Yearly Archives: 2008

I administer a Harry Potter discussion forum that’s been mainly inactive since the seventh HP book came out. I subscribe to the forum feed, so I know if any new posts arrive. Follow?

Today, a new post was added by a previously unregistered user. It read:

Hello boys and girls ;-)
Somebody can give me url to the XRumer’s homepage?
Or maybe some info…

Thank you very much!!!

It sounded innocuous, if a little odd at first, but when I Googled “XRumer,” wondering what it was, I cam up with this Wikipedia page.

XRumer is a Windows program that posts forum spam with the aim of boosting search engine rankings. It has been claimed that the program is able to bypass techniques commonly used by many websites to deter automated spam, such as account registration, CAPTCHAs, and e-mail activation before posting. The program makes heavy use of a database of known open proxies in an attempt to make it more difficult for administrators to block posts.

Nice. So you’re asking me, a legitimate forum operator, to point you in the right direction to find a tool to spam forums, such as mine? I don’t think so. *Delete*

I finally got my 16GB iPod Touch yesterday, and it’s great. I had to jump through a lot of hoops to get it though. (This post was almost called “iRant about Best Buy.”)

First, I checked the local Best Buy, a mere two days after the new device was released, to see if they had it. They didn’t. A little disappointing, but no big deal, after all it had only been a couple days since the keynote.

So I started monitoring the Best Buy website, so I’d know as soon as it came in. About a week after the keynote, the site updated to show that it was available, yay! So after driving in to town, and asking asking for the device, I was told that they were sold out (if they’d ever even had it at all…). In only a few hours they were sold out. And that was the 8GB model anyway. Somewhere along the line I decided it would be better to get the 16GB.

A few days after, the Best Buy website updated again to show the 8GB model was in stock, but not the 16GB. Apparently they’re not stocking the larger model at all…

Luckily, an Apple store had opened in my state, they’ve been open for a week today, and they of course had all of the iPod models in stock. So I ended up in the car two hours both ways, on a trip to the über-cool Apple store. I got the iPod and that was that.

Oh well, I’d much rather Apple made some extra cash than Best Buy.

Apple has just released their new iPod lineup for fall 2008, and have posted their keynote online. Jobs and crew have really done good this year. New Nanos starting at $150 (they are crazy thin, and come is some real slick colors); a $250 120GB Classic; thinner iPod Touches starting at $229, with a few hardware and software changes (and the 2.1 software update is free for older Touches running 2.0 firmware).

• The MacBook Air is a totally amazing computer. Not only is it small, it’s feature set is amazing. Look at this comparision.
• “Over the past decade it has become increasingly obvious that countless web users are misrepresenting themselves by typing LOL (or “lolling” as it has come to be called) when they are NOT actually laughing out loud.” – NoMoreLOL.com. All I can say is WTH. Or maybe I should say LOL.
• Shooting yourself in the foot: Time Warner’s usage caps
• This is why Network Neutrality is important.
• A computer shop’s sales pitch: ‘We remove Vista’
• MicroYahoo Part II: It’s really going to happen. Microsoft has made a $44.6 billion cash and stock bid for Yahoo!, a total of $31 per share.
• Frozen Grand Central – “On a cold Saturday in New York City, the world’s largest train station came to a sudden halt. Over 200 Improv Everywhere Agents froze in place at the exact same second for five minutes in the Main Concourse of Grand Central Station.”
• If you live in Italy, you can legally pirate music. A new copyright law passed legalizes P2P music downloading of any “degraded” music. That basically means anything in MP3 format.