First there was Gator, now there is iDownload. The two programs are spyware, yet the companies do not like us calling their products by that name. My personal definition of spyware is any software program that installs itself on your computer without your permission through stealth techniques. I’m not sure what they consider the...
Archive for February, 2005
The Kyoto Treaty and Solar Power in Developing Nations
I was reading this post on the WorldChanging blog and was overjoyed to learn that solar may be practical in developing nations. The Kyoto treaty, which the United States has cowardly refused to sign, represents the chance to vastly reduce the amount of CO2 that we release into the environment. Nations that are able...
No Wonder I have Satellite Radio Now
I have been frustrated with radio for the longest time. Once Clear Channel started gobbling up our spectrum, the end was near. We went from goofy semi-spontaneous radio to controlled playlists and constant concert and ad hawking. Now Zeta 94.9 in South Florida is no more. To be honest, Zeta had been pretty bad...
Robert Parsons’ Rules for Survival
Robert Parsons of GoDaddy fame has written up a list of 16 Rules for Survival on his blog. I highly suggest that everyone read them. The rules stress going beyond your comfort zone, and not quitting. “Robert, they can’t eat you!” My Rules for survival. These are very important principles to consider. If there...
Magnatune music to be more widely available
For those of you who do not know about Magnatune, it is a record company that is fair to its artists. From Magnatune’s site: We’re a record label. But we’re not evil. We call it “try before you buy.” It’s the shareware model applied to music. Listen to 342 complete MP3 albums we’ve picked...
Major ISP in Ecuador Blocks P2P
According to this post (in Spanish) at the ALTO1040 Blog, one of the major providers of Internet access in Ecuador has blocked P2P access. According to the post, customers of Satnet when asking customer service why their P2P was blocked were given various answers such as “The fiber optic connection has failed”, “Our bandwidth...
International Domain Names and Spoofing
I am of the opinion that International Domain Names, or IDNs are important to the world-view of the Internet. It has recently been demonstrated that by using letters in different alphabets that look similar, one can establish a pretty convincing phishing operation. The post IDN – The Sky has still not fallen? on The...
Popups defeat popup blockers. Oh joy.
I hate popup ads with a passion. Mozilla Firefox has for some time afforded me some peace from the nasty little creatures. Well no more. Advertisers have figured out ways to circumvent popup blockers. What marketing idiot actually believes that someone who went through the trouble of getting a popup blocker and is now...
SocietyGuardian.co.uk: Ecstasy Trials for Combat Stress
SocietyGuardian.co.uk, a website that I have never visited before today, has an interesting article on a trial of Ecstasy on American soldiers. The US food and drug administration has given the go-ahead for the soldiers to be included in an experiment to see if MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, can treat post-traumatic stress...
Slide shows using only XHTML, CSS, and Javascript
Eric Meyer has a demo of how this is done, and it looks great. It’s a bit complicated, but I would bet that tools to take advantage of this will come out soon. S5: A Simple Standards-Based Slide Show