Captchas are there so you can prove you are a person instead of a ‘bot. But what if you fail the test? They can be pretty hard! Frank Lesser, who writes for The Colbert Report, expresses his frustration with captchas in a column in the New York Times that you might relate to. Link -via the Presurfer

First, it’s important to remember that trolls are not attacking you—they’re attacking boredom. They have nothing better to do than say something mean so that’s how they’ve unfortunately chosen to spend their time. If what they’re saying isn’t going to have much of an impact on anyone, just remember that they’re bored, loathsome people and let it go. On the other hand, if they’re promoting hate speech and potentially causing harm to others, it’s best to avoid engaging them and instead report them to the site’s administrator. Many sites offer a means of flagging harmful posts, and commenting systems offer ways for an administrator to ban problematic users. A simple email is often sufficient to take care of a bad person. Engaging with a troll-ish thread is just going to make you angry and potentially get you in trouble, too. If you do fall into the trap of feeding a troll, however, using the principles of cognitive therapy can be a worthy solution. This means responding positively and calmly, while accepting their different opinion. The trolls will likely find it frustrating and even condescending, but it’s hard to argue with someone who is accepting your point of view (or even agreeing with you).

Link -via Geeks Are Sexy

Working on the web is hard, which is why Fark has decided to take a brave stand, going against the grain to support SOPA and PIPA. This way, if the site gets shut down under the ridiculous censorship bills, the company won’t have to do any more hard work.

While a bunch of other sites are going “dark” to protest SOPA/PIPA, we’re over the moon about the whole thing. Why? Honestly, we’ve been bringing you the latest news happening across the internet for 12 years, and we’re tired. And SOPA/PIPA is the perfect excuse to quit.

While SOPA might be “almost dead,” it’s not quite all the way there, and under various drafts of both SOPA/PIPA, Fark could have its DNS assignment (the thing that turns an IP address, like 10.0.0.1, into words like Fark.com) revoked without notice simply for linking to content that could come under foreign copyright claims. This means, even if it is actual news in and of itself, if we link to it, we can be shut down. And thank God, cause we’re about ready to crack under the strain of being on top of the news all the time.

The post isn’t up anymore because the blackout day is over, but you can read about it over at the link from The Consumerist.

Link

By now, I’m sure you have all heard about SOPA and PIPA being as how every blog in the world has been talking about them as of late. Even those that are usually apolitical (like Neatorama) have taken a stand against the legislation, but despite all the talk and Wikipedia’s many messages warning about their upcoming blackout, some people still didn’t get the memo.

That’s where Herpderpedia comes in… chronicling the Tweets of people freaking out over the Wikipedia blackout despite the many warnings on the site and the fact that its blackout message clearly describes what’s going on.

Sure the Twitter account will only have one good day, but it’s certain to bring endless enjoyment for the internet snobs around the country.

Link Via Laughing Squid

Nitrozac and Snaggy from The Joy of Tech made a comic to cover the site during the internet strike. See, there are things to do that aren’t on the web! Link -via Laughing Squid

There are many criticisms of SOPA and PIPA (e.g. the ones at EFF, Gizmodo, and reddit), but let me focus on one: under the proposed law, linking to a website with infringing content is illegal.

Censorship aside, that presents a huge day-to-day operational problem for many law-abiding websites. For a blog like Neatorama, which has nearly 40,000 posts and over 311,000 comments, this means that we'd have to police every single comment to ensure that nobody links to a rogue site (and continuously checking that legitimate links in past comments haven't gone rogue), otherwise we'd be breaking the law. A gargantuan task, indeed.

I urge you to contact your members of Congress and ask them to vote against SOPA and PIPA: Link

Update #1 1/18/12: Sign the Petition or Call Your Representative and tell them to vote against SOPA and PIPA – Thanks for the suggestion, ray hahn!

Update #2: Header on all Neatorama posts now links to the petition and call pages.

College Humor presents new superheroes for the internet. Or, internet sites as superheroes. Besides Google here, check out the powers of The Facebook, Reddit, Huffington Post, and Google Plus. Link -via reddit

Remember your first time driving? For most Americans, nothing symbolizes freedom more than the open road. But that's changing: for more and more teenagers, freedom doesn't mean a fast car. It means a fast Internet:

If Ferris Bueller had a day off now, would he spend it on Facebook?

Recent research suggests many young Americans prefer to spend their money and time chatting to their friends online, as opposed to the more traditional pastime of cruising around in cars. [...]

But with money tight in many households, and the cost of gas and insurance soaring, some youngsters are having to choose between buying a car and owning the latest smartphone or tablet.

In a survey to be published later this year by Gartner, 46% of 18 to 24-year-olds said they would choose internet access over owning their own car. The figure is 15% among the baby boom generation, the people that grew up in the 1950s and 60s - seen as the golden age of American motoring.

Link

That should explain all those kitten videos.

The report finds that the amount of time people spend tooling around on the Web doing nothing corresponds with age. Only 12 percent of people over 65 say they went online the previous day for no particular reason. Of those aged 50 to 64, the study found 27 percent answered yes to the same question.

In all, 58 percent of all adults said that they use the Internet to pass time or have fun at least occasionally. Of adults who use the Internet, nearly three-quarters surf the Web for no reason.

And those are the people we aim to serve. Link

From Angry Birds to YouTube, the internet is already addicting enough, but just in case you need a little more motivation to enroll in your favorite time-wasting activities, here are some great propaganda posters.

Link

Ben Mendelsohn gives us a look at “The Physical Underbelly of the Internet.”

The video is meant to remind viewers that the Internet is a physical, geographically anchored thing. It features a tour inside Telx’s 9th floor Internet exchange at 60 Hudson Street in New York City, and explores how this building became one of the world’s most concentrated hubs of Internet connectivity.

Read more about the film at Brain Pickings. Link

How many internet memes are in this song by the GAG Quartet? All of them! Well, according to the YouTube page, there are forty -in case you want to try to find them all. -via The Daily What

We've got Books on Wheels, so why not the Internet on Wheels? Here comes the Google Internet Bus, a free, mobile cybercafe that roams the backroads of India, bringing the joy of the Interweb to many:

LIKE the travelling fairs that still roam India, a snazzy white bus trundles along the subcontinent's B-roads, stopping in small towns for a few days at a time and inviting locals into another world. But in place of tightrope-walking girls and performing monkeys, its main attraction is access to the internet. For some visitors, it is their first time online.

The Google Internet bus is a free, mobile cybercafe dreamed up by the search giant and run in association with BSNL, a large state-owned internet service provider (ISP). It has covered over 43,000km and passed through 120 towns in 11 states since it hit the road on February 3rd, 2009. Google estimates that 1.6m people have been offered their first online experience as a result. Of those, 100,000 have signed up for an internet connection of their own.

There is, however, a dark side to the project:

Like a high-school drug dealer, though admittedly less nefarious, the idea is to hook them young and keep them coming back. In return for its efforts, Google says it gains a better understanding of their needs. That, in turn, lets it develop products for the potentially huge local market.

Link

If you are a fan of community, you may have seen their parody of Doctor Who on an episode a few weeks back. If not, here’s a link.

So why am I bringing this up now? As it turns out, the internet is even geekier than most of us imagine and the show’s parody, called Inspector Spacetime, now has it’s own fan page on Tumblr filled with speculation about who will play the next inspector and what the fan’s favorite episodes are. Now that’s something even a sitcom writer couldn’t have predicted.

Link Via The Mary Sue

Back in 2001, you’d have to mail in money orders to pay for online shopping. Wikipedia had just launched, and research was probably still done by reading books. Things have changed. What do you remember about the internet ten years ago? (I remember playing Neopets…)

Link -via Look At This

Do you ever feel like your love of the internet just isn’t obvious enough when you’re away from the computer? If so, you may need to invest in some of the jewelry on this great BuzzFeed list, like these delightful LOL earrings.

Link

“Browsing the Internet serves an important restorative function,” according to a report from the National University of Singapore.

So-called cyberloafing can refresh workers mentally after long periods of work, researchers said at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management in San Antonio this week.

Surfing the Web is even better for productivity than talking or texting with friends or sending personal emails, the study found.

And smart bosses would stop snooping, researchers said: Excessive Internet monitoring and surveillance only makes employees do it more, they said.

Link

Caldwell Tanner posted the 8 Lesser-Known Fairies that affect your daily life. This one, the Internet Fairy, should be very familiar to all of your Neatoramanauts! Link - via Look At This

It is certainly no accident that the post-idea world has sprung up alongside the social networking world. Even though there are sites and blogs dedicated to ideas, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, etc., the most popular sites on the Web, are basically information exchanges, designed to feed the insatiable information hunger, though this is hardly the kind of information that generates ideas. It is largely useless except insofar as it makes the possessor of the information feel, well, informed. Of course, one could argue that these sites are no different than conversation was for previous generations, and that conversation seldom generated big ideas either, and one would be right.

Remember Mary Bale, a.k.a. the woman who was tracked down and harassed after someone uploaded a video of her throwing a cat into a trashcan? She’s one of the many people who were taught a lesson by the throngs of angry internet users. You can read more about her and 11 others in similar situations over at Ugo. Fair warning, not all of the people actually deserved what they got.

Link

Spanning from over a decade ago to this summer’s memes, Ranker has gathered together 35 catchy viral musical videos that swept the internet. You can relive the good old days of “All Your Base” and “Peanut Butter Jelly Time” and also catch up with tunes you may have missed as well. Lyrics in some songs are NSFW. Link

For a while after his first TV series was broadcast in 2009, comedian Stewart Lee was in the habit of collecting and filing some of the comments that people made about him on web pages and social media sites. He did a 10-minute Google trawl most days for about six months and the resultant collected observations soon ran to dozens of pages. If you read those comments now as a cumulative narrative, you begin to fear for Stewart Lee. A good third of the posts fantasized about violence being done to the comic, most of the rest could barely contain the extent of their loathing.

Link

Who says internet memes don’t last? Some people have the most fleeting memes tattoos on their bodies. Imagine trying to explain to your grandchildren why those things were so important to you that you had them permanently inked into your skin. Ranker has a list of ten memes, some with more than one tattoo found. A couple pics are NSFW. Link

Geekosystem has a hilarious list of subjects you won’t believe eHow claims it can teach you. I particularly like the one above and “how to use superglue to fix a tooth,” which is conveniently followed by “how to remove superglue from a tooth.” You stay classy eHow.

Link

Those of us who came of age alongside AOL must contend with something even more incriminating than a lifelong Google profile: A trail of discarded online aliases, each a distillation of how we viewed ourselves and our place in the world at the time of sign-on. The dawn of the Internet was an open invitation to free ourselves from the names our parents gave us and forge self-made identities divorced from our reputations IRL.

Here at Neatorama, every author either uses their real name or a made up name that sounds like a real name so they don’t have to explain it (except for me, which means I am a dinosaur in internet terms). However, the majority of our commenters use pseudonyms. Would you like to share with us the story of how you selected it -or the story of some abandoned name you once used? Link -via Metafilter

Update: Just to be clear, you don’t have to enter your password on the site, just your email.

Link

A very internet video, indeed! This collection of clips features just about every video meme that ever hit the ‘net, edited into appropriate places to “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Some language NSFW.  -via BB Spot

There are two reasons for the decline, according to Nielsen. One is poverty: some low-income households no longer own TV sets, most likely because they cannot afford new digital sets and antennas.

The other is technological wizardry: young people who have grown up with laptops in their hands instead of remote controls are opting not to buy TV sets when they graduate from college or enter the work force, at least not at first. Instead, they are subsisting on a diet of television shows and movies from the Internet.

I had forgotten that there are places in which people can pick up several TV channels by using just an antenna. If I lived alone, I would give up TV entirely because I don’t have time to watch it. Link -via TYWKIWDBI

Selleck Waterfall Sandwich:

Perhaps one of the strangest Tumblr blogs around, Selleck Waterfall Sandwich is exclusively dedicated to three things: Tom Selleck, waterfalls and sandwiches.  You’ll be amazed just how many ways these three things can come together in an image.

Citation Needed:

Have you ever seen a citation needed tag on Wikipedia and thought, “really, they need a citation for that?“ Well, that’s the whole point of Citation Needed. One of my personal favorites on the site is this gem, “The band March Hare is named after the March Hare. [citation needed]“ Unfortunately, many of the funny bits on this site are removed from Wikipedia, making Citation Needed the only archive of such comments.

Hungover Owls:

There’s a reason owls are nocturnal creatures –they’re too hung over to be awake during the day. But while hungover humans tend to look downright disgusting, Hungover Owls look absolutely adorable –in a slobbish, grumpy and tired kind of way.

Captcha Art:

Have you ever read a captcha and laughed at how humorously the words seemed to go together? Captcha Art asks you to take a screenshot of the captcha and then submit your artistic interpretation of the message.

Kid Casting:

Whenever a television show or movie needs to do a flashback that involves the main character as a child, they have to cast a child that looks like the main actor. Sometimes they do such a spot on job that you really do believe the two are related. Other times, you can’t help but giggle. Kid Casting makes it easy to compare the kids casted as the flashback versions and the adults who played the main characters. I think my favorite has to be this one of Tina Fey and Alex Baldwin’s flashback kids from 30 Rock.

Caught Dead In That:

If you think there is nothing funny about death, then you’re not going to be a fan of Caught Dead In That. While it may sound like a fashion blog, the site is decidedly more morbid, dedicated exclusively to  humorous tombstones.

Godzilla Haiku:

As the name implies, Godzilla Haiku combines two great Japanese classics –Gozilla (and other budget monster movies) and haikus.

Awkward Stock Photos:

Most people only see stock images that have actually been purchased to illustrate some kind of idea or feeling, but the people who make stock images work to ensure there is an image out there for just about any conceivable notion. As a result, there are a lot of seriously strange stock photos with no apparent use other than humoring the people who read Awkward Stock Photos. Personally, I like to make up completely logical captions for these images in my head.

Garfield Minus Garfield:

Without Garfield, these comic strips seem to depict a sad, lonely man who has taken to talking to himself rather than trying to meet people in the real world. Almost every post on Garfield Minus Garfield is surprisingly depressing, and that’s what makes it so funny.

Panda Loves To Party:

Panda Loves to Party is one of my favorite Tumblr blogs as it is loaded with adorable images of pandas celebrating. Before seeing this blog, I had no idea that pandas were such party animals or that zoos made so many darn ice cakes just for cute black and white bears.

Hotties From History:

Whatever physical traits get you going, Hotties From History is sure to have someone from an era long gone that you would have fancied. Aside from the obvious physical characteristics, the author also makes sure to include any extra tidbit that could help add to your crush.

What do you guys think? Is it just a coincidence these are all on Tumblr or is their something about the site that caters to strange sites? Also, feel free to share any of your favorite strange blogs in the comments (even if they aren’t Tumblr specific).

Encyclopedia Dramatica was always a place to get in-depth information on internet culture, memes, and history, but the site was rarely linked here at Neatorama because it was NSFW and far from family-friendly. Now Encyclopedia Dramatica is no more, and a new site has risen in its place. The new Oh Internet is dedicated to the same type of information, but is not open to unlimited editing by users as ED was. Geekosystem has more on the big switch. Link to story. Link to website.

When you order a pizza online, a lot of the places have a text area for you to include any special instructions you might have, like extra sauce or a code to get in to your apartment complex. When the blogger who writes for Awesome Robo got to this section on the Domino’s online order form though, he decided to ask for a drawing of Yoda riding a tauntaun. Surprisingly, the Domino’s staff was happy to oblige with this little doodle.

Link

How many internet memes are incorporated in this music video? All of them! But they happen so fast you won’t catch them all the first time around. -via Laughing Squid

Remember Chatroulette? Once in a great while, something really good can happen. I wonder how many “strangers” these guys rejected before they found Diana. -via reddit

Joseph Tame

The iRun features four iPhones on rotatable mounts, an iPad, and Android handset, three mobile Wi Fi routers, a four-in-one atmospheric monitor and a heart monitor – all to record his route round the 26-mile circuit.

A post on Tame’s website states: ‘This technology will allow me to broadcast live video on two cameras (using either skype or FaceTime to a local studio for re-broadcast), send live location/pace/heart rate data via Runkeeperon the iPhone, transmit temperature, COx/humidity/noise levels via a custom-made Android app – and do all of this while looking incredibly cool.’

Watch Tame looking incredibly cool in action at Japan Probe. Link

In the past twelve months, more people have searched for the 16-year-old wonder on Google than have searched for “china,” “jesus,” or “boobs.”

Bieber also left other celebrities in the dust. The only person who came close was Lady Gaga.

Based on a rigorous analysis of Google Trends we’ve identified the most popular people on the Internet. Since Google provides only comparative data, we compared everyone we could think of to Bieber. Feel free to check the data and post a comment if we left anyone off the list.

Business Insider counts down the top 20, ranked in comparison with Bieber’s popularity. Link -Thanks, Adam!

Can you name the most popular websites in the United States? That’s the challenge in today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. You have two minutes to name the top ten (you don’t have to type the URL). There are really no surprises here, so if you don’t get them all, you’ll kick yourself when you see the answers. I got all ten in time, but I have to admit that I typed a lot of wrong guesses quickly! Link

Caldwell Tanner and Kevin Corrigan rounded up internet memes to bedevil Batman and Robin in a series of comic book cover mashups. There are five in all; this one is my favorite. Link -via Gorilla Mask

What happens when you take away your teenagers' TV, iPods, cell phones, video games and even - gasp - Internet?

Susan Maushart did that to her three kids for 6 months in what she called "The Experiment" and lived to tell about it.

And something with as grand as "The Experiment," you'd need to kick it off in a grand way - which is exactly what Susan did:

She turned off the electricity completely for a few weeks — candles instead of electric lights, no hot showers, food stored in a cooler of ice. When blackout boot camp ended, Maushart hoped the "electricity is awesome!" reaction would soften the kids' transition to life without Google and cell phones.

The result is surprisingly (or not surprisingly, for some people anyhow) are good:

Her son Bill, a videogame and TV addict, filled his newfound spare time playing saxophone. "He swapped Grand Theft Auto for the Charlie Parker songbook," Maushart wrote. Bill says The Experiment was merely a "trigger" and he would have found his way back to music eventually. Either way, he got so serious playing sax that when the gadget ban ended, he sold his game console and is now studying music in college.

Maushart's eldest, Anni, was less wired and more bookish than the others, so her transition in and out of The Experiment was the least dramatic. Her friends thought the ban was "cool." If she needed computers for schoolwork, she went to the library. Even now, she swears off Facebook from time to time, just for the heck of it.

Maushart's youngest daughter, Sussy, had the hardest time going off the grid. Maushart had decided to allow use of the Internet, TV and other electronics outside the home, and Sussy immediately took that option, taking her laptop and moving in with her dad — Maushart's ex-husband — for six weeks. Even after she returned to Maushart's home, she spent hours on a landline phone as a substitute for texts and Facebook.

But the electronic deprivation had an impact anyway: Sussy's grades improved substantially. Maushart wrote that her kids "awoke slowly from the state of cognitus interruptus that had characterized many of their waking hours to become more focused logical thinkers."

Link

“The Scrollwheel” is a short film about the frustration that one experiences while watching someone who doesn’t understand computers try to surf the Internet. You know, like people who type a URL into a search bar. Just keep in mind that long ago, you didn’t know anything about the Internet, either.

This cartoon was made by Neon Noodle, Guy Collins, and Kevin MacLeod.

via Urlesque

Being a good writer is 3% talent, 97% not being distracted by the internet. – @AdviceToWriters

Ain’t that the truth! And it’s a occupational hazard when your job is to offer internet distractions to everyone. This Twaggie was inspired by @AdviceToWriters. Like all Twaggies, it is available in print or t-shirt form. Link

Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal posted a series of methods your cat will use to get your attention while you are surfing the web. Cat owners will not be surprised by what finally works! Link -via Digg

Ah, the memories of a year chock-full of useless and incomprehensible things to occupy your time. These are the internet memes of 2010, causing a laugh or two as they fly around the web. If by chance you’ve missed any of them, you can become familiar with all 25 before someone calls you out as a n00b. If you are familiar with them, it’s a chance to relive the greats, or maybe not-so-greats of the past year. Link -Thanks, Joanne Chu!

4) Cthulhu

Created by H.P. Lovecraft, Cthulhu is a humongous cosmic entity resembling a blend of an octopus, dragon and humanoid. Bordering on a ridiculous mishmash that would be found laughable in today’s horror scene, Cthulhu is still widely-known and loved amongst literature buffs and geeks the world over.

* The Mystery: Probably doesn’t need a list of common mispronunciations, but it’s safe to say every letter in the name other than the “l” can be pronounced one way or another.
* The Answer: Wikipedia says H.P. Lovecraft once transcribed the pronunciation as “Khlûl-hloo,” though didn’t pronounce it that way at other times. Now commonplace, the accepted pronunciation is “ka-thoo-loo;” that is, if you accept a pronunciation from a source other than the creator of the word. Lovecraft didn’t seem to have any consistent way of pronouncing it though, so we’re all better off settling on the common way described above.

You’ll also want to check out the best way to pronounce FAQ, Ubuntu, and meme, among others. Link

(Image credit: the NeatoShop)

The majority of Americans do:

Sixty-one percent of Americans said the President should have the ability to shut down portions of the Internet in the event of a coordinated malicious cyber attack, according to research by Unisys. […]

“A majority of the American population is willing to grant the President the authority to cut short their Internet access to protect both U.S. assets and citizens, suggesting that the public is taking cyber warfare very seriously,” said Patricia Titus, VP and CISO, Unisys. “Our survey shows that the American public recognizes the danger of a cyber attack and wants the federal government to take an active role in extending the nation’s cyber defense. It will be up to officials in all branches of the federal government to respond to this call to action in a way that is measured and well planned.”

Link

You might remember how Randall Munroe of xkcd created a map of the internet in 2007. A lot of things have changed since then, so he made a completely new map to reflect the state of online communities today. Just a portion of the map is shown here. Go to xkcd and enlarge the map, and you’ll find Neatorama in the inset of the Blogosphere area (in the Sea of Opinions), a tiny island off the coast near Deadspin and Lifehacker. Look around, and you’ll see plenty of cleverness, such as Facebook’s privacy controls isolated in a pool of lava, and a meteor crater where Craiglist’s adult services used to be. Link -via Metafilter

Update 10/6/10 by Alex: Woohoo! Randall knows we’re alive – Neatorama made it to this year’s map, right alongside Boing Boing, Lifehacker, and Deadspin:

Like to chat and tweet? Try Qvaq. It’s a brand new and very neat web app, made by Robert Birming (a Neatoramanaut and fellow blogger at Geek Alerts) and Martin Lindkvist, that makes discussion and collaborations in real time fun and easy.

With Qvaq, you can discuss your favorite topics with others (either by joining an existing group like the Neatorama group and Guess The Movie or by starting your own). You can add photos and video clips, chat privately or publicly, and so on. None of these are new features – Martin acknowledged that IRC has been around since the 80′s – but what they’ve done is create a smoothly integrated set of functionalities that just flow easily. Qvaq is fun to use

Give it a try – I’ll be at the Neatorama group there off and on today. Come and say hello: Link

This year’s Web 2.0 Summit, a conference for web bigwigs, has a pretty neat topic: Points of Control, The Battle for the Network Economy. What got my attention was the nifty presentation of various segments of the Internet as a battlefield map.

One could envision a smoke-filled backroom where Internet honchos (I’m looking at you, Ben Huh) play the Net like a game of Risk: Link – via John Battele’s Searchblog

It’s the game that brings the internet into the real world!

This is the best thing since BUMP for the iPhone which allowed you to instantly add friends to Facebook – it’s Social Media Monopoly. Pete Cashmore, Kevin Rose, Tom, Amber MacArthur, Crystal Gibson and Ariana Huffington are fighting for social media dominance. Race around the board picking up smartphones and computers but make sure you don’t get sent to MySpace or you’ll risk losing everything, including your reputation.

Print out the full-size version plus the Mashable and Technorati cards and use your regular Monopoly game money, and you’re good to go. Link -via Nag on the Lake

If you like these, be sure to scroll to the bottom for links to all sorts of other great Comic Con coverage from this year and previous years. Now, on to the costumes!

All images by Jill Harness (Hey, that’s me!), and Zeon Santos.

Heroes:

Now this is Sparta!

This Xena has incredible leather-working skills. She made the whole costume herself.

Normally I try to leave myself out of these things, but I could resist a photo opp with White Gold.

Mad Max costumes are always pretty cool.

Villains:

Normally, I try to avoid putting youngsters up, but this little one’s costume was just too “Kick Ass” to pass up, and it’s pretty hard to guess his true identity. I do have to wonder if his parents actually let him see the movie or not though.

Is Doctor Horrible still considered a villain even though you support him?

Oh no, Pedobear is on the loose!!! And he’s a even more of a predator this time.

Doctor Who:

There were quite a few doctors this year, and I was thrilled to see that most of them dressed up as two of my favorites, David Tennant and Tom Baker.

All of the David Tennant doctors looked a lot like him, but I liked this one the best because he even brought along accessories from the era, including 3D glasses.

Tom Barker’s always a fun one to do thanks to his wonderful scarf.

Of course, where would any doctor be without his trusty T.A.R.D.I.S.?

Steampunk:

This group is the coolest group of Steampunks I’ve seen around. All of the League of S.T.E.A.M.’s stuff actually works and most of it is powered by steam. They’ve even been featured on Boing Boing before.

This whole wheelchair was decked out and it looked wonderful.

Steampunk was such a huge trend this year that there was at least 6 separate booths selling gear. This girl was advertising for one of them by sporting their clothing around the convention.

Sci-Fi Theatre:

There is no try, there is only do… and this guy does make a great Yoda.

Poor, poor little red shirt. At least he managed to survive.

How perfect is this guys Morpheus costume? Seriously, it was awesome.

Horror:

If they put this guy in a box, he would make quite the Ash doll.

I particularly love this costume because the bloody nurses were some of my favorite Silent Hill characters.

Child’s Play:

Do you prefer your Alice In Wonderland in classic…

Or modern version. (BTW, am I the only one who thinks this Alice looks a lot like Rachael Berry of Glee?)

Carmen San Diego is in…San Diego, and hey, there’s Waldo!

Fans of The Dark Crystal are sure to recognize this woman as a very  sexy skekis.

Speaking of Jim Henson movies, how awesome is this girl’s Goblin King costume? And yes, she does have a massive bulge.

There were two girls dressed as the main girl in How to Train Your Dragon and both of their costumes were great.

This one even had her hair and axe look perfect for the part.

These days, you can’t mention children’s flicks without someone talking about Disney princesses, and these two really fit their parts.

Mario Love:

This father and son team made quite the Mario and Luigi.

And here’s everyone’s second-favorite characters together, Luigi and Princess Daisy.

Does anyone know what the blue version of Princess Peach is called, if anything?

And, as promised, here is some major linkage to other posts and photos involving Comic Con. There are over 100 more costume pictures from this year on my blog, along with some from 2009 and 2008. I also have a collection from last year featured on Neatorama, along with a list of 10 Types of Comic Con Fans.

For the convention itself, I have some cool photos of the exhibits from both 2010 (to be uploaded soon) and 2009. On Mental Floss, there is also coverage of celebrities and independent artists at this year’s event.

If you like hot girls in costumes, I’ve also got an extensive collection of cute girls in costume at the convention from both this year and 2008.

I also have a video of two Elvis storm troppers singing Evil and awesome Stitch Vinyl toys on display at the 2009 Comic Con.

Ricky Bess spends eight hours a day in front of a computer near Orlando, Fla., viewing some of the worst depravities harbored on the Internet. He has seen photographs of graphic gang killings, animal abuse and twisted forms of pornography. One recent sighting was a photo of two teenage boys gleefully pointing guns at another boy, who is crying.

An Internet content reviewer, Mr. Bess sifts through photographs that people upload to a big social networking site and keeps the illicit material — and there is plenty of it — from being posted.[...]

The surge in Internet screening services has brought a growing awareness that the jobs can have mental health consequences for the reviewers, some of whom are drawn to the low-paying work by the simple prospect of making money while looking at pornography.

“You have 20-year-old kids who get hired to do content review, and who get excited because they think they are going to see adult porn,” said Hemanshu Nigam, the former chief security officer at MySpace. “They have no idea that some of the despicable and illegal images they will see can haunt them for the rest of their lives.”

What has been seen, cannot be unseen.

Link via Gizmodo | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user TheMuuj used under Creative Commons license