I knew something had to be wrong with the “deal” I talked about in this post here. I just KNEW it!

Well, the other day, the other shoe dropped over on ABestWeb. Seems that they just weren’t satisfied with having that content on only the sites they paid to have it on!

So they stole it.

And then offered it out “free” to all their other affiliates.

Now, obviously, that’s lowdown and rot. But it’s also probably the STUPIDEST most idiotic move I’ve seen in ages!!! What’s stupid about it? Oh where do I start?!?

1. The type of affiliate links they have don’t pass any page rank. Having more of them will STILL not pass Page Rank. So their apparent desire to improve SEO value remains unsatisfied.

2. It’d be duplicate content. Know what Google does when it spots that? IGNORES IT. Which does not mean “they’ll miss it.” It means, “they will only list one version of it in any remotely findable position.”

2a. If the merchant doesn’t have the highest PR, one of the sites that’ll be booted for dup content will most likely be THEIRS!

3. Their name is now MUD! Affiliates demanded their content removed, or else. (Which it then was.) Then their affiliate management service quit in protest of the theft (and to keep affiliates willing to work with their other clients). And, their affected affiliates are GONE. There’s also now a thread on ABW that’ll come jumping right up into the face of anyone who searches on that merchant name.

3a. That merchant was doing a branding campaign, which will probably be shifted to a different branding campaign now. What happens from a branding campaign? People search on the merchant’s name! See last line of above. What those searchers are going to see, is that that company is a content-stealing, copyright infringing, bunch of no goods. That oughtta convert reeaallll well. Not.

I’m glad my fish-o-meter went off when I saw that deal. I would have just had to buy a domain name to come up with a “qualifying site” and make a profit…but something told me not to do it. Now I’m glad I didn’t. The last thing I would have needed would have been to see copies of my pitch all over my competitor’s sites!

Now I’m just waiting for when that merchant realizes it doesn’t want to fork up those 50 bucks-es and starts reversing. Many people on boards would show a popcorn icon now (getting ready to watch the show)–but I think a big stick of marshmallows is more appropriate. There’s going to be a hell of a bonfire.

To post about it.

A few days ago, Anonymous declared war on Scientology! Early wins include the crashing of some Scientology sites, jamming their phone lines, and other assorted mayhem. And, getting publicity from the offline media.

Here’s some more info: Article from someplace called Radar Online.

But much misreporting has ensued, so first of all:

The fuel for the war is NOT that Scientology censored some Tom Cruise video. That was just the match that lit the gasoline. The FUEL is that, according to several sites (which say they have documents that are supposed to be verifiable offline), Scientology is a dangerous cult that not only eats its members money like a Pac-Man on speed, brainwashes them, and abuses them…but that there are actually several deaths associated with them! And, if someone decides to leave “the org” or to mount serious opposition or attacks to it, they are said to do bad things: Harrassment, slander, libel…basically try to destroy the life of the person, usually figuratively, and sometimes literally.

One of the pretty uncontested traits of Scientology is that they are also litigious, and that they will bother with the small fish. A perfect example of the crook being the first one to beat a path to the courthouse.

So…It was already cold, and already raining–censoring the Tom Cruise video just provided that speck that allowed the hail to form.

Who’s Anonymous? LOL they wouldn’t be too “anonymous” if I knew the specifics of THAT!! All I know is that pretty much anyone can join with Anon, those who consider themselves a part of it seem to be fairly young, and they tend to hang out on a couple of forums in particular. But, the individuals don’t limit themselves to those forums. And NO it’s not all hackers.

If you do any lurking on forums which have people who are, oh…14-25 yrs old…you’ve probably heard of them and/or their favorite forums, whether in a positive way or not. And if you’ve ever seen/read things like: lolcats, the terms “lulz,” “epic win,” or the concept of “pissing off the Internet”…there has been some Anon influence, although lolcats have spread so far now that not everyone knows where the idea came from.

Back to that “whether in a positive way or not” notation. Anonymous is controversial! Probably almost as controversial as Scientology, in some circles. Why? Because, when enough of them are pissed at the same target, they’ll collectively do things like: DDoSing, tying up banks of phone lines, sending fake pizza orders, site defacements…it sounds like plain old teenage pranksterism, until you remember that the target of the wrath is getting this from 1000s of Anonymous…from all over the world!! And, it’s decentralized. Anonymous can’t be beheaded, because it’s got no head.

In a word, Anonymous is a swarm.

Anonymous is making full use of the ONE thing that’s any good about being a minor: Near-immunity to adult-centric legal maneuvers and to adult-oriented economic sanctions. They have no jobs worth caring about losing, no decent stuff to seize, and no professional reputations to protect (McDonald’s Employee of the Month?).

Scientology’s normal methods of offense will lose horribly against this.

My bets are on Anonymous for the win.

Readers may be wondering if I’ve jumped in on this. I’m avoiding any illegal activities (or as Anon would put it, I’m “too pussy” :-p ). And I’m not nearly “anonymous” enough–after all, I’m writing about it on HERE, which is about as anon as advertising in the Yellow Pages. But I’m enjoying the heck out of watching all this.

And I’ll publicize this date:
January 30, 2008, 6PM
Anon says it’s going to strike again then, and they want the “whole internet” to know! So what the heck. Although I question the strategic sense of giving advance warning when the target’s supposedly already contacted the FBI (even though the target sites are still not publicized as of the time of this writing)…

Grab your popcorn…

International forums are fun.
I don’t just mean the “technically the entire internet is international” bit, but I mean forums where there are actually people from lots of countries.

I like to discuss business on US-American forums, where the other people are working off basically the same cultural framework, but politics is another matter. The two really do belong apart, too, despite the temptation to mix ‘em up: it interferes with doing business, to find oneself caring about whether the other guy likes [insert candidate here], or supports/decries “X” controversial policy.

Truly international political forums are like a window into the systems and psyches of other countries. Lots of other countries have a system where there’s a gajillion parties, all of which may gain a few seats apiece, and in order to get anything done, they have to form coalitions. To me this sounds like a horrendous tar pit of gridlock just waiting to happen!!! Yet, those under such systems will swear by them (instead of AT them like I would).

In fact, if one thing is in common amongst almost all the internationals I’ve run across online, it’s that no matter what system their government uses, they think it’s the best and that everyone else should wake up and adopt whatever they have! It’s actually pretty funny. There’s even been people from N. Korea on, saying that Dear Leader is the greatest thing on wheels, although they don’t stay long. It’s like they’re doing those posts as a temp job. I’d think they were just trolling, but they don’t stay around long enough to stir anything up.

Then there’s the differences in local customs when it comes to simple things. For some reason, the English don’t like to give away their locations. So if you see something like “Location: Earth” you can bet it’s England, provided the custom hasn’t spread throughout the entire board. And I don’t mean “the UK” I mean the English part. Wales, Scotland, and Ireland don’t seem to have that trait, and will put something like “Location: [Town] Scotland” right out there. Then there’s Australia, which is addicted to calling their place “Oz” and variations thereof. As for the USA, we’re the ones who put some state name and expect everyone to know where the F that is, even if the other people are 4000 miles away! I admit I did that too, at first, but I added “USA” after realizing that the rest of the place has probably never heard of Michigan. I didn’t bother on the US-centric forum I’m on, though. Any “furriners” who come there can just Google it :p

Then there’s the tipoffs in the use of English. UKers seem to be surprised when they get spotted, because they forget how obvious their speech/typing patterns are. As soon as someone tells you he thinks something is “bollocks” you can just get a big UK stamp and stamp him with it! And if they get a “flu jab” they didn’t get it in the US–we get “shots.” He’s either in the UK, Australia, or maybe even New Zealand.

The same countries also think of “f*ck off” as an actual command–an insulting way to say “go away”–while US people use it more as a generic insult. This leads to interesting verb tenses not seen here, too, like “he f*cked off” which could result from him being told to, or (depending on context) the phrase could be an angry way to say that someone ditched out when he shouldn’t have!

If someone calls us “USians” they’re usually in some Scandanavian country and think it’s oh-so-original to use that term even though it’s been done to death.

The only confounding factor is the fact that speech patterns tend to be contagious among those in a group. So eventually, a few terms will cross over. I’ve picked up quite a few UKisms that are always trying to sneak their way into my typing. For instance, I wanted to type, “amongst those in a group” back there. “Whilst” is another one. In US-English it sounds pretentious as all hell to add these “st”s, but in the UK that’s just the proper way to spell it.

Then there’s the altogether different Indian-English. Irritatingly, they will argue that they speak proper English (meaning, like in the UK)! But it’s as obvious as rocks. First, they type in text-speak, and mess up the capitalizations. u c this, u no it’s frm India right away. Then there’s the odd use of articles. “If u want the internet jobs, u hv 2 no how to type.” Errmmm…
Makes me wonder if the schools over there are actually telling them that that’s the way to type online?!? I see it far too often for it to just be a couple of jokers. The strange thing is, when they’ve been online for a few months, they’ll suddenly quit that and then write pretty much like anyone else!!! So maybe they’ve been told that the (actual) proper way is “too formal” or some rot, and then when they realize that it’s NOT “formal” they go ahead and use regular English spellings…Dunno.

Of course, a post such as this isn’t complete without a look in the mirror at the good ol’ US of A. It’s easy to spot Americans online, too. We’re the ones who assume that the rest of the world knows what we’re talking about when referencing local stuff. Also, we do not Francify words like “color” and “flavor” by adding a spurious “u” to them! Oh, and we love to get on the Internet.

What IS it with some people and forums?!? Every forum I go on, there’s always some clod making a big deal out of nothing. Now on one of ‘em, somebody claimed to be being “moderated,” and didn’t retract the claim even though she now knows freakin’ well it’s just a software thing. So the only point of the big dramatic post was, well, drama. And she appears to have roped in another poster to costar in the bit of cheap acting, too.

When I was just 7 years younger, I would have gotten my blood pressure up, but now all I can think of is 2 things:

1) GET A LIFE, DRAMA QUEENS/KINGS!
and
2) The Admin should just ban those clods and be done with it.

Granted, BAN IT has always been my opinion of that kind of emo-manipulative bullrot. But my fuse is shorter now that I’m older. It’s times like this I wish I was the admin, because those self-righteous types would have been banned and their threads locked long ago. As in, years ago…

And if the friends of those types leave, this is undeniably a GOOD thing. Like cutting off a weed root and getting rid of all its stems at the same time, the garden is better off without ‘em!