Archive for January 1st, 2005
I was reading This Article and I realized that we as Americans just need to stop, forget about 9-11 and think back to the year 2000.
Got it? Remember it? Good. Now what do we want in the future? What type of world do we want to live in?
If I told you about a country in 2000 (before the sept 11 world trade center attacks) where the government monitored your phone calls, your internet access, your search history and library books, allowed people to go to jail without being charged, tortured prisoners of war, and started wars…
You’d be like “OMG, I’d hate to live there.” Right?
Well guess what, now you live there… and it’s only going to get worse in the future.
It’s serious America. Your dog died, you got over it. 9-11 happened, get over it. It’s time to move on and quit mourning. Lets decide what kind of country we want to live in.. I know nobody wanted this 6 years ago… why does 9-11 make it so much more different?
January 1st, 2005
I’m still waiting for Matt Cutts to confirm if this is a real bug or not, but I can’t find any other causes..
I think it has to do with the latest BigDaddy update and cache sharing. Here’s how that works:
When adsense visits your site, it caches it. When the search spider needs to visit your site, it says “oh, adsense was just there.. I’ll use that.” This is a great feature, as it saves both Google and webmasters bandwith.
Note, that using adsense does NOT get you indexed faster, it just stops the bot from making an unnecessary visit. But, I do think this is causing me to get indexed slower. Here’s what happened:
In April I bought a domain and put up a “coming soon” type message on it. I then created a subdirectory and started developing the site there. Security by obscurity right?
Anyway, I made a test.html page in the root directory a few days before going live. This test.html page linked to www.mydomain.com, and had adsense included on it.
I noticed after a few visits to my test page (121 actually), that ads were starting to get relevant. I verified this because I saw Googlebot had visited twice (Yahoobot has visited once too, as my alternate ads are set to yahoo)
I thought nothing of it, and switched the site live.
It’s important to realize that at this time, there were a total of 0 in-links to the site (in google, msn, yahoo, ask, etc), and the site had not been previously owned, nor submitted to any search engine.
But it was listed on Google’s cache. Not the test page, just the main index page, and it’s “coming soon” message.
How did that happen? Is it possible that the adsense spider searched other pages it found (to determine relevance), then cached them too? So when I submitted the domain to Google the next day, it grabbed that old adsense cache even though it technically didn’t exist anymore?
Ordinarily this wouldn’t be a problem, but another BigDaddy improvement was to not revisit spam sites as often. I can see how Google wouldn’t want to revisit a 4 word website, and so it’s been almost a month since the last googlebot visit (despite some fresh in links and a manual submission)
It looks like putting adsense on my page here actually hurt me.
The good news is, it’s an easy fix for Google. Don’t let the adsense bot make the first cache of a webpage. Or, if you do.. don’t let the search engine spider use the adsense cache if it’s the first time it found the URL from a different site, or from manual submission.
January 1st, 2005
Follow the Red Wings playoffs with me on my Red Wings Blog
January 1st, 2005
Imagine opening up your browser, typing in www.userfriendly.org to view your favorite comic, and getting this message:
We’re sorry, but this feature is only available to premium subscribers of Comcast Internet. Please click here to upgrade your subscription for only $9.95 / month.
You’d be pretty pissed off right? Well, this situation will become reality tomorrow.
Congress is expected to pass a bill tomorrow allowing the cable companies control over their networks.
You see, under the communications decency act of 1996, telephone companies couldn’t offer preferential treatment. They simply had to allow any bits on their networks to flow. That’s how the freedom of the internet came about, and it’s largely responsible for its rapid growth; not to mention allowing anybody with a laptop to start a website.
A recent ruling said that high speed lines don’t fall under this act, and that’s where the problems come in.
Cable companies already miss the point (see the old “google is using my pipes and not paying me” type articles), and you can expect them to miss the point even more so after the bill gets approved wednesday.
The internet as we know it is over. Expect the monopolistic cable companies to engage in any type of profiteering or anti-competitive practices they see fit. After wednesday, there’s nothing in place to stop them.
January 1st, 2005
With gas hitting $3/gallon today in some parts of the US, I figured I’d let you in on what other countries are paying.
here’s some gas prices (converted to US dollars per gallon) from around the world:
UK: $5
Germany: $5
Italy: $4.86
Japan: $3.84
Australia: $2.63
China: $1.54
Russia: $1.45
Azerbaijan (no clue where this is) $1.15
And finally…
Venezuela: $0.14 No, that’s not a typo!
Anybody else wanna move?
January 1st, 2005
Reading Wired today I noticed an article titled “MySpace has a perp problem” where they run the database of sex offenders against a MySpace search.
Their results? 5 confirmed accounts of sex offenders on myspace.
5!! that’s not a problem… 5/500,000,000 = .000000001 That’s really really really small. that’s 0.000001 %
It’s not like looking for a needle in a haystack and finding a pincusion.. it’s like looking for a needle in 100,000,000 haystacks.
This seems like such small numbers that it’s not even statistically significant.
I just wish the media would quit inventing problems and deal with actual ones.
Besides, who cares if a sex offender uses myspace?
In this example.. none of them had children in their friends list. NONE!!
Guess what.. tons of sex offenders use AIM, Yahoo, Gmail, and (gasp) most of them have computers too!
While we’re playing the numbers game.. I can say that statistically more sex crimes are committed by people with no criminal history than sex offenders. (there’s more non offenders, and most offenders are in jail.. duh!)
so OMG, WTF.. we need to protect ourself from non offenders too….
I don’t see the media going crazy with that statistic though..
January 1st, 2005
Think you’re getting bent over this tax season? It could be worse:
• Arkansas taxes tattoos and piercings.
• Tennessee taxes illegal drugs.. that’s right, you need to pay a tax to put a stamp on your pot..pothead.
• Don’t play poker in Alabama.. they tax playing cards
• Maine taxes blueberries.
• Utah taxes sexually explicit business.. (wonder if blogging in your underwear counts?)
It could be worse though.. the average US citizen pays 29% in taxes..
Compare that to france where they pay 50.1% and we have it sorta good.
January 1st, 2005
Ok, it’s new car time. Here’s the short list of what I’m considering. Basically.. if it doesn’t go topless, it’s not for me.
Which one would you get?
Mustang GT convertible
Solstice
Sky
Thunderbird convertible
Corvette
crossfire conv
I really really like the Sky, but there’s an 8 month waiting list..
I’m also limited to Ford, GM, Chrysler, and Toyota cars… otherwise I’d have already bought the nissan 350z
Somebody help me decide.
January 1st, 2005
Let me tell you a story about how NOT to treat your customers.
When ordering my Ipod online, I decided to order the play it over your car stereo accessory, so I added it to the cart too. A quick check of it’s description says “works with all Ipods”.
Upon recieving my order though, I found out it was an old package and it didn’t work with the new ipod that I ordered.
So, I called Apple, explained the situation and asked that they send me a box to return it. While on the phone, I also ordered a correct part and a AC adapater from the gentleman. I was going out of town, so I paid for next day shipping to use it on my trip.
Well, it came next day, but signature required.. so I didn’t get it next day, in fact I got it 5 days later! Even worse, I had to drive 20 miles to the fedex office to pick it up myself because they had “retryed” shipping while I was away, and wouldn’t leave it without a signature.
So, I called Apple again and asked them to refund me the shipping, as it’s only fair that I don’t pay for shipping when I have to pick something up right? Well, they hung up on me.
It’s at this time I notice that the power adapater the guy sold me is only an attachment, not the adapter itself.
Since my box for the itrip hadn’t arrived yet, I decided to give up and take it to the apple store 30 miles from my house. Store credit only.
I say fine, give me the right stuff… sorry we’re out of stock.
Finally the manager gave me my money back and all ended well, but should I really have to go through all this just to order a power adapter and car part for my ipod?
January 1st, 2005
I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.. but not in this case.
While reviewing my site logs, I found a hit from another website that was an exact copy of my txt2day.com website. I mean exact.. the wording, the layout, the images, everything. IN fact, his FAQ page even had my site’s name in it!
anyway.. I sent off the usual cease and desist letter, and this is what I got back:
Please, provide the proper proof that the website is indeed yours. I require the sales reciepts, payroll for the coders you hired to create the site, proper copyright documents showing you have file the proper copyrights to the concept of creatting a text messaging script. I have bought the script from a user and would like to find out if they have cheated me, but without the proper proof I will take it that your copying thier work and have indeed tring to harass me to not use thier script and will follow up with proper legal action’s. You are annoying me with the emails. Please, provide all contact details to me or I will have a legal right to follow up with a lawsuit against you.
Have a nice day.
Name Removed
Payment details? sales receipts? copyright documents? None of these things exist for any website, let alone are required by law.
The law is simple.. I made it first, and I can prove that.. he copied the exact wording. Anyway, him and his laywer will be hearing from my attorney first thing in the morning. I don’t have time for this immature crap.
January 1st, 2005
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