Common Sense

Bring him out indeed

Myspace friend Pistachio links to an online slogan generator. What do you get if you put in your name?

Try it for yourself and let me know what it says.

This one is too close to home.

Fun present from nobodygirl

Tom DeLay: Icon

I can't believe I've never seen this site before. Thanks to super reader DH for the link.

This will wake you up in the morning

Lucy Lee, the "Asian XXX Starlet" is selling her "services" on Craigslist!

God I love Craigslist. I mean, where else can you buy a used appliance and a porn star escort. The Internets are awesome.

Hat tip to Luke.

Editor's Note: My strict "no linking to actual porn" policy was bent slightly to bring you this news. If you click on the link, you will see nake pictures and should probably not do so at work. That is all.

What is it with Myspace?

I'm not so behind the times that I don't understand the cultural fascination that is Myspace.com. I mean, why is it that 3/4 of the time when I want to check for messages or to see who is on, I can't even connect to the damn Web site.

No matter what computer I'm on or which browser I'm using, it always stalls right around now. It's friggin' annoying. I guess their server can't handle the traffic. You know what that means, you people need to get off. All my Myspace friends are porn stars and I need to see if they've written to me, which is way more important than whatever the hell it is you're doing.

Maybe it is because I'm a blogger

But I don't understand how anyone in an urban or suburban area can be without Internet access. I know the focus of this article is about the gap between rural and urban broadband access, and that's something we really need to talk about, but this figure of 70% for urban and suburban areas with Internet access, that just struck me.

I can understand why many people in urban areas might not have access. For budget reasons, owning a computer and/or having Internet access may not be possible. But the 'burbs? Rich white folk can't come up with 40 bucks a month for broadband? That just seems silly to me.

Maybe I'm just giving into a stereotypical view of suburbanites.

What they say about intensity of Internet use based on connection speed is right on. The perfect example is me. With my laptop I'm still on dial-up due to continuing router problems. The wait to connect and the slow speed with which the page loads make me very reticent to even bother in the first place. Plus there is another dial-up user in the house and I have to wait until the wee hours of the morning to even check my AOL mail.

Compare that to the desktop with broadband access, I can't walk by it without sitting down and checking my email. All I have to do is double-click the Firefox icon on the desktop and I'm off sufring the Web. The same thing at work; the fast connection speed at the Trib makes me want to keep checking my mail and to keep blogging.

That's why I advocate free broadband access for all through municipal wireless. We should be a country of introverted, Internet-addicted bloggers. No, but we should have easy, fast access to the largest repository of information in human history. The Internet is possibly the greatest education tool ever created. With relative ease we can search for just about anything, from the latest political news to a recipe for cocktails. An entire world is in that little black coaxial cable. All of us should have access to that.

Plus, streaming porn.

The biggest news story of the day

It's not ports, it's not governors and it's not porn: Ask.com is getting rid of Jeeves the Butler. That's right, by by beloved corporate mascot.

See, I'm not asleep at the wheel, I know what's going down. Ask.com is overhauling the way people search for things on their site and Jeeves the Butler just didn't fit in with the do-it-yourself philosophy now being espoused. So this is much more than just a style vs. substance argument. There is substance and style is following suit.

I have to believe that many Ask.com users are going to be disheartened, though. I hardly ever used the site, but it was kitschy in its own way. I like the idea of a computer answering my questions. Google offers much more reliable searches, but is too ubiquitous for some people. Ask Jeeves stood out from Google and Yahoo and even with improved search capabilities, I think something is really being lost here. Not the least of which is a fun reminder of the heady days of the dot com boom.

Web surfin' Safari

Get a PC. Use Windows. Be miserable like the rest of us.

Safari Shell-Shocked by Scripts

Google, always up to something

I can't believe Google would have copyrighted images from Perfect 10 Magazine available for me to look at for free. For shame.

Well, it probably won't for much longer, since a federal judge is issuing an injunction. Judge A Howard Matz says that the images are searchable and do not fit the fair use exemption standards. That would constitute copyright infringement.

Judge Matz has ruled that Google's display of the Perfect 10 thumbnail images likely does not fall within "fair use exemption". Typically, limited use of copyrighted works such as for criticism, comment, news reporting or teaching is legally admissible.

However, I can use said images because I'm reporting the news, commenting, criticizing and teaching people about the fair use privisions of copyright law. Tee hee.

Google will probably appeal the injunction.

Loosing someone is never easy

Last week, out household lost someone very special to us: the living room desktop computer. That computer served us faithfully for two years, but a lost power supply and a fried motherboard just aren't easy things to recover from.

So, we had to let the old girl go.

The new computer that Common Sense Mom bought last night is a nice replacement and should fill the whole in my heart nicely. It helps that we salvaged the hard drive from the old computer and installed all of our old files on the new one. That's good because I have irreplaceable pictures, stories and columns that have never run and all of my porn on that hard drive. Gigabytes of porn.

We keep running into the same problem with our router and cable modem setup. When the computer was gone, I could plug the router directly into it and my laptop was off and running. Now, with the new hardware, the router is putting out a signal, but it somehow got turned into a security-enabled network that I need a password for. I obviously don't know what that password is.

I recently hired Spacemonkey to double as my attorney and tech guy (without monetary compensation) and he is going to have to help me fix this, as I am not in the least technologically inclined.