Content Farms Are Amazing

/sarcasm

I've known about such Web sites before, but it's become more pervasive in my line of work after Stack Overflow (also known as SO) boomed.

Stack Overflow's content comes from the hundreds of thousands of programmers from all over the world who post their programming questions and answers in the site.  SO licenses their content under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.  This means that what the SO content farms are doing is perfectly legal.  Even if they simply mirror the original Q&A page from SO, as long as they link back to it, they're covered.

However, I'd say that what they're doing isn't different from what the ad farms and SEO-mongers do -- they hijack search results traffic from the original source of information, which in this case is SO (that they link back to SO doesn't matter).  It's legal, but it's not something to be proud of.  Personally, I frown on them.

Jeff Atwood, one of the co-founders of SO, has already written about the issue of rip-off sites in his blog post Trouble In the House of Google, although he did focus on faulting Google in their failure to keep the content farms from out-ranking them.

What pushed me to write about it was my surprise in seeing how seemingly instant this hijacking occurs.  I just read about Google's Personal Blocklist Chrome extension, and it reminded me of this issue. I installed the extension and I tried to search for a question I asked in SO several hours ago.

A content farming site topped the search results -- and SO was not even in the top 5!

See how the site complies with the Attribution-ShareAlike license by linking back to SO:

And here's the original content in SO, and notice how fairly recent it was posted:

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not incriminating this particular content farming site.  They might be totally legit and "nice".  It's just that I think it hit me hard enough to feel uneasy about it.

Tekken Movie Reactions

I was able to watch the new Tekken movie courtesy of Mike.  Several minutes into the movie, I just had to take down some notes as it ran.  If I hadn't I would've just forgotten a lot of my reactions.  In hindsight, I guess it would've been better if I had timestamps per reaction.  =p

Here goes:

[Spoiler warning:  If you do watch the movie, your day will be spoiled!]

• I'd let the lame backstory pass.
• No respect for the characters whatsoever
• Raven?  No hints of being a ninja?  Dead, just like that, in a gun fight, not in a match?
• Steve?  No hints of being a boxer?
• Christie?  Not capoeira?
• Jacks?  Mere foot soldiers?  Jackhammers. Anvil. Yeah, yeah.
• Dragunov -- since when was it spelled "Dragonov"??
• And why does he look like he's always just about to laugh?
• Nina didn't look cold enough.
• The fighting styles aren't obvious!
• They should be since they're a huge part of a fighting game character's personality!
• Why insist on Kazuya's facial hair?  He would have looked great without it!
• The bed scenes were totally unnecessary. Especially, Kazuya's.
• Jin's portrayal is actually good!  Probably the only aspect that's properly done?
• Well, almost -- Jon Foo's Irish accent is showing.
• Bryan is good, too!
• "Heihachi Mishima is dead"  --  CRAPPY DELIVERY!
• Could've been a nice reference to the game
• What's with the weapooons????
• What's with Dragunov's "Hwoooaaah!" like he's Law or something?
• Oh.  Raven's not dead.
• Yeeees..  Jin is the right amount of emoooo..  :p
• Why do they pronounce Miguel's last name Rojo as row-haw?
• Wow, a pep talk from Raven?  *raises an eyebrow*
• Finals already?  We didn't see Anna fight?
• THAT'S NOT A MACH PUNCH -- that's Jin's move!
• Why so many wall jumps??!!
• People cheering at the TV now?  Way too lame, even for a kiddie movie nowadays.  And, this movie isn't supposed to be for kids.
• Kazuya's attitude seems just right for his Tekken 2 phase, I guess.
• Even Kazuya uses weapooooons..
• Parang PBA championship lang kung magreact mga tao..
• Cung Le's name was misspelled in the credits:  "Cung Lee"?
• Bryan's name in the credits is "Brian"
• Nice after credits extra scene!

Comments On Naruto Shippuuden Episode 70

..or basically the current story line.

*** SPOILERS BEGIN ***

First of all, I think the Naruto animé's idea for fillers have been, in general, bad.

Then there's the resurrection jutsu -- is it that easy to do? Orochimaru must have sucked if he had difficulties trying to do it himself!

They're reusing the Kyuubi?! You can take the Kyuubi's leaked chakra and make a pseudo-Jinchuuriki? W.T.H.!

They're reusing the monster vs. monster conflict: Naruto vs. Gaara, Naruto vs. Sasuke with level 2 cursed seal, Naruto vs. Orochimaru -- now Sora's a monster too?! I want to watch NINJAS, for crying out loud! I want to see ninjas fiiiight!

They're reusing the Jinchuuriki loner problem: Naruto, then Gaara, then Sora?! Forcing the drama.. tsk..

They're underestimating the Kyuubi's power -- Naruto pushed back the Kyuubi by sheer willpower?! Maybe they're overrating Naruto.. But it looks like Naruto will "save" Sora (*rolls eyes*)..

Fuuka, the multi-chakra girl -- kills the surprise of multi-chakra Kakuzu! W.T.H!

Filler trademark: too many bystanders! Just standing! Doing nothing! They immobilized Sora and they didn't even think of placing the First Hokage's necklace on Sora so Yamato can do the chakra containment thing -- it should have been over back then!

Filler trademark #2: the close combat scenes are ugly!

Filler trademark #3: poooor pacing, takes toooo long!

*** SPOILERS END ***

Waste of Space

I've griped about this for too long: I think that the new lobby at the Smart Tower is a huge, huge waste of space!

They have no seats and there're these large mirrored columns.. It's quite a looong stretch of tiles that doesn't even get that filled up!

Does This Not Suck?

Especially when you only have less than P1000 in your account and almost all the ATMs in the mall already ran out of P100 bills and you really, really need the cash and you don't have any left in your pockets.

No To Plastic

Maybe one of you guys might know who to give a heads up to, coz I don't know.

Kei and I had lunch at Food Choices at Gateway earlier. We noticed that most of the shops served their food on STYRO. We hadn't been there for months, so we decided to go for a safe choice: Jumbo Japs. We saw right away that they had stacks of styro bowls, which they handed to us for our rice. We asked for plates instead --- they gave us styro plates. Kei asked for a spoon and a fork and they gave us plastic spoons and forks. We asked if they had stainless steel utensils, but they said that they didn't. We were surprised.

We hadn't started eating yet when we noticed that some other shops also served their food on styro plates and bowls.

After eating, we walked around and saw that most of the shops had stacks of styro plates and bowls.

Was it a policy of Food Choices? Were they trying to save water and were willing to splurge on plastic instead?

Wasn't it only around 3 years ago when Gary Granada was heading a movement for McDonald's to reduce their styro usage?

Not that I've turned environmental activist, but I REALLY HATE EATING ON STYRO and I REALLY HATE PLASTIC SPOONS AND FORKS.

---

P.S. I cringe at the sight of the website GaryGranada.com, but I was curious about what he has to say when I saw a link to an article "How come some songs in this site are freely downloadable?" and I found it witty when he said at the end of it, "So why are the mp3s in this site accessible and some even downloadable for free? No, they’re not. We're just charging zero pesos."

Crash And Burn

I'm getting really annoyed at how Firefox (2.0.0.12/13 on both WinXP and XUbuntu ) has crashed on me more frequently this past couple of weeks.. What annoys me the most is that most of the crashes occur when I'm cleaning up my current session and I'm actually closing a lot of tabs.

Dumbing Down..

I really need to kick my brain and get it started..

I couldn't load my Blogger Dashboard a while ago, and kept getting this page. So I clicked on the link to the Help Page, and I deleted the browser cookies from blogger.com.

I refresh the page a dozen times.

Until I look at the URL and realized that I am indeed reloading the same gosh-darned page!

Ashamed and defeated, I click on the Blogger logo..

Blank Stares..

..are what my monitors get from me..

Yeah, monitors. I have two workstations here at work (WinXP and XUbuntu), and I like it! Supposedly, my teammate and I should be working on Linux, but our old Windows machines haven't been revoked yet. I hope we do keep them. The load per machine has considerably lessened, and it feels really great to no longer wait for Eclipse or Aptana to respond!

Anyway, my brain doesn't want to work. I try to rev my figurative engines, but all I get are sputters.

My teammate and I are expecting a bulk of work to be assigned to us in a while. I would have enjoyed it last week, when I could still think.

I hate it when I can't work despite wanting to.

Damn You..

..you freakin' terrorists.

Manuel L. Quezon III's round-up of blogger accounts of the event.

Inquirer.NET's special section.

Online Again!

Finally!

For one-and-a-half days, our office -- the entire building (maybe even the whole block!) was disconnected from the net! Well, if everybody was connected via PLDT.. I don't know the details, but it still sucks, anyway!

What The Heck?!

I was on my way to work and, as I've mentioned before, I am now somewhat too cautious when trying to cross the road.

So, there I was, waiting for the traffic to ebb. I noticed that the far side of the road was already clear, despite the near side still being packed with a variety of vehicles. I waited for some more, and during a lull in traffic, I crossed half-the-road.

I took a peek to the right and, indeed, it was clear. I step over the line in the middle of the road when, suddenly, I had this strange feeling and I looked to my left -- and I had to step back, with a grimace and a silent curse in my head:

Damn you counter-flowing motorcycles (with a passenger, even)! Damn you all to hell!

Sometimes..

..I just suck.

Lousy Tribute

I suddenly recall another scene from this year's Myx Music Awards:

Kami nAPO Muna performers switched songs!!! Channel surfing, I stumbled on Raimund Marasigan *gasp* slurring his way through Batang-bata Ka Pa.. The agony.. I knew I had to change the channel when Sponge Cola's vocalist went out after Raims..