Reminds me of the old Space Pen Joke/Urban Legend

What you say? You’ve no idea what I am talking about? If you’re’nt* from the states, you may not know that internet segregation exists. It does though. If you don’t live in the states, try watching a Hulu clip or try watching something on Comedy Central. Under normal circumstances, you can’t! That’s called internet segregation. You may think, “Gerard, Lord of darkness, why does this matter, it’s one site.” True, but if you understand the true nature of the web, it’s all interlinked. This detracts from the whole web experience not only on hulu but digg and all sites that reference locked content. There are ways around this though. By using a proxy it can appear as though you are browsing from inside the United States, thus allowing you to watch the content. Hulu however have begun to shut down content for people using proxies even if they are for a valid reason. All this leads to is people finding other methods to watch the content, namely torrents. Pointless.

Hulu, it's pointless.

Another example of internet segregation is this talk of Microsoft trying to buy the news from News Corp. My current belief is that Google currently hold an information monopoly on the world. Don’t believe me, check out Google Dashboard and just see how much they know about you. If you are anything like me, it’s a lot. So if you could ignore my paranoia about Google until the day I get to say, “I told you so”, you would see that I am all for removing the Google information monopoly. (Losing it to Microsoft, is another issue all together, but still). Assuming it’s the actual news and not the news brand that is more important. And assuming it’s possible to get the same news on the internet from more than a single source. With all this in mind is it a good idea to prevent content being viewed from a specific network. Even if somehow it did make sense, ultimately it would be pointless. All this will do is broaden the the market for something I thought previously useless, search engine aggregators.

These are just more examples of big business messing up the internet.

*you’re’nt: contraction for “you are not”… I totally just invented that

This one: http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/20/britains-new-interne.html. This is rubbish. If it happens I will leave the UK. I promise you this. I don’t like petitions because I don’t believe they work but  go here to “help prevent” this: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/dontdisconnectus/

The other post is this: http://gigaom.com/2009/11/22/should-web-page-speed-influence-google-pagerank/. This is bullshit… because I say so. The internet is currently a level playing field for everyone, big and small business alike. Are you going to skew it towards those with most cash? Are you Google? Recently I’ve become A LOT more untrusting of Google.

Ok, it’s true that one swallow does not make a summer, but these things seem to point to the trend that the internet is now going to become more of a corporately controlled entity? I hope I am wrong.

Edit: Also?! Why is my text justified? Justified text?! WTF? This also angers me.

Update: Ok. I removed the justified text. At least I feel like I have the power to change something.

require ‘net/http’
url  = ‘/api/user.xml?id=6′
post_data = “<user><firstname>Freeman</firstname></user>”
http = Net::HTTP.new(‘www.asdf.com’)
http.read_timeout = 300 # seconds
http.open_timeout = 180 # seconds
resp, data = http.put(url, post_data)

So, if I am right… why is this a good idea?

I am right? Right? What am I missing here… I could eval that with js easily to get an answer… and I’ve seen this captcha in more than one place.

I don’t know maybe there is some hidden technique I am missing. I would like to hear from you if you can explain.

Edit: The other version of this is asking in words something like “What is five plus two?”… have you ever typed that into google…? Google is a machine and it knows. Seriously, what’s going on here?

The other feeling I got was that there were too many higher ups just talking and not enough ground level. Get your head out of the clouds (no, not decentralised infrastructure). It’s not the big guys that are important it’s the little guys with the big ideas. It’s the small guys that are the ones who are able to adapt to quickly market fluctuations not the big guys.

Then some props were going to Helen Zille for saying some inspring stuff and a little bit of circle jerking… not much though.. which is good.

Then ending off with people saying it’s an awesome conference and one or two tweets saying government needs to do something…. Are you serious? After all that you are still expecting hand outs from Government? Fuck government, don’t expect them or anyone to do anything for you. You need to be prepared to go it alone if you need to. If something happens, great! Otherwise, you need to make it happen yourself.

I really do hope the enthusiasm continues… Change the world. It’s up to you.

One example of this is email validation. On the surface email validation a simple task. Take the email address your user has typed in, apply some tests to it and make sure it’s valid. One of the ways to do this is with regular expressions. As with any data filtering or data filtering task, you can do something basic or you can try to cater for all cases. To give you an example of the complexity of email filtering, lets break down the parts of an email address. An email address consists of 3 parts: the user name, the @ symbol and the domain name. Simple enough. But to what extent do you want to make sure it’s clean? The most basic option is to check that it has those parts in the correct order. A level up from that is to do the previous check and then check that the user name contains only valid email address characters. From that you could also check that that the domain name is made up of two or more part separated by a dot. A step up from that is to do the previous three checks and check that domain has a valid domain extension. One up from that is to do all previous checks and then also check that the domain actually exists and resolves. This is all I am aware of but there might be additional checks you can do.

So anyways for simplicity sake lets just say you want to check the format is correct, the user name has valid characters and the domain name is made up of two or more parts. All of this could be achieved with a regular expression.

If you use PHP as I do, you could easily find a bit of code for this on the internet, hundreds maybe thousands of different iterations of code all claiming to do the same thing: Validate an email address.

The only problem is, I don’t trust source code found on individual’s pages on the web. I don’t know that user’s credentials. I don’t know what he knows, I don’t know what sources he used to build that code. Or if he used sources at all. And because it’s something that is seemingly so simple, it’s easy to not do it correctly. Unless it is a trusted library or comes from a person who I know to be of a specific standard, I won’t use that code. Otherwise, I want to be able to see the references used so that if it comes to it I can check that it claims to do what it says it does. If those references are there my test need to be even more rigorous than I would need for trusted components, meaning that I might as well have written it myself.

I noticed myself doing this the other day. Just a little tech… sigh… Tired of writing now. Guess I won’t be doing what little spell /  sanity check I usually do.

This site really resonates with me. I started the site hoping that someday someone will happen to come across it, and hopefully on that day the site will be displaying the message that this person needs to hear. Hopefully it will give them the push needed for them to improve their life. It might not happen, it might never happen. I know that what I am hoping for is pure coincidental. You may think I am being silly but I had an experience where this exact thing happened to me. I had been thinking and introspecting on a problem for almost a month. And if I had not been in the exact place at the exact time, I may never have found the answer. And because I knew that finding the solution was pure chance, it really enforced the solution. So, what I am hoping to achieve is improbable but not impossible. I think the idea of it unlikely makes it even more appealing to me.

The site embodies a so much of what I believe in:

Done things for the sake of doing them. One thing I really love about the site is that if it does help someone, there’s an equal chance that I’ll never know that I’ve helped anyone. The site provides no contact details and no way to contact the owner/author. Due to the anonymity of the site (from both my side and the user’s side), it means helping people just for the sake of helping people, nothing else, no thanks, no recognition, nothing.

Secondly, positive thinking. At the core of the site, it provides a positive thought a day. I believe they way you think and talk to yourself in your head, determines a large part of your success (whatever success may mean to you). Also an added benefit, because I am trying to think of positive thoughts for the site it forces me to think positively at least once a day.

Thirdly, another philosophy I live by and also incorporated into the site is the Buddhist philosophy of the impermanence of all things. Nothing lasts forever. So every message is shown once and never again.

And fourthly, it’s just a little bit a day, just one line of text. This is my newest philosophy that I have adopted and it has made me a much happier person. For a large part of my life I wanted to be exceptional (hidden under the guise of appearing normal) but I wanted to be exceptional immediately. I wanted results now. This latest philosophy I adopted has taught me patience. Just a little a day.

And that’s it. http://correkthinking.com