Ok, I will!
Month: July 2008
So you think you’re anonymous on the internet..
But.. you’re not. ;)
Let me preface this post with a little story. When I was about 16, I attended a church. One day I found an anonymous letter in my letterbox which was pretty unpleasant – *though I don’t remember any of the details now. The person thought they were anonymous, but when I gave the letter to the church pastor, he recognised the handwriting – and thus anonymous was found to be a nasty beyotch named Michelle. No offense to people named Michelle, but I’ve found it a bit hard to trust people with that name ever since. It’s not you. It’s me. Its my stuff.
So when Kelley posted on her blog that someone calling themselves “concerned” had written her a nasty letter full of unpleasantness, I commented could she please give me some information and maybe I could track down who wrote it. And because I am awesome and have mad skillz, I did manage to track down the writer. And now Kelley knows who it is, and I assume it won’t be too long before the entire interwebz knows who it is also. Word like that tends to spread.
Everywhere you go, everything you do, you leave behind a few vital details. Like your IP address, the time you visited, what browser and operating system you run. Your IP address can be used by the police and your internet service provider (and by scambaiters like me who know what they are doing) to track you down. That is how they arrested all those pedophiles not so long ago – there was a page on the internet that a lot of pedophiles visited, and the federal police came knocking on the door of the people who visited it.
For example, here is a line from a server log – me visiting Kelley’s blog and my browser grabbing her Favicon.
121.44.XX.XX – – [20/Jul/2008:11:41:34 -0500] “GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1” 404 25192 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.16) Gecko/20080702 Firefox/2.0.0.16”
Note – I have XX out a couple of the numbers, because I am on a static IP address and I have been on it for a decently long time, and I don’t want to give that IP address to the scammers because it can be used to do port scans and other rather nefarious activities.
So every website you visit your browser sends a whole heap of GET requests off to the server, and the majority of servers log all of this information. Also, when you visit a blog and leave a comment, most blogging software keeps a record of the IP address. This is always worth keeping somewhere in case you need it another time – mine all go to a gmail account so I can easily search it and don’t have to worry about storage.
When you visit forums – say for example the Aussie Bloggers forums – your IP address is logged. If you were to leave a message that was abusive, the forum admins might report that to your Internet Service Provider. And for those of you who think you can use a proxy to access the forums and leave abuse – sorry, we get *both* IP addresses, the proxy and your real one. So there is nowhere to hide.
Also, interestingly, when you send emails (unless you know what you are doing like I do, otherwise I would not be emailing the scammers) your IP address will appear in the header of those emails.
So, when you think you are anonymous and you send an anonymous email to someone – say Kelley, for example – what happens if you’re not actually anonymous, and you can be traced? Well, I guess what happens is, I know who you are. And I do know who you are, Concerned. Will I tell people? Maybe I will. Hope that keeps you awake at night.
Would you like a piece of unsolicited advice “Concerned”? If I were you (which I would NEVER be, I believe anonymous letters are lame and horrible and creating bad Karma for yourself) I would confess that you did this on your blog now. People might feel sorry for you if you do that. Probably not too many, but maybe you can manage to tell enough of a sob story that you can keep a few friends.
And here’s some more advice. Get a life. I can’t believe you spent at least 4 hours solid viewing Kelley’s website. For those of you interested, here’s just one hour of the viewing – of course to save you headaches I have just put the time and the get request.. You need to add +10 (or so) to the actual times – so this happened between 7pm and 8pm Australian Eastern Standard Time.
[07/Jul/2008:09:02:58] GET /page/25/ HTTP/1.1
[07/Jul/2008:09:10:06] GET /page/26/ HTTP/1.1
[07/Jul/2008:09:17:47] GET /page/27/ HTTP/1.1
[07/Jul/2008:09:21:09] GET /page/28/ HTTP/1.1
[07/Jul/2008:09:28:04] GET /page/29/ HTTP/1.1
[07/Jul/2008:09:33:18] GET /page/30/ HTTP/1.1
[07/Jul/2008:09:39:53] GET /page/31/ HTTP/1.1
[07/Jul/2008:09:43:53] GET /page/32/ HTTP/1.1
[07/Jul/2008:09:48:46] GET /page/33/ HTTP/1.1
[07/Jul/2008:09:51:05] GET /page/34/ HTTP/1.1
This person read back 56 pages. In order. Over 24 hours. Viewing the log made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
So if you happen to have a blog that is hosted by me, and someone sends you an “anonymous” email, please contact me immediately and I will give you instructions on how to get me the info I need from the email. Whatever you do, don’t delete the email. I know that might feel like the right thing to do because when you get an email like this it feels horrible, but identifying people like this is one of the best ways to stop people from doing this kind of stuff. They might not stop with just one anonymous letter.
*I seem to be having some problems with my memory but that is a whole ‘nother post for another day.. ;)
I thought I was going to die
You probably heard about the Qantas plane that recently experienced explosive decompression. In case you didn’t, here’s a news story about it. Over the past day or so you probably saw headlines like –
Qantas boss ‘horrified’ by hole
‘Massive’ hole in Qantas jet
Qantas jet was ‘rust bucket’
Qantas flight plunges 20,000ft
Hole ripped as Qantas jet dives
The most stupid of which being the last one, because the hole was ripped first, and the plane dove as a result of the hole. So why did it dive? Because the pilots cannot rely on the passengers sitting behind them to actually put their oxygen masks on, and if the plane did not dive the passengers would all lose consciousness within 75 seconds.
There have been times in a normal flight when there has been nothing wrong with the plane and oxygen masks have dropped. The passengers tend to look at them curiously. They don’t make any effort to put them on.
There is very little oxygen at 30,000 feet, certainly not enough to sustain life. It is also extremely cold at that flight level and hypothermia becomes a possible problem if the plane stays at that level for too long.
They have to dive – they have no choice, and the pilots are trained to do it. There is a risk that the plane might break up if it is damaged too badly by whatever has happened, but they have to weigh that risk against the risk of people dying from lack of oxygen and warmth.
Headlines like those seen above make me angry. In fact it makes me angry that the first thought anyone would have in this situation would be “I’m going to die”. Thinking this is an absolute waste of time and the only reason people think it is because they do not know better.
If people took the time to EDUCATE themselves before setting foot on a plane, they would know exactly why the plane went into a dive, and they would be sitting there thinking “We’re diving so people will be able to breathe – we’re diving so we won’t die. What can I do now to increase my chances of surviving this?” If newspapers stepped away from the sensational headlines, they could write about why the pilots put the plane into a dive and then anyone reading that would be educated.
I’ve written about plane safety before and the following posts are something you can read if you want to educate yourself before flying –
Plane Safety – A Must Read For All
What Not To Wear In The Event Of A Plane Crash
I once went scuba diving on the Gold Coast. Normally before you can dive you have to do a course but they have worked something out so you can try a dive without all that. Even so, before they let me get in the water, they made me sit through a lecture that seemed like it went forever where they explained to me all the various ways that I could die!
Things like.. If I breathed too fast. If I didn’t take enough breaths. If I went down too far. If I didn’t stay with my buddy. If I went up too quickly. They had a paper we had to sign which said that the risks had been explained to us clearly – and it probably said we wouldn’t hold them liable if we did die, it was a fair while ago now.
But there’s no lecture before you get on a plane. There’s no paper to sign saying you know the risks. There’s not anything to sign saying you listened to the safety briefing or took a look at your safety card. It is up to YOU to do it. If you don’t do it then you *are* putting your life at risk in the event of an emergency.
All you need to get on a plane is a ticket and some ID (and for overseas, a passport). We’ve made plane travel so easy – and so safe – that people consider it like getting on a bus. They don’t worry about safety when they get on a bus – nor do they worry about it when they get on a plane – but they should. They don’t listen to the safety briefings – they read a book or the paper.
I won’t get into the sensationalist aspect of these headlines – the use of scary words, the general stupidity of the journalists involved – even though there is an entire post in that. What I will say is that the press are missing a chance to genuinely educate people on this important topic. So we have to do it ourselves. And you can help by linking to this (and the other two posts) to educate your readers. You can also stumble this post and the two others. Just think – you might save a life – or you might save someone from panic if they do ever find themselves in this kind of situation.
Comment Timeout.
I’ve been testing a batch of plugins recently – some requested by bloggers I host blogs for, some that I thought might be good. Unfortunately out of all the plugins I have been testing, only one works with the set up we are all using. That one is Comment Timeout – and in fact is the plugin I thought we’d have the most trouble with given that we do run a lot of comment plugins.
I think it was Lightening who mentioned somewhere around the place how much trouble she was having with spam on the blog. One of the things that I was getting a lot of was trackback spam where spammers are putting trackbacks to my posts with drug names and sex sites etc. It happens a lot on old posts. For example – yesterday there were 25 trackback spams. Today there were 2 – and that is because I allowed comments on posts which had more than xx number of comments. I’m going to turn that off and see if it reduces the spam to 0.
Comment Timeout gives you the ability to close comments on old posts as well as treat trackbacks like comments. We’ll be rolling it out across the blogs on Monday and Tuesday of next week, and I might put together a post on how to use it.
On the not so positive side, it means people can’t comment on your older popular posts. So it is a toss up – do you want to deal with spam, or do you want people to be able to comment on posts you wrote ages ago? For me it is a no brainer – get rid of the spam!
The other plugins broke stuff, so apologies all but they won’t be appearing on our blogs. Unless you want stuff to break, of course. ;)
Addictions Part 2 – Aldi!
So, I am officially addicted to Aldi. It’s been looming for some time, but was made official when I told The Other Half that we must stop at Aldi yesterday. The Other Half asked “Why do you need to go to Aldi?” and I replied “I don’t know, I just do, ok?”
For some weeks now we have been waiting for the price to drop on an exercise bike that we spotted there – hoping that it would go down to a clearance price as things leftover often do. This week, the bike that formerly was $299 was now.. wait for it.. drumroll.. $199. Bargain! So we bought it. And here’s a picture of it all assembled, which took some time – but first a pic of the “kitty supervisor” who was watching The Other Half put the bike together..
She totally thinks she is a human, with her arms up on the armchair like a human. :) But then there are times she thinks she’s a dog and fetches stuff, too.
So, I plan to combine the exercise bike 3 days a week with wii fit step aerobics 3 days a week and have one day off a week. Much of this is in order to get fit for kayaking this summer.
Wii Fit can be brilliant, but it also can do a bit of damage – because I have such major problems with my middle ear I can’t do the balance games and the first time I tried them I pulled all kinds of muscles. Then I hurt myself with the hula hoop – it throws you more hula hoops, but you have to lean left and right to catch them and no matter how much I lean the Wii Fit doesn’t think I am leaning. That day of Wii Fit left me in major back pain.
I think it is safest if I stick to the exercise I can do – riding the exercise bike, step, some of the muscle stuff, and sometimes Yoga. Frankly I’d rather be unfit than in pain from pulling muscles. I’m not a fan of Yoga but I also haven’t given it much of a chance yet.
Yes, I have an addiction..
Did I mention I have an addiction to all things Dexter? Yes, I did, but I did not mention this fantastic website – Michael C. Hall Online. They have a fabulous photo gallery with all kinds of Michael C. Hall goodness. Today there’s some shots up from the TCA panels held recently as well as a couple of new promos for Season 3. Here’s a couple of my favourites.
Looks like Deb will be rocking the short hair in Season 3. That really suits her!
I’m loving that green shirt – and those shoes! ;) But perhaps this is not a very practical outfit to wear to a crime scene. This would be more casual Dexter chilling out at a bar with his new friend played by Jimmy Smits, methinks.
One of my favourite sections is the candid shots because looking at them I wonder if I would even recognize Michael C Hall if I saw him on the street. He has one of those faces that changes when he becomes a character, in particular when he becomes Dexter because a big part of the character is wearing the mask and in a couple of the candid shots he looks years younger and somewhat different. Maybe I’m not putting that into words very well. ;)
My addiction may have been fairly obvious from the amount of posts I have written about the show but perhaps you do not realise the full extent of my addiction.
1. I have google alerts set for Dexter and Michael C Hall, they arrive daily in my inbox.
2. I generally watch between 3-8 episodes of Dexter a week. And hello, there’s not any new ones arriving so how am I doing that? I watch the repeats on Showcase which is currently double Dexter and I might catch that 2-3 times during the week, I watch season one on 10 and I usually pre-watch the episode which is airing on 10 and write the stuff I post in the Aussie Bloggers thread.
3. I recently lent the box set to my Mother and while the box set was not in the house I felt very strange – I couldn’t just go watch an episode from Season 1 anytime I liked and I didn’t like that feeling. I got it back a few days ago and now all is well. ;) And before you ask, yes she loves the show. She was secretly watching it on Showcase out of order, which is why I had to lend her the box set.
So I was thinking, maybe Michael C. Hall also has google alerts set for his name and if he does this post is sure to set off an alert. What would I type here if I knew he would be reading this? Love your work. I sincerely hope you are having as much fun working on the show as we fans are having watching the show – something Julie Benz said about you being very serious on set has me a bit worried that you might not be. I wish there was a outtakes roll somewhere so we could be sure you guys are having a blast. And probably about a billion questions about the show in general. It annoys me that the press who are interviewing you are not asking the questions that I would ask.
Anyway, I just had to admit that to you guys because I know the first step is admitting you have a problem. And I do, but I am not sure I want a cure because Dexter is a great show to watch.
Oi! Lurkers De-lurk & Comment Day
According to my various stat gathering programs, there are on average a good couple of hundred of you reading this blog via your feed readers daily. That does not count those subscribed by email. Today I would like to give you an excuse to de-lurk and say hi.
Please Drop By And Comment!
I am about to update my reader and blogroll over the next week or two, and I would love to add the blogs of any of my blog readers, so if you are reading please comment with a link to your blog so I can return the favour and read/link to your blog.
If you are on my blogroll already, make sure to comment so I know you’re still reading – I would hate to delete anyone by accident. I do have to make some serious cuts in my reader as I am up to over 200 blogs, so I am going to be deleting a fair few blogs.
I am still procrastinating – cutting blogs from my reader is not a job I enjoy doing.. I love adding blogs, which is how I keep ending up with more blogs than I can keep up with. ;)
And Now For Something Completely Different
A few bits and pieces from the web and my home.
On a recent blog topic, Sephy has posted Where Did WordPress Go Wrong?
The Other Half has been doing Yoga on the Wii Fit – and loving it. There is no possible way that he would have tried Yoga without the Wii Fit. Isn’t technology wonderful?
I love the Wii Fit myself – in particular the step aerobics.
WordPress 2.6 Warning – DO NOT upgrade.
Yesterday I mentioned a somewhat serious problem with permalinks in the just released 2.6 version of WordPress. Now there is a new issue which is an even bigger problem. Users have reported not being able to log into their blog once they upgraded to 2.6 – there is currently no fix for this problem.
There is a work around that _ck_ on the support forums has figured out – Otto42 says in this post that the work around reduces your blog security and he highly recommends against using the work around..
This problem may not affect you – maybe you’ll be one of the lucky ones – but if it does affect you these are your two somewhat unpleasant choices –
1. Stop logging into your blog until there is a fix.
2. Use a workaround which may open a security hole.
The problem with option one is – who knows how long a fix could take – there is a six page thread and they haven’t worked out what is causing the problem yet, in fact Otto says there will be no resolution until someone gives them the info they need to fix the problem, and as yet nobody has been able to do that.
Also, there is the somewhat huge problem of not being able to log into your blog – no posting, no moderating comments, no nothing until someone works out how to fix this problem.
And option 2 isn’t a great option either – what if this workaround allows spammers and hackers to get into your blog?
The best option for now –
Don’t upgrade.
Spread the word about these issues to other bloggers.
Want to help spread the word?
Give this post a stumble.
WTF, WordPress?
Ok. So I was pretty negative about the 2.5 series of WordPress. I was hoping that 2.6 might solve all the massive problems involved with 2.5, might actually work properly rather than break things, and might be worth looking forward to.
2.6 has now been released a month early. And what a surprise to find out that they should have used that extra time to actually solve problems with the software. I’m not talking about small, insignificant problems. I’m talking about major substantial problems. Oh, like upgrading only to find none of your permalinks work anymore.
Many people have reported permalinks not working after upgrading to 2.6. In all cases, these people have permalink structures that contain “index.php”. This is a bug, detailed here.
Sorry Matt, but this is not what I would call “a solid release“. Not unless you’re taking some serious hallucinogenic drugs. This is more like catastrophic explosion after a very drunken night out on the town and a dodgy 3am kebab that goes straight through you and leaves you in great need of bleach and the toilet brush. Fun for everyone – NOT!.
I mean, that is a pretty big deal. If you have this problem, not only does it mean links to your blog don’t work but it is surely going to affect the search engines and SEO etc. How many people have installed it and not realised they have this problem? Not everyone goes about checking all their links once they upgrade. Not everyone checks the support forums to see what the problems are.
Surely someone could have spotted this problem during testing of the beta, before it was released to the entire universe. And now that they have spotted it, how about stopping people from being able to download it until you have fixed it? Because they’ll download it, install it, find out it is broken, turn up on the support forums to ask for help (not noticing there is a sticky about it at the top) and then post things like this. And this. And this.
What I am about to say may come as a surprise to WordPress, who clearly think we the users have all signed up to be a part of their major mind-f**kery of constant updates and tweaking combined with the occasional complete overhaul. But maybe they’ll hear us if I say it out loud.
WE JUST WANT TO BE ABLE TO BLOG.
We don’t want to upgrade to find things broken. We don’t want to be told that we need to upgrade because of security issues. We just want basic, simple blogging software that works. So how about you quit this insane “software development by torture” that you seem to love inflicting on your users, go away into a room, shut the door, create something that BLOODY WELL WORKS and then come back and release it once you have tested it A LOT.
And hello, how about you start listening to your users. Because there are a lot of them on the support forums who are trying to tell you how annoyed, frustrated and in some cases upset they are about your treatment of them. This post is a good example – but who knows how long it will stay there.
Here’s another good idea – organise your forums better. Why not have a forum for each version of WP that you release, so people can go in there and post their 2.5 questions in a 2.5 area, and people can put their 2.6 questions in a 2.6 area, rather than the absolute clusterf**k that currently exists.
Going in there and reading those forums, with the arrogant pissy bitchy “helpers” and on occasion moderators (other than Otto42, who seems to be a saint directly sent from Heaven, though I have seen that he still loses his cool from time to time and understandably so – I hope they’re paying you some serious money Otto and if not get the heck out of there fast!) gives me a major migraine. No wonder the helpers are bitchy – I don’t even know how they can stand to hang out there.
Even so – can’t these so called helpers try being nice to people? Can’t they understand that peoples blogging worlds are falling apart because WordPress released another broken version of their software? They don’t want something broken – they want something that works, and they’ve likely been scared into upgrading rather than sticking with what they already have that does work, and then they come to the support forums for help, and they are treated like they are the ones with issues. They’re not the ones with issues – other than the fact that they have installed software that sucks. Why don’t we look at the creators of the software that sucks to see who really has issues?
The fact that I now have to start testing yet another broken version of WordPress because people will likely want me to install it for them (and heads up guys, no freaking way am I doing that anytime soon) makes me want to shoot myself in the head. Good thing I don’t have a gun, huh people?
So yeah, looks like I’m in a bit of a bad mood today. It is just really frustrating to watch. :( And I only visit the support forums occasionally – in this case to get an idea of what the problems with 2.6 are before trying to test it myself, but when I do visit I leave with a splitting headache and a desire to start up my own wordpress wank blog.