Pay Wall Without The Walls

Oh my giddy aunt! The New York Times pay wall has hit a new level of stupidity. According to this techdirt article, the pay wall is written in... Javascript(!) and is trivially bypassed with NoScript enabled.

WTF? Who the hell wpould use client side code to create a pay wall? And who the hell would pay someone to write something so ridiculous? Well, someone at the New York Times apparently. Heads should roll for this embarrassing mistake.

Interestingly, the paywall is active in Chromium with Javascript disabled, which indicates the difference in Chromium's blocking capabilities compared to NoScript. Lack of NoScript is one of the reasons I am no longer so enthusiastic about Google's browser.

Hmm, note to self: must look at Firefox 4 again now that it has been released...

D&D Is Dangerous. Again.

Dungeons and Dragons has been labelled many things in its 35 year history, but this one really takes the cake. Apparently, playing D&D promotes gang activity, according an expert on gangs. This kind thinking makes me wonder if there is any intelligent life on this planet. I'm kind of surprised Wizards of the Coast didn't come forward to defend their game, since they are so very protective of its image.

To The Morons Running YouTube

Why has YouTube suddenly started asking me to enter a CAPTCHA before I can see a video? Not just once. Every. Single. Time. And it's not just me.

As you will note from that last one, the most common explanation is that it occurs for people behind a proxy. Well, I'm not behind a proxy. I am behind a NAT firewall but I am also the only person making requests from this IP address. Even basic traffic analysis would reveal that there's only one computer making the request. It shouldn't look like a proxy at all. None on this makes any sense so I'm concluding the people who run YouTube are morons. They solve problems by nuking it from orbit.

American Television

I don't watch many American TV shows these days but I got sucked in by FlashForward and Stargate: Universe, and was actually starting to enjoy both shows. So what happens when they get half way through the season? Both go on hiatus until the Spring! I mean what is it with that?

There's a reason I don't watch many American TV shows. Thanks for reminding me what it is. The people who produce the shows are clueless about how to entertain people.