I Have Outwitted Google.

I checked, and it turns out that Google simply has nothing to say (ie, it returns no search results) if I ask it something absurdly specific. I discovered this when I searched for something I always wanted to know, namely:

What is the sound of a woman in the 95th percentile for lung capacity using a vuvuzela to blow bubbles in a vat of turpentine while traveling at 25 kilometers per hour on the roof of a Ukrainian locomotive in the rain on a Tuesday?

Of course now that I made this blog post, it'll get incorporated into Google's search algorithms and start returning this post to anyone who searches that query. You know, in case anybody else has weird and very specific auditory curiosities.

Console Gaming

Well, another generation of gaming consoles is underway, so let's have a quick rundown of the available options.

Option A: Nintendo Wii U.

Having decided the one thing gaming needed was an irritating motion controller system that shattered any form of immersion and turned even the most simple game into an exhausting flail that leaves you feeling like the Hf'ra'rkc'tal after his mating dance ends, Nintendo has now decided the primary problem with the Wii is that it has a controller one can physically use. You'll be pleased to know they have rectified this problem by redesigning the controller to weigh fourteen stone and need to be plugged in every two minutes. Thankfully, this isn't much of a handicap to the console's ability to play games, since there aren't any released.

Option B: Xbox One.

Don't ask me how the naming system works. Considering this prequel of a console hasn't been released yet, we're basically limited to what Microsoft has told us, which is that (1) it will require a constant internet connection, (2) it will spontaneously delete your games whenever Microsoft or your ISP have any downtime, (3) it will sometimes charge you money for games you've already bought, (4) it has no backwards compatibility with older Xbox games or hardware, (5) It comes with a mandatory camera and microphone that will monitor you at all times and cannot be turned off. Literally. As I've noted before, Microsoft has fantasies of taking on Google, but their offerings in the area are rather pathetic; Bing is clearly inferior despite the lies they post about it. However, Google developed a patent some time ago for a software program that would hijack users' computers' webcams and microphones to record their activities and conversations to sell to advertisers only to find themselves unable to actually deploy this software lest people descend on Mountain View with burning chromebooks and flay them alive. Thus, the Xbox One represents the first real attempt Microsoft has made into edging in on Google's territory and may be the one invention that finally allows them to get sued by Google because Google has already patented the concept of spyware and American intellectual property laws are outright ridiculous.

Option C: Playstation 4.

Sony has not released a lot of information about this theoretical future console, but given what I know about Sony it presumably consists of nothing but a box containing a court summons because Sony is now suing you.

Option D: PowerMac G4, which may or may not have a playstation emulator.

Now that I have a new(er) computer, the old Power Mac is now going to be repurposed as Games Console. It's got all the games I like, and no one suing me for playing them, installing Linux, or anything! Plus, I already own it (and I mean really own, not that I paid a bunch of dollars for the privilege of borrowing it from Sony or Microsoft for an indeterminate period of time).

Google Ads Fail

So whenever I use a browser without adblock, I get piles upon piles of ads asking me to download Google's Chrome browser. I have no clue why Google has the obsession with which browser I use (since it's not like they get any extra ad revenue from Chrome; maybe it has built-in spyware to track my browsing habits?) but they seemed extremely adamant.

So having seen months of constant ads begging me to try Google Chrome, I finally clicked one of the ads.

At which point, Google declared: "Click here to download the Chrome browser for Mac! System requirements: OSX 10.6 or later."

OK.

I'd been seeing these ads for awhile, so I looked up the system requirements for the earliest versions of Chrome, in case they had only just changed.

System requirements for Mac: "OSX 10.5 or higher, Intel only."

So this entire time, Google has spent untold sums of its ad money or its ad space or its clients' ad money/space, in a massive and perpetual effort to convince me to download a browser that would never, at any point, run on my computer.

Obviously, I never got rich starting up or getting hired as CEO for a massive international company, but if you asked me, I'm pretty sure it's not a particularly good use of Google's marketing budget trying to convince me to download a piece of software just so I can look at a message that says: "You can't open the application 'Chrome' because it is not supported on this architecture."

And the most ridiculous thing is that even without any privacy-invading profiling and without any cookies, Google's ad server can tell that my computer won't run Chrome; I'm pretty sure I can download a user agent switcher for TenFourFox, but I haven't.

Now I have to install Chrome on the laptop just to see if I get ads for Chrome whilst actually using Chrome. Assuming it doesn't require Add Minn privileges to install, since there's no way Google's getting those out of me even if I could give them.

Vital stats:

Browser: TenFourFox
Date: Today
Current Mood: Ironic
Sleep Status: Wrong
Word of the Day: Architecture
Platform: Mac
Operating System: Mac OSX 10.5.8
Processor: Dual 1 Ghz PowerPC G4
RAM: Broken and tends to cause kernel panics.
RAM: Replaced
Redundancy: There is some redundancy here in that this item is redundant.
Redundancy: Yes
Redundancy: Triply so for added security
IBM: No, Motorola
Mobile: Also Motorola
Computer: 10 years old.
Intactness: It still runs.
Computer Store: A bin.

Ad Targeting From the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy

Third post and I'm biting the hand that feeds me hosts this blog. But then, Google has its hands in a lot of pies so it's bound to get bit. And I'm breaking metaphors and stitching their corpses together like the venerable Dr. Frankenstein (or maybe, I haven't actually read the damn thing it's still on my to-do list).

So ad targeting is a simple concept; use extremely invasive tracking cookies, flash cookies, web beacons and so forth to track the pages people view, figure out what they're interested in from said data, and target the ads served to them based on that information. This simple concept is virtually impossible to execute.

Turns out, knowing what people look at doesn't help you figure out what they want to buy. The concept of bile fascination means that people may very well be viewing information about products they hate. And evaluating what products people view is the easy part; most of ad targeting attempts to derive what people want to buy from what interests they have. I'm a photographer, ergo I must want to buy cameras... well, not quite, since being a photographer means I've already got all the cameras and lenses I need, I take good care of them so I don't have to buy new ones, and since I consider them the tools of my trade rather than fancy toys, I'm as miserly as possible with my equipment budget, making sure to buy exactly what I need and not waste a penny on stuff that I don't.

Some fun facts about me, as obtained from my own personal experience with Google Ads.

-Apparently, I'm bilingual. I briefly looked at one Chinese web page, so now the Adwords Engine assumes I speak Chinese and is targeting Chinese-language ads at me.

-I've failed primary school maths lessons. One ad that appears with astonishing regularity is for a company called Fingerhut, which charges as much as double retail price for their products. Their gimmick is that they offer financing; pay twice as much up front, and in exchange, they'll let you pay interest too. On towels. Seriously, it's not like they're selling cars or something people might not just be able to pay cash for. Only the most innumerate of morons could fall for it, but apparently that's how poorly the Adwords Engine thinks of me.

-I'm an idiot in other ways as well. The Adwords Engine has figured out that I view a lot of websites which cover news and politics and has rightly deduced that I'm interested in politics and current affairs. However, it hasn't quite yet figured out that I might hold actual positions instead of passively consuming what other people say, with nary a thought of my own. Google's "Ad Preference" panel (which can be viewed here) confirms it; my interests as they've assumed them to be include several listings for "news and politics" and several more for "law and government." Armed with this knowledge, they target ads for right-wing lunatics, secure in their presumption that someone interested in "politics" must actually give a shit what those delusional fucksticks have to say.

-My budget for pointless electronics is larger than the GDP of most nations. I have been known to follow tech news and laugh at the overpriced tablet PCs and other passing fads that are going to seem very silly in about ten years. So the Adwords Engine naturally assumes that I must be interested in buying such products, otherwise why would I be reading about them? I get adverts for tablets, smartphones, ebook readers, and computers, even though I'm still certain tablets are a fad that no one will remember or care about in ten years, smartphones are toys whose limited uses fail to counterbalance their massive price tags, ebooks are shit, and a new computer is absolutely beyond my budget at the moment; I'm currently using a computer I found for free in a bin.

-I'm approximately 50 years old. See, in addition to divining my interests from what websites I look at, Google divines my demographic information by cross-referencing my interests with what they've determined "most people" of a given age are interested in. Based on my interests, they've determined that I'm probably around 50, and I'm wondering where all those decades of my life went.

-And last but not least, I really want a Chromebook. I know this is sort of a bad example; Google using its ad space to advertise itself probably skips the Adwords Engine and just foists itself upon everyone, but I'm seeing a truly mind-boggling number of ads for these things. For those who have had the good fortune to avoid such things, the Chromebook is a netbook with most of the features removed that costs as much as a decently-spec'd laptop and runs Google's Chrome operating system. If you find that name suspiciously similar to the Chrome browser, you're not wrong; the operating system contains the Chrome browser and absolutely nothing else. If you want to write or edit documents, you're fucked. (Unless you use Google's rubbish online Google Docs service and put up with the headaches and privacy violations this entails.) If you need to review that spreadsheet, you're fucked. (Unless your boss puts sensitive information on Google Docs where anyone can see it.) If you want to view or edit photos, you're fucked. If you want to keep your private calendar or planner up to date, you're fucked. If you want to listen to music, you're fucked. If you want to install software, you're fucked. If you want to browse the internet, you can get a netbook for half the price and get a real operating system and some offline storage capacity too (hey, maybe you'll need it someday).

Now I'm going to delete my cookies and watch the targeting algorithms give up entirely. My internet connection is sent through a single shared line that I share with other people, so IP address tracking won't help them when the cookies (and flash cookies) are gone.