Category Archives: Internet

Item one (really funny):

Ze Frank’s nerdcore standup routine at TED : Here’s a Google Video of Ze Frank doing a stupendously funny geeky standup routine at the TED Conference — don’t miss the dramatic reading of a Nigerian Letter! Link

Item two (not surprising, but will I suspect be experienced as a betrayal by people who for some reason got invested in this Internet happening):

LonelyGirl15 is a filmmakers’ project?:

YouTube superstar lonelygirl15, the mystery chick who posts confessional videos and has long been suspected of being part of some big media company’s stealth campaign, might actually be an independent filmmakers’ project, according to the post from the LonelyGirl15 website’s “creators.” Danah Boyd has more. Link

It takes you back to the old days.

Only I never did IRC (Internet Relay Chat) in the old days. (And don't IM or text today — signs of fogeydom I suppose.)

But Tuesday, for the first time in my life, I seem to have be banned from an IRC channel.

About three times a year I go onto slashnet, to the #slash channel to get some help/support with occasional problems I have with a slashcode-based web site I more or less run called ICANNWatch. Sunday was one of those rare occasions.

I posted a three line query. Didn't get an answer. There was basically no traffic at all — looks like people had better things to do on a Sunday. Late that day my research assistant solved the problem. I logged off.

Today I logged on thinking to ask how I might enhance ICANNWatch's RSS feed so it carries full text instead of just headlines. But lo and behold:

slashnet
[INFO] Network view for “slashnet” opened.
[INFO] Attempting to connect to “slashnet”. Use /cancel to abort.
[INFO] Connecting to irc://slashnet/ (irc://irc.slashnet.org/), attempt 1, next attempt in 15 seconds…
= *** Looking up your hostname…
= *** Checking ident…
= *** Found your hostname
= *** No ident response; username prefixed with ~
=== *** Your GECOS (real name) is not allowed on this server (Invalid real name) Please change it and reconnect
[ERROR] Closing Link: icw[adsl-9-209-210.mia.bellsouth.net] (Your GECOS (real name) is banned from this server)
[ERROR] Connection to irc://slashnet/ (irc://irc.slashnet.org/) closed.

I duly attempted to follow the FAQ on how to get reinstated, but to no current avail. I don't even know if this is because the previous user of my DSL link “adsl-9-209.210.mia.bellsouth.net did something naughty, or they think I did, or some other cause entirely….

Update: well, banned in the sense that if you don't change the default user name in the Chatzilla plugin it gets banned…

Emergent Chaos pokes deserved fun at the CYA tactics — or simple ignorance — of the Catawba County (NC) Public School System’s explanation of how student social security numbers ended up being searchable.

Sadly, this is so far from unique…

Would-be data-haven and self-styled independent nation Sealand suffered a major fire, burning a substantial fraction of the nation’s territory and requiring the evacuation of the entire resident population (one person).

The other day I mentioned Robert Waldmann’s troubles getting Google to show him an image of a hedgehog genital. This subject won’t die. In Infothought: “Zen and the art of sexing hedgehogs”, Seth Finkelstein says it shows that searching images is harder than text, but that the information is there if you know how to find it via text searches.

Meanwhile Robert has extensively updated his original post and posted a small followup…that suggests to me Seth is right…

A new, downloadable song by Kay Hanley, Jill Sobule, and Michelle Lewis in favor of net neutrality. Nice, but the chorus sounds too much like it’s going to be “Hey Mr. Tambourine Man.”

And coming on the heels of this gloomy analysis of the congressional vote — heck, they even got Alcee Hastings to vote against it! — it does put one in mind of Tom Lehrer’s Folk Song Army (they “may have won all battles, but we had all the good songs”).