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Wednesday, 18 October 2006 |
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It appears that the Russian mp3 site, AllofMP3 has had its priveliges to process Visa and Mastercard payment types revoked. It seems the RIAA has likely had a hand in this. A spokesman from Mastercard said that "MasterCard does not tolerate the use of its network for illegal activity..." Visa took a similar stand. Why would they do this? The site itself, technically operates legally. They pay royalties to the Russian Multimedia and Internet society, who in turn attempt to give the money to the record companies. The record companies (RIAA) do not accept these. The purpose is to keep AllofMP3 from being a competitor.
The US government will not allow Russia into the World Trade Organization because of AllofMP3's existance. It is really all a ploy, in my opinion. The site follows Russian law, and attempts to pay loyalties (stupid RIAA is sandbagging to try and shut a viable competetor down). Furthermore, it is legal to use in the USA because we are importing a product from a foreign country. There is a legal loophole that allows such activities. Eventually the site plans to give its music away for free, using ads to support itself. When that happens, lets see how long it takes for the USA to set up a national firewall to block AllofMP3.
Oh well. Looks like we are stuck transferring money to Paypal accounts, then using XROST. Hopefully Paypal doesn't follow the card companies' suite.
More info:
http://www.betanews.com/article/AllofMP3_Fights_Critics_Loses_Visa/1161197051
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8KRC1KO0.htm
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Friday, 13 October 2006 |
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A broken item in the mail leads to much pain, sorrow, and suffering. Welcome to the hell of trying to get money back from the USPS postal insurance policy...read on. I recently had the LCD on my laptop crack. Being a typical geek, I immediately bought one on eBay. I managed to find one with a misspelled name through FatFingers, and paid half price. I insured the shipping (thankfully), and waited two weeks. Then came the package. I looked, unimpressed at the crappy little manilla envelope. I opened it up, and pulled out the LCD. As I looked it over, IT WAS CRACKED! Either the seller screwed me and eBay, since the post office would pay for it, and the mail insurance was a mandatory fee on his auction, or it broke in the mail due to the crappy shipping container. I think the seller didn't do it, although he could have easily broken it, and packaged it in a manner to look like it was the USPS's fault, so he could keep my money, and get good feedback, since I would be paid by the mandatory insurance. Either way, eBay sellers: OVERPACKAGE your breakable items. Use more packaging material than you know will be needed! Someone paid you money for that item, and you don't want to make them go through the hell (I am currently experiencing) of getting refuned by the post office. /rant I got another screen for twice the price. At least I have my lappy back. Still makes me unhappy I haven't seen my insurance paid out yet. That was $91 that I really don't want to be without.
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Friday, 08 September 2006 |
I have seen and heard of many people as of late complaining about advertisements. Heck, today on Digg, someone posted this: "Too Many Ads Not Enough Content" in reference to PC Magazine's site. There are still those who haven't heard of adblock, or anything of the sort. If you are one of those, and are tired of the ads, fear not, and read on.
Firefox
You must have Firefox to remove any advertisements effectively. Firefox is a browser, an alternative that is superior to Internet Explorer in many ways. To get Firefox, either use the button at the left, or go to Mozilla Update. Proceed to install Firefox, and then continue below.l.
Getting What you Need
To install Adblock Plus, click here. (You may have to click the little yellow bar if it appears and allow the site to install the extension). It will pop up a window and will count down, and then an install button will appear. Click install, and do not restart the browser quite yet, first do what is below:
You need to download the Filterset.G updater. Get it here. Install it as you did the previous extension, and click restart.
When you open Firefox back up, you will get a dialog that tells you filterset.g is successfully installed, and the option to configure it. It is easier to configure now than any other time, but if you choose not to, go to the tools menu, and click filterset.g updater. I personally have mine set to automatically update and give no dialogs about it. Completely transparent.
Once that is done, you are good to go! Surf to a page full of ads. You shouldn't see any. If you do, right click on it, and in the menu that pops up click on "adblock this item." In the dialog that pops up, you see the url to the ad image. If it comes from http://www.site.com/ads/ad.jpg, you want to use a wildcard. To do so, change the string to this "http://www.site.com/ads/*. Then hit "Ok" with the next dialog. You won't see ads from that folder again.
Sometimes, sneaky flash files or scripts sneak past adblock. You can't right click some of them. To get rid of them, you can click the text in the bottom right corner of your screen that says adblock. Look for a stirng that appears to be the ad..(ex. http://www.site.com/ads/asdf.swf). Then adblock it.
If you have trouble with other annoying SWF files, try Flashblocj, Get it at http://flashblock.mozdev.org
Since you now have Firefox up an running, you can configure it to do many neat things. Some neat extensions to check out include Greasemonkey, Amazing media Browser, Noscript, Fasterfox, Fireftp, and many others. Have fun!
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Tuesday, 12 September 2006 |
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I am gearing up to start a podcast, based on an idea that hasn't been done before. To those of you who are my friends, contact me if you would like to have a part in it.
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Friday, 08 September 2006 |
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When I recently reloaded Windows onto one of my laptops, I decided that I would get everything pristine, and then make an image so that I wouldn't have to go through the trouble of all of that work again. So, I proceeded to install all of my programs that I commonly use, Firefox and extensions, etc. When I got to the point that I needed to install a PDF reader, I really didn't wan't Adobe Reader on my system ever again. It constantly tries to update, and when it updates, it installs the Yahoo toolbar, which is crapware (although I don't use IE, it still takes my resources). Also, Adobe Reader is now gigantic in size, and extremely slow. Its browser integration into firefox sucks. So, what did I do? I searched for an alternative. I found foxit reader. Its free, and it has a super small footprint compared to Adobe Acrobat. It even loads large PDF files quickly. It doesn't integrate into firefox, but I really don't want that, because usually PDFs crash firefox anyway. Instead, Firefox sees it as the default PDF reader, and gives you the option to open it in Foxit. All in all, this is a great little program! http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php#
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