Friday Q&A

Questionable Options

Greetings, crickets and trolls. Welcome to another thrilling edition of the Friday Q&A. It was an exciting week, so I'll have to dispense with the formalities of insulting Boner's mom and implying TSZ is a closet homosexual. No time for all that now, though I may be able to work it in later on.

Q: What happened to Photobucket?

A: They pissed off the wrong people. As many of you may know, quasi-reliable image hosting site Photobucket.com came under attack by an elite (or possibly L337) group of Turkish hackers with ties to Wayne Newton. Clearly, this is the latest shot fired in Newton's war against Rupert Murdoch. That rhinestone-clad lounge lizard (Newton) has laid claim to Newscorp, since the media conglomerate shares the first three letters of his name. He's already exacted bitter vengeance on the makers of Fig Newtons, so I tend to take his actions pretty seriously.

Q: Were any contests disrupted?

A: Not as such. But while I can't confirm that we're through the great Photobucket scare of 2008, I can sadly report that the damage has already been done. TheSniperZERO was officially right about something. You may recall a while back that he railed against free image hosts, making Photobucket a specific target of his rant. TSZ's argument was that since the photoshop work you do for Fark is your legacy, you should care enough to host it on your own domain. That way your creations will stand the test of time, until you forget to pay the bill.

Q: So what's the best hosting option?

A: Good question. Obviously, paying for a domain will only ensure that your work lasts as long as your interest in this particular hobby. You can forget about setting an example for the future generations of 'shoppers, because when your domain runs out, everything you hosted with it is going to red x. On the other hand, using a web-based host leaves you wide open to hacker attacks and censorship by over-zealous content mods. There's also nothing to stop the host from accidentally deleting everything you've ever posted. My advice is to just forgo image hosts altogether, and post ASCII text-style drawings, like that one of the middle finger I always used to see.

That's all for this time, gentle reader. Once again, thanks for stopping by. I want to personally congratulate TheSniperZERO for being right about something. Web-based hosting companies with an unreliable track record, such as Imageshack and Photobucket, are ill-suited to the needs of the Fark community. Hopefully, this week's uproar has served to teach a valuable lesson about the perils of web-based hosts, because the problem is only going to get worse.

Stay tuned for more dire prognostications from the Doctor!