Unlike the band, the million-strong murder of crows that suddenly decided to alight on the tree outside my window are producing a racket that can only grace the soundtrack to the remake of the ghoulies.

The Susan G. Komen foundation just reversed its miscalculated decision to withdraw funding to Planned Parenthood. Whose victory and war was this? I say, it is Twitter's and the internet's victory over powerlessness and voicelessness as a whole.

I think the power of internet in democracy and public opinion has FINALLY arrived and not a minute too late. The mother (freakazoid) teresa approach that Komen seemed to have adopted was made public on Tuesday. It took just THREE days for the voices across the net and social media to speak up and rise to a crescendo against this ridiculously medieval move by Komen.

I sometimes wish that toxic hag teresa's evil, ignorant, petty and insular mind* that wrecked lives for Irish women and made it hell for many women in India were blown to smithereens by public opinion as strong as this.

The reversal of Komen's recent asinine policy in response to social media and public outcry makes me hopeful that not all causes are lost yet. Given the right power and voice women all over the world can better their lot and fight against barriers that sometimes stifling society and always misguided religions place over them.

I am somewhat amused at all these regulatory bodies that have suddenly decided to take affront at the simplified transparent Google privacy policy.

The new privacy policy is clearly written, brief, well-worded, has no legalese and states clearly that all Google products are from... surprise, one company, Google. Every time you log in to use one of their several products, Google will track your online usage to make the Google experience, as a whole, more personalized and better at finding what you are searching for. You can opt out of sharing your data by simple going to your dashboard and turning all data collection off. It makes you aware of the fact that if you don't want your data to be collected ever, use anonymous geographically-remote proxy servers, anonymous names, stay logged out of ALL services (i.e don't ever accept any cookies in your browser) and use incognito mode all the time. All of these are doable but people just don't care that much. But they do have an option. It's not as if Google is taking this freedom away. It's just shaking you up and telling you about it in simple words.

If you are paranoid and believe that ignorance is bliss, you can always use Micro$hit's Bing or Hotmail and ignore their ginormously long, terribly dry, completely dense, loopholes-ridden legal privacy policy and stop using Google. What is the point here? The minute you are online people will collect data about you, like it or not. It is how the internet operates; on collected data, and personalization. (e:Paul) is collecting data about your browser, about your OS and recording your IP as you are reading this. So are ALL the sites you go to. With the IP everyone can pretty much localize where you live if they want to. In addition, your information can also tell (e:paul) and everyone else how long you have been on any particular site, where you came from, which links you are clicking on and what you are doing at this very moment. Are you freaked out about that? If you are on Freakfacebook, it has access to ALL that you and your extended circle of family and friends said, did and/or posted. It's privacy policy is about a zillion pages of no-one-can-understand-this legalese.

Some bring transparency to the process by making it simple for you to understand what data is being collected, some hope you won't read those zillion page legalese tomes and some don't tell you at all.

The reaction of various thick-in-their-heads government agencies to Google's new policy is funny. Because they suddenly seem to have woken up to the basic nature of the internet. And pointing fingers at the one company that is actually taking some pains to make it transparent while conveniently ignoring the really intrusive privacy policies (search for the Apple privacy policy that (e:Paul) posted sometime back*) that are tougher to understand but are probably more invasive than Google will ever resort to. It is clearly another classic example of how all governments are made of morons who probably can't do anything else and have lied their way into slimy politics, and who take the shooting-the-messenger always a bit too far, because they are probably are too dumb to recognize the messenger even.

Well, the people are not as dumb as you, dear government. We have options and we will utilize them, if we want to. Why don't you go and do something more productive that does not involve bringing crap censorship to the internet and fear mongering about online services? I suspect you cannot. Because you don't really know how to help the people you manipulated and coerced into voting for you in the first place.

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• itunes privacy policy: (e:Paul,54481)
• data collection on the internet: (e:paul,54665)

I am having a terrible time with netspeeds today. So I have temporarily switched off all images and switched to a very barebones browser called Midori.

I can't tell you how awesome the web feels sans intrusive loud high-resolutions images, slow loading videos, ginormous bandwidth-hogging media and other crappy whatnots.

I am back to the text-only ages but it's awesomely fast. I think I am sticking to Midori and this image-free mode for a while just because it makes me feel like I am on some crazy-awesome broadband. Gmail loads as if it were local. Gdocs throws some nasty error on Midori that causes it to load over and over again. :/ Oh well. You can only win sometimes.

If you have a mediocre net connection like I do (and are not on Gdocs 105% of the time), take a break and go the image-free route. You will see what you have been missing!

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PS: I notice that the edit button and the comment button on estrip have no alternative text behind them. All the other buttons on the top and in the editor have alternate text. I edited this post using the mobile mode.

The City of Buffalo has teamed with Google to bring more online presence for the businesses in the city and make it easier for small businesses and start-ups to set up amazing websites with little or no expertise. They have this little blurb:

From

City of Buffalo
Buffalo is the second largest city in the State of New York, and the hub of the Buffalo-Niagara region. The City’s attractive quality of life, low-cost of living, and diverse economic base make it a wonderful place to live, work, and do business.
Located along the shores of Lake Erie, Buffalo has a prime spot along the Canadian-American border, less than 100 miles from Toronto.
The City of Buffalo remains fiscally strong. Since 2006, its residential property tax rate has been reduced by 15.2%, and commercial by 16.2%.
Buffalo is rich with history and museums, professional sports, vibrant neighborhoods, top notch restaurants, theater, and more. And thanks to a strong base of well-educated and skilled employees, Buffalo remains a strong stable business region.

Interesting. Wonder if all that is true...

I read this whole 25 hour work donation campaign at this by marketing firm, Crowley Webb for a Buffalo startup called, "You and Who" and thought, what about those who can't afford such marketing support and will not get it for free. I wonder if the answer is the "New York Get Online" initiative. On the surface, it looks pretty awesome, I hope it infuses some life into struggling businesses here. My first introduction to any shop or store or restaurant is always online. I am sure tons of others find businesses the same way.