An example of “practice what you preach”?
Tag: site
I am not referring to an airline hijacking.
Michael informed me this morning that our host for ATPM told him we went over our bandwidth limit for the month of February by 17 GB.
After further investigation, we learned that most of this extra bandwidth is going toward serving up various JPEGS to other sites. In other words, rather than downloading the desktop pictures we offer to our readers each month, and hosting it on their own server, people are linking directly to the file on our server for display on their sites. They are hijacking these images, and our bandwidth. This is nothing new. It’s just never happened on such a large scale before with any site I’ve been involved in.
People, this is not cool. First off, those desktop pictures are the copyrighted property of a photographer or artist who graciously donated their use to ATPM, and subsequently to our readers, as desktop pictures. This means if you want to use said picture on your web site, or any other medium, you should be contacting that photographer or artist for permission. Second, if said photographer or artist grants you permission for usage, you then host the picture on your own site. To link to the picture directly on ATPM means you are stealing our bandwidth, and driving up our costs.
We are not a for-profit publication. Our staff is all-volunteer, from the top down. Any moneys generated from ads and sponsorships goes in to our hosting costs, and after ten consecutive years of publication, those costs can be considerable. Thus, bandwidth is not something we can afford to give away, and certainly not at the rate of an extra 17 GB every month.
If you are one of the many persons out there linking directly to one of our pictures, please stop. You are violating legitimate copyright and stealing bandwidth from a group of people who do something each month out of love and joy.
This week is the week of site birthdays, I suppose. Lee’s Second Initial turns one today. Congratulations, compadre!
In case you’ve ever wondered why you keep getting pop-up or pop-under ads, even though you have pop-up blocking enabled in Safari or Firefox, MDJ has the answer in today’s issue:
Several people have noticed more pop-up and pop-under Web ads recently, even if Safari’s pop-up blocker is turned on. Safari can’t block them because they’re not coming from JavaScript – they’re coming from Macromedia Flash content. Macromedia has spent the past few years bragging about Flash’s browser ubiquity, convincing developers to create everything from simple animations to full-fledged video in Flash because every browser can run it.
Now we’re seeing the dark side of that – Flash content can also open windows, and advertisers are using it to subvert standard pop-up blocking, which typically prevents JavaScript code from opening new windows unless you clicked on a link to do so.
So there you have it. Yet another reason to hate Flash.
Am I the only one who doesn’t get the whole del.icio.us craze?
So I just left a comment, in reply to one left by Raena, and a thought occurred to me: If I’m logged in to my Movable Type installation already, why can’t I already be logged in to my TypeKey account as well? It just seems silly to have to go through a separate login procedure to leave comments on my own blog.
Speaking of Movable Type, the web site has undergone somewhat of a makeover, and the old .org domain redirects to the link just noted. The new menu across the top left reflects all of Six Apart’s products, including the newly-purchased LiveJournal.
Thanks to inspiration from Lee, and code from Chris, I have the master archive index page I’ve been wanting. You will note there is no longer a monthly archive list in the sidebar. You can always get to the site archives by clicking on that “Archives” button in the navigation menu at the top right of each page.
Enormously, incredibly stupid. Michael was right. I was insane. I am man enough to admit such.
No more blogging at Godblog or digitalpembroke. (I do not link to the former because that domain will eventually go bye-bye, but do to the latter because I will keep it; it was my first domain, my first blog, my online baby.)
So while Retrophisch will maintain its focus on Macs and technology, items that were previously reserved for the above blogs, plus the already-retired Ludichris and Forty Caliber, may find their way here as well. Fear not, dear reader. Those other blogs were woefully underposted to begin with, which was what led to their retirement. You will not see a sudden influx of firearms or political-based postings. There are other bloggers doing a far better job than I on those topics. Yeah, there are bloggers doing a far better job on pretty much any topic I choose to cover. So I’m an egomaniacal narcissist at heart. All bloggers are. 😉
Tom notes logging in to his Gmail account this morning, and finding 50 invitations to offer to others. This prompted me to do the same, wondering if I would also have 50 invites, seeing as how the last time I looked at my Gmail account, I still had 4 from the previous 6 given to me still available.
Sure enough, there’s the little box, just like Tom has in his post, with 50 invites ready to go. How am I supposed to get rid of this many invites? Has Gmail already reached a saturation level, and it’s not even out of its invitation-only beta program?
Maybe it’s just me; I have a fairly close-knit group of online friends, with a slightly larger group of acquaintances. Everyone in these two groups who wants a Gmail account already has one. Heck, the reason I have a Gmail account is because one of my friends pointed me to a post by Tom offering Gmail invites back when they were hard to come by, and this is how he and I began chatting. (FYI: my winning funny is #2 in the comments.)
I’ve had a hard enough time unloading the last six invites Google gave me. I’ve joined Gmail for the Troops, but have yet to unload any invites that way. My own attempt to have fun while giving out invites met with one whole reader taking me up on the offer. So now I’ve got 50 invites. Want one?