It has been a year and four months since the conclusion of the famed “seraphim proudleduck” SEO competition for Google…. And you would be surprised to see the outcome.

Either the Google engine has become better and found new back-links to sites that didn’t win, or this competition never ended but no one knew.

Either way, an examination of the results brings quite an interesting (to put it mildly) look at the Google search algorithms. Much of what we discovered is quite shocking.

First, here is the link to the Google search results for “seraphim proudleduck.”

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For those of you that pelted my email address telling me that the links to the forums in our last post here were broken, well, they're working now.

We left IPB (an excellent piece of software with unfortunately snobbish developers) and are now using MyTopix…. Which we hope to customize, skin, and hack; as soon as the new version comes out that is.

Without further ado, here you go: NeoSmart Forums! 

Linux is an OS for nerds and it only runs on geek machines. No way my suave (circle one: XPS | G5 | Alienware) is gonna run Linux!

Sound familiar? Don’t believe a word they say, the days of CLI-only workstations and green-and-black screens are long over. Now anyone can download and install most distros via easy to use setup screens… But when it comes to actually using Linux is where most people freak out, for no real reason at all. Read our article on how easy Linux is to use then you’ll see what we mean.

We’re not here to cover the details all geeks should know such as disabling services and installing games or setting up web-servers, Google exists for one reason, use it. This list/mini-guide covers simple and extremely effective ways to make your Linux a more enjoyable OS from top to bottom, and take the geek-factor out. Don’t worry, it has enough secrets to keep you intrigued, but it’s nowhere near as hard to use as it’s made out to be.

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Depending on how much of a "Geek" you are, you probably woke up today feeling like any other day. Most likely as you lay there in bed, it never crossed your mind that today was the beginning of a new month, or anything of that sort (unless you had exams today like I did…).

But do not be fooled, there are people that spend all year looking forward to this day, and planning for it. One is my brother, whose birthday is today (Happy Birthday!), but the greater majority spend forever planning on what false information can they successfully spread… Most are evil, but quite a few aren’t. 

The biggest problem is knowing who to believe. Last year the homepage of Gmail.com showed a doodle pad with plans for an unlimited space email system (infinity plus 1) and though everyone believed it to be a joke, 24 hours later Gmail was at 2GB and still, 365 days later, counting. Today we hear rumors of a "Google Rooms" at the moment poking fun at the (lack of) life in Larry Page’s day.. Could this be a new social community coming up on the Google front?

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Following our post about listing our fears and concerns about the global phishing watchdog PIRT, this may seem a bit of a big change in opinion. However, we never "had it in" for PIRT or were "jealous" as posts around the web are claiming, and is absolute nonsense; we are only doing our duty and warning our readers where we find it necessary. It’s not often that we get the wonderful opportunity to make a post like this, so listen up.

After our first post, CastleCops rep Ike was kind enough to give us the blow-by-blow of how PIRT works, you can see the first bit of our conversation here, which we then continued via email.

We are very proud to let our readers know that PIRT has now convinced us 100%, and we give them the NeoSmart Seal of Approval, for what it’s worth. We wish them the best of luck… and don’t be surprised if you hear we are working together on something… but that’s all I’m authorized to say for now! For now though, rest assured, and fill out & submit as many fraud reports as you can over on their site!

Ricky smiled again, and shrugged. “Hey,” he said. “It gets the job done.” Those kettles in the next room were indeed tanks for controlled microbial growth. But Ricky wasn’t making beer—he was making microbes, and I had no doubt about the reason why. Unable to construct genuine nanoassemblers, Xymos was using bacteria to crank out their molecules. This was genetic engineering, not nanotechnology!

That was an excerpt from Michael Crichton’s Prey, a sci-fi novel, and an excellent read, published in 2002.

That particular quote was in reference to the protagonist discovering that a R&D company was using bacteria (in his case "Theta-d 5972 […] A strain of E. coli.") to grow nanoparticles, which in turn built nanobots. I am a lover of sci-fi novels, the more plausible, the better. Michael Crichton is a physicist, and his novels tend to be incredibly beleivable… Just read on!

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PIRT (Phishing Incident Reporting and Termination) is making headlines around the web, but take their plans with a grain’s worth of salt for now. For those of you that haven’t heard or can’t be troubled to follow the links, PIRT is a non-profit organization comprised of volunteers, dedicated to tracking links in spam to phishing websites and concentrating their efforts on "shutting those sites down." It may sound like a valiant and praise-worthy effort, but our researchers are unearthing more details that may cast a shadow of doubt on this organizations methods and goals.

PIRT’s methods for "shutting down" sites aren’t too clearly defined, their homepage mentions contacting hosts and ISPs and requesting their cooperation, but as Netcraft reports, most phishing schemes launch from the same netblocks repeatedly:

Fraudsters will often host their sites in developing countries with limited law enforcement resources and incentivize the hosting company to keep the site running as long as it possibly can. Indeed, some unscrupulous hosting companies actually promote fraud hosting as a service. Some hosting companies offer fraud hosting as a service whereby they are incentivized to keep the site up as long as possible, and this necessitates more extensive action.

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