I don't necessarily agree with everything I say... ~Marshall McLuhan
17 August 2007
Written by
Yours Truly (
)
Published on August 17th, 2007 @ 03:07:35 am, using 1599 words, 12587 views
This evening I checked out a website (http://planet.intertwingly.net) which had linked to my Acura mobile computing blog and, while there, noticed an interesting article on a recent attempt by site owners to block visitors using the Firefox web browser from accessing their sites. Their protest stems from the fact that one of the many available plugin extensions for Firefox, the AdblockPlus extension, allows internet users to free their web browsing experience of intrusive and often resource exploitative advertisements. These sites have begun to employ various blocking scripts, essentially user-agent sniffers, to detect the Firefox browser and prevent access to the page and its content. The rationale (I apply the term loosely) is that these sites are losing advertising revenue due to the fact that internet users who demand a clean and streamlined internet experience are avoiding the ads displayed on certain web sites.
Being a loyal Firefox user since the initial beta releases many (many) years back, and a naturally inquisitive person, I decided to check out the site which is, apparently, spearheading the effort and serving as a soapbox for all those site owners who feel they are being cheated by internet users who have the AdBlockPlus extension (myself included) installed.
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01 February 2006
Written by
Yours Truly (
)
Published on February 1st, 2006 @ 02:53:00 pm, using 263 words, 1603 views
This site successfully blocked 20,375 referral spam attempts for the month of June, 2007.
This site successfully blocked 8,862 referral spam attempts for the month of May, 2007.
This site successfully blocked 11,720 referral spam attempts for the month of April, 2007.
This site successfully blocked 22,052 referral spam attempts for the month of March, 2007.
This site successfully blocked 37,958 referral spam attempts for the month of February, 2007.
This site successfully blocked 360,573 referral spam attempts for the month of January, 2007.
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15 December 2005
Written by
Yours Truly (
)
Published on December 15th, 2005 @ 08:40:04 pm, using 232 words, 7282 views
I've been listening "almost" nonstop to the Philosomatika stream on netradio using the PVR system I built around a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250 TV Tuner. Since I haven't been watching television for going on 5 weeks now, I figured a good alternate use of my homemade tivo would be to use it for streaming netradio streams. It's basically just Shoutcast radio, but displayed on my tv screen in the GBPVR software interface. The Hauppauge WinTV-series of TV-Tuners give phenomenal picture quality for the price. Since they have an onboard video-encoding chip, they can function equally well on older hardware since the video compression routines are done on-board, in hardware, rather than in software which relies on the speed of the processor to keep up with the incoming video stream.
The Win-TV PVR 250 card has:
- Integrated 125 channel cable-ready TV tuner, hardware MPEG-2 encoder, dbx stereo audio with IR remote control
- Composite Video, S-Video & audio inputs, for connecting VCR or camcorder
If anyone wants to check out the philosomatika stream, just download the .pls file here, and drop it into winamp, or you can grab it yourself at the philosomatika website.
Contemporaneous Auditory Narcotics:
or, What my speakers are currently pumping...
Tranan - Restarter
This post is the creative work of Yours Truly and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
13 August 2005
Written by
Yours Truly (
)
Published on August 13th, 2005 @ 11:52:27 pm, using 88 words, 650 views
Well, the title pretty much says it all. It was... interesting. I wonder if there's any left inside there and, if there is, will it take the short route and work its way out over time, or will it defy the laws of gravity and work its way up to eventually lodge in my brain?
Contemporaneous Auditory Narcotics:
or, What my speakers are currently pumping...
Metallica - Broadway Jacks 1983
This post is the creative work of Yours Truly and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
25 June 2005
Written by
Yours Truly (
)
Published on June 25th, 2005 @ 10:17:05 am, using 244 words, 2664 views
TAIPEI - The killing of a Taiwanese teenager in a brutal knife attack at an Internet cafe over a dispute involving the Blade&Sword Online computer game has raised concerns over violence on the normally tranquil Pacific island.
"(The assailant) didn't know the difference between reality and fantasy," lamented the Apple Daily, which splashed a graphic depiction of the assault across its front page Tuesday.
The local TVBS news station suggested the violence of the game played a role in the attack.
"In the bottom corner of the game, there's a sign that pops up and tells players to 'kill until your eyes are red,'" a TVBS commentator said. In Chinese culture, red eyes are associated with extreme anger, bordering on insanity.
Blade&Sword gamemaker, Pixel Studios of Beijing, was not immediately available to comment on the incident.
The dispute occurred after the 19-year old killed in the attack, Lee Hon-hui, used his character in the online game to slay an opposing player. Angry over being knocked out of the game, the alleged assailant left the Internet cafe and headed straight for a hardware store to buy a long machete-like knife, according to TVBS. He then allegedly returned and attacked Lee.
Read the original article here: Teen Killed Over Online Game Dispute
I just think "TVBS" is a very appropriate name for any television channel, especially a television news station.
Contemporaneous Auditory Narcotics:
or, What my speakers are currently pumping...
Mampi Swift - Mainframe
29 April 2005
Written by
Yours Truly (
)
Published on April 29th, 2005 @ 10:37:28 pm, using 99 words, 957 views
Well, there's been yet another accident outside my living room window, because stupid college kids playing stupid crap on their too-loud stereos and talking to their stupid friends on their stupid cellphones don't look where they're going while behind the wheel of two tons of rolling steel paid for by mom and dad. The sound of the crash was kind of cool though.
Contemporaneous Auditory Narcotics:
or, What my speakers are currently pumping...
Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks
This post is the creative work of Yours Truly and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
08 February 2005
Written by
Yours Truly (
)
Published on February 8th, 2005 @ 07:29:42 pm, using 163 words, 448 views
It looks like Internet Explorer has trouble loading icons and graphics in the blog, and it's not reading a lot of the CSS properly. I'm not sure yet what the problem is. For now, use Firefox or Netscape, as they seem to work correctly. I'll see if I can fix the issue in the next few days...
UPDATE: The image issue in IE is fixed now (I missed a baseurl reference, doh!), but haven't had a chance to make the stylesheet work 100% with IE yet. the only thing remaining is the list-bullet vertical spacing)
UPDATE (06 March 2005): I've switched skins because I like kubrick better. Those of you familiar with kubrick will immediately recognize that I've tweaked it to the point where it's a different animal entirely. Right now the only problem I'm seeing is the vertical height of the list-item icons in IE. They seem to sit a little too high. Need to work on the line heights of list items in general.
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