Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Pro Choice

One of my neighbours has put up a 3x6 foot Pro Life yard sign. It has colour, and a picture. It must have cost some money to make it. I wonder why they're not spending that money to help all the kids in foster care, waiting RIGHT NOW to get adopted? And when you start regulating medical proceedures, where does it end? If they made abortions illigal in New Brunwick again, would the suicide rate go up?

It's already impossible for poor people here to have an abortion. If you live in Saint John, you need about $500 and transportation to Fredericton. The clinic may waive the fee, if you know enough to ask, but how does a third generation welfare recipient get a drive to a city 2 hours away? Imagine that you have a minimum wage job, you're 15 years old, and you can't tell anyone. Exactly.

So, folks, that's why I have three tiny, one colour Pro Choice signs in my yard. For a friend I had in high school, who had two unwanted kids at 17 years old.

Monday, May 22, 2006

Gmail - Spam

5 spam messages last weekend, 33 so far today

I miss the Frog!

Sunday, May 21, 2006

Blue Frog, Blue Security - The official letter

Here's the letter from the Blue Security site, as accessed using the Google cache:

Blue Security Ceases Anti-Spam Operations

When we founded Blue Security in 2004, we believed that if we automated a way for users to rise up and exercise their rights under the CAN-SPAM Act, we could reduce the amount of spam on the Internet.

Over the past few months we were able to leverage the power of the Blue Community and convince top spammers responsible for sending over 25% of the world's spam to comply with our users' opt-out list. We were making real progress in eliminating spam from the lives of our users.

However, several leading spammers viewed this change as a strategic threat to their spam business. The week before last, these spammers launched a series of attacks against us, taking down hundreds of thousands of other websites via a massive Denial-of-Service attack and causing damage to ISPs, website owners and Internet users worldwide. They also began a relentless campaign of email intimidation against many members of the Blue Community.

After recovering from the attack, we determined that once we reactivated the Blue Community, spammers would resume their attacks. We cannot take the responsibility for an ever-escalating cyber war through our continued operations.

As we cannot build the Blue Security business on the foundation we originally envisioned, we are discontinuing all of our anti-spam activities on your behalf and are exploring other, non spam-related avenues for our technological developments. As much as it saddens us, we believe this is the responsible thing to do.

You need not do anything as a result of this change. We will continue to protect your names and addresses and honor all privacy commitments we made to you.

We have concluded we should not take Blue Security to the full deployment stage we originally planned to achieve, but we are proud of what we have accomplished thus far as a young startup company.

We are extremely proud to have had the chance to work with such a devoted and dedicated community: thank you for the vote of confidence you gave us over the past few months as well as the particularly vocal support you have shown over the last two weeks.

We will be innovating and building our technology in new, other directions and will continue to give back to you, our Community.

Thank you for your support,

The Blue Security Team.

Saturday, May 20, 2006

BBC NEWS | Technology | Web attacks end anti-spam effort

It was great while it lasted, but it's over now. No more blue frog :-( It makes me hate spammers even more.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Web attacks end anti-spam effort

Monday, May 15, 2006

Skype - Free Phone Service!!!

Hi there! Skype just started offering free calls within Canada and the US! I just downloaded it and called my home phone with it, and it actually WORKED! Very cool!

Here's how to do it: 1- Get High Speed internet 2- Run out to Radio Shack and get a headset for your computer. About 10 Bucks. You could just use the crappy mic and speakers that came with your computer, I guess. 3- Download and install the program, really easy. 4- Test it using the Test Call buddy that comes with the program. When it works: 5- Try your home phone number. Ignore the thing that asks you to buy credits, and just click on the "Dial" tab. Now, in the little text box, type in the number, like +15065551111 and your phone will ring!!! Cool, eh? I still can't get over it that it's for real!!!

My Skype ID is sheri.richard so look me up :-)

Sheri

Skype - The whole world can talk for free.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

My Website

My personal site is all nicely updated, simplified, and now matches this blog, finally!!

The Richard Family

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Doctor Who on CBC - June 20th? Woohoo!!

Woohoo! Looks like it's possible that maybe Doctor Who will start it's new season on CBC around June 20th ish, hopefully. Yay!! It's playing on BBC One right now, in the UK, but you know how Hockey season goes, eh?

mattwatts.ca � Blog Archive � Doctor Who on CBC - June 20th?

Blue Security - Members Site

I hate getting spam! So, about a year ago I started using this software, called Blue Frog. I love it! It works easily with all the e-mail programs that are out there, from Outlook to Thunderbird, to Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo! I don't get a third of the spam I used to.

This program is working so well that one nasty, ugly, stupid old spammer (Who doesn't like getting asked that we be excluded from his list) has started sending pointless, stupid threats to the people who have the program. I'm not the least bit afraid of him, and you shouldn't be either. We're not dumb enough to believe him, let alone open an attachment from his emails! HA!

Download the program, protect your e-mail addresses, and help show Spammers that we're really, REALLY not interested in their products.

Download Blue Frog! Click here to go to their website!