We’re Knights of the Round Table We Laugh Whenever Able …

I just had to add a link to this comic from Socks and Barney by Steve Conley because it is just a great laugh especially if you are a Monty Python fan and are watching the Democratic Nomination race. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

The only thing I think would make his comic better is if he had the characters calling each other “twit” more often. Don’t know what it is about that word but I really like it.

Circle the Wagons Boys … US Court Attacks Web Freedom!

So if you haven’t heard yet a court in California has signed an injunction (note I didn’t say wrote an injunction they let the plaintiff do that) that blocks the access of wikileaks.org. In case you don’t know what Wikileaks is it is a website which provides a place for whistle blowers to post documents anonymously for the world to see. Pretty awesome that a place like that exists in the world. The site is managed in multiple languages but has its primary servers located in Sweden. The plaintiff in these matters is the Bank Julius Baer which is a Swiss bank and does business in the Cayman Islands. It is apparently the type of business in the Cayman Islands that was posted on Wikileaks which has led to this unfortunate turn in internet freedom. Now I could re-iterate everything that was said or better yet I’ll just link to an alternative Wikileaks page (you know they would have a backup) the FULL correspondence between Bank Julius Baer’s shyster and Wikileaks.

So not getting their way the Bank Julius Baer wrote their own little injunction and took it to a US Court of the Honorable [sic] Judge Jefferey S. White. Who is just delusional enough to think he has jurisdiction over this insanity because Wikileaks made the slight error in registering their domain in California. What do expect from a Bush appointee. So instead of writing his own injunction he signs the one that was create for him by the plaintiff. How lazy of our judicial system. Now you might be wondering where the Wikileaks lawyers were during all this? They had no idea that it was coming. They weren’t informed. They were NOT represented during the legal [sic] proceedings that has blocked all access to their website.

So what’s next? Well apparently on the 29th of February there will be a hearing. Who knows what will happen during this. Maybe the Judge will try to force the non-US based domain registers to block the other wikileaks domains. My personal thought is that people should start writing in to this “Loose Cannon” Judge to explain to him that he is really out of his jurisdiction and should possibly send this to a higher court. Or maybe you can visit him in Person at the court house in San Fransisco, or you could just call his office (it is amazing what you find in Public Domain) and voice your opinion. Personally I my opinion’s voice would be more like the sound of gas leaving a tight smelly orifice.

Oh I forgot to say that if you are still wanting to get to Wikileaks you can access them also through the UK site at www.wikileaks.org.uk which as far as I know is not under jurisdiction of Judge White (at least for now).

Beware of Video Conversion Software that Says It Is Free.

Yeah so I learned a lesson today. You would figure a computer/internet savvy guy like me would know better but I really wanted to convert some video to the 3gp format that is used by my Nokia phone. Needless to say I was happy at first (at least I got the video I wanted converted done before this happened).

So I did a search for free 3gp conversion software and found an application at SmallVideoSoft.com. Downloaded their 3gp converter and installed it. I was able to run it right off the bat with no nag screen or anything (bells and whistles should have been going off in my head at this point). So I converted some video and closed the application and tried the video on my phone. The video transfered OK but I didn’t like the quality so I wanted to convert the files again with better video settings. So I started the application again. I got a nag screen asking me to register and that registration is free. However, I didn’t have the time to do it at that very moment. So I converted the files I wanted with better video settings. Strangely enough I couldn’t find a button or menu selection that would take me to the registration page. So I closed and the program and decided I would try again later.

So today I woke up and decided I had better register this application. I started it up and sure enough it gave me a nag screen. So I clicked the link that it had to send me to the registration web page. I registered and when I clicked the section to get my registration number it gave me this comment:

(The free registration has been closed for the huge website traffic.)

Give me a fucking break. If I want to register I have to pay (the good things in life are not free). What gets me the most is that they try to make it look like that they HAD to stop free registration like they ever really had a free registration. So I figured I would just click on the Later button and sure enough when I did the application closed and said it wouldn’t run until I registered.

So what they didn’t isn’t really illegal but it is really annoying and I refuse to do business with a company that doesn’t come right out and say “Hey our app will let you do some video conversion for about 10 or so videos and then you have to pay to do more.” or they could say “This is a trial version and it is only good for 24 hours.” But to pretend that their software is completely free and then try the old switcharoo afterwards really pisses me off.

So now I’m weighing my options:

• Crack their app (Completely illegal but probably not so difficult, nope I won’t be doing that. Got too much to lose).
• Buy their software (Nope I don’t do business with companies that play tricks on potential buyers, at least if they aren’t smart enough not to get caught.)
• Find out the 3GP requirements and build my own converter then offer it on the net completely free and really piss off these companies that charge for the software. (quite a possibility once I’ve finished off a few projects).

Cox Communications Inc. Obviously Doesn’t Care About Abuse of Their Network!

So today I finally got fed up with the all the spam bots that have been appearing on my forum and started going through and contacting the ISP to have them blocked as well as doing the blocking locally.  Actually I don’t have that many bots visiting but there are enough and they like to try to do this type of posting http://www.mysite.com/index.php?topic=http://somepornsite.com/lookatme?. Which of course doesn’t work on my website but adds crap into my error log. I’ve never really heard of Error Log spamming but apparently it is happening quite often.

Now normally when I contact an ISP I find under ARIN or some other Who Is type site the email address for abuse reporting. However when I looked up Cox Communications because of this IP 68.103.150.86 I find that they have no way of reporting abuse on their network. I even went to their website and still found nothing. Honestly, they really need to do something about this. I’m actually tempted to ban the entire COX network from my site. I might do it still if the number of bots on their network increases.

Persian Gulf – Arabic Gulf What’s so Damned Important About a Name?

Since my company does a lot of work in THE Gulf region (you know the one where the US is always meddling in), I wanted to make sure I got the names correct of the countries that we do most of our business with. So I did a search for the Arabic Gulf since that is what most of the countries on the Arabic Peninsula call it and I find this mock 404 page. Which basically says that the Arabic Gulf doesn’t exist and that you should try looking for the Persian Gulf, as well as suggesting that you really need to read history books. There is also a link to a site called Legofish (which makes me wonder if a certain toy company in Denmark will be very happy to know that this guy uses their trademark), which apparently discusses that the mock 404 page was created as a Google Bomb because Iranian bloggers weren’t happy with National Geographic using the name Arabic Gulf instead of Persian Gulf. So it makes me wonder what is so damned important about a name?

Here’s my reasoning on this and not in any particular order:

1. Everyone on the other side of this body of water usually prefer to refer to it as the Arabic Gulf.
2. Although at one time the Persians were a very powerful people in the area around this body of water, how many people living in the area are still Persian.
3. If my history is correct the Persians were led by the Shah who was ousted when the people of Iran decided to follow the religion of the Arabic people.

Since no one can really decide which is the proper name for this body of water I have a suggestion that should please everyone. How about we call it the “Black Gold Gulf” or “Oil Gulf” or “Gulf of Oil Tankers”.

Diskeeper to Fix Exchange Rate Problem.

So if you actually read my post about Diskeeper’s European website not having accurate exchange rates. So I got an email today about it from their Public Relations Department with an apology as well as a little surpise:

Diskeeper Corporation Has No Concept of Exchange Rates!

Ok this irks the hell out of me.

In the past I’ve used the trial version of Diskeeper and was really happy with how well it kept my hard drive in order. However, I wasn’t sure if I really needed it so after the trial I removed it from my computer.

Fast forward to today when I realized that my hard drive is more fragmented than china plates dropped from the Empire State Building. So I decided maybe I should give another check on the costs for buying a license for Diskeeper since I was pretty happy with it. So I look their website up and they offer a European website for buying their product, and since I live in Europe I figured I should look their. The first thing came up was the British costs for the software which for a single home license was 28.56 British Pounds which converts to about $56.13. Ok but I don’t live in England but in Germany so I click on the German flag and get the price there. The price in Euros is 40.91 which converts to approximately $60.12. Wow so it costs about 4 dollars more to buy it in Germany than in England. So out of curiosity I decided to look at the original United States site where the price for a full version cost $29.95!

WTF, FTW Have the people at Diskeeper Corporation ever heard of a conversion rate? Why are we in Europe paying approximately 1.5 to 2 times more than the United States? Do they think people are really that stupid? Is it any wonder why people pirate software like this when they add such a high markup on it?

Of course nothing would stop me from actually buying the software from the US Site where with the exchange rate it would charge my credit card for 20.37 Euros which is much better than the rate they are offering as mentioned above.

I’m going to attempt to contact the company to see what they think about this problem. I would like to hear how they justify charging so much just because people live outside the United States! I’ll keep you posted.

P.S. So you can see the pricing yourself here are the websites that I’m referring to in this post:
Diskeeper Corporation US
Diskeeper Corporation Europe

Google’s Malware Warning and Bloom County.

I’m a big fan of Berkeley Breathed, the author of such great comic strips as Bloom County, Outland, and Opus. He has a great satire and I’ve always enjoyed reading his comics as far back as my childhood (of course now that I’m an adult his jokes make more sense). So out of curiosity I decided to take a look online for where they might be posting old Outland comics (Yahoo and GoComics are posting Bloom County Reruns, and Comics.com posts Opus on Sundays). So of course I turn to trusty Google. So I run a search for “Outland Comic” and the second listing is Berkeley Breathed’s website, and it is marked as “This site may harm your computer“. Now I’m not too sure I understand how that happened but I can say that I’m pretty sure that Berkeley Breathed would not have a site that has some sort of hazard seeing he’s probably trying to sell his books.

Strange thing this Google Malware Warning stuff. I hope they get it figured out soon. In the mean time does anyone know where I someone is syndicating the Outland comic?

No Comcast in Germany … They wouldn’t be able to stand the competition.

After reading this article, I realize that I’m really happy to live in Germany where just about every person and his cow provides ADSL service. The competition is so high that it is a buyer’s market. It is amazing what the ADSL providers in Germany will do to get your business.

One thing that they won’t do is mess with your bandwidth even if you are using P2P. Now I’m not saying that Germany good for software/music/movie pirates, German law is pretty specific about such things. However, you never hear about an ISP blocking or Inserting TCP in an attempt to throttle bandwidth use.

So you Americans who are upset with Comcast I have a couple of suggestions for you:
1. Change your ISP and tell Comcast to go to hell … OR
2. Start your own ISP and provide more competition.

Tagegory? Man I Wish I Had Thought of That!

Hey I would like to point people to That Girl Again’s blog Wank She’s got a great post about this whole grey area of Categories and Tags or as she calls them Tagegories.

It looks to me that she’s waging a little war against the administrators of WordPress.com which honestly I can agree with in part. In particular the comments, lack of support, and firewalling of the particular admin Matt (not sure what he does other than act as a human firewall but he apparently is staff here He’s the software Author? No wonder he is so sensitive. Maybe we should be nicer … nah!). So I’m going to start a new Tagegory (damn I love that word) called “Bad Matt” and I hope everyone who has a complaint about him joins in with this.