The David Attenborough hoax.

David Attenborough

This kind of propaganda is pathetic and troublesome.

I found a post on Facebook today that quoted David Attenborough as saying:

I am unaware of any animal that is as cruel as Israelis -- not even crocodiles. They bomb schools, hospitals, refugee camps, orphanages, UN feeding stations, water works, power plants, ambulances, kids playing on the beach. They put millions of people in a siege. They shoot children going to school. They kidnap kids and harvest their organs. They inject prisoners with disease pathogens before releasing them. They murder by land sea and air. And worst of all, they slander their defenceless victims as "terrorists".

The post has been put on Facebook by an entity called Sotirios Sooty Thoupi who is aware that there is something amiss as he states that the post keeps getting blocked but fails to corroborate his claim with a link to any authentic source.  Here is the link to the post (which may be blocked) https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152157267417282, and here is a screen shot of the offending post as I found it:

Screenshot of Sotirios Sooty Thoupi's post.

On further investigation it appears this quote attributed to David Attenborough is entirely fictional.

The most probably source is from this page on Press TV's web site in the comments.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/07/21/372201/israel-drops-phosphorus-bombs-on-gaza/

Screen shot of Press TV comment.

There is also an exact copy of the text not attributed to David Attenborough by someone going by the name of Aaron Cohen on the Independent's Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/TheIndependentOnline/photos/a.315767831635.155802.13312631635/10152199587196636/

Screen shot of comment on Independent's Facebook page.

Then there is another example posted by umbrokhan786 on:
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/20/33698242-israel-zionist-jews-killing-innocent-people-page-11.html

... and the list goes on.  But nowhere could I find any serious suggestion that David Attenborough is the author of the statement.

So why lie?  Why falsely attribute this quote to David Attenborough attempting to give it weight and credibility?  Obviously this obfuscates the real situation and can only make it worse not better.  On a simple level the question does not need answering as most people 'understand' why someone does it whether they agree with them or not.  It seems on the face of it that this is a destructive and unnecessary abuse.  But there is more to it than that.  There are several issues it raises that are worth considering.

Conditioned values:
There is the question as to how we rate the truth of what we read.  By claiming David Attenborough said it we tend to rate its credibility higher than if someone by the name of Sotirios Sooty Thoupi said it.  We are less likely to question it if it comes from a source we respect.  This leads to the worrying issue of why we so often believe our 'leaders' who we know lie repeatedly.  That, of course, is the authoritarian oppression.  We have been conditioned (or many of us to varying degrees) to accept under threat of pain (be it emotional, psychological or physical) what the people in authority decree.  We need to get over that one.

Discerning the truth:
Then there is the issue of obfuscation and disinformation to deal with.  Sotirios Sooty Thoupi is in fact delivering a vital service, rather like that of computer virus writers.  On the surface it appears it is simply a bad thing but on investigation it turns out to be necessary.  In simple terms we need biological viruses in the real world to maintain a robust and evolving immune system.  We need viruses in the world of computers to force us to make them resilient against threats.  Even if we lived in a world of naive trust there are still external 'bugs' and physical events that would threaten what we now rely on to survive.  But worse, if we were not well protected then a rare malevolence would find it very easy to step in and take control.  Misinformation on both sides helps in strengthening our ability to discern truth from fiction.

Bias:
There is the issue of bias that this kind of thing highlights too.  We do have a propensity to believe what we want to believe more readily than that which we don't want to believe.  There is, of course, a grave danger in this tendency.  It is one thing to check to see if there is corroborating evidence to support a theory or belief but it is more fundamentally robust to search for evidence against our view.  This was well understood and explained philosophically by Karl Popper in his theories of falsification.

This sort of 'positive' deception is as bad as the 'negative' deception but does help us stand back from both to get a more rational view.  There is a lot of trouble in our world today and mostly people don't seem to like it.  I think it is fear that drives many to be self contradictory and belligerent.  I have my own theories about the human neurological network and how it creates the illusion of cognition.  A salient part of the theory is that we copy the world in our physical being to aid interaction with the world.  It is memory of sorts.  If things are working well the copy is fairly good and the openness to learning more remains largely intact.  However, if the process of absorbing experience is interrupted the copy is necessarily faulty.  This leads to inconsistent and flawed comprehension.  It, ironically, often leads to more of the same because similar events are processed through the faulty understanding and strengthen the misunderstanding.  People get more belligerent and extreme as time goes on.  It is akin to the popular term 'cognitive dissonance'.  Stuff doesn't seem right because the internal world view is contradictory and yet the experience of each part seems real.  There then becomes this bizarre situation where people try to change the outside world to force it to match their inner flaws.  The consequences are obvious.

I am often accused of 'sitting on the fence'.  But I take sides.  I side with truth, justice, compassion, cooperation and generally what are regarded as peaceful and creative values.  I oppose lies, manipulation, aggression, abuse and division.

So, much as I accept the existential reality of the avatar 'Sotirios Sooty Thoupi' and his miscreant meme, and I understand to some degree how it plugs into the whole, it remains the case that I dislike and disagree with this sort of misinformation.  It is abusive to David Attenborough and to the viewer.  It also becomes the very thing it appears to be objecting to.

Swordfish

Since I have nothing to write about I will make something up.  How wonderful to tramp through the orange peel of someone else's sword fish.  How ridiculous is it to make a New Year's resolution to write something on my blog every day of the year?  What happens when I have nothing to say?

So I went to http://www.randomwebsite.com/ and the first thing that came up was http://www.historicalweapons.com/.  Not very useful - and it is in Croatian to boot!  You can find out what language it is with Google's translation tool.  It has an auto-detect option.  That is, it automatically detects the language, it doesn't find your car if you have misplaced it on New Year's eve.

Then I came across something a little weird.  A love affair with goat.  But the guy spends more time designing and selling templates for pumpkins now.  His Goatee Style web address is http://goateestyle.com/ and his Zombie pumpkin web site is http://www.zombiepumpkins.com/ but I have embedded the goat romance here.  It may not satisfy the Bronies but Groaties need their fix too.



After this all I got was crap so I have given up on randomwebsite.com - It's a fail.

So I tried stubleupon and came across www.wherecoolthingshappen.com/1-perfectly-timed-photos/ which was a bit nifty.

And I found a quote for which I can't locate the origin but it goes...

"Before you judge others or claim any absolute truth, consider that you can see less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum and hear less than 1% of the acoustic spectrum. As you read this, you are travelling at 220 kilometres per second across the galaxy. 90% of the cells in your body carry their own microbial DNA and are not 'you'. The atoms in your body are 99.9999999999999999% empty space and none of them are the ones you were born with, but they all originated in the belly of a star. Human beings have 46 chromosomes, 2 less than the common potato. The existence of the rainbow depends on the conical photoreceptors in your eyes; to animals without cones, the rainbow does not exist. So you don't just look at a rainbow, you create it. This is pretty amazing, especially considering that all the beautiful colours you see represent less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum."

which is sort of a bit interesting.  Before the internet I used to think these things were very interesting.  Has the internet dulled my sense of wonder?  I wonder!

Well I might get the hang of stumbleupon one day but after some time of stumbling I did come across the Osaka City Station Water Fountain Clock.  It is something else.  Words can't do it justice you will just have to watch it for yourself...



Now I have to go get dinner;  Lots of garlic, tomatoes and noodles.

(If that does not remain the most boring entry this year I will cut of my ... something.)

Making money on the internet

Making money on the internet is not as easy as it used to be.  It has rarely been easy.  Well it is like winning the lottery is easy - if you win.  Some people have made very easy fortunes on the internet like the million dollar home page but it is not easy to come up with ideas that make money and there are no easy recipes.  There are ways, however, to do it.  The way I do it is to create adverts for merchants on affiliate networks and place them on my web site.  I write content and stuff for the web site and if certain products or services are relevant then I can point to the adverts.  People find the adverts and click through to the vendors website.  If they buy something I get a small commission.  It doesn't cost the customer any money and it is a very neat targeted marketing plan for the merchants.  They only pay if they sell something.  I create pages like ...


So if you are wondering how I make money on the internut - that is how!  It's not easy and it doesn't make much at the moment.  But the revenue is growing and if I keep at it I might get out of this poverty hole I am stuck in.  And here is some really neat labelling software if you want to create address labels quickly and easily.  Like that!  And if you want to make money out of thin air that is really easy.  If you want to know something interesting that is easy too :)  And I like making animated gifs too!

Videos Keep Freezing Browser

If you have a Windows XP computer or Windows 7 you might find YouTube frequently causes the computer to crash or your computer freezes.  Sometimes the video continues playing but the browser freezes.  You might ask yourself "Why does my computer freeze?"  Well I was having this problem and I found out why my computer freezes!

Image by Andreas Tille

Strictly speaking it was only the browser and not the computer that was locking up and not responding.  It was happening more and more as I used YouTube.  I searched the internet for a solution but found endless "problem pages" with hundreds of people asking why their computers locked up or froze when watching videos but no useful answers.  I hate these "forum like" sites that elicit questions from users only to offer no answers but hundreds of adverts.

But I persisted and I came across a useful bit of software provided by Microsoft which analyses the codecs on your cvomputer to inform you of any possible clashes or problems.  Codecs are bits of software that facilitate digital video streaming in Windows and various media players.  The software executable is called MicrosoftFixit.Codec.Run.exe and you can download it from: http://support.microsoft.com/mats/video_freezes_or_crashes/en-us.  The reason I mention this is because you don't always know if you can trust downloads nowadays and I have checked this out extensively and used it on my own computer with complete success.

The software checks all the codecs and informs you of any clashes.  You then get the option to disable ones with a problem.  This is always a bit worrying since you don't usually know enough about what is going on inside your machine to feel confident about disabling or deleting system stuff.  But the information I got from the software was pretty straightforward.  It told me there was a conflict problem with a particular codec installed by RealPlayer.  Given that RealPlayer are getting more pushy I don't use their software if I can help it so I was happy to let this software disable RealPlayer's codec.  I have had no more freezing videos.  Problem solved!  That easy once you have a reliable source.

So if your videos keep freezing your browser causing it to hang up you might want to visit http://support.microsoft.com/mats/video_freezes_or_crashes/en-us and download the MicrosoftFixit.Codec.Run.exe program.  Running it to see if anything is wrong doesn't change anything on your computer and you always get the option to fix the problem only if you want.

Google Analytics Content Overview problem

Google are a dangerous force to reckon with nowadays.  They started out as a good company but I think ideas, institutions, corporations and all manner of virtual objects or systems develop along the same lines of survival as Darwinian evolution.  Google seem to think they do everything so "right" that there is no real need to actually communicate with their "users".  (Telling phrase that: "users".  Sounds like drug addiction.)  The Christians thought they were so good they even embarked on an Inquisition to do good in the world and look what that turned into.  People and institutions that think they are so good are maintaining a Freudian "ego" that suits them for the purposes of survival.  That is a primary problem with bringing children up with a judgemental controlling moral framework.  They need to get their parents approval and "being good" achieves just that.  So they have to "be good" to survive and it becomes a compulsion.  A compulsion so strong they will kill to maintain their constructed or conditioned self image.  Have you ever heard any government justifying slaughtering loads of foreigners on moral grounds?  And guess what?  In the end the cannon fodder go along with it believing they are fighting for justice and peace.

So what has this got to do with Google?  Well Google are isolated from their victims with the idea that they service so many billions of individuals that it is impractical to deal with them individually.  So they are perceiving people as their commodity.  Of course they will do things that "appear" to be good and the worst of it is that they will believe it themselves;  That is the purpose of it.  So they are now defining the morality of the communication network that is the internet.  Like any "thing" they need to survive so they will "do good" when it keeps them alive and they will do harm when they interpret a situation as being bad.  A simple example being that they cancelled my account because I mistakenly typed a voucher code in and it was meant for "new users" and I had used them before.  It seems they have analysed this behaviour as malicious so they stop the account and keep the outstanding money.  It is annoying but I don't care much because I found another way around it.  The important thing is that they define what is good and bad with no investigation or trial just their own broad-brush analysis.

Now they have changed the Google Analytics interface.  Of course everyone is going to have to change to it.  At the moment they allow you to use the old version but it will be terminated like a euthanasia subject one day.  The trouble is that although they do their market research they still design it for their own advantage.  It is on such a large scale and affects so many people that it actually defines the way certain business is conducted.  And can you communicate with them over this?  No!  You can tell them what you think but it is a one way conversation.  They get the info for their use and you get nothing.

Anyway - what brought me to this blog was that I just sent them another "comment" from the Google Analytics Content Overview page:

Are you going to fix this problem with long URLs causing the page to fit the screen width instead of the browser width?


Google had a saying once: "Do no evil."  Methinks your lack of contactability is the beginnings of a very evil force in the world.  You might think you are a nice chap working for a nice company but bear in mind they (Google) are running the show now, and like any nice evolved life form it will survive at any cost.


But it would be nice if you could fix this problem on my way to your corporate digestive system.

Viewing JavaScript Output.

A problem I encountered recently was how to actually see the HTML output by JavaScript.  The trouble with producing HTML code from JavaScript is that when you view the source of the rendered page you only get to see the original JavaScript.

For example:  Can you see what is wrong with this JavaScript?
<script type="text/javascript">
  //<!--
  var SquaresAcross=16;
  var SquaresDown=16;
  document.writeln("<table width=\"100%\" border=\"0\" align=\"center\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\">");
  for (i=0; i<(SquaresAcross*SquaresDown); i++)
    {
    if ((i%SquaresDown)==0) {document.writeln(" <tr>")};
    document.writeln("   <td width=\"34\" height=\"34\"> <img src=\"pics/maze/maze-11.gif\" alt=\"s"+i+"\" name=\"s"+i+"\" width=\"34\" height=\"34\" id=\"s"+i+"\" /> </td>");
    if ((i%SquaresDown)==(SquaresDown-1)) {document.writeln("  </tr>")};
    }
  document.writeln("</table>");
  //-->
</script>
Is it going to produce the right HTML code?  And if it doesn't but still runs can you see, from the output, what the problem might be?  It would be so convenient to see the HTML it produces but if you load the page into a browser and view the source all you get is the original JavaScript.

There is a solution!

Load the page into a browser and save it to your hard disk.  Then load the saved version into a browser and 'View Source'.  Hey presto! (Or even Ali Bongo if you like.) The HTML output is in the source for the page.

A useful little tip and more is explained at Toxic Drums: View JavaScript Output

Also... If you want to know how to get HTML code in your Blogger post (like the above example) the simple solution is to go to Simple Bits where you can simply put your code into the processor and it spews out the code required for Blogger.  You can work out how to do it after that.

Google Chrome goes wonky over CSS a:link and a:visited

Arriving back in the wee hours of this morning I took a look at some Toxic Drums web pages. To my amazement and distress I noticed there was something wrong with the web site. The problem was that a lot of the links (particularly in the generic "see also" link bar) had gained a black background.

I investigated and found that this only appeared using Google's "Chrome". All other browsers were displaying the web pages as they had always appeared. This was slightly consoling but still a major worry. Eventually I tracked this down to the way Google Chrome was interpreting the CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) info.

In short if the "link" pseudo-class actually specifies a background color then if the "visited" pseudo-class doesn't specify a background color then Chrome set the background colour to black. Quite where it ascertains the "black" value remains a mystery for me but I guess it could be arbitrary or a default within Chrome.

e.g.

.style4 a:link{color: #CC0000; background-color: #FFFFFF;}
.style4 a:visited{color: #6600FF;}
.style4 a:hover{color: #FFFFFF; background-color: #CC0000;}


the above used to behaves as expected with only the color changing if the link has been visited. Basically an anchor in style4 has red text on a white background for a link and the color changes to purple for a link that has been visited. The hover psuedo-class is kind of irrelevant to this issue. But the display behaviour seems to have changed in Chrome and now the "visited" links were appearing with a black background. A remedy was found by specifying the background color in the "visited" CSS psuedo-class as below.

.style4 a:link{color: #CC0000; background-color: #FFFFFF;}
.style4 a:visited{color: #6600FF; background-color: #FFFFFF;}
.style4 a:hover{color: #FFFFFF; background-color: #CC0000;}


On further investigation I also found that by removing the specification of the background color in the "link" and having no background color in the "visited" also did the job as illustrated below:

.style4 a:link{color: #CC0000;}
.style4 a:visited{color: #6600FF;}
.style4 a:hover{color: #FFFFFF; background-color: #CC0000;}


What I would be interested to find out is whether Google has got the interpretation of the CSS right and all other browsers are actually fudging things or has Google gone and made a mistake with their latest "update" of Chrome. It could be that the interpretation can go either way but I would like to know.