I can't help with asset tracking, but at work, we use OTRS to manage our entire IT support ticketing system. Multiple queues, complete email integration, LDAP support, and a host of other features make it one heck of a solution. Oh, and it's free:)
So, for example, not only would the government know what books you were buying, but the bookstore would also know if you had an outstanding speeding ticket!
Sweet! Now they'll be able to suggest a discount if I buy a copy of "Traffic Court for Dummies!"
They still run on telephone modem due to restrictions imposed by the FTC from the TW/AOL merger - AOL cannot use TW's cable resources unless TW opens their pipes to competitors (which they have refused to do).
This is no longer accurate; Time Warner has been allowing competing providers to sell broadband service that traverses TW cable lines... And AOL is definitely among the providers sharing the lines. Here are a couple of ARP packets that just came over my Time Warner RoadRunner connection:
The aolclient ones are users of the "AOL Highspeed" service, and they seem to be using the same hostname scheme (and thus offering the service) in every RoadRunner market.
With Windows Vista, the operating system will make "shadow" (that is, backup) copies of files and folders for users who have "System Protection" enabled (the default setting).
Sounds to me like those of us who turn "System Protection" off, which would be one of my first few post-install steps, don't have to worry about the new features. Much ado about nothing, it appears...
The disadvantage to relying on a hosts file is that it won't, and can't by design, filter out entire domains. One of my pet peeves is 2o7.net; they host ads for all sorts of places and they're more pervasive than DoubleClick ever was. Check your machines and see how many cookies you have from various subdomains of 2o7.net. You can sit there playing whack-a-mole, and wind up with hundreds of these in your hosts file...
..and still get ads from the servers you haven't identified yet. Or you can really take charge of the situation, set up your own local nameserver, declare it authoritative for 2o7.net, and resolve every last one of their subdomains to dead IP space, forever, no matter how many they add in the future.
What sent me over the edge was when I found a cookie from 192.168.112.2o7.net (which resolves to a couple of IPs in 216.52.17.0/24). As far as I'm concerned, trying to masquerade like that is just plain malicious... They aren't trying to fool users, they're trying to fool admins. Now they and all of their fellow scummy advertisers that I come across are permanently blocked from purveying their wares to anyone here.
I personally find that I work best when I'm not drinking
I know that you were talking about caffiene, but your comment struck me with some significance.
I've found that if I have a particularly tough time getting motivated, a couple of drinks will often soften up the boredom enough, and relax my brain enough, that I'm able to get back into things. I suppose it's all about defining "the zone" that others have mentioned here, and that every programmer knows about. In my experience, you will accomplish your best work when you're just shy of comfortable; for me, "comfortable" frequently equates to inebriation, and thus I tend to perform very well after imbibing a bit.
Disclaimer: this applies to the work that I do from home (e.g. what I'm working on now, at zero dark thirty), and not to the work that I do at work. I do not drink during the workday, and if you don't work at home, I don't suggest that you do so either.
I totally agree with regards to your points 1 and 4. The cooler the better, and I'm much more productive before lunch than I am after lunch. Make hay while the coffee's fresh!
Developers aren't the only IT folks who need (or are made to use) version control. Technical writers, graphic designers, sysadmins... You name it, those folks have a use for it.
I'll take a different stab at it
on
PHP Hacks
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Having looked at the book's website, some of the hacks involve such things as "creating custom MP3 broadcasts" and "integrating web sites with Google Maps." There are potential legal ramifications to these sorts of applications. Google Maps comes with a terms of service agreement, for example; and you can imagine the sort of trouble that someone might get into if they set up a "custom MP3 broadcast" that was noticed by anyone other than their circle of friends on Myspace. I don't have the book, but I'm willing to bet that discussions of the legality of the code samples are primarily comprised of disclaimers.
Heh. I remember going on a canoe trip at camp a while ago. After floating down the river for a couple of hours, the canoes got spread out, so that they were out of sight of each other. And then this kid gets an idea: "Hey! Were all alone in the middle of a river! We can cuss as much as we want!"
Out of sheer curiosity, was it a religious camp of some sort? That's off on a tangent but living in the bible belt I see that sort of attitude more often than I'm comfortable with. Like, whoa, mom and dad aren't around so god isn't going to care if I say "fuck!"
I'm only 26, and it pains me that there are kids (well, teens..I'm not trying to be condescending) existing in this country who think that cussing is some sort of luxury.
I heart my parents! I can't say it enough. It's all about the parenting. I feel sorry for the dude who couldn't believe he had an opportunity to curse - I hope he adjusts well. The real world is something that his parents neglected to prepare him for.
I have the DVD of "Good Night and Good Luck." I really enjoyed the film (and I recommend it highly, especially around here, where its political sentiment will likely ring true with many readers). One of the coolest things about that DVD is that, after watching the film, I was able to watch it again and hear George Clooney and Grant Heslov's commentary dubbed over the movie. I'm not a big fan of George Clooney, but I didn't care; it was really insightful to hear anecdotes and scene descriptions from the writers themselves. You can gain a real understanding for the composition of the film.
You watch the film once and you interpret it in your own way. Then you can watch it again (and since you've already seen it, the voiceovers don't ruin anything) and you learn why certain scenes were included, why they contributed to the plot, why the actors were directed in a certain manner, etc. I think it's a cool feature. I'm not so sure about downloading a commentary, but having it on the DVD is a "value added" service that makes it worth owning, IMO...
Are you telling me that through out all of high school you never said something like: "Another pop quiz? I wish the teacher were dead."
Sure I did, but I made damned sure that nobody but the friend(s) I was talking to would overhear me, and I sure as hell never wrote it down. I learned very early on - 4th grade, as a matter of fact; I still remember the teacher and the incident - that anything you write down can and will come back to haunt you. It's a lesson I've not forgotten. I'm glad that I actually had the ability, the freedom, and the opportunity to fuck up so young. It's saved my hide in any number of situations that I might have otherwise gotten into since then.
That said, I can understand why this kid didn't know not to "write it down." There's been a huge paradigm shift in society since those days. I was fortunate enough to live my childhood and adolescence in an age where most parents took responsibility for raising their own kids, instead of throwing up their hands in defeat and bitching that the government didn't do it for them. I grew up in a time where I actually knew what "go play outside" meant, and my parents actively encouraged me to do so, with no adult supervision, no less!
It was through those experiences that I learned how to look out for myself. I learned right from wrong. Perhaps more importantly, I learned that sometimes, doing the "right thing" is the wrong decision, and vice versa. There are times when doing something wrong, or even breaking a law, is the prudent thing to do. And there are those times when no matter how right you may feel, no matter how oppressed you might think yourself to be, and no matter how unfair life is, you simply need to shut up and take it, or at the very least, avoid flaunting your opinions until such time as you're confident that you're going to win the battle. If I could sit down with every teenager in the country and give them one piece of advice, that would be it.
Some may say it's a bad thing that I knew how to play politics by the time I was 15, or that I somehow "lost my innocence" at too young an age, but it's served me well enough ever since and I wouldn't have it any other way. I may have had similar fantasies to the kid in this article about some of my high school teachers, but I didn't communicate them to anyone. By the time I hit high school, I already was aware of what the limits were, how far I could push them (for the most part; I'm not saying I never got in trouble at all;) and when they'd push back.
I have a hard time picking a side in this case. On the one hand, I want to say the kid is an idjit for doing what he did. On the other hand, I can sympathize with why he did it. Flip the coin again and I have a hard time comprehending that someone who's grown up "post-Columbine" wouldn't realize that this sort of thing is going to cause problems. And back to the other side yet again, he's probably just ignorant and clueless, and doesn't know that columbine is the name of a pretty purple flower, much less that of a tragic school shooting. I don't really blame the school system, but I can't blame the kid, either.
Kids these days are so sheltered by their parents that they aren't getting the chance to develop those decision making abilities. As the saying goes, "good experience comes from judgement, judgement comes from bad experience." In other words, if you aren't afforded the opportunity to make the wrong decisions now and then, you're never going to learn how to make the right decisions.
Mom and Dad hear on the news every night that a child molestor lurks on every streetcorner waiting to snap up Junior (or Juniette), and they buy into it, and suddenly "go play outside" is replaced by "go play video games." Social interaction is limited to groups of their peers, and frequently not in-person. Then Mom and Dad see one of - what is it, 8 or 10 now - episodes of Dateline NBC about !!!EVIL SEX PERVERTS ON EVERY WEBSITE ARE RAPING YOUR
I dont think Al Qaeda attacks would be reduced, nor would Iran, North Korea etc cease to build bombs. They'll only be encouraged. Makes me wonder whats the point.
To begin with, you need to clear your head of the misconception that Al Qaeda is any more of a threat to the world than drunk driving. Next, realize that the point of this research is to remain on top, which is the only way to "win" when nuclear is an option. Nuclear ordnance is not built to be used, at least not in the last half-century. It's built to be bragged about.
In the global power economy, who would you rather be:
a) The USA with 6,000 supernukes
b) North Korea with 20 maybenukes
c) Iran with an "energy program" that "might" be capable of producing deployable nuclear munitions
If you ask, "who the fuck cares, when one nuke is all it takes?" then you're not getting it. All the world knows that one nuke is all it takes, and at least for the time being, nobody in the world wants to fire that nuke for fear of MAD. Not even in the middle east, not even Kim Jong or his cousin Menta Li. And so it devolves into a dick-measuring contest, as these things tend to do. And so the United States wants to show it has the biggest dick[1], as it tends to want.
[1] There is a Bush joke here that I will abstain from making.
Don't you realize that ATT is a backbone, and that a whole lot of the world's internet traffic passes over ATT fiber? They're capable of sniffing a hell of a lot more than their own WorldNet service...
Add my vote for Usenet. Perhaps I'm old-school, but newsgroups are one of the first resources I tap when I'm having a problem. I don't mean to sound elitist, but these days, most of us who bother with Usenet are geek enough to know where to ask questions, and how and when to help those who ask questions that we can answer. Your average Joe troublemaker has no idea that Usenet exists, and thus doesn't cause problems there.
Anyone can stumble upon a web forum, and that includes those of less personable character. On Usenet you generally run into more enlightened folks who are willing to help. (Of course, Google Groups has sort of re-AOL-ized Usenet in a way; but the archive they provide in return is invaluable.) Usenet will never be without trolls and newbies, but the signal to noise ratio is generally much more acceptable than firing a random web search on a particular topic. And the trolls are easier to ignore.
Bank of America, Washington Mutual and Citibank are among the financial institutions that have replaced more than 200,000 debit cards in the past two months...
I have a BofA account, and the associated debit card. When I first received it, I was a bit miffed that it came with a 6-digit PIN, but now I've gotten used to it and I wish my other card issuers offered the option to select a PIN longer than 4 digits.
That said, this is the first I've heard anything about BofA debit cards being pilfered and replaced. As someone who is paranoid by default, I am questioning the security status of my BofA debit card. I have, regretfully, shopped at Best Buy within the past month; when my LAN went down due to a burnt-up switch and I had to get a new one, BB was my easiest option.
Should I be worried? Considering that I've received no contact from BofA regarding this situation, I don't know whether to feel placated or even more paranoid.
What irritates the hell out of me is that groups like the Parents Television Council generate thousands of complaints to the FCC about the fact that this clip aired on television, yet they're hosting the very same clip on their own website. A website that any kid with half a brain can find, and watch the clip. If it's so oh-my-gosh outrageous and offensive, why are they hosting a copy of it that any kid can download?
I blogged about this particular instance back in January 2005 when this first came up, Parents Television Council Hypocrites. I should note that PTC has actually removed a lot of the vulgarity citations from their site (many of the links in that blog entry are Google searches that no longer produce the same results). It's also interesting that I had to go digging around to figure out why "teen orgy" was showing up as a hot referring search term to my blog over the past couple of days.
...but this story gives me yet another reason not to. I mean come on, a Google story once in awhile is valuable, as is a Firefox story once in awhile, or a Perl story every now and then.
But for the past month, it seems that every day brings a new Google story or three to Slashdot. Then we start getting "news" stories like this which aren't news at all, but instead describe features of Google which have existed for at least a year. I suppose that I could submit a story about Google indexing belly-button lint, referencing a two paragraph article that I posted somewhere, and it would wind up on the/. front page.
This story is a non-story, like many of the Google stories lately. Google.org has a bit of text promising to be philanthropic, in some undetermined manner, at some undetermined point in the future. How in $DEITY's name is this a news story? If I were to buy the.org version of my company's domain, and erect a similar site claiming that I want to do great things, would it be worthy of an entry on Slashdot's front page? Of course not.
Does OSDN get a kickback from Google for every Google article posted here? I really want to know, because it's getting ridiculous, and if Slashdot doesn't provide a way to opt-out of the multitude of unnecessary Google articles, there's no way that I'm going to start paying for this.
Ugh. Blue LEDs are, without a doubt, the most annoying new fad in consumer gadgetry. The problem is they're suddenly showing up in everything, replacing green LEDs as the default.
A couple of months ago I bought an all-in-one VCR/DVD deck that plays and records to both tapes and DVDs. Hell of a convenient unit, except that when you power this puppy up, it has four blue LEDs on its face. One for "power on," one for "disc in," one for "tape in," and one down by the controls which I guess is there for the hell of it. The clock is a matched-color blue LCD display.
The blue LEDs are absolute distractions. Even during the day, with the lights on or the sun coming in the windows, my eyes want to focus on the blue lights instead of on the TV screen. I'm not sure whether it's the intensity of the LEDs, or the fact that the eyes are more sensitive to blue light. Probably some combination of both - they chose blue strobes on cop cars for a reason I guess - but whatever, it's damned annoying.
Give me a soft green LED any day. Enough with these bright blue ones.
1. search Google for 'allinurl:', e.g. 'allinurl:slashdot.org'.
Actually, as I understand it, you should search Google for 'site:' e.g. 'site:slashdot.org' and not 'allinurl:'.
'allinurl:' shows URLs that contain a specific keyword, which can lead to false positives. 'site:' is supposed to show only the pages that Google knows about within a certain domain. If you search for 'site:yoursite.com' and get results from sites other than yoursite.com, then you know you've been affected. Especially if those other domains have taken the #1 result.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't help with asset tracking, but at work, we use OTRS to manage our entire IT support ticketing system. Multiple queues, complete email integration, LDAP support, and a host of other features make it one heck of a solution. Oh, and it's free :)
Assuming a table named aol_search, with columns user_id and search_term, this will speed things up:
alter table aol_search add index users(user_id)
alter table aol_search add index terms(search_term)
If you're querying on the URLs, add an index for those too.
In the last 10 years, I've flown maybe 5 times, and tomorrow I've got a flight. It's only natural that this crap had to happen now.
No shampoo or hair gel allowed on the plane? I wonder if the mousse in my hair will get me a trip to gitmo...
The aolclient ones are users of the "AOL Highspeed" service, and they seem to be using the same hostname scheme (and thus offering the service) in every RoadRunner market.
..and still get ads from the servers you haven't identified yet. Or you can really take charge of the situation, set up your own local nameserver, declare it authoritative for 2o7.net, and resolve every last one of their subdomains to dead IP space, forever, no matter how many they add in the future.
What sent me over the edge was when I found a cookie from 192.168.112.2o7.net (which resolves to a couple of IPs in 216.52.17.0/24). As far as I'm concerned, trying to masquerade like that is just plain malicious... They aren't trying to fool users, they're trying to fool admins. Now they and all of their fellow scummy advertisers that I come across are permanently blocked from purveying their wares to anyone here.
I've found that if I have a particularly tough time getting motivated, a couple of drinks will often soften up the boredom enough, and relax my brain enough, that I'm able to get back into things. I suppose it's all about defining "the zone" that others have mentioned here, and that every programmer knows about. In my experience, you will accomplish your best work when you're just shy of comfortable; for me, "comfortable" frequently equates to inebriation, and thus I tend to perform very well after imbibing a bit.
Disclaimer: this applies to the work that I do from home (e.g. what I'm working on now, at zero dark thirty), and not to the work that I do at work. I do not drink during the workday, and if you don't work at home, I don't suggest that you do so either.
I totally agree with regards to your points 1 and 4. The cooler the better, and I'm much more productive before lunch than I am after lunch. Make hay while the coffee's fresh!
Having looked at the book's website, some of the hacks involve such things as "creating custom MP3 broadcasts" and "integrating web sites with Google Maps." There are potential legal ramifications to these sorts of applications. Google Maps comes with a terms of service agreement, for example; and you can imagine the sort of trouble that someone might get into if they set up a "custom MP3 broadcast" that was noticed by anyone other than their circle of friends on Myspace. I don't have the book, but I'm willing to bet that discussions of the legality of the code samples are primarily comprised of disclaimers.
I'm only 26, and it pains me that there are kids (well, teens..I'm not trying to be condescending) existing in this country who think that cussing is some sort of luxury.
I heart my parents! I can't say it enough. It's all about the parenting. I feel sorry for the dude who couldn't believe he had an opportunity to curse - I hope he adjusts well. The real world is something that his parents neglected to prepare him for.
I have the DVD of "Good Night and Good Luck." I really enjoyed the film (and I recommend it highly, especially around here, where its political sentiment will likely ring true with many readers). One of the coolest things about that DVD is that, after watching the film, I was able to watch it again and hear George Clooney and Grant Heslov's commentary dubbed over the movie. I'm not a big fan of George Clooney, but I didn't care; it was really insightful to hear anecdotes and scene descriptions from the writers themselves. You can gain a real understanding for the composition of the film.
You watch the film once and you interpret it in your own way. Then you can watch it again (and since you've already seen it, the voiceovers don't ruin anything) and you learn why certain scenes were included, why they contributed to the plot, why the actors were directed in a certain manner, etc. I think it's a cool feature. I'm not so sure about downloading a commentary, but having it on the DVD is a "value added" service that makes it worth owning, IMO...
Sure I did, but I made damned sure that nobody but the friend(s) I was talking to would overhear me, and I sure as hell never wrote it down. I learned very early on - 4th grade, as a matter of fact; I still remember the teacher and the incident - that anything you write down can and will come back to haunt you. It's a lesson I've not forgotten. I'm glad that I actually had the ability, the freedom, and the opportunity to fuck up so young. It's saved my hide in any number of situations that I might have otherwise gotten into since then.
;) and when they'd push back.
That said, I can understand why this kid didn't know not to "write it down." There's been a huge paradigm shift in society since those days. I was fortunate enough to live my childhood and adolescence in an age where most parents took responsibility for raising their own kids, instead of throwing up their hands in defeat and bitching that the government didn't do it for them. I grew up in a time where I actually knew what "go play outside" meant, and my parents actively encouraged me to do so, with no adult supervision, no less!
It was through those experiences that I learned how to look out for myself. I learned right from wrong. Perhaps more importantly, I learned that sometimes, doing the "right thing" is the wrong decision, and vice versa. There are times when doing something wrong, or even breaking a law, is the prudent thing to do. And there are those times when no matter how right you may feel, no matter how oppressed you might think yourself to be, and no matter how unfair life is, you simply need to shut up and take it, or at the very least, avoid flaunting your opinions until such time as you're confident that you're going to win the battle. If I could sit down with every teenager in the country and give them one piece of advice, that would be it.
Some may say it's a bad thing that I knew how to play politics by the time I was 15, or that I somehow "lost my innocence" at too young an age, but it's served me well enough ever since and I wouldn't have it any other way. I may have had similar fantasies to the kid in this article about some of my high school teachers, but I didn't communicate them to anyone. By the time I hit high school, I already was aware of what the limits were, how far I could push them (for the most part; I'm not saying I never got in trouble at all
I have a hard time picking a side in this case. On the one hand, I want to say the kid is an idjit for doing what he did. On the other hand, I can sympathize with why he did it. Flip the coin again and I have a hard time comprehending that someone who's grown up "post-Columbine" wouldn't realize that this sort of thing is going to cause problems. And back to the other side yet again, he's probably just ignorant and clueless, and doesn't know that columbine is the name of a pretty purple flower, much less that of a tragic school shooting. I don't really blame the school system, but I can't blame the kid, either.
Kids these days are so sheltered by their parents that they aren't getting the chance to develop those decision making abilities. As the saying goes, "good experience comes from judgement, judgement comes from bad experience." In other words, if you aren't afforded the opportunity to make the wrong decisions now and then, you're never going to learn how to make the right decisions.
Mom and Dad hear on the news every night that a child molestor lurks on every streetcorner waiting to snap up Junior (or Juniette), and they buy into it, and suddenly "go play outside" is replaced by "go play video games." Social interaction is limited to groups of their peers, and frequently not in-person. Then Mom and Dad see one of - what is it, 8 or 10 now - episodes of Dateline NBC about !!!EVIL SEX PERVERTS ON EVERY WEBSITE ARE RAPING YOUR
In the global power economy, who would you rather be:
a) The USA with 6,000 supernukes
b) North Korea with 20 maybenukes
c) Iran with an "energy program" that "might" be capable of producing deployable nuclear munitions
If you ask, "who the fuck cares, when one nuke is all it takes?" then you're not getting it. All the world knows that one nuke is all it takes, and at least for the time being, nobody in the world wants to fire that nuke for fear of MAD. Not even in the middle east, not even Kim Jong or his cousin Menta Li. And so it devolves into a dick-measuring contest, as these things tend to do. And so the United States wants to show it has the biggest dick[1], as it tends to want.
[1] There is a Bush joke here that I will abstain from making.
Don't you realize that ATT is a backbone, and that a whole lot of the world's internet traffic passes over ATT fiber? They're capable of sniffing a hell of a lot more than their own WorldNet service...
Add my vote for Usenet. Perhaps I'm old-school, but newsgroups are one of the first resources I tap when I'm having a problem. I don't mean to sound elitist, but these days, most of us who bother with Usenet are geek enough to know where to ask questions, and how and when to help those who ask questions that we can answer. Your average Joe troublemaker has no idea that Usenet exists, and thus doesn't cause problems there.
Anyone can stumble upon a web forum, and that includes those of less personable character. On Usenet you generally run into more enlightened folks who are willing to help. (Of course, Google Groups has sort of re-AOL-ized Usenet in a way; but the archive they provide in return is invaluable.) Usenet will never be without trolls and newbies, but the signal to noise ratio is generally much more acceptable than firing a random web search on a particular topic. And the trolls are easier to ignore.
That said, this is the first I've heard anything about BofA debit cards being pilfered and replaced. As someone who is paranoid by default, I am questioning the security status of my BofA debit card. I have, regretfully, shopped at Best Buy within the past month; when my LAN went down due to a burnt-up switch and I had to get a new one, BB was my easiest option.
Should I be worried? Considering that I've received no contact from BofA regarding this situation, I don't know whether to feel placated or even more paranoid.
What irritates the hell out of me is that groups like the Parents Television Council generate thousands of complaints to the FCC about the fact that this clip aired on television, yet they're hosting the very same clip on their own website. A website that any kid with half a brain can find, and watch the clip. If it's so oh-my-gosh outrageous and offensive, why are they hosting a copy of it that any kid can download?
I blogged about this particular instance back in January 2005 when this first came up, Parents Television Council Hypocrites. I should note that PTC has actually removed a lot of the vulgarity citations from their site (many of the links in that blog entry are Google searches that no longer produce the same results). It's also interesting that I had to go digging around to figure out why "teen orgy" was showing up as a hot referring search term to my blog over the past couple of days.
..can it decipher doctors' handwriting on prescription pads? That would be a momentous scientific advance!
...but this story gives me yet another reason not to. I mean come on, a Google story once in awhile is valuable, as is a Firefox story once in awhile, or a Perl story every now and then.
/. front page.
.org version of my company's domain, and erect a similar site claiming that I want to do great things, would it be worthy of an entry on Slashdot's front page? Of course not.
But for the past month, it seems that every day brings a new Google story or three to Slashdot. Then we start getting "news" stories like this which aren't news at all, but instead describe features of Google which have existed for at least a year. I suppose that I could submit a story about Google indexing belly-button lint, referencing a two paragraph article that I posted somewhere, and it would wind up on the
This story is a non-story, like many of the Google stories lately. Google.org has a bit of text promising to be philanthropic, in some undetermined manner, at some undetermined point in the future. How in $DEITY's name is this a news story? If I were to buy the
Does OSDN get a kickback from Google for every Google article posted here? I really want to know, because it's getting ridiculous, and if Slashdot doesn't provide a way to opt-out of the multitude of unnecessary Google articles, there's no way that I'm going to start paying for this.
Ugh. Blue LEDs are, without a doubt, the most annoying new fad in consumer gadgetry. The problem is they're suddenly showing up in everything, replacing green LEDs as the default.
A couple of months ago I bought an all-in-one VCR/DVD deck that plays and records to both tapes and DVDs. Hell of a convenient unit, except that when you power this puppy up, it has four blue LEDs on its face. One for "power on," one for "disc in," one for "tape in," and one down by the controls which I guess is there for the hell of it. The clock is a matched-color blue LCD display.
The blue LEDs are absolute distractions. Even during the day, with the lights on or the sun coming in the windows, my eyes want to focus on the blue lights instead of on the TV screen. I'm not sure whether it's the intensity of the LEDs, or the fact that the eyes are more sensitive to blue light. Probably some combination of both - they chose blue strobes on cop cars for a reason I guess - but whatever, it's damned annoying.
Give me a soft green LED any day. Enough with these bright blue ones.
'allinurl:' shows URLs that contain a specific keyword, which can lead to false positives. 'site:' is supposed to show only the pages that Google knows about within a certain domain. If you search for 'site:yoursite.com' and get results from sites other than yoursite.com, then you know you've been affected. Especially if those other domains have taken the #1 result.
Here is one example.
Here is another example.