Blog spam, content theft, and other fun things

When I converted my site to a “for real” blog using WordPress about a year ago after nearly a decade “pretend” blogging, it was like I’d moved into a nice, upscale neighborhood. The neighbors were friendly and reasonably intelligent, and everyone’s yard was tidy. The rare comments to my site were reasonably intelligent, and were obviously written by real people who were actual visitors.

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Ultimate Tag Warrior, Ecto, and other fun things

I have become increasingly intrigued with the concept of “tagging” in blogs over the past year or so. Tagging is a way for someone posting a blog entry (or other web content) to include some sort of categorization hints in the form of keywords. Specialized search engines like Technorati can then use those keywords to present “similar” content.

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Google upset about IE7 search default…are they blind?

Apparently Google is taking Microsoft to task over the new search bar built in to Internet Explorer 7. The Googleheads are upset over the fact that this search bar defaults to using Microsoft’s own MSN search.

First let’s set aside the obvious fact that Firefox “defaults” to using Google, and no one complains about that. And then we can ignore the fact that Microsoft is the manufacturer of IE 7 and therefore somewhat entitled to give precedence to their own products. That leaves us with one slim thread holding up any credibility to Google’s concerns: that somehow, Microsoft is taking away a user’s “freedom of choice”.

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Strange computer behavior: IE7 and Firefox don’t get along?

I installed the IE7 beta on my computer earlier this week, and it *seemed* (on first glance) to be working fine alongside Firefox. But then I started noticing strangeness. My computer auto-rebooted several times due to failure of \WINDOWS\system32\lsass.exe, in one case involving the wdigest.dll module: this might be an indicator of several varieties of virus, but my machine scanned clean with the latest version of Avast, which is usually pretty reliable.

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iToilet: when iPod accessories go too far…

I own an iPod. Not because I’m an Apple fan, but because the iPod works very well (the UI is good) and their music service fits the way I like to buy and manage my music. One thing that I thought was kind of neat about the iPod was the huge variety of third party accessories available- car kits, chargers, external speakers, you name it.

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The man with exploding arms…

I was lying half-unconscious on the couch tonight and ended up watching some programs on Discovery channel. One was about strange things removed from humans (E.G.: the cop who had a 6′ long section of a mobile home stuck in his chest), then there was a show with the provocative title “The Man With Exploding Arms“.

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