I was asked yesterday “just what the hell is a ‘[tag]meme[/tag]‘ anyway?”. Quite simply it’s one of those geeky terms that bloggers love to use because they sound complicated and techie, but in reality actually easy to understand: a meme is an [tag]idea[/tag]!
Now if you head on over to [tag]Wikipedia[/tag], the be-all and end-all definitive source for all information on the planet, you’ll see them ramble along like this:
The term “meme” (IPA: /miËÂm/, not /mÉ›m/ or /mimi/, to rhyme with “theme”), coined in 1976 by the zoologist and evolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins, refers to a unit of cultural information transferable from one mind to another. Dawkins said, Examples of memes are tunes, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. A meme propagates itself as a unit of cultural evolution and diffusion  analogous in many ways to the behavior of the gene (the unit of genetic information). Often memes propagate as more-or-less integrated cooperative sets or groups, referred to as memeplexes or meme-complexes.
Yeah, ok wikipedia, whatever… so a meme is an idea, right? Here’s a couple of simple [tag]examples[/tag]:
- General: Just recently some bloggers posted asking several other bloggers to post on their own blogs with 5 things that their readers mightn’t know about them. This meme has spread exponentially to thousands of blogs and is simply known as “5 Things”
- Cycling bloggers everywhere are currently posting lists of the cycling-related blogs they read, this is following another meme
Got it?
Thanks to [tag]Spam Karma[/tag] 2 and [tag]Askimet[/tag], my various [tag]Wordpress[/tag] blogs’ comments are 100% spam free from [tag]automated spam[/tag].
So [tag]comment spam[/tag]mers, piss off and bother somebody else.
Some humour to get you through the first day back at work ! This is one from way back when… used to keep me entertained every day:
Link: The Chronicles of George.
Did you read Good ol’ George back in the day? Leave a comment.
I’m selling my laptop because I’m moving to a desktop system. This Dell Inspiron 9300 is a powerful desktop replacement machine with a great widescreen and the fantasic nVidea GeForce Go 6800 graphics card which runs games like Quake 4, Half-Life 2, CounterStrike and World of Warcraft at high resolutions with no lag.
Dell Inspiron 9300
- 17″ ULTRASHARP WIDE SCREEN WXGA (1440X900) TFT DISPLAY 60HZ TRUE COLOR (32 BIT)
- INTEL PENTIUM M PROCESSOR 2.0GHZ
- 1024MB 533MHZ DDR2 SDRAM (2X512)
- 80GB (5, 400RPM) IDE HARD DRIVE
- FIXED INTERNAL 8X DVD +/-RW DRIVE WITH SO
- 256MB NVIDEA GEFORCE GO 6800
- DELL WIRELESS 350 BLUETOOTH 2.0 MODULE
- GENUINE WINDOWS XP HOME SP2
- INTEL PRO/WIRELESS 2200BG NETWORK CONNECTION
- 6 X USB PORTS
- 1 X 1394 FIREWIRE PORT
- SD CARD READER PORT
System servie tag is 6HKPK1J - I believe it’s possible to look it up on the Dell site somehow and it will confirm as “INSPIRON 9300 - 2GHZ - 80.00GB HD - 0MB”. The “0MB” is incorrect - it’s most certainly got 1024MB (1 gig) of RAM.
I’m looking for 1000 eur ONO. If you are interested, please post a comment below, including a real email address in the appropriate box (you don’t have to put your email address in the comment body). Serious interest only please.
I’ve currently got my Inspiron 9300 listed on BuyandSell, a free ads paper with an online version. I believe I’ve received a couple of potential fraud inquiries.They mention “the item” I have for sale without mentioning what it is, and talk about PayPal or Moneygram payment. I don’t know precisely how the fraud works, but I imagine it leaves me seriously out of pocket. If you’re familiar with this one, leave a comment below.
Dear BuyandSell customer,
This message was sent by www.buyandsell.ie to you directly on behalf of free-email-address1@gmaildotcom in
response to your adverisement on the BuyandSell WebSite.
Please read the message from the interested buyer below, and if you would like to respond please
use the following email address: free-email-address1@gmaildotcom
Best Regards
The BuyandSell Team.
MESSAGE FROM INTERESTED BUYER: (free-email-address1@gmaildotcom)
——————————————————————————
Hello seller,
i am Mrs Helyn John from New York.i was surfin on the web when i came across your ad and am
very interested in it,but first i will want to know if you are the real owner of the item and what
is it present condition.Moreover i will want to know the total cost of the item and like to let you
know that am paying you thru MONEY GRAM or Paypal ok.so get back to me on my personal email
address at free-email-address2@yahoo.co.uk ok.
thanks await your humble reply soon…………
Helyn John
——————————————————————————
(Sent: December 6, 2006, 11:33am AV: 311)
If you have a question or suggestion please contact our HelpDesk:
http://support.buyandsell.ie/?group=General&_m=tickets&_a=submit
Why I think it is fraud:
- refers to what I am selling as “the item”
- uses free email addresses (and 2 different ones at that)
- mentions MoneyGram and PayPal as payment methods
- poor spelling and grammar
BuyandSell list a Payment Protection fraud on their Knowledge Base, it’s not the same fraud, but has a couple of similarities.
Update:
BuyandSell responds:
Sorry for the inconvenience & thanks for bringing this to our attention. Please note we would
definitely not advise you to go ahead with this as it looks as one of the current scams listed on our
website. We had to stop the registrations those e-mails were sent from as they did not comply with
with our registration policies.
Thanks & regards.
B&S Support
I had to secure a new Dell laptop (a lovely Inspiron M1210) recently, here’s what I did.
Security updates for operating system
First things, first - update Windows as soon as possible. Use Windows Update at windowsupdate.com.
Alternative to using Windows Update:
In the comments, brucew mentioned AutoPatcher XP. He says “Updated monthly, a single download contains all the patches, plus some other useful things. You launch the installer, tick-off the things you want it to do and walk away. Recommended.”.
Sounds great, because you don’t leave your unpatched machine exposed while you’re downloading updates - which, if you’re on a really slow connetion gives a very strong chance of your machine being compromised before it’s patched. So offline patches are good - and the fire and forget interface is really cool - who wants to click buttons when you can be making a cup of tea?
Free auto-updating anti-virus system
I use Avast Home Edition and register for password.
Free anti-spyware tools
I normally install these two (and immediately use the online updates after install):
Install a secure browser
Get Firefox. After installing the browser, install the Adblock Plus extension and use the filter subscription:
Am I missing anything?
Over at Yahoo!s Spotlight! On! Technology!! there’s an article! (ok, I’ll stop now) about Microsoft’s Zune project manager and how he’s a cool and hip downhill mountain biker. It’s an interesting article, you should go check it out.
One thing I thought was a bit bloody stupid of the reporter, though, was this fantastic comparison:
Zune hit store shelves on Nov. 14–a mere eight months after Allard’s team got the go-ahead for the seemingly impossible task of toppling Apple’s iPod music player. Contrast that with the five years and some 10,000 Microsoft Corp. workers it took to give birth to the latest version of the company’s Windows operating system, Vista
Sure, dude, ‘cos writing and shipping a multi-million line-of-code general purpose operating system supporting tens of thousands of devices is comparable to shipping a device comprising a hard drive, a sound card and 4 buttons.
I’m no fan of MS, and especially not Vista with it’s f’cked up license, but jeez, give those guys a break!
I didn’t fully comprehend the scale of the changes to culture on the web these days. I’ve been a geek forever and yet I missed the whole Web 2.0 thing. The web has become the realm of normal people lately! Cute girls (who I can positively guarantee don’t know a pre-processor statement from a constant declaration) are getting tens of thousands of video views on YouTube, granddads who can’t program their VCR are making video responses to their YouTube peers. Wow.
Way to go me, I’m quite good at missing everything lately 
