August 2006 Blog Posts
Ever watch TV when those 'info-mercial' style commercials come on TV? Ever sit there and think 'Who the heck buys these things?'. Yeah, me too, only I ask myself the same question about online advertising. Like Google AdSense links and other 'sponsored' links that you read at websites. Who clicks those things?I guess I really ask that since I don't do too much frivolous purchasing (if my wife's reading this, my new server wasn't a frivolous buy) and maybe that's where I fail to connect with advertising like that. I never buy things at the...
#63 - When stuck in a cesspool of immorality in Thailand, here's a great tip on getting back home for under 10¢: Claim you've pulled off the crime of the century, say, like, you killed Jonbenét Ramsey. Not only can you get a free ride home, but you get first class treatment on the flight and you get a free pair of leg-arm-waist shackles to any destination within the continental United States.I don't think it takes a whole police department to have figured out that John Mark Karr didn't kill the young girl. I guess to satisfy...
It has taken them a long time, but Dictionary.com, my favorite resource for finding word definitions, has decided to upgrade the visual feel of their website. It looks pretty great considering that its previous design was circa 1993. Why do I like Dictionary.com so much? Well, to be perfectly honest it doesn't provide any additional information than any other reference website does, it was just the best site for subverting my University's policy on the use of search engines in the library.The Library was about the most anal place to do any productive educational work (how 'bout...
I downloaded yesterday a copy of "Steal This Film", a documentary about The Pirate Bay (TPB), arguably the world's largest torrent tracker. Back a couple of months ago TPB's servers were seized in a Swedish raid on grounds of copyright infringement. The whole idea of "Steal This Film" was to provide not only an opposing view to the seizure of their servers, but to provide a counterpoint to the whole piracy and peer to peer debate.And unfortunately, I think they only half-succeeded. They historical events don't seem to be lacking at all, but TPB seemed to lack any...
...who you let your host be. For those of you wondering why the site was down for the past 22 hours, my host's server was down for whatever reason. If I were you, do not use 1PlanHost for any of your hosting needs.Why haven't I changed hosting services, you ask? Well, I can't even get a hold of them to tell them to unlock my domain...
Yes I made this up, but I think it would be a wonderful source of revenue for big stores like Wal-Mart. So what is it? Well, I find it very annoying to have to wait longer in line to pay for something than it did to get the stuff in store in the first place. So, I figure if I could pay an extra $5 to check out *right* now, it would be worth it. This would be especially helpful at Wal-Mart where they staff (on average) 1.372 employees on the checkout stands. I figure...
Last night I was going over the code of SemesterTracker.com and wanting to make some improvements, but all through the evening I found myself muttering 'What was I thinking?' This code (which is almost a year old) was absolutely terrible. It looked like a caveman wrote it! It was all written procedurally with no real concept of Object Oriented Design. There were even some class files that had multiple unrelated classes in the same file! It was embarrassing to say the least.I guess I shouldn't be too surprised since I had written the code in...
For those of you out there pondering whether you should rush to the store to buy the Windows Vista Upgrade or purchase a new computer with it preinstalled, I offer you the following advice: Don't do it.I think the biggest reason revolves around security. When Windows XP launched back in 2001, it was touted as the most secure Windows yet. In retrospect, I can safely say that it wasn't. Security holes, viruses, worms crawled all over the place as if there was no security at all. Granted, this came about before Microsoft set the firewall...
After I had covered yesterday's news about the foiled terrorist plot, there seemed to be quite a decry from the civil liberties groups about current tactics to discover plots to cause death and destruction. All these criticisms stemmed from the accusation that the 4th Amendment is being compromised. Well, let's pull out that dusty piece of parchment called The Constitution and have a look."The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by...
With today's announcement of a foiled terrorist plot to detonate bombs stowed in carry-on baggage, one really has to ask themselves why terrorists choose to use mass transit as their target for their plots.I think the answer lies in their motives--to make people afraid and submissive. By blowing up a plane, your killing a couple hundred of people. This has the effect of making people afraid. So afraid, in fact, that they stop flying. That translates into a trickle down effect of people not going about their usual economic activities. Buy a hamburger at the airport, renting a vehicle, purchasing...
C|Net News is reporting that Adnan Hajj, a Lebanese freelance photographer, has been found altering photographs of the Israel-Lebanon war. The pictures in question involve digitally created plumes of smoke, meant to convey a greater sense of destruction than actually took place.Reuters, who had hired the freelancer to take photos for distribution to newspapers all over the world, is still investigating as to why the photos didn't pass editorial muster.The story broke when bloggers (Who Are Not Journalists In Any Form Or Fashion™) made assertions as to their dubious origins.The biggest question the article raises is the concern of...
I have spent quite a few hours trying to get this blog post thing to work...and now it's here. I wrote all this myself in ASP.NET and I haven't implemented all the features that most blogs have, but I'm happy to have made it thus far. More features are on the horizon.All in all the greatest challenge has been with my host and my database not working. They claim to have 24/7/365 support. Right. This usually involves sitting on the phone (no toll free number, mind you) for two hours. Thank goodness for cell...