How spammers are targeting blogs

From BBC:

Technology analyst Bill Thompson has been getting lots of comments on his weblogs, unfortunately most of the want to sell him Viagra. He has been "flyblogged".

I found this snippet handy: posting a porn/whatever spam ad is an "[o]nline equivalent of putting ad for 'private massage' on your coat." Well, good I don't have the time to insert that comment inserting feature.

Mountain-climbers discover mummified leg of unknown creature in Altai, Siberia

...according to this article from "Getaway to Russia."

What a coincidence: just a few days ago I read "Tintin in Tibet," an enjoyable comic book by Herge. In it, Tintin goes out of his way to save his Chinese friend Chang who's stranded in Tibet after an airplane disaster. Of course the Yeti is around - there. But, back to the article...

The discovery continues to be examined. Scientists say it's early to attribute it to a yeti because this would require a DNA study. Besides, a European size 36 shoe would fit the discovered leg while yetis are believed to have exceptionally large feet.

Would You Like Some French With That?

The War Nerd (eXile) & Ted Rall (uComics) Revisit French/US Military History. Rall is part French, but that has no bearing on his cartoons. Especially this one.

Get your war on poses a deep question:

If the terrorists destroy the Statue of Liberty, would the French pay for it's rebuilding?

For another link choice free of bias, I really liked when I noticed Macedonia mentioned at the bottom of this page.

Homecoming

The dullest blog in the world (see 2 posts bellow) reminded me of a scene from the movie Queens Logic.

There's this guy who's trying to impress a girl, and talks to her about this and that in the corner of a party. At one point she exclaims something to the effect of "Why do men try to take perfectly ordinary events from their lives and turn them into fucking mythology?!"

Trendy

The same day Reality Macedonia published a critical article by Darko Angelov on missing Macedonian public relations, I got word that MIM set up a special site for PR education, called PR.ORG.MK. How appropriate. I love coincidences, but also warn against attempting to "read" from them. :-)

The problem with Macedonia's PR impotence is missing opportunities (which come at the least opportune moment, check the link to Marphy legislature), and refusing to learn from past mistakes. And not planning ("failing to plan is planning to fail" - an American proverb). So basically, working both ends of the time scale against the middle, and being the middle!

Funny :-)

Thanks Ania, for the link to the dullest blog in the world. Dear reader, do not feel obliged to thank me... at least until I install a paypal account or something to that effect.

Tough luck: Macedonia got blacklisted by most of the e-commerce community because our banks suck, and especially because those pesky X-induced brats greedilly ordered way too much stuff with stollen credit card numbers few years ago.

Murphy's Legislature

A train of thought starting with the chain-letters and belief in magic healing paired with lack of knowledge about computer technology lead me to Quotes about Murphy's Law from Basic Quotations. I was looking for Clarke's law:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Reminding me that couple of weeks ago I almost read an article on origins of Murphy's law via a Slashdot link.

Back In The Day

David Sugar (also known as "some GNU guy"), came to Macedonia in 2002 and subsequently wrote the article Software Freedom for Macedonia?, appearing on the highly popular Linux Journal. Here's a striking observation:

The problem the hacker community faces in Macedonia is that, especially in regard to their age and historic isolation, they do not have anyone who fully understands free software philosophy in the country.

The article is worth reading, at least for its humorous ending:

I have learned that the people of Macedonia do care deeply about software freedom, and that they relate to it in regard to their own unique cultural history and national identity. With their recent elections and change of government, there is new hope that software freedom will become part of the agenda of their national government, for it already is part of their society.

Awright, now!

I want a pet.

In the urban jungle that is New York, cops found a 400-pound tiger and a 3-foot alligator relative in a Harlem apartment yesterday after their owner was hospitalized with suspicious bites on his arm and leg, police said.

Whole story by Fox News.

Rep.check: 11 visits a day, 1102/1346 = 0.82. Skyrocket! :-)

Beer Saves Man's Life

News item Dave Barry proclaimed the feel-good story of the decade.

Bridging the Language Barriers

I noticed that a Hungarian flash mob forum site linked to my Agora article "The First Hungarian Flash mob." Its English translation originally appeared on this blog. In spite of the intuitive interface, I can't help feeling rather good because I managed to sign up to the forum and post a link to the translation, considering the fact that I can't even order a beer in Hungarian.

Microsoft Watch: India

From Slashdot:

Economic Times, India reports on the failure of Microsoft to sign up the Indian government as part of the Government Security Program. The Print Edition carries a comment by an official: "... there was tremendous pressure on us to sign an MoU (memorandum of understanding) which would allow Microsoft access to all TDIL products (Technology Development for Indian Languages)." The government has gone ahead and put all the project initiatives in the public domain. TDIL recently released Indix : an engine for rendering Indian languages on Linux.

Reputation check: with 9 visits per day, holding 1135^th place out of 1334, the quotient is 0.85. Improvement. :-)

I've decided to start keeping track of the status of this blog by checking the rating provided by The Truth Laid Bear. Today, with an average of 8 visits per day, Razvigor holds the 1161 place out of 1328. Dividing those two yields a quotient of 0.87. Closer to 1 - bad. Closer to zero - good. We'll see how it works out.

MS Macedonia

Microsoft moves towards a "strategic partnership" with the Government of Republic Macedonia, called FYROM (an insulting designation the people detest) by the software giant. Details of the relationship are still not disclosed, even though the negotiations have been going for over 5 months, just after Macedonia joined the WTO.

Few days ago, Microsoft and the Government signed a letter of intent, a step towards closing a contract. Balkanalysis gives a scoop of the situation in the article "Quietly, Microsoft arrives in Macedonia ."