Twitter to Facebook Swine Flu transmission confirmed

I lol'd.

Earth Day Followup...

Comedy Central's Indecision Forever blog posted this funny (and relevant) thing entitled "Top Five Dumbest Pieces of Internet Pollution this Earth Day". Here is the best part:

Natch.

Conclusion: We need an Internet Earth Day too, where idiots and mouth-breathers are BANNED FOREVER from not only the Internet, but their computers, and summarily given a courtesy card. Hopefully, this would this help reduce the amount of soul-destroying bullshit (streaming in mainly from wing-nut message boards and comment pages) that is clogging up the Tubes. It will also single-handedly solve the global climate/energy crisis by reducing global computer usage by 95% (read: 95% of the people using the Internet are retards/Internet polluters). All problems solved, forever. BAN HAMMER FTW.

GeoCities: An Ode to Thee

My homepage from 1996-1998

10 years ago (that's 1999 people, had you even heard of the Internet then? If anything defines the dotcom boom, it is this), Yahoo bought GeoCities for over 4 BILLION DOLLARS. This is fucking insane. I never realized this. Now Yahoo has announced that it is shutting down GeoCities for good, sometime later this year.

I was going to write something funny and nostalgic about GeoCities, and how in retrospect it really sucked balls but how like half of my life on the Internet was characterized by using library computers to do WebCrawler and Lycos searches for Super Nintendo cheat codes and Star Wars trivia that yielded poorly formatted GeoCities pages. Instead, I think it's appropriate to reflect on actually how fucking badass GeoCities was for being 2.0 before anyone else ever thought of that shit. It's true. Although GeoCities was/is home to 95% of the Internet's worst HTML, it also is one of the first websites that allowed users to easily create and share their own content with other people on the web. If that concept sounds familiar, it is because EVERYTHING YOU DO ON THE INTERNET TODAY IS EXACTLY THE SAME AS WHAT PEOPLE ON GEOCITIES WERE DOING 15 YEARS AGO. Minus the scrolling text marquees and .gifs, that is. Unless you are still using MySpace. For Science's sake, PS is Web 2.0 as it gets. Thank Science for GeoCities!

In any event, I guess it's time to migrate my My Little Pony fansite from GeoCities to AngelFire. I hear that is the new hot ish...

p.s. I wonder if Yahoo was ever able to recover the $4bill they sank into GeoCities? HAHA WE DOUBT IT. It may have been ahead of its time in some ways, but as far as dolla dolla bills go, the 21st century has got the 1990s beat. Can you say MONETIZATION???

This one goes out to a very special planet...

"Earth (my favorite planet)" by woodleywonderworks

Earth! What's up! It's your day!

Yesterday, not so much. Sorry about that, but it's hard to aim for a garbage can when I'm speeding down the freeway in my Hummer. Especially since I can't roll down the windows and waste the air-conditioning that I have to blast! to the max! since it's getting hotter and hotter every year. Ha ha, global warming.

Anyway, I promise not to throw my styrofoam out the window, or my cigarettes, or the gasoline tanks that take up precious room in my awesome Hummer. Today is about you! It's the day to recycle! Even toilet paper! Literally, the sky's the limit, according to chemists. No hairspray in an aerosol can for me!

Actually, I figured out that while my carbon footprint is over twice the average in the world, for an American, I'm doing pretty good! My carbon emissions level is half the level of the average American, in fact! Find out yours, and what you can do to lower it, by using the Carbon Footprint Calculator.

Pirates Are Suddenly News Again to People That Aren't 10 Years Old

Artist's rendition of pirate life in Somalia

Piracy is a fad that is generally considered to have gone out of style in the late 1700s and early 1800s when those that were being pirated got wise and co-opted the strategies of pirates into something that has become known as Capitalist-Democracy.

If you happen to frequent web pages such as www.newyorktimes.com or www.bbc.com or www.cnn.com or even crap like www.drudgereport.com you are more than likely aware that recently it has become trendy to lose 80 pounds and buy a zodiac boat and reenact the popular series of modern pirate documentary movies produced by America's #1 racist/fascist movie studio. Normally we wouldn't talk about crap like this on PS, but it falls into two relevant categories: the on-going Pirate vs. Ninja vs. Robot struggle (Robots FTW, duh, watch Terminator 2), as well as something that Robert Ballard might get his hands into. Anyways, you are probably being lied to about what is really going regarding this latter-day spate of Piracy. Read this to learn more.

In other pirate related news, four individuals linked to the very influential Bittorrent hosting site (aka Internet file sharing) The Pirate Bay (the site is still online. The URL is www.thepiratebay.org. You should go to it, and just, like, go crazy) have been sentenced to a year in prison in addition to significant fines. This is IRONIC because, like, Vikings from Sweden and Norway were the O.G. pirates, back in the day. This is the latest lame strategy launched by major recording studios and media companies in an attempt to remain relevant. All four of them plan to appeal, and since the trial is taking place in Sweden, they will probably be acquitted. We certainly hope that is what happens.

Internets, I Haz Them!

It's very simple.

Dudes, I finally bit the bullet and got a good/real/non-pirated Internet connection at home. What does this mean for you, dear reader? It means that I no longer have an excuse to lag on bringing you the hot, sexy, steaming Science-related blogging that you crave (well after this weekend at least when I pick up a wireless router). I hope you are as excited as I am about this.

Feds Bust Spam Overlord ISP; In Unrelated News, Pleas For Sex From Horny 18 Year Old Virgins Troublingly Disappear From America's Inboxes

After receiving information gathered during an investigation conducted by the group of B.A. Internet commandos at the Washington Post Security Fix blog, the Feds have shut down a renegade ISP called McColo, which apparently is responsible for routing up to 75% of all spam sent out globally! McColo also hosted numerous child porn distribution sites as well as tons of other vile crap that makes the Internet the most wretched hive of scum and villainy this side of Mos Eisley Cantina.

Almost immediately after the closure, spam traffic across the web plummeted:

I see what you did there.

Although this seems like a great victory in the war on Spam, it is most likely only symbolic at best. As long as the Internet remains a relatively free and unregulated space (which it should), spammers and scammers will find a way to keep doing what they are doing. Still, it is nice to see the government actually action against this sort of exploitative filth.