He didn't mention link exchanges in the article - merely link buying. You're absolutely correct that with PageRank algorithms that have been around for years that exchanging links actually hurt your results.
Buying a link for cash on the other hand can help you greatly especially if you're buying that link on a PR6 or higher site.
I read this article yesterday and found it very interesting but a little simplistic and light on details. Greg Boser appears to make repeated claims that getting top billing in the search engines is easy, but he doesn't point out that for any particular search engine term, there are thousands of people attempting to get top ranking. Even though the basic concepts are easy, when you have thousands of people competing for limited resources, the task is still going to be difficult.
As for his claim of buying and selling links - a quick search on Google for "buy links" verifies that is very true. Sites such as LinkAdage act as EBay-style auctions for links on sites of various pagerank, various Free-For-All sites allow you to post your links for free for a certain period of time and of course Blog-spamming.
I'm afraid that the long history of people breaking DRM controls (especially by this person) can only lead to one logical conclusion...
Content owners must sue every single person in the world. The RIAA and Apple will likely start with engadget.com for writing a story about it then move on to Slashdot for linking to a story about it and then round it out with everyone that read either of the stories or clicked on any of the links.
In anticipation of the day when Google does become evil and takes over the world and we all wish that we had a time machine so that we could go back to 2005 and stop Google while we still had the chance, I've been doing some searching for plans to build such a contraption.
I think the only plausible defense against a botnet of such a size is to use the botnet against itself. Allow one of your systems to be infected with the botnet - effectively join their network. Then sniff the network traffic to find out what IRC server and channel to join and any security codes that are necessary to control the botnet. Then upload a "virus" into the botnet that will patch the infected system and remove the botnet binaries. No more botnet.
The only thing that makes me think it might not work is that it's similar to the stereotypical way of ridding the world of aliens in almost every sci-fi movie. Come to think of it, I might have gotten this idea from Independence Day.
The courts are very familiar with SLAPP suits (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation).
Many states are adopting Anti-SLAPP legislation that should make this easy to get dismissed and as TFA suggests impose sanctions against the plaintiff.
The MPAA issued a press release saying they went after Lokitorrent. How does that mean that Lokitorrent didn't disappear?
I was as big a fan of Lokitorrent and BitTorrent in general as anyone, but collecting tens of thousands of dollars as a legal defense fund and then mysteriously "settling" and effectively disappearing after the fact does not sit well with me. What were the terms of the settlement? Did Lokitorrent have to turn over all the money they collected from their legal defense fund? I find that unlikely.
Show me a press release with the terms of the settlement and my suspicion could be allayed. Until then, I think it stinks.
Not everyone is rolling over to MIPI, however. The administrator of one site has vowed to seek legal advice as a result of MIPI's enquiries into the legality of his operations.
I think I know the drill here. Set up a legal defense fund, collect tens of thousands of dollars and then disappear.
There are a lot of problems with implementing hydrogen fuel-cell cars and battery-only electric cars. Isn't the biggest problem though the short-term thinking that requires a brand new technology to immediately have all the bells and whistles of a technology that has been around for 100+ years?
Think about it... It doesn't seem that anyone would switch to a new technology no matter what its lack of environmental impact or other benefits unless it:
Handled like gasoline cars or better
Accelerated like gasoline cars or better
Had every other feature of gasoline cars or better
So long as nobody is willing to drive a version 1.0 of anything, I don't see us ever getting out of this cycle of developing a concept car, declaring it to be not profitable or practical and then throwing it away.
I agree with the position of TFA's author... Google will try to treat computers running all types of operating systems as a thing client that has access into various applications within Google's server farms.
This would be fantastic in terms of not having to synchronize data between multiple locations and other tangible benefits. But would anyone trust this? Setting aside the privacy concerns, right now if your internet connection is down, you can still write and print a document. You can still do all sorts of things as a matter of fact. You less you put onto your "thin client" and the more you depend on the network for, the less you will be able to do when the network is down.
I've witnessed a mass-exodus from Hotmail in the last few months. Complaints range from:
1. Being asked to type in a human-verifier code everytime you send an email
2. Server Busy errors for hours or even days
3. Account unavailable due to maintenance issues for hours or even days
4. Horrible interface
5. Spotty spam protection from everyone except the copious amount that Hotmail sends you
I have a Hotmail account that's about 7 years old that I still check from time to time, but I can't imagine using it on a day-to-day basis.
I've been a longtime Google fan and frankly use all of their services reguarly.
The update interval is definitely becoming a serious issue with Google. Their images.google.com is admittedly near-useless for getting an image that's newer than 6 to 9 months. Their search is lagging so far behind other search engines that their results are really starting to suffer.
Hopefully it's just growing pains and they will be able to work out the kinks.
Since Yahoo and Google appear to be encroaching on each others territory now, I guess the only remaining thing to do is to name the duopoly between Yahoo and Google. Windows/Intel has always been called Wintel, for instance.
Apparently someone with some pull at Google reads Slashdot. My listing is now #1 for searching for my own trademark.
Woohoo!
I've been getting Server Busy errors
on
Gmail Goes Public
·
· Score: 2, Funny
For the past few days while using my GMail account, I've been getting Server Busy errors. This has been happening both when logging into my account as well as actions within the account (sending email for instance).
Nothing anywhere near the frequency as my old Hotmail account, but I guess they're still ramping up their userbase slowly so as to avoid this type of thing.
As a side note, I have 49 Vintage GMail invites currently and will sell them for $1,000 each.
I'm a fan of Tivo, but I think any impartial observer would note that Tivo would've definitely been negotiating from a position of weakness. Here's to hoping that they were able to negotiate a deal that would be profitable for them despite them needing Comcast much more than Comcast needed them.
Since the stock is currently up 49.52%, it would appear that a lot of people think this really will benefit them (or there are a lot of shorts panicking and covering their positions).
Re-read the write up of how to do this. This is complicated so it's not surprising you didn't understand it at all on the first read-through. If you want an example of this, search for "insurancegenius" in Google.
When you do, you'll see several sites at the top that are on the domain www.ins123-auto-quotes.com. That is the guy that hijacked one of my sites. The fact that he hijacked the site makes my site completely disappear from the search engine results. To verify this, search for:
site:www.insurancegenius.com
Within Google. You'll get no results. That site has existed for quite some time, yet it doesn't appear in Google's rankings. Why? Solely for the fact that this person created a site with a 302 redirect to my site. Google crawled his site, got the 302 redirect to my site, so then crawled my site and assumed that his site was the same as my site. Its dupe finder had to delete one of them, so it deleted mine and left his up. Now anyone searching for me gets him, no matter what. And I don't appear in the search rankings - at all.
Once again, this is a big deal if you're trying to promote a site. And since a hijacker has infinite attempts at hijacking you, every site can potentially be hijacked no matter what its pagerank.
During these few months, we saw 226,585 unique IP addresses joining at least one of the channels we monitored [...] This shows that the threat posed by botnets is probably worse than originally believed
Doesn't this qualify as the understatement of the year? Never in my wildest dreams did I think a botnet would grow above a few tens of thousands hosts. There's no explanation for such a botnet other than a professional full-time organization specifically created for profit.
Anyway, I couldn't have imagined a better or more authoritative write-up of botnets. Hopefully though it doesn't add fuel to the various ??AA organization's fire of declaring IRC a scourge on humanity.
Slashdot Mirror
Just have 500,000,000 of them watch the other 500,000,000 of them. (And vice versa).
Done and done.
Nobody besides Google insiders know exactly what they do, but I've heard the same thing. I'm not sure I believe it though for the simple reason that:
Competitor A is #1 for "widgets"
Unscrupulous Competitor B is #2 for "widgets"
Being unscrupulous and wanting the #1 position, Competitor B submits Competitor A's site to various link farms.
If that did penalize a site, I think we'd be hearing about it happening all the time.
He didn't mention link exchanges in the article - merely link buying. You're absolutely correct that with PageRank algorithms that have been around for years that exchanging links actually hurt your results.
Buying a link for cash on the other hand can help you greatly especially if you're buying that link on a PR6 or higher site.
I read this article yesterday and found it very interesting but a little simplistic and light on details. Greg Boser appears to make repeated claims that getting top billing in the search engines is easy, but he doesn't point out that for any particular search engine term, there are thousands of people attempting to get top ranking. Even though the basic concepts are easy, when you have thousands of people competing for limited resources, the task is still going to be difficult.
As for his claim of buying and selling links - a quick search on Google for "buy links" verifies that is very true. Sites such as LinkAdage act as EBay-style auctions for links on sites of various pagerank, various Free-For-All sites allow you to post your links for free for a certain period of time and of course Blog-spamming.
Several other people have also written Brazil to advise them to use FedEx for their International shipping to save money.
I'm afraid that the long history of people breaking DRM controls (especially by this person) can only lead to one logical conclusion...
Content owners must sue every single person in the world. The RIAA and Apple will likely start with engadget.com for writing a story about it then move on to Slashdot for linking to a story about it and then round it out with everyone that read either of the stories or clicked on any of the links.
I'm going to hire an attorney now.
In anticipation of the day when Google does become evil and takes over the world and we all wish that we had a time machine so that we could go back to 2005 and stop Google while we still had the chance, I've been doing some searching for plans to build such a contraption.
It seems those Google bastards have anticipated even this!
I think the only plausible defense against a botnet of such a size is to use the botnet against itself. Allow one of your systems to be infected with the botnet - effectively join their network. Then sniff the network traffic to find out what IRC server and channel to join and any security codes that are necessary to control the botnet. Then upload a "virus" into the botnet that will patch the infected system and remove the botnet binaries. No more botnet.
The only thing that makes me think it might not work is that it's similar to the stereotypical way of ridding the world of aliens in almost every sci-fi movie. Come to think of it, I might have gotten this idea from Independence Day.
This article would've scared the crap out of me if I hadn't already sent all my money to a Nigerian Prince.
Once I get the millions in cash I've been promised, I'll be sure to keep it away from any keyboards.
The courts are very familiar with SLAPP suits (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation).
Many states are adopting Anti-SLAPP legislation that should make this easy to get dismissed and as TFA suggests impose sanctions against the plaintiff.
The MPAA issued a press release saying they went after Lokitorrent. How does that mean that Lokitorrent didn't disappear?
I was as big a fan of Lokitorrent and BitTorrent in general as anyone, but collecting tens of thousands of dollars as a legal defense fund and then mysteriously "settling" and effectively disappearing after the fact does not sit well with me. What were the terms of the settlement? Did Lokitorrent have to turn over all the money they collected from their legal defense fund? I find that unlikely.
Show me a press release with the terms of the settlement and my suspicion could be allayed. Until then, I think it stinks.
Not everyone is rolling over to MIPI, however. The administrator of one site has vowed to seek legal advice as a result of MIPI's enquiries into the legality of his operations.
I think I know the drill here. Set up a legal defense fund, collect tens of thousands of dollars and then disappear.
Combine this with Geo-Targeting and it's amazing to know what web sites can find out about you without your consent.
It's like an involuntary a/s/l check from web sites you visit.
I've attended the Seattle Folk Festival many times and often wondered, "When are they going to get mobile processors here?"
There are a lot of problems with implementing hydrogen fuel-cell cars and battery-only electric cars. Isn't the biggest problem though the short-term thinking that requires a brand new technology to immediately have all the bells and whistles of a technology that has been around for 100+ years?
Think about it... It doesn't seem that anyone would switch to a new technology no matter what its lack of environmental impact or other benefits unless it:
Handled like gasoline cars or better
Accelerated like gasoline cars or better
Had every other feature of gasoline cars or better
So long as nobody is willing to drive a version 1.0 of anything, I don't see us ever getting out of this cycle of developing a concept car, declaring it to be not profitable or practical and then throwing it away.
I humbly submit my idea for building a new page for Microsoft to test IE7 with to make sure it does everything Web designers want it to.
Get Firefox!
If it can properly render that link, I'll be satisfied.
I agree with the position of TFA's author... Google will try to treat computers running all types of operating systems as a thing client that has access into various applications within Google's server farms.
This would be fantastic in terms of not having to synchronize data between multiple locations and other tangible benefits. But would anyone trust this? Setting aside the privacy concerns, right now if your internet connection is down, you can still write and print a document. You can still do all sorts of things as a matter of fact. You less you put onto your "thin client" and the more you depend on the network for, the less you will be able to do when the network is down.
I've witnessed a mass-exodus from Hotmail in the last few months. Complaints range from:
1. Being asked to type in a human-verifier code everytime you send an email
2. Server Busy errors for hours or even days
3. Account unavailable due to maintenance issues for hours or even days
4. Horrible interface
5. Spotty spam protection from everyone except the copious amount that Hotmail sends you
I have a Hotmail account that's about 7 years old that I still check from time to time, but I can't imagine using it on a day-to-day basis.
I've been a longtime Google fan and frankly use all of their services reguarly.
The update interval is definitely becoming a serious issue with Google. Their images.google.com is admittedly near-useless for getting an image that's newer than 6 to 9 months. Their search is lagging so far behind other search engines that their results are really starting to suffer.
Hopefully it's just growing pains and they will be able to work out the kinks.
Since Yahoo and Google appear to be encroaching on each others territory now, I guess the only remaining thing to do is to name the duopoly between Yahoo and Google. Windows/Intel has always been called Wintel, for instance.
I prefer Yahoogle, but Goohoo isn't bad either.
Apparently someone with some pull at Google reads Slashdot. My listing is now #1 for searching for my own trademark.
Woohoo!
For the past few days while using my GMail account, I've been getting Server Busy errors. This has been happening both when logging into my account as well as actions within the account (sending email for instance).
Nothing anywhere near the frequency as my old Hotmail account, but I guess they're still ramping up their userbase slowly so as to avoid this type of thing.
As a side note, I have 49 Vintage GMail invites currently and will sell them for $1,000 each.
I'm a fan of Tivo, but I think any impartial observer would note that Tivo would've definitely been negotiating from a position of weakness. Here's to hoping that they were able to negotiate a deal that would be profitable for them despite them needing Comcast much more than Comcast needed them.
Since the stock is currently up 49.52%, it would appear that a lot of people think this really will benefit them (or there are a lot of shorts panicking and covering their positions).
Tim,
Re-read the write up of how to do this. This is complicated so it's not surprising you didn't understand it at all on the first read-through. If you want an example of this, search for "insurancegenius" in Google.
When you do, you'll see several sites at the top that are on the domain www.ins123-auto-quotes.com. That is the guy that hijacked one of my sites. The fact that he hijacked the site makes my site completely disappear from the search engine results. To verify this, search for:
site:www.insurancegenius.com
Within Google. You'll get no results. That site has existed for quite some time, yet it doesn't appear in Google's rankings. Why? Solely for the fact that this person created a site with a 302 redirect to my site. Google crawled his site, got the 302 redirect to my site, so then crawled my site and assumed that his site was the same as my site. Its dupe finder had to delete one of them, so it deleted mine and left his up. Now anyone searching for me gets him, no matter what. And I don't appear in the search rankings - at all.
Once again, this is a big deal if you're trying to promote a site. And since a hijacker has infinite attempts at hijacking you, every site can potentially be hijacked no matter what its pagerank.
During these few months, we saw 226,585 unique IP addresses joining at least one of the channels we monitored [...] This shows that the threat posed by botnets is probably worse than originally believed
Doesn't this qualify as the understatement of the year? Never in my wildest dreams did I think a botnet would grow above a few tens of thousands hosts. There's no explanation for such a botnet other than a professional full-time organization specifically created for profit.
Anyway, I couldn't have imagined a better or more authoritative write-up of botnets. Hopefully though it doesn't add fuel to the various ??AA organization's fire of declaring IRC a scourge on humanity.