The Dumbing of our Society

For those who did COM 101 with me back in Spring 2012, you may faintly remember that I posted something similar regarding social media. If you never came across it, you can click here to read about it. (Its fun to read)

This can be considered a follow up to that post and since that time, the overall intelligence of the users on Facebook/twitter/tumblr has never improved whatsoever.

Facebook is still filled with many attention-seeking people posting about every single detail of their life, people who like to display to the world their stupidity,  and self righteous gits (gramma/spelling nazis) going around flaming others for their stupidity.

I don't think it's current evolutionary state is what Mark Zuckerberg had in mind when he first created it, then again I may be wrong since according to his letter on September 8, 2006 he "wanted to create an environment where people could share whatever information they wanted". Sadly it is us, human beings, with our infamous ingenuity, took this ambiguous statement to another level: stupidity.

Since the last decade, more than half of the world's population is connected to the internet (I'm guessing) through traditional mediums such as computers and laptops, to more recent technology like our mobile phones and gadget. Statistically, it means that there is a balance of intelligent, average, and idiots on the internet. But the most of the intelligent people have realized that except for its ability to connect to other friends and share bits of their lives with people that they care about, Facebook does not really provide anything else. Therefore it leaves with an overflowing number of idiots who like to post about every single thing they are doing at any moment in time as though we are interested to know, and the average blokes who think they are intelligent by singling out the idiots for cyber shaming. There are better things to do in life than "surfing" Facebook. There are tonnes of better games out there compared to the crappy selection on Facebook, how on earth did it ever be self sustainable and profitable makes me cry at night (mainly due to why didn't think of it first),  maybe because I always had hopes for the human race.

My goodness this sounds all very negative doesn't it? Nevertheless this is my two cents on the social media issue, I am open to opposing views (if any). I shall stop here and end with some light hearted Facebook humor. =)

- Paperbear out

ERRORS ERRORS AND MORE ERRORS!!!

Forgive me for my little joke Mr. Choy, there is nothing wrong with my blog URL, hope you enjoy a laugh when you realize it! =D

During class, we talked about the various components of a domain name and if there was a misspelled or missing letter in the URL, we will encounter the "ERROR 404 PAGE NOT FOUND" page.
But what exactly is an ERROR 404? This page appears when the server cannot find the file that is requested. The file has either moved or deleted, or the wrong URL or document name is entered. Look at the URL. If the a word looks misspelled, then correct it and try again. If that doesn't work, backtrack by deleting information between each backslash (/), until a page on that site that isn't a 404 appears. From there, you may be able to find the page you are looking for.

Here are some examples of interesting ERROR 404 pages:

Soocial



Patterntap



Catswhocode



ERROR 404 is one of the more common errors that we encounter, but there are many other errors as well.

ERROR 400 BAD FILE REQUEST
Usually means the syntax used in the URL is incorrect (e.g., uppercase letter should be lowercase letter; wrong punctuation marks)

ERROR 401 UNAUTHORIZED
Server is looking for some encryption key from the client and is not getting it. Also, wrong password may have been entered. Try it again, paying close attention to case sensitivity.

ERROR 403 FORBIDDEN/ACCESS DENIED
Similar to 401; special permission needed to access the site -- a password and/or username if it is a registration issue. Other times you may not have the proper permissions set up on the server or the site's administrator just doesn't want you to be able to access the site.

ERROR 408 REQUEST TIMEOUT
Client stopped the request before the server finished retrieving it. A user will either hit the stop button, close the browser, or click on a link before the page loads. Usually occurs when servers are slow or file sizes are large.

ERROR 500 INTERNAL ERROR
Couldn't retrieve the HTML document because of server-configuration problems. Contact site administrator.

ERROR 501 NOT IMPLEMENTED
Web server doesn't support a requested feature.

ERROR 502 SERVICE TEMPORARILY OVERLOADED
Server congestion; too many connections; high traffic. Keep trying until the page loads.
We encounter this annoying error quite often too especially when grades are released or when add/drop dates begin.

ERROR 503 SERVICE UNAVAILABLE
Server busy, site may have moved ,or you lost your dial-up Internet connection. 

CONNECTION REFUSED BY HOST
Either you do not have permission to access the site or your password is incorrect.

FILE CONTAINS NO DATA

Page is there but is not showing anything. Error occurs in the document. Attributed to bad table formatting, or stripped header information.

BAD FILE REQUEST

Browser may not support the form or other coding you're trying to access.

FAILED DNS LOOKUP

The Domain Name Server can't translate your domain request into a valid Internet address. Server may be busy or down, or incorrect URL was entered. HOST UNAVAILABLE Host server is down. Hit reload or go into the site later. UNABLE TO LOCATE HOST Host server is down, Internet connection is lost, or URL typed incorrectly. NETWORK CONNECTION REFUSED BY THE SERVER The Web server is busy. The solutions to these errors can be easily 'googled', however, we do not encounter these errors everyday. Thus, they fall under the radar and ignored by most of us. Then again, sometimes these error pages can be a prank so do not fall for it so easily!! *cough* Mr. Choy *cough*

We learn new things everyday =D!

- Paperbear out