Hisfault

I have received several emails asking if people could just get updates to HisFault - Rants from Costa Rica - by email. They prefer to receive new Posts by email so as to not have to deal with RSS or visit a ton of blogs to see if anything new has been added.

This turned out to be a pretty simple request thanks to the folks at Feedburner, the company that handles my RSS feeds.

To subscribe, just place your email address in the form at the top-left. You will receive a verifying email which you must answer, then you will be all set. The system will send you a copy of any new posts in HTML format. They will be sent at about 6-9 AM CST. No posts? No email.

Prefer a direct link to subscribe? Click Here

As with my other blog, a fair number of people have complained that the old brown color scheme was difficult to read. Not enough contrast for older eyes I am thinking.

With that in mind, I am switching to new theme which hopefully will be easier to read. About the only thing I may want to change on this one, is moving the posting information to the bottom of each post instead of having it appear just below the title.

Anyway, feel free to comment on this new design… good or bad.

Unless you have been living in another dimension, you have probably heard of the “Browser War”, the Browser being the program on your PC that you use to visit web sites (like his one) and the War being the two major Players, Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Looking a my stats for this blog, The Real Costa Rica Blog, and The Real Costa Rica, I found something astonishing!

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I really do not know just how many Blogs are being published about Costa Rica, but for sure, there have to be about forty or so… maybe more. Some are really, really good! Some are… well… not so good. Who reads these blogs? I guess that depends on the type of Blog. Some are of a personal nature giving readers the chance to peek inside the personal lives of the blog writer. Others are geared to current events, news, information on living in, retiring to, or general information about Costa Rica. Sadly, there are also some SPAM blogs that really say nothing. They only want you to click on one of the ads you find there.

Some Blogs add new content (articles) every day. Others maybe once or twice a week or sometimes less often. So the question is whether there is a way to keep up with the blogs you like to read without having to go to that Blog to see if there is anything new. If you have a list of maybe 8-10 of your favorites, that can be time consuming. Well there IS, and this article will teach you how to do it in almost no time, and the good news is you already have everything you need to set it up!

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I have two photo galleries. Why do I have two? I have no idea whatsoever! I can’t remember setting up two… but the evidence is is right there. Senior moment. But now, I want to add more photos to my blogs, so I am experimenting with Flickr, a service offered by Yahoo. I opened a free (read that as pretty useless) account, so as I get busy uploading, you get to see ML naked… um, lots of cool stuff!
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Although I have met a ton of other blogger type persons over the years, nearly all have been by email… until this past week.

I had the pleasure of meeting Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey, Jones, Smith, Heinlein, Kasnowsky, Blah, Blah and Blah, who is the head cheese and main blogger at Jacqueline Passey, Incorporated, LLC, SA, DDS, and BS and 2004 winner of the “Most Affiliate Links on any One Web Page Award”.

Jacqueline has recently made the move to Costa Rica with her (also) prize winning “novio del dia”. I say this because he was the winner of the Big Contest wherein JP went online to solicit a traveling companion and sex A LOVER! Terrence was the prize! How cool is that! I shudda applied!
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So by now everybody knows the story that Google has gotten their corporate nose out of joint because a CNET reporter used the Google search engine to find and publish a few private goodies about Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

“Google has blackballed online technology news service Cnet News.com for googling Eric Schmidt, CEO of the Mountain View company, and including some personal information about him in a story last month. Google told a Cnet editor that it will not speak with Cnet reporters until August 2006…”. I now expect that bloggers and others all over the world are gonna roast Google’s Corporate nuts for this… I know I am.
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Wired News: Sasser Worm Creator Avoids Lockup
VERDEN, Germany — The teen creator of the Sasser internet worm, which caused millions of dollars in damage worldwide, won’t be going to jail despite his conviction Friday on charges including computer sabotage.

Sven Jaschan, 19, who was fingered with the help of ($250,000) reward money from Microsoft, instead got a 21-month suspended sentence and was ordered to do community service, court spokeswoman Katharina Kruetzfeld said.

How ridiculous is this? This little butt-hole gets 30 hours of community service after causing millions of dollars of damage world-wide. What a message to send to all the other socially inept, sexually inadequate, attention seeking misfits.

The court claims he just wanted attention and respect from his ‘peers’. How silly. With this ’sentence’, they just GAVE him all he wanted, AND sent a message that this is how to get it with nothing more than a wrist slap. He was only days short of his 18th borthday. Really just a child I guess… not aware of his actions.

I guess the German courts are following the lead of other European courts in not making these little shits responsible for their actions. What a deterrent!

I can’t wait until he hacks the courts computer system! Think the sentence would be the same?

Microsoft warns of unpatched IE flaw… AGAIN (gaffaw!)

Microsoft, for the 2,347th time this year, has issued a security advisory for Internet Explorer, after a research firm published a working exploit to demonstrate how attackers could take advantage of the flaw, and with almost no effort on your part, allow any pimply faced anti-social to take control of your very life.

Gee!

Just about everyone else involved in Internet technology issued another advisory today: Microsoft Sucks!

The vulnerability, discovered by SEC Consult, mean that attackers could cause the browser to unexpectedly exit and execute arbitrary code.

Translation: Oh Shit!

Versions of IE affected by the flaw include IE 6.0 on Windows 2000 with Service Pack 1, 3 and 4, and on Windows XP with Service Pack 1 and 2.

So, in other words, if you have all the latest and greatest updates and whatever, you STILL get to take it in the shorts!

A patch for the flaw is not available.

A patch for the flaw is not available. As an interim measure, the software giant advises people to set their Internet and local intranet security zone settings to “high” before running ActiveX controls.

And I advise you to never use this cumbersome, slow, dangerous, and hopelessly out-of-date web browser unless you have some sort large hole in your head!

Damn people… if you don’t use Firefox (best) or Opera NOW… you gotta be about as dumb as a box of rocks.

OK… I know, this is blasphemy.

I stopped using Google about ten months ago. I switched to Brand Y and on occasion Brand A. They just worked better. I feel like that little kid who said “The King Has NO Clothes!”, but I am here to tell you now, Google just plain doesn’t work well any more… so I left them. Dropped ‘em like 4th period French.

I do not get impressed any more about the stuff I see on the Net. It’s just the same ol’ crapola in new packaging.

Then… about 6 months ago, somebody told me about Vivisimo, a “new” type of search engine. “The Google Killer”. Hogwash. IN 20 years of Interneting, I have seen it all come and go. But I am a geek at heart, so I tried it. It worked GOOD. Then, I used it for a month… it worked REALLY GOOD. Instead of the garbage returned daily by Google and to a lesser extent, brand Y, this thing returned useful information. It not only returned it, it actually packaged it!

Now this ain’t new. The placing of SE results in handy little packages was used about ten tears ago. It didn’t work well and the company that did it is now in private practice.

But dear readers… this damned thing DOES work… and it is especially good if you have to do a broad search.

ANY search engine works if you enter a search phrase or term so narrow that the results make sense. But in the real world, this seldom happens. In the real world, we do searches (at least I do) on broad subjects.

Example: A search on Costa Rica for example.

In Google you get a mismash of stuff in the first three pages. Maybe what you want is there… maybe not. Usually not…

But in Vivisiomo…. you get this: Topic (number of sites)

costa rica (203)

Travel (58)
Maps (17)
San Jos�, Costa Rica (17)
Community (8)
Estate, Costa Rica Real (11)
Nacional (7)
Costa Rica Hotels (12)
Surf (10)
Birding (7)
Fishing, Sportfishing (9)
Adventure Tours (6)
School (5)
World Factbook (2)
Costa Rica and Central America (3)
Flights (5)
Costa Rica Natural (3)
Quepos (4)
Land (4)
Governments (5)
Visit Costa Rica (4)
Art, Offering Contemporary (3)
Condominiums (2)
Embassy (2)
Geographie (4)
Cocori (2)
Costa Rica Beach (4)
Reisen, Mietwagen (3)
Discover Costa Rica (4)
Costa Rica Car Rentals (3)
Costa Rica.Net (3)
Lots And Houses (2)
Life In Costa Rica (2)
Room (5)
Lawyer, Law (3)
Find Costa Rica (2)
Airfares To Costa Rica (2)
Breakfast, Reservations (5)
Rep�blica de Costa Rica (3)
Trips In Costa Rica (2)
Databases (2)
Gourmet (2)
Transportation, Transfer Services (3)
Costa Rica City (2)
Music (2)
Dolphin and whale (2)
Beautiful Costa Rica (3)
Other Topics (22)

58 web sites on travel, 17 about maps, etc.

To ME, this is just far more useful.

I may have become jaded…. but for today, I am delighted to write about something that really makes me happy. A search engine that really works.

(See the next entry for some very interesting facts. Vivisimo #2??? Can it be?)

To check out Vivisimo in a new window, click here.
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