Pharyngulated!

It's official.
The greek atheists' english version of the blog is online and you can read it here: http://english.atheia.gr
The very good news is that we got pharyngulated: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/10/greece_has_got_atheists.php
Thank you PZ, for reading my e-mail and promoting our efforts.

Scienceblogs on FIRE!

With the PepsiCo incident, Scienceblogs lost a number of good science bloggers, and it is still losing a lot of people. And now, my favorite Scienceblog, Pharyngula is on strike.

My opinion on the PepsiCo incident is that it was a huge blunder by Seed Media. There was a conflict of interest between the scientists-bloggers and PepsiCo. What if a blogger wrote something against PepsiCo? What if someone took a post of PepsiCo's and showed how flawed it was? Would that have been okay? Or would have the management of Seed Media silenced the scientists because of the big money PepsiCo was handing over?

PZ Myers was saying that he does not want to leave Scienceblogs. He has a lot of effort invested in SB, and that he did not want to move his huge blog. But, because of the way the scientists-bloggers are treated, he is on strike. No more Pharyngula for now, and it is a huge pity. A huge loss for Scienceblogs and the Seed Media.

I hope they wake up, and address the problems. Losing bloggers like that, and good bloggers on top, is not going to help Scienceblogs; in fact, they are already losing credibility in the blogosphere, and the internet in general. WAKE UP SEED MEDIA.

I want my favorite bloggers back. I am not going to read anything on Scienceblogs, anymore, until the situation is resolved. And many people will probably do the same. I want Pharyngula back...

Spam, and more Spam: from blogs to Nigerian scams

I've had some problems lately with spam comments in this blog. I must have deleted up to 10-15 comments at least in the past 2 weeks. Every now and then I get an e-mail in my inbox, and there it is: the spam message in chinese, with every kind of spamming links, from pr0n (as it is the word in the intertubez) to selling I don't know what.

If there is one thing I dislike, in general, from my mailbox to the forums I frequent to the blogs is spam. I understand that people want to advertise their product, and that they want to sell; but spamming sites and blogs is not the answer. Nowadays, there are ways of getting rid of spam, that is very effective.

For example, mail programs have spam rules, and put various spam messages into the Junk or Spam inbox. They don't always get it right, but they do at least 9 times out of 10. I do check my junk mail to see if there has been an error at times. For example, this morning one of the messages from ESA got into the junk mail, and I just redirected it to the normal inbox.

There is also the kind of spammer who is looking for victims; like the Nigerian scams, or the bank e-mails. If you point (without clicking) on to one of the links in the scam bank e-mails, you will see that those links re-direct to a different web address than the one you see on your screen. This is done in order to make you think that you are linking towards the bank's website, while, in reality, you get re-directed to a site where your username and password as well as other details can be keylogged and used by fraudsters.

As for the Nigerian scams, I had found once a little book with some of the most famous Nigerian scams around. I have regretted not buying it at the time; it must have been more than 6-7 years ago though. Nigerian scams have been here almost since the time of faxes; I have gotten a number of those letters by fax in the company. Maybe they have been around even longer, and the first ones were by snail mail? I don't know, but it might not be so far-fetched.

After all there are a lot of gullible people in the world, ready to believe anyone and anything.

Last but not least...

Following the death of the RD forums, there has been a lot of hype over the internet. The news travelled fast, and if you search you will find a lot of posts in blogs, in articles and more. Peter Harrison was contacted by journalists and more, but whatever we, the old mod team, had to say has been said. In our blogs, in various forums, in various comments in blog posts.

But we don't want to blow this out of proportion. Because what a lot of people have not understood, is that it was never about the proposed changes. It was about the way both the mod team and the members of the forum were treated. As Sciwoman, an admin on the RDF said, this was a classic example of how not to do it.

I do not want to post any more on this, nor do I want to go to any more sites that are reporting the events. All I wanted, was to get the truth out about what happened. This has been done, by many people. I wish to thank anyone out there who helped to put the record straight. It is now time to move on. 

Goodbye RDF, and Welcome to Rational Skepticism. Most of the old mod team is now on Rational Skepticism, and for anyone still out there from RDF, but also anyone else interested in science and reason, we welcome you to the new forum. 

Blogger problems

Blogger is having serious issues. I am a European user and half the time, I cannot access blogger. I am thinking of moving both blogs, this one and the greek one, to my own website.

I have to think about this, and find good hosting and cheap prices. The problem with moving is the number of posts, which is not too bad in this blog. But in my greek blog, I have 80+ posts and they will grow by the time of the move.

Originally I had opened this blog as a test site, but lately decided to making it a proper blog, and write as much as I can.

I will have to make a decision before the year is out, if problems with blogger persist.