Google Code In

 Programming  1 Response »
Jan 212012
 

On January 16, 2012, Google Code In 2011 officially ended. Google Code In, summed up in one sentence, is an international contest that mainly is about programming. Of course, there are other tasks like writing promotional articles, creating tutorials, and of course, translation work. To advance quickly, one has to know programming, though it is possible to get into the top ten without programming skills, though it is very hard. The top ten people (last year it was the top fourteen) get to go visit Google Headquarters in Mountainview, California. This year was my first year, and I got off to a rough start. By the way, this contest is for 13-17 year old people from around the world.

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Boston-More than a feeling (Norwegian subtitles)

 Norwegian  No Responses »
Jan 202012
 

This is a translation of Boston’s “More than a feeling” into Norwegian. By the way, I’m not very good at speaking Norwegian.

Jeg har lært norsk…men jeg snakker IKKE norsk…Jeg prøvde å oversette denne sangen…jeg er amerikansk

No Copyright Infringement Intended. All audio rights belong to their respective owners. Norwegian translation by Daniel, but he does NOT guarantee the accuracy.

 Posted by at 11:53 am

The Wikipedia Blackout and how to bypass it

 World  No Responses »
Jan 182012
 
Wikipedia Blackout

The English Wikipedia looks like this during the blackout.

Right now, the U.S. Congress is “considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet”. This comes in the form of the two bills, SOPA and PIPA.

Wikipedia is blacking out its English language encyclopedia for 24 hours. If you’re curious, it’s actually pretty easy to get around the blackout. The easiest way is to add “?banner=none” to the end of any Wikipedia url. The most efficient way is to disable Javascript in your browser.

The good news is that support for SOPA and PIPA is waning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more

5 reasons why Godaddy is a terrible web host

 Complaints and Rants, I hate GoDaddy  No Responses »
Jan 172012
 

Godaddy is a terrible web host. Move your business elsewhere.

I’m a bit curious. Does Godaddy monitor every web hosting account to see if the owner(s) say something bad about Godaddy? If my account doesn’t get suspended in a few days and this website doesn’t disappear, that would be a no.

These are my personal reasons that I do not like Godaddy:

  1. It’s horribly slow. This website is hosted on Godaddy’s servers. They advertise “lightning fast” servers. Look at this website (which is hosted on Godaddy) and look at the loading time. See a correlation?
  2. When you call to complain about how slow your website is, they try to sell you a dedicated server. That’s like more than US$30 per month. I’m only running a WordPress blog, and nothing else. Even WordPress.com, Blogger, and Blogspot have faster hosting. Yes, free blogging websites have faster servers. When I called Godaddy to tell them (I acted like a clueless idiot, of course), the customer support guy (his name was AJ) told me that he didn’t know about thoses services.
  3. Godaddy’s technical support is clueless. I called them about my website speed twice. Each time they told me that they would have to “check the documentation”. Then, they proceeded to “empty my applications folder”, which did absolutely nothing to the speed of my website. Then, they proceeded to sell me a dedicated server (I told them I wasn’t interested).
  4. Godaddy got hacked and they covered it up. Read about it here.
  5. Beware of the misleading advertisements! As I said before, Godaddy advertises “lightning fast” servers. I called the technical support people once and told them that it was “horribly misleading and false”. He told me to contact the marketing department. When I asked him where I could find a better web host, he told me, “I dunno, Google it”.

I originally signed up for Godaddy because it was the most popular web host at the time (so many commercials on TV). At the time, they gave me free advertisement-supported web hosting (grrrrr…they canceled this program because it was too costly, and because it was SO easy to hack their program and make the advertisements invisible). That hosting was actually pretty fast. Now, my website is on a horribly overhosted server that has over 4000 other sites hosted on it. Just horrible.

The domain name for this website was really cheap (about US$1), but the discount applies only when you buy a year’s worth of hosting. Now I have fell into their trap and I’m struggling to climb out.

My advice for those Godaddy representatives reading this is to spend less money on advertisements and more money on the quality of your services. You’ve lured your customers in, now you have to keep them.

I will be packing up and leaving this web host in February (hopefully).

If you’re Belarussian and live in Belarus, don’t read this

 World  No Responses »
Jan 132012
 
Belarus on the map

Belarus is located in Eastern Europe. Image credit: Wikipedia


If you’re Belarussian and live in Belarus, don’t read this because you could get in trouble with the KGB (that’s what they still call the secret police).

Internet restrictions passed by the Belarussian government will go into effect on January 6, 2012. This already passed. This means that it is a misdemeanor to visit a website that is not hosted in Belarus. My website is hosted on a server somewhere in the middle of the desert in Arizona by a company called Godaddy (warning: they have extremely misleading advertisements, I advise you to STAY AWAY from them). Fines can be up to US$125, depending on the website the individual went to and what activities he/she did on it.

Belarus has been criticized for a deteriorating human rights situation and it is the last dictatorship in Europe. President Obama signed the Belarus Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2011 (what a eupemistic name), which imposes new sanctions on Belarus, and denies some Belarussian officials visas. The law labels President Alexander Lukashenko a dictator (which he technically is) and states that he “established himself in power by orchestrating an illegal and unconstitutional referendum that enabled him to impose a new constitution, abolishing the duly elected parliament.”

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