10:47 AM
Internet Links blog updated

Added a bunch of cycling links to my links blog today...

03:41 PM
Internet Sometimes they see the light...

Techdirt: Major Spam ISP Kicks Off Spammers All of this is correct - the "former employee" is on the Spam-L list I'm on and he published the internal memos to the list as well as his whistleblower site. He also worked with Spamhaus' Steve Linford who talked with the Savvis CEO and explained the consequences of hosting spammers, ie., being shut off from the rest of the internet.

So sometimes it does work, sometimes the bad guys who give spammers access to sent out spam can see the light and understand that while the short term money from the spammers looks very nice, the long term money from legitimate customers will disappear because of blocking and then the spammers will disappear too because they're blocked as well. And poof, no more company.

11:46 AM
Internet Oh my, that's reassuring (NOT)

Thursday, email from owner of server host: Open a support ticket and give us your server password, the datacenter is changing IP addresses in six days and we need to add the new IPs to your server.

Okay fine, file support ticket, give them all the info. Hope they get the new IPs in soon as I'll have to change my nameserver IPs too and that takes a day or two to propogate as well.

Friday, reply to support ticket from webhost, "do you want me to assign this ticket to (name of their main admin guy)?"

Eeesh. I was fairly polite in my response but sometimes I really want to take a baseball bat to their stupidities. (And the result of my reply is that they moved the ticket to the Dedicated Server Support department which is a new one they added after they told me to open a ticket to the Migration department.)

12:58 PM
Internet New features in Thunderbird 0.8

Yippee!!! Neil's World - New features in Thunderbird 0.8

The main things that caught my eye:

• Global Inbox - when adding a new POP3 account, you can choose to have mail delivered to Local Folders, as opposed to creating a new set of folders for each account. This was a big gripe among some users with many accounts, and it now means that Thunderbird can more closely imitate OE
• Get All Mail - the Get Messages icon now has a submenu that also lets you get mail from all accounts or select a specific account. This is a feature in Mozilla Mail that was missing in Thunderbird.
• Better quick search - it offers a greater level of control and allows you to use it to search the message body too.
• Ability to import mail and settings from Mozilla Mail

Thank god for the Global Inbox! v0.8 will be the one I'll start recommending that everybody switch to it, that's the thing I've been waiting for - along with the ability to view messages without loading remote images and being able to switch easily between plain text view and html view make Thunderbird the best and safest email program. Plus they'll have RSS feeds which will make it even spiffier! I've been using an extension to get RSS feeds but it's a bit clunky so I'll be looking to see how Thunderbird handles it.

And just remember folks, this is from a DIE-HARD OE user of six years! Took me a few weeks to get comfortable with Thunderbird but it was definitely worth it.

09:44 PM
Internet Zempt for posting to MT blogs

After my post about w.bloggar, Jason pointed me towards Zempt, a multi-platform posting for Movable Type and it is a truly wonderful little program! It's actually easier to post thru Zempt than thru MT's interface, especially if you're using multiple categories, in MT it takes multiple saves to add the extra categories, in Zempt I can choose the extra categories while creating the initial post and that's a huge timesaver. Plus all the other nifty things, editing past posts, preview, html shortcuts and spellcheck, it's really nice. Along with the MT plugin to post new entries to LJ, I'm set, no need for the MT interface or Deepest Sender anymore! Thanks very much to Jason!

09:13 PM
Internet Speaking of blogging...

I installed w.bloggar this afternoon and I like it! I can post to any of my MT blogs and to LJ as well. And it's got more html options than the MT interface and it minimizes to the tray by the clock and it doesn't use much memory either. For those using other types of blogs, like WordPress, Blogger and LJ lookalikes that use the LJ engine (like Slashcity's Journalfen). It has a nice preview feature too and it can connect by ftp as well for uploading stuff. Plus you can save drafts locally as well, comes in handy when LJ is overloaded.

11:16 PM
Internet Microsoft's single patch to fix all the bugs released today

Earlier today, I got a notice from the Windows Critical Update Notification program that there were new critical updates to install. I started up IE and went to the Windows Update site and there were two of them and I selected them and they installed successfully.

Then I went off and did other things, I use Firefox as my primary browser so I didn't start up IE again. Several hours later, I got a spam from Bravenet, I'd already deleted my account there last month when I got their first spam and here it was again a month later. I tried to delete my account again (just to make sure it took last month) in Firefox but Bravenet insisted I didn't accept cookies (stupid Bravenet) so I right-clicked and selected "View in IE".

I get a popup box that says "Unable to locate Internet Explorer".

Huh?

My Computer > C:/ > Program Files > Internet Explorer > well I'll be damned, there is no IEXPLORE.EXE. I refuse to believe what my eyes tell me so I click on the IE link in my Start menu. No luck there, I click on the Windows Update link, same thing. There is no IE anymore.

I furrow my brow, I rack my brain, and I suddenly realize what's happened - Microsoft has come up with the perfect patch to fix ALL their bugs! They removed IE! No IE, no bugs, simple as that and apparently, even Microsoft agrees!

I don't think I'll even try to fix it, I have the standalone versions of 5 and 5.5, I'll just use those. I haven't done the updates on my other computer yet, it'll be interesting to see if IE disappears there too...

07:29 PM
Internet Pick one: MT or LJ

Jason asked: Do you like MT or LJ better? And why?

Weeeeellll...

---

Movable Type Pros

I love MT because it runs on my domain so I can back it up easily and it's html pages that I can format and style with html and CSS and the amount of MT code that I have to learn is minimal - it also has excellent help documentation so I don't have to remember the MT tags, I can always find them in Help easily.

I'm a picky person, I like being able to give in to a redesign urge, to have my journal pages as wild or sedate as I like them, to try out new HTML/CSS things, play with graphics, make it totally my own. I like being able to tweak there and tweak here and add a links section and a tidbits column and backgrounds on mouseover and underlines and borders and all that. MT satisfies that urge.

Movable Type Cons

Nobody leaves comments. Jason did because I asked and he's a sweetie! But normally it's a very blue moon when someone leaves a comment at my MT blog. And the nasty spammers made me do work to keep them out. Buggers on them.

---

Live Journal Pros

Comments coming out my ears! People talk, they comment, they reply to comments and not only do I get an email when there's a comment left on my entries (which MT does also), if someone replies to someone else's comment on my entry, that person gets an email so then they reply to the reply and the conversation keeps going.

Live Journal is where I find fandom people, I've run into people I used to know from other parts of fandom but had lost track of and I've gotten to know people in fandom that I wouldn't normally because they hang out in entirely different parts, except for LJ where we cross paths.

I can lock an entry so that only my friends see it or a few of my friends or this other group of my friends or no-one but me can see it. That's nice to have although not terribly critical.

Live Journal Cons

Unless I feel like learning tons about whatever is necessary to really format and layout an LJ, I can't really fix it exactly like I want it. And it's not on my domain, I can't backup everything, I especially can't backup comments which is the more valuable part of an LJ to me.

And it's not on my server, it's on theirs and they get swamped and overloaded and probably 50% of the time I go there, there's some problem - that' not to say that LJ is down 50% of the time - I don't go that frequently, once/twice a week, sometimes less than that and I just tend to hit the bad times. LJ is big and that makes it a target for twerps to try to take them down and that kind of thing doesn't happen on my server since I'm small and inconsequential and I'm careful about who I host and all that.

And there's all that cutesy stuff, what music you're listening to, what your mood is, and the icons (pet peeve - animated icons) and while I've gotten used to all that and I mostly ignore the parts I don't like, it still seems very thirteen year old girlish to me.

---

With the advent of plug-ins to auto-post from MT to LJ, it's better, I don't have to endure the LJ posting programs or plugins, although I do have the Firefox plugin for LJ in case I need to edit an entry and I can ignore whatever LJ format I've chosen because I don't go there as much. Lately I use Bloglines to read news and other people's blogs. The only thing I miss is LJ because if the entries are friends-locked then there's not much visible in an RSS which is only public entries but otoh, if I tried to read other people's blogs on LJ, I'd have to create a feed for each of them and there's a limit to how many you can do. Bloglines (and any RSS reader) is flexible enough to let me quickly add feed, rearrange them, mix and match them and drop them whenever I like.

---

So what do I like better? MT or even WordPress - for the main reason that I get control. I probably won't ever completely abandon LJ because I like keeping in touch with friends there but I'll post to MT (or WordPress) first and use a plug-in to get it to LJ.

12:43 AM
Internet For those hapless few still using IE...

..yet another IE exploit, this one specifically aimed at catching banking info and logins. From the Internet Storm Center: New Scam Targets Bank Customers. That page also has a scanning tool to detect the nasty stuff and disable it. (Caveat: I have not tried this program, I can't offer any help with it but it is a trustworthy program since it's recommended by the ISC.)

Links to a variety of non-IE safe, secure browsers can be found here (or here if LJ is still being plagued by 13 year olds who need their hands slapped). There's also a great article at Open for Business on switching from IE and OE to Firefox and Thunderbird, it walks thru the details of how to install both and import your favorites, email and mail settings into the appropriate program.

The BBC and a couple other places are reporting that CERT "recommends using browsers other than Internet Explorer", I don't think anyone has an actual cite of where CERT said that but it's still a good recommendation. :)

And for anyone who had troubles with Firefox v0.9, there is a new version with the worst of the bugs fixed (including the never-ending installing extensions one that Dargie fell afoul of), v0.9.1 is now available (and Dargie, I completely understand if you don't want to mess with it yet! :))

I have a nasty sore throat, please think soothing thoughts for it, it hurts like the devil and my ears ache too.

(and is it just me or is LJ down a whole lot of the time over the last couple weeks??? I know they were having server problems but for the last couple weeks, it takes forever to get in and tonight it gets a bit of the page and then tells me "document has no data". Maybe they should go back to invites and slow down the new user rate increase until they can get stablized on servers and load and all that...)

06:01 PM
Internet How to use Outlook Express safely

I use OE - I have a couple dozen pop email accounts that I monitor and it works best for me. BUT I make it safe thru these steps:

1. Tools > Options > Read tab > check the box for Read All Messages in Plain Text. This prevents html from showing up at all and prevents viruses from auto-executing when I open an email. Since I don't subscribe to a bunch of html newsletters and I prefer lists that use only plain text, this works great for me. None of that hot pink text on a yellow background. :) (Note that this feature is only available in the last version of OE, 6.00.28 - you must upgrade if you see anything less than that. But it's a good idea to upgrade anyway, get the latest and most secure version of OE and IE.)

2. Tools > Options > Security tab > select Restricted Sites zone. This helps protect you from some of the hazards of OE's integration with IE.

3. I use Avast's home edition anti-virus program which is free and automatically checks for updates at various times when I'm online in the background. It integrates with OE as well, running all incoming and outgoing mail thru it and alerts me when there's a virus in an email, flagging the subject line with a warning.

4. I have filters (message rules in OE) set up to automatically delete anything Avast flags as a virus. I also have filters set to put any email with an attachemtn OR that's over 30k in size into a folder labeled "ATTACHMENTS". When I look at that folder, I know to be careful, scan subject lines and if I don't recognize it, then I right click on the subject and select Properties, then click on the Details tab and then on the Message Source button to view the message safely without being infected by the virus. (I do this with spam too, that way any tracking html or images they have in the spam message don't phone home to the spammer.)

5. Tools > Options > Maintenance tab, select Empty Messages from the Deleted Items Folder on Exit. This dumps all viruses (and spam too) everytime I close OE so it's completely gone.

All of this is mostly automated and doesn't disrupt my use of OE or require any time from me on a regular basis. Avast catches most viruses and they go straight to trash which gets dumped at least daily. Occasionally a virus turns up in the ATTACHMENTS folder but since I scan subject lines carefully there and use the Properties option to view the messages, I see the virus safely and then delete it.

It does require paying attention and using the tools given, but OE can be run safely. If these kind of precautions are more hassle than OE is worth, then I recommend using another email program, Eudora, Thunderbird, most any email program other than OE will be safer than OE.

For Outlook users, you can follow some of these steps, I think #1 is only available in recent versions of Outlook tho and I'm not sure if Outlook has ever had #2. Avast however will integrate with Outlook as well and scan all email for viruses (it also works with virtually any pop email program). Steps #4 and #5 can be done in Outlook, although in some versions of Outlook, it's not possible to see the message source and so no way to safely view the message.

I have Outlook on my computer and for businesses, it is a great digital day planner and the ability to access global folders, other employees' schedules and projects is very useful. On a business network where the IT department can take other precautions to keep out viruses, it's a good thing to use. At home, I never use it for email tho, it's never allowed to connect to the internet. I use it only for keeping my Contacts and for synching with my Palm Pilot.

So for Outlook users, I suggest using something else to send and receive email instead of Outlook. If you use OE and set it up to run safely, you can then easily export your email into Outlook if you want to store it there along with Contacts and other stuff.

03:10 PM
Internet Don't use Internet Explorer!

Using Internet Explorer? Going web surfing today? Protect yourself!

If you haven't heard before, there's a virus that's infecting websites run on Windows servers. Alot of large trusted sites do run on Windows servers, some banks use Windows servers as well as online stores and other sites. This virus can transmit itself thru any webpage on the infected server if the user is viewing the webpage in Internet Explorer. The virus works by embedding itself in every webpage hosted on the server and anytime someone using IE visits a site hosted on the infected server, the virus is delivered to the user's computer along with the webpage. There currently is NO patch for Internet Explorer to prevent this. And there's no simple way to know from looking at a website if it's hosted on a Windows or Linux server.

Most anti-virus programs do have updates out today that will detect this virus, so be sure to update your anti-virus program as soon as possible.

This virus is a keystroke logger so it'll capture anything you type, like logins and passwords to anywhere you visit, including your bank, your email, anything you type. All that info is sent to a server in Russia. The people investigating this virus believe it is tied to the Russian Mafia, it's custom written with the resources to handle the server traffic (see this CNet article and there were also articles on CNN and AOL News last night). The virus also opens a port from your computer to the Russian server which can be used for just about any purpose, sending out spam, accessing your hard drive, launching an attack on the internet, whatever. And you may not be aware that any of this is happening, especially if you have a cable or DSL internet connection, it'll happen in the background while you're working or whenever you've left your computer on.

For the best and safest web-surfing, simply don't use IE. Other browsers don't have the vast array of security flaws that IE does - if you pay attention to the news, new security holes are found in IE on a weekly basis, plus there's all the old ones if you haven't kept up with Windows updates to patch the holes that have been found and plugged.

So the best thing to do is use a different browser. It's not hard, there's several FREE options, all of which are easy to install and use.

For IE users, I recommend switching to Firefox, it looks and works like IE so the transition is easier and it will automatically import all your Favorites during the installation process. It's a friendly program too, it won't take up much space on your hard drive or eat up huge amounts of memory. And best of all, once you install it, you never have to mess with it again. You don't have to get updates to patch security holes, you can just use it day after day. The current version is 0.9 which is technically classed as a beta (or technology preview) but don't let that worry you, it's an extremely stable and reliable program and this version has been fully tested. I've been using Firefox since version 0.7 last winter and it's always been very stable.

For Netscape users, I recommend Mozilla, it looks and works like Netscape, in fact Netscape versions 6 + use Mozilla as the base of the program. If you're still using any version 6, especially version 6.0_, I highly recommend upgrading to Mozilla, version 6.0_ had various problems and issues that were fixed in later versions of both Netscape and Mozilla. If you're using Netscape 7.1, you don't have to wait for v7.2, you can switch to Mozilla v1.7 now - that's what Netscape v7.2 will be using.

For Netscape version 4 users, if you don't have a lot of hard drive space or memory (RAM), you may want to switch to Firefox because it is smaller and needs less memory, even tho it will look a bit different to you, for example, Edit > Preferences is Tools > Options or Tools > Themes or Tools > Extensions, depending on what you want. Normally I'd recommend Mozilla because it looks and works like Netscape but Mozilla is about twice the size of Firefox and uses more memory as well.

There's also Opera but one caveat, this one's not free like Firefox and Mozilla. You can pay for it or you can download the "free" version and pay for it by having ads displayed in the menu part of the browser. Other than that, it's a good, safe browser with good features.

While Mac users can't be infected by this virus, if you're using Internet Explorer, it's not really a very good browser. There are all sorts of problems with HTML web standards compliance so you might want to check out better alternatives. For OS X users, there's Safari and there's Camino from the Mozilla people. For Mac users on OS 9 or lower, there's Opera.

06:15 PM
Internet These people just do NOT get IT!

These people just don't get it. The feed from your site is the tease, it's the headline on the paper that makes me dig a couple quarters out and buy out. The feed is the tease that gets me to your site (skip the fricking stupid registrations that are nothing but lies we make up anyway) to see your ads! If you start putting ads in the feeds, I won't ever be visiting your site because I won't be reading the feed anymore, I'll never see the teasers, I'll never see the ads in the feed and I'll never see your site anymore. I take the feeds to see what interesting content is at your site, advertising is not content!

Give me the feed without advertising and go work on better context-sensitive advertising at your site, then you'll not only get me to your site, you might even get me to click on the ads.

Sheesh. People laughed at that scene in Minority Report where the walls talked to Cruise's character, everywhere he looked was advertising all reaching out to grab him. I got shivers - it's not really science fiction.

03:04 PM
Internet Lockergnome article about IE & Mozilla

Lockergnome has an excellent article on switching from IE to Mozilla Firefox and I'll add a note that Firefox 0.9 has just been released and it's got some great improvements in it.

I sort of forced my parents to switch to Firefox about six months ago by installing and changing the IE icons to go to Firefox instead and they've been quite happy with it - my mom really likes the tabbed browsing and I can breathe easier about my stepdad, he's a very un-computer type and he tends to wander into all sorts of sites and click on things so with Firefox at least I don't have to worry about nasty websites secretly installing stuff on his laptop.

Like Lockergnome, I use IE mainly for running Windows Update and the occasional site that I have to see that only works in IE or for testing web design. There's a nifty Firefox extension, called IE View which adds an item to the right-click menu, "Open in IE" so when I run into an IE-only site, it's easy to right-click and choose "Open in IE" to see the site.

And if you're using Mozilla or Mozilla Firefox and you visit my websites, you'll see them the way I intended them. I always make sure my sites work well in IE and look very similar, but there are some subtle differences, things that work better if you're using a standards-compliant browser.

There are other alternatives, Opera and Netscape v7+ are standards compliant, secure and use tabbed browsing too. If you're using Mac OSX, there's Mozilla versions for you, too. (For Opera and Netscape, just Google and you'll find them easily.)

If you've been sticking to Netscape 4 all these years - please do yourself a favor and try out Mozilla - it looks the same and works the same and is up to date. Trust me - I recommended Mozilla to several diehard N4 users and once they tried it, they loved it!

11:49 AM
Internet You can tell...

You can tell you've been doing alot of html and css coding when you write "a freshly made ham sandwidth" and it takes you several days of looking at that to realize it's wrong.

:)

02:44 AM
Internet How to get yourself banned at Vox Populli

How to get yourself banned at Vox Populli in 30 seconds or less:

Report an email from me about your free site at Vox Populli as spam! bzzzzzzzzzt!!!

That'll get every last flipping scrap of your site scraped off in record time and don't ever come back asking for anything ever again.

:pppppppppp

12:18 AM
Internet Moveable Type: RIP, part 2

And as I typed that last entry, MT was busily backtracking and changing their pricing plan. When I first saw the pricing plan an hour ago, it was like this for personal plans:

1 author, 3 weblogs - special $70, normal $100
3 authors, 5 weblogs - special $120, normal $150
5 authors, 10 weblogs - special $150, normal $190

(I'm not totally sure on that last one, I was still in shock from the first two.)

Here's their revised pricing plan (which may have changed by the time I hit "post" on this!) Currently it shows:

Personal:
5 authors, 5 weblogs - special $70, normal $100

Then you pay $10 to get an additional author/weblog combo. For example, if you have 10 authors and 8 weblogs, you'd pay $50 more.

So if I upgraded, it would be $70, still too much for me, get that puppy down to $40, I would think about it - but I'd have to see what new features I was getting, besides the TypeKey thing.

I don't think they changed anything on the commercial plans but --- look at this:

Commercial:
5 authors, 5 weblogs - special $200, normal $300
20 authors, 15 weblogs - special $600, normal $700

What company in their right mind would consider paying $200 for the commercial 5/5 plan when the cheapest personal plan has the same thing??? Now, I realize that legally and ethically anyone using it for commercial purposes is supposed to buy a commercial license but if there's no difference in the software for the personal edition and the commercial edition, that pricing just looks really wonky. if they upped the 5/5 to 10/10, it would look a little better when compared to the personal licenses.

10:50 PM
Internet Moveable Type: RIP

Wow. Guess I won't be upgrading my MT blogs ever again. I'll just make do with v2.6, it works just fine for me and I sure don't need to be forking over hundreds of dollars for something that's not even really an upgrade from what I have now.

Moveable Type's new pricing structure

I don't have a problem with them charging for v3 but the "personal" license fees are a joke, not only in the amount of money they want but also in the number of authors and weblogs allowed. My brother and I run a blog for our comments on TV shows, just for both of us to be able to post on the same blog, I'd have to pay a minimum of $120 ("special" discount price). *coughchokegag* Even the price of the single author/three blogs is more than I'd pay, $70 for the "special" discount and $100 normally? Thank you very much but no thanks.

Here's an excellent post at the Many to Many site. Excellent points made, and I see many of the people in the comments on Mena's blog (see link in the Many to Many post) are in the same boat as me, running personal blogs for themselves, their family and their friends and there's no way they can shell out that much money.

It's just not realistic for Six Apart to expect people to fork ove that much money when there are various alternatives that are *free*. Blogger's just improved their site, added commenting, profiles, they're mainly going after Live Journal but they're also a good alternative to MT. Live Journal is even a good alternative to MT, especially for people with personal blogs, it's designed for that and LJ recently removed the requirement of a sign up code so anyone can join now. WordPress is free GNU open source license and allows for multiple authors, I'd looked at it before and liked it but since I was happy with MT, I didn't do anything with it (but I will be installing it now and trying it out). Textpattern has also been mentioned, I haven't checked it out yet but I definitely will be. There's also SimplePHPBlog which I found yesterday, I see that kewl.us has started up a service offering free blogs using that software (it's free GNU open source license) and free 1 gig webmail accounts too.

I daresay that MT will survive and they may even change their pricing structure (although I don't expect that they will reduce it significantly enough that I would consider it) but they sure have managed to find the perfect way to piss off a whole lot of people all at once in the meantime.

10:33 AM
Internet More strange things from the contact form

I get the weirdest things from my contact forms on my fanfiction archives, other than author questions, it's usually spam of some sort but every so often, it's something from way out in left field...

Name: [deleted]
Message: Iworred about Gizz-Mo my cat's upper
left paw he's not been walking on it
sence the 4 of May by now I'm thinking
could it be broken? I feel like Gizz-Mo is my baby please help.

(I wrote back advising her to take the cat to the vet.)

05:58 PM
Internet Flaming idiots

I see, you think that people who like to top-post also want slavery to be reinstated.

Yep, that makes perfect sense. Those dastardly top-posting villains!

I'm so glad my migraine was gone by the time the flaming idiot posted that, so that I could simply point out that he'd invoked the American version of Godwin's Law and the person who does loses the argument. Hah!

09:35 PM
Internet AOL spam reports

I *heart* the monthly mailing list membership reminders that Mailman sends out. Why do I love them? Because they contain the full email address of the list member and what lists they belong to in the body of the email. Then when some AOLer reports it as spam, AOL includes the reported message and I open it and I remove that person from that list and ban them from joining it again. Voila, no more spam reports from that AOLer!

I just wish Mailman had a global ban option so I could ban these people from all the lists I host in one whack.

*alice hates spam but hates false reports even more*

12:10 PM
Internet Google Email - Not an April Fools joke...

This is one free email service I'd be happy to use:

Google's Gmail

The press release came out last night with an April 1st date and there was some speculation that it might be an April Fools joke, but it looks real. There's more info up on the Gmail page today and there's a link to an About page with more details.

While they will put ads in your email, it's Google's AdSense ads, all plain *text*, no flashy, whirlygig things, and Google does an excellent job, imho, in matching up ads with content on their search engine so it should do well in email too. And Google knows the importance of their reputation so I trust them far more than most free services on the net, they're one of the few that hasn't lost sight of what helped them grow in the first place.

One thing to note on Google's AdSense, because it looks at the content, it won't always pair up an ad with the email. Just as with searches, you don't always get ads on the results page, you won't see them in every email thru GMail either. AdSense looks for particular keywords for its ads and if you discuss a music concert, you might get an ad for online ticket buying but if you're talking about what an ass your boy/girlfriend is, you may not get any ads at all.

That's one reason I like Google's AdSense, it lets your immediate interests drive the ads and not by silly cookie or page tracking (Amazon's recommendations based on their cookie/page tracking are totally off-base for me and thus completely useless), instead AdSense looks at your immediate search terms and if it has related ads, then it displays them, in plain text where you're not distracted totally from what sent you to Google in the first place. If AdSense doesn't have any relevant ads, then it doesn't display any.

That's true consumer-driven advertising and it's the kind that works for all consumers.

05:54 PM
Internet Can someone please kill IE? Please?

Please, really, I mean it's bad enough it's got all those security flaws in it that virus/worm creators and hackors love, but it's got so many CSS bugs, it's just a little old roach factory!

Let me start by saying that I used to love IE and I used it all the time but because of the security issues, I kept looking at other browsers and finally about a year and a half ago, when Mozilla v1.0 came out, I tried it out. Because Mozilla has so many nifty extensions so that you can customize the browser like you want and because tabbed browsing is truly wonderful :), I switched and haven't gone back to IE (well except for the occasional Flash site that I know is safe because I turned Flash off in Mozilla because of Flash advertisements that drain my poor little three year old win98 PC's memory).

I started using Mozilla's Firefox a couple months ago and for IE users, I really recommend it, Firefox is tailored to look and act more like IE's interface but of course, it's more secure and safe for browsing. It's still in beta but Mozilla's betas are very stable and I've been running the latest, v0.8 for about a month and it's great.

Since I've been using Mozilla/Firefox as my primary browser, I tend to preview my html pages in it as I'm building them. Then I'll run them up in IE to see if I need to tweak anything. Most of the time IE's display is very close or exactly the same but as I get more into CSS positioning, I find more and more things I need to tweak, styles I want Mozilla (and Opera and Safari and other standards-compliant browsers) to see but want to hide from IE so I've learned a few of the hacks to hide certain styles from IE or Netscape 4 or whatever. And mostly those hacks have been kept to a minimum and I had to do them more for N4 than for IE.

But just now, I happened to wander to this page:

IE Escaping Floats Bug

where it describes an IE bug with floating text around the page and in describing how you force IE to do what it's supposed to, it says:

IE browsers have an invisible and mysterious wrapper element around 'html'...

and I threw up my hands in frustration! I mean sheesh, THAT'S a broken browser that really needs to be put out of its misery!

Oh well....LOL! subliminal message: use Mozilla, use Firefox, use anything but IE! :) Tell all your friends they must use Mozilla, use Firefox, use anything but IE! (I'd even settle for Opera 7 or Netscape 7!) (But if you're using Opera 5, do yourself a favor and upgrade! Wow, O5 makes a huge mess of perfectly valid CSS!)

01:58 PM
Internet Stylin'

I <3 CSS and accessibility, I'm close to being done with redesigning my blog site in all CSS, it W3C validates for XHTML1.1 and CSS! I just have to plug it into MT...then I think I'll see if I can't redo my LJ site to match it.

I completely redid the Glass Onion Archive in CSS and it works in both N4 and current browsers. I used the nifty shadow box thing from A List Apart but I've found a better idea from Tom Gilder's Blog.

The ALA version for paragraphs won't work properly on divs in IE5 but the idea from Tom Gilder's does work on just about anything in IE5+, Opera (hmm, I can't remember if it works in O5 tho), Mozilla, Safari, etc. and I'm using that on my new blog design. In looking at the one on Gilder's site, it's so simple, it does require more images than the ALA version but they're no bigger than the ones that ALA uses. (I am however restraining myself and using it only where it enhances the design, I love shadow boxes so I have to remind myself to not overdo it! :))

11:26 PM
Internet testy, testy

..nothing to see here, move along, move along..

11:59 PM
Internet Conguering CSS Positioning!

While I am an extragavant proponent of CSS for everything, I've had a tough time getting the hang of CSS-P that works in Netscape 4. Because alot of visitors to my archives are still using N4 on computers they can't upgrade, I try to keep everything accessible in N4 and I like it to look mostly the same. So I've ended up mostly using tables, minimal ones, usually just one big two or three column, two or three row tables to do the page layout and then using CSS for everything inside but I know that CSS-P can work in N4 and I'm finally getting the hang of it.

I worked on it today, mostly on two private links pages that I use locally but also on the Emaillist-Managers which is now completely table-free! It's just a two column layout with a banner across the top, but I did it all myself, I didn't copy any templates from anywhere and it looks close enough in N4 that I'm happy with it.

Now I need to go fix the N4 problem I created last night on the Basement when I made a teensy-weensy change to most of the (hundreds of) fic links...oops. :)

11:42 PM
Internet Lost in Translation

People say the darndest things on my archive contact forms...

hello i am searching sex gril pnones

*chuckle*

03:52 PM
Internet FTP Program plug!

About a week ago, someone on a list somewhere (I can't remember where!) recommended FileZilla for ftp, an open source freeware program.

And this is flat out the best FTP program I've used in ages. It's amazingly fast, I'm on a cable modem so downloads/uploads are fast anyway, but this thing goes even faster! I have one free host that is always really slow on upload, it just crawls even tho I'm on a cable modem but with FileZilla, the uploads go noticeably faster and with my other hosts, it just zooms!

I don't normally rave about products but this one is really worth raving about. The layout (screenshot here) is similar to CuteFTP and you can resize everything, turn off various parts of the display. Setting up ftp accounts is easy and it's ready to go in seconds.

I'm not affiliated with the program creators in any way, I'm not getting anything for this endorsement, really I'm not! In fact, when I get paid next week, I'm going to donate some money to them, that's how much I like it and I'm a scrooge when it comes to paying for software. :)

06:15 PM
Internet Woohoo!

testing, testing testytest

ETA: YES!! I did it! I navigated my Linux server to edit a Perl module to customize it so that a nifty little MT to LJ plugin that a friend of a friend created will work properly when including a url in an entry!

I did it! And I didn't destroy the server! :D And I even deleted several old large files left from the conversion to the server last fall. And I think I've figured out how I can transfer free accounts to paid accounts without having to dowload everything and upload it again and reset file permissions. ah, this is nifty.

See, at home I really don't have that much need for Linux, I have to use various Windows programs for my work and that's not going to change any time soon but I need to know what to do when I SSH in to the server so I can do various things there.

Now, if I could figure out how to download a backup file....hmmmm, I could set the WHM to do a weekly backup and then move the backup file to a folder I can ftp to and download it...but it'll be humongous and probably take a week to download so it's probably not worth it. But still, it's neat to finally have a faint understanding of this stuff!

01:47 PM
Internet Sometimes it's good to be poor...

I haven't upgraded to WinXP or even Win2K because I wanted to wait till I could afford a new (much faster) computer and start fresh.

My brother's computer got infected with the Welchia worm that came out about ten days ago. Nasty little thing, it got past Norton and it even survived reformatting the hard drive. It most likely arrived via a toolbar that his wife installed, possibly before Norton got the updates.

But the nice thing in all the info about the virus: "doesn't affect Win98" (among other O/S).

So sometimes it's good to be poor and way behind the curve. While I'm still sitting here on Win98, the upside is that it runs nicely on my P2 450mhz. My mom's spiffy new computer, a P4 2.3ghz with WinXP, doesn't run noticeably faster than mine. The only thing I really envy is the flat panel monitor. *sigh* That thing is gorgeous.

I have her old computer here (also a P2) and I'm thinking that I'll take another whack at Linux. Anyone care to recommend which version to install? Pretend I'm a helpless newbie who needs the simplest one possible that looks the most like Windows to ease the transition.

I want to be able to run a few Windows programs tho, mainly NoteTab which doesn't (yet) have a Linux version and possibly Lotus v5 which is one of their older versions but I know it backwards and forwards and I can make it do tricks, clean the windows, fetch the paper, walk the dog, so I'd feel better having it. And a graphics program but that could be a Linux version of something, there's Gnome? isn't it? That's a graphics program for Linux?

And maybe I'll save my money for a Max with OS X instead of a new PC.... :)

The only thing I miss by not having a newer version of Windows (or a Mac) is being able to access iTunes! But that can wait.

Hey, Dee, what are you using for your own computer these days?

11:24 AM
Internet Vulnerabilities that really are critical!

I adore SourBob!

Now that's a critical vulnerability to get upset about! shit in cookie jar, oh no! :)

09:52 PM
Internet Crap!

I was trying to clean things up, not make them worse! I was deleting broken links in the collective and now for no reason that I can fathom, most of the buttons won't show up. I've checked the code, the image files are there but they won't show up.

Damn. Chocolate chip cookie to anyone who can figure out what's wrong....

Most of the broken images are in the folder archive/0 which I did re-upload and on the off chance that they didn't upload properly, I deleted them and uploaded them again, then uploaded one thru the control panel file manager, nothing worked.

11:20 PM
Internet Testing, testing

1, 2, 3....this is only a test, if this were an actual entry, you'd have something to read.

06:17 PM
Internet Best Laid Plans of Mice and Me

I was all set to post something long and thought-out about this last fall, my temp job, dealing (still) with depression, how that job affected it and me and where I'm at now and then I got home and checked email quickly before writing all that up....

That was my mistake.

Innocous looking email, subject of "stop spam" from Max J. in my inbox. Name seemed familiar, I know it's not a virus, no attachment, (those get filtered to a separate folder), small size, I have images disabled in my email program so I open it.

[ SpamCop V1.3.4 ]
This message is brief for your comfort. Please use links below for details.
Spamvertised website: http://tools.populli.net/

For those not familar, that's SpamCop and that's a report from them saying that a site on my populli.net domain was advertised in an email that was reported as spam. Max J. is the head guy at my webhost and he's passing this on to me to get rid of the spammer. I'm very happy he didn't simply suspend my entire dedicated server, especially since the spam report was totally false, the email reported was NOT spam and my site was NOT spamvertised.

What is http://tools.populli.net/ ?

It's a FAQ about Email Lists that I created about two years ago, I've since moved it and expanded but left in redirects so if you click on that url, you'll see my site that was reported as spam...a perfectly non-spam site meant to help the TOTALLY CLUELESS LIST MEMBER who reported a TOTALLY NON-SPAM LIST MESSAGE as spamming.

SHEESH.

The listowner had put a link to my FAQ in her list footer and SpamCop automatically reports all urls as spamvertising. The message itself was part of a serious discussion about Tarot on a list that's been around almost four years with almost 1,300 members.

TOTALLY NOT SPAM.

So here I am bitching again. *sigh* I really didn't mean to do that but I had to write two nice polite emails back, one to my webhost, pointing out what my site is, why the message wasn't spam and that they could reply back to Spamcop that it wasn't spam and one to the listowner, asking her to remove the link since I don't want anymore false spam reports on my site from her (really stupid) list member. (I also gave her the list member's email address, I hope she bans the little shit.) And so I have to vent somewhere about the sheer stupidity of this person. I mean, the message didn't have a speck of spamminess in it! And reporting thru Spamcop isn't like that big ol' spam button in AOL, you do have to hit a couple more buttons, even just to report it by forwarding.

SHEESH.

Maybe I'll write up that other stuff later.

Now I have a headache again. Dee, how's yours doing? Any better today?

ETA: I get awful worked up over these things, don't I? I've been working on that sort of thing, I get really stressed out when driving too and I've been applying my "It's Not About ME" mantra so I need to start saying that about stoopid people too. :)

11:56 PM
Internet Wretched Spammers!

Some nasty spammer virus has started up today, I'm finding tons of spammed viruses in my server's mail queue, both sent to never-existed email addresses on my domains and domains I host as well as the usual bounce backs from other ISPs who so thoughtfully included the wretched virus! (Except AOL, they did the right thing and sent only the headers of the virus emails they bounced). It's getting caught by my server's anti-virus scanner but then it ends up in the mail queue, trying to bounce it back to the forged, non-existent, From address so I'm deleting them as fast as I see them.

The spammed virus is mostly sending to short common first names @ whatever domain, like Bill, Joe, Mary, Julie and forging from addresses the same way. A warning to everyone! Make sure you've updated your anti-virus software! And if you don't have any, get some! AVG is free with free updates and available here:

AVG by Grisoft

And I blame the spammers for this virus, because of certain email addresses that the virus was spammed to on one of my domains, I am almost certain it's one of those trojan viruses that will take over the infected computer so the spammer can use it to send out spam and not get caught.

07:54 PM
Internet Sheesh

AOL offers a service to domain owners, the ability to get cc'd on all spam complaints (they remove the AOL member email address to preserve the AOLer's privacy). I signed up for it to keep an eye on what was being reported. I only host fans so it's extremely unlikely there'd ever be any real spam from my domains so mainly I'm watching to see what legitimate mail is getting reported as spam.

In the last four days since it was activated, I've gotten two copies of spam reports. One was for a list post to a very large list, okay, well, it happens, perhaps the AOLer thought that "Report this as Spam" button is a magic unsub button or that if s/he reported the list messages s/he doesn't like,that AOL will somehow magically filter those out for them, letting thru the list messages s/he does like. Oh well, it happens.

The seond spam report tho, ...here's the sequence of events (as I deduce from the spam report):

1. An author wrote a story, the author has a website at Populli and a Populli email address and she posted her story on her site or on a list somewhere, using her populli email address.

2. An AOLer read the story and liked it and sent an email to the Populli author, asking for more.

3. The Populli author replied, just a couple lines, saying thanks and that she never knew what plot bunnies might pop in her head.

4. The AOLer received that reply from the Populli author and reported it as spam.

Sheesh.

Step away from the Report Spam button, people, just step slowly away, it's for your own safety.

07:41 PM
Internet Testing...

Testing, testing, testing...1, 2, 3, testing...

11:03 PM
Internet Getting the word out in a timely fashion (NOT)

Email from Zone Alarm received just moments ago:

Dear Valued ZoneAlarm Customer,

You may have heard about the "Defacers Challenge" taking place this
upcoming weekend.

Header line to verify that they just sent this email out tonight:
Received: from sc8-a7-omp4.rsc01.net (10.40.1.117) by SC8-A7-OMP4.rsc01.net (PowerMTA(TM) v1.5); Sun, 6 Jul 2003 22:44:02 -0700 (envelope-from [news@zonelabs.rsc02.com])

Trouble is, they're just a little behind the times. The Defacers Challenge was this weekend, this morning in fact....

05:54 PM
Internet Hackers' contest Sunday July 6 - BACK UP your sites!

There's supposed to be a hackers' contest tomorrow:

CNN: Will hackers attack 6,000 Web sites in 6 hours on July 6?

And even tho it's always a good idea to back up your website, this would be
another reason to back up your websites today!

11:52 PM
Internet All the little codes running round my head...

gah. I'm drowning in the automated archive! :) I've been working on it for a couple different archives for most of the last week and it's running all around my brain now, I'll probably dream about it tonight! Mostly trying to get the automated archive to do what I want and it's been giving me fits (but! I think I just figured out the answer to my problem! Use the boolean setting, 1 for yes, 0 for no...) and I'm starving and it's 11:45 and I'm hot and sweaty and I need to take a shower before I go to bed!

07:03 PM
Internet The return visit of the Dodo

The dodo is back!

dodo: "I know where I created my original group,and I know it is where now,so I do not appreciate being called a liar."

me: "First off, I never called you a liar (I never even said you were an idiot, even tho you are :)), I just pointed out your error. Since you persist in it, you have demonstrated how much of a fool you are as well as being an idiot."

This last time, he included the name of his group so I trotted over to its home page, it was created on January 30, 2000, about eight months before Yahoogroups bought eGroups and oooh, lookie there, his group's message archive is public, so I click on the link, then I click on "First Message" on January 30, 2000 (posted by the idiot of course) and then I click on "View Source" and wow, lookie at all those headers with....you guessed it! EGROUPS! in them! Gee, I wonder where he created his group???? Could it be....EGROUPS????

So I copied all those lovely EGROUPS headers into a reply to him, it's my responsibility as a conscientious researcher to properly document the dodo's intelligence levels as well as their migration habits....

04:44 PM
Internet Bizarro world alice ttlg

But this is absolutely and completely wrong! There's nothing there that's me, not even the number or the color!

alice ttlg
Magic Number	17
Job	Writer
Personality	Sunshine And Blue Skies
Temperament	Nervous
Sexual	If I Have To
Likely To Win	A Free Coke
Me - In A Word	Startling
Colour
Brought to you by MemeJack

 

04:31 PM
Internet You can write, but you can't read?

Geez. What part of "Slash is generally defined as fan fiction featuring romantic pairings of same-sex characters from TV, movies, or other media" is not understandable?

WARNING: Very adult graphic language ahead.

Same-sex = two men or two women, I don't want to hear about his dick in her pussy, I want to hear about his dick in a guy's ass. And the "characters from TV, movies..." part, that means fictional characters, TV, you know, that big box in your living room with sound and pictures, and the movies, you know that big dark room you go sit in and whack off in the last row while watching 40 foot tall actors on the big screen at the other end of the room?

That's a slash fanfiction archive I run. So don't send me crap about some horny guy and a hot babe, I ain't interested. And go take some classes in writing, it reads like some really bad Red Shoe Diaries.

(grin) I just felt like being obnoxious without actually being obnoxious to that particular person!

11:36 PM
Internet Mucking out the forms

What did I do today? I mucked about with PHP formmail. Since some nasty spammer was trying to abuse cgi formmail on my domains and I couldn't figure out if it was my formmail scripts or the one the webhost has set up on the server for all customers, I took my cgi formmail scripts down. I happened across a link to a PHP formmail and so I've set that up on four forms on two of my sites, we'll see how that goes, although I'm still not sure why PHP forms are supposed to be more secure than cgi forms, seems like they have the same problems with referrers and recipients as cgi forms do, but what the heck. At least it'll take the spammers awhile to find the new ones.

Had another weird dream last night, this one featured Madonna but I can't remember any details except that she wasn't obnoxious or annoying like she is in real life. :)

11:21 AM
Internet Running screaming from the computer

Gahhhhhhhhhhh! I hate webhosts. I am so tired of dealing with server crashes and endless intermittent problems that never get fixed, domains that disappear, webhosts who promise something and then never do it...I just want to stick my head in the sand and work on something FUN!

09:51 PM
Internet Sur-prize!

Weird....never had anyone copy anything I created, not even a little bit and it's really strange to read someone's post on a help list, click on the link to their site to see more detail on the problem and have my own design staring back at me. Not exactly, the pic is different, the site is for a different fandom and the colors are different but the layout is the same, all the pieces in the same places, the background image follows the same design as mine.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not upset, I'm not mad, I've said frequently that people are welcome to stuff on my sites to help them figure out their problems and no-one's ever even remotely copied anything I've done so I'm actually flattered that someone liked my design enough to imitate it. It's not a hugely complex design, I didn't spend hours on it. It's fairly basic, I probably ought to package it up as a template and stick it in a zip file for anyone to download because it's pretty easy to use and navigate. It's just that it took me so unawares, caught me off guard. So it's weird, that's all.

02:28 PM
Internet CSS resources

Couple of css/stylesheet resources:

House of Style

Guides, tutorials, layouts, etc. They also sell various CSS and web design software but there's free stuff there too.

And a CSS list they started, CSS-Foundations, a basics list, a place for beginners to intermediate, tips, tricks, working out problems, suggestions. I'd been on the css-discuss list for awhile but it's very advanced, way over my head and this one looks to have more usable info and be more interesting.

It's not fan-oriented, more general web design but it's open to anyone.

09:43 PM
Internet Spam Arrest Redux

From Spam Arrest's website today:

Recently we have received some inquiries regarding a mailing we delivered to some verified users of Spam Arrest.

While this contact was completely covered by our privacy policy, our customers concerns come first.

Because of this, Spam Arrest has ceased sending such solicitation and will not send unsolicited bulk email again. Spam Arrest apologies for any inconvenience this action may have caused anyone.

Biggest problem with this statement is: a mailing we delivered to some verified users of Spam Arrest. The people who received the mailing are not Spam Arrest users, they are people who were sent verification notices by Spam Arrest's service or were whitelisted by Spam Arrest users. The people who received the mailing never entered into any agreement with Spam Arrest, never agreed to the Privacy policy (or Terms of Service) on Spam Arrest's website since they were never Spam Arrest users.

As for ceasing to send spam, that's nice, but they aren't admitting that they spammed! This is a company selling an anti-spam service and they don't know what spam is. The arguments they made for their spamming are the same arguments that spammers make, especially the "just opt-out" argument. If anyone else had sent this sort of spam to the Spam Arrest users, Spam Arrest would have blocked it because it's spam! But when it comes from Spam Arrest, it's okay because spam is "what everyone else does".

A company that makes money off this kind of hypocrisy is ludicrous and isn't allowed anywhere near the mailboxes on my domains.

09:37 PM
Internet Just say No to Spam Arrest's spam!

If you're using Spam Arrest, don't. The company has joined the ranks of spammers themselves and they are actively harvesting the email addresses you place in your whitelist and the addresses of anyone who emails you and then spamming them with advertising for Spam Arrest, offering only an opt-out link. This is called spam. People who emailed you or that you happen to know did not ask for and don't necessarily want to get unsolicited commercial email (aka spam) from Spam Arrest.

This has been verified in emails from Spam Arrest staff to ISP network admins, I've seen the emails and you can read them yourself, Spam Arrest response.

Spam Arrest openly states that they will spam anyone you whitelist and anyone who emails you. So you may not get spam, but everyone else will, your mom, your Aunt Ida, your cousin Bob, your boss, your best friend.

That's not ethical or acceptable behavior and therefore I've blocked them on Populli.net. It won't stop the software on anyone's computer but it will block the Spam Arrest verifications and the Spam Arrest spamvertising as well from reaching me or anyone using a Populli.net or Brillig.net email address or any other domain I own.

If you know someone using Spam Arrest, please pass on the info, tell them to take the Boulder Pledge, don't use the products of spammers! Tell Spam Arrest that their behavior is unethical and not acceptable on the internet and you're not using their products as long as they continue to spam people.

12:16 PM
Internet Limits, Life and LJ

I've seen one user who posted 350, 250, 150, and 50 times on the 11th through 14th of September 2001 (from a comment on the LJ_News thread about posting limits)

Wow. How do you even actually post 350 in a 24 hour period??? One word per post? I mean, you'd have to sit at the computer and make a new LJ entry every four minutes, assuming you never left the computer for food or sleep or to pee. If you do any of those things, you'd have to post more often to make 350 in one day.

Wow.

In case anyone hasn't heard, LJ is going to impose posting limits. They apparently tried it yesterday (evening?) when I was busy running around in the real world but the reaction was a bit more than they wanted to deal with, especially on Brad's birthday (over 2800 comments on the LJ_News post alone). But the posting limits will come back. Here's the LJ_News post about it. While 20 is wayyyyy more than I'd ever post in one day (if I really wanted to post 20 times in one day, I hope someone would whack me with a 2x4!), three is wayyyy too low. I'm not a frequent poster but there have been some days where I posted 4 or 5 times on completely different topics. If I hadn't already paid for my account, I'd go back to my Moveable Type blog and just keep the account here to read other people's LJ. So I hope they raise it to at least five whenever they start imposing the limit again.

And while they aren't imposing limits on comments atm, it looks like that is coming, the news post says:

"We haven't limited...number of comments per post, comment posting frequency..."

and later on says:

"The first limit to be going live is..." (my emphasis on first)

which tells me that later on there will most likely be limits on the number of comments per post and/or comment posting frequency per user.

While I can understand the need to set limits, LJ isn't a bottomless bucket of money, they don't run any ads (which truly amazes me), I do hope they take into account that the comments is the heart of LJ. I haven't been here long but it didn't take much time at all to see why people love it, the friends page is cool, but it's the interactivity of commenting that makes it really connect people. Being able to talk back, to see other comments, to click and see the other person's LJ, to wander back and forth and around thru comments and LJs is the key to making it a community. And since the majority of users are free accounts, to limit them severely on commenting, either thru the number of comments on a post or comment posting by user, would really put a dent in that feeling of connection and community. And it would really make it more of a Haves and Have-nots thing, it's one thing to say, "you pay, you get more features", it's another thing to say, "you don't pay, you're a second class citizen and maybe we'll let you talk some of the time".

I can go post in my blog anytime. The main reason I'm posting in my LJ is because of the comments. The main reason I'm reading my friends page is because of the comments. Because not only can I say what I think, people can reply and tell me what they think and not only can I read what other people think, I can reply and tell them what I think and I read what other people replied. That just doesn't happen as much with blogs that I've ever seen.

That'll be two cents, please. :)

09:46 AM
Internet How I love the smell of smoke in the morning (NOT)

Turn on computer, monitor kicks on automatically...computer boots, windows starts loading, screen starts going wonky, squishing in and out and something smells funny....eeeeek! There's smoke coming out of the top of my monitor! Hit off switch, unplug monitor. My beautiful 19 inch sparkling color monitor.

Crap. Now I really need a job. ;)

So my choice is really old 15 inch monitor (never throw anything that works away) which is *really* fuzzy and blurry cause it's like SIX years old, maybe more. Or 17 inch monitor that blew out something relating to the yellow spectrum awhile ago so everything is really dark and webpages with dark backgrounds are really hard to read.

But, on the bright side, at least I have two choices, it's not like I have no monitor at all and it wasn't my *computer* that was smoking, that really would have been a disaster especially since I've been a bit lax in backing up lately.

12:03 PM
Internet Senfic list back up again! and SXF too!

Senfic, mailing list for the posting and discussion of The Sentinel gen fanfic, rated G to R has a new home!
 
http://www.brillig.net/mailman/listinfo/senfic_brillig.net

Since the member list was lost when Trickster crashed, please pass the word on to any interested parties.

Edit: And I should add that SXF is also up again, here:
 
http://www.brillig.net/mailman/listinfo/sxf_brillig.net

10:38 AM
Internet Properly coded html makes the cyberworld so much better!

I love Mailman, really I do. But I sure wish the creators of the program would clean up their scuzzy html code! The dang thing's default html code for the list sign up pages is missing some closing table td's and tr's which just kills Netscape 4. Yeah, the browser is going on six years old and it's really ancient and buggy but having properly closed table tags is also very basic standard html and it's such a simple thing which would make the page display completely in N4.
 

10:04 AM
Internet Internet worms affecting Populli and DitB

There is currently a massive worm attack on the internet. While the worm is aimed primarily at Microsoft SQL servers, as it distributes itself, it checks all servers to see if it can attack them, thus affecting all servers. And the additional traffic that the worm generates affects everyone else's access.

CNN has a story but it kind of minimizes what's happening. The webhost for my Ditb.org domain has more details.

Your access of Populli or Ditb websites may depend on where you are, for example, I can access Populli.net/org just fine, its servers are on the east coast, I'm in Texas. But I'm having lots of problems accessing Ditb.org which is on the west coast. If you're on the west coast, you may have trouble accessing Populli but not Ditb. And this may change as the worm moves around, as different internet backbone providers figure out ways to block it.

There's nothing any webhost can do, the problem lies with the worm running its course or if the internet backbone providers can find a way to block it. All of my webhosts are Linux, not Microsoft so they can't be infected by the worm, all websites, lists and email are intact, they can only be affected by the increase in internet traffic from the worm blocking valid requests for webpages. It is possible that some email may bounce if the sender's ISP or mailing list can't access Populli because of the traffic caused by the worm.

So be patient, the attack will diminish as time goes on and should settle down in a day or two as the worm runs its course.

04:03 PM
Internet Alphabet Soup

ETA! I finally figured it out! Edited To Add! See, ETA has always been Estimated Time of Arrival to me and then I got on LJ and people were putting "ETA" and some additional note and I figured it had to do with adding that note but I couldn't quite figure out the words for ETA since it's always been about time of arrival to me. But it finally popped into my head just now!
 
And yeah, I know I could have looked it up in Google or any number of acronym guides but I just never got to doing that...

12:06 PM
Internet Nothing to see here, move along...

Arrrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh!

02:27 PM
Internet That 100 things meme

Nuh-uh, no way. That 100 things meme that's going around? You won't catch me doing it, no way. First off, you don't want to know 100 things about me, just trust me on that. Second off, I got too many other things to do! Ten things, I could handle that, but 100? You people are crazy! (but I love you anyway! :))

1. I haven't taken a shower yet today, will later tho, taking my mom's computer back to her, new and improved, well, improved anyway.

2. I like white foods, didn't do it on purpose, it's just that all the things I like are white or beige or yellow. My aunt pointed this out to my mother who passed it on to me.

3. I like to sit down front in movies. A crazy Czech friend of the stepbear said it's because I want to see the movie first, before anyone else in the theatre. :)

4. I love books, although I don't read as much these days and I miss that.

5. I hate hot weather! Cause there's only so many clothes that you can take off before the police start making arresting motions. I love snow and cold and coats and boots and sweaters and being able to see my breath!

6. I hate roaches, I totally freak out over them, scream and jump on top of things. Then I kill them, stomp on them with my Dr. Scholls hard wood sandals or drown them in bug spray or both. And I should specify, it's the big roaches that freak me out, the itty bitty ones you get in kitchen cabinets, them I can squash and get rid of easy but the big ones can *fly*, nothing worse than a roach *flying* at your face.

7. My father died when I was four, it's given me a lifelong obsession over the Kennedys (he died about a year before JFK, I remember being five and watching his funeral on TV and I'm about the same age as his kids), men in uniform (my dad was a Navy pilot until about a year before his death and most of the pictures I have of him are in uniform or flight jacket) and male parental figures along with a large inability to relate to or even talk to men, even tho I'm firmly heterosexual.

8. I'm pro gun control, pro choice, pro death penalty and a moderate Democrat. None of that has ever seemed like a contradiction in terms to me.

9. I love to fly. In airplanes I mean, my grandfather flew small planes and owned a charter service, I love big and small planes, both for the experience of being up there and for the promise of going somewhere *other than here*.

10. I love Scotland. No, that's not really right. When I went there, I felt completely and totally at home in a way I never have anywhere else in the world. I *belong* there.

There ya go, that's all you need to know about me! :)

03:17 PM
Internet Pest Control

Okay, this just cracks me up! Everything, but everything goes around the internet at least twice. This little article about Yahoo's web beacons first circulated over a year ago when Yahoo first published the notice. Now it's going around again (I've gotten it a dozen times on all the lists I'm on) like it's something new! And I have to laugh because, believe me, Yahoo's little web beacons are the least of the privacy intrusions on the net, I'd worry more about spy software that you can get without realizing it from unscrupulous websites, like Gator/Gain and Kazaa (although Kazaa is much more open about their spy/distributed networking thing these days) and all the other nifty free programs everyone downloads.
 
TANSTAAFL - There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
 
corollary:
TANSTAPOTN - There Ain't No Such Thing As Privacy On The Net.
 
(Mine's not as catchy as Heinlein's, but it's just as true.)

02:46 PM
Internet A blow for politeness!

Wow, fandom_wank is suspended....I don't read it so I have no idea what they might have done that was so offensive (other than being wanking bitches but that's fairly normal for some).

That subject line up there is really meant as a joke. If people want to go bitch and rant and rave and whine and moan, that's fine with me, as long as they don't insist on doing it in my face. So fandom_wank was fine with me, they did it all over *there* and I'm fine and happy over *here*.

But I'm not surprised that someone complained, I mean if you insist on pointing and laughing at people, well hey, some people are not going to like you pointing and laughing at them and they'll complain. That's life.

07:10 PM
Internet Live Feeds on LJ, part 2

After touting the live feeds on LJ, I was kindly reminded that they can only be friended by paid accounts. So I created a special friends page with a bunch of live feeds, thanks to Chris for the nifty idea. You can bookmark this page and then check it whenever. The live feeds on it are:
 
Daily Comic Strips:
Boondocks
Dilbert
Doonesbury
Dork Tower
Foxtrot
 
Miscellaneous stuff, blogs...
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Illuminatio
The Big Screen
The Idiot Box
Wil Wheaton
(Yes, Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: TNG, he's a really good writer, tells good stories and a hopeless romantic too! :)
 
And the Syndication Promotion community, info on new feeds is posted here:
Syn Promo
Check out the user info, there's a list of all the known live feeds and I can add more here if anyone has any requests.

08:39 PM
Internet Mercury retrograde

Gahhhh. Sometimes I have this huge urge to just whap people about the head and shoulders and beat some sense into their tiny brains! Gee, you think if you tell people they need a history lesson, they'll just bow and scrape and fall all over you apologizing for offending you??? Whapwhapwhap! You just declared a thread off topic? Gee, I must have missed that announcement where I abdicated and made you listowner, must be my Alzheimers kicking in... Whapwhapwhap!

Sheesh. Definitely mercury retrograde. Maybe I'll just set the entire list to NoPost, that'll fix them. :) (and no, this is not on any fandom lists so don't go looking, fandom_wank knows nothing.)

04:51 PM
Internet Puffing out my chest

Mary Ellen's BNFhood and LJdom Post
2. What do I think makes someone a BNF? Power. Control or perceived control of fannish resources is the clearest and most obvious measure of BNFhood: running an archive, mailing list, bulletin board, website; organizing cons; editing/publishing zines.

Hey, look at that! I'm a BNF! I run (several) archives, mailing lists and websites and I'm running a fic awards this year, so I qualify! Cool, now how can I abuse my power? ;)

Thing is, you mention my name in XF (where my largest archive is and the awards I'm running are) and a bunch of people would go, "alice who?" Cause I lurk alot, I work on sites, I upload stories, etc., but I lurk. Every so often, I post announcements of updates and all that, but mostly I lurk.

It's weird cause I'm really talkative in real life with people I know, I'll talk their heads off! But online, I've always been quieter, I read alot, I am fascinated by discussions of shows and discussions of fandom but by the time I think of posting, either the discussion has been over for days (cause I'm slow on catching up on list mail) or someone else has already said it and all I have to add is "me too!" So I lurk.

On the other hand, I think because I'm fairly quiet, I get less grief than other people in control of archives, lists, awards, etc. I have had perhaps a handful of obnoxious emails over three and a half years. So that's good, my biggest hassle in taking on all that I do is feeling guilty when I get behind.

09:35 AM
Internet Syndicated feeds on LJ

Since I've been talking about live feeds for my other blogs, I figured I ought to post a clue as well. Live feeds, syndicated feeds, it's pulling entries from other blogs outside LJ and from news websites and daily comics like Doonesbury, Foxtrot, etc. You can find a listing of all the known, public syndicated feeds on the syn_promo community, click on User Info and there's a list of all of them under "About". And people post new ones in the community as they find them or create them.

Every LJ user gets an allowance of how many syndicated feeds they can friend, the more LJers who friend a syndicated feed, the cheaper it gets for everyone, plus you get your daily news and laughs, too! :) You can check out your syndication allowance here and some of the popular syndicated feeds are listed there too.

From what I've read, it looks like syndicated feeds is fairly new and they're not listed in the interests or any general place for LJers to find them so I figured I'd spread the word a bit. :)

11:01 PM
Internet Live is good

The live feeds at LJ are updating! Got the comics, it seems to be working it's way from most popular to least popular, Zeldman's done, that's close to my two feeds for idiotbox and bigscreen, so almost there! Yeah! Live is good.

And I'm going to bed, I'm tired, I'm drained, I'm up to my eyeballs in teeny text on graphics and repetitive html coding, I'll do the other two pages tomorrow, along with defragging my mom's computer and pricing out a new one for her.

11:03 PM
Internet This is your brain on LJ

This should be interesting. There was a discussion on LJ and some lists awhile back, about fan sites and archives with "donate" buttons on them. I only caught the tail end of it from Maygra's blog. It just came up again on Zorrorojo's House of Snark LJ, she mentioned boycotting The AlphaGate Archive and I asked why. Turns out they have a Donate button on their site and she boycotts any site with one of those.

So I very kindly gave her my four domains, populli.net/org, ditb.net/org so she wouldn't fall into the evilness that is my sites since all the webhosting fees are paid by donations. I went on to voice my opinion about the Donate buttons, too....

Read all about it on the House of Snark.

I don't think I'll crosspost this entry to LJ either. :)

06:42 PM
Internet Light dawns...

Now I understand why people occasionally make comments about the unreliability of Live Journal. No posting, no comments for a bunch of folks for three to four hours, when people could post, everything posted twice, trying to delete one was a frustrating deal as LJ kept saying "read-only status". And now it's refusing to bring up pages, when I'm trying to make some changes to the style. I can edit the styles, I just can't get LJ to display the *page* so I can see how it looks!

Arrrggggghhhh! And I feel crappy and I don't feel like reposting this in LJ cause that will probably take hours.

Bah. Bah on people who won't answer emails. Bah on people who wank on and on about feedbacking feedback, silliest damn thing I ever saw, like Maygra said, poking a rattlesnake with a stick. Bah on people who insist on being offended where there is no offense. Bah, Bah, BAH!

I sound like sheep! cause that brings up memories of driving thru Scotland, crying out "sheep! sheep!" at every turn cause I was so used to seeing crops or cows or horses, never sheep like Scottish sheep and my Scottish companions were laughing at me (and thankfully not annoyed at me acting so silly :))

07:36 PM
Internet Fun with journals

I've added the live feed for the Big Screen to Live Journal too, the movie review blog my brother and I do and don't forget to sign up for the Idiot Box, sparkling witticisms from my brother and me about TV shows. I added a rant about Enterprise a few minutes ago (a nitpick really, cause I like the show otherwise).

Now if my migraine medicine will just kick in completely, I'll feel a whole lot better...

09:21 AM
Internet Job placement services thru the Basement slash archive

The weirdest thing I ever got thru the contact form on one of my websites...well maybe not the weirdest, I get *lots* of weird stuff, but definitely up there in the top five!

  source: the Basement at DitB [my ginormous X-Files slash archive] SentBy: [identity hidden to protect the stupid] ReplyEmail: [removed] Message: Happy New Year.   Im a Diploma holder in Archival Studies and Records Management, and currently working In an insurance firm as Records Personnel. I love my career so much than most people, particulary my work-mate have stressed me by telling me to change the same. The major problem that's been faced particulary in Kenya(Iam A Kenyan)is to sensitize people the importance or preserving Records.Like in my place of work, my professionality is treated like "unknown" and hence they (My employers)belittle once profession.I would like very much if I get free journals,newsletters etc on my career, and also, I would like also very much to further my career to Degree even to P.hd level but I don't know the best colleges that offers the same. Please assist. I would like to be abreasted on the same so that I can sensitize people of the same.

I guess he just googled on "archives" or something, wow, that's going to find him some really *interesting* places on the net! LOL!

09:47 PM
Internet Fun with feeds

Yes! Wow, this is cool, I got the syndicated feed set up for the Idiot Box blog that I share with my brother so now I can see the posts there on my friends page (and everyone else can friend it too, theIdiotBox) and I got my friend aefen's blog, Daily Illuminations, set up and added to my friends list, too!

bouncebouncebounce!

But bah on LiveLizard, it made a complete hash of the LJ user links above, I guess because in order to get it to work with Mozilla 1.2, you have to turn off the html option. So I'm back to the LJ for Windows client that I was using. Although it spit at me just now when I tried to edit this entry.

03:54 PM
Internet Grrrrrrrr Arrrrrgghh!

Okay, you run a webhosting business. A customer has a script that creates a problem. You shut down the account but you don't bother to tell them (hell, they not only have an email address for me thru another domain/webhost, they also have my cellphone!) Then when the customer asks publicly if the server is down, you tell them to email you but you don't turn on their account so they can delete the script and you don't delete it yourself.

What part of this makes any sense at all? Especially given that the customer (me) had absolutely no way of knowing that there was an out of control script (there is nothing available to the customer about this) and the customer (me) hasn't uploaded any new scripts but suddenly your server is objecting to the ones that have been running for (literally) months.

Sheesh.

This happened before, last June after my account was moved to a different (and apparently more limited) server, only I was never told that the servers were different and didn't have a clue that there might be a problem. I have since removed the one script that their server objected to from public access and set it up as a nightly cron job instead. So I don't know what the deal is this time. I did make some changes on Friday evening and Saturday to one site, that's the only thing I can think of. But of course I can't get in and they won't tell me which one it is so I can delete it and get the rest of the site back up.

Double sheesh.

The only reason I have sites there is that I paid for a whole year and their refund policy is screwy (slanted in their benefit) and I would get virtually nothing if I cancelled now. Come June, I'll move those sites elsewhere but for the moment, I can't afford to lose that money.

Addendum: He did reply and tell me the name of the script file but can't tell me which folder it's in (I have several archives on that site) so I'll have to delete that file in all of them and try to figure out what I can do with it. Personally I think it's really a server problem, that their server had some glitch and locked in a loop with the script. But this guy listens to no-one so I groveled and said I'd delete it as soon as he turned on ftp access. (Kind of difficult to do if I don't have ftp access tho, sheesh.)

Addendum2: All deleted, all restored now. And I should add that he didn't yell and scream this time, he was reasonable and quick to respond. When this happened last June, he wouldn't reply to emails (even after they told me why my site was suspended) and then he lectured me about it and said it was "punishment" for causing the problem, like I had deliberately done it.

Addendum3: And after looking at the error logs, I can see that it was the Basement archive and the script is one that converts the stories into a .txt file for people who want to print out stories or save them to their hard drive so it's not critical. I set the Basement and ScullySlash to use the one at Squidge instead (Squidge never objects to the automated archive :)) and removed the option at the Spookys. But I really do think this was a glitch in the webhost's server, that it stumbled and locked into a loop with one file. Their servers are really puny and stuff happens every so often with them.

09:05 PM
Internet Cyber-People

On the other hand, people I meet in cyber space are some of the best there is, both in fandom and elsewhere. I've been managing a couple lists for a woman I met on a technical help list almost two years ago, I originally volunteered to do it, she insisted on paying me (the lists are free but relate to her business) and she is the dearest, sweetest person. She's a stereotypical grandmother who does consultant work for businesses for team building and she publishes these new age-y affirmations and she really does live them, she's always so positive and warm and friendly even when we were having terrible problems with the list host. So between all the nice people in fandom and this lovely lady, my day is a bit better.

I'm not addicted to the Internet, it's just that all the really nice people hang out there! :)

12:29 PM
Internet