The IOC Can Sod Off

24-Feb, 2010

Several stories worthy of the WTF? files have confirmed that the IOC is arguably a bunch of greedy bastards who simply use the athletes as pawns for monetary gain. Unfortunately, over the years it seems the athletes are becoming moving billboards and the spirit of the games are being overshadowed by corporate greed, “proud” sponsors, and intellectual property bullshit. This is why people boycott the Olympics.

  1. Red Bull, Verizon Tweets Run Afoul of Olympics Rules
  2. IOC Orders Blogger To Take Down Video
  3. IOC Claims Olympian Lindsey Vonn’s Name As Intellectual Property
  4. Uvex put together a great little poem for the IOC and Lindsey Vonn
Posted by penkapp
Filed in adverts, playtime, politics, wtf?
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Microsoft’s Bing Now Comes with a Side of Fries

2-Nov, 2009


These two videos are so similar, it’s absolutely terrifying.

Posted by penkapp
Filed in adverts, food and drink, microsoft
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AdBlock Plus and NoScript: Not BFFs

4-May, 2009

It seems two of the most popular Firefox add-ons, both of which I use, AdBlock Plus and NoScript are not BFFs. The Register posted an interesting story, informing us that:

Giorgio Maone [NoScript creator] admitted that he added a small piece of code that worked around the EasyList filter used by Adblock Plus. The code, which was obscured so it wouldn’t be noticed by people who maintain the Adblock filter, was designed to ensure that commercial ads carried on Maone’s websites continued to be displayed on browsers that use the popular ad-blocking extension.

Wow. But wait, there’s more!

Maone said he added the anti-Adblock Plus functionality on Friday, after discovering the people who maintain EasyList had modified the filter so it blocked not just ads on Maone’s websites, but all scripting languages as well. This made it impossible for Adblock Plus users to get updates for NoScript or FlashGot, another Firefox extension Maone maintains, he said.

Giorgio did apologize, but this does not look good for Mozilla’s blessed add-on model for its flagship browser and struggling mail client. Mozilla quickly responded, but the obvious question is “How many other add-ons are doing this?” I’m not familiar with the add-on submission process, but it would seem Mozilla could implement a Public/Private key encryption system for each add-on based upon a given domain name or author ID. A given add-on could not alter another unless it was capable of exchanging keys. I wonder if the Moz team saw this coming and was the topic of many heated debates over dark beer. More to come…

Posted by penkapp
Filed in adverts, mozilla, privacy, security, software
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