Mike's blog

I saw this in my inbox today:

From: dissembler@sevendegreesofbum.com
Subject: Ado6e Acro8at 8 79 $, 5ave 599.95
Body: Vlsi+ cheapxp4pc .com ln 1nternet Exp1orer.

This is so truly pathetic. Yes, it managed to get past gmail's spam filter. So what? It's so blatantly obvious that this is spam that one can just delete it without reading it. Out of the hundreds or thousands of spam messages that end up in my gmail spam box, this is the only kind of message that makes it through of late, and it's only rarely (one or two out of thousands!)

So far it seems that BlogRush is pretty much useless. I can't see how it has added any traffic to any of my sites - actually, it's more likely to take away traffic since it's another exit point.

At this point, I'm not even sure I understand why I should be using it - since it has generated little or no traffic to any of my sites, and the benefit of accumulating the BlogRush credits is unclear to me at this time, I see no point in devoting any of my sites' real estate to the latest widget. I suppose that one must promote BlogRush in order to truly benefit, and if that's the case, then it speaks volumes about the program.

So... I'm removing it from all my sites for now. I'll check it out later and see if it's worth using.

Paul Graham tells us how not to die.

His observations are interesting - it seems that there's a case to made for keeping yourself 'plugged in' - to stay engaged, to keep showing your stuff, to work with others - this may be the key to avoiding an unfortunate and untimely demise, business-wise.

Link

I'm hearing a growing chorus of people calling for government intervention to halt the increase in gasoline prices. My response to such calls is this: If you want the price to drop, change your travel habits. Kick the habit. Get off the juice. The price is increasing due to two very real reasons, neither of which are under the control of 'greedy oil barons'.

One thought that has been popping into my head over the years, is that the internet has turned everybody (well, maybe not everybody, but sometimes it sure seems like it) into a surrogate data-entry operator.

It appears that the ad blocking wars are heating up.

There are massive fortunes at stake, and you are fooling yourself if you think that advertisers and ad network owners will just sit back and let it happen without making any effort to defend their markets and income.

Quick Take:
Here's a collection of humorous bits about engineers and engineering, from a cow-worker.

Link

I had the 'honor' of rescuing yet another victim of a pre-installed software nightmare. A new co-worker was working with his notebook (a Hewlett-Packard, recent vintage, less than a year old with Vista Home Basic installed).

The complaint? Minimum five (yes, FIVE) minute boot time from power-on to desktop interaction.

After a cursory examination, I found that it wasn't a hardware problem, nor was it due to memory limitations: the system had 512MB RAM, Vista was using just over 300MB with no other applications running (yes, that's a lot, but this is Vista, after all).

Blocking Firefox is a Bad Idea

A friend of mine forwarded me a link to WhyFireFoxIsBlocked.com (no, I won't link to them, because I won't feed this particular bit of link bait.) He asked: what are these people smoking?

My initial response probably makes him wonder what I've been smoking!

AdBlock Plus Is Not The Problem

In a nutshell, at least one webmaster has (and perhaps others have) decided to try to block site visitors who are using Firefox, because of the existence of a popular extension called AdBlock Plus, which has the ability to allow one to visit web sites and never see any ads.

I've been reading up on the issue, and it seems that Firefox-blocking webmasters' position is may be summarized as:

• Firefox users with AdBlock installed are engaging in "theft" (their words, not mine) because they are visiting sites that depend on commercial advertising revenues to support the site, and
• AdBlock developers have taken steps to circumvent webmaster attempts to detect and defeat AdBlock use by site visitors.

(There are other, non-essential and even more inflammatory arguments made about some Firefox users and promoters, but I won't bother with them here because they have nothing to do with the matter at hand.)

If you dig lists and list-making, here are a couple of quick, fun finds I want to share with you all.

Simple Checklists

Want to keep a list of things for your private consumption, or to share with others? Need reminders?? Try ZingLists.

"My Dog is Better than Your Dog" lists

Want to make a list and share it with the world? Want to rank things by popularity? Want to see how others rank the items on your list? Try UnSpun by Amazon.