Author: Portfolioso
Most Digg Stories Aren’t News
I have been a Digg fan for a few months. When Digg was small, the only news that was submitted was recent news that was informative and interesting. With digg’s spike in popularity, I’ve noticed that a lot of completely useless stories are being submitted. When I go to Digg All Stories, there are like 50 useless stories with 1 digg. It’s hard to sort through all of these to get to good stories. The following are severely over-dugg:
- Check out X on Google Maps – X can be replaced with Bill Gates’ house, air force bases, Area 51, planes, crop circles, alien dudes and others.
- Photoshop Tutorials – How many of these do we need? There are way too many of them. yes, some are good, but there is like one submission per day.
- Self Promotion – People are advertising their bands and other stupid crap that has nothing to do with anything. Also: “Watch my flash cartoon” “Check out my über h4x0r site” etc.
- Utter Stupidity – I found useless things like links to rentmyson/daughter.com, man vs. squirrel etc.
Yes, some of these stories cool, but it’s not worthy of tech news. I was always under the impression that Digg is more of a news site. It’s okay to post a cool story every once in a while, as long as it’s new and tech/science related. Maybe I’m wrong.
I’m going to submit this to digg. As a matter of fact, this article doesn’t even deserve to be there since it’s not tech news. But hopefully, people will get the message and the quality of stories will improve a little.
I’m Back
Yes, I’m finally back from Europe. Get ready for a giant post about everything.
First we flew into Paris and got on a bus and drove to Antwerp, Belgium. Then we checked into the hotel which was very scary. The lights in the halls went out to save electricity and it was old, dark and would be an excellent place for a horror movie. We were exploring the hotel and found a random door with a bathtub in it that reminded me of the movie Saw. The I got off the elevator and it was dark and I was trying to find my room, but a wall appeared out of nowhere. When I pushed on it, it opened like those Scooby Doo secret passages. Very weird. And the room was strange also. The windows were wide open so anyone could walk in (even though we were on the second floor, there was a landing out the window where you can get out and walk into other people’s windows.) Then I was angry because my camera was on all plane ride and the battery died, and the power converter I had wouldn’t fit because the outlets were recessed. Luckily they gave me a circular thingy to get the outlet even with the surface, then I had to plug in the converter. The only good thing about thew hotel was the free internet, but the European keyboard was very weird and it took me forever to type on it. Please explain why the A and Q are switched? Anyway, we had free time after dinner and the next day we toured Antwerp. I bought delicious Belgian Chocolate, ate in some crowded restaurant and our group had some free time to walk around and do whatever. The area by our hotel was a dump but the center of Antwerp was nice. It was your typical old fashioned European city.
We left before dinner for Germany, which was MUCH nicer. At a rest stop I had the best yaegerschnitzel ever. Mmmm I love German food. We got to the hotel and there wasn’t much around there except for a gas station that sold everything…
The next day we went to the Bay Arena (a huge soccer stadium) for a World Youth Day event. We watched the Pope arrive in Germany and had a good time over there. After that our bus driver took us to the Rhine river to see the Pope’s boat. We waited there for a few hours. In the meantime, people were wading in the water and having a good time. Some people (including me) were a little dehydrated and needed water, so we filled up our water bottles in a public bathroom (sounds gross but the water was tasteless and I could have bottled it and sold it). I was afraid I was going to get sick, but Germany is über clean, and the water from a public restroom is much better than the polluted chlorine tasting wasser we have here. The Pope’s boat finally showed up, but he was facing the other side of the river and we didn’t see him to well (the boat also turned around slightly before it reached us). Patrick has this crazy zoom camera and managed to get a good picture. We were supposed to see a boat show or something but we couldn’t find it, so our bus driver drove us over to Cologne where we had some free time to walk around. The crowds were insane and a few people from my group ended up playing crazy games with some Italians.
The next day we went back to the Cologne area and waited on line to see the Cathedral. After that some people went to Düseldorf to see some performance and the rest stayed behind to see Cologne. I bought a few souvenirs for people and then ate in McDonald’s with a small part of our group (and almost went crazy because the line was driving me insane). I ended up getting a Köln T-shirt, a Weltjugendtag T-shirt, some pins and other little things for people. Then it started pouring and I had no umbrella so I pulled out a foil rescue blanket (which was supposed to be for the camp out) and went under that. it was all rainy and we had to walk across the bridge to find our bus. The group that went to Düseldorf was late and the bus driver had to go track them down. Finally, we went back to the hotel and ordered some pizza.
The next day, we packed all our things on the bus and left for the Marienfeld (the place we would be camping out at night). The bus driver got us as close as we could and we walked through little dirt paths through the woods, through open fields of crops and through a little village where all the German peoples were waving. I had shorts and a T-shirt on but it was freezing so I put pants over my shorts and a sweatshirt. The walk wasn’t too bad and we finally got to B22 and set up. I had a shower curtain and that foil blanket to sleep on for the night. Some people walked to get food for everyone and then we had free time. Some of us walked around and traded American items for things from other countries. At night the Pope arrived and we had a candlelight thing and then we tried to sleep, but it was impossible because it was really damp and I had a little sheet which wasn’t working. Someone gave me a blanket (how nice) and it helped a little bit, but it was still really cold. I work up around 6 the next morning and ate some slop. Mass with the Pope started at 10 and we left right after that. It took 8 hours to leave!!! First we packed our stuff and walked for 2 hours in a crazy crowd. Then, our group was separated so we had to find them. After some more time, we had to walk to busses which would drop us off by our bus. We had to stop for an hour or so because the line for the busses were two long and a few people needed to go to the medical tent. We finally got on a bus which was severely overcrowded and went in circles 3 times (about 20 minutes each) an hour later we realized the bus was in the wrong place and the Driver was being a stubborn German and wouldn’t drive us to where we thought we were going (because some polizei was like “this bus goes here” but apparently the driver didn’t think so.) Finally, another bus showed up and took us to the right place, we got on our bus and went to Luxembourg (by 2AM) everyone was dead.
We left at 9:30 and toured Luxembourg which was nice and then drove off to France. We checked into another hotel and then some people were tired and another group went on the subway to Notre Dame. When everyone returned (late of course) we had dinner and then went to the Eiffel Tower and on a boat ride explaining the interesting points in Paris (while it rained and everyone froze). After that Derek our bus driver drove us around on his own (how nice) and showed us some other interesting places.
The next morning we had breakfast and left for CDG and went home. (I wrote so much already so I’m being very brief about this)
Internet Explorer 7 Sucks
Since IE6 is such an inferior piece of crap, the fools at Microsoft decided that its time to release a new version of Internet Explorer. A few days ago, Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 was released and I got a hold of it somehow. They added useless features and utter ugliness.
Microsoft decided to add tabs but at first, they were skeptical. Here’s a quote from IE product unit manager Dean Hachamovitch: “Some people have asked why we didn’t put tabs in IE sooner. Initially, we had some concerns around complexity and consistency–will it confuse users more than it benefits them? Is it confusing if IE has tabs, but other core parts of the Windows experience, like Windows Media Player or the shell, don’t have tabs?”
This ignoramus works for Microsoft? What’s he on crack? What the hell does he mean that Windows Media Player or the Windows shell does not have tabs? Go into the options in Windows Media Player or any other M$ product like Word, Excel, Powerpoint, even the IE6 options – they all are tabbed. And if you are not counting the options dialog boxes, then if you want tabs go into Excel and look on the bottom – Sheet 1 Sheet2 and Sheet 3 – TABS. So tabs are part of the shell and widely used.
And here’s my other complaints about IE7:
- The quick search in the top-right is stolen from Firefox
- The organization sucks: The only buttons on the address bar are forward and backward. All other useful buttons like home, stop and refresh are scattered elsewhere. You need to look all over the place for them.
- The address bar is locked at the top of the screen. You can’t move it. Traditionally, the File Edit etc… menu should be there. In 99% of other programs the menu is on top not hidden under other ugly toolbars. Firefox is customizable – you can change its looks to your liking.
- The tabs show up regardless of whether or not you are using tabbed windows.
- EVERYTHING IS UGLY! (The tabs suck, the open new tab button is an ugly gray block etc)
- It’s even uglier if you have the XP theme off and have the Windows Classic Theme on.
- MS has you paranoid about phishing (faking legitimate sites and trying to steal your information). Every time I got to a site it attempts to do a phishing check, which takes a long time. I disabled automatic phishing check but it still puts an exclamation on the bottom saying it doesn’t trust my site (portfolioso.com)…
- Favicon support stinks (the icons on the tabs/in the address bar) For some reason, if you check out my screenshots below, the google favicon is displayed on the tabs but the portfolioso favicon is not. Firefox never has any favicon problems…
- RSS Feed support… It’s decent but Firefox has a better idea with the live bookmark feature.
This is only beta 1, but it sucks. If IE7 is anything remotely like the beta, then I’m still using Firefox. Actually, scratch that. I’ll ALWAYS use Firefox, no matter what M$ does to IE…
Screenshots:
NSLC Gallery Completed
I’ve added some more of my pictures I forgot about and also borrowed a few pics from Angela, Ari and Maylene. I also renamed some of them so similar events are grouped together (some pictures were not in order because I either misspelled them, or named them wrong). So now the gallery is complete.
Check it out over here: (Edit – link is now dead due to website upgrades)
Ignorant People
August 31, 2005
Rants
1 Comment
Portfolioso
99% of computer users are completely ignorant. I got a forwarded email message warning me “LYK OMGZ lyk da WOrsT ViRuSSz eVA!!!”
Out of the 400 people it was emailed to, you think someone would realize that this is complete bullshit. It is IMPOSSIBLE for a virus to physically destroy your hardrive. Yes, it can mess up your software and make you lose data, but it will not destroy the actual piece of hardware. Even if this was a real virus (it probably isn’t), a fresh reinstall of windows and format would solve everything. So stop sending this crappy email around and don’t waste your time or mine! And only morons/n00bs get computer viruses by doing stupid things and not knowing the basics of security. I don’t have any anti-virus software and you don’t see me with a virus.
Check out how retarded this is:
HAHAH!!! First off, “No vaccine has been developed.” I didn’t know you can inject your computer with a needle to get rid of computer viruses. Secondly, sector zero is the most phony made up BS I’ve ever heard of – only noobs would fall for something like that. Anyone who believes this completely bogus email DESERVES a virus and should be banned from computers for life. And the ignoramus who made this crap up can’t even get the source straight – first it’s CNN then Microsoft then McAffee. Go back to 7th grade and take a creative writing course – I’ve heard five year olds make up better stories. And finally, “I’m sure most people, like myself, would rather receive this notice 25 times than not at All” – I will strangle someone if this gets sent back to me. It probably originated from some ignorant AOL user nüb.
And now as Stong Bad would say: “DELETED!!!”
Stupidity