Cainele vagabond, parazitul sfant al Romaniei

Am citi de curand un interviu cu Radu Georgescu, "Romanul care i-a vandut un antivirus lui Bill Gates". Excelent interviul.
Una din intrebari, fara legatura cu IT-ul... mi-a trezit amintiri vii:

«-De ce va este teama in Romania?

-De cainii vagabonzi.»

Da... le e teama multora dintre romani. Si mie.



Merg acasa. Trec prin parcul de leagane. O mama tipa la un copil care se joaca in nisip. A pus mana pe un r*** uscat de caine. Trec pe langa spatiul verde din fata blocului. Ah pute pute a hoit… iar a murit un caine in boschet. Da, uite muste. Trec prin tronson… muste si r*** de caine de nu stiu pe unde sa calc. Au vecinii caini si pentru ca ii scot prea tarziu… nu mai ajung sa faca in parcul de leagane in nisip… si isi dau drumul in tornson. Iar muste, iar pute. Cinci-sase caini stau la intrarea blocului si maraie. Imi atin calea. Trebuie sa stau calma si sa ma uit in alta parte. Nu am mancare la mine asa ca poate scap. Ma chinui sa intru in propriul meu bloc, in propria casa. Urc in bloc. Un caine la parter pe pres. Un caine la Etaj 1 pe pres. In fata usii sta o cutie de conserva cu resturi de mancare care put. Nu e nimic, oricum pute peste tot a excremente si a caine jegos de tomberon. Nici nu ma agit sa gonesc cainii din scara. Oricum ii baga iar la 12 noaptea vecina. Femeie buna. Intru in casa. Aud ceva care s-a pleostit de frunzele copacului din fata geamului. Sunt bucati de paine inmuiata in mancare prelingadu-se. Acum si copacu e imputit. Asta e, a aruncat vecina de la 4 mancare la caini. Bine ca nu m-am trezit cu un os unsuros in cap. Ce tare e vecina!... nu mai trebuie sa duca gunoiul plus ca a facut o fapta buna. Deci sa ma culc. E cald. Deschid geamul. Nu pot sa dorm… latra cainii. Or sa adune sobolanii de la subsol resturile aruncate. Cainii se pare ca au treaba sa latre si sa schelalaie.

Cred ca este perceputa gresit libertatea si protectia animalelor.

In Bucuresti, lucram prin Pipera. Cel mai greu a fost sa intru in cladire cand am avut interviu. Apoi am invatat sa vin la ora optima, dupa ce oamenii buni hraneau cainii. Cand sarea la cate un nefericit haita faceam ca toata lumea... ocoleam scena.

In ianuarie 2006 un om a murit in plin centrul Bucurestiului, atacat de un caine vagabond. Nu a fost nici primul, nici ultimul incident grav. E incredibil ca tot ce s-a intamplat a fost ca milioane de romani sa ridice vocea in apararea cainilor vagabonzi. Vor sa se cheltuie sume uriase pentru vaccinare si castrare ca sa fie iar retrimisi pe strada!!! Sunt aproximati 200.000 de caini numai in Bucuresti. O astfel de campanie e deja imposibila. In timp ce cateva sute de cadre specializate castreaza cateva mii, restul se isi dubleaza numarul in cateva luni.

Sunt zeci de specii pe cale de disparitie, padurile sunt defrisate, dar pentru astea nu are nimeni bani... Oameni atacati, cosuri de gunoi rasturnate de cainii flamanzi, purici, zapada in parcuri plina de r**** de caine, lesuri de caini calcati sau nu de masini = peisaj romanesc urban.

Planul cu castrarea si repunerea in libertate e ca si cum cineva ar dori sa interzica otrava de sobolani, sa ii adune pe toti sa ii castraze si sa ii vaccineze. Sobolanii sunt la fel de “folositori” si se inmultesc cu acelasi succes ca si cainii vagabonzi.

M-a muscat odata un caine vagabond si mi-a dat sangele. Nu a latrat, a venit din spate, fara avertisment si a sarit direct sa muste. M-am dus pentru vaccin anti-tetanos. Era coada. O femeie cu o fetita in brate cu mana sangerand. Mi-am amintit cu tristete de urmatoarea parere caraghioasa: “Numai pe oamenii rai ii musca cainele. El simte omul.”. Absolut. Politia de pe tot mapamondul e incompetenta. Folosesc ei cainii pentru depistat urme dar asta e nimica toata. Detectorul de infractori ar fi o haita de caini vagabonizi flamanzi. Suspectii sunt pusi la zid. Cei la care sar cainii sa ii muste sunt omenii rai. Da da da, cainii vagabonzi sunt cei mai buni psihologi si clarvazatori. De altfel si pe politisti ii latra cainii. Oameni rai! Si oamenii care merg pe bicicleta sunt tot oameni rai. Si cainii care latra la masini... simt oamenii rai din masina. Clar!

M-am gandit de multe ori sa infiintez o organizatie de educare si trezire la realitate in privina cainlor…dar am renuntat intelegand ca nu sunt destui adepti. Oricat as incera sa imi inchipui pana unde se va merge... simt ca imi depaseste imaginatia... Cred ca inspaimantatoarea moarte a omului de afaceri Hajime Hori a adus o pata de nesters Romaniei.

Am gasit pe unele forumuri cateva pareri care mi-au trezit sperante. Nici in EUROPA si nici in USA, eu nu am vazut caini vagabonzi. Si e o idee buna. Cainii abandonati de stapani care nu gasesc adoptie sunt eutanasiati. Are cineva o idee mai buna? Care?

Social Networks : the potential, the trends and the critics (YASNA)

Social networks. Definitely a boom in the last years!

The need to make your life public aka “not a nobody anymore” is old and strong: “I need to live, feel and share everything online. Feel like a celeb!” I saw people describing where they stay where they go and what they do on a daily basis in their public blog/ web-site, adding all their friend information also. Is it wise? Does it make any sense? I heard people being proud that their name is indexed on Google pointing straight to their personal page. There, all possible information: physical address, personal photos from their birthday, their professional achievements and interests, all mixed!
What if I am your boss or subordinate? Reading all that stuff I might start not to like you at all! What if I am a recruiter and I do not like to see that you are such an online extroverted? Companies wake up with some unexpected information on the internet. I think their solution (firing the bloggy person) is not repairing anything. I remember well the Google fired employee story. Actually, a friendster developer was fired for blogging about her work!

Having some private access can be an appealing compromise. And so comes the need of social networks.

I think the need of social networks comes from four big directions:

1. Globalization. People all over the world need to cooperate, as friends, colleagues or business partners. Usually, they benefit from the grained security access that social networks provide. Examples: Multiply, Classmates, Famoodle

2. Structure and give wisely access to your personal information. Professional stuff: go on LinkedIn, personal stuff on MySpace or Me.com, etc. It is all about having different access levels of the information, like private view, friends view, friend of friends view and finally the public view.

3. Dating dating dating. You are single. You are buisy and in a tight social circle. You need somehow a link, a connection that would happen spontaneously, to find a friend. Social networks are a comfortable solution. How nice is to make personality tests on Tickle.com and by accident meet the perfect match! Sounds somewhat more romantic and naturally than agencies. H5 and Friendster to OkCupid, most of the social networks provide dating. I sometimes think that dating is the main thing happening. Thousands of teens trying to look handsom in their photo collection from Hi5 and collecting comments like "Oh you are such a good looking!". This kind of users become suddenly inactive. It is nothing further to do or say...

4. Make new acquaintances in your interest area: you have the need to connect and share with others … as special as you.
Travelers: tripconnect.com, wayn.com,
Cars: carspace.com from Edmunds
Jokes: jibjab.com
Url bookmarks: stumbleupon, wink, del.icio.us
RSS sharing: bloglines, rojo

After reading the article from Slashdot I understood that social network analysis software is the dimond of marketing. I start realizing what a huge value have all these social network sites.

1. Media repositories of tagged photos and videos (the ones made public). Try a search on Flickr...

2. Huge collection of all kind of life stories enough to inspire and give some recent realistic flavour for thousands of magazines, movies, books, TV shows... whatever. Take a look: livejournal, xanga, deadjournal

3. Huge potential to analize the behavior, wishes, occupations of groups of people. See the article:

« " The whole point is that you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, so you use data mining to search for patterns," Brobst says. "Going in the other direction is easy." »

Well, is seeams that soon all the companies will have some consistent data about their customers . The more niche-oriented is the social network the more relevant patterns. If no social network available the company starts one (see Edmunds). Many companies started to have a business blog... now they add to their forums an newsgroups some social network behaviour. So it comes the social network software going from open source to enterprise solutions.

Ok, now are there enough money coming from advertising? Some photo,dating or diary social networks have paid services. The rest… hope for advertising. So, where is thing going? To the end of out privacy?

«Our social networks, searching habits, visual identifiers and personal preferences will be mercilessly sold to anyone who wants to get their hands on our particular demographic. And when your photos, your files, your email and your friends are all online, you'll have to be online - and thanks to net everywhere, like the Google San Francisco project, you'll always be able to be online. And as long as you're online, they can market to you.» sais Wil Harris in "Why Web 2.0 will end your privacy".

I read an article saying that specialized social networks can provide good targeted advertising and therefore become much more attractive. Therefore, this is why it is a large number niche-oriented social networks yet to come targeting the no. 4 need. However, they have problems promoting themselves. For instance for social network- photo sharing. Each has its own non-exhaustive way of presenting the features so you end up making an account to try it. I find this quite annoying. Flickr, Slide, Zorpia, Zoto to name some of them…

So, are there too many social networks? (See the article). Well ... it seams that one person tends to subscribe to more then one social network (need no 2)…. It is necessary some kind of common protocol to help everyone use aggregators with all the benefits. It seems that some social network aggregators (not yet released) like Iceflake have their impatient customers. I am one of them.