Ah, I remember the good old days of eBay, when you could peruse the entire inventory in an hour, read about the Ebola virus on the main page, and list your soul for sale if the mood struck you. But now it seems the online auction house’s rules, growing more voluminous by the year, are wiping out even the last bits of fun to had on the site. And as if that weren’t bad enough, new rules keep cropping up which seem to have one purpose: protecting the stupid at the other users’ expense.

For example, everybody who uses eBay knows to check the shipping cost before bidding. That’s a given. But instead of placing responsibility on the buyers, where it belongs, eBay has decided to put shipping caps on certain categories, such as video games and books. If you sell a book on eBay, you literally cannot put the shipping cost above $4.00. Everybody knows that Priority Mail costs more than $4.00, even for the lightest shipment headed to the closest destination. So you are left to resort to shipping your books via Media Mail (affectionately referred to as the “slow boat to China” option). However, if your book is very heavy, such as is the case with the majority of textbooks, $4.00 will not even cover Media Mail costs. In frustration, most sellers will probably just increase the cost of the item and offer free shipping. I suspect this may be eBay’s ulterior motive (beyond protecting the stupid and/or lazy) because in this case they get to take a cut of the higher priced item, whereas they don’t take any percentage of shipping fees. Bottom line: sellers make less, eBay makes more, and stupid people are spared having to think too hard or read too much.

Another new development is the banning of certain key words. Users trying to put “Like New” in the title of their listings will receive the following error:

Oops!

Before listing this item, be sure to describe it as “slightly used,” “refurbished,” or other similar words that make it clear the item isn’t new. You can’t use phrases such as “like new” because the listing will show up in search results for new items, which would not be right since the item is used

Yes, really. I couldn’t make this stuff up. In my most humble opinion, someone who can’t differentiate the meaning of “New” from “Like New” shouldn’t be using a computer, let alone spending money through it.

I am torn between feeling offended that eBay thinks its demographic is composed primarily of half-wits and wondering if that really is the case. In 12+ years, I have only ever dealt with reasonably intelligent people through eBay (with one or two glaring exceptions) so I find this “dumbing down” to be a disturbing development, especially when it is a bane to people of normal or higher intelligence. It is possible that catering to idiots may have the unintended result of attracting them like flies. For the rest of us, I suppose, there’s always Craigslist.

Recently the House passed an amendment to the Matthew Shepard Act, intended to further protect LGBTIQ (that is, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and/or queer) people from hate crimes. President Obama has already announced that he intends to sign the bill. Senate is preparing to vote.

That is all well and good, and as it should be, in a country whose press release would have you believe that it is and always has been a magical place where every individual enjoys both equality and freedom.

However, the AFA (”American Family Association”) has today sent out a press release stating that this act will, quote, “give legally protected status to pedophiles.” [I will not link to the original, though it can be easily found through a web search, or you can view a screenshot here.] Although I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt, I can only conclude that this statement is purposefully incendiary. The poor logic behind what is surely a hastily thrown-together argument hinges upon the fact that the government has not legally defined “sexual orientation.” They go on to name-drop quote inaccurately the American Psychiatric Association as defining pedophilia as a “sexual orientation,” then they conclude that pedophiles will go around enjoying some sort of vaguely hinted at “special protection” and “protected legal status” under this new law. While they do not come out and say it directly, they have chosen these words in order to suggest that this law will legalize pedophilia as a practice, and thereby infuriate and incite their members into calling their Senators and mindlessly forwarding their action alerts without further investigation into the truth of the situation.

Please see the List of Fallacies, particularly of type “Red Herring” and see how many you can find in the AFA’s argument.  The overall tone of the campaign is an “Appeal to Fear” specifically. To break down this “argument” piece by piece:

Red Herring #1 - The fact that the government has not legally defined “sexual orientation” is irrelevant. Why? Because it just doesn’t matter. It is a matter of personal preference and therefore not the government’s business. Anything which is criminal behavior is well-defined legally and is clearly not an “orientation.” I believe this could best be called a “Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy.”
Red Herring #2 - The APA defines pedophilia as a mental health disorder under the classification of a paraphilia, not a sexual orientation.
Red Herring #3 - The spin making this entire bill about “pedophiles” instead of law-abiding Americans who happen to be LGBTIQ is known in logic as an Association Fallacy (Guilt by Association). Thereby the real argument is hidden by one that is completely irrelevant.
Red Herring #4 - A quick look at the Wikipedia entry for this Act will reveal that this act does not give anyone “special” protection under the law, let alone pedophiles. It does reinforce the idea that people in America, regardless of their sexual persuasion, gender, disability, etc, should be protected from being beat up or killed in the streets. As ridiculous as it is to actually have to say this, again, it does not decriminalize pedophilia.

Now, it does not matter what you personally feel about LGBTIQ people. Even if you do not approve of  your neighbor’s lifestyle, you cannot beat him or her to death in the streets. This philosophy was not born in America. I remember another great leader who taught many people not to throw that first stone.

I urge you to call your Senators and ask them to support the Matthew Shepard Act, S.909. You can view more information and get the numbers for your Senators at the Human Rights Campaign website.

AFA leaders, I offer a challenge to you: If you oppose the right of every American to be legally protected from crime and brutality due to prejudice, then have the decency to say so openly. Furthermore, realize that this same protection has given you the freedom to practice your religion without fear of repercussion. If you cannot argue against this act without using dishonest methods such as red herrings and emotional buzzwords, then let it alone. And you might take a moment to ask yourself: WWJD.

I have been recently asked how to create one of these web form verifications things (particularly, featuring CAPTCHA images) which will confirm that a real human is submitting your form, rather than a bot sending you ads for Viagra and other happy pills. I can tell you firsthand that some sort of verification is necessary, as I recently posted a form without one and indeed, my inbox runneth over.

There are a few ways to create one of these verifications. The most common way is to install a PHP script on your server which creates a CAPTCHA image. Google has released such a script under a GNU General Public License, which you can download here. Another way is to use a third party service such as ReCAPTCHA, which is a little simpler to implement. ReCAPTCHA also makes a cool Wordpress plugin which protects your comment form. It also has the ability to hide your email address until a CAPTCHA image is solved, which may be an alternative to using a web form in some cases. (As an aside, it is really interesting to note that every time someone solves a ReCAPTCHA, it is helping a computer somewhere over at Carnegie Mellon University learn to digitize books better… How space age is that?)

However, even this can be complicated for those who are not technically inclined or for those of us who are technically inclined but too lazy to bother. Some of us would prefer not to rely on a third party solution if possible. Another group are those humans who hate those damn things because they are often incomprehensible, cause eye strain, or in some strange happenstance of the Universe, seem to curse at you (see this post and this post).

As an alternative, I have seen a few web forms using a simple mathematical problem, which presumably only a human can calculate. Usually it is something like “1+1 = ?” and the user has to input the proper value in order to send the form. I like to take this a step further and make it a word problem, preferably related to the content of the site,  if possible. If it is slightly amusing and causes a little head-scratching, even better. For example, take a look at my contact page. The disadvantage is that word problems could be confusing for those who don’t speak English well (or those with a serious math disability) so I have made my form so that it will accept any value as long as something is entered. If I wanted to take it a step further, I could filter my email so that only emails with the correct value get through, or force the right value to be entered on the form in the first place. Spammers may eventually figure this out, so I may have to change the problems occasionally and force the right value in the future. But I am banking on my estimation that most spammers are too lazy to bother, when there are so many juicy unprotected forms out there for the pickings.

At my local grocery store, they have a unique setup allowing you to pick up your grocery purchases at a drive-thru, where the groceries are loaded into your car for you. (Old and/or lazy people love it, but I digress!) Each of the little bins they put your groceries in has a three letter code. Most of them are nonsense, but a few are actual words. Yesterday, a bin was picked for me that said, “OLD.” I said under my breath (to the Universe), “Is that a sign?” and the next bin that was pulled said, “YUP.” True story ;P

In these challenging economic times, this recipe will yield an inexpensive but delicious latte-like drink which will satisfy most $4.00 Starbucks iced latte addicts. Die-hard espresso afficionados may detect the difference, but even they will most likely accept this drink (at least when times are tough!).

Ingredients:

• Medaglia D’Oro Instant Espresso (highly recommended) or Instant Coffee (Regular or Decaf)
• Flavoured Coffee Syrup (Recommended: Monin Rose Syrup) or Sugar
• Spring or Distilled Water (or Tap Water, if you like to live dangerously)
• Milk (Moo, Soy, etc.)

Get yourself a nice large coffee mug or a tall glass. Put in 1 to 2 tablespoons of instant coffee, or to taste.  Put in 1 to 2 tablespoons of sugar, or to taste. (I prefer 1 tablespoon of instant coffee with 2 tablespoons of sugar.) On top of that, add a couple tablespoons of water, and mix up until it is a syrupy substance (Alternately, omit sugar and water and replace with a shot or two of  your favourite flavoured coffee syrup– Monin French Syrups
are recommended for some exotic flavors you will never find at Starbucks). Shake the milk up real hard to approximate foam (works best if milk container is half empty) and pour into the glass. Slosh it around a bit and you’ve got yourself one heck of a faux iced latte. Enjoy!

If you like it colder, add ice cubes (preferably made out of coffee instead of water).
If you like it frozen, throw it in the blender with some ice.
If you like a mocha, add chocolate syrup.
If you like-a this post, show me some love.

Shit, in fine sterling silver.

10. Sterling Silver Oh Shit Charm (9/16th”). For shits and giggles. Includes chain.

We all know someone who thinks they’re hot shit.

9. Hot Shit Costume. One size fits all. Not just for Halloween.

Or perhaps their shit doesn’t stink.

8. Dollar Sign Fake Poo. Wow, just like Donald Trump makes!

A gift for your favorite tree-hugging environmentalist?

7. How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art by Kathleen Meyer. Please note: Irony may be lost depending on level of hippie-ness.

Hey, even the most accomplished brown-nosing, ass-kissing coworker will appreciate this.

6. Dog Poop Flavor Lip Balm. (I’m not making this shit up.)

Well, have you considered giving the gift of an actual shit?

5. Metamucil Fiber Laxative/Fiber Supplement, Coarse Milled, Unflavored. Oooh Course Milled. Mmmm Unflavored. They have even thoughtfully made the bottle resemble a big roll of toilet paper.

No? How about a tear-jerking, toilet-grasping violent blow out?

4. Colon Blow A Red Habanero Enema! Hot Sauce. I think the name says it all.

Or, you could just scare the crap out of someone.

3. Toilet Monster (green). Adult diapers not included. No gift-wrapping required.

And if you do, this might be a nice gesture…

2.  Fancy French (or “Francy,” if you will) Toilet Paper. In Black (yes, really) or other exciting colors. Ultra Plush for Your Pooing Pleasure.

Here’s hoping you end up on that special somebody’s…

1. Shit List Notepad. A must for those forced to live in modern society (or otherwise interact with humans).

Is it just me, or are all these verification things swearing at me?

Yes this really came up.

See also previous post, FAIL Blog Contribution.

Yahoo!, how you disappoint me. I’m afraid I shall start Googling more often.

A few months ago I was alerted by Bob Parsons that Yahoo! Domains was raising their prices for domain renewals from something like ten bucks to $34.95 per year, which of course is a ridiculous price for a domain registration. I had one domain registered there which I quickly transferred to Go Daddy without a hitch.

End of story, right?

Uh, wrong. A couple months later I notice my credit card was charged $34.95 from Yahoo! I wonder how many people got billed for one domain and did not realize it? I know that the “relatively” small $34.95 nearly got past my radar. I emailed the Yahoo! Small Business billing department, and the next day I got a canned response saying that they could not talk about billing via email. Sigh. So today I called the 800 number, which was answered after a few minutes, however, I had to be transferred to another department, which immediately announced “Your estimated wait time is 30 minutes!” Great. They bill you for nonexistent services then make it extremely difficult to get the charge reversed. So I left it on speakerphone. After 35 minutes, I finally got a human and was told that I hadn’t cancelled my service, even though I transferred the domain out of Yahoo!

You have to cancel the service, even if you transfer the domain away from Yahoo! Yahoo! does not check every domain out there.

Yes, that’s a real quote. Really. What a load of crap. It’s their business to know how many domains are under their care and therefore billable. You can’t bill someone for services which you do not render. That’s called, uh huh, wait for it… yeah, fraud.

I should have just done a chargeback with my bank so that Yahoo! would take a hit for it, as they deserve. If you’ve ever had a domain with Yahoo!, I encourage you to check  your credit card statement. And if you haven’t already, make sure you transfer your domains to Go Daddy or Moniker… Just don’t forget to “cancel” your nonexistent Yahoo! service afterwards.

Or, “How Not to Get the Dreaded PSAs (Public Service Announcements).”

As a webmaster, I learned some good lessons recently about Adsense’s over-sensitivity to certain words. Immediately upon publishing a page about mesothelioma, a specific type of cancer, the Adsense ads were replaced with PSAs. No matter what I did, it seemed that I was getting the PSAs. Now I knew that “mesothelioma” is one of the highest paying adwords due to all the mesothelioma litigation that has been going on– So I knew the ads were out there! I tried checking if my domain was blocked by Google due to the previous owners’ actions, by using Google Webmaster Tools (appparently it will tell you if your domain is blocked, and it wasn’t). Some further research revealed that Google bots scan the page for certain “stop words” that when found will block any paid advertisements from being displayed on a particular web page.

Apparently Google faced some criticism from disturbed web page viewers when it inadvertently served ads for luggage to an article about a dismembered body found in a suitcase. Ouch. While I can certainly understand why they would want to prevent this from happening again (and especially why Gucci & Samsonite would want to prevent this from happening again), what I do not understand is why Google fails to reveal these key “stop words” to their publishers.

Now you might be wondering what the offensive word was… It was “cancer.” Yes, really. Apparently “disease” is OK, but not “cancer.” And nevermind that almost all the ads that get served say “cancer” in them! I even had to take out links to two of the most respected cancer sites on the internet: cancer.gov and cancer.org!! Even if the text did not say “cancer,” the URL was enough to offend the Google Gods. Sigh. Far be it from me to criticize Google — Perhaps they are still perfecting this technology. This site helped me locate the offending word: Finding Stop Words. Don’t ask me how they got their list of key words (probably painstaking trial and error), because Google’s lips are sealed.

Once you’ve published a page and it has been found to contain one or more “stop words,” the PSAs appear immediately. Simply changing the wording will not help at this point, as it takes an undisclosed amount of days for your page to be re-checked by the damn Google bots (I tested three days later and it is still blocked). Since I loaded my page as “index.html” I was screwed. After finding and replacing the “offending” words, I tried renaming it to “index.htm” but that didn’t help. Then I tried “test.html” and I got ads. Hmmph. So I redesigned the site with a splash page as the index, and that seemed to work out really well anyhow. Actually it helped me realize another thing: Google is assigning a large weight to the name of the actual html file. When I uploaded the page about mesothelioma as “test.html” I got ads about SAT Tests!! Seriously. I gotta tell you it took me a few thinks to make that connection. So I got wise and renamed it to “mesothelioma.html” and bingo! Lesson here: Always upload your pages with a temporary file name to test whether ads get served! If there are PSAs, there is probably something wrong. Ads for anything else, however strange, is a go.

Now, ways to get around this… I can think of two. One, put the offending words (or whole paragraph) in an image file. The other way is to use a Javascript to display the text, as currently Google bots do not execute the Javascript and therefore ignore the resulting text (However, I don’t know if this will change in the future). With a Javascript, it would be possible to have the text appear perfectly normal to the user, whereas if you have a block of text and only the word “cancer” is a graphic, for example, that might look strange, at least in some browsers, inevitably. On the other hand, Javascripts sometimes take a while to load. Flash may be an option as well, but I have not tested that. Now, if the words are actually offensive, and not just “offensive to the bots” then a real human at Google may end up blocking your page, due to a complaint, or random chance. Furthermore, I understand that chronic abusers get their entire domains blocked, and naturally you can get kicked out of Adsense altogether. Of course I do not recommend that; if you want to display Adsense, your site should have a professional tone.

To that point, and since I am not using Adsense on this blog, I am free to say whatever the hell I want (well, within reason). So if you found this helpful, put some love in my daggone coffee cup.

Here is my contribution to the FAIL Blog.

This code really came up in one of those verification boxes on a site I was recently browsing. After I took the screenshot, I refreshed the code about fifty times to see if some smartass programmer did it on purpose, but all the other codes were the normal gibberish. Not sure what the odds are of that coming up… Maybe somebody upstairs was having a joke on me.