There's a site called webstatsdomain that purports to be "a free online service that collects and analyzes any data about domains and keywords they are optimized for". Basically, it sucks, polluting the web with lots of broken links. Read more
Today, another story was posted about how a startup, which depended on Google AdSense for a large portion of its income, suddenly found their account blocked and funds in the account frozen. This isn't the first such story. Google, as PayPal tends to do can block accounts and freeze funds pretty much without warning or chance for appeal. That's a scary thing as it allows these large companies to cause huge financial troubles for smaller companies or even individuals. Read more
Just recently, MPAA/RIAA sock puppets Brein managed to convince some clueless judge to order two of the largest ISPs in the Netherlands, XS4ALL and Ziggo to block (in)famous torrent website The Pirate Bay. TPB have put up a message that is shown to anyone visiting from a Dutch IP address, as shown below. XSALL and Ziggo have both announced they will appeal to a higher court, which is a good thing. I don't even use TPB myself and wouldn't really miss it, but I do care deeply about worthless assholes doing anything limiting my internet access. So, how would this work and what can I (or anyone) do to give these lying thieves the finger and circumvent these blocks if they are upheld by the higher courts? Read more
You may have seen the latest well-publicised PayPal horror story. I've seen plenty of them too and was never really bothered about them, figuring those people might have brought it on themselves. Well, not anymore. Now that I have my own experience to add to the list, I'm done defending PayPal and have actually closed my account. PayPal not only inconvenienced me in several ways, but their communication actually contained blatant lies, not to mention the whole thing being drenched in incompetence. I have zero tolerance for that kind of crap from any company that has anything to do with my finances. Here's what happened. Read more
Web development is something I've been doing for the past 15 years, and it's been my day job for the past 8 years. I've also done quite a lot of server administration tasks since then, even if that wasn't part of my actual job description. While there's probably a good economic case for outsourcing hosting and support duties, it can get to be quite frustrating when things simply don't work as intended. This is even more the case when you're a more technically savvy user (and I count myself among those, even if I'm no guru) and you have to deal with a poor hapless tech. You know what it is needs to be done and they just don't seem to be able to do it. Read more
