About comments …

If you’ve been to any of my web properties (e.g., www.WernerPatels.com or www.VoxNewsMagazine.com), you’ll have noticed that comments are now moderated across the board. If you look again, you’ll also see that I don’t withhold any comments (even those posted by lefties!).

The reason why I switched to moderation has to do with security concerns. I had noticed a drastic increase in malicious spam comments, which didn’t always get caught by the antispam software built into the blog application. Then, I’d read some troubling news about how those types of spam comments can be used to insert malicious code that could harm my readers’ computers.

Since I can’t monitor my sites all the time and, say, delete such malicious spam instantly, I’ve decided to switch to moderation. The only comments that are deleted are outright spam. No legit comment, whether the poster agrees or disagrees with my views, will ever be rejected. That’s my solemn promise and guarantee.

Seeing how most political bloggers – at least, the ones I read on a more or less regular basis – have taken to comment moderation in recent months, I feel I’m in good company.

Again: No legit comment will ever be rejected. Only spam messages will be nuked.

I need to say this …

I’ve been mad as hell in recent weeks (if not months). To me, it’s felt as if common sense had been tossed into the garbage by the majority of people out there – not only in Canada, but in the US and everywhere else.

On the one hand, we’ve been hearing nonsense about how capitalism is “dead” (with the recession and its concomitant revival of Keynesian folly being cited as proof). On the other, we’re being fed even bigger nonsense about “man-made global warming”.

I won’t claim to have the ultimate truth, but what I do know is that the “scientists” working on this problem have been politically and ideologically motivated, and many, if not most, of them have acted unethically (“Climategate”). I don’t see any middle ground in this debate. We have radical lefties who insist that we must put ourselves back in the Stone Age, or the planet will be lost. Such exaggerated claims accomplish only one thing: actual proof that it ain’t so.

Remember what mom always said (at least mine did): Anyone who raises his voice and screams, while trying to drown out and gag anyone who thinks differently,  is automatically and invariably in the wrong – no matter what.

But whether that BS is real or not is not the issue here. What is, though, is the tone and style with which stuff is being shoved down our throats today – in politics, society, business and “science”. In short, there is a lot more stupidity in the world today, with the really stupid people being absolutely arrogant about their claims to know the “ultimate truths” about everything. And this has kept my PO level at an all-time high recently.

I shouldn’t have allowed this to happen, but my anger has shown through on numerous occasions in recent weeks and months, culminating, for example, in name-calling on blogs or Twitter, etc.

Not making excuses here at all, but let me just say that, if nothing else, it shows that I do care about what happens to our country, our world. If more people cared, we’d actually see a higher turnout at election time for a change. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

So, while I’ll try to keep my anger at “global stupidity” in check, I won’t always succeed. But, at least, I care enough about the issues to get all worked up – which is more than most other people can say about themselves.

News Spectator is now Vox News Magazine

Please update your bookmarks. My site The News Spectator is now called Vox News Magazine and can be found at www.VoxNewsMagazine.com. The old URL will remain in effect for some time to come, so old links to previous posts on the site will remain active.

My personal browser rating

I’ve spent some time playing around with different Internet browsers this weekend. I used to have only two browsers on my computer, Firefox and IE. I’ve added Safari and Google Chrome now as well. (This will also help me with any design issues down the road, as I’ll be able to view and compare the design, CSS, etc. of my sites/blogs in the four main browsers in use today.)

I’ve rated these four browsers in terms of the “eye factor” and speed.

Internet Explorer versions 7 & 8:

This weekend, I’ve finally upgraded from IE7 to IE8. The visual quality of text, etc. seems to have improved since IE7, but it is very slow to start up and settle in on the homepage. Before, reading text in IE7 and then in one of the other browsers was like “analogue versus HD”.

Firefox:

I’ve always liked the speed with which it opens up (compared to IE7 & IE8), plus its visual appearance has always been better in terms of colours and font definition.

Safari:

I really enjoy the Top Sites feature, which gives you a panoramic view of your most favourite bookmarks. Its customization options are also a plus, and generally this one is faster than IE too. Duh!

Google Chrome:

I had tried Chrome before when it first came out and was disappointed. Its latest version, however, is very good, I find, and of all the browsers reviewed here, it is absolutely the fastest.

Ranking (visual – “eye factor”):

1. Firefox – Google Chrome – Safari (tie)
2. IE8
3. IE7

Ranking (speed):

1. Google Chrome
2. Safari & Firefox (more or less a tie)
3. IE7
4. IE8 (yes, I find it’s even slower than its predecessor)

Personal conclusion:

I continue to use Firefox as my main browser. However, IE remains the default, because I run a number of applications I need for my job that require IE to be set as the default; any change results in those applications not opening up or crashing. They don’t run IE as such, but somehow open it in the background (as some kind of “code foundation” I suppose). I’ve tried many different things, but whenever I change the default browser to anything other than IE, those applications become disabled. Since I need them to earn a living, changing the default browser is not an option (at this time).

Google Chrome I now use specifically for all the Google-related applications and uses (Google reader, Blogger, YouTube, etc.).

Safari has become my “news browser” for newspapers, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

I’ve also assigned my various blog accounts (with the same provider) to these different browsers so that I can stay logged into my respective account without having to log out and back in to change between accounts (e.g., my News Spectator is with Firefox, while my WorldViews21 is now permanently logged-in in Safari.).

Overall conclusion:

I could easily give up IE (7/8) if it weren’t for the issues I described before. But apart from that, if anyone told me that as of tomorrow, I could have only one browser on my computer, I’d be fine with Firefox, Chrome or Safari.

Pins and needles … awaiting the 2-hour season premiere of ‘Lost’

I don’t know about any of you, but I’m really excited about the final season of Lost. Starting this coming week, we’ll get to see the final 16 episodes and solve the mystery of the island.

Was the island a kind of purgatory?

Is there some time loop going on?

What about the two skeletons found in Season 1?

What is the Smoke Monster?

Is everything just part of an eternal struggle between two god-like creatures (Jacob and Man in Black)?

Everything will become crystal-clear (?) in mid-May.

What dubbing can do to a TV show

When a TV show is dubbed and adapted for the respective national market, things can go, um, not so well. Then again, sometimes a dubbed version can actually surpass the original.

Take a look at the old animated sci-fi series Captain Future. The original version was in Japanese. You can see its intro and listen to the original Japanese theme here:

Now, look at the English version:

The French version (terrible idea to change his name to “Capitaine Flam”):

The Spanish version:

And, finally, the German version, which I think has the best theme of them all, the Japanese original included:

Well, there you have it, but you be the judge.

Want to know what I think of the iPad?

Well, to find out, you can read my (sort-of) live blog from earlier this afternoon, or you can check out my new web column.

Who needs external stats anyway?

Following up on my post from a while ago, in which I exposed the malicious code contained in SiteMeter, I should mention now that I have also disabled StatCounter on all my sites.

While I haven’t noticed any bad code in StatCounter, it did cause more and more delays in the loading speed of my sites – and I use one of the fastest broadband speeds in the country available to us.

A lot of people are not this “fortunate”, stuck on somewhat or even much slower connections, which is I why I removed the StatCounter – as well as other external widgets such as the MyBlogLog feature – in order to maximize loading speeds.

I also removed the Twitter widget, because whenever Twitter had hiccups (and that happens about at least once every 30 minutes or so), the Twitter widget would prevent my sites from loading fully.

All my main sites are hosted on Typepad, so I get internal stats from the service anyway (just as WordPress users get to see their stats on the Dashboard). They are less detailed than those supplied by SiteMeter or StatCounter but still do the trick.

Besides, I think bloggers often tend to become overly obsessed with their stats. They check them every five minutes to see who’s linked to them, or who’s written about them.

My philosophy on this is: Just enjoy your blogging and write about what interests or moves you. If others enjoy your blog, great. If not, it’s their loss.

Happy Blogging, everyone.

The sounds of winter …

…. people shovelling their driveways, scraping and hacking away at ice late at night.

Too many people let the snow accumulate, freeze up, and then they’re surprised they can’t get the stuff off. It’s better to clear the snow in stages, instead of turning the whole exercise into a real (and heart-attack-inducing) chore.

Lefties are cowards

Not exactly an earth-shattering statement, is it? Nor overly surprising or shocking, eh?

I’m just throwing that out there, because the more I see out there, the more it becomes clear that lefties really have no clue about the world – and they’re also cowards. Most of them blog, tweet, etc. anonymously, because deep down inside they know how malignant, deranged and diseased their political views are.

I’ve just had to block one of them on Twitter, because that individual had all the characteristics of a (seriously) deranged troll: (a) arguing for argument’s sake; (b) twisting your words around; (c) accusing you of not answering questions, when you, in fact, answer his questions while he totally ignores your answers; (d) engaging in name-calling and defamation while remaining anonymous. All typical text-book behaviour of regressive/retarded “progressive” lefties.