Yep. My site's forum got hit be a porn spammer a few weeks ago.
Fortunately, when it comes to forums, they do have the advantage you have to register and login before you can spam the forum itself, so it's easy to block them, by IP if neccessary.
The current favorite tactic on forums is just to register, and not bother ever logging in, and putting the spammy web address into the user details so it shows up in the user list.
Again, once I blocked him and deleted the users he had created, I didn't have a problem. But if needs be, it would be easy enough to remove the all web addresses from the member list page.
One to look out for is <div style="display:none;"> if html can be posted. It makes the span invisible to any human reader but I doubt that any current search engine can identify the purpose of such a tag.
Of course, blocking tags like that would penalise anyone using that sort of thing to hide page elements that will be shown on a mouse over, or whatever.
Your solution requires RFID readers in all existing vending machines. That's a lot of replacing to do, while this might not help as much, it's also a lot less costly.
When it comes to fraud prevention, the financial institutions of the world are willing to spend and replace in large quantities.
Witness the current move to 'chip & pin' credit cards in the UK: over the next couple of years, every store that accepts credit cards is going to have to get a new card reader. Why? Because the banks think it will prevent fraud.
There are a number of keys I very rarely use too, (including caps lock), but just because *I* don't use them, I don't think that's a reason to get rid of any of them.
Here we have a bunch of programmers discussing reasons to get rid of a key they never use. But hardly anyone has mentioned any other use for the keyboard other than programming. Come on guys. Non programmers use keyboards too, and they use them very differently to the way we do.
In fact, shocking though it may seem, there are more non-programmers than programmers, and you know what? Most of them have keys they never use that we use all the time (eg why do british keyboards have a dollar sign? because it's used in programming). Do you hear them complaining about it?
Truly, if you are worried about taking drugs made from saliva, then you've got a nasty shock coming when you find out some of the other places we get pharmacuticals from.
Hmmm... reminds me of a Dilbert comic from a while ago...
Wally (to boss in meeting): I need to to test our system by downloading as many large files as possible from the busiest servers I can find on the web.
Wally (to Dilbert after meeting): Damn. I came this close to making it my job to surf for porn.
Hmmm..... Cafepress has not worked for me. I'm sure others have done well from it, but I think to make more than the tiniest amount from it, you're going to have to put quite a bit of work into it.
I agree with you about Google adsense - it's hardly earning an earth shattering amount, but it is earming a lot more for me than cafepress.
I think the popularity of these two speaks for itself. I've tried a few others, but in all honesty, I don't think there is anything else out there in the general market that is earning money for web sites. You might get something that works better if it's specifically targetted to your site, but in general, my advice is to stick with google adsense, and be happy with what you get.
Most of the other advertising services won't get you as much, and despite the large amount quoted, most of the money going into the advertising industry is staying there.
Finally, I wouldn't bother with donations either, unless you have an insane amount of traffic. It won't get you much, and it'll make you feel cheap when you do get anything.
An internet cafe I know achieves this very simply: Every night after they close, they just restore every PC to it's original state from a backup on a hidden partition.
Takes them practically zero time or effort -- all they have to do is open the admin program, enter a password, and click 'Okay'. No disks or tapes to insert, and users can do anything the like to the machine during the day. (well... it might be awkward if they managed to delete the backup program, but I don't think that's happened yet.. and anyway, they keep proper backups too, just in case)
A very interesting post, but not really applicable to the story, since it happened in the UK, and I can tell you for certain that the legal system works differently to the way you've described it.
In the UK, old laws do remain on the books, and can be used at any time until they are explicitly repealed by parliament. (I can recall a recent case where some kids who desecrated a grave were convicted under a law that hadn't been used for over a century)
Likewise, rights of way are enforceable even if the path has not been used for years - in theory, even if it's been built on.
I can't tell you about the other specific examples you mentioned, but it seems pretty clear that the rules are different enough in the UK to make an argument based on US law seem somewhat shaky.
They built it because every summer thousands of cars get stuck in Millau while traveling from north to south.
Which leads to the next question, which is why did they only make it two lanes wide each way? Three lanes would have allowed for an increase in traffic flows later on. As it is, I dread to think how easily the traffic could get backed up even with this new bridge. And I would *not* want to be stuck in a queue on a bridge like that! (man, I get vertigo just looking at that photograph!)
The Citrix/Terminal Server platform is usually pretty good, but there are a few things that have caught us out.
Even in this age of multitasking, some apps still don't share. One timesheet application I know of can't be used on terminal server because it chews up all the processor time it can get it's hands on, which just about kills all the other users.
Even some well known applications can be quite heavy on resources when run on a terminal server, so lesson one is to make sure you know what you'll be running, and how well those apps work in that environment.
The other thing that stung us quite badly when we moved to the terminal server platform is licencing.
One piece of software in particular that we used to rely on suddenly became massively more expensive when we switched from fat client desktops to terminal servers. The licence for the desktop PCs had been a free client licence, but for the same users doing the same thing on a terminal server we were forced to pay for them all to use a server licence for the software.
Needless to say, we dropped that product as soon as we had found an alternative, but it was quite a painful process to do in a hurry.
So lesson two is: work out the licencing implications for everything you run before you start the conversion.
I hope this helps you avoid the mistakes we made.:-)
The analogy isn't all that good (bad plumbing will usually cause really nasty problems later on; a lower spec web site will just cause frustration), but the sentiment is spot on.
The web team at our office consists of two people. A developer, who writes the code, and a graphic designer, who makes it look pretty to the customer.
Customers only see (and often only really care about) the user interface. If the software is insecure, inadequate, screws up their data, or whatever else, they truly don't seem to care as long as the front end keeps working.
(in fact, they often don't even seem to care about that - I've been caught out before by showing a prototype GUI to a customer for approval of the design, only to find a week later that they though the program was finished when they saw it, and why can't they have it now?)
If you don't believe me on that, you need only look at the success of MS Windows over the years.
People only seem to actually care about what goes on internally when something goes badly wrong, or they suddenly realise that the software can't do what they want. But these events almost always happen some time after the sale has been completed, at which point it's cheaper for them to get it fixed or to ignore it than switch to a different software supplier (... which makes for even more work for the same developer, resulting in a lack of incentive to write the best software in the first place).
My advice to you if you want to keep this project, is to find yourself a skilled graphic artist, and get your page design smartened up a bit. Make it look good, and you'll find your customers will suddenly be very happy with you again.
It is a fact after you do open your net up there is no way for them to proove that you commited the illegal acts. The fact that you did this opening up by stupidity or on purpose does not change that fact.
Who cares whether they can prove anything or not. Do you really want to have your computer and every other gadget in your home confiscated for six months while they try?
It's happened before - innocent people being arrested for computer crime because someone stole their identity. What's being suggested here is just opening yourself up for it. It's completely insane.
(On the other hand, if you're planning to actually use this as cover for doing those illegal acts....? Well, I hope you've got a good lawyer)
What does it take to get common carrier status? I sure ain't no lawyer (ISANL) but I'd have a hard time believing that the size of your "customer" base makes a difference.
Well for starters, you either have to own the physical network that is transmitting the data (ie the phone lines), or pay to use someone else's with a contract that states that you can resell the bandwidth.
The consumer contracts that most of us are on for our internet connections will explicitly forbid allowing anyone else to share your bandwidth. The wording may differ, but it's a near certainty that if you do what this guy's doing you're in breach of contract, and his service provider would be quite within their rights to terminate his connection, or worse.
I remember Piers Morgan saying "I am 100% certain that these photographs depict an actual event". That is slightly different to your claim.
He only started saying it that way toward the end of this week. Up until then, he was adamant they were authentic.
Also, the claims in the paper have brought forward the Red Cross report on prisoner abuse, that Blair and his cabinet claim they never got
Now you see, good journalism would have been if Morgan had made *that* his front page story rather than the pictures. That is an important story.
But I disagree with you - I think this story with the faked pictures has actually taken away from the real story. The RC report would have come out anyway sooner or later (probably soon, given all the other stories of US soldiers). But what has actually happened is that the true story has been almost drowned out of the news by the fake one.
However, we are now completely off topic, so that's the last I'm going to say on this.
(this is going *way* off topic, but I feel this needed a response... albeit that you're probably just trolling)
This is a serious blow for the truth in the UK. These pictures depicted an event that happened, they were reconstructions, not fakes.
You do realise that it was old news when the pictures were published? The story had already been run in all the papers (including the Mirror) several months earlier, and there was already an investigation into the allegations (which is still on-going).
The only reason it became newsworthy again was the existence of the pictures. If they had been real, they would have been explosive - they would have helped prove the case for the investigation, and also added the dimension of a soldier photographing the event, which itself could be construed as abuse.
However, since the pictures were staged, they did not achieve either of these points.
In fact, since the story had already been in the news, many people assumed that this was a whole new story. Their appearance the very day after the American photos first showed up was also highly suspicious (given that they were fakes, this really does add toward making it look like a malicious hoax), and had the effect of making them appear to many to be part of the same story.
However, the basic point is that the Mirror committed a serious journalistic sin by printing staged photographs and claiming they were real (repeatedly, and in the face of opposition from just about every angle). Piers Morgan has been on TV every day in the last two weeks to say that they are definitely absolutely positively genuine. He painted himself into a hole, and the only possible way out once his argument was shown to be untrue was for him to leave the newspaper. Whether it was by sacking or resigning was his choice, but his position was untenable either way.
An other advantage, when you get a, say A4 envelope, you know how to easily fold an A3 or A2 sheet to fit in it. No need for a large inventory of funny sized envelopes or odly folded documents....except that the standard envelope sizes are called D4/D5/etc, because they're slightly larger, so that the paper will fit into them.
Not only do we not use 'English' paper sizes in England, but we never used them.
Before we adopted A4 as our standard printer paper, typing paper was generally sold here in the wonderfully named Foolscap page size.
It was only a few years ago that stationery shops in England stopped selling Foolscap paper... around about the same time that Inkjet printers finally killed the market for dot matrix.
It was standardised printer models that killed off the Foolscap standard.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep. My site's forum got hit be a porn spammer a few weeks ago.
:(
Fortunately, when it comes to forums, they do have the advantage you have to register and login before you can spam the forum itself, so it's easy to block them, by IP if neccessary.
The current favorite tactic on forums is just to register, and not bother ever logging in, and putting the spammy web address into the user details so it shows up in the user list.
Again, once I blocked him and deleted the users he had created, I didn't have a problem. But if needs be, it would be easy enough to remove the all web addresses from the member list page.
It's a real shame it's coming to that, though.
One to look out for is <div style="display:none;"> if html can be posted. It makes the span invisible to any human reader but I doubt that any current search engine can identify the purpose of such a tag.
Of course, blocking tags like that would penalise anyone using that sort of thing to hide page elements that will be shown on a mouse over, or whatever.
Your solution requires RFID readers in all existing vending machines. That's a lot of replacing to do, while this might not help as much, it's also a lot less costly.
When it comes to fraud prevention, the financial institutions of the world are willing to spend and replace in large quantities.
Witness the current move to 'chip & pin' credit cards in the UK: over the next couple of years, every store that accepts credit cards is going to have to get a new card reader. Why? Because the banks think it will prevent fraud.
There are a number of keys I very rarely use too, (including caps lock), but just because *I* don't use them, I don't think that's a reason to get rid of any of them.
Here we have a bunch of programmers discussing reasons to get rid of a key they never use. But hardly anyone has mentioned any other use for the keyboard other than programming. Come on guys. Non programmers use keyboards too, and they use them very differently to the way we do.
In fact, shocking though it may seem, there are more non-programmers than programmers, and you know what? Most of them have keys they never use that we use all the time (eg why do british keyboards have a dollar sign? because it's used in programming). Do you hear them complaining about it?
Truly, if you are worried about taking drugs made from saliva, then you've got a nasty shock coming when you find out some of the other places we get pharmacuticals from.
Hmmm... reminds me of a Dilbert comic from a while ago...
Wally (to boss in meeting): I need to to test our system by downloading as many large files as possible from the busiest servers I can find on the web.
Wally (to Dilbert after meeting): Damn. I came this close to making it my job to surf for porn.
And the first quantum-encrypted message was:
"What hath Heisenberg wrought?"
Are you certain of that?
Hmmm..... Cafepress has not worked for me. I'm sure others have done well from it, but I think to make more than the tiniest amount from it, you're going to have to put quite a bit of work into it.
I agree with you about Google adsense - it's hardly earning an earth shattering amount, but it is earming a lot more for me than cafepress.
I think the popularity of these two speaks for itself. I've tried a few others, but in all honesty, I don't think there is anything else out there in the general market that is earning money for web sites. You might get something that works better if it's specifically targetted to your site, but in general, my advice is to stick with google adsense, and be happy with what you get.
Most of the other advertising services won't get you as much, and despite the large amount quoted, most of the money going into the advertising industry is staying there.
Finally, I wouldn't bother with donations either, unless you have an insane amount of traffic. It won't get you much, and it'll make you feel cheap when you do get anything.
An internet cafe I know achieves this very simply: Every night after they close, they just restore every PC to it's original state from a backup on a hidden partition.
Takes them practically zero time or effort -- all they have to do is open the admin program, enter a password, and click 'Okay'. No disks or tapes to insert, and users can do anything the like to the machine during the day. (well... it might be awkward if they managed to delete the backup program, but I don't think that's happened yet.. and anyway, they keep proper backups too, just in case)
A very interesting post, but not really applicable to the story, since it happened in the UK, and I can tell you for certain that the legal system works differently to the way you've described it.
In the UK, old laws do remain on the books, and can be used at any time until they are explicitly repealed by parliament. (I can recall a recent case where some kids who desecrated a grave were convicted under a law that hadn't been used for over a century)
Likewise, rights of way are enforceable even if the path has not been used for years - in theory, even if it's been built on.
I can't tell you about the other specific examples you mentioned, but it seems pretty clear that the rules are different enough in the UK to make an argument based on US law seem somewhat shaky.
It's a shame that there are so many in the world who refuse to take responsibility for their actions.
In that single sentence, you've summed up the root cause of almost everything wrong in today's society.
They built it because every summer thousands of cars get stuck in Millau while traveling from north to south.
Which leads to the next question, which is why did they only make it two lanes wide each way? Three lanes would have allowed for an increase in traffic flows later on. As it is, I dread to think how easily the traffic could get backed up even with this new bridge. And I would *not* want to be stuck in a queue on a bridge like that! (man, I get vertigo just looking at that photograph!)
The Citrix/Terminal Server platform is usually pretty good, but there are a few things that have caught us out.
:-)
Even in this age of multitasking, some apps still don't share. One timesheet application I know of can't be used on terminal server because it chews up all the processor time it can get it's hands on, which just about kills all the other users.
Even some well known applications can be quite heavy on resources when run on a terminal server, so lesson one is to make sure you know what you'll be running, and how well those apps work in that environment.
The other thing that stung us quite badly when we moved to the terminal server platform is licencing.
One piece of software in particular that we used to rely on suddenly became massively more expensive when we switched from fat client desktops to terminal servers. The licence for the desktop PCs had been a free client licence, but for the same users doing the same thing on a terminal server we were forced to pay for them all to use a server licence for the software.
Needless to say, we dropped that product as soon as we had found an alternative, but it was quite a painful process to do in a hurry.
So lesson two is: work out the licencing implications for everything you run before you start the conversion.
I hope this helps you avoid the mistakes we made.
Good.
The analogy isn't all that good (bad plumbing will usually cause really nasty problems later on; a lower spec web site will just cause frustration), but the sentiment is spot on.
The web team at our office consists of two people. A developer, who writes the code, and a graphic designer, who makes it look pretty to the customer.
Customers only see (and often only really care about) the user interface. If the software is insecure, inadequate, screws up their data, or whatever else, they truly don't seem to care as long as the front end keeps working.
(in fact, they often don't even seem to care about that - I've been caught out before by showing a prototype GUI to a customer for approval of the design, only to find a week later that they though the program was finished when they saw it, and why can't they have it now?)
If you don't believe me on that, you need only look at the success of MS Windows over the years.
People only seem to actually care about what goes on internally when something goes badly wrong, or they suddenly realise that the software can't do what they want. But these events almost always happen some time after the sale has been completed, at which point it's cheaper for them to get it fixed or to ignore it than switch to a different software supplier (... which makes for even more work for the same developer, resulting in a lack of incentive to write the best software in the first place).
My advice to you if you want to keep this project, is to find yourself a skilled graphic artist, and get your page design smartened up a bit. Make it look good, and you'll find your customers will suddenly be very happy with you again.
It is a fact after you do open your net up there is no way for them to proove that you commited the illegal acts. The fact that you did this opening up by stupidity or on purpose does not change that fact.
Who cares whether they can prove anything or not. Do you really want to have your computer and every other gadget in your home confiscated for six months while they try?
It's happened before - innocent people being arrested for computer crime because someone stole their identity. What's being suggested here is just opening yourself up for it. It's completely insane.
(On the other hand, if you're planning to actually use this as cover for doing those illegal acts....? Well, I hope you've got a good lawyer)
What does it take to get common carrier status? I sure ain't no lawyer (ISANL) but I'd have a hard time believing that the size of your "customer" base makes a difference.
Well for starters, you either have to own the physical network that is transmitting the data (ie the phone lines), or pay to use someone else's with a contract that states that you can resell the bandwidth.
The consumer contracts that most of us are on for our internet connections will explicitly forbid allowing anyone else to share your bandwidth. The wording may differ, but it's a near certainty that if you do what this guy's doing you're in breach of contract, and his service provider would be quite within their rights to terminate his connection, or worse.
A guy who was clinging to the side of the rocket when it was launched has been awarded the X-Prize postumously.
"Public safety is more important than public convenience."
I agree! We should make sure our public conveniences are safe.
I remember Piers Morgan saying "I am 100% certain that these photographs depict an actual event". That is slightly different to your claim.
He only started saying it that way toward the end of this week. Up until then, he was adamant they were authentic.
Also, the claims in the paper have brought forward the Red Cross report on prisoner abuse, that Blair and his cabinet claim they never got
Now you see, good journalism would have been if Morgan had made *that* his front page story rather than the pictures. That is an important story.
But I disagree with you - I think this story with the faked pictures has actually taken away from the real story. The RC report would have come out anyway sooner or later (probably soon, given all the other stories of US soldiers). But what has actually happened is that the true story has been almost drowned out of the news by the fake one.
However, we are now completely off topic, so that's the last I'm going to say on this.
(this is going *way* off topic, but I feel this needed a response... albeit that you're probably just trolling)
This is a serious blow for the truth in the UK. These pictures depicted an event that happened, they were reconstructions, not fakes.
You do realise that it was old news when the pictures were published? The story had already been run in all the papers (including the Mirror) several months earlier, and there was already an investigation into the allegations (which is still on-going).
The only reason it became newsworthy again was the existence of the pictures. If they had been real, they would have been explosive - they would have helped prove the case for the investigation, and also added the dimension of a soldier photographing the event, which itself could be construed as abuse.
However, since the pictures were staged, they did not achieve either of these points.
In fact, since the story had already been in the news, many people assumed that this was a whole new story. Their appearance the very day after the American photos first showed up was also highly suspicious (given that they were fakes, this really does add toward making it look like a malicious hoax), and had the effect of making them appear to many to be part of the same story.
However, the basic point is that the Mirror committed a serious journalistic sin by printing staged photographs and claiming they were real (repeatedly, and in the face of opposition from just about every angle). Piers Morgan has been on TV every day in the last two weeks to say that they are definitely absolutely positively genuine. He painted himself into a hole, and the only possible way out once his argument was shown to be untrue was for him to leave the newspaper. Whether it was by sacking or resigning was his choice, but his position was untenable either way.
Morgan didn't quit - he was fired. And from what I hear, he had to be escorted from the building by security.
The Mirror newspaper will struggle to regain it's credibility after this. (not that it has much to start with, IMHO)
An other advantage, when you get a, say A4 envelope, you know how to easily fold an A3 or A2 sheet to fit in it. No need for a large inventory of funny sized envelopes or odly folded documents. ...except that the standard envelope sizes are called D4/D5/etc, because they're slightly larger, so that the paper will fit into them.
Not only do we not use 'English' paper sizes in England, but we never used them.
Before we adopted A4 as our standard printer paper, typing paper was generally sold here in the wonderfully named Foolscap page size.
It was only a few years ago that stationery shops in England stopped selling Foolscap paper... around about the same time that Inkjet printers finally killed the market for dot matrix.
It was standardised printer models that killed off the Foolscap standard.
'It took Adam Arkin and David Schaffer just $200,000 and a grad student to develop a potential treatment for AIDS.
Two people and a grad student, eh? So the student doesn't get any credit.
Sad.