Deeker's Message of the Week
February 16, 2003
About the "Technical Difficulties"
I was not able to update this site on Sunday as I usually do. I was having
trouble FTP'ing the files to the server (kept getting "permission denied"
errors and the like). I emailed the person who hosts my site and he indicated
to me that he was experiencing slowdowns in his network, but no definitive
reason has been determined. Nevertheless, I managed to get the files uploaded
Monday morning (didn't have to go to work since it was President's Day). I
apologize for the inconvenience that this may have caused as well as some of
the concerns as some of the people who emailed me were thinking that I may
be discontinuing the site. I appreciate everyone's patience.
The Missing (MOTW) Link
Some of you may have wondered why there was no MOTW posted for last week (February 9).
Actually, there was, but I just forgot to include a link to it on the main MOTW page. 
While there wasn't anything seriously important in it, you may wish to take a look
anyway and see what's there.
In Search of a Search Engine
You may have noticed that the search engine has been removed from this site.
The search engine was set up on Picosearch and I had been using it for
at least a couple of years. On Tuesday I received the following email from
one of the goons at Picosearch who must have finally won his first game of
Solitaire ever on his work computer and therefore had nothing better to do
that day that he could perform at his desk. Either that, or he didn't get
any ass the night before and decided to take it out on me. Lastly, it's
possible that some brainless wonder do-gooder reported my site. In any case,
this was what the email said:
Subject: Remove your PicoSearch Account
From: PicoSearch
Date: Tue, February 11, 2003 6:36 am
To:
Priority: Normal
Dear Dan,
Your PicoSearch account(#####) has been disabled because it does not comply
with the
terms of use stated in our license agreement (see prohibitions in
http://www.picosearch.com/license.html). Please remove PicoSearch from your
web
pages.
Regards.
After having read the "prohibitions" in the above link I was driven to think
that this search engine service should rename itself to "Pious-Search."
Apparently it's run by some group of over-zealous Jerry Falwell-butt-kissing
fundamentalist assholes:
13. Prohibitions
You shall be prohibited from using (and this Agreement shall
automatically terminate if you use the Product in connection with) any of
the following materials, content or activities:
(a) Nudity, pornography, or sexual material of a lewd, lecherous or obscene
nature and/or intent or that violates local, state or national laws;
(b) any material that violates or infringes in any way upon the rights of
others, including, without limitation, copyright or trademark rights (this
includes "WAREZ" (copyrighted software that is distributed illegally), "mp3"
files of copyrighted music, copyrighted photographs, text, video or
artwork);
(c) any material that is threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory,
invasive of privacy or publicity rights, vulgar, obscene, profane, indecent,
or otherwise objectionable, including posting private information of another
person;
(d) content that promotes, encourages, or provides instructional information
about illegal activities including, without limitation, hacking, cracking,
or phreaking;
(e) any software, information or other material that contains a virus,
"Trojan Horse," trap door, corrupted data or any other harmful or damaging
component; and
(f) content containing hate propaganda, hate mongering, swearing, or
fraudulent material.
Mmmm-kay..., whatever 
.
To be fair, I agree with the prohibitions where illegalities are
concerned for the sake of covering their candy-asses. As for the
prohibitions which are simply based on the fact that some people might be
offended by it, I heartily say, FUCK YOU! As if these clueless fucks
haven't pulled their heads out of their asses and taken a good look around
to see for themselves, the Internet is rife with content that is offensive
to some, and yes, I know that my site offends some people. While I don't
agree with everything that people say under the permission of free speech I
do recognize that this right granted to me as an American citizen allows me
to express my opinions on my own site (such as my opinion about Puke-o
Search). To them and anyone else who doesn't like my site I say, "deal with
it, fuckwit, and if you don't like it, then don't fucking read it! Case closed!
While I know the buttnuggets at PicoSearch are not out to attempt
regulating the content of the Intenet itself, I still resent the fact that my account was
terminated because my site contains vulgar and profane material (gee, duhhh,
like other sites don't?), which I presume was the reason my site was found
to be in violation (although the bastards didn't even have the decency to
actually cite which of their incredibly anal prohibitions I
supposedly violated!) I'd encourage boycotting these overly moralistic
morons by not supporting their advertisers, but then, who the hell supports
web advertisers anyway?
For now this means that my site has no convenient means for searching its
contents. The easiest solution, I suppose, would be to just sign up with
another third-party search engine service and look for one whose policies
aren't so goddamned conservative that they only comply with the moral standards
of the people who were alive in the 19th century. Ultimately, I would like
to have a self-contained search engine on this site but unfortunately I
don't have the programming know-how to do this. If there is someone out
there who can recommend a good way to set up a search engine without needing
to know the ins and outs of CGI, Perl, Java, etc., I'd appreciate hearing
from you.
Top Ten Story Downloads for Week of 02/09/02 to 02/15/03
* * * * *
Stay happily and thickly diapered!
Other Messages of the Week
