Hijacked Cruise Critic Home Page

[Shellie1964]

Hi Cruise Critics

I am not sure where to post this; so I apologise in advance if it is in the wrong place.

When I try and access Cruise Critic through my search engine (Like I always have) the home page appears hijacked with many adverts for TA's etc. This problem only started today. It is making complete download near impossible because it is really slow. :( I have accessed this page through a link I found on another review/thread website.

Can anyone advise please?

Shellie

[pnhmrk]

Hi Shellie

 

I've got http://boards.cruisecritic.com/ saved as a bookmark/favourite. That way I go straight to the home page for the boards so I never visit the main CC home page.

[LauraS]

I'm unsure what you mean here.

 

I just used both Google and Yahoo's search engines, clearly typed in "cruise critic", and the top result was our homepage (followed by lower level pages of our website, including our message boards).

 

However, if you MISTYPE the phrase (maybe either by transposing a letter) you may get a page that is simply a listing of advertising.......

 

GOOGLE will sometimes correct this for you, by offering up the correct spelling of our site, and offering the search results in the first position...

 

Can you tell me, what specific search engine have you used that produced this result.

 

In the meantime, how about loading each of these pages and BOOKMARKING both of them, for ease of retrieval in the future:

 

http://www.cruisecritic.com (our HOMEPAGE)

http://boards.cruisecritic.com (boards)

 

Laura

[Shellie1964]

Hi Laura & Malcolm

Thank you for your replies. I have done what Malcolm has suggested and it appears to have cleared the problem. In addition I deleted some cookies that seam to be 'polluting' certain web pages with adverts. I search with Google Laura, never had a problem before. It was just that I panicked thinking that I would be unable to access Cruise Critic as regularly as I had done previously - I was feeling a bit of seperation anxiety and had withdrawal sypmtons developing.

 

Thanks Again

 

Shellie:)

[dougnewmanatsea]

While I do have the boards bookmarked (http://boards.cruisecritic.com), I also regularly visit our home page (http://www.cruisecritic.com) and I suggest you do to.

 

Of course, the boards are wonderful, but have some great editorial content as well. OK, I'm a bit biased since I write some of it ;) ! Another contributor you might know is QM2 First Officer Ben Lyons.

[pnhmrk]

While I do have the boards bookmarked (http://boards.cruisecritic.com) .

 

You don't actually have to bookmark the page. This works with IE 7, I'm fairly sure that it works with IE 6.x, but I can't advise about other browsers (except Blazer - I know that it doesn't work there). Once you have visited http://boards.cruisecritic.com you only need to type in the first few letters of boards into the address bar, ie boa. You will see a drop down list with the full http://boards.cruisecritic.com as the first item. Use your down arrow to highlight it and then press enter. That takes you straight to the page. (NB the settings on your computer can prevent this happening - if you're trying and not getting the results you expect this could be the cause).

[dougnewmanatsea]

Once you have visited http://boards.cruisecritic.com you only need to type in the first few letters of boards into the address bar, ie boa.

I guess you never clear your History :) !

 

My browser is set to clear its History every time I quit the application. Otherwise, every link I've clicked on in the past 30 days (or however long I set the browser to keep the History) will be highlighted as having been clicked on (usually this means it turns a different color; here it's red). I find that very annoying so I do not let my browser save a History at all.

 

As a result, I am something of a compulsive bookmarker. I just checked and at the moment, I have 286 bookmarks! I try to bookmark every page I might ever want to return to, to avoid searching for it or remembering URLs.

[greatam]

Sounds more like spyware or adware to me. I'm no computer whizmo, but there was a large adware dump Thursday-Friday (learned about this from a computer techie friend). People with Citibank credit cards were innundated as well as others.

 

I had to download two more spyware/adware programs to get rid of it all.

 

You should run those type programs AT LEAST once a week or your computers could be like molasses. We were almost out of business Friday, until we got rid of it all.

[dougnewmanatsea]

You should run those type programs AT LEAST once a week

Or you could save the trouble and get a hardware solution ;) .

 

By the way, the aforementioned QM2 First Officer and Cruise Critic contributor Ben Lyons was just on TV.

[pnhmrk]

a hardware solution ;) .

 

Boaster:p :D :)

[greatam]

Or you could save the trouble and get a hardware solution ;) .

 

By the way, the aforementioned QM2 First Officer and Cruise Critic contributor Ben Lyons was just on TV.

 

Host Doug,

 

That would be nice. Only problem-Mac still does not work with a lot of software. We have some proprietary software that would have to be rewritten to use a Mac. But the biggest problem-Quaalcom (in cab communications with our semi's) only works on a windows platform. Here's a pretty good article about Quaalcom. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/sheffi.html

 

We do LTL, specialty food products. We only have 3 terminals-NYC, Missouri and Arizona. We do mostly load to ride LTL-ie we put it in the trailer and that is where it rides until final destination. So some things are different than the article. But Quaalcom and cell phones save us time and money-no driving through 5PM Friday traffic out 495 to pick up 20 cases of cheese in Mineola that is NOT ready. We will just keep getting rid of the spyware and adware.

[travel-to-go]

Host Doug,

 

That would be nice. Only problem-Mac still does not work with a lot of software. We have some proprietary software that would have to be rewritten to use a Mac. But the biggest problem-Quaalcom (in cab communications with our semi's) only works on a windows platform. Here's a pretty good article about Quaalcom. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/sheffi.html

 

We do LTL, specialty food products. We only have 3 terminals-NYC, Missouri and Arizona. We do mostly load to ride LTL-ie we put it in the trailer and that is where it rides until final destination. So some things are different than the article. But Quaalcom and cell phones save us time and money-no driving through 5PM Friday traffic out 495 to pick up 20 cases of cheese in Mineola that is NOT ready. We will just keep getting rid of the spyware and adware.

 

Hmm, Must be using that carrier (cellular) that my company likes to call "the Dark Side" or "The Evil Empire" (due to their use of a certain actor in their commercials generally more well known for his part as Darth Vader in the Star Wars Series) You should change to the world standard in communications, GSM- All the Brits use it! And of course, the 3G or 3rd Generation Wireless Standard (Which I am involved in deploying in the US) UMTS. I suspect we could come up with something that could use any OS (operating system.)

 

Ah- don't let Doug's jiving you get to you. I get it at home from my Linux geek. I refuse to use an operating system that I have to spend hours on every time I load new software, and can't even buy peripherals for, because there may not be drivers yet for Linux. My brother-in-law and nephew are always razzing me because they are MAC'ers also. <sigh> I don't use MS software if I can avoid it. For instance I use Eudora Pro for email and Mozilla Firefox for a browser. Eudora has been around a lot longer than IE, or even Windows, for that matter! Face it, most crackers do write cracks and hacks and viruses for MS and IE, as that is what is around (not to mention it has so many security holes in it you could...excuse the reference...drive a truck through it.)

 

 

Now...About that cheese. Do you think you could stop and drop off some Bleu Cheese at the Brooklyn Pier for the exclusive use on the QM2's Todd English restaurant, since it seems they dont know where to find any! <G>

 

Karie,

Who uses Eudora, which is produced by Qualcomm, the same people who invented the CDMA cellular transmission system.

[dougnewmanatsea]

That would be nice. Only problem-Mac still does not work with a lot of software.

I know... Lots of people have no choice but to use Windows. Just like I have no choice but to use Office, even though I hate it (it doesn't like to conform to Mac OS's user interface).

 

You should change to the world standard in communications, GSM

Easier said than done. Many people really can only get decent reception where they live/work/play from one carrier and have to choose that carrier whether they like it or not.

 

Anyhow, I think what Gina is talking about is some sort of special thing for trucks, not just regular mobile phones. (Verizon mobile phones should work fine with Macs, as do, I believe, their EV-DO adapters.)

[greatam]

Doug is correct. Not mobile phones at all. Our Verizon cells and air cards work just fine for mobile communications. Quaalcom is satellite based and tracks semis, taxis, busses, trains, containers and all kinds of other stuff. It allows us instant communication with our drivers. Our consoles are built into the dashes and they can be easily read going down the road. Only problems with it-it is expensive, both initial and monthly fees and it doesn't work in major storms. During Katrina, the entire southeast trucking community had to run the old fashioned way-pay phones and CB radios. And it didn't work during 911 for all our trucks that were in NY/NJ. Thank goodness for my two sat phones. Somehow, someway they still worked. Must be different satellites.

 

Karie,

 

I have no idea why Cunard has no bleu cheese. They are normally provisioned by Fleming (well, the new spin off, since the parent filed bankruptcy) and Sysco for staple stuff. I haven't seen much bleu cheese recently, but we have two containers of gorgonzola coming in next week AND the real biggie-a 1/2 container of baklava direct from the Middle East. I love baklava and we ship a lot of it out of Chicago. But the stuff from the Middle East is just a little bit better. Now to figure out who it goes to and buy a couple boxes before it all gets shipped. Probably belongs to some Saudi King or something and I won't be able to get my hands on even one little smidgeon. Oh well.

[travel-to-go]

I suspect the consoles are still somewhat in conjunction with CDMA. CDMA (or Verizon, at least) uses GSM chips for it's location based services, including 911. It's not a far leap from that to using the same technology to locate and track trunks enroute. My former parent company, SNET, the local phone company which was bought out by SBC and is now part of AT&T uses it (using Cingular as the provider) on their vans, UPS and one of the other carriers (FED-EX? I can't remember) use it also. Many of the police and fire departments do too. There are plenty of vendors who develop mobile software based solutions for logistics. I am guessing that your Qualcomm services may be supported by Verizon, simply because Verizon is the major CDMA provider (along with Sprint) and CDMA was invented by Qualcomm. The reason it didn't work during Katrina is probably two-fold. First, during the storms, of course, satellite (which this obviously partially is- GPS) can be blocked by buildings terrain, and weather. The second is the same reason you had difficulties during 9-11. Sooner or later, most systems have some sort of land-line based element. Although the cellular carriers did better in some ways than the landline carriers during both disasters, usually the failing part overall for mobile providers of any sort was the land line based portion of the service. Verizon Commuications, which is the landline based Telco in New York City (One of the Baby Bells) had a MAJOR communications hub through which much of the large capacity cimmunications cable passed under one of the towers of the world trade center. (I think AT&T and MCI also) It disrupted not only landline, but also mobile. There was also a plethora of communications towers and antennas of all sorts atop one of the towers. During Katrina and the aftermath, I kept up with what was going on in New Orleans on a daily basis through a blog (with pictures) from a major provider of business broadband and internet services in New Orleans. They stayed through the storm, and it was fascinating how they survived, through the fires, powering (and getting fuel for) their generators, even loaning to Bell South, whose main building in the area was visible from theirs. Bell South in turn, manage to restore major broadband cables and fiber to them as quickly as possible. They also arranged to go into other damaged building to retreive routers and servers and create hook-ups to major business's servers and such, so they could do such things as make payroll in exile for their very needy employees who had lost both their homes and thier ability to work! It was really cool wathcing and reading all of this as it happened! A couple of their guys went out when they could with digital comaeras and posted picutes, as things were happening, and put a webcam out one window. Of course they had to stay there and survive on what they had (They had set up for emergencies there, but no one knew it would be this long! Most such services have emergency generators, as do most phone company buildings and central offices.)

My own people from my company volunteered in droves to go down and rebuild infrastructure and help out, We took our COW (Cellsite on Wheels and COLT (Cell On Light Truck) and every generator we could get our hands on. My company has a call center in Ocean Springs Mississippi. The calls went out to locate all mising personal to ascertain that they were okay and to provide them with whatever they needed. We built two huge tent cities with showers, cooking and dining facilities and our CEO personally arrive with a truckload of bottled water and food. (Which was shared with everyone in the area, not just our own people)

We brought in temporary facillities and trucks full of gear to create celllular outposts where people could communicate with family, apply for assistance and so on. We can do a lot with satellite and microwave, but every system, satellite or other, sooner or later needs to make landline connections of some sort, ro they cannot connect to the rest of the world. So we were all dealing with the same lack of facilities.

 

As for Baklava, Too sweet for my taste! The comments on the Blue cheese was a result of someone's recent post reviewing their QM2 experience during which they had diner at Todd English, and they could not get Blue Cheese! Unbelieveable! (Or was it QG- either way- just hard to fathom!

 

And yes, Doug. I recognize the superiority in many ways of Apple. It's like Beta Video. Yes, it was superior, but in the end, VHS won here in the US.

 

Pretty interesting articl e on Logistics Gina. A friend is involvved in that at a location in Eastern New England. No more cowboy operations for sure!

 

Karie,

who has a much better appreciation after reading that article!

P.S. Good luck getting a piece of that pie before it gets to its intended purchaser!