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| | Date:Sun Feb 28 00:00:01 1999 |
XOOM STEPS BACKWARDS...QUIETLY
00:33 PST 28 FEB 1999
More outrage on the net front: Xoom has, for a long time, been the best of the free web hosting sites, allowing people to design their own pages without forcing watermarks, popup windows, or banners on them. In return, said people agreed to let Xoom email them ads. Many people, like ourselves, were willing to make that sacrifice so that their viewers wouldn't have to. Back when we signed up, Xoom said that they wouldn't force those things on us, and they just asked that if at all possible, we put some sort of little acknowledgement and link on our pages. Strangely, this line of the agreement seems to have mysteriously disappeared... But now -- we have been betrayed!!! Our pages have been forced into frames, changing many of our pages titles to "Xoom.com," causing people who browse by keyboard inconvenience, and prohibiting anyone who doesn't use frames from viewing our pages! We say if we wanted frames on all our pages, WE would have put them there. If we wanted them all named "Xoom.com," WE would have named them that. And if we wanted to only allow newer browsers, WE could have coded it so! We were never notified of this, either. We consider it sneaky, underhanded, dishonourable, dishonest, unacceptable, and just plain WRONG!!! Please notify the UFie public... let everyone know. If people think this is wrong, we ask that they write to xoom at webmaster@xoom.com; if they have sites there and think this is wrong, they should be sure to tell them that they'll leave and take their advertising-reading-eyes with them if Xoom doesn't do the right thing! The above was submitted collectively by Rii, Nordica Raapana, Devon Erthshade and Banshee. I'm of two minds about this: I think Xoom has the right to change their policies as they see fit since they're providing a free service, but I think doing it the way as described above is asinine and insulting.
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| Date:Sat Feb 27 00:00:01 1999 |
THE TRUTH IS IN THERE
00:01 PST 27 FEB 1999
Heh. This is funny in a really pathetic way: According to Microsoft KnowledgeBase article Q216641, Microsoft Windows 95/98 are limited to an uptime of exactly 49.7 days. The interesting part of the matter is, it took until about now for someone to actually encounter this bug. Too busy crashing due to other matters. ;) http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q216/6/41.asp Thanks to Jeff for this lovely tidbit that happens to vindicate Windows critics everywhere. :)
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| Date:Fri Feb 26 00:00:01 1999 |
UF INTERCONNECTED
00:54 PST 26 FEB 1999
Remember the LOTD (DIRK) from yesterday? Jens Ellerbrock added UF to the database...cool. :) Check it out and while you're over there, add to it if you're in a contributory mood. Thanks Jens! READJUSTING YOUR SIGHTS
00:46 PST 26 FEB 1999
The issue regarding the banks tracking your financial/spending behaviour posted yesterday got a reply from Greg Weston. Sayeth Greg: Someone else sent me mail a while ago urging to speak out against this change. The rhetoric telling people to complain doesn't really accurately represent the proposal, so people are complaining about the wrong thing. The real issue is this: Every bank in the country has been collecting demographic information about their customers for years, using it to comply with existing FDIC regulations and conduct their own marketing programs. The existing regulations are what people are finding odious and complaining about, but the proposed change is quite peripheral. Rather than being an order to all banks to start spying on their customers, it's an order to _some_ banks to provide FDIC with documentation of the techniques they've been using for years to gather customer information. There is no codification of the techniques and banks remain free to determine for the own market and customer base what techniques are appropriate and what qualifies as suspicious. There's no implied change in the relationship of a bank to its customers, nor is there a long-term change implied in the bank-FDIC relationship. In short, it's not "comply with these new rules." It's "tell us how you're complying with these old rules." Thanks for the clarification, Greg.
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| Date:Thu Feb 25 00:00:01 1999 |
WORD SPREAD
00:15 PST 25 FEB 1999
This just in from Jimmy Bragdon over at Illuminati Online: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is attempting to pass a regulation that will require banks and financial institutions to set up customer profiles, and notify government investigators if you "deviate" from your profile. It forces banks to determine a customer's "sources of funds" and thier "normal and expected transactions," monitor all transactions, and identify those that are "inconsistent with normal and expected transactions." Any "suspicious activity" ust be reported to federal investigators. The offical government page on this can be found at: http://www.fdic.gov/lawsregs/fedr/98knocus.txt A page that is attempting to bring this to light, and has organized a petition system (that appears fairly decent) is at: http://www.defendyourprivacy.com/ The petitions will only be really useful if recieved by March 8, as that is when the public comment period ends. What the government is doing sounds pretty offensive to me. If it bothers you too, go and add your voice to the petition. BLAME AND FORTUNE
00:09 PST 25 FEB 1999
A hard-working UFie by the name of Soren Harward went and put together a 'fortune file' for open sources, based on Arcterex's UF quotes database and a pile of others Soren added himself from the cartoon archives. The fortune file is grabbable at http://www.soren.cinternet.net/files/. Thanks Soren!
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| Date:Wed Feb 24 00:00:01 1999 |
THE DEAL WITH SANFORD
00:03 PST 24 FEB 1999
For those not in the know: Sanford Wallace established himself as an icon of Internet commerce when he ran the notorious Cyber Promotions, which earned him the moniker "Spamford." It's been a while now since he shut down his biz ($2 million in lawsuits will do that to you :)), and he's adopted a white hat in the crusade against spam. There's some info on him here if you'd like to read up a bit. Anyway, I felt it was important he was featured in the strip, being an icon and all, late as it may be. He even wrote me, and said he enjoyed the strip. Thanks for being a sport Mr. Wallace. :-) NOT HACKED, JUST OUTTA WHACK
00:01 PST 24 FEB 1999
Well, I did warn you that the site was gonna go through some turmoil. :-) We just switched over to a different IP for the site, so some of you may be seeing barfed links (pointing to luserfriendly.org, the mirror). It was a DNS problem, which should be fixed. If you're seeing any major problems by the end of the week, please let me know. We're trying to keep a close eye on things during the transition. My thanks to Bjorn for working so hard on making this as transparent as possible.
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| Date:Tue Feb 23 00:00:01 1999 |
BE HOOKUP
00:05 PST 23 FEB 1999
Anyone out there know what init string to use with a Netcomm Roadster II AM5690 modem operating under BeOS? If so, please drop Sillz a line. IT'S CON-TEXT-UAL
00:03 PST 23 FEB 1999
Some of you might've noticed that I changed the lettering face in the comic strip. I did it first on 1999-02-14 and then 1999-02-20 and continued from there. The reason why I made the change was to accommodate print media. If you look at most of the cartoons in newspapers, they use the all-caps format there. The face I'm using also has better attribute and scale handling. I've had only three "please change it back" letters since I switched, so unless you find the new lettering really objectionable, I'll stay with it for now. To those who have a hard time reading the new lettering: please give it a chance. You may find yourself getting used to it fairly quickly. JAVA BEANS
00:01 PST 23 FEB 1999
You might have noticed that most of the site (the Daily Static is the most notable exception) has a spiff Java applet menu system. Of course, if your browser pukes on Java, you should get the text links. The site itself is going through a bit of reconstruction and tidying up, so please bear with me as I get all of it together and plug any holes. A quadjillion thanks to Ritalin-Boy for slaving away on the Java applet!
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| Date:Mon Feb 22 00:00:01 1999 |
THE RELATIVES YOU NEVER TALK ABOUT
00:01 PST 22 FEB 1999
A company in the UK called McVities produces a food item known as a "Jaffa Cake," which is well represented by creatures called "Orangey Tangs." These wee bastards look remarkably similar to the Dust Puppy, although they seem to have arms and hands, and they have orange fur. Kinda cute, really. Thanks to Alice for pointing me at this item.
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