Since it’s Anzac day.
Anzac Day is commemorated by Australia and New Zealand on 25 April every year to remember members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who landed at Gallipoli in Turkey during World War I. [Source]
Here is a handy tool bar, yes one thats actually useful, unlike search engine tool bars. McAfee SiteAdvisor is a tool bar that attempts to offer protection from Adware, Spam, Viruses, and Online Scams.
Features:
Not to mention it works in Firefox and Internet Explorer.
Question: Why didn’t he get out through the roof, and why didn’t security who should be watching the cameras see that he was in the lift.
Wired magazine has released a set of cool photos done using macro photography, the photos come from their macro photo contest.
TrueNuff is one funny sketch comedy site, their comedy lets say it, tends to be kind of nerdy but hay it’s all fun and games.
Given that the name of the next installment of big screen X-Files movie has been released, “The X-Files: I Want to Believe“, I thought it time to level some criticism at the TV series and it’s spiral into mediocrity. Originally when it started out I love it, it was new it was different, but then in 1998 when The X-Files – Fight the Future came out the series took a slide, a slide that it never recovered from in my opinion. The final nail in the coffin was when Mulder disappeared, I simply stopped watching, I could not stand to sit through the adventures of Agent John Doggett.
I’m hoping for the new movie to at least restore The X-Files somewhat, but I have my doubts.
Between 5:00pm on the 18th and 11:30am on the 19th, someone decided to vandalize my car in the most annoying way, the old bend your antenna over trick. Thats right some little punk with nothing better to do decided it would be fun to cause me an inconvenience. Most people wouldn’t bother to report that to the police, but I did and they are going to get this lovely picture that I took to add to the case file.
Interestingly enough when I offered the lady on the phone to email her the photo she said she would look for an address for me to send it to, she subsequently couldn’t find one and suggested that I take the photo to the local police station and they will add it to the file.
It now looks like if you want to express yourself YouTube is not the place to go. Apparently YouTube has a history of this, they will suspend peoples accounts but will not explain the exact nature of the suspension. You can see an example here. (Banned on YouTube By Michelle Malkin)
If you look at this example you will see that all you get from YouTube is a generic notice, a very flimsy document indeed from a legal view point. The most insulting part of this email is that it points you to the terms of service. Service is not a word I would use here, service would be if a staff member at YouTube bothered to give a clear and concise explanation of the suspension. The best part is that it does little to reply to them and ask them to explain in detail the suspension, and/or to provide information about the claim that has been made against your account.
Here is the fun part, in that article there was a video, this video is a trailer that was uploaded by the interviewer, Mark Bunker, a known critic of Scientology. What is really interesting though is when you click the video it’s not there, you get the old “Sorry this video is no longer available”. Now I’ve seen this video before, it was post at “The Wog Blog“, and I’ve seen the video’s that Mark has placed on YouTube before so I know that he has been posting under “XenuTV1” (The 1 is there because Mark has had his account closed before, he was “XenuTV” prior to that). So I did a search for his account, www.youtube.com/user/xenutv1 was the URL were his videos get published on YouTube. You will see that when you goto the page “This account is suspended.”
Now the previous day I know that Tory Christman, a former high-ranking Scientologist of 30 years and noted critic of the cult since 2000, had been also suspended on YouTube. On that day when I found out I sent my protest to YouTube about this.
So I’ve done the same thing today, I’ve sent a message YouTube bitching about this, it’s not acceptable that YouTube can just close an account and provide a crappy response. Now I wasn’t expecting a reply from YouTube, they didn’t reply on the ToryMagoo44 account suspension, but this time they did.
YouTube Support support@youtube.com wrote:
Hi there,
Thanks for your email.
We are only able to discuss specific content removals with the user who posted the materials.
We take copyright issues very seriously and prohibit users from uploading infringing material. We cooperate with copyright holders to identify and promptly remove infringing content from the site. Our community guidelines make it clear that users must own or have permission from the copyright holders to post any videos. Videos that breach these rules are removed and we disable all accounts belonging to repeat offenders.
Regards,
The YouTube Team
Now Mark has been allowed by Torry to put a video on her account, here it be:
You can see from Mark’s statement that he does not believe that he is in violation of YouTube‘s terms of service. I can’t wait for the interview now, I otherwise would have probably ignored it. So YouTube what the hell are you doing?
So what little creative thing has this prompted me to do, well the following logo’s are probably going to be of entertainment value to anyone who wants to lampoon YouTube and their censoring ways. So have fun with them.
Disclaimer: These are not official YouTube Logos
Definition: Freedom of Speech
Freedom of speech is the concept of the inherent human right to voice one’s opinion publicly without fear of censorship or punishment.
[Source]
Let this be a lesson to you all, this is why you must be careful when it comes to sending people accurate information, and being clear in your emails. Especially when it comes to legal notices.
Here is a link to a very long explanation as to what is going on with Mark Bunker‘s YouTube account.
I disagree with Mark in regards to YouTube not telling him about the identity of the complainant, privacy is important and I feel it’s unnecessary for a persons identity to be revealed to him (Mark) by YouTube. However YouTube must explain carefully exactly the nature of suspension, and allow the issue to be resolved between the parties. Because YouTube wants to maintain user privacy here you can see that they basically need to be an intermediary between the parties. To me this looks like a case of YouTube just simply doesn’t give a stuff and would rather trash the content then resolve the issue. Lazy bastards.
A portion of blame here belongs to Mark as well, reality is he should have chased YouTube and Viacom when his first account was suspended and resolved the issue in regards to BayTSP notice ID: 158-8236. (Basically a DMCA Notice)
Mark Bunker has posted the Jason Beghe Interview, it’s bound to cause a storm.
[Link]
Part 1
Scientology: Jason Beghe Interview Pt.1 from Mark Bunker on Vimeo.
Part 2
Scientology: Jason Beghe Pt 2 from Mark Bunker on Vimeo.
Part 3
Scientology: Jason Beghe Part 3 from Mark Bunker on Vimeo.
Part 4
Scientology: Jason Beghe Part 4 from Mark Bunker on Vimeo.
Part 5
Scientology: 5/8 Jason Beghe Interview from Mark Bunker on Vimeo.
Part 6
Scientology: Jason Beghe Part 6 from Mark Bunker on Vimeo.
Part 7
Scientology: 7/8 Jason Beghe Interview from Mark Bunker on Vimeo.
Part 8
Scientology: 8/8 Jason Beghe Interview from Mark Bunker on Vimeo.
A while back I was blogging about how spammers were abusing Google‘s “I’m Feeling Lucky” search feature as part of their email spam campaigns (link). It’s now been some time since I received one of these emails with an “I’m Feeling Lucky” link inside it, today that has change.
When I went into my email today I noticed some emails that had not been tagged as spam, interesting I thought. When I looked at these emails the pattern immediately stood out to me, a Google search URL with &btn at the end of it.
Here is the email for those interested, and yes their are offering to enlarge my already large penis ;):
Rock your partner into extacy in bed with your upgraded device!
Click on first listing in google search results -> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=dreamsizeslarge+satisfied&btnGNow what different will you see, Google has taken measures to prevent the URL from automatically forwarding. So if you click on the link you will get search results, which is what should happen. The search query that is used in this case is dreamsizeslarge satisfied. Now looking at the email we can see that they now have to instruct the user to click the link.
So all in all Google has done a good job here.
Another phrase has come up now, back to the inurl for them by the looks:
inurl:dreamsizeslarge full
Additional phrase:
inurl:toolargebutrue satisfied