Blag

The box is locked, it is dangerous.

I have to live with it overnight

And I can’t keep away from it.

There are no windows, so I can’t see what is in there.

There is only a little grid, no exit.

Excerpt from “The Arrival of the Bee Box” – Sylvia Plath

It is the end…

…welcome to the dark side, so 5 people told me, all within a few minutes of signing away my life to Facebook.

I have caved in after 17.5 years. 17.5 years of hard work – staying anonymous to the rest of the world, keeping all my personal details out of address books, social networking websites, forums, SPAM and mailing lists – all to be undone in a few clicks of a mouse.

Welcome to Facebook, your account has been created — now it will be easier than ever to share and connect with your friends.

…the e-mail said. I personally think it should read:

Thank you for signing your life away – your business, is our business.

Facebook is such a ginormic waste of time, but a necessary evil to keep in touch with others and for Uni. I’m shocked at how long and how often people spend their free time on Facebook, and the amount of personally identifiable information floating around on there. Good thing profiles are set to private by default too, or I’d be in ICU by now on life support.

…it IS very addictive.

And yes my dear Bergamin, there is finally a picture of me on the internet. I am so not paying you the challenge money. Hmpf.

NB: Facebook is the ONLY social networking website that I will sign up to this year. Or the next. And the year after that. Ok, perhaps Youtube, but otherwise no more social networking! :@

Everyone whinges about it, but I feel like I’m missing out.

SPAM!

I have 13 e-mail accounts, and I get on average a grand total of 1 spam e-mail a month across all of them. So like, what’s up with this??? I want my fair share of penis enlarger, Viagra and Nigerian 419 scam e-mails!

This blog used to get spam comments – 552 of them, gained over a period of 10 months – but even they have dried up.

Perhaps my digital identity paranoia is keeping me from the oh-so-desired offers for $20, 000, 000 USD dollars from Mrs. Doraty Sithole from Zimbabwe, whose husband was brutally murdered Robert Mugabe’s lackeys for supporting white farmers.

*scans passport and e-mails to xxxxxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com*

Somehow or other, this blog (blag) has somehow made it into the indexes of over 15 search engines including Google, Yahoo, Live/Bing, Ask, Alexa & Netcraft. Amazing, considering there weren’t any inbound links to theparanoidtroll.com in the beginning yet somehow Google caught on within days of the domain being registered, and all the other followed suit.

Stats make for interesting reading -

• Average of 6-7 unique visitors per day (excludes RSS feeds, and returning visitors)
• 72.8% of visitors use Internet Explorer, 15.2% use Safari, 8% use Firefox, 0.9% use Chrome and the remainder are all random browsers/feed readers
• 95.9% of visitors are Windows users, Macintosh accoutns for 1.2% and <0.1% use Linux. I have no idea what the remainder is.
• Top 5 keywords were  – “cheap”, “discount”, “billion”, “KFC” and ”pointless”
• Top 10 countries are – Australia, US, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Spain, Brazil, Russia and Germany

I actually received 3 offers via e-mail from various dodgy SEO companies offering to ‘promote’ my site to make it to the front page of Google. It already does, thank you very much -.- No thanks to you, J. Walker, H. Ellis, and K. Lampton. All you succeeded in doing is wasting 15 kilobytes of space in my inbox.

In other news, more server changes to come

I’ll wait until I’ve moved all my websites and domains away from host “X”, before I tear into them, lambast their shitty service and name them publicly. The server load of 70.34 and memory usage of 88.20% is atrocious, let alone the support staff who ignore support tickets, or take 4-5 days before replying to those marked as ‘crtical’, or the high packet loss and latency. And that’s before I start complaining about corrupted SSL data, terrible PHP/SQL performance and the intermittent FTP service. -.- *rage*

For those not in the know, a typical server packed with hundreds of websites only has a load of 1 to 4, and memory usage around the 40-60% usage mark under normal conditions.

So, time to shift all my domain names to Layered Networks, and move my other sites to IGXHosting. (Free plug for Layered Networks here actually, they have very cheap domain names which come with free WHOIS privacy, which still beat Australian registrars for price, despite the AUD to USD exchange rate and conversion). This blog shouldn’t be affected as it’s already hosted by Layered Networks and the domain is already pointed towards their nameservers. Still, if something does bugger up, max downtime should be 24-48 hours, while your ISP re-caches DNS lookups.

Damnit.

Gotta re-evaluate the browsers again – Firefox 3.5 , Google Chrome 3 Beta, and Opera 10 Beta were all updated in the past few days.

Dunno if there are any ground breaking changes though – Firefox’s update only fixed a few security and stability issues, Opera’s was “numerous bug fixes” and a GUI update, but Chrome… well, given the number of bugs currently in it, any update is welcome.

a.k.a 32-Bit Web Browser Review

And now for a short detour in the multi-part series, onto the most extensive post I have written to date.

A few months back, I was searching for Firefox on Major Geeks (file download mirror that’s unmetered on my ISP) and came across a… let’s say, unique browser – 32-Bit Web Browser, developed by a small company called Electrasoft.

Click here to visit Electrasoft’s home page, and here for the product information page.

Seeing as I was auditioning browsers anyway, I downloaded 32-Bit Web Browser and installed it in a virtual machine to try out. The results made me cry

I didn’t even bother benchmarking it; instead, I shall endeavour to give the application a virtual anal tearing, point out it’s numerous (understatement of the year there) flaws, and why its author is a charlatan who is scamming money off unsuspecting parent and senior types who don’t know any better. Let’s just say I would rather use Lynx or Dillo, than go anywhere near 32-Bit Web Browser with a 15 foot barge pole, so to speak.

This will be a long and intensive post, so click to read more.

(There’s more text at the end, it’s not all images!)

Read the rest of this entry »

There are only a few browsers even worthy of consideration at the moment – due to lack of support, infrequent updates, security holes, performance issues etc, I’ve decided to ignore all other browsers except for the main five. Legacy browsers (e.g. Firefox 2.0, IE7, Safari 3, Netscape were excluded), and the latest versions and betas available at time of testing were used.The versions I tested were:

• Google Chrome 2.0.172.33
• Google Chrome Beta 3.0.193.0
• Opera 9.64
• Opera 10 Beta Build 1631
• Safari 4.0.2
• Firefox 3.0.11
• Firefox 3.5
• Internet Explorer 8

Aside:  FYI, I’ve long since lost all traces of browser loyalty – they’ve already wasted enough of my time and sanity for me to even bother blowing the X browser horn.

I don’t really believe in browser benchmarks – the only real way to test browsers out is to use them for a few days and monitor their performance and system resource usage.  The SunSpider and V8 “industry standard” benchmarks are utter crap – every tech blog, journal and media portal seem to toss their figures around willy nilly, yet fail to realise that both benchmarks are BIASED and UNFAIR when used to compare competing browsers. They were designed to test performance of different builds, updates, improvements and so on, not the performance of a completely different competitors product. SunSpider was developed by WebKit (the basis of Safari) as an internal benchmark, as was V8 for Google Chrome. The only “un-biased” benchmark currently available is ACID 3, but even that doesn’t really simulate real world usage.

So, I gathered 301 different websites – each laced with images, Javascript, Java applets, Flash, Shockwave, Silverlight, pop-ups and AJAX and loaded them in each browser to check for memory leaks, abnormal CPU usage and disk I/O. I then tried using each browser with 30 tabs open for a day or two each, to see how they performed over time. As a test of each browsers tagging, history and bookmark searching capabilities, I also imported my 8MB bookmarks.html (where possible).

Each browser was setup to a “usable” state – i.e. pop-up and adblocking enabled if available, dangerous javascript options disabled. All other options were left at default, as settings shouldn’t need tweaking out of the box for a browser to be usable.

Test system specs were:

• Overclocked  Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4ghz @ 2.95Ghz
• 4GB 4-4-4-12 DDR2
• 3x 250GB WD2500KS SATA Hard Disks in a RAID0 Array (used as system disk)
• Nvidia GeForce 7600GT
• Windows XP Professional SP3 32-Bit with latest patches as of 13/7/09 applied
• Norton Internet Security 2008 16.5

So by no means a slouch. Keep in mind the average PC will NOT be anywhere near as powerful.

More to come in following posts…

I am a whore for the internets. If I had the money, I’d have interwebs pipes as extensive as Paris’s sewer system connected to my house so I could stream HD videos and torrent all day, at 40Gbps via multiple redundant upstream backbone networks. Unfortunately, bandwidth costs about ~$250 per Mbit unmetered delivered via fibre, so that’s an $12,000,000 internet bill per month. Then add on installation costs of laying fibre from the nearest access point to my doorstep, priced at ~$200 per metre in suburban areas (of which 98% of that costs is for the trenchworks and council approvals), a Cisco ONS 15454 SONET backplane to terminate the Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexed fibres, with a price heading into the 6 figure range and my plan doesn’t look quite so rosy anymore…

Regardless, the web browser is still the weapon of choice when it comes to surfing the web. Interestingly enough, picking the right web browser has been a long and gruelling process for me (no really!). I have rather peculiar web browsing habits, some of which entail -

• Bookmarking and tagging any website that is remotely interesting, or possibly useful in the future – my bookmarks.html is so large that some browsers can not import it, and scrolling to the bottom of the list takes ~ 5-6 minutes.
• Looks interesting? *click* *open in new tab* – after only about 20-30 minutes, I’ll typically have 25-30 tabs open. After a day of browsing, it’s usually around the 120-140 mark. Just wait until I start opening new windows as well…
• Constantly opening and closing browsers, so the ability to “save all” tabs and “open all tabs” is VERY important
• And as a consequence of the above reason – a high performance core that can search through 8MB of bookmarks and tags, 180 days of history and handle a 800MB cache

I mentioned long and gruelling – up until now, not a single browser available was suitable, each having their own crippling flaws and perclivites. But now, with the latest wave of browser updates/releases/betas, that’s all beginning to change. Hooray, no more:

• Blue Screens of Death (BSOD) – yup, a *certain* browser forced me to reboot my PC constantly
• Massive memory leaks that would make windows page its own kernel to disk in an effort to free up RAM
• Disk thrashing as browsers try to re-open 120 tabs from the cache
• Constant tri-daily browser crashes
• Awful laggy performance worthy of sandpapering your face

Well, I compiled a list of 301 tabs of pages packed with images, Javascript, Java applets, Flash, Shockwave, Silverlight, pop-ups and AJAX and unleashed them on all the browsers I could get my hands on. The results may surprise you…

More to come in the following posts.

(By the way, I do realise my web browser usage is NOT in anyway representative of most users, but the debilitating flaws in some browsers would still affect the average granny, logging into her ISP e-mail once a week to check for messages from the kids).

Bleurgh. As you may or may not know, I hate social networking with a passion.

(I think I posted on this a while ago. Did I? Yes I did. I did so here!)

It eats into people’s lives, cutting them off from reality, breaking up relationships, running up huge phone and Internet bills and so on, not to mention the fact that once it’s posted, it’s out there for the world to see. Now throw in online predators, e-mail harvesting by SPAM bots, the 101 trojans and phishing scams that seem to plague Facebook and MySpace and you might begin to understand why people might be better off without it.

Actually, as a side note, I read in a user survey that there is actually a demographic rift between MySpace and Facebook users. (Damnit, lost that URL ) Apparently, all the educated White people are moving to Facebook, whereas MySpace has now become a trashy ghetto. Where that leaves the Asian, European and Middle Eastern people, I’m not quite sure. Well, I do have SOME idea – Asians have their own non-English forums and Web 2.0 SN websites, Europeans have their own ripoffs of Facebook written in gobbledygook, and the Internet is the tool of the devil used to disseminate vile pornography (according to the crackpot clerics anyway) so that leaves out most of the Middle East. And yes, I hate political correctness. And no, I will not make any attempt to censor myself, not for the sake of sheltered children nor radical far left Christians nutters either.

Side Note #2 – I hate you Fred Nile. You too, Stephen Conroy. May you rot in hell for eternity Fred Phelps.

Back on topic though. The idea of social networking DOES make sense, if you ignore the ego-flapping wars of “who has more friends on Facebook” and “I have more followers than you on Twitter”.

Speaking of Twitter – ce qui donne?

What’s the point of Twitter? According to it’s home page:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

Of everyone I’ve asked (about 9), no one seems to comprehend the purpose of its existence. Of all the Twitter accounts I’ve ever looked at, all but 2 were utterly boring.

“OMG woke up and it was raining”

“my dog shit the carpet againz”

“lol, gonan go eat brekky now”

“Awesome, saw a new ad for Hershey’s ice cream”

lolwut? Stream of consciousness brain feeds delivered straight to the web? Most of the tweets I’ve seen aren’t even properly formed sentences. My mind is boggled – how can people be hooked onto such mindless jibber-jabber? Twitter IS mainly used by our Yankee counterparts, so that does explain it’s popularity…

The concept of micro-blogging does seem intriguing though – handy for when you can’t be bothered writing out a full article, or when you’ve got a funny video/pic to share.

*grumble grumble* #rant# <anger> RAWR! </anger>

Sigh… I need to get a Facebook for uni…

May as well start now. (Or however long I can procrastinate it.) *accepts invitation to join the dark side*

Hmmm… that’s mildly annoying. A back end upgrade had unexpected side effects, breaking the custom modified theme I was using for the man website (Blog excluded) due to the way it parses get_categories(), so now it looks mingered.

Well more mingered than it was previously anyway. A patch will be out in a few days, so I hear.

Eh, what do you know – some how, this site gets enough visits per month to use over 1.25GB+ bandwidth per month.Yay for search engines!

Copied verbatim from their blog post:

As always, check back at http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-trial-the-verdict-090417/ and Torrent Freak for the latest news.

Today is a sad day for Internet users, torrent trackers, ISPs and network operators worldwide.

The Pirate Bay 4 – Guilty.

1 Year jail term, and $905000 fines each.

The Pirate Bay will stay running of course – the trial was never about the tracker, just the 4 admins who ran the website behind the scenes. They do have 2 courts (or opportunities) to appeal their sentences though, the first of which must be lodge by the 9th of May 2009. It may be years before an outcome is reached though.

http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-trial-the-verdict-090417/ is the most accurate and constantly updated source. (Torrent Freak is the de facto site when it comes to file sharing news.) Check back constantly.

The outcome will be very interesting though as this is a landmark case, and it could mean that ISPs may become responsible for policing their users download habits. The outcome of this case LITERALLY could halt the development of broadband worldwide. Let’s face it, with P2P file sharing accounting for 2/3 (and growing) of the data transmitted over the Internet, the ripple effect from these legal proceedings could make 4 companies VERY rich, many companies very broke and land millions of citizens in jail (or at least considerably lighten their wallets anyway).

Speaking of which, iinet vs. AFACT isn’t going too well either… I’m sure Senator Cuntroy is happy, but every Australian ISP is on the edge of their seat watching the drama unfold.

A blog from an expat Australian couple who have recently emigrated to New Zealand – http://www.fushnchups.co.nz/. They’ve far exceeded the usual sheep jokes, tearing the shit out of the Kiwi’s with their caustic comments. Examples include:

When you arrive in New Zealand, chances are you might hire a car. Chances are also that you may die due to the batshit crazy haphazard way many Kiwis drive.

and (describing Rotorua, a popular tourist destination):

I was always under the impression that the locals just ate too many baked beans, but no, apparently it’s the bubbling mud pools which create the stench. The smell is pretty striking when you’re just visiting the place, but I suppose the locals get used to it. Scientists tell us that the smell is actually an aphrodisiac, but I highly doubt it. It just smells like the whole town let rip at once. It still got me to thinking, does good old-fashioned flatulence still provide the giggles to Rotoru-ians that it does to others? Can blokes get away with letting out a silent-but-deadly in bed next to the missus? How do people tell when their eggs have gone off?

and

Number of times overtaken by a a fellow motorist who couldn’t handle me only doing the speed limit: about 30.

Number of times this happened when approaching a blind corner or crest: at least 10.

Number of times this happened when the overtaker was heading in my direction and I momentarily feared for my life: twice.

Yeh… it doesn’t sound that impressive reading quoted text. It’s a lot funnier reading the full articles. The blog even made headlines, havign pissed off a lot of New Zealanders. http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/world/5426019/aussie-bloggers-upset-kiwis/