Month: June 2003

referer logging rendered valueless

Well, I may just stop logging referring URLs, since I noticed this morning that the top 22 HTTP_REFERER variables logged are all bogus, all spam, all designed to attract pr0n surfers.

This has all been in the last couple of days: traffic has quadrupled but it’s all meaningless, since I know it’s some invisible background hack running on a myriad of unsecured Windows PCs, all requesting “/” just to leave a bogus referring URL.

Since I don’t automagically publish all referring URLs, the geniuses behind this aren’t benefitting at all. Cretins . . . .

the ever-dynamic workplace

Well, after several detours through the Slough of Despond at this job, I am on the verge of completing my 6 month probationary period and becoming a full-fledged employee of the State with all the rights and emoluments thereto appertaining . . . .

It now seems that some of my tech skills and interests are useful, so I am taking advantage of the opportunity to learn more about PHP and CSS. PHP seems more straightforward than CSS so far, or at least more familiar. I have successfully created a database, and some pages to query and display its contents, all in a matter of hours.

It helps that the summer lasts until late September, giving me a nice 3 month window of opportunity without students and the background distraction of teaching to get in my way: faculty like to — and plan on — travel in the summer, and staff can’t afford to, so that keeps us out of each other’s way.

JK Rowling’s spell persists

I finished Harry Potter 5 last night, and am pleased that the depth and strength of the story continues to build. Sorry, no spoilers: you need to look elsewhere or read the book yourself if you want to know what happens.

If you found The Goblet of Fire to be heavy going or too intense, you may want to put this one aside. Sadly, now we face another 1-2 year wait for book 6 and then another for book 7. It’s like an elaborate meal: hours or days in the preparation, a fraction of that in the eating. I only started the book Thursday morning, just to ‘see what it was like’ and then ended up putting everything else aside to finish it.

<UPDATE>
Just a reminder that JK Rowling isn’t likely to see any of the tributes posted here: I don’t mind them being posted here, but I’m not forwarding any of this stuff on (even if I knew her address).

Thanks.

referer log spamming

This is really stupid: someone (some people?) keep stuffing my logfiles with bogus HTTP_REFERER values: here’s today’s gem and the number of times it’s appeared.

[/home/paul]:: grep -c http://www.blowjob-pics.info/ /usr/local/weblogs/httpd-access.log
887

The only way anyone is going to see this is if they look at my stats pages (and no, I’m not going to put a link to them: they’re not hard to find, but why make things worse?). What a waste of time and bandwidth, so say nothing of disk and logfile.
Continue reading “referer log spamming”

feeling Orwellian?

from The EPIC Alert

======================================================================
[1] Birthday Greetings
======================================================================

Dear Mr. Orwell,

Greetings on your 100th Birthday! You might be gratified to know that
a new generation of readers have a growing interest in your writing.
Your insights resonate as never before in these times.

We take this occasion to share some of our personal reflections on
themes you brought attention to, including language, commercialism,
inequality, and war. The theme of surveillance is notably missing; we
hope interested readers of the EPIC Alert might contribute a 1000 word
essay on the subject and send it to orwell@epic.org. Contributions
will be edited and posted on our website.

Best regards,

The EPIC Team

a variation on collaborative filtering?

I noticed that you can export your library or any playlist that you’ve made with iTunes: what would be interesting to see who else owns the same stuff you do and let that guide you to new sounds. Perhaps this is how audioscrobbler works, I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to. but it might make a nice complementary feature, especially since iTunes tracks ratings and the frequency of use for each track.

american ingenuity at its finest: homebrewed weather balloon with telemetry

vpizza.org photo gallery

This is the highest elevation at which there’s a photo.

This guy built a weather balloon from off the shelf components, built and installed a linux-powered computer to run the camera and weather sensors, equipped it with packet radio equipment for flight control, and proceeded to get it up to almost 18 miles above California on his first attempt.

that’s not a bug, you’re a Luddite

meta-douglasp

This is a snapsnot of what we (Microsoft and everyone else in the software industry) should be focused on. We get too wrapped up in self-importance many times. In the end, it is about one thing… Making Bob (#define for our customers) happy. Not super cool features that can do X,Y, & Z, but just making Bob successful so he can go home and enjoy his family without worrying all night long…

Doug’s a smart guy, and I don’t doubt his sincerity, but for his vision to become reality would take some huge changes at the Big House.

Granted this is an old quote, but still: when the Boss says “The new version – it’s not there to fix bugs. That’s not the reason we come up with a new version,” what does that suggest *he* thinks is important? Chrome or stability? Reliability or security?

To be fair, marketing fewer bugs or greater stability would be harder than selling new features, and I suppose that’s why no one does it. Airlines don’t advertise their safety records or cite their competitors’ records, either: it’s not done.

But perhaps this is perhaps the most pernicious aspect of MSFT’s heft in the marketplace: if you’re really good, where else is there to work?