Category: Modern problems

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While writing another piece…

I got to thinking about the internet and wondering about it’s effects on the world.  The piece in question was about Trump calling for us to cut the internet going into ISIS controlled areas.

1450552308_full.jpegAs I thought about it I wondered if you were to disconnect ISIS, would young internet addicted people from the West continue to join their ranks?

If messages of radicalization weren’t regular, would the radicalism simply flame out?

This line of thinking has caused me to wonder, “Is the internet with it’s ability to instantly show the disparity between cultures and living conditions actually the source of the problem?”

When the third world can see the first world through the window of technology, does that engender social unrest, or even civil war? Desire and greed are natural human emotions.

Taking someone from the poorest slum in Brazil to Rodeo Drive and handing them $50 would by most measures be considered cruel. They could window shop all they wanted but never purchase any of the bright shiny baubles.

Gene Roddenberry explored these questions a bit in StarTrek. The Prime Directive wasn’t about protecting The Federation, it was about protecting less advanced cultures.

I suspect his thought on the matter may have been based in the cargo cults that sprang up during and after World War II.

Essentially you had an extremely disruptive event where native people were confronted with technology that was for all intents magic to them.

Items of great value were given to the locals by visitors descending from the sky. These items held little value to the visitors but took on great value and importance in the lives of the natives.

Then one day the visitors left. Taking with them the source of new gifts and wealth. So the natives built effigies of planes, hoping to entice the visitors into coming back.

It reads like the plot of an Ancient Aliens show but it happened.

Maybe the question is; “Have we technocrats been inadvertently cruel and thoughtless by bringing the internet to all parts of the world? Are we essentially saying ‘See, we have all this and you can’t?’”

We talk about the disruptive technologies that appear in our society and their effects. What effect do these disruptive technologies have on third world societies?

As an experiment we could shut down those parts of the internet that service Daesh then see what happens. If their violence ceases to spread then we might be on the right track.

These are questions I think are worth answering.

Fear not!

I’m not becoming a social justice warrior. I’ve already been there, done that, and donated the T-Shirt to the preservation of female unicorns society. They used it to light the bonfire that killed the last male unicorn. Now they’re asking for donations funding recombinant DNA research to preserve the unicorns!

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Yes I use an Ad blocker

I’ve been seeing more and more little notices on web pages telling me that I use an Ad blocker.

Often these sites will try to shame me, pointing out that they are supported by Ads.

Lately the tenor of some advertisers has been more like the bitchiness of an ex girlfriend complaining that I’m not buying her a drink when we run into each other at a bar.

Let me explain, breaking up with you wasn’t all that hard to do.

While you’re telling everyone in earshot, my dick is too small, or I make funny noises when I cum.

You should probably know honey, all my friends and their friends, know your hole ain’t quite as golden as you think it is.

A little advice… Ya might consider some Kegels, and some soap & water occasionally.

Sometimes a site is a bit more direct, simply asking me to support them with a donation. This approach is a lot more honest and typically causes me to consider, “How often do I actually go to this site?” If I go to a site less than once a month, I dismiss the notice, if I’m on the site often, I’ll think about donating.

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Ad Blockers have become a necessity, like virus protection.  Since I don’t buy a newer, faster computer every year I’m susceptible to ad inundation.

The condition that occurs when you can’t get your task done because you’re unable to dismiss ads fast enough. I call it ad rape, or ad fucking, or ad pounding.

My little netbook for example doesn’t have the horsepower to handle the barrage of messages telling me I don’t have Flash installed, all the popups for health aids, creams unguents, and God only knows what else. The CPU pegs at 100%, memory utilization shoots through the roof and then the browser folds.

I’ve wondered about people whose only access is with an older computer or a netbook or Chromebook. Does ad pounding place them at a societal disadvantage?

What about the poor? They can’t afford the latest $2000.00 computer and their internet may be provided via cell phone or public access at a McDonalds, doesn’t ad pounding increase the unfair disadvantage the poor are already laboring under?

Have I been reading too much SJW propaganda?

My tablet has the same problem but not to the same extent. I commonly see the message, “Due to a problem, this page is being reloaded.”

Usually I’ll see this message after the page blanks while I’m reading an article.

I’m sure it’s some POS Ad that’s trying to commandeer all the system resources to show me something really important about unknown Insurance loopholes.

Brietbart.com is among the worst offenders. The New York Times, and LA Times are right up there too.

So I use an Ad blocker.

It helps, but doesn’t completely alleviate the problem.

Because I don’t run Flash, I see a fair number of messages telling me I don’t have Flash loaded and that I should have it loaded so that I have a better browsing experience.

Yeah, right, that “better” browsing experience is someone at the web site deciding to download, then play a video on my machine without my permission at a volume only slightly lower than the flight deck of a carrier during a scramble of fighter jets.

“DO YOU WANT BETTER SEX? THEN LISTEN TO THIS IMPORTANT MESSAGE”

Speaker blown, computer screen cracks and then the ad says for only $29.95 they’ll tell me the secrets to having a bigger dick and more fulfilling sex life. RIIIIGGGHHHHT!

The secret to having a more fulfilling sex life, is having more sex.

Being unafraid, unashamed, and open to the variety of experiences that we are presented with daily goes a long way towards having a better life in general and definitely a better sex life. Bend your partner over the arm of the chair, put on a cowboy hat and yell “High Ho Silver!” Okay, so that’s not for everyone… Try new things is all I’m saying.

There, I just saved you $29.95. You can send donations of $9.95 to me.

Yes, for a limited time you only pay 1/3 for the secret to a happier life. But act now, this is a limited time offer.

The question that the web sites and advertisers should be asking themselves isn’t, “How do we get around Ad blockers.” They should be asking, “WHY so many people are using Ad Blockers?”

They should be asking why ads have become such rich fodder for episodes of South Park.

The answer is simple. Ads have become abusive. They’ve gone from being something we’d notice in the margin, to offending and annoying us all, by blocking the content we wanted to see and demanding that we figure out how the fuck to close them.

We go to an article, or a site to look at something specific. Not necessarily to see which celebrity had botoxed themselves to the level of a mummy in the Cairo museum.

I don’t even try to close full screen pop-up ads anymore. I close the page. If the article, goods, or services, has to display a full page pop up ad covering their shit, then they can’t be very good articles, goods or services.

So Advertisers, instead of getting all bitchy because most of us are using ad blockers, how about you check your abusiveness and stop sounding like whiney little pussies.

That advice is my Christmas present to the advertising industry.

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That’s Better, I think

I just thinned out the categories and eliminated all the #tags from my blog.

It had gotten to be a pain in the ass to keep track of something like 250 distinct items to categorize the posts.

So I eliminated a ton of stuff.

I spent some time re-categorizing a lot of posts that ended up in the “General” area. No doubt I’ll be continuing the process over the next weeks.

I think I’m going to see if I can pare the list down some more, but my eyes are about to fall out.

This should make it easier for me down the road if I decide to make some more major changes to the blog.

Hopefully I haven’t destabilized anything.

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OK, 2018 I’m researching a move to another domain provider

Over the past year, Hostgator has become increasingly more difficult and their staff is becoming increasingly arrogant.

Case in point. I have a client whose web site was suddenly just, ‘gone’.

I’d received no notifications of any billing that was due, and neither had they.

So I go digging through all the invoices I have on my account and couldn’t find any evidence that I’d fronted the money for the domain name. The client also couldn’t find any evidence that they’d paid for the domain name.

In checking through my invoices I ran across one invoice that said it was a bill for two domains but neither of the domain names was listed.

Weird…

So After waiting 50 minutes on hold, I get connected to a snotty person in billing. This person tries to make the problem about me and my mismanagement of the domain. Uhhh NO! And this guy keeps cutting me off mid sentence as I’m trying to answer his question about if I’d properly entered the DNS information. Uhhh yeah I guess I did since the site has been up for 3 freaking years!

I was talking to my client at the same time I had this guy from Hostgator on the phone. Yes, it was a bit of a ploy. I could have muted my mic or put the Hostgator rep on hold. I didn’t because I wanted him to hear exactly what I was saying.

“Well, this guy I’m talking to has yet to provide any information about this mystery invoice, and can’t seem to find any invoice with your domain name on it.”

The guy at Hostgator got a little excited about that. Then asks to place me on hold.

After a few minutes he comes back and say that the mystery invoice is in fact the invoice for the two domains that have been suspended. (The original invoice was for 3 years beginning in 2012, which means that it expired in 2015.)

Since the invoice and the associated domains were apparently somehow botched up in Hostgators billing system, it meant that the Hostgator systems never sent a billing notice, generated a request for payment, or notified anyone that these domains were due for renewal.

Uhhh how is this my fault?

After a brief pause suddenly the Hostgator rep is very interested in getting this resolved.

Point is, with one notable exception, every time I’ve contacted Hostgator in the recent past they’ve been snotty and arrogant and pretty much unhelpful until I’ve held their feet to the fire.

In other words they’ve begun to behave like typical IT people in large companies.

There’s a reason most employees bring their own shit into a company. It’s because the IT people are such assholes that nobody wants to deal with them.

IT people often forget that they exist to serve their clients not the other way around.

One Hostgator rep was very helpful a couple of weeks ago. He told me that my website had malware.

“Okay,” I said, “Which of the 10 sites that I host are your referring to?”

“You should have malware protection on your sites.”

“Dude, not at a cost of 9.99 or 19.99 per month per site! And by the way, aren’t you supposed to be monitoring for that kind of stuff? Why did I have to ask you if there was something going on with a particular site? Why did one of your colleagues just tell me that they found no evidence of malware? Are you just trying to sell me a rather expensive service?”

Suddenly, that representative went silent.

Regarding malware protection on sites, I wouldn’t mind paying for a service if it protected my main site and all the sites I host. Just scan the whole tree say up to 25 individual domains, once a day. That would be fine and it would be a worth while expense.

Ahh suddenly the domains are associated with my account. I’ve even got an invoice. Yippee! Paid it just now, but the site isn’t up yet.

Looks like all the DNS info is correct although it’s curious why some of my DNS entries point to one server and some of them point to another. I’d have thought that all my sites would be hosted on the same server as my main umbrella site.

Why do I feel like I’m peeling an onion?

I’ll give it a couple more hours then if the sites are still not back we’ll have another conversation with Hostgator.

I’m starting to wonder if there isn’t something else going on. I wonder if they switched the server that my stuff is hosted on and that has caused a bunch of weird little problems.

It’s probably worth my time to get it straightened out, since I’m going to be with them for another couple of years. However, based on what I’m seeing I think the next couple years I’ll be shopping and comparing Hosting providers.

Update:

After waiting 48 hours, my client’s website still wasn’t up. I called Hostgator once again.

This time, I got hold of someone from the Old Hostgator. That Texas drawl was somehow comforting and he got right on the situation. No nonsense, no bullshit. It was, “I see, well let me check on that.”

A moment or two later he said that’s strange, then a couple of moments later, he was asking for my client’s website address again. Then he said, “There it is.” and started describing the site. I checked it on my end and there the client site was.

“Sometimes the DNS propagation takes time and the occasional kick in the pants.”

I swear if I could talk to that guy every time I needed something I’d be a seriously happy camper.

Trouble is, I know that it’s catch as catch can, and the next time I call them it’s likely I’ll be talking to someone not from Texas. They may be in Texas, but they’re not from Texas, there’s a big difference.

For the moment, everything is up and running. It only took two phone calls and one online chat session to get the issue resolved.

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Huh… OSX Update this morning

There was a large (2GB) update this morning to El Capitan, and Xcode.

My computer notified me of this right after Sophos Anti Virus (Which is a great AV program, by the way) told me that there was a trojan virus of some kind on my machine.

Lovely!

The trojan was in an email and had been sent to the Junk folder, in addition to Sophos quarantining it. I love it when software does exactly what it’s supposed to do.

For those of you who may be interested, the mail containing the virus looks like it’s a zipped invoice. The text is terse and looks for all the world like someone is sending you a copy of an invoice that you either need to pay or that you’ve already paid.

In other words it looks innocent and as busy as we are this time of year I could see any of us opening the thing, thinking it was something to do with a gift.

I have to admit, I have a grudging respect for whoever created this little bit of nastiness. It’s simple and innocuous. No logos, or florid attempts to fool anyone into believing anything. It’s simply, “Here is your invoice, thank you for your business.”

The Xcode update was also 2GB.

My computer was a busy little camper!

Apple says the OS X update is about security and stability improvements. I can say that it “feels” snappier.

My system is currently backing up 12GB of changes, apparently caused by the updates so obviously I’m not going anywhere for a little while.

Anticipating a big backup, I connected my computer via hardline to the network. Gigabit Ethernet should make this a little bit quicker than WiFi. Even so, the time estimate is about 2 hours.

Well off to work on Job applications. If just one application is on the Taleo site, two hours should be just about right. Then I’ll see what other trouble I can get into today.