This is a follow-up to “An Open Letter to Facebook”.

Although my open letter to Facebook took about 30 minutes to write, I still considered it to be one of the best pieces I have written so far.  In the letter, there were several elements that went into it:

• I embrace diversity, although that means needing to cater to more needs.
• EE 312 (Introduction to Programming) talked about users’ requirements.  I put in a small bit of that just to apply a little of what I learned.
• I abhor people who try to quash innovation.  I did indeed give it a fair trial, hence my understanding of the feature.  Additionally, I know people who like this feature; and I perfectly respect that.  Therefore, the ability to opt-out is the perfect compromise.  As many philosophers believe, happiness comes from living well, living well is living rationally, and living rationally is selecting a means between extremes.
• Good work needs to be recognized.
• One of the innovations I have been actively watching and using is the concept of open-source software.  One of the things I like about it is how transparent it is — anybody can go in and inspect the code that makes it tick.  In a Facebook profile, I put that analogy in there.  A profile makes a person more transparent and people could obtain more knowledge.
• Groups were being formed and joined like wildfire, which made the situation very urgent.  To make this letter more representative of the community, I emphasized that urgency.

Throughout last year, my writings were not so great because of a lack of elaboration and support.  So, while I was writing that piece, I constantly told myself to elaborate; and when I made any point, I made myself back it up with something.  I hope that all my writings for school will be like this.

With everything said, I would like to congratulate those who bore pens (or keyboards) to protest this change and never lost your cool.  We got that solved in record time, and we can now update our Facebooks in peace!  Now, I’d like to see the ability to hide, show, and rearrange the blocks however you please in the profile.

Whew!  I am so tired from the things I have done this week!

Dear Facebook Developers and Administrators,
Facebook as we know it is a useful resource for finding our friends’ contact information and obtain updates on how they are doing.  By posting our profiles here, we make ourselves more transparent and accessible to others.  With the addition of more networks to include companies and our hometowns, the group of people using Facebook diversifies; and as that happens, requirements change.  This is why Facebook has added features like Photos, status updates, and other tweaks that make Facebook more useful and innovative.

While we embrace innovation and openness, as well as your good intentions to satisfy everybody, there exists a limit.  Unfortunately, the line has been crossed with the addition of the “Mini-Feed” feature.  As we understand it, this feature allows users to see comprehensively and at-a-glance the updates done over a period of time.  We feel that this feature is an invasion of our privacy with plenty of potential for abuse.  For example, suppose somebody’s relationship status is changed from “In A Relationship” to “Single,” a change that is currently logged in the Mini-Feed.  Another person could potentially attempt to “come on” to the newly broken-up person, disenfranchising him/her the time needed to recover.

Take a look at the ramifications of this feature now: The formation of groups such as “I HATE THE FACEBOOK FEED FEATURE” and “I remember when facebook didn’t suck.”  As members, we request that this feature can be turned off completely.  The ability to hide individual items is not enough and is tedious.  If you truly respect our privacy, we entreat you to satisfy this requirement that we place before you.  Otherwise, we fear that more peaceful actions done in protest may occur.

Sincerely,
Your Facebook Members

While surfing on Digg today, I came across an article called “Proprietary Software Can Kill You.”  Basically, there has been an incident where doctors refused to pay the new, more-than-quadrupled tech support fee for some program that they use for their patients’ records; and they were consequently cut off from their patients’ records without some updated password.

While it is contractually correct for the vendor to disable the use of something the user did not pay for, it is ethically incorrect to hold the lives of many ransom over any amount of money.  It is the first fundamental canon of engineering ethics (which, to my irritation, not many people care about these days): to “hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.”  Is there really not a better way, like making records read-only when the contract expired?  Additionally, where do data formats come in?

A file can contain anything it pleases, and the only thing that could make sense out of its contents is the program that made this file.  Imagine a medical practice found a better, more affordable solution to keep its patients’ data.  Taking into consideration what I said and with no documentation on what the specifications of the file is, it will take a massive effort in order to port the data over to the new system.  Therefore, a vendor has even more reason to hold the data hostage: The prospect of having to re-enter information is simply daunting.

Therefore, I believe that the combination of contracts, proprietary data formats, and vendor-lock in is a deadly combination.  I swear to never be the person coding such an extreme, for the means between extremes (a compromise, if you will) is The Way to happiness.

Title changed per Cody Goodman’s recommendation.

One day, my 10-year-old brother checked out a book from the library called A Book About Design: Complicated Doesn’t Make It Good.  I read it out of curiosity, and it reminded me of the importance of balance and simplicity.  I believe that is a crucial lesson that us engineers often need a reminder.  In our attempt to make life easier by automating tasks and put as much functionality into everything we build, we have unfortunately made things too complicated.  That is why buying the latest and greatest has been relinquished to the geeks.  One of my friends told me about some cars that are overly complicated, and I would like to use them as examples:

• A certain Lexus model does not have door handles.  In place of keys, a driver has a RFID keyfob.  Should that keyfob’s batteries die, one can pull out a key and stick it in some place under the rear bumper.  But what if the battery in the car is dead too?  Will hilarity ensue?  Who knows — the hood access switch is inside the car, and the doors are electric?
• A BMW does not have a dipstick to check oil levels.  Instead, it has a sensor of some sort.  Additionally, you will be unable to check the oil level until the engine has warmed up.

Despite the good intentions of those who designed these features, they are still counterproductive at best.  I find it ironic and silly to pay $50,000 upwards for a car that I will have to fix or repair frequently if not daily.  I welcome innovation, but nobody likes it when it gets too intrusive.  Therefore, transitions must be made slowly so that innovations have time to mature and eventually become the time-tested, tried-and-true classics.

While watching the news on the good ‘ol rabbit ears last night, there was five-minute segment over how someone discovered Harris County library books in recycle bins.  If I remembered correctly, they mentioned going to four different bins.  That’s right — they found at least four dumpsters full of books, magazines, and things that cost taxpayers significant amounts of money.  If you watch the video, you may also agree with me that everything the director of the libraries said had no logical foundation whatsoever — just because books are “outdated” does not give you an excuse to throw them away because libraries exist to keep books that people may want to just read and return it to its owner.  I see a library as an archive of sorts.  In any case, there is absolutely no excuse to throw any book in good condition away because there are others that could make use of or need them.  For the record, this is coming from someone who does not read much literature.  I am clearly outraged by this kind of waste; and if I read something about America’s literacy rates going down, I will not be surprised.

News link: KHOU

Thank God for investigative reporting.

Although I have so many things I would like to get done, I still feel so bored!  Out of this boredom, I went on Google Video to surf for videos.  It so happened that one of Paris Hilton’s music videos was in the “featured” section.  Out of curiosity, I clicked on it.  For anybody who is in the same position, don’t bother — this woman has no talent whatsoever.  The video was only four-and-a-half minutes of her rubbing on someone’s body, which takes zero talent whatsoever.
I really wonder how people without talent manage to become famous.  Even a high school choir can do better than her.  Seeing that there was a tagging feature, I moved to tag it “slut,” as that was the first word that came out of my mind.  Too bad someone beat me to the punch…  Oh, well… that didn’t meant that I could not rate it down!

Not knowing any English, my parents blithely signed the papers that made the house ours.  Apparently, among those papers, was the FCCA deed restriction.  The repercussions are only starting to appear, for there exists the compliance inspector with no life.  Thus far, he has written about these issues:

• The electrical breakers box is the wrong color: The house is that way when we bought it.
• White rocks on landscape bed near the front door: The house is also that way when we bought it.  However, because we watered and did other maintenance tasks, the rocks eventually became hidden in the dirt and discolored.  We bought some more rocks to fix that.  I’ll scan the complaint letter later.
• Patches of missing grass: Perfectly legit, but it takes time to fix, though!

Let me ask a question: Do I have to ask for approval to plant a flower in the front yard?  Oh, the horror of living in such an uptight community like this… the horror of living in a world where rules exist to generate revenue.  Rest assured that I will not be living here again when I get my degree.

Some UT organizations decided to stage a walkout today at 11:11 over the illegal immigrant issue (notice here). It appears that the House was being its typical, irrational self by proposing that it is a felony to immigrate here illegally and a felony to assist illegal immigrants. Furthermore, they wanted the deportation of any illegal immigrants, regardless of whether they contribute to society or not. Both sides have very valid arguments, and I have my own to chip in:

• Due to their unregistered status, employers could exploit them by paying less than legal wages. We need to stop that kind of the human rights abuses we accuse other countries of (that is, unless Americans would like to continue their tradition of doing so — if you would like some idea of what I mean, look up slavery, Indian reservations, segregation, and my favorite: The Chinese and the Railroad).
• It’s not fair that my parents went through the long process to get them and their family naturalized and let these illegal immigrants waltz right in and become citizens fast.
• America is a country of immigrants.

I think a good compromise bill would look something like this: Go ahead, tighten the borders by adding fences and stuff. But as far as the ones who are already here, let them have a path to legal citizenship as long as they are not causing any trouble.

Relevant links:

• News 8 Austin
• KXAN
• Click2Houston

I was sitting in my EE 411 (Circuit Theory) class today, and right in front of me were two people. They were doing their homework due today. As if that was not enough, they were sharing a laptop with the instructors’ solutions manual pulled up on there, and they were blindly copying stuff off there. The solutions manual actually had some of the steps involved in the problem (I could tell because it took about half a page per problem). I was tempted to rat them out. However, I have faith that someone else will take care of them, so there’s really no point in getting too mad about it, right?
People like these… people who slack off and are unwilling to put forth the effort… simply do not deserve anything.

During dinner at the lovely Kinsolving, the new tri-fold cards caught my attention. It looks like they are looking for people to help with moving in. Unfortunately, they put the information in a MySpace site along with some details they pulled out of thin air (would anybody like to date a 100-year-old female? She’s up for grabs, men!). For the record, this is unprofessional. If you are affiliated with a department and would like to propagate information, please do us all a favor and get the webmaster to make you a page on the department’s site! It will save your skins from looking unprofessional.

To clarify this point, here’s a picture:

Per request, here is the link to the site I am criticizing: http://www.myspace.com/mooovin