Webmasters, if you don’t want something to be publicly accessible, then for all that is good, don’t make it publicly accessible! Otherwise, Google might just index it, and in this case, that’s definitely Not a Good Thing. (via Lockergnome)

The sad thing is, there are people out there who would fall for this:

Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by
(IKS4LY@aol.com) on Thursday, July 29, 2004 at 10:33:37
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

: Dear Paypal customer,we are sorry to inform you that we are having problem's with the billing information on your account.

We would appreciate it if you would goto our website and fill out the proper information that we require to keep your account

active

Please Update your account information by visiting our updates web site below.

http:\r.aol.com\cgi\redir-complex?url=http://paypalzz.tripod.com/index.htm

We are here to serve you

Steve Johnson.

Billing Updates Center

Acoount Updates Team.

2004

IFLT6A.

Note the reversed slashes, which mean that the link won’t work correctly on any standards-compliant browser. I suppose this scammer only uses Internet Exploiter… serves him right, I think. 😉

And naturally, the scammer’s site has already been shut down. Duh. Really, Mr. Inept Scammer, you at least remotely considered that using one of the most popular free hosting services was not a good idea, didn’t you? Guess not.

::sigh:: Scammers these days. They can’t even be convincing.

Internet Explorer can be crashed by using a particular four-character string in a style sheet. Unbelievable.

Here’s a usability howler for you: If you forget the password you used to register on Adobe.com, the site offers a form to recover your lost password. Only one problem… you need to know your password in order to access the form. D’oh!

(via the oft-amusing This Is Broken)

Along the same lines as the previous post, and also found via some Engrish-related Googling… here’s what you get if you buy bootlegged Star Wars DVDs.

Some choice selections from the… rather fractured descriptions on the backs of the cases:

Attack of the Clones: “Improbity trade the federal strike against the nape of the star the empress ten years, day that own thenot of the common run power line peaceful anner the gold grow upped…”

Return of the Jedi: “The ream person is greatly terrified, with the’s war!”

And it’s a bit blurry– I’m especially unsure of the second word– but I believe the description of The Empire Strikes Back starts off: “mark rice the is improbity influence for line road fram for the sake of resisting the black warrior of day follow the elder generation”.

I also love the fact that Return of the Jedi stars “Carie Fishersir” and “Alecgu Imess”. And is rated both R and PG. Those silly bootleggers.

And this is completely ignoring the subtitles from Episode IV…

Yes, everyone’s probably familiar with the captions from that one bootleg of The Two Towers.

But a Google search led me to discover that there’s another bootleg of the movie with even worse subtitles, which appear to have been translated from English to Chinese and back. Needless to say, this version makes even less sense than the more well-known one, which consisted mostly of an ESL student’s mishearings; take, for instance, the subtitle quoted in the subject line of this post…

Ever wonder how to say “user-friendly” or “bandwidth” in Old English? Well, here’s a glossary of Anglo-Saxon computer terms. (via J-Walk Blog)

Fans of intentionally bad writing, the 2004 Bulwer-Lytton awards were given out yesterday, when it was neither dark nor stormy (nor night, for that matter). And the winner is a National Spelling Bee contestant from long ago, at that– glad to see a fellow Websterian getting some recognition…

::chuckles:: From the latest Onion:

University Implicated In Checks-For-Degrees Scheme

Sad thing is, this is pretty much the truth, too!

One of the most… bizarre… news headlines I’ve seen in a good while: Girlfriend ‘hit with alligator’.

And no, that’s not a typo:

A man in the US state of Florida was arrested after he allegedly used his pet alligator to hit his girlfriend.

David Havenner, 41, faces misdemeanour charges of battery and possession of an alligator, said the authorities.

Girlfriend Nancy Monico claimed he beat her with his fists and then grabbed the alligator and swung it at her as she tried to escape, said officials.

I just… have no words. And besides, anything I could say would be overshadowed by the utter weirdness of the event itself…

(found via Blogdex)