Proposed: An Expansion of the Death Penalty

I like to consider myself a fairly compassionate and tolerant person. In fact, by most people's standards, I'm probably considered to be one of those pinko-commie dirty liberal types that are always talked about on the radio. I oppose capital punishment for murderers, rapists, and child molesters, but recently I have been made aware of a breed of humanity (I use the word generously) for which the death penalty is being shamefully underutilized: malicious computer programmers. Specifically, I am referring to those people who have decided (no doubt using some sort of twisted, sociopathic reasoning) that it is a good idea to create adware and spyware. These people, like the programs they create, are nothing but social viruses. They contribute absolutely nothing useful to society and as far as I am concerned, anybody who thinks that writing programs that covertly infiltrate my computer in order to provide me with unsolicited advertisements for online poker, penis enlargement, and (ironically) spyware/adware blocking software every two and half seconds have absolutely no right to breathe the same air that I do.

As such, I am proposing that two new criminal sentencing rules be mandated in all federal, state, and local courts:

1. All persons convicted of creating spyware/adware or conspiring to do so will be sentenced to death. There will be no appeals and the execution will only wait as long as it takes to power up the generators.

2. All employees of companies that have ever profited from adware/spyware-generated advertising will be expelled from U.S. soil and forced to live out the rest of their lives performing menial and pointless labor in Siberian Re-education camps. The only employees who will be spared this fate are those who report their company's illegal practices to the Board of Technological Terrorism (a soon to be created division of the DHS).

I think that any dispassionate observer (such as myself) should be able to see that these rules are both eminently reasonable and pragmatic. In this post-9/11 world in which we live, our country cannot afford to be weak on terrorism. And I ask you this - if spyware and adware are not terrorism, what is?

-Dave

ps. The above proposal has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I spent over four hours last night unsuccessfully attempting to remove untold numbers of spyware/adware programs that managed to sneak their way onto my computer without my knowledge. Nothing at all.

Friendster is evil

At the invitation of a friend of mine, I decided to join the website Friendster. After finishing my profile, I was looking around the site and found out that I could search for other Friendster users by their hometown. I grew up in an extremely small town in Minnesota (approximate population: 1,000 people) so I figured that if I found anybody there was a reasonable chance that I might know them. My search revealed two people. One of them was a guy whom I had never met. The other person., well....

Do you remember that girl from highschool? Yes, that girl. The one you met at the beginning of your Freshman year and immediately fell head-over-heels in love with. The one who could make your entire day bright just by saying "hi" when you passed her in the hall (or ruin your day if she ignored you). The girl who completely changed who you were before you even knew yourself. The first girl you could ever truly say you were in love with. The girl whose very existence helped to define that stage of your life bewteen childhood and adulthood. Maybe you never knew anybody like that in highschool. I did...

The other person., well, it was her. That was one shock right there, but apparently one wasn't enough. I immediately clicked on her profile and received shock number two. In her profile was the one soul-crushingly cruel word I wasn't ready to see: Married. I was amazed at how quickly that one little word could erase the hopes and dreams I had carried with me for such a long time. Granted, it had been three years since I last talked to her and I had moved on (for the most part), but for whatever reason, seeing this still felt like getting an emotional sucker-punch in the kidneys. Weak.

I am basically recovered from my experience now and I've learned a lesson from all of this that I would like to share: Friendster is evil.

-Dave

Maiden Voyage

Well, I caved. I've managed to make it 22 years through life without an Ipod or cell phone, but I've decided to jump on the web log band wagon. I'm not sure what kind of shape this blog will take or what I'm going to talk about. The only real purpose I have in starting this blog is to learn to express myself better and to get into the habit of writing on a (hopefully) regular basis. If for some inexplicable reason you find yourself reading this, feel free to leave me a comment. Otherwise, I'm fine just talking to myself. Well, I guess that's about it. By the way, my name's Dave. Good to meet you.