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Domain: blueshinra.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to blueshinra.com.

Stories · 5

  1. Slashback: Nigritude, Indignation, Artifacts

    Yro · Slashback · · posted by timothy · from the tomorrow-is-sushiwhore-time dept. · 181 comments
    Slashback brings you updates this evening on a handful of previous and ongoing Slashdot stories: read on below for more on how to manipulate Google rankings, what's wrong with Sun's Java Desktop, Claria's plucky response to L.L. Bean's suit, and a fly in the infinite-twin-primes theory.

    How to not make friends and influence rankings. Ben Michel contributes an update to the search-engine optimization (SEO) contest mentioned last month, the object of which was for contestants to create a site ranked highest by google for a nonsense phrase, "nigritude ultramarine."

    Michel writes "The first phase of the competition ended last Monday, and the winner was the owner of a forum called nigritude ultramarine--previously known as Merkey.net. According to Brandon Suit, the owner of this forum, the key to his winning strategy was "getting high PR backlinks"--having other websites with high Page Ranks link to him and vice versa.

    What impact does this have on SEO, and indeed for the rapidly growing search industry in general? The viability of certain underhanded methods in the pursuit of SEO has been clearly reinforced by many of the results of the contest--both Suit and his closest competitor, Philipp Lenssen, posted links in Wiki Sandboxes in order to better their standing. According to Suit, "If you want to manipulate [Google], you can." While search engines certainly have come a long ways from relevance-based searching, it seems that they still have significant changes to make before they can more accurately order results for any given query. The search engines' creators themselves must make countless revisions in their own, perhaps quixotic, quests to create the perfect tools to retrieve relevant data in the vast, ever-expanding realm of the internet."

    However, not everyone is as matter-of-fact about this method of increasing search-engine visibility; May Kasahara is one of the webmasters and wiki users who isn't.

    Kasahara writes: "The Search Engine Optimization contest previously mentioned on Slashdot has had a detrimental effect on wiki users and admins (including myself) lately , as the words 'Nigritude Ultramarine' have been showing up in wiki sandboxes across the web. A search on UseModWiki's homepage brought me to this informative entry, which in turn led me to Nigritude Ultramarine and the Wiki Sandbox Effect [note -- mentioned last week on Slashdot] and to these accompanying comments, mostly from very annoyed wiki users."

    OK, so maybe "infinite" was a strong word. Prof.Phreak writes "Quoting wikipedia: On May 26, 2004, Richard Arenstorf of Vanderbilt University submitted a 38-page proof that there are, in fact, infinitely many twin primes. On June 3, Michel Balazard of Bordeaux reported that Lemma 8 on page 35 is false.[1] As is typical in mathematical proofs, the defect may be correctable or a substitute method may repair or replace the defect. Arenstorf withdrew his proof on June 8, noting "A serious error has been found in the paper, specifically, Lemma 8 is incorrect"."

    What are these dashed lines all over your sacred cow? reifman writes "Slashdot's link to my article in the Seattle Weekly helped generate 175,000 page views and numerous letters and comments. The article seemed to touch a nerve in the Mac and Linux communities. I've posted a follow up responding to people's letters."

    Updates from the Academic Affairs Division. zenrandom writes "As Case Western has just recently been reported, we may as well mention the initiative that will be connecting many schools in Ohio. Oarnet, a part of the Ohio Supercomputer Center and The Ohio State University is building a statewide academic and research fiber optic network. Composed of multiple metro-rings and over 1600 miles of fiber."

    In unrelated college news, Mirell writes "After the FBI previously investigated an open records request filed for the tunnel blueprints at UT, students decide instead to enter via brute force. Hooligans - 1, War Against Terror - 0."

    The problem with opening Pandora's Box. WC writes "The previous review on JDS2 ended with no successful installation so it wasn't very helpful on what to expect from the Sun distro. This new review has got a working installation but with a slew of new problems: more installation woes, unusable networking, buggy Nautilus and Mozilla window resizing artifacts among others. The author concludes that JDS2 is --effectively-- nothing but JDS 1.1 with the added Sun server software on top, but the desktop part has the same (and more) issues like JDS1 had."

    Looking innocent is not their strong suit. tbase writes "As reported on News.com.com, Claria, formerly known as Gator, has sued L.L. Bean, charging the retailer with filing a frivolous lawsuit against its advertisers. As covered in a previous Slashdot story, L.L. Bean has filed suit against current and former Claria advertisers for advertising via pop ups over L.L. Bean's site."

  2. How are System Requirements Determined?

    Ask · Games · · posted by Cliff · from the picking-numbers-out-of-thin-air dept. · 113 comments
    May Kasahara asks: "Seeing as how my Unreal Tournament buddies are considering upgrading to UT2004 soon, I thought I'd check out the system requirements ahead of time. I thought that I'd have no problems, seeing as how UT2004 is mostly just UT2003 with new content, but upon looking up the specs online, I found quite a different story. My PC runs on a 733mHz Pentium III, just meeting the minimum system req.'s for UT2003 (which runs very smoothly on my machine, BTW), but UT2004 requires at least a 1gHz processor for the PC version. Curious, I checked out the UT2003 system specs listed on the official site, and found much the same info-- specs that were quite different from those listed on the retail box in my storage closet. Naturally, I got to thinking about other games and apps, and what I want to know is: what gives? How accurate/trustworthy are system specs listed on a box? Are they artificially inflated to sell more hardware from companies that these publishers are affiliated with (nVidia in UT's case), or is there a more logical explanation?"

  3. Disney Does Digital, Ditches Drawings

    Entertainment · Movies · · posted by simoniker · from the darn-tootin dept. · 337 comments
    May Kasahara writes "This is something which has been the talk amongst animators for the past couple of weeks: Walt Disney Feature Animation is in the process of halting all work on traditionally-animated features and going completely CG. Supposedly, all of their animators-- even staunch traditionalists such as Glenn Keane-- are being trained on 3D computer animation techniques. The last hand-drawn high-budget Disney feature scheduled for release is Home on the Range, which is due out next April. It appears that Disney is bowing to the supposed pressures of the market, even though the hand-drawn Lilo and Stitch was considered a success and the all-CG Dinosaur (done at Disney's now-defunct FX house The Secret Lab) was not. However, I believe there's another factor at work: Pixar's contract with Disney is set to expire soon, and the revered CG house has been making their own demands of Disney for the contract's renewal."

  4. Celebrating Bad Game Packaging Art

    Games · Classicgames · · posted by timothy · from the cel-berate dept. · 247 comments
    May Kasahara writes "Recently, I discovered The Gallery of Hideous Box Art, a collection of some of the worst illustrations ever to grace video game packaging. Many of the entries compare the US cover artwork to the (superior) Japanese ones; in some cases, comparisons with screenshots are also made. Come browse through the annals of video-game-artwork badness, from Strider on through to Wonder Boy III."

  5. Must-See Films at L.A. Anime Festival

    Anime · · posted by ryuzaki0 · from the tom-and-jerry dept. · 153 comments
    May Kasahara writes "The first annual Los Angeles Anime Festival is being held May 2-15. Among other films screening at the festival are Studio Ghibli's The Cat Returns (making its US debut), Memories, and all nine episodes of The Animatrix. However, the film I really want to see is the trippy-looking Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat In Space. More information, including a full schedule of events, is available here."