Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Garbage In. Garbage Out.

The second law of thermodynamics guarantees that computer hackers will discover, sooner or later, the whereabouts of McHenry County. And according to the public sector pensioners at the McHenryCountyBlog, that day has arrived:
The host I use to publish McHenry County Blog is Word Press. Last night I started noticing underline words that, when clicked upon, transfer readers to something called "en.wikipedia.com," whatever that is. I apologize for the annoyance.
Unauthorized Links Now Appearing on Word Press Publications
Discerning operatives will instantly recognize that en.wikipedia.com is the URL of a notorious Russian zombie botnet porn site. Ha ha j/k. Discerning operatives will instantly recognize that en.wikipedia.com is, erm, Wikipedia -- the Internet's (as well as your LakeCountyEye's) official reference source.

This blog, for one, will often post a hyperlink to the Wiki, like for instance ...
Public Sector Pension
These hyperlinks are intended to provide the reader access to a quick and authoritative brief on any topic. In fact the practice is so common among bloggers that blogsites offer standard tools to automate the process of tagging their HTML:
Plugin Directory
Tag: wikipedia
For operatives who are interested in installing a WordPress plugin for creating Wiki hyperlinks, your LakeCountyEye suggests ...
Creates links to Wikipedia with different languages
The plugin is a Wikipedia plugin, for setting links to Wikipedia articles. The language and the description for every link can be set individually.

Reference 2 Wiki
Unless of course you happen to be a tragi-comical blogger at the McHenryCountyBlog. In that case what you might be looking for is an appropriate plugin removal tool:
How to Uninstall a WordPress Plugin
Now, the last time a blogger in McHenry County actually attempted to uninstall a plugin, the area lost power for a week:
Power Outages in McHenry County
This may explain why the easily befuddled bloggers at the McHenryCountyBlog opted not to remove the annoying plugins off of their computers. They opted instead to keep the unwelcome hyperlinks, while asking their readers to install some annoying ad-blocking crapware on their computers:
Heck of a Guy blogger Allan Showalter came up with the solution to the pop-ads on my web site, as well as every other one with text. It's called "Adblock." You can access it here if you have words with dotted underlining on you screen. I'm so please to know that McHenry County Blog is not the exporter on unauthorized links.
Ad Blocker Add-on Cures Unwanted Links on Word Press, etc.
Content filters like Adblock Plus that block scripted HTTP requests to prevent popups and other unwanted ads usually have no effect on the sort of embedded hyperlinks that bedevil the bewildered bloggers at the McHenryCountyBlog.

A final note: smart operatives will make sure their antivirus software is up-to-date & current before any future visits to the McHenryCountyBlog!

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