What users do on the Internet

According to a stanford.edu research, this is what users do on the Internet:



It was made around year 2000 I think, so it's quite old.
Something more recent(2006) says Internet is mostly used for p0rn: http://www.grupthink.com/topic/433.
More surveys and polls list emailing and shopping on top: http://www.pewinternet.org/trends/Daily_Internet_Activities_1.11.07.htm
dpolls.com


Some more stats like usage by continent/countries can be found here: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

Call to undefined function imagecreatefromjpeg()

I was trying to resize some jpeg file in a php script and got this error:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function imagecreatefromjpeg()

I have recompiled the PHP by adding the following parameters to the ./configure script: --with-gd --with-zlib --with-jpeg-dir and everything worked after.

Of course I had to fix some dependencies first, but it was easy under Debian using apt-get, I remember that I had to do something similar a few years ago under an old Red Hat and it was really painful to fix all those GD requirements.

UFO2000 the only true XCOM remake

The first XCOM was released in 1993. It was one of the best game ever. Turn-based strategy game, with RPG elements. The game is divided into two parts. In one part you build base, make researches and general administration. In the second part you fight aliens on the battle field using researched technology and manufactured weapons and of course your soldiers.

The fight is quite realistic(an unarmored soldier dies at the first shot) and quite SCARY. Yes, the game can give you some feelings unexperienced with other games. Usually the hypnotic music goes in some repetitive mode while the enemy is hiddenly moving and then suddenly one of your men's life is taken and you hear some scary sounds. Everything the game is so realistic: fog of war, line of sight, night missions, civilians, etc. The mystery part makes you wanna play this game non-stop. At start, you basically don't know anything about the aliens or their technology and you start little by little to capture parts of their weapons, bodies, etc. After long days of hard playing you eventually discover all their technologies and you are ready to go to their main base on Mars and destroy their core mind.

The game continues with XCOM2: Terror From the Deep and XCOM3: Apocalypse. But the lack of new elements didn't make these games so successful as the first one.

There were many commercial remake attempts lately: UFO: Alien Invasion, UFO: Aftermath, UFO: Aftershock, UFO: Afterlight and UFO: Extraterrestrials. None of them can give you the feelings from XCOM. All the time and resources spent with these games are useless. Each was announced as masterpiece and hardly expected by the fans but they all make you bored and disapointed after one hour of playing.

But don't lose hope, there is one game which uses the elements from the original XCOM and comes with something new, something we could not even dream in 1993: MULTIPLAYER SUPPORT .
Yes, it's the UFO2000 project and it's open source. It runs well on both Windows and Linux and maybe other OS. Official page: ufo2000.sf.net.

The game is continuously updating and improving. Basically you have a number of points/money, the same as your opponent, and you use them to buy soldiers which can be human or aliens and weapons. You can also adjust your soldiers capabilities. You can design some to be scouts, some snipers, grenadiers, etc. If you like turn based strategies, you cannot miss this one. Although the game is free, you still need to download the original XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM: Terror from the Deep if you want to play additional maps.

The game has an official server where they keep statistics of played online games at ufo2000.xcomufo.com.

If you are annoyed by the complicated 3D graphics of the new games and their lack of good ideas, you have to try UFO 2000, which has some old 2D graphics but can offer some magnificent gameplay.

Warning: the multitude of customization of your soldiers and high number of strategies you can use, make this game very addictive!

Will Google ever update PageRank again?

Definitely. But why these delays? It used to update every three months or so. As most webmasters noticed, when Pagerank updates, there is no big change in SERPs, so they assumed that Google updates the pageranks much often and they make the changes public every couple of months. It's called pagerank export.

But this time the delay is bigger than ever. This probably happens because too many webmasters started to manipulate the Pagerank by getting paid and reciprocal links. While reciprocal are easy to detect, the problem is with paid links. Paid links are not easy to detect manually and it is even harder to do this automatically. So while Google tests various algorithms for this, they probably decided to delay the pagerank export. This has a quite high impact, because many webmasters started to panic, they invested in links and cannot see the results in Pagerank or some SEO companies have contracts with customers where they promised higher pageranks.

There are many rumors that Google will change the PR to something else. But I disagree. I think it's either google exports the Pagerank in the next couple of weeks and they also come with a good detection system for paid links or they will just stop to make the pagerank public hoping to discourage link buyers and sellers.

A good explanation about how Pagerank works can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank.

Blue Air

It's been a while since Blue Air started to operate flights in Romania and Europe, but I've only found out about it recently. I was planning a vacation in Greece, and the almost 1500 km that we'd have to drive to the destination (which was northern Greece, the southern part would have put some more hundreds kilometers on the route) didn't sound too good. So I looked for
some cheap plane tickets and found none, only the airport taxes were about 300€, not to mention the tickets themselves, so I gave up the whole trip, sadly. Now it's too late, the summer is gone and I've got a new job to think about, but at least for the next year I'll know that there are some options for the light-pocketed, Blue Air being one of them. Not for Greece, though, as for now they only operate routes in Romania, Spain, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Turkey and UK. They have some nice offers, 1€ per ticket and other such cheap offers, but still, the 2 problems for me remain: is it worth it to travel with low-cost companies, in terms of safety? and th eother one, well, they don't cover that many destinations...But this is constantly changing, as they grow, after all, 3 years is not such a long time in business world. Heh, I've seen that they're based in Bucharest, Baneasa airport, and not only do they offer cheap flights, but they offer free connection from Cluj- where I live - to Bucharest, thus making me the same offers as to the ones living in Bucharest, nice! I've surfed a bit for some customers' opinions, and just like in any other matter, there are pros and cons, of course the only pros are related only to the low prices...While the cons range from targeting the air hostesses' attitude to the more worrying problem of flights cancels, delays and lack of efficient communication.
Well, I'm still in doubt. It's not yet the time to make a decision in becoming their customer, but I think it's a good thing that the ancient Tarom has some competition in the local and international markets. And it hasn't been a whole year since Romania joined the EU, I'm sure things will improve in this area of air transportation too, I just hope it'd be sooner than later :)

Being anonymous with Tor

Tor is a tool which uses encrypted tunnels which can help you anonymize web browsing, instant messengers, IRC, and any applications that use the TCP protocol. It is based on volunteers who run servers.

Although, it was created to protect you against a common form of Internet surveillance known as "traffic analysis", it can also be used to reach websites or services that are blocked by your local Internet providers or even by local authorities(like in China), of course you do this on your own risk.


Tor is a free open source software, so anyone can use it without any charge, but beware, some even got arrested, you can read more about this here.

Site uptime monitor for your business

If you run sites or servers and want to be notified as soon as there is a problem with them, you can use siteuptime.com free service. They have various available monitoring options such as: http, pop3, smtp, ftp, dns, ping, ssl and custom tcp ports. They send tests at time intervals and if more than one location detects a connection failure, an email or SMS alert is sent to you.

Since this service has a public statistics page, you can use it to show your customers how stable your servers are, specially if you are in some kind of hosting business.