The upcoming school year has many schools and universities preparing for the potential epidemic of the swine flu or what is technically known as the H1N1 flu. Many colleges and universities are frantically giving away disinfectant hand wash to every student on campus and they even have created procedures for classes if the H1N1 virus hits half the campus. The swine flu which popped up around the spring of 2009 has caused a world wide pandemic. No one wants to go through another bird flu or a SARS epidemic again and Toronto and China can attest to that. Here’s a funny fact about the swine flu. Originally, they called it the swine flu but pig farmers got mad and lobbied to change it’s name because it reflected poorly on pigs and pig farmers in general. Everyone got scared of pigs and stopped buying any type of pork which obviously brings the pig farmers’ profits down. Then they called it the Mexican flu and all the Mexicans got mad because then everyone thought every Mexican (aka: illegal alien) had the disease. It was named Mexican flu because it originated from there, not because Mexicans had it. Now they have resorted to just calling it based on it’s strain, the H1N1 virus.

When this outbreak occurred, every country closed its doors and temporarily banned international flights hoping to isolate the epidemic. The WHO raised the their pandemic level to five (5). That’s pretty serious stuff; once the level reaches 6, it’s total and immediate lock down in every country. Many countries were obviously afraid that the flu would spread amongst the people so travel was banned for the time being. Egypt on the other hand went to a more extreme length; they killed ALL the pigs in its country. Some might say good move because this definitely reduces the possibility of a swine flu case to 0%. Also, Muslims do not eat pigs. They only eat blessed meat or halal and pigs do not get blessed. But why do they have pigs in the country in the first place if they aren’t used for food or food bi-products?

Well, one thing pigs are good for in Egypt is to clean up the organic waste that people throw out on the streets. This unfortunate and misguided attempt at preventing swine flu failed on an epic proportion as now the streets of Egypt are littered with garbage. When pigs were alive in Egypt, they would stroll the streets and eat the organic waste. Now, without the pigs, Egypt is facing an ever increasing amount of garbage on the streets and something even worse than the swine flu can come about, like The Plague. Obviously the government is trying to clean up all the garbage but that will take some time. It’s like whenever a city has a garbage strike. All the residents just throw their garbage in one spot and that area pretty much becomes uninhabitable. No one would even want to walk around there a year after the garbage has been cleaned up. If the government does not act fast, that could happen to Egypt. I’m pretty sure the effects of garbage on the streets are all negative.

This article has more information: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/world/africa/20cairo.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss&topic=swineflu

Yesterday was the first time in a long time that I saw a movie on opening day. I think the last time was when X-Men 2 came out. With an expectation that the theatre will be full, my friends and I grabbed a seat at the back an hour before the movie started. Of course it was empty and pretty much stayed empty until fifteen minutes before the movie started. I had my doubts about this movie. I kind of wanted to watch it but overall it seemed like a movie that I would not enjoy and a movie that I would not want to see again. Quentin Tarantino surprised me though, overall it was actually a pretty good movie. I would say it is his best film since Pulp Fiction, of course I actually have not seen all of Pulp Fiction so I can not say that it is as good haha.

The movie revolves around eight Jewish-American men lead by Brad Pitt’s character, Lt. Aldo Reins Tennessee native. Their mission, to brtually kill any Nazis they find to spread fear and crazy rumors across the Third Reich, like the ‘Bear-Jew’. The company’s objective is to make sure every Nazi soldier hears about them and become so afraid of the rumors that every time they go into battle, they think they are fighting against the Basterds.

I expected the movie to be action packed with crazy stunts and a lot of gun fights but unfortunately I was let down by Mr. Tarantino. There are not that many gun fights and the only action scene is at the end. I can not be surprised though as Mr. Tarantino is not known for making action movies like Michael Bay. With Tarantino, the movie is more about the talk and the dialogue. While watching the movie, I did not really care fo the plot. It’s pretty much like every other WWII movie, try to end the war but there is a twist at the end of the movie that is unlike the other WWII movies you have seen. What really surprised me though is the dialogue and the writing, this movie has one of the best dialogue that I have ever scene in quite a long time. I loved the fact that the characters speak in different languages other than English. I hate it when I see these kinds of movies only to see everyone talking English…like in Valkyrie. I don’t think EVERY German knew how to speak perfect English. The setting was in France, and I was really surprised the movie had Germans speaking French. Pretty much the only time you hear English is in the first chapter and when the Basterds are talking.

By the way, the storyline is segregated into five chapters (I think). Each chapter is pretty much a story on its own but the audience does not get lost. There are two stories that the movie revolves around, the Basterds and the French Jew who owns the Cinema. Everyone knows the Basterds and their storyline; kill as many Nazis as they can find and cut the scalps from their heads off. The other movie which the audience does not see in the trailers is this French woman who owns a cinema and is reluctantly forced into hosting a premiere for a biopic movie on one of the greatest German war heroes ever. This war hero was trapped in a bird’s nest for three days and he picked off about three hundred American soldiers. Coincidentally, the soldier who plays himself in the movie is attracted to the French woman and tries everything to make her love him. He even has his movie premiere at her theatre. Everyone’s seen this device in story telling; there are multiple stories going on and in the end they all converge on each other to make a spectacular ending. That’s what this movie is, two separate stories and in the end they come together. What’s amusing to me though is that none of the Basterds and the French woman do not meet so it makes the whole ending like a coincidence and not like those other stories where all the characters in separate storeis meet each other at the end.

If you aren’t a stickler for historical fiction, then you’d be fine with the ending as they successfully assassinate Hitler. I didn’t spoil the movie for you because Hitler’s assassination takes a back seat to the main story line. That’s just a bonus Tarantino put in but no one expects it because we all think that the movie would follow historical fiction. There are some gory scenes that people in the theatre were evidently disgusted by. The whole scalping of the dead Nazis thing, everyone could see their brains. They made it so easy though, when the Basterds were scalping their Nazi counterparts, it was like slicing a hot knife through butter. They cut it so easily but it makes me wonder though as if they were scalping them, they would have to cut through bone in order to see the brains and that would be really hard to do with just a knife.

The movie was really great up until the ending. I did not like the ending nor did I understand why the main antagonist did what he did. Hitler’s not the main antagonist in this movie. The Jew Hunter as they nick name him is the main antagonist. Unfortunately this movie is like a lot of Tarantino’s movies where EVERYONE dies. This is pretty much at the ending but I was puzzled as to why though because for some of the characters that died, they could have easily avoided the confrontation but they chose not to and in the end they go on a suicide run…whichw as pretty much the plan in the first place. My only beef with this movie is the ending because it seems like a slap in the face if you ask me with what happened. All together though, I enjoyed the movie. It was refreshing to see it, you just have to not be bored by like two hours of dialogue and only about half an hour of action which comes at the end. Unfortunately, this is one of those movies where that I would not want to see again; it is not for me.

Between Inglorious Basterds and District 9, I would choose District 9. Mainly because District 9 is one of those movies that make you think.

Maxime Valette and Guillaume Passaglia have a lot to thank to the unfortunate people who get fucked over day after day and like to vent out their depressed thoughts. Of course we are talking about the up and start website, fMyLife which has become a global sensation solely because we all want to have that feeling that no matter how bad our day is, there is at least someone else who has it worse. Or we just want to laugh at other people’s misfortunates. Give or take, these two reasons are pretty much why it has become so popular. The website is actually an English version of the French website, VieDeMerde created by the same people. The website launched in January 2008 but lately it has become a huge hit as more and more people begin to discover other people’s misfortune. Of course I am a fan of the website because the posters’ submissions are hilarious. The website has reached its peak in early 2009 and I am pretty sure it is due to Facebook. Not that many people knew what FML meant but as the website became more popular it has become the next LMAO. Its biggest push was when a fan page was created for it and afterward, it spread like wildfire.

Back then though, the stories which some were probably fake were very good and hilarious. These days, the website has degraded to a form of unimaginative stories which are probably all true nowadays since they suck so much. What happened to FML? The stories people had were so good, but now the stories reaching the front page don’t even get a sound out of me. The website has a section to moderate the FML submissions but, what the hell have these moderators slumped down too. It’s come to a point where

“Today, I was taking the AP Biology exam. It’s strictly timed, yet my proctor spent 30 minutes (a third of the time we have) talking about his sexual relationship with his wife, who was also proctoring. I don’t know how I did on the test, but I now know my proctor had erectile dysfunction. FML”

Yea, that’s truly an FML moment. Oh man good for you knowing that your proctor has ED. That is a terrible FML. What happened to the days where people were submitting stories of them being dumped and getting kicked while down? I remember that FML where the guy paid for his girlfriend’s pay as you go phone for text messaging just to get dumped. That’s sad, and hilarious at the same time! That’s a good FML.

I better finish this article so I can watch the season finale of House or else FML.

Last weekend I had dinner with my family in pretty much an entire year. It was my idea that we all go out for sushi. As cheap as my parents are, they decided to go to the all you can eat sushi restaurant down the street instead of going to the really good one that is a half hour drive away. You would think it is because of the fact that the restaurant is down the street from us AND that it is an all you can eat restaurant but no, it is because they found a coupon that gives you fifteen percent off your entire meal. As we got to the restaurant and managed to beat the rush, we sat down and ordered our food. We ordered spicy tuna roles, california rolls, oyster rolls, cucumber rolls, spider rolls, love rolls, spicy salmon rolls, beef udon, miso soup, and fried smelt fish. The sushi was not the best but it definitely was not the worst but it really sucked when a lot of the rolls kept on falling apart while grabbing them with our chopsticks. Apparently my family can tell the difference between ohtoro (best quality) and toro (recycled fish) tuna/salmon when eating sushi but I can not. I really do not care about it though as I can barely taste the difference. My palette is not as well developed as theirs’ are and I am not motivated to develop it at all. Everything was good and fun and we were able to get back home right before Prison Break started which was SO COOL! Unfortunately, the next day was dreadful. I woke up with the runs and when I went to the washroom, there was no remorse for the toilet! I could tell I came down with a sudden case of diarrhea because when I went, it sounded like I was taking a long and THUNDEROUS piss; so loud that it woke my parents up. Haha no but it would be funny, actually more embarassing if that did actually happen. For the rest of the day, I felt like throwing up but my urge to vomit was not paramount which is a good thing because we were shopping. That could have been a great FML though. I barely ate anything that entire day and even when I came back home I had to take a ‘thunderous piss’ again which was even LOUDER hahaha. Obviously I came down with a case of food poisoning which I find hard to believe because no one else in my family came down with it. I also had burgers with my siblings earlier that day and neither of them got sick so it could not have been the burgers. The other possibility was the oyster sushi and the spicy tuna sushi. I was the only one to eat those pieces of sushi because no one else liked them. It might have been the spicy tuna because the oysters in the oyster sushi were fried. They may not have been thoroughly cooked though.
Forty eight hours after my ordeal, I was still FREAKING SICK with food poisoning. I was supposed to go have lunch with my grandparents but last last minute, I had to go back home because it got worse. My parents actually thought I had the flu but they still wanted me to have lunch with our grandparents which I think is stupid. They thought I had the flu and they still wanted me to have lunch with my grandparents in which I could potentially pass it on to them and kill them because of their weaker immune systems. It was not so bad as we were travelling to lunch, but then right when my dad turns into the parking lot, he hits a big pothole and I almost threw up all over the car. We drove half an hour to the restaurant, only to turn back once we hit the parking lot. When I got back home, the thunder came back and I thinkwe need a new toilet…haha no. Everything was better the rest of the day as I fell asleep in my bed and woke up the next morning; I had slept for 14 hours, a new record.

When Monday came, all my parents could think was that I caught the H1N1 virus, the swine flu. They kept on asking me if any of my friends went to Mexico during spring break and I repeatedly kept on telling them, “I DON’T KNOW.” If it was the swine flu, then I could have caught it from anyone in any of my classes and I can tell you, I do not know everyone in my classes so it will be very hard to pinpoint just from that.

As I write this entry now into my blog, I still have not fully recovered from my ordeal at the sushi restaurant. I think the food poisoning translated to stomach flu which has no translated to a sore throat and a build up of mucus. I actually might think it is the flu and in any case I will have to get the shot but I am actually recovering and feeling better now…except when I eat. Everytime I eat, I get full really, really fast. I kid you not I used to chow down medium sized pizzas in one sitting but I tried it earlier this week and I could only get through two slices before I was stuffed. Everytime I eat food, there is a build up of gas and I get full really fast. An hour later, the thundering piss comes in. Actually it’s more like thundering wind (if you get my ‘drift’. Double pun definitely intended).

I just read that there was another horrible incident that occured at Virginia Tech; months after the Massacre. A graduate student by the name of Xin Yang was killed and was decapitated by a kitchen knife. She arrived on January 8th to Beijing to study accounting but she passed away too early. Too early for anyone to get to know her, too early for anyone to see what a wonderful girl she is.

Another graduate student by the name of Haiyang Zhu was arrested and charged with first degree murder. This comes about a year and nine months after the Virginia Tech massacre that took the lives of 32 innocent students.

My thoughts and prayers go out to Ms. Yang and those that have perished April 16 2007.

I watched Battlestar Galactica last night. It came out of its winter hibernation and is set to air the last ten episodes of the series. Last night’s episode was AMAZING and there were so many twists and turns that came at you so fast that once they were over you were thinking, ‘what the hell just happened?’ There were so many things going on that it just blew my mind away.

The first surprise was the best. It turns out that the thirteenth tribe was a colony of cylons. That sucks for the president and admiral Adama who have been preaching that they will find earth some day. Well they did, only to realize that it was inhabited by cylons that nuked the hell out of each other.

Next thing you know, you find out that Tyroll discovers he was living on earth as a cylon in the thirteenth tribe. All the cylons in the fleet, colonel Tigh, Tyroll, Anders, and Ms. Foster were copies of the cylons that lived on earth. The music they keep on hearing was the music that Anders’ original body was playing for the rest of them before they all go nuked to hell.

The most WTF moment in the show was when Dualla just shot herself in the head without any warning. Some people say if you look closely in the frames, the skin colour of the hand does not match hers and the angle that it was at did not look like she was pointing the gun to her head but as if someone else was pointing the gun at her. Plausible, but it was very bright in that room and when you do see the hand, its lit up to a point where its just pale white. The whole angle thing, I don’t really know what to say for that.

Starbuck’s scene was most surreal though. She finds out that she actually did come to earth in her viper but she died and you see evidence of a dead body resembling Kara in a destroyed cockpit of a viper. Her ex husband cylon or the guy that held her captive on New Caprica got scared and ran off not understanding what was happening.

To me, the part where Tigh gets the memory of him and his wife getting destroyed by the nukes in the bank and then he realizes that his wife was also a cylon was not so WTF. It did not surprise me at all for some reason, probably because deep down inside I knew that she was a cylon. It would be crazy though if she did ressurect somehow and came back to earth to surprise the shit out of everyone.

I started doing some machine level coding this month and it is the most complicated programming language I have ever seen. It takes quite a bit of time outputing “hello world” on the terminal. It’s not the same as just importing your libraries, creating your class and typing out, system.out.println(“hello world”);, or printf(“hello world”);. The high level programming languages like C, C++, C#, or Java make this so much easy for you, but once you start assembly language, you’re done! It will take a lot more time to get to know how the language works.

So, I figured the best way to write assembly language is in linux. So I decided to hop on the band wagon and download the most popular unix/linux variant I can find which happens to be Ubuntu. I downloaded Ubuntu 8.10 or what many like to call it, Intrepid Ibex. I already have Hardy Heron (8.04) on my computer as dual boot with Windows XP so I decided to install it on my 8 Gb USB key. I used this article from PenDriveLinux in order to install to USB. The installation process is actually the same thing as just installing it on your computer. The article states that you should remove any existing hard drives in your computer/laptop before you plug in the USB, but you don’t have to. As long as you know the name of the hard drive(s) on your computer and the name of the USB key, you should be fine. Oh, you have to make sure to set your BiOS to boot from CD and if you want to use the Ubuntu USB, then you better make sure your computer can boot from USB as I learned the hard way. In the partition option, they give you which storage device you can partition and it will show you the USB key. Choose the USB key from the list and start the installation. Usually installing Ubuntu on a computer takes around half an hour. It depends on the reading/writing speed of your hard drive and the CD/DVD drive. If you install it on USB though, you better make some popcorn because it will take a while. It took about an hour and a half to finish installation but when it finally finished installing I leapt with glee, only to have it brought back down to observing HOW SLOW it is on USB. The operating system is so slow on USB; due to the fact it is SSD technology slowing it down, a lot. I’ll open up Firefox and it will take about thirty seconds for the program to pop up and when I create three empty tabs….it takes a LONG time for the program to respond. You actually might think that the program stopped responding but, just be patient and you’ll see. Anyways I had enough of that once I tried out the many applications that came with Intrepid Ibex. They just took too much time to boot up and I couldn’t do any work on it. The terminal was even slow and I couldn’t do my machine level coding on it.

Well, it was waste of 8 Gb. It was cool installing the OS on my USB key but the end results do not satisfy the curiosity. Next time I’ll install it on my external hard drive and see how that goes.

It is every digger’s dream to hit the front page of Digg and many of them do not know exactly how to reach the front page. Most of it does depend on your friends on Digg or your contacts. Just like in the business world, its 80% who you know and 20% what you can do. Then there’s always that plus/minus 1% error that deals with luck. Actually who am I kidding, its probably a relative error of 5%. Anyways if you are an introvert who does not like to deal with other people even with those online or if you are just creeped out by the idea of meeting others over the interwebs and you still want at least one more digg, then you should read some of these tips. They could really help you out. I would know because they have helped me get a couple of diggs. Not enough to come close to the frontpage but hey, its a start.

1. Figure out the Peak Times
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You have to know that most of Digg’s users are probably from the West, AKA North America so in order to attract a lot of attention, or to get noticed more you should know the time zones. The time zones range from Eastern to to the Pacific Time zone. Many of Digg’s users do have jobs and are parents so most likely, they will not be checking out Digg or the newly submitted articles at night because they are either too busy with their families, or just too tired from work and are already sleeping. This downtime occurs a few hours after work, ranging from around 8 PM to the next morning. So most likely, you will not get a digg within the hour or the next day because less people have the chance to view your article. When the morning comes, the most dedicated diggers/powerdiggers will go online right before they head out to work, check their RSS feeders and submit new articles. Their will be a flood of submissions and your article will be buried underneath it all. It will be swamped and lost forever in the sea of diggs. What is worse is that someone else could have submitted the same article after you have and they got the diggs that you deserved. What you have to do is figure out the peak time of when most users will be checking through the newly submitted material. This probably occurs when they are at work. So it is better if you submit an article during the work day as that is when the peak time comes around. Most office workers get breaks every four hours or so or maybe even every two hours or they’ll just be REALLY bored and have nothing to do. Most likely they will go on Digg to satisfy their boredom and waste the time during their breaks. So its a good bet to submit an article during the working hours of the day so you’re article has a better chance of being seen by those people. Also submit articles around 3 PM – 4 PM; that is around the time when school ends and if these kids like to go on Digg, you increase your chances of being seen.

DO NOT submit an article when the work day ends because that is when a lot of the submitters for Digg will get off work, and once they do, another rush of RSS feeds will flood the submission pages.

2. Use RSS Readers
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Just like the pros, use RSS readers (and be cheap at the same time) so you can get news articles hot off the press and be the first one to submit a breaking story to Digg. Subscribe to any news website that updates their website around the clock. You have to be fast though because the powerdiggers and even more diggers use RSS feeds for their article submissions. This will not guarantee a digg though because most of the time, people won’t actually read the list of related articles and will submit anyways. Next thing you know, you’ll have the exact same story submitted by three different powerdiggers making it onto the front page in less than an hour.
With your RSS feeds, carefully choose your target sites and choose many sites because if you just choose one site and submit articles from there, well that’s not going to be fun.

3. Submit Articles from Websites that Rarely hit the Front Page
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How many times have you seen an article/comic/picture from the same website hit the front page in a week? ARS Technica is an example of a website where practically all its articles hit the front page in a day (alright I’m exaggerating). TechRadar UK is another one as well. The news is interesting though, but sooner or later people will get REALLY bored and pissed off that articles from the same source will hit the front page. They’ll go straight to the source and read those articles before they are submitted to Digg and sometimes they won’t digg it if they see it again on digg. Pictures/comics especially won’t get dugg. An example is XKCD. People keep refreshing that webpage for the latest comic trying to be the first one to submit it. In the end, diggers will be pissed that everything from the website is submitted and you can get buried.

If you want to use websites that rarely hit the front page, use ExtremeTech, or Anandtech, even submit from WebbAlert (I love you Morgan Webb!).

4. Search for the Most Interesting, Random or the Most Absurd Thing You Can Think of
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That title is pretty much self explanatory. Ex) Search for “Chaccaron Macarron music video”

or this for example, History of the Internet.

5. Publicize your profile a bit
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The more publicized your profile is, the better it is for people to relate to you or show that you have some credibility.
When people look at the profile of the person who submitted the article, they want to see someone who actually has some life in their account. If you submit an article but keep your entire profile as private, then how is anyone supposed to see what kind of person you are. Even if they see your submission history and like what you have submitted, they’ll try and be your fan. If they forget your name, and they can’t find it too bad, you just lost out on a couple of diggs.

6. Do Not Submit Articles on Current Technology
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To save time, do not submit articles belonging in the Technology section. Most likely, someone has already submitted the same article a few minutes before you just did. If you do submit these types of articles, then you better be fast and you better have dependable sources. Not every news website updates their site or puts up articles at the same time when late breaking news comes to the eye of the public. You have to know which source announces it first and you better hope it is something good. Again, you also have to be very fast.

7. Figure out trends on Digg
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Figure out what type of articles have been hitting the front page more recently. Sports stories have been taking up some space on the front page, so you should submit some sports stories hoping the sports geeks will see it.
Once Digg opened up its doors to expand past technology, the odd story articles have made the front page many times. Political news and Current event news especially have made a big impact on Digg. They pretty much take up most of the front page now. You have to learn to submit the type of articles that will appeal to the masses. If you submit a tech article, then most likely only geeks/nerds/techies will digg your story before it hits the front page. If you submit a political news story, more people would probably digg it as it could have a profound importance on them. Currently I have been seeing A LOT of ‘odd stuff’ news stories hitting the front page, so find ‘odd stuff’ articles like the boy who’s cheek had been ripped out by his teacher to submit. Currently these kinds of stories will appeal to the masses and get the attention of diggers so submit those types of articles.

8. Create Multiple Accounts and Digg your Own Submission
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If you do this, you’re a douchebag.

9. Submit your own Thoughts
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If you have something interesting or important to say, then create an account on any blogging service, WordPress, LiveJournal, Blogger, or Tumblr. There are more services out there in this age of Web 2.0 so use whichever service you like the best. Once you type out your rant, submit it to digg and hope someone out there in the world likes what you have to say.
Oh and do the same thing with pictures or videos.

On second thought, this might be against Digg’s TOS so…don’t do this this a lot. lol

10. Find articles from Other social Websites and Submit Those Stories!
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Title is self explanatory. Don’t worry, a lot of people on Digg use this tactic so you will not be alone or feel any guilt doing this. It’s the same thing as using RSS readers, but it is not so up to the minute but it is still useful.

11. Learn How to Write Good Titles
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I forgot what the name of this story was called, but I saw this on Digg about a year ago. Anyways if you write a good title that will explode in the face of a digger, then you will get their attention and their interest in your story will rise. If you have a well written description, even better; it lures them in. If you just copy and paste the first paragraph of the story into the description, some people might bury you for that because they think you did not take the time to read the article. You just read the title, and submitted.

If you do not know who Kevin Rose is, then you should be ashamed of yourself. Well you don’t have to be because not that many people outside of the technology industry know who this man is and if you are a casual internet user, you probably still do not know who he is. Well I’ll tell you, he is the man who created Digg, Revision3. and Pownce. AND before all that, he is one of the most beloved hosts of THE SCREENSAVERS and TechTv (Damit Paul Allen!). Digg is one of the best and most innovative Web 2.0 websites created, it has revolutionized the internet and is pretty much the website that has introduced social media to the people of today. Well it was one of the best web sites ever until it became a dictatorship, but let’s not get into that today.

Anyways, for a new user on Digg, it is great to look at the articles on the front page and digg them. Basically digging an article is the same as bookmarking your favourite websites but instead of saving the website to your internet cache on your computer, the digg just saves the article online in your account (and yes, I just used Digg as a verb). New users on Digg will most likely digg their most favourite articles and they will have a slight bias of what they want to digg. Some, will digg political submissions, some will digg technology submissions, and some will just digg those random LOLcats or XKCD comic whenever it appears. Slowly though, their bias will digress, and they’ll just digg anything that seems interesting to them. The point is, Digg has opened peoples’ eyes up to the world and allows people to discover new things that they never heard about or even seen before like that hexadecimal passkey allowing one to crack the DRM on HDDVDs. I remember that storm of anger Digg caused when they started deleting/banning accounts.

Over time though, when the new Digg user finally gets some balls, they will decide to start submitting articles. This epiphony that they have experienced will give them the sense of individualism and courage to start submitting articles. It only occurs though once they believe they can and they are not intimidated by the likes of: MrBabyMan, MakiMaki, msaleem, or badwithcomputer. These guys are Digg’s top users or as many would like to call them, powerdiggers; they have contributed/submitted over 26 000 articles, dugg about 400 000 articles (excluding their own), and have over a 1000 friends altogether. Talk about a Digg overload. These guys contribute probably over 80% of Digg’s top stories found on the front page every day. They are pretty much the life of Digg and have made sure Digg has become of the top Web2.0 websites ever. When most new users decide to start submitting articles, they will all feel the sense of anger and hatred towards Digg as well pretty much, no one has dugg any of their comments. Be reasonable though, it is a rare sight that someone will come across your submission and even rarer if they decide to digg it or not.

I have been through this process so many times as I try to submit articles. Most of the articles I have submitted have not been dugg by anyone else. Everytime I check a few hours later after I submit the article, I get really pissed off because no one has dugg my articles. What pisses me off even more is if I submit an article but a similar article is posted after my submission and it gets dugg. I hate it when users find something interesting and when they submit it they don’t look at the related articles that might be the same. They just hit the ‘Totally Original, I swear’ button and off they go. For a long time, many people will submit articles without another digg and this will put a lot of users off from trying to submit their own articles. The main factor behind this problem are the powerdiggers who are pretty much the gatekeepers of the website. They’re usually the ones who don’t read the similar articles and will just hit the ‘Totally Original, I Swear’ button. Plus they do have that ability of reading a hundred articles in less than five minutes, I wonder how they do it?! *Note the sarcasm*.

Finally though after tears, and heartache, sweat, and blood, someone finally sees your submission and diggs it. When you see that you’re article has two diggs, it is one of the happiest moments ever on Digg. It basically signifies your first fan, or your first paycheck, or someone has dugg you out and you lost your Digg virginity; that fine patch of grass is not so innocent anymore! When all the happiness and glee has drained out of your system, you just sit back and relax, close your eyes and think that you are, ‘t3h l337ness’ or somewhere along those lines. What is amazing is that someone else, somewhere around the world likes what you have done and have shown you their appreciation by digging your article. This euphoria of happiness from getting a digg gives people the courage and confidence to submit another article. Unfortunately, most of the time that second article they submit won’t be dugg so they enter a viscious cycle of anger asking themselves that their submission was not good enough. One day though, it will all change when more and more people start to digg your submission. The most diggs I have ever gotten is twenty and when I saw that, I almost pissed my pants with glee and I did think to myself that I was, ‘t3h l337ness’. Unfortunately, I have never been able to gain that status back and I have slumped back into a cycle of anger and despair.

It is fun though, submitting articles to Digg and hoping that one day someone will digg your submission. If it does not happen, just keep trying and if that does not work, start making some new friends on Digg to make sure all goes well. To many, getting dugg feels like you have accomplished something you thought was impossible and in some sense it is true except for the impossible part. It can become the happiest moment in your life until you get three diggs, then four diggs, then five, and so on and so on until you reach that milestone of reaching the front page. That’s what all Digg users want, to some day hit the front page. Just keep trying, keep submitting, make new friends on Digg, and one day you will get that satisfaction of hitting the front page. Just don’t be a douchebag and game the system!

The real question though is, how does one “defriend” someone on Facebook?
Settings –> Privacy Settings –> Block List

Burger King has just come out with a new promotional stunt called, ‘Whopper Sacrifice’. This new app made for Facebook gives the user a coupon for a free Whopper if they “defriend” at least ten of their friends and they only allow one coupon per account so people don’t have to go overboard. This new campaign by Burger King will cause some rifts in relationships between people.

What would you do for a BK Whopper?
If you go as far as “defriend”ing your friends on Facebook, that is low. On the other hand, most likely everyone who has a Facebook account has added friends from their old schools or people in their new schools that they only have talked to once or twice and it was in the hallway. Face it, everyone has friends or acquaintances from school or from work that they never talk to anymore. We all fall into that classic situation where we add old friends or new friends on Facebook but only post on their walls once or twice and never talk to each other again, let alone never see each other again. Sometimes we even add people we know from another friend BUT NEVER TALK to them, hence the Facebook group, “I hate it when people add me on Facebook but never talk to me.” Adding people on Facebook but never talking to them alludes to the fact that you probably just want to stalk them and want to see their pictures.

Well it is a good thing we are like that because adding people we don’t talk to makes it much easier to sacrifice them for a Whopper. It actually pays off to add someone you don’t talk to anymore. Instead of twisting in agony or living those sleepless nights where you just don’t know how to tell your friend that a Whopper is more valuable to you than they are, you can just “defriend” all those people who probably won’t care if you “defriend” them. Chances are, if they have the same application as you they would have done the same thing so its pretty much guilt free sacrificing a relationship for a tasty Whopper. The bad part though is that once you “defriend” someone on Facebook, it will show on your newsfeed showing everyone what an evil, backstabbing, douche/bitch you are. It is just best to modify your news feed so that no one sees your actions for apps on Facebook.

If I know Burger King, which I don’t then they would have some function on their new application that allows someone to “defriend” people on Facebook. BUT if you really want to “defriend” someone on Facebook because you had a falling out or you just don’t really want to see their face anymore, just go to Settings –> Privacy Settings –> and on that page that shows up is an option for you to block someone. Once you block that person any trace of you will be distinguished from their eyes. They will not be able to see any of your posts that you write on mutual friends’ walls, won’t be able to see tagged pictures of you, and they will not be able to search for you. If you unblock them, you will have to add them back as a friend so be careful who you block because if you become friends again or what not it is going to be awkward trying to explain to them why you had to add them again.

I really think this is a stupid idea because so many people can abuse it and it does show how low someone is willing to go just for a burger. You can easily make a new Facebook account with a couple of your friends and then add them, add the application, and then “defriend” them. Also I’m pretty sure that once someone “defriends” ten people, they’ll be given an e-mail with the coupon on it and that person will send it to all his friends so they can abuse this campaign. Although BK probably has put a coupon identifier/code in place so this scheme does not happen.
I won’t be adding this application on my Facebook page because it’s just rubbish, I wouldn’t want to sacrifice a person for a Whopper and even though I know I will be sacrificed by the many people I don’t talk to anymore but have on Facebook, well that’s life what can you do about it?

By the way, defriend is not an official word in the English Language yet.