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Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category

There are some really classy people at Facebook. Take for instance the following chat that took place in a Zynga Texas Hold’Em chat room. This guy, J.F., wanted some chips from what I presumed was a friend, A.W., a rather attractive girl from her profile picture.

J.F.: a. send me sum chips plzz hun
A.W.: hahahha no
J.F.: ok
J.F.: fuuck you than
P.W.: charming
A.W.: done it j
J.F.: ty hun
J.F.: no you hav not
A.W.: il try again :|
A.W.: its not lettin me j
J.F.: is ok hun
J.F.: cum in a room wiv me and fold

That boy needs a beat down with the manners-stick.

From the makers of T-Shirt Hell… Pornstar or Potato. My score card is below.

I don’t even want to know, but there’s over 3,000,000 results for it.

I mentioned a short time ago that I was planning to utilize social networking sites more. It began with Last.fm through the enjoyment of the music I listen to periodically. I had some misgivings about the other major sites due to privacy and security concerns, but there was too much intrigue to pass them up completely.

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I’m not much a fan of online games. This of course is a small lie as I’ve been engrossed with Mob Wars and Street Racing at Facebook for the last month. But in the most part, online games don’t attract my attention, which is normally in short supply.

MyBrute sets you up with your own personal warrior to go at it head-to-head ala Thunderdome style (“Two men enter. One man leaves.”) You type in a name to generate your warrior. You can change its appearance and coloring to suit your own taste. Then the battles begin.

It’s as easy as it’s entertaining. You pick your opponents, then sit back and watch as they take turns punching, kicking, stabbing, hitting until one of them is critically injured. As you gain experience from the matches, you gain extra strength, agility, and speed. You also obtain weaponry and special skills.

You also get your very own unique mybrute.com address in order to access your warrior and gain recruits which help you build stats.

Despite my reservations about Facebook and Twitter, I’ve decided to venture out more into the social networking ecosphere with accounts at both.

Facebook came with the surprise of finding other family members there. Making friends with the family made it easier to explore what Facebook has to offer. When you boil it all down, it’s really nothing more than an advertisement server. They entertain the Internet public while getting the opportunity to serve that public ads that make them money. This isn’t much different than the strategy television networks have been subscribed: free entertainment as long as we can pitch some products to you in the meantime. “Here’s a word from our sponsors.”

Twitter is going to take some time to get used to. I’m still not sure how I’d want to use it. Besides announcing a random thought once in a while, I don’t have much need for it. I do like the ability of following others’ feeds so that they all collect on your Twitter home page. I follow Senator John McCain from Arizona, Tim Buckley of Ctrl-Alt-Delete, and Ryan Sohmer of Least I Could Do. It’s entertaining and with this market you couldn’t ask for more.

I still can’t bring myself to go back to MySpace, though. It doesn’t appeal to me anymore. So, I’ll play around with these and see what I can make out of it all. If you’re at all interested, the links are located to the right and at the bottom of every page.

The effects of Slashdot on the Internet can be extreme. Because of a post about Google’s SearchWiki possibly being used to send secret messages, a lot of people are now searching for Orthogonal Terwilliger Accordion.

I’ve been having issues with Google trying to decide from what country I was visiting their site(s). Up until just recently, I was always landing on www.google.com. However, I now get redirected to www.google.de. I have nothing against the Germans or the German language, but it makes using Google difficult since I am not familiar with the language. I noticed similar issues with YouTube as well.

At first I thought there was an update to Firefox that changed some locale setting. But then I noticed I had the same issue on every computer regardless of which browser I was using. I assumed it had to be a problem with Google in relation to my IP, but I couldn’t find any confirmation until just today.

In a Google Groups discussion, a lot of users were reporting the same issue. One was able to get information from Google and relayed it to the group. Google uses location files to keep track of where an IP resides in the world in order to provide region specific services. Apparently, the files are not perfect and fortunately Google has provided a form in order to report any issues that are found.

http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=ip

If anyone else is experiencing this strange phenomenon, let Google know so they can correct it. Even my brother on location in Afghanistan was being redirected to www.google.de.

Every year between June 1 and November 30, every island nation in the Caribbean, every country along the Gulf Of Mexico coast, and every state in the US along the Atlantic Ocean braces for the onslaught of hurricane season. Names like Andrew, Hugo, or Katrina bring horrible memories of the death and destruction that’s caused by these huge reminders that mother nature, and not mankind, still controls the weather and the seas.

And while mankind can not control the awesome force of a hurricane, we can still develop better ways to track and predict where a hurricane may strike populated areas in order to issue fair warnings so that people can seek safety or shelter in time. When Gustav was still a major threat, Google put together a meta-page in order to track it and help with any recover efforts. One of the most interesting links from that page was the Hurricane Tracking Map that StormAdvisory.org maintains.

Powered by Google Maps, you can select any or all of the hurricanes from this season and see their path from life to death. Different stages, or way-points, are detailed to show date, time, and wind-speed and are color-coded according to each storm’s severity. Current storms also give projected paths. Whats even more intriguing is that StormAdvisory even has a drop-down menu where you can see the paths of every hurricane known to exist as far back as 1851. Of course, accuracy begins to decline the further back in time you look, but it’s still cool to see.

I’ve been seeing an increase in spam that contains links to sites that try to trick users into thinking they have to update their Flash player plugins/software in order to watch some particular video. Just in the past two days, I’ve gotten three plus one other possible email.

• Feel her womb entrance with new length [Sexual Enhancement]
• Cheap Price degree/Bacheelor/masteerMBA/PhDD certificate srhrs 0x6e [Online school]

• Apple iPods explode while charging – Software industry sues eBay for not controlling piracy [malware - flash update]
• Lost writers wrapping up hit series – American athletes denied Chinese visa and are unable to compete in upcoming Olympics [malware - flash update]
• new Olimpic china collection – luxury stuff for Olimpic games. aspecial models with hundred discounts. [Cheap crap / possible Erection Pills]
• Medic assistance share! – Beer is a silent killer? [unknown, but funny]
• SPECIAL OFFERS-Pharmacy Online July Sale 70% [Viagra & Copyright 2008 Microsoft?]
• Bartender Gettts $10,000 Tip on $26 Tab [Sexual Enhancement]
• New recipe for successful love [malware - flash update]
• new sports watches models for Olimpic games [Erection pills]
• Try also each time new unforgettable impressions [bay.liveefilestore.com known spammer]

I think I do pretty well with controlling spam, so if I’m getting these emails, I know other computer users are certainly getting them. And that means I get to recite my usual warning:

If you don’t know the sender of the email, don’t even bother to read it. And for God’s sake, don’t even bother clicking on any links or visit any site contained within the emails. For those times when you think you know the sender, use caution and pay attention.

If some site is asking you to update your Flash player software, don’t use their supplied updater. Go to Adobe’s website and get it straight from the source. Chances are, you already have the latest software.

I’m still laughing at the first listed spam title. “Feel her womb entrance with new length.” Whoo hoo!