Arjun Ram

Phil wilson responded to my rant about blogs & porn

Porn sites add themselves to your referrer list in order to boost their
position in search engines! It emerged as the latest trick about two months
ago, I think Dave Winer mentioned it on his blog at some point.

I don’t think there’s any way around it, but you could always add your
referrers page to robots.txt to stop search engines listing it.

and here’s Dave’s mention

Referer spam is starting to get pretty annoying. A couple of weeks ago we finally figured out why porn sites add themselves to referer pages on high page-rank sites: to improve their placement in search engines. Last night at dinner Andrew Grumet came up with the solution. In robots.txt specifically tell Googlebot and its relatives to not index the Referers page. Then the spammers won’t get the page-rank they seek. Maybe they’ll bother someone else.

More info about robots.tx here. So the robots.txt would look like:

User-agent: * Disallow: /Referrers/

Now should a default Robots.txt be created by roller for every user? Dave/Lance/Matt/Anthony any ideas?

Here the note from Rick Ross of Java lobby :

For many of us the JavaOne expo has just become too expensive and may not deliver the benefits we really want when we take the time and spend the money to attend a developer conference. TheServerSide Symposium will be a smaller, more focused and more affordable alternative which may well be what you have been wanting. I’ll be there the entire weekend and look forward to meeting those of you who are able to attend.

Here are the facts of the both the symposiums

This is what I dont understand, why is Ross trying to pitch one symposium against other. If he thinks that JavaOne is more expensive or unaffordable (600$ more), should’nt he lobby with SUN for the price to be reduced!

From what I understand the price difference is 600$ other than accomodation and travel. So if someone can afford about 1,600$ for Serverside symposium then they would probably be able to afford 2000$ for JavaOne. I dont get his argument of offordability!

The ServerSide symposium seems to have more open source folks and agreed that its a much smaller group. But for Ross to pitch one against the other is plain BS! If Serverside had a comparision chart between JavaOne and their symposium then its a different story! But this seems like folks in one team pulling in multiple directions!

BTW Ross is a keynote speaker @ TheServerSide symposium.

Either ways hope to read up on these symposium in the blogsphere! I hope someone attending either posts updates on their blogs.

Traversing thro the blog rolling I ended up @ Sam gentle’s blog. He has a section called “New and Notable“, pretty similar to what eric does for Java technology. Its always good to know what happening on the other side of things .. As someone said  ”read your friends blogs early, read your enemy’s blogs even earlier”   Subscribed!

It appears that the finally chapter of the browser war has been written! Works well for both parties. AOL gets som much needed cash to fill its coffers while Microsoft settles the dispute by emptying some of its pocket change Here are the highlights of the settlement.

(Source News.com)

1. Microsoft to pay Netscape 750$ million
2. AOL Time Warner will receive a seven-year, royalty-free license to continue using Internet Explorer
3. The companies will explore ways for AOL and MSN Messenger to interoperate
4. AOL Time Warner receives a long-term, nonexclusive license to use Microsoft’s Windows Media 9

The 2 companies that stand to loose by this deal in my opinion are Yahoo and Real. AOL has been using Real media player exclusive on its sites like CNN.com and AOL would probably start using windows media player, while on the other end AOL and MSN would try to eliminate Yahoo on the instant messaging platform! What beats me is that when AOL and microsft mention the following

“The companies will explore ways to increase adoption and distribution of digital media, such as making more digital content available”

Yeah right! sure thing AOL! MS has played it really smart here. They have this issue resolved now they are going to go all out to make sure MSN kicks AOL’s rear end!

Wonder what mozilla folks think about it.. Internet explorer licensing deal probably means that Mozilla is less likely to be included in AOL releases.

All in all, you got to give it MS, they are masters in working the system!

Sometimes one over looks the obvious and it has happened to me yet again. This time around, subscription of RSS feeds from W3C. duh! So grab it here. Am I the only one who forgot to subscribe to this or are there other around as well? You can also grab technology specific feeds under the respective pages

A few days ago I ranted about how yahoo and Amazon have not capitalised the market and then I read this.

Amazon.com Inc. said Wednesday that it planned to open several more stores on its online shopping Web site this year, and confirmed it has been considering online distribution of digital media such as music for several years.

Hmm Interesting! Meanwhile erik’s reporting that Real has launched a 79c music download service. Looks after all these days, finally the customer gets value of his/her money. You got to credit Napster, et al for pressuring the music industry!

“unveiled a game machine on Wednesday, the “PSX,” that puts a TV tuner, DVD recorder and game player in a single box. The PSX, which will include a hard-disk drive and broadcast satellite tuner, is due for launch in Japan this year and in Europe and the United States early next year as an all-in-one entertainment device for games, music and moving pictures.”

Neat! I would see my desktop and get myself a PSX and a tablet PC

Can someone tell me why me toolbar (with categories above) appears bigger on IE and works fine on Mozilla (Phoenix)? while the calendar appears fine on IE and is screwed up(left aligned) on Mozilla?

Cross browser support is a pain! Any help is greatly appreciated! arjunram_DOT_myway_DOT_com

Im usually pretty good at updating my windows using windows update in the hope that there would be security fixes. But this report scares the hell of out me! Gee! Reminds me of independence day where a virus is implanted in the mother’s ship and propagated down. So what if someone hacks into microsoft server and infect the windowsupdate! scary as it might sound, the probabily seems to be increasing. More so cuz of the recent security issues that microsoft has had off late? Makes one wonder if microsoft tests it internally before they put it on the main site!

That was me being Devil’s advocate Now dont tell me i need to use Linux, I do have a dual boot @ home.

• Memorial Day was originally known as Decoration Day
• It was first widely observed on May 30,1868
• Several Northern and Southern cities claim to be the birthplace of Memorial Day
• In 1966, the federal government, under the direction of President Lyndon Johnson, declared Waterloo, New York, the official birthplace of Memorial Day.
• In 1971, Congress declared Memorial Day a national holiday to be celebrated the last Monday in May.
• Today, Memorial Day is celebrated at Arlington National Cemetery with a ceremony in which a small American flag is placed on each grave.
• Several Southern states continue to set aside a special day for honoring the Confederate dead, which is usually called Confederate Memorial Day.
• For more info go here

Funny, I have been here for a couple of years and I dont know how to wish someone for memorial day. Does one say “happy memorial day”?

Never thought about it!