I Hate the Internet (still)

Apparently the top searched term that links to my site is "I hate the internet", which links to this article about me hating the internet that I wrote a year and a half ago. I still hate the internet, for various reasons. And since I'd love to become the number one search result of people who seek others who hate the internet, here are the reasons.

Can we all stop being lemmings on YouTube? Ok, I get it, chocolate rain is kind of funny, but I don't need to watch your own personal rendition of it. Sure, digital cameras are cheap now, in fact, they're practically handing them out to you whenever you walk into Circuit City, but still, must you?

Here's a better idea. Now that you bought a camera in order to join this wonderful 2.0 craze of self produced content, do something to become the next internet sensation instead of riding on the coat-tail of someone else's brilliancy. Film yourself for 20 minutes and when you watch the replay, you'll realized you truly are uninteresting. Because if you were, you wouldn't be surfing for videos on YouTube and trying to create a Response Video.

I don't participate in this random adding of friends on MySpace and Facebook. I really do like the concept: keep in touch with old friends, be in the loop with what their doing, and never really have to talk to them. I don't see the point in doing that with people I met once. Stop adding me as your friend. I can't validate your existence for you, guy I met once at a college meet-and-greet.

No, i don't want a free i-pod, a free X-Box, free ringtones, wallpapers or knick-knacks. I don't want a magazine subscription or to find friendly singles like me. No, you didn't just stumble across my profile and want to chat with me. I don't want to see your pictures that got banned by going to your other social network site at genericcamwhores2.com/loosepanties23.

Yes, we get it, anyone who can kill your ranked 50 ass is hacking. What we don't understand is why you're twelve-years old and your mother hasn't beaten you for still being on Halo at 2 in the morning. I also don't understand why people twice your age are actually entertaining your existence by arguing with you. And fix your mic, you sound like a chipmunk using a blender in a wind tunnel.

Also, your passwords are terrible, change them. You're going to get hacked. See previous post for more info.

Let's talk passwords

As the internet becomes more applicable to storing everything you need in your entire life, it also creates larger risk if someone were to find a way to break in.

How many applications of yours use the same password? There's a good chance that if I know you're email address and password, I have access to everything you belong to. How many of these could someone break into at once for you? Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, AIM, Y!IM, MSN, Ebay, Amazon, YouTube, Myspace, Facebook, iTunes, Citibank, Washington Mutual, E-trade, TradeKing, ING, and of course, Girls Gone Wild Online.

If you're using the same password for more than any two of those sites listed above, there's a good chance a hacker will try out the same email/password combination for those sites.

Okay, so nobody is insane enough to have a different password for each site and I understand that. It doesn't mean though, that we can't work on trying to create a password that will not be easy to steal. You already know passwords should have both letters and numbers, at the very least, so I won't baby you. But you probably only have numbers at the end of your password, right?

Remember, a hacker isn't targeting a person specifically, they're just trying to find the weakest link in order to break in somewhere. They don't really care who you are, only that they can get to your stuff. A hacker may only try combinations of passwords that begin with lowercase letters and end with numbers, knowing that's what most users do and hoping you're one of them (remember, in the computer world, lowercase letters are different than uppercase letters).

So what's a good password that I can remember?

I always tell people to create sentences, because even a single number thrown into the middle of a password will decrease the chances of being hacked significantly.

Here's some examples:

il0veCats - the 'O' is a zero. It's short, easy to remember, and the number and capital letter gets you out of basic hacking range.
gr8shesL8 - Great, shes late. A simple sentence, but uses 8's to form words.

If you're really serious about a good password, throwing in a symbol increases your safety even more. Think about sentences like this:

hey!Thatsm1ne = Hey! That's mine. The exclaimation mark is easy to use in a sentence, which most people automatically want to use a capital letter afterward. The 1 in the word 'mine' creates added safety as well.

Some of your passwords are too long, dude

You're right. Unfortunately some sites still only allow passwords that should be eight letters. These sites probably aren't very secure.

My next recommendation is always to have three different passwords memorized.

1) A trivial eight character length password for basic things.

2) A very secure eight character length password for sites you think should be secure

3) A longer length password, remember, the longer it is, the safer it is. But it should only be as long as you are comfortable in typing it over and over daily.

Having three passwords at least ensures that a hacker won't be able to break in to everything. And who says the passwords can't all be the same?

lovecats, l0veCats, and omg!il0veCats are completely different passwords in the computer world.

And lastly, pin codes

Nowadays, banks have evolved to beyond just having 4 number pins for your ATM card. The scary part is that some banks use your pin as the password to your online banking login. Keep in mind that the rules still apply. Longer is better. And with pins, since you can't use letters and symbols for security, length is your only safety.

So how to form words with just numbers? Just try to think of some numbers as letters.

811194732 - BILLGATES. Ok, not really easy to grasp, but think of the 8 as a 'B', the 1 as both an 'I' and 'L', the 9 as a lowercase 'G' and so on. It's only your pin, so it really only has to make sense for you.

You won't be able to form every word you want, but it works.

Go change your passwords

Now spend some time and go change your passwords. You'll find that if you come up with a good one, you won't even have to write it down (which is also very bad).

Congrats, your secret internet life is now a little more safe and secure.

The Future of Mobile

There are some big players banking that mobile is the next big thing. Google has android, Dell is thinking about making a handset, Apple is killing with the iPhone, and various services are experimenting with GPS (friend finding, directions).

Let's try to picture the future for a moment. Let's imagine a post 3G world where mobile bandwidth is as good as or better than wi-fi hotspots. You're handset is anonymously tracked and the bottom inch of your 4-inch touch screen randomly shuffles through ads based on where you are.

An Exxon is coming up, perhaps you should stop for gas.

There's a Best Buy at the next exit, and oh, Blu-Ray box sets are 20% off.

Macy's is two blocks up, and they're having a sale (today only!).

And those are just the involuntary suggestions.

You hit a button, select restaurants, and suddenly, you're zoomed in on a map that shows the 10 closest eateries within 4 blocks.

You pick the nearest restaurant and you bump into some girl you met the other night at a party. She says hi to you, but you don't remember who she is. After making some small chit-chat with her you pull out your cellphone and beam a blue tooth request to her. She acknowledges your request and beams back her info.

That's right, you totally remember her now that you have her cell number, email, and links to Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn.


Your friend walks in right as the girl leaves and says hi to you. He saw that your GPS Twitter auto-update had you pegged at this location.

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Mind you, in my future, I assume that people are all voluntarily enabling this sort of tracking and open access to information about one's self. I'm not really here to discuss the social or ethical implications of the scenarios provided above, I just think it's kind of interesting.

There's a great deal of opportunity for advertisers, startups, and tech-savvy users who want to be THAT connected to the internet.

Nvidia fans get icing on the Cake

It's not a lie.

Valve has entered an agreement with Nvidia to screw ATI over. All owners with Nvidia cards can now download an exclusive extended version of the Portal Demo, plus the full version of Peggle Extreme.

For those of you who didn't buy The Orange Box because you already owned half the games included in it, but wanted to get your hands on Peggle Extreme (which is only available if you buy The Orange Box), now is a great chance to pick it up.

Take the system test by following this link. Don't worry if you don't have Steam installed already, you'll be asked to download it. (if i'm wrong, just head directly to http://www.steampowered.com to install Steam. I highly recommend it anyway.)

List of games:

Portal: First Slice (extended demo)
Half-Life 2: Deathmatch
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
Peggle Extreme

Does your computer suck for gaming?

Some people don't believe the box when they buy a game. Minimum requirements don't necessarily mean you'll have an enjoyable gaming experience, yet people still buy the game. Then they complain that the game is unplayable.

Now if you, for some reason, don't know your computers specs or can't make the connection between what you have and what's written on the box, why don't you check your system requirements against every game?

A word to the macheads out there, don't bother with the site, you'll amusingly get "unknown" for every test.

Blu-ray to win format wars?

Yea, I'm a little late. Anyone who has been following the news knows that Warner Bros. Entertainment has decided to side with Blu-ray.

The impasse was broken Friday by Warner Bros. Entertainment, the last major studio to put out movies in both formats. It announced it was ditching HD DVD, and from May on, would only publish on Blu-ray and traditional DVD.
The decision puts a strong majority of the major studios, five versus two, in the Blu-ray camp.

That will probably boost PS3 sales, as the prices for PS3's are becoming reasonable. As much Sony bashing as I've done recently, even I'm starting to consider a PS3. I think the combination of Blu-ray and Sony's hardware specs could see itself out-pacing the Xbox 360's graphics in a couple years. It's going to be a tough fight though, because graphics itself won't be able to take down the Halo and Xbox Live community in general.

There's still one more deciding factor in the format wars and that's the Adult Film Industry. It's been said that porn helped decide VHS has the winning format. So far, the adult film industry has chosen HD-DVD, but that's really not saying much since we're talking about a handful of films. Things might change though, since PS3 owners are apparently all porn addicts and Digital Playground has released their most popular title Pirates out on Blu-ray.

However, Joone now tells CePro that PlayStation 3 owners have been demanding that the studio release movies in the Blu-ray format. (PlayStation 3, owned by more than two million people in North America, has a Blu-ray player inside.)

I still don't like Sony's attempt after attempt to dominate formats, but I guess if you keep trying, eventually you'll win one.

Your old TV is lame

TV broadcasters are about to stop using analog signals in favor of digital ones. For those of you who still have analog televisions, you can pick up coupons for digital converters here. They are going to cost about 60 bucks and the coupons are for 40.

Even if you have a digital TV, it might be work signing up for the coupons. I'm thinking that your analog TV tuner card for your computer might benefit from it. A bonus is that those TV tuner cards will probably be extremely cheap after the switch is made.