Archive for the ‘internet’ Category

Stop using TinyURL

Tuesday, April 8th, 2008

You know what I fucking hate?

Reading a web page, or an email, or anything at all where someone gives a link to a URL redirection service rather than the URL itself. Tinyurl.com is the most popular but there’s a number of them. Why the fuck do people do this?

If you don’t give the proper URL, I can’t tell:

  • Whether I’ve read it before
  • Whether it’s worth reading at all based on the source
  • Whether it’s a link to some likely spam/other hostile site
  • Whether I’m about to get “rickrolled” for the 15,000th time
  • Fucking anything at all

Why the hell do people do this? There’s plenty of room on the screen. If the intention is to fit on a small screen like a mobile, that should be done in the mobile software. If it’s HTML, use a freaking href.

There are some hideous URLs out there, I know. Just a few days ago I was talking with someone, looking at some real estate site, and pasting URLs back and forth – they were awful. About 10 lines of gibberish in Skype – literally hundreds of characters. But that is their fucking problem. Site operators should be forced to make decent URLs because if they’re that bad, people won’t use them. Using a URL redirection service simply removes the economic incentive for websites to clean up their act while adding needless obfuscation for the rest of us.

Adding to the idiocy is how some of the redirection sites have now added a “feature” which enables you to preview the URL before visiting. If that isn’t the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard, I don’t know what is. So, if I click this fake URL, I’ll be allowed to go to another website (with ads, of course) upon which I’m to be given the privilege of looking at the real URL, so I can decide whether to click it? This is insane! Just use the real URL in the first place!!

Everyone in the world, just stop doing this stupid shit already. Please.

Tags: tinyurl
Posted in internet | 2 Comments »

DNSstuff now pay-only

Saturday, October 6th, 2007

I was very disappointed to discover that one of the most useful websites for diagnosing DNS issues, DNSstuff.com, has decided to force people to pay for its lookup services. That really sucks, because it was always so good that no-one bothered making a competitor, and now it’s no longer free, I don’t know any other good options.

And they don’t allow you to sign up for less than a year either! Sigh. USD$36 .. I’ll have to think about that. Seems awfully expensive for a totally automated website I’m only likely to use the once or twice a year I make DNS changes. Then again, it’s fucking useful when making those changes. But I don’t like encouraging these “monetising what used to be free” trends. Sigh!

Posted in internet | 5 Comments »

Definition of Bully Seeding

Saturday, September 22nd, 2007

I can’t believe there is for this important term.

Bully Seeding is the practise by which someone with extremely good internet connectivity monopolises the entire upload activity for a BitTorrent “cloud” on a ratio-counting tracker.

Usually, such a person, having such a good connection, has no need of the upload credit such activity generates, but does it anyway, to the deprivation of the genuinely needy, slower-connected folks whose pitiful attempts to compete with his disproportionately fat pipe meet with nought but failure.

Posted in internet | No Comments »

My first internet admirer!

Wednesday, September 19th, 2007

It’s taken long enough but I finally have a fan! In a lengthy love letter, Nazi blog “Private Intelligence” thoroughly endorses me, my blog, my comments policy, my comments, my image use and attribution policy, my opinions on WordPress and pretty much everything else, and Hitler. After some quick telepathic communication with the racist owner of “Private Intelligence” I’ve obtained permission to post the entire article right after the jump, translated from its original German. Enjoy!

UPDATE: Due to a DMCA complaint (I am not kidding, the owner of Private Intelligence actually sent one) I’ve removed the translated article. Of course there was no merit whatsoever, but I don’t want to piss off my kind host.

UPDATE 2: Check out my admirer’s new 1700-word essay on this very subject, espeically if you’re having trouble sleeping, right here. Note how the “private intellectual” doesn’t seem quite “intellectual” enough to correctly implement permalinks on his outdated WordPress blog!

Tags: funny
Posted in Sho Fukamachi Online, external reference, internet | 13 Comments »

NetNewsWire

Thursday, June 14th, 2007

I think I’m finally sick enough of Safari’s RSS implementation that I’m trialling the popular NetNewsWire aggregator program. Not like I have all that many subscriptions, it’s just that I have a few that are quite frequent (10 or so updates a day) and after a while, Safari just can’t cope. It’s slow, hard to read, and occasionally forgets where it’s up to. For friend’s blogs, which update maybe once or twice a week, Safari is fine. For Wired New Epicenter, it’s totally inadequate. And the constant updates in the menubar get on my nerves after a while. I want to keep track of the news, sure, but I want it out of the way so I can check it when I want to – not have it distractingly in my face, as the menubar is.

I don’t usually like to run 3rd party software when the defaults will do – and a place in the dock is valuable and usually reserved for only absolutely necessary software – but it’s become enough of a problem that it warrants a custom solution. Everything’s looking good for now.

Dock status, assembler style:

ADD NetNewsWire

SUB GraphicConverter (never use it, Phoenix Slides replaced it)
SUB Toast (never use it, i just realised)
SUB iChat (use it rarely enough that I’ll just use QuickSilver)

Posted in internet, mac, recommendation | 2 Comments »

Down with self-righteous bloggers

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007

You know, it’s a rare wikipedia article or holier-than-thou blog post I can read these days without being at least tempted to, and pretty often going on to, vandalise it in some amusing-to-me way.

Call it childish, call it postmodern Fight Club Durdenism but the urge to troll seems stronger than ever for me these days. I wonder why?

I guess there’s not too many things funnier than the thought of Wikipedians blowing their tops at your repeated edits to their precious girlfriend-substitute “watch pages”, and it can be a memorable sight indeed to watch some self-important blogger go well and truly off the rails, all because of some well-deserved barbs from yours truly.

It’s always been the heighth of comedy to pop up somewhere with a totally inappropriate swear word right in the middle of some pompous ass’s ode to his own grandiosity. The internet as a whole has gotten far too serious for my tastes, and it behooves a man well to give any perpetrators one comes across a good kick every now and again.

As Yoda once said, it’s all about pissing off the right kinds of people.

UPDATE: Let me clarify this: I’m talking about being FUNNY, not about being a jerk. There’s a very fine line but I like to think I stay on the right side of it.

Posted in internet, rant | 4 Comments »