Let’s see if I understand this: a free (repeat FREE) Web service, Facebook, exists solely to share information about what a person is doing or thinking with every friend and friend of a friend they can reach. Most of the information, at least the last six months, has been annoying as hell Farmville nonsense. No, I will not help you buy a cow.

Those who share information now want to hide some information, and they think Facebook is making it awkward or difficult or confusing in some way. So they call a lawyer. Surprise, surprise, the lawyer thinks they should file a lawsuit.

Advice to Mark: take care of those privacy issues the easy way: Throw the whiny idiots out of Facebook. Want more privacy? You got it. Afraid someone might see what an idiot you are from your Facebook drivel? Taken care of, quickly and easily.

Now let’s see if Mark can grow a pair with hair: block whiners from any direct Facebook activity, and block all mentions of the whiners in all other user comments and photo galleries. You want privacy, whiners? Here’s your privacy: you are persona non grata on Facebook, period.

Is Facebook wonderful? No. Do I use it? Sometimes. Do I get tired of Farmville and Mafia Wars and other nonsense? Absolutely. When Facebook annoys me, do I call a lawyer? Hell no, I go to another Web site, or go play tennis.

Facebook is a free service. If you don’t like it, don’t use it. Problem solved. Go whine about something else.

So I wrote my own jokes here. Let me know what you think.

Do yourself a favor: always search for comments about any product or service you are considering buying before you put your money down. If you do that, you’ll see HostDepartment.com has an enormous number of negative comments. Add this one to the list.

You want broken technology? HostDepartment.com is the most broken technology since cassette drives as data storage devices on personal computers.

How smart is this cat, name not released pending notification of relatives, that he can download child porn? And if he’s into porn, why child porn and not cat porn? Do cats secretly find children sexy? Guess we won’t know until the police break the cat, and sweat him out until he talks.

Griffin claims his cat walks on the keyboard, and several times has downloaded bizarre things. Yes, that could happen, and maybe you could get one or two porn images downloaded. But this cat walked so much, according to Griffin, he downloaded over 1,000 child porn images. That cat should be tired after stomping on the keyboard all that time.

Surprisingly, the police didn’t believe this story and arrested Griffin rather than the cat.

Cable companies love to sell Voice Over Internet Protocol phone service, but they have always priced it far too high. While Vonage advertises $25 per month, cable companies jack it up to $40 per month even though they own the connections to each home. Why? Greed, I guess, but I haven’t been able to get a straight answer from a cable executive.

Recently, a flyer came from Time Warner Cable offering residential VoIP service for $20 per month, for 12 months. At first I was thrilled about the price reduction, figuring it would be tough on Vonage but good for consumers. But the fine print said the price was only good on a service plan that offered unlimited calling only in Texas.

This is a disgusting trend, and Time Warner Cable executives should be ashamed of themselves. The Internet eliminates distance for domestic calls, and to charge long distance rates outside an artificial barrier like a state line makes no technical sense whatsoever. This is the type of stupid phone pricing I expect from AT&T as they struggle to keep their landline business profitable. To see a cable company use this type of pricing only shows their contempt for customers and a perversion of the values of using the Internet for telephone calls.

Time Warner Cable officially sucks.

In most cases, I gather technology information from vendors, users, or my own research. I present that material for readers so they can gain the benefits of technology without making the same mistakes earlier users made.

It saddens me to see so many writers accept the label of “content creator” without realizing they have been marginalized and their work commoditized. Calling translated knowledge “content” puts it on a shelf like toilet paper.

I am NOT a “content creator” who fills Web pages with keyword-laden drivel. I do not “create content” by typing two sentences of keywords then quoting press releases or other news stories or blogs. I refuse to cut and scrape and plagerize other people’s words to stuff useless text onto a Web site that offers no value but only the hope your eyeballs will be tempted by a tangential and annoying text ad.

If you are a professional writer as I am, stand up straight and refuse to answer to the term “content creator.” If you read to learn, be entertained, be distracted, be surprised, or be transported to another world, join with me in denounced those who “create content” and try to tell us it’s writing.

If you’re looking for a “content creator,” go to hell.

Thank you, Google Alerts. And, of course, Screaming Weasel.

I’m attracted to weasel names, and have the domain SlackerWeasel.com. My daughter was playing with it, but lost interest immediately. What should I do with SlackerWeasel?

To my surprise, or maybe not, Microsoft Vista SP1 on a five month old HP computer did NOT handle the time change. Even when I went into the time settings and forced the computer to use Network Time Protocol to check the official Windows server at time.windows.com, it still didn’t make the hour jump for the right time. I had to set my brand new Vista computer manually to display the new time.

To my surprise, or maybe not, a six year old PC running a Linux distribution from Ubuntu (8.04) caught and made the time change automatically. Old PC with a BIOS made before the time change switch gets it right, brand new PC with Vista can’t.

Just another in the seemingly never ending “Vista sucks” story file.

Why? Because unlike the hedge funds, mortgage securities repackagers, and Ponzi schemers on Wall Street, the porn business provides something tangible to their customers. Granted, porn on the Web isn’t as tangible as many would like, but just wait until we get 3D with TouchMe technology and virtual reality gloves and, um, other things.

America will not rise up out of this recession by making it safer for more Wall Street MBAs to trade paper filled with financial promises understood and regulated by no one. America will come out of this recession when people make and sell real products and entertainment products customers can get their hands on and will purchase.

The technology industry should be particularly enthused by a porn business bailout. After all, would VCR players have made it in the marketplace if we just had Disney tapes to play? Would VCR cameras have made it if they were just used to get bad videos of kids soccer games? Would digital cameras have the success they have if they didn’t allow people to take and share, um, personal images without the interim step of turning over private film to some pimply faced kid at the drugstore film processing station? Where would DVDs be if not for porn? And the new HD consumer camcorders?

We haven’t even talked about streaming video. Do you really believe engineers work hard to improve streaming video for more corporate sales meetings?

Yes, we should bail out the porn business. Certainly those of us in the technology biz should rally on their behalf, because we know how much they’ve helped us in the past. Perhaps it’s time for the tech people to more openly jump into bed with the porn people. Sure beats video games.

This blog entry limited to those over 18 unless accompanied by a parent.