Finally able to post

I had pretty well written off being able to post here anymore. When I switched to satellite internet I found that WordPress.com never responded when I attempted to access the admin area. I could only guess it had something to do with the large latency of the satellite internet connection. So I skipped this little baby blog when I made my daily rounds of my vast blog and website empire as well as a few forums where I read and post.

But today it seems to be working. Not sure what changed. So I may start to drop by and post more often again on subjects that are rather off topic for any of the myriad other blogs of mine.

Free blog hosting sucks

So it seems. Blogger is down again. When I try to create a new post I get a 500 server error. And I mentioned how terribly slow WordPress.com is. Ok, so they are free, so it is ok for them to suck, because they really do suck. Did I mention they suck? I would move all my blogs to my own servers, but when you have such a vast empire of blogs and websites it is nice to sprinkle a few around to different platforms. Then as your blogs get more juice you use links from them to boost the juice of your other blogs. And it’s better if those links aren’t all coming from the same IP address. Unlike some of my other super blogs this blog has no juice. It’s a throw away blog for now. Since it has no juice there is no point in linking from it. And since it is a throw away blog there is no point in linking to it. This blog is just a little island onto which I drop an occasional pearl of wisdom.

Pathetic blogs

Now and then I surf some of those blog traffic exchanges. It is mostly a waist of time, what with all the mommy blogs and political rant blogs out there. But now and then I find a new jewel. Not today.

I ended up on a page with a small ad promoting a blog that the author described as “An art journal reflecting the creative journey of an upper Michigan artist who works primarily with gourds, rocks and driftwood.”

I am not kidding! Perhaps this little blog of mine here would be considered pathetic by some people. But at least I don’t go into flowery prose about it. How about some down to earth description like “I like to make stuff with gourds, rocks and driftwood. I take pictures of it.” Much better. It almost sounds kind of campy. And I almost would visit (almost).

Goggle’s blogger.com and blogspot down

Sometime around 9:00 a.m. Eastern time today Goggle’s blogger.com and, apparently, all blogs on blogspot went offline. I was in the middle of editing a post for a blog I have over there when blogger became nonresponsive. I spot checked some blogs on blogspot and they returned internal server errors. That was about 40 minutes ago and the situation remains the same. A lot of unhappy bloggers out there right about now, including myself. I have some blogs over there that are part of my vast empire of blogs and websites.

Update: After about an hour and a half it appears Blogger and Blogspot blogs are back up.

Netscape’s neglected channels

How many people read the new Netscape? I check in once in a while to see what stories have made it to the front page. But the moronic rants on the comments on most of the stories don’t keep my interest for long. It must appeal to some (those who like moronic rants obviously).

Perhaps more pathetic are the neglected channels. Like the Men channel. I popped in to see if there was something of interest yesterday. 15 spam posts fill much of the whole first page. Some guy posting over and over again with some cheesy comment about some girly pictures. The same spam posts and more from the same guy when I checked 36 hours later. I guess the anchors can’t be bothered to clean out the spam.

Google is like Vegas

I was reading a post over at revenews.com by Schmuly Tennenhaus. He wrote an article on the debacle of Overstock.com trying to start an auction site and their poorly thought out choice of a URL – obay.com, an obvious attempt to associate with ebay.com. Schmuly writes that he was trying to dig up more details on the discussions about the choice of domain name on the Overstock community forum and found that some posts had been deleted. But then he says “Fortunately, Google is like Vegas. And what happens in Google, stays in Google.” LOL! You might expand that a bit beyond just Google’s cached listings to other resources like the Internet Archive Wayback Machine which takes periodic snapshots of billions of websites going back (currently) 10 years. It is good to remember that what happens in the internet stays in the internet.

MySpace and spyware/adware

Last week I saw a couple of news stories pop up at Netscape about spyware/adware being distributed through ads on MySpace. There was the story of a banner ad that used Osama bin Laden’s face on the body of a model in a bikini to advertise a spyware invested toolbar from a company called Starware. Then there was the report that another banner ad was exploiting a Windows security flaw to infect more than one million machines. The discussion went back and forth with one side saying that MySpace is responsible and should check its advertisers and another side saying that it is impractical to do so. That debate assumes MySpace wasn’t complicit in the whole business of distributing spyware. But then later in the comments there were links posted to reports by Jason Miller at WebProNews and Trent Lapinski that include details on the sordid past of the MySpace founders. It seems they previously ran companies that were big into spam and spyware/adware distribution.

MySpace may not be particularly important or interesting to many people, but if even a modest fraction of the more than 80 million (and growing) members are legit, this is a vast enterprise. And if they are engaged in distributing spyware/adware/malware the impact could be large and widespread. It is easy to make the assumption that when an enterprise gets very large they are, or at least attempt to be, legit. That feeling is based on the idea that now that they are so big they have much to lose. But it is a bad assumption as we have seen with the vast corporate corruption and greed demonstrated in recent years (Enron, WorldCom). Alan Greenspan, the former head of the Federal Reserve Board, once said while testifying before congress, “It isn’t that people are greedier now than in the past. It’s just that there are so many more ways to express their greed now days”. Vast distribution networks of spyware/adware are yet another way for some to express their greed.

Domain name snarfing

Ever get a great idea for a domain name and do a quick check to see if it is available? Careful, there are a few domain registrars who are snarfing those domain names. Brad Waller wrote an article titled Domain Hijacking Hijinks in which he talks about a study that pretty convincingly shows that if you check domain name availability at the CNet domain search page, for example, chances are it will quickly get registered by someone else if you don’t immediately register it yourself. That someone else is an outfit called Chesterton Holdings. Waller does some Googling of whois data, office addresses, and phone numbers and finds quite a tangled web of “holding” companies that are connected to this domain name snarfing business.

And for what purpose? Profit of course. It works like this. Domain name queries are monitored for potentially interesting names, or names of potentially great interest (numerous queries). Then Chesterton or someone like them registers the name. The domain name then finds its way to Domain Cargo where the domain name is offered for sale. While waiting for a buyer ads are run on the snarfed domain.

With the rapidly diminishing pool of good domain names the best action to take to prevent getting snarfed is register that domain name immediately.