dang spammers

I got home at 6:30am this morning after working on our project all night and slept until 4pm this afternoon. I didn’t have to go into work so I got some errands done and got my library card. I’m glad I don’t have that schedule every day.

I’ve seen an increase in spam lately and I don’t know exactly why. I have removed every trace of my email address from all the sites I run and yet the spam continues to flow in like fatty sludge. I was reading an article about how linking works in the search engine world and it mentioned Alexa at the bottom. I went there to check it out and found that they have my email address posted for all the world to see. I’m not saying that’s the reason I’ve gotten more spam, but I had to dig around a bit to find out how they got my information and the link to get my information unlisted. If you have a web site, I’d recommend checking there yourself.

Web surfing dead? – I disagree. I think blogs have revitalized random surfing, because you can bounce from one site to another, finding interesting sites that link to others and so forth. I’ve found some great sites doing that and I can’t think of any other way I would have found them. Blogs are becoming a form of editorialized search engine results, based on the blogger’s tastes.

I’ve also decided to boycott online articles from the New York Times unless they stop requiring a login. I find it very annoying and not worth the hassle. All of the other news sites I use want you to visit and wouldn’t dream of making it harder to read their content, but when companies get popular, big and powerful they seem to stop caring about the individual user. For example, telemarketing companies will call a bunch of phone numbers at once and only talk to the first person that answers, leaving the other nine that picked up a few seconds later to yell “Hello” into their phones until they realize no one is on the other line. It makes the telemarketer’s life more convenient at the expense of the individual’s time. Speaking of which, it’s interesting how some people will answer a phone and hang up if they don’t hear anyone, while others will keep saying “Hello” multiple times until they’re sure no one is on the other end.

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