Stupid hackers!

The Gawker Media blogs are back up. Word on the street – and by on the street, I mean Gawker – is that hackers trying to block access to Consumerist (which isn’t even a Gawker Media blog anymore, but is still hosted on the company’s servers) effectively prevented people from accessing anything. Although I missed checking these sites while I was at work yesterday, I feel even worse for the many Gawker Media bloggers, who I believe still get paid on a page view model. This cannot be good for them. Bummer all around.

Sounds like some shady company is trying to prevent people from learning of their suckitude.

A day without Gawker

I visit various Gawker Media blogs multiple times during the day on weekdays, and usually at least once every weekend. This morning, upon starting my workday, I fired up my personal and work email accounts, the interlibrary loans window, Metafilter, Jezebel, and Gawker.  Those last two didn’t work. I gave it ten minutes, and tried again. Same deal. I googled Jezebel.com and saw the beginning of a post  from yesterday that mentioned technical difficulties. So I waited a couple of hours, and checked again. Still not working. I remember that this once happened before and I was able to find a backdoor link to Gawker, but that’s been years and now I don’t remember how I found that link (possibly Jossip, but since that site is now dead, that’s no help to me).

It’s kind of sad how much I missed these blogs. It’s not just the gossip or the ridiculous content; I actually like the people who post on threads and appreciate learning about things I would otherwise not know.

Right now it is 3 pm EDT, and these web sites, as well as Lifehacker and Gizmodo, are still not working. I never realized how much time I spent checking these blogs until I couldn’t look at them.

Bummer.

Stupid Apple

Oh Apple, why must you break my heart? As anybody who has ever seen me with my laptop knows, I am in lurve with my MacBook. It’s pretty, it’s cool, it’s fast, and it has opened up a different world of computing. My geeky soul finds this deeply satisfying. So why did Apple have to go and release pretty much MY computer with an updated screen, built-in card reader, and lower price? WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?

That is so not cool. Right now, I’m weighing my options. Should I make a fuss with Apple? I do enjoy my computer, and I just bought the MacUpdate bundle, so for the last day I’ve been playing around with Parallels 4 and Windows 7. (As an aside, I cannot say enough good things about this bundle. Even if the rest of the apps sucked, which they don’t, Parallels 4 would make the whole thing worthwhile, as it retails for $79.99 and the bundle was only $49.99.) It’s been nice to use my multitouch gestures on the Windows platform, or switch back and forth between Leopard and Windows 7.

But why in the name of all that is holy did Apple have to do this to me? Couldn’t they have waited at least one year? I’m finding it different to read the reactions on Engadget and Gizmodo. The commenters at the former seem more down on Apple, while people more fanboyish seem to frequent the latter.

Really, I was looking forward to today’s announcements because I thought they were going to announce a new iPhone. They did, the iPhone 3GS, and it’s totally underwhelming. It’s faster, but it still lacks a camera, AT&T is being slow to add MMS support, and they’ve said nothing about officially sanctioned tethering, even though other international iPhone carriers are supporting it immediately. Wake me when the HTC Touch Pro 2 is released. Also of interest is the announcement that Snow Leopard will be available starting in September, and that the upgrade will cost only $29.