Tag: Internet

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So long, old friend.

After 10 years, I am quitting Firefox and moving to Chrome. This is a big change for me. I’ve used Firefox since it was called Phoenix. I’ve written magazine articles about how much I loved it. I’ve rubbed elbows with its developers and championed its cause.

But I gotta move. Chrome has evolved and has surpassed my old friend. I do not feel great about having to depart from my allegiance with the browser that began the death of Internet Explorer, but I really can’t justify clinging onto it anymore.

Since becoming a full-time Mac user last year, I’ve noticed the flaws of Firefox. The locking up, the memory leaks, the slowness. It has become quite annoying.

Now that I’m a full-time user of Google Apps at work and at home, it just makes sense.

Now that my favorite plugins for Firefox are all available for Chrome, and even some new ones that are awesome, it just makes sense.

So after I gave Chrome a decent trial this week (something I’ve done in the past just for kicks), I have decided it is time.

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Social Media Hell

If you can’t tell, I’ve been personally getting fed up with social media lately. My cancellation of my Facebook account yesterday was a big deal for someone who actually tells people all the time about the need to do social media for marketing their businesses. This is personal though.

A lot of it has to do with this sort of thing:

That said, every social media site still sucks hard. I’m not talking about users making asses of themselves, but instead about how every site tries too hard to be more than a one-trick pony, offering stuff you don’t want. I guess they are trying to increase shareholder value or some such nonsense rather than serve their audience. Skype was trying to branch out with their ‘mood’ feature – who thought that crap was a good idea? And now Pinterest is copying that same bad idea? Facebook Social Cam? Or LinkedIn communities, which seem to be a cesspool of bad information and people “positioning themselves” for employment. Corporate Twitter spambots are bad but they’re not the worst – not by a long shot. It’s the garbage from the social media companies who feel they must inform me that my “contacts are not very active”, or remind me that I have not responded to so-and-so’s request, or promote some new ‘feature’ they have just created which will likely interfere with what they actually do well. Who decided that social media must have nagware built in?

From https://securosis.com/blog/friday-summary-may-18-2012

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Better WP Security

I have been cleaning up a lot of hacked websites/malware and doing security updates and hardening for WordPress websites lately. Ideally I’d be able to lock down a client’s server more thoroughly, implement a good firewall, and run some intrusion detection software, but since many people can’t afford this sort of thing and are on shared hosting environments, I have to lock down what I can.

For hardening WordPress I have traditionally been a fan of Secure WordPress, but lately it has seemed a little too simplistic and not proactive enough. Malware infestation on websites has been spreading like wildfire lately for whatever reason, so staying on top of things is a must.

WordPress Firewall 2 seemed to work pretty well in the past, but it would often kick back false positives which caused issues with plugins and prevented things from working that should otherwise not have a problem. Not to mention it hasn’t been updated in a while.

I was happy to see that Sucuri made their premium plugin free recently. It is pretty slick and has some cool features, and I really like what Sucuri does for web security.  But with this plugin they are trying to walk the line between simplicity for the end user and comprehensiveness for being secure. It’s kinda weird to use for that reason, as you don’t really get a good understanding of what is being done behind the scenes.

I tried this a few weeks ago and orginally gave it up, but I have since returned to Better WP Security, especially now that I can specify an email address to send notifications to and can disable warnings in the WP admin area. These are things that mattered a lot to me, as they would inevitably lead to clients or bosses emailing me asking what all these warnings were. The recent update to the plugin fixed all that, and I’m a happy camper.

I really like that the plugin shows you what needs to be done, makes it easy to do it, and keeps you well informed about what is going on behind the scenes. There is intrusion detection, there are logs, there are password strength policies, there are database tweaks, there are database backups, and there are many other ways to tighten up security. You don’t find so many useful tools in one place with any other plugin.

You should try it – Better WP Security (website) – Plugin Download

 

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Stopping SOPA by Appealing to Your Mom

The whole anti-SOPA saga has been hindered by the fact that it’s hard to understand the issues unless you are a geek. For that matter, the whole SOPA sags is an issue because it was written by people who clearly don’t understand its ramifications, and are not geeks.

A brilliant idea was born on Reddit which takes the issue and makes it something easier to get the gist of, and in a way that many people will help to perpetuate: the email chain letter.  Here, complete with spelling and grammar errors, is what you can copy and paste into an email. Send it to your mom and ask her to send it to everyone in her email list.

ATTENTION!!!!! A NEW BILL BEING PASSED BY CONGRESS THREATENS TO REMOVE FACEBOOK!!! THIS DOESN’T MEAN NO MORE FACEBOOK, IT MEANS THE END OF YOUTUBE, GOOGLE, YAHOO NEWS, AND MANY MANY MORE!!!! THIS IS AN IMPORTANT BILL THAT CAN’T BE PASSED BY THE GOVERNMENT BY ANY MEANS NECESSERY!!!!!

This scary new bill is called SOPA will censor the internet! This will cause massive damage to what makes the internet so great for everyone! Youtube, Facebook, Myspace, Yahoo, basically the whole internet is upset that Congress would do something like this! This threatens our first amendment rights and MUST BE STOPPED!!!

If you think this doesn’t matter, than think about this. The internet belongs to the people and is a great way to get across the message of the almighty! As you and I both know, there are way too many athiests in power right now and I’m sure they would love nothing more than to stop people from spearding the message of GOD! If your a Christian, please stand up for what is right and pray with your family and inform everyone you know and pray with them to that this bill does not make it past Congress! It would not only do great damage to help the spreading of the message of GOD, Jesus and the holy spirit it would hinder all kinds of free speech as well!!!

So as you can see SOPA will basically kill the internet!!! Please stand up for your first amendment rights and inform everyone you know!!!! Call your repersentatives and tell them to say NO!!! America is the land of the free and that includes the internet!!!!

Spread the word, stop SOPA!

 

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Dump GoDaddy Day

It’s here!  If you haven’t done it yet, this is the day to officially dump GoDaddy and move your domains and hosting to another, more anti-SOPA company.

Here is an article explaining how to move your domain name(s) to a new registrar.

Here is an awesome domain registrar to move your domains to. Use the coupon code SOPAsucks for a discount.

Wondering what this is all about? Read a little history on how GoDaddy managed to piss off the entire Internet.

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Stop SOPA now

I’ve censored the following, in protest of a bill that gives any corporation and the US government the power to censor the internet–a bill that could pass THIS WEEK. To see the uncensored text, and to stop internet censorship, visit: http://americancensorship.org/posts/10253/uncensor

If ???? ??????, we ???? all ????? ?????? ???? ???? of ????? on a ??????? ?????. Go ???? ???? ?????????????? NOT to ???? for ????!

Uncensor This

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Star Wars Preschooler

Unless you have been living under an Internet rock, you are familiar with the Star Wars Kid meme which circulated 5 or 6 years ago. People went to extraordinary lengths to take the original video (below) and adapt it into various alterations. If you haven’t seen it, or you need a refresher, check this out:

After having watched that video many times, I became quite familiar with the Kid’s awkward moves. Naturally, I was amazed when my 4 year-old son, Dax, busted out doing his own version the other day. He has never seen the Star Wars Kid video, but this looks eerily similar:

Yes, The Force is strong in this one (but I bet you knew I was going to say that).

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What Your Internet Plan Will Look Like Without Net Neutrality

If Senator John McCain has way by defeating the FCC’s move to support Net Neutrality with his “Internet Freedom Act“, this is what your Internet plan options could easily look like:

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Say “goodbye” to experiencing the World Wide Web as you know it, and say “hello” to experiencing it as you do your cable TV, with restrictions on what you get unless you want to pay more, and unless the content providers pay more to be listed there.

As usual, the notion that a “government takeover” and a “marxist plot” are being bantered around to generate support for McCain’s bill through fear and ignorance. It goes without saying that McCain was the biggest beneficiary of  telco/ISP money in 2008, to the tune of $894,379.

Picture courtesy of some quink at Reddit.  Click the pic for the full-size image.

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