Blocked from watching "Let Me Borrow that Top" for six hours.....come on Pakistan!

Following an attempt by the Pakistan government to block its citizens' access to YouTube, millions of people throughout the world were unable to go to the site for several hours on Sunday. This who debacle began on Friday when Pakistan Telecommunication Authority ordered 70 internet providers to block YouTube.com so that Pakistanis would not be able to watch the several thousand anti-Islamic videos, mainly the trailer for an upcoming film by Dutch director Geert Wilders, on the site. The outage went world wide after, apparently, a Pakistan telecomm company accidently began advertising itself as the quickest route to the site which sent two-thirds of the global internet population's traffic into oblivion. Apparently, the telecomm company established a route that directed requests for YouTube videos from local Internet subscribers to a "black hole," where the data was discarded, according to vice president of internet community services at Renesys, Todd Underwood.That route was then published its international data carrier, PCCW Ltd. of Hong Kong who accepted it. PCCW, one of the world's 2o largest data carriers, this route was passed along to numerous other carriers without any double-checking. According to the Associated Press, Asia was hit the hardest by the outage, which lasted about two hours.

I'm just really glad I wasn't craving me some "Aicha" or "Flee Market Montgomery" on Sunday or I probably would have been SOL.

Apparently, not everyone is a facebook junkie fo' lyfe

Following several accounts of unhappy users and even a couple of threats of law suits, Facebook has fixed the "technical difficulties" involved with deleting one's profile completely. According to Katie Germinder, Facebook's director for user experience and design, when the site's team first tried to make deleting accounts easier, the changes created a technical snag that only affected a few users. "None of their information was exposed, but the empty account continued to exist even though all of its data had been removed,” she said. But now, the bug has been exterminated and usrs can now erase their account for good.

“It’s pretty obvious that Facebook are scared of losing loads of members if they made the delete option easily available,” Mr. Wallin, the creator of the facebook group "How to permenentally delete your profile said.

So if you're "soo over the 'book" you can now completely devote your online attention to some other time-wasting site. Why not try to bring back friendster ?

Google runs the world

As an admitted Google fanatic, Microsoft's latest move to level the playing field come to no surprise to me. Last week, Microsoft proposed an unsolicitied $42 Billion dollar buyout for Yahoo Inc., a move that would make the world's largest software maker a fierce competitor in the online search market. Google, who controls roughly 75% of the internet's paid search, has come out in strong opposition to the news claiming that with the purchase of Yahoo, Microsoft may be able to stifle innovation and steer customers to their internet capabilities through their already dominating software. Google chief legal officer Michael Drummond wrote of the situation: "This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation." In response to this allegation, Microsofts' CEO Steve Ballmer claims that the acquisition of Yahoo would in fact raise competition in the industry rather than eliminate it. In any matter, if the $42 Billion dollar deal does go through, it is expected that antitrust regulators in the U.S. and Europe will launch an extensive review that could take up to a year.

Whatever happens, I'm still a Google girl. Any search that can give me an accompanying YouTube video is tops.