when i say go away, it means go away

Well! I haven’t posted one of these in a while. It’s yet more fun with an ICQ’er who doesn’t know when to quit.

Before continuing, for those that wonder why I even bother leaving the web-aware feature on in ICQ, it’s because I do periodically make good friends on it. But in order to encounter good people you have to deal with the crappy ones. That’s just the way it works.

And if you’re wondering why I don’t block every idiot I come across in ICQ, if I did my block list would be 1,000+ long, so I don’t bother.

Many Non-US ICQ users are desperately seeking any American to chat with because they want to learn English. That is their only goal. They want to mooch off you for free English lessons just by chatting with them. It took me a long time to figure this out, because no matter many times you say “no”, no matter how many times you throw insults at them (and trust me you will after being bothered enough), no matter what you do, they just keep coming back for more. When I finally realized it was for English learning only, that was the piece of the puzzle I was missing.

Something new I’ve tried recently is, “sorry, no free English lessons, go away”. It’s very effective.

Here’s one that happened today with this genius.

Oh, and by the way, this genius has bugged me for three days in a row before I finally put the “no English lesson” drop on him.

The funniest part is that during the conversation, the genius claims he’s “his mother”, then proceeds to tell me “fuck you”. Classy broad, isn’t she?

588644428
10:34 PM
can talk to do?

Rich
10:34 PM
sorry, no free English lessons, go away

588644428
10:35 PM
Americans are so unfriendly to do?

Rich
10:35 PM
sorry, no free English lessons, go away

588644428
10:36 PM
Oh my god  In my impression that the United States is very humorous and generous

Rich
10:36 PM
sorry, no free English lessons, go away

588644428
10:37 PM
I am his mother do not you teach me English!!

Rich
10:37 PM
sorry, no free English lessons, go away

588644428
10:39 PM
I am an American friend said that the Americans are very warm, it seems not the case

Rich
10:39 PM
sorry, no free English lessons, go away

588644428
10:40 PM
F

Rich
10:40 PM
sorry, no free English lessons, go away

588644428
10:40 PM
u

Rich
10:40 PM
sorry, no free English lessons, go away

588644428
10:40 PM
c

Rich
10:40 PM
sorry, no free English lessons, go away

588644428
10:40 PM
k

Rich
10:40 PM
sorry, no free English lessons, go away

588644428
10:40 PM
y

Rich
10:40 PM
sorry, no free English lessons, go away

588644428
10:40 PM
o

Rich
10:40 PM
sorry, no free English lessons, go away

588644428
10:40 PM
u

Rich
10:40 PM
sorry, no free English lessons, go away

588644428
10:40 PM
!

Rich
10:40 PM
sorry, no free English lessons, go away

Ah, the joys of copy and paste. Beautiful thing. Truly. Have CTRL+V, will travel. :-)

music format transitions

In March I’ll turn 35 years old. Hard to believe.

I have the fortune of having seen the music industry gone through four different formats.

Records to tapes to CDs to MP3s

Before I was a teenager a lot of people still bought records. In fact I remember seeing full-sized 33 speed LPs of popular 1980s glam bands of the time in record stores. In my preteen years I literally saw the end of the vinyl record because there was only a small part of the store dedicated to it. That small part got smaller, and smaller, and eventually was removed completely.

Audio cassettes, better known as just tapes, was what replaced vinyl records. It was the way to buy music for at least a good 10 years. During my teens I bought many tapes.

CDs slowly but surely replaced tapes, but the transition was really long. This was mainly due to the fact CDs were (and still are) so expensive. In fact, they were so expensive that some artists in the 90s revolted against it. It was not uncommon to see some CDs – single discs mind you – for $26 each. It was pretty ridiculous. The same artist on tape wasn’t more than $12 at the most.

On top of that, most people didn’t have CD players in their cars. Oh sure, they’re common now, but back then it was wickedly expensive.

Two things ushered in the MP3 era. The internet and the iPod. And I know for a fact the record industry was dragged into that kicking and screaming all the way. They did not want to convert to a virtual product because it simply doesn’t make as much money as CDs do, and still doesn’t.

The record industry loved CDs for the longest time because copying them was difficult and expensive, therefore resulting in more sales. But that’s obviously not the case now.

Digital music only sells now because the record industry was forced into doing it. Nobody wants to spend $20 or even $10 on a CD anymore when you can buy digitally for half (or less than half) the price.

And that DRM thing.. what a laugh that was. It’s a good thing that’s mostly gone now.

The vinyl was always the best format

Vinyl had the longest run of being a popular format compared to any other. Tapes didn’t even last two decades as the popular format. With CDs, same deal. Vinyl on the other hand had many decades of being the #1 music sale format before it was cast aside.

The vinyl format has such a dedicated fan base that there are teenagers today who prefer it over anything else. Why? Because it’s (to them) different, interesting and the decidedly simple format does have the best sound.

If the record industry wanted to give themselves a boost in sales, the answer is simple. Bring back vinyl. Work deals with manufacturers to put good record players for sale in Wal-Mart and Target so people can buy one. Besides which, they can be manufactured for next to nothing so sales of them would make companies a lot of money.

People would genuinely appreciate those big sleeves with the nice artwork and the retro-yet-awesome way of playing records. It would totally work.

See, here’s the thing. When you buy a vinyl record, it just makes you happy. By nature they’re round, and round things psychologically feel better to the mind than square. In addition, you can put your hands all over them without worry of damaging playback. The artwork as mentioned is something really, really cool. Heck, the Alice Cooper School’s Out sleeve actually folded into a miniature school desk. Seriously! It was cool.

But the most important thing about a record is that you’re paying for something good. It is worth paying for. You just don’t get the same feeling from a cold digitally perfect CD. It’s just not the same.

I’m not even a record collector and I know this.

To the music industry: Seriously, you guys and gals, bring vinyl back. You want a physical product out there that makes money. Vinyl is your answer.

getting firefox to stop phoning home

I tried K-Meleon out, and it’s good. Really good. But there are certain FF plugins I require that won’t work in it, so it’s a no go. However I am keeping it installed because it’s much faster than FF is, so on the occasions FF pisses me off I’ll just use that. :)

When software “phones home”, that means it’s purposely sending data based on how you use it. With Firefox, the default phone-homes send Google all your RSS feeds, every site you visit and every internet search you make.

Using a network sniffer I examined when Firefox contacts Google, and these are the instances where FF phones home:

Google Safe Browsing

Every web site you visit is checked against a database to determine if it’s “bad” or not. The checking process is a phone home.

How to turn it off:

1. Tools
2. Options
3. Security tab
4. Uncheck “Block reported attack sites”
5. Uncheck “Block reported web forgeries”

Suggested Sites

This phones home in two ways. First is the location bar and second in the search bar.

How to turn it off:

Manage search engines

Get rid of all the search engines, then click “Add more search engines…” at the bottom and add Scroogle. Finally, uncheck “Show search suggestions”.

When done it looks like the screen shot below.

To the best of my knowledge that’s pretty much all you have to do.

k-meleon makes me take off my tin foil hat a little bit

“Wearing a tin foil hat” is a joke term assigned to those people believe are being paranoid for no reason. However I do have good reason when it comes to web browsers.

Okay so here’s the deal when it comes to IE, Firefox and Chrome.

IE uses something called a SmartScreen Filter. This checks every single web site you visit against a huge database somewhere on the internet. Every time it’s used, your browsing habits are being recorded.

Firefox and Chrome use Google Safe Browsing. It does the exact same shit IE does. Different database, same creepy nature.

Chrome has the extra added “goodies” of putting in not one but two unique IDs. One is for installation and the other for user metrics. What are they used for? Oh, I dunno, tracking how many times you click your back button maybe? How much more fucking creepy can you GET? I swear, if you use Chrome, you just love giving all your info to Google, right down to where you click navigation buttons. And you thought it was just “anonymous” recording of web sites you visit. Ha! Wrong. They’re tracking everywhere you click in the browser too. So much for “Incognito” mode, eh?

And of course there’s no way to remove those creepy IDs unless you force them out.

IE is so hooked into Windows that it’s extremely difficult to un-creep it. Not impossible, but it will take time and a lot of it.

Firefox is chock full of Google “goodness”. A quick run to about:config and a search for google will show that. For a computer savvy user it takes about 5 to 10 minutes to un-creep that thing.

As for Chrome, you have to go through every single fucking option to tell it, “STOP PHONING HOME PLEASE THANKS OKAY GOOD I’M GLAD WE HAD THAT CHAT”, and then you have to force out the IDs. But this won’t help out much since the next time the browser updates, ta-daaaa those fucking IDs are back.

To Chrome, I just say fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou. Just.. don’t use it.

So what does one do when one wants to run a completely un-creeped browser? Answer: K-Meleon. It uses the Firefox Gecko engine and has absolutely zero Google phone-home bullshit in it. And yes, Flash runs just fine in it too.

The tradeoff is that it’s more difficult to use than Firefox is – but – it will support most FF plugins and, God bless this, it actually knows how to release memory properly, which is something FF does not do and never has done right.

I actually really like K-Meleon. You can configure the crap out of it and basically make it work any way you like. Toolbars can go anywhere, everything’s lightning quick, you can add custom macro scripts easily (yes!), mouse gestures, etc.

Is K-Meleon a geek’s browser? Yes. But a darn good one. And it does the one thing that kept me a Firefox user all these years, custom quick searches.

So oh yeah, if I can get along with K-Meleon (which looks very likely), I’ll switch. I just have to see if there’s any bookmark sync for it. There’s a few ways to go about doing that, so I’ll have to check my options.

gps perks

There are times when I’m driving around that I discover unintentional perks by using GPS. One of them happens to be that GPS can act as a cheap replacement speedometer. It is never cheap if one of those breaks. But due to GPS, now it is.

Another perk that dawned on me today is the fact you get extra help during construction situations.

A few streets away from where I live there’s some construction going on. When that happens, street signs get dirtied up, bent, knocked over, moved, etc. It happens no matter where the construction is.

Another thing that happens is that familiarity is taken away. When all you see are orange barrels, barriers and flashing yellow lights, it all looks the same. Especially at night.

GPS basically saved my ass once again when traveling through this construction zone. I was looking for a specific road to make a left, but darned if I could see the sign until I was literally on top of it. And by that time it was too late; I needed more notice. I looked at my GPS screen to locate it, found it and went to make the turn, but the road had been blocked off. So I looked at the screen again for where I could take another turn, found it and used that one instead.

Were it not for GPS, I would have been forced to drive way up the road, take a right, backtrack and have to do a circle just to get where I wanted to go.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, GPS is the best automotive accessory you could ever have – period.