Geek Stuff category archive

I’ve moved the bulk of this post over to a page. Read it for more information. Or just go sign the petition now.

Via LQ.

I have another podcast up at HPR.

Partition 36 makes a mash-up from Larry Bushey’s Going Linux podcast:

Comment spam has been over the top all week–several hundred a day. The current popular technique is to string together words to give the impression that the bot actually read the post, while actually saying nothing precise or relevant. The link that the bot is pimping is embedded with the signature.

(Remember that the most common purpose of this stuff nowadays is to give sites more Google juice. It’s dark side of “SEO” and companies get paid lots of money for it.)

Just for grins and giggles, here’s a sample:

Undeniably consider that that you stated. Your favorite reason seemed to be at the web the easiest factor to remember of. I say to you, I definitely get annoyed at the same time as other people consider issues that they plainly don’t realize about. You managed to hit the nail upon the top as neatly as defined out the entire thing without having side effect , people could take a signal. Will probably be again to get more. Thank you.

Now that’s word salad that even Sarah Palin could admire.

The Chicago Tribune thinks that publishing an article about how to be a twit is a useful thing to do.

But tens of thousands of Americans may still lose their Internet service Monday unless they do a quick check of their computers for malware that could have taken over their machines more than a year ago.

Despite repeated alerts, the number of computers that probably are infected is more than 277,000 worldwide, down from about 360,000 in April. Of those still infected, the FBI believes that about 64,000 are in the United States.

The malware changed the DNS (Dynamic Name System) settings in computers and routers to point to bogus DNS servers.

DNS provides the street signs for the internet. When you put “pineviewfarm.net” in your browser’s address bar, the computer goes to a DNS server, which in turn provides the ip address (97.74.215.117) of pineviewfarm.net. The browser then searches the back streets and alleyways of the innerwebs for that numeric address.

The malware was discovered a while ago and the perps put out of business; the servers have been kept on line to give persons a chance to check and fix their DNS settings. If you have a home router and use DHCP, the settings are stored in your router.

You can check your settings by going to http://www.dcwg.org.

Oh, and the malware worked only on Windows. No worries here.

Rob Reid enters the marvelous world of math as practiced by the MPAA and the RCIA and emerges with an $8,000,000,000 iPod piece of iJunk.

Via HPR.

Install the Meebo bar.

It covers up content, displays nag screens, and generally irritates your visitors. And it’s automated!

Webmasters! Torment your visitors while tracking their internet use and convincing your employers that you are bleeding edge technology magicians.

Get the Meebo bar now!

Facebook attempts to bamboozle users into using at-facebook-dot-com email addresses.

Typical.

The link describes how to stop displaying the at-facebook-dot-com email address, but, consistent with its practice, Facebook moved the settings around again and it took me about five minutes to find it. There is no way to make that at-facebook-dot-com email address go away, though.

Anyone who tries to email me at that address, forget it. I’ll never check it and, if I stumble over it in a drunken stupor, I’ll just delete the mails.

Thanks to Todd for reporting this.

Via TuxRadar.

Science 2.0 considers the signs of the fail:

A report from market research agency Conquest into the social media habits of 14-24 year olds claims that Facebook’s core audience – teenagers – are starting to fall out of love with the website and that activity may have peaked amid a groundswell of dissatisfaction and concerns over privacy and even bullying.

. . . Grievances triggered by Facebook’s culture include obsession with appearance and acceptance of sexually provocative behavior; increased negative self esteem, vulnerability to bullying, depression caused by jealousy and comparing one’s life to peers and inability to project one’s true self.

In other words, the same problems teens have had for thousands of years, but now we can blame social media.

Follow the link to find out what the heck “fuicide” is.

First, a judge gave Oracle their walking papers, and now, this:

A U.S. judge on Friday ruled that Apple Inc. cannot pursue an injunction against Google’s Motorola Mobility unit, effectively ending a key case for the iPhone maker in the smartphone patent wars.

The ruling came from Judge Richard Posner in Chicago federal court. He dismissed the litigation between Apple and Motorola Mobility with prejudice, meaning it can’t be refiled.

Judges seem to be educating themselves to see through the lawyerly smokescreen about software patents.

Software patents are ludicrous, because they are attempts to patent ideas–attempts to keep other persons from carrying out that idea in a better way. Suppose some dude in the 1880’s had patented the concept of powered heavier-than-air flight and threatened to sue the Wright brothers when they finally got it–er–wrignt?

We would never have had the opportunity to sit in metal tubes for hours at a time without air conditioning while waiting for those “mechanical difficulties” to be remedied.

What can be copyrighted and licensed is software code, which is a work product, the fruition of an idea.

Even a Forbes columnist thinks they are evil.

A hoot.

Warning: Language.

Don’t worry about translating. Just watch.

H/T Susan for the link.

Microsoft unveiled its tablet yesterday.

I predict that it will be almost as successful as the Windows phone.

Pat is the benevolent dictator of Slackware, the oldest named Linux distribution still actively maintained (it’s older than Red Hat and Debian by a matter of months). It was also my first and remains my preferred Linux distro.

In the course of the interview, Pat manages to quote both Einstein and Lao Tsu. Read it now.

My two or three longtime readers will remember that this site started out self-hosted with dynamic DNS from no-ip.com (whose service was excellent and whom I recommend unconditionally). The free domain name from no-ip was frankwbell.no-ip.info.

About two years in, I got the current domain name.

I finally went back through the SQL tables and changed all the references to “frankwbell.no-ip.info” to “pineviewfarm.net.” I did it the hard way, with phpMyAdmin search, because I didn’t have the energy to work out an SQL query to do it all in one swell foop.

Now, in the first two years or so of posts, the pictures should display and the internal links should work once more.

Only five years behind schedule.

I think this is my favorite set of now-resurrected pictures.

Turn your favorite webpage into a Geocities site.

Via Thoreau.

Let Amy tell you all about it.