Rants
A Rant on Cyber-Bullying or ‘They’re 11. You, the Parent, Take Responsibility!’
This is partially a rant and partially a list of resources to help protect your children safe online. I was “inspired” to write this post for two reasons, I was already accumulating the list of resources for keeping kids safe online and secondly, Good Morning America had an interview with a family that was victimized by cyber bullying where they got it all wrong. Here’s my two cents as a guy who isn’t as far out of the American public school system and isn’t too old to be baffled by the technology that kids (I hate the word ‘tweens’ and won’t be using it in this article.) are using. It includes these sections:
- The cold, hard facts
- Why my generation is the next “greatest generation”
- The problem with today
- A list of resources to protect your kid
- Where technology isn’t the solution
- The rant
For context, here’s an earlier video of the 11 year old girl, online pen-name Jessi Slaughter, featured on yesterday’s Good Morning America:
(warning: foul language)
Ass-Scapes.com and Other Problems With Domains
This post is Safe For Work!
I’m sorry to say but there is no pornography here at 404 Tech Support. Why do I lead with this disclaimer you ask? Well, if you read yesterday’s PvP Online webcomic and were curious enough, you might already know. You might also understand if you’re one of the thousands of people I had visit yesterday, indirectly referred here by PvP Online. You see, the comic, which continues an arc that started last week, mentions a domain name ass-scapes.com. It’s meant to shame the character and it’s implied that it is a porn site to which Cole subscribes. You can read the strip yourself for the exact context:
Turning Down Technorati Media and Looking for Ad Networks for Small Sites
If you’ve visited 404 Tech Support recently, you’ll have noticed a few additional ads. One was on the right column and another was on the home page following the most recent article. These ads were provided by Technorati Media. Today, after testing the ads for the past week , I have removed all Technorati Media ads and will not be going back to the service.
Google’s Terms of Service = Not Safe For Work?
Or Why You Might Reconsider Forwarding Your Work Mail to Gmail
“Do No Evil!” That’s Google’s well-known catch-phrase that makes people more trusting of them. It has been called into question a few times when Google has over-stepped its bounds before and I’ll cite the Google Buzz privacy issues as a recent example. Would it be evil for Google to do something that you have agreed to? Well, your answer probably depends on what you have agreed upon. With that in mind, I decided to dissect the very dry reading material that is the Google Terms of Service. The Terms usually go unread just like the EULA, which might pay to read. Without modifying them at all, I’ve provided some commentary inline below, jumping to selected tidbits that stood out to me. Some of them are your standard run of the line legalese but others might be a little more eye-opening.
Download the Latest Adobe Flash for Firefox and IE Without Any Extras
Previously I’ve provided a (fairly obvious) method of how to download the installers for the latest version of Adobe Flash for Internet Explorer and for Mozilla Firefox without having to install the Adobe Download Manager, GetPlus, GetPlus+, or whatever other name they’re calling that junk. Since then Adobe’s updated their site and the work-around is no longer an option. Therefore, here are the direct links to get the latest Adobe Flash installer executables.
You can visit http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ in Google Chrome or Opera to get Flash for plugin-based browsers (Chrome, Opera, Firefox, pretty much anything but Internet Explorer).
The Illinois Marathon and Active.com – A Source of Spam?
Last year, I ran in the 5K that accompanied the Illinois Marathon and half-marathon. I registered for the event ahead of time and used the online registration through Active.com. The event was fun and well coordinated. Unfortunately, months after the event, it wasn’t quite so coordinated.
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