughout because of certain limitations on times and external cultures available for such rituals and practices.

• Social management in terms of relationships, marriage, and child rearing according to scientific case studies of family or a decent scale, say of a few thousand families studied through their lifetimes.
• Financial training in terms of managing money, investing, and seeking decent returns throughout your lifetime.
• Physical training to improve health and wellness.
• Facilitation of social interaction between young youths in a setting to practice social management skills taught otherwise.