Poop! I’ve just followed a link to a slashdot article only to discover that ‘my’ IP has been banned!

Either your network or ip address has been banned from Slashdot
…due to script flooding that originated from your network or ip address — or this IP might have been used to post comments designed to break web browser rendering. Or you crawled us with a rude robot, especially one that doesn’t understand RFCs very well…

I know that NTL, my ISP, recently changed their transparent proxies so that they stopped giving out originating IP addresses. So a quick check, by pointing my browser’s proxy setting to another NTL proxy, had slashdot’s server give me the page. So I know that it is the transparent NTL proxy server that has been banned not me!
I’ll have to email NTL and see if they will contact slashdot.

Update: It’s seemed to be resolved now, without me getting round to contacting NTL. I guess there were a few people affected and someone else got in touch before me.

A bunch of SEO professionals and amateurs have set themselves a challenge: Get top ranking on Google for a nonsense phrase: Google Contest.

Things are already heating up. Just one of the forums discussing it has some lively conversation: Nigritude Ultramarine

Story from slashdot: How To Get Googled, By Hook Or By Crook

It had to happen, they couldn’t seem to hold off for much longer. The BBC has the story Google to sell $2.7bn in shares, so does Slashdot: Google Files for IPO. Interestingly Google’s own press center is not yet carrying the story.

I only hope that what they are offering is not the majority of the company, that is, I hope that Sergey and Larry retain absolute control. Somehow I doubt that! I think it would be very unusual.

There has been a lot of speculation about what a majority third party shareholder interest in Google will do to the value of it’s search results. I think that matters less than it did. They know they have been losing market share in the search engine arena and quite rapidly in recent months. I believe they have started to diversify and will continue to do so. If they can get it right (and that is a big ‘if’) GMail will be a killer app. And I think with all the specialized search engine and AI companies they have been buying they have something stunningly clever up their collective sleeves.

We’ll just have to wait and see.

update: Wow! I was wrong to doubt. It looks like Google will be bucking the trend and retaining absolute control within the company. This article at Wired More Reasons to Love Google has the info and much more besides. From page two of the article:

A dual class stock structure will keep control of Google in the hands of its founders.

Sometime in the night, my simple page view counter passed the 1 million mark! That’s since 25/08/2002. I cannot be bothered working out how many days that is but I’m impressed!

My real people visitor counter (as opposed to the page view counter which counts bots and crawlers and refreshes, etc.) also passed the 70,000 mark last night. That counter is a count of real visits by people (or at least web browsers running JavaScript) and has been going since April last year (though I recently lost 15 days worth of stats in my server problems).

Sun Enters Microsoft’s Orbit

Struggling Sun Microsystems reached a sweeping, $1.6 billion settlement with Microsoft and said Friday it plans to cooperate with its longtime nemesis, a company it had branded an unrepentant monopolist

Although I’d hardly call the agreement entering their orbit. More like agreeing to stop fighting.

“Our companies will continue to compete hard, but this agreement creates a new basis for cooperation that will benefit the customers of both companies,” said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive officer.

This, however, is beyond my comprehension:

Sun, once a shining star of Silicon Valley, also said it expects revenue for the quarter ended March 28 to be approximately $2.65 billion. The net loss will be between $750 million and $810 million, or 23 cents to 25 cents per share.

How can you take $2.65 billion in a quarter and still lose money?