What a Flocker!

Image via CrunchBase

Flock You, NineMSN!  Is Flock the Browser affiliated with the new "The Flock" in the new NineMSN news site?

Who knows?

Is it wrong?

"The Flock"

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• A collection of alternative Web browsers trying to hold their own (thaibrother.com)
• Flock Breaks Up With FireFox and Goes Google (lockergnome.com) - actually, sort of, it is only a BETA at this point - not replacing the current update of Flock browser.  Yet.  "Goes Google" is a misnomer, as well.  Really Flock is changing its engine to Chrome-like, dropping the Mozilla-born FireFox engine.

Chess.com way behind the times or just confused?

A cohort of mine sent an email to chess.com after some odd registration issues, inquiring why they consider the use of the '+' to be invalid.

Special characters are valid on the net on all mail servers, the + being one of the major ones in use today. By default, ALL mail programs allow use of the + and many other special characters.

The following is their response (note; no explanation as to why not the use of + and the ticket is closed, with no allowance for rebuttal)

The following is the chess.com response:

Julie Howells to me

show details 5:48 AM (14 hours ago)

xxxxxxx

I'm sorry, but we won't be using or allowing the use of + in email addresses.

The only special characters permitted are dash, underscore or dot.
- Kohai
Chess.com Support
www.Chess.com

Ticket Details

Ticket ID: 0000000

Department: Registration & Activation Problems
Priority: Normal

Status: Closed

You can check the status of or reply to this Ticket online at: http://support.chess.com/

She apologizes that chess.com won't be following any web standards? Only those 3 characters? Even if the issue was that of using the email as username (not needed at chess.com, as you can sign in with your nickname), there would be no reason - security or otherwise - to disallow, by deliberate choice by the way, the use of any standard special character in emails. In fact, the disallowing of the + character is itself more of a security risk to the user of chess.com than ever chess.com servers. Using the + can actually prevent spam on servers, in both directions (as whatever comes after the plus is used as an effective spam mask - you know exactly where the original email would have come from)

Obviously, I don't need to say anymore here. As usual, I must defer to the wisdom of Steve Gibson at grc.com

So for now, stay FAR away from chess.com -

I recommend instead, redhotpawn.com

How Dare I?

So how DARE I stay with GCast Podcasting? Lookee here (from their site):

"By Phone: Call 1-888-65-GCAST (888-654-2278) and use your PIN: 'xxxx' international option If outside USA: +1-305-437-8719.
Important! Beginning April 1, 2009, podcasting by phone will require a yearly subscription fee of $99.* To purchase a subscription, contact .

* If you use more than two hours of phone time in any 90-day period, we reserve the right to cancel your service and refund the unused portion of your fee after deducting a pro-rated amount for the number of days used and an overage of 9 cents/minute for usage over the 90-day limit."

How DARE I stay with them? Oh, and G-Cast, HOW DARE YOU !?

Britney Spears' new smell...

Brit; How DARE you!?


I can't smell a thing!





Come on; I had to.
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Panera Bread, Heavy, but light on WiFi

Panera bread locations that have Wifi (not all do), while free, still might come with a price - two prices, in fact:
1: privacy/security - you can forget about it, they track every website you go to and
2: site blocking; one in particular I found rather odd is the blocking of livevideo.com - as they are one of the few from the "ustream/sitckam/blogtv" crowd that actually has an always-defaulted-on Family "Friendly" button!
The problem I find here is that Panera isn't actually checking these blocked sites for contraband, other than perhaps for keywords; such as "twogirlsonecup!". Well, we all know that 99% of those sites are reaction videos and (thanlfully, yet how would I know) not the "real McCoy" - or is it MacCoy? How Dare You, Panera? You need to lighten up or you may find your free access go the way of the dodo.

And, btw, they also block Anonymizer.com - go figure.

Public Access? Net Neutrality? Can anybody say "throttling"?

Panera Bread, Heavy, but light on WiFi

Panera bread locations that have Wifi (not all do), while free, still might come with a price - two prices, in fact: 1: privacy/security - you can forget about it, they track every website you go to as their mandatory logon portal requires 3rd party cookies,  2: odd site blocking; one in particular I found rather odd is the blocking of livevideo.com - as they are one of the few from the ustream/sitckam/blogtv crowd that actually has an always-default-on Family-Friendly button!

The problem here is that Panera's contracted Internet portal provider isnt actually checking these blocked sites, other than for keywords; such as 1girl2cups! Well, we all know that 99% of those sites are reaction videos and not the "real Macoy". So lighten up Panera, or you may find your free access go the way of the dodo.

And, btw, they also block Anonymizer.com - go figure. They cant block proXPN, however.

"No dice" for drop.io !

Like twitter asks; "What are you doing?" And, although we can all look to Twitter and ask them the same "How Dare You?" question - regarding their API that only lets others send Twitter login information UNENCRYPTED - another loosey-goosey Web 2.0 company is screwing some of their PAYING customers.
I don't care if it's free or paid, but especially if I have to pay for a GB of storage (at $10 US per year ), you'd better make damned sure I can at least re-set my password, especially when using a sales receipt verification number.
Google does NOT have this problem - although sometimes their method of retrievable is rather onerous.
OK, shame on me for not reading the small print (ironically, I usually do), but that is a horrible business model - to not provide a method to reset an Administrator password, when using a sales receipt transaction number should be proof enough that an account holder should be allowed the accommodation. Using a previously entered password for early (account start) verification should be more than enough to allow for this.
The broken English excuse given by drop.io - it's Flash-based. Huh? Wha? WTF!?

From their site:
"

I lost the drop's admin password, help!

This is basically the equivalent of losing the drop address - sadly, no dice. Part of the ease and simplicity of drop.io comes from the fact that we do not require usernames or passwords. The downside to this is that if you lose your admin password we have absolutely no way to verify that you made a drop, and therefore that we should grant you access as an admin.

The good news is that if this happens in the absolute worst case scenario your drop will evaporate in less than one year. Again, just consider that drop.io is really more about flash online storage make sure you have your stuff backed up elsewhere!'

And if you think that getting a new "drop code" will help;
"

I lost my upgrade drop codes, help!

If you lose your upgrade codes we can sometimes help. While we have a no refund policy, we can re-issue you more drop codes based on your transaction receipt number again, your name or email address will not help here as we don't keep them, so hang onto that receipt. If you contact us because of lost drop codes we will deactivate all of your un-used codes and re-issue you new ones. This could take up to two weeks, so again, be careful."

Drop.io's business model = relying on most people's ability to remember or even write down passwords or keep them in a safe place, we can really make change - especially if we don't authenticate any data in transit and use the cheapest rental servers on the market (so that passwords can get lost more often). Ya, kind of funny they can store all this data and not store a relatively secure password per customer.

CEO, Sam Lessin, HOW DARE YOU? You really need a lesson in standards.

As far as using drop.io for anything even trivial, sorry, but "No dice".

And read the article linked - very good in-depth review, despite my rant.