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Thursday, 23 August 2007 |
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We all know that G4 is in its death throws, but what has happened since we last took a look at the network? Viacom, Comcast's close competitor, has it in for the "gaming" network. Viacom has acquired Xfire, and rolled it into MTV networks. Xfire is currently a service for gamers that features an in-game IM client and server browser, among other things.
Considering that Xfire is gaming related, we can only imagine that the long term plan involves adding it to the MTV channel lineup as a gaming network. If this happens, it will easily outrank G4 on its first day, as G4 is currently the least viewed basic television channel in all of America. This fact alone was enough to get Chris Pirillo to say "sh*t" on his blog.
Considering that G4 has been nothing but a money pit so far, it seems that it's death is inevitable. No matter how many dollars G4 puts towards promotion, or towards buying syndicated shows, it still comes in dead last.
Needless to say, this is an interesting development that we should keep our eyes on, and as we do we need to remember to keep beating the G4 horse, and once it is dead, beat it even more just to be sure.
(Oh, on another topic, Comcast is Astroturfing for one of its new channels...this shows what kind of "quality" this company is capable of.)
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Wednesday, 22 August 2007 |
I have always had a problem with proprietary software, because it costs. I know that makes me cheap, but I primarily use Linux (Free), and generally always look for a free alternative to an overpriced piece of software. Since I recently got my laptop nearly the exact way I want it, I figure I should make an image of my Windows and Linux partitions so that I don't have to go through all of the installing, customizing, and such again.
I thought about springing for Norton Ghost, but then after some Googling, I found PING. It stands for "Partimage Is Not Ghost," and I am about ready to use it. Based on Linux, it somehow warms my heart to use it, rather than a product produced by the world's worst antivirus company. PING is able to make an image of a hard drive, or individual partitions (any partition type), and it will dump them (compressed using gzip or bzip2 as long as it is a FAT, ext3, NTFS partition) onto a partition other than the one your are imaging, or onto a network drive. Once completed, you can download a few boot files, and their boot generator (Windows only, but I will try it in WINE at some point, I figure it will probably work) to make an ISO image for CD or DVD of your image. That way, you can boot up and restore your computer in no time, compared to installing again from scratch. You may have to split the image, which adds some difficulty, but isn't too bad if you print out and follow the tutorial.
All in all, give PING a try, and backup your machine. Also, check out some of the other free software on that site, as it seems to be worth looking at, too.
I'm off to image my XP and Linux partitions now! Peace out!
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Tuesday, 21 August 2007 |
These are the results of my personality test. I am not surprised...Next comes the IQ test.
Introverted (I) 66.67% Extroverted (E) 33.33%
Intuitive (N) 59.52% Sensing (S) 40.48%
Thinking (T) 53.66% Feeling (F) 46.34%
Judging (J) 51.11% Perceiving (P) 48.89%
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Tuesday, 21 August 2007 |
Schools, libraries, and government offices from county all the way up to national government for the most part all have some sort of internet filter. They all pay for the majority of them, and waste spend millions of our tax dollars on the subscriptions. For instance, my college uses Websense, which costs for each mac address on the wireless and for each wired IP (and is really easy to bypass). In a model, say that every government office in America, every library, and every school used Websense. Multiply the cost of the average number of users by all of the government offices and institutions. What a staggering figure!
There are free alternatives that will do just as well as this. While Dan's Guardian / Squid are pretty good, they constantly have to use bandwidth to upgrade their lists, which are very large, and they require their own dedicated server that goes between the users and the internet. While a firewall is always a good idea, this type of setup can really decrease internet speeds, and thus decreases productivity. Also, the fact remains that it costs to have the type of hardware needed to run such applications.
Currently, most states allow their schools' internet access to be strictly controlled by some state contracted company. I know that these companies put a heavily locked router in the school, which isn't allowed to be modified by the schools' network personnel. This leads to other problems, as IT staff have to deal with waiting on crappy service from a government contractor.
Why do I mention all of this? Because the methods of filtering above don't work as well as you'd like. Less-than-hacker type people and up can get around these filters by use of browsing by IP address. Proxies are always going to be out there, and they are really the only loophole that allows one to browse unrestricted internet (among other things I won't disclose because I need loopholes on public computers) in a blocked environment. As soon as one pops up and is blocked (both PHProxies and old-style IP proxies) another 10 come to take its place. The majority of employees and students in these offices, schools, and libraries don't know about this, though.
All of that to get to the real meat of the story, my proposal. I propose that all of these agencies, offices, libraries, and schools make the switch to filtering only with OpenDNS. OpenDNS is free to use. It is reliable, and it would allow IT staff to do more than block all the various sites that somehow offend the government, or are deemed inappropriate. They don't have to update it, as it is done daily by OpenDNS, and it is as close to blocking at the source as you can really get. It not only blocks bad domains but their IP addresses too! We would have more money in our pockets, and more money in the various coffers if OpenDNS would be accepted by the various governments..
So, write letters to various dignitaries in your local, city, state, and federal governments. Write more than 10, even if they say the same thing, as many offices won't allow the representative to even read such letters until they have gotten lots of them on the same subject. We can do this, and fix this problem.
On a side note, OpenDNS is free, and it seems faster than the DNS servers of my ISP. I doubt that OpenDNS logs your actions as much as your ISP does, too. Why not give it a shot? Whether on one computer or a network of them, OpenDNS is free, and works like a charm!
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Monday, 20 August 2007 |
I know that many people really seem interested in starting a directory. I guess I can pass along a little "how to" now that I have Tip Top Directory setup, since it won't be threatened as much. Make sure you have a good domain (preferably a .com, .org, or .net) to put the site on, and some hosting with a MySQL database.
First comes the software that is the basic CMS of your site. In this case, the best one is called PHPLD, or the PHP Link Directory. There is a free version, but it is useless compared to the pay version you can get for only $25. Once you have bought it, follow the included install instructions, and move on to the fun parts.
Next you really need a good template. You can either buy one, download a free one, or make one. I personally got a free one and modified it to my personal specifications. (Note: Make sure to create a logo!) Once you have done this, and installed the template and activated it, you may want to consider installing the deeplinks mod, which increases the amount of submissions, and the amount of sales for featured links (you can choose free or pay for the various link types). The deeplinks verification addition and the hide fields modification for deeplinks are also good to keep you from being cheated by people submitting more links than they actually pay for.
Then, you need to go through the various site options and set them to your own preference. I highly suggest using compression, and using Ajax category selection. You also need to choose good keywords and have a good description.
Besides that, just a good name and lots of backlinks are all you need. Submit your directory to all the directories you can (free and paid directories exist). Then, promote in forums and consider joining the DigitalPoint forums, which are free, and are a great resource for webmasters.
Anything else is up to you, and I have my secrets that I really don't want to disclose for indexing and promotion type stuff (most of which is at DigitalPoint). Good luck!
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