Some of the programs encode the IP address of the harvester in the bogus addresses, which is nice for tracking down the real culprits as opposed to just blocking some open relay in Korea.
I do like this idea. From this it would be possible to build up a list of IP addresses of known email harvesters - which could then potentially be blocked, or shut-down.
Is running an email harvester on an ISP dial-up connection a breach of terms and conditions, or legit?
I recently wrote such a CGI script for my site. It creates html pages with randomly generated paragraphs, dotted with random email addresses and links which loop back to the script.
However, my problem is that my site already over-runs my bandwidth limit every month
Why don't you introduce a sleep of a few seconds before starting to deliver the page. And then sleep every paragraph or so. If you can keep an email harvester busy for a while _waiting_ for data - that's less resources that harvester can use.
There needs to be some type of HTML standard for printed documents
HTML encapsulates the document structure of the content - and not tag soup that some people call "web design". So in its purest form it already has the ability to be a printed document. Just stick in a print-orientated Cascading Style sheet, and off you go.
When you then take HTML, stick all your content in an x-pixel wide table - you break it in everything other than a browser running a window x-pixels wide or wider.
I guess it wouldnt be too stressful for every linux based company to have 1 single windows machine, set up to accept.doc files and return them as.rtf,.txt etc.
Unreliable as it may seem, why not take one windows box, stick a webserver on it, and do an ASP page that allows you to upload a word document, converts it to a rtf, and allows you to download that.
Then we'd only need one windows machine connected to the Internet (or two for 'resilience' *smirk*), that the rest of the world could use.
IMNSHO, the problem with spam block lists are 1.) They have a lot of false positives (blocking people they shouldn't),
That should encourage those positives to ask their ISPs why they are conducive to spammers, and start to convince ISP's that spammers are the source of the problem
2.) a lot of false negatives, (they don't block very many spammers),
Outta sight, outta mind. A little spam is still spam.
3.) they are a lot of trouble to maintain, and
So certain people have decided that they can accept the maintenance problems in an effort to clean up the internet - kudos to them.
4.) they don't mesh well with the general spirit of the internet.
Spam block lists are merely opinions of a group of people. Other organisations may agree that their list is good, and thus adopt it as their main filter - that's the organisations right.
Adopting block-lists is nothing more than exercising the right to disassociate from a known group of people.
This freedom of choice - what the general spirit of the internet is about. The ability to say "No, I don't want your crap."
Open source? Who cares? The only people who can use it at the moment or for the forseeable future are the people who are already forking out R20,000 or more for a new computer every year anyway.
Large South African companies, such as banks, make it a habit to upgrade their computers every two years or so. These old computers are scrapped, or sold cheaply to employees - but mostly without software - and you don't get the software licenses.
Open source gives someone the _opportunity_ of legally acquiring software for a PC without restrictive licensing fees. This makes old computers that much more accessible to the general (and electrified) public.
Note, I said "opportunity" which means people can decide for themselves, and not have it forced upon them. Your opinion is that people won't bother - I disagree. By lowering the cost of owning a computer, you have a better potential to get people involved in using one.
Yes, these people will need support. That's what user groups are for. That can be done informally friend to friend, or child to parent.
Take these discarded PCs to a not-for-profit volunteer organisation that will install and set-up the PC with Open source software. This will create a range of PC's that can be delivered and powered on, and used.
Heck, South Africa has already realised the benefits of low cost computers using a television instead of a monitor - they can do this just as easily.
You say that "They don't use open source stuff", which is true, but no more true than any other country,
Accessibility and visibility of open source is a good indicator to its presence. Take an example:
Walk into a top South African computer store - like Incredible Connection - look for a copy of Linux or BSD. I tried this in early December 2001, nothing.
Walk into "Books etc" in the UK, there's a brand new copy of Suse 7.3 on the shelves (both personal and professional). Most computer shops (MicroAnvika) have a tidy range of linux distros (Redhat, Mandrake, Suse).
Remember, you just need to buy one copy, and that can be installed on all the computers in the world without paying extra - and get support for it. But its that first step SA hasn't achieved yet - and this document can be that first step.
My introduction to Open Source was at Wits University (Johannesburg, SA) - but I was fortunate to have a friend that knew about these sort of things.
Without doubt, at grassroots level, Open source is there - but the stamp of approval (the "will not reduce the availability of Open Source") will open many more eyes than geek-speak alone. It will "legitimise" Open source in a country where Microsoft has an overwhelming dominance.
Lets face it, computers for the population of poorer nations is not really as important as a stable economy and jobs - you can't eat computers
A computer is a means to an end, not the end itself. Its the same with miners. You can't eat gold, but you can sell them on an international market at international prices, that gives you income to buy food.
The same with computers. With a computer, you learn new skills, these skills you use to deliver quality goods, which produces income to buy food that you can eat.
Look at how far India have come in the last decade by offering their computer skills. I know IBM SA were largely dependant on Indian talent to fix the Y2K problem. India's investment has paid off handsomely - SA can do the same, if it really wants to succeed.
Open source makes it easier to legally start down that road. I believe Mexico or Brazil are trying the same road at the moment - so it will be a great experience for South Africans that do participate.
I'd have to disagree on 5 (capatalist/market economy) somewhat. With four companies (Anglo-American, Rembrant, can't remember the other two) controlling 75% of available stock, its not a true capitalist economy.
Comparing the road and rail infrastructures -SA's
road network and quality is so much higher than the UK, but the UK's rail is by far superior to SAs.
Its difficult to classify SA, and I always think of it as a meld of 1st and 3rd world technologies - it is as you suggest, a duality. Open source is the tool to lower the barrier of moving third world stuff to be competitive in a first world arena.
ESKOM is the 5th largest utility in the world. They operate the 2 Koeburg reactors, each with a capacity of ~900 MWe.
I thought they closed down the Koeburg reactors well over a decade ago - have they reopened them?
Although ESKOM is a critical part of the success of Open Source in South Africa, since households would require electricity to power a pc in the first place. How much of SA is still without electricity (from a non-availability view, not non-payment)?
I'm glad to see SA taking a fantastic step in an excellent direction this time (unlike the malnutrition/Aids argument!).
look at the other comments. a lot of people have used word, and it's worked well for most of them. myself included.
I find word very cumbersome when trying to format documents correctly. Though earlier this week I found a cute way of formatting documents properly in Word:
I use a wiki for my own documentation - nice simple stuff like == 2nd Level Heading == and a few in-line HTML tags.
I then copied the htmlised text from IE5, pasted it straight into word - self formatted - looked like any other document we have here.
The bonus of this trick is that I've built myself a wiki to DocBook converter (partial at the moment), so my wiki is a neat document management system that I can use from any web browser.
I'm a big fan of wiki's - its a useful catch all solution
I can't think of too many sites out there that Mosaic 1.0 can't read
I'm just having a look at the web through Netscape 1.1 - msn won't let me in (but NN1.1 is standards compliant - surely it complies with HTML1.0). At least my site works fine in it:-)
An Apache module might be useful for something like this. Strip out useless tags and format it so it is still useful, but just contains the facts.
That's approaching accessibility from the wrong way. HTML was never meant to be the root of all documents, but the end-point. Start with a syntax that allows information and content the highest priority - then transform it to the required output.
For me, I'm building a DocBook editing enviroment for all my content, then use simple XSL transforms that can produce any desired output from HTML for browsers or palms, to text only, to RTF, to PDF and PostScript. That way one source can be used to create multiple looks and feels.
Want to change the layout, edit one.xsl file, then run the transform - new website without changing any content.
Standards-compliant HTML which works in all browsers is nice, but contradictory.
First off, there is no HTML Standard - only a WWW Consortium Recommendation. Secondly, there is more than one Recommendation, based on the DTD used to author the page. So making pages largely compatible involves using the relevant DTD for each User-Agent (note User-Agent, not browser). There's no point hacking an HTML4.01 Strict DocType to work in Netscape 3, since this browser implements a form of HTML3.2.
Detecting browsers is often misused, but with older Javascript implementations the only way is sometimes to use a browser sniffer.
Never use a browser sniffer. MSN.com proved conclusively the idiocy involved in relying on User-Agent strings.
If only there was a standard function like browser.does("DOM_2") or something so you could switch by features rather than browser...
There is, and always have been. Javascript object-detection is a recommended way of determining a browser's functionality, so if(document.getElementById) {} identifies browsers that comply with W3C recommendations to DOM.
The one thing most web-designers are completely forgetting is that plain old HTML is supposed to be a document structure, not a layout format. Trying to force it to layout can only reduce the effectiveness of the structure, thus impair its future as a www-document.
With ideas like the Sematic Web approaching fruition, it is essential for webdesigners to concentrate on getting the document structure right first, then use CSS for layout.
Lets move beyond the fuzzy effects, and concentrate on the web's future. Its obvious msn have no clue about the web's potential as a global and open medium.
IE has been losing marketshare for several months now, and Opera and Mozilla are the two browsers that have been taking most of that marketshare away from them.
Really? Could you post the source of this information, please?
I'm not sure what would happen if you made a copy of IE using the IEAK that contained a custom UA string that had the word "Opera 5" in it. I wonder if it'd get blocked too.
What would happen if a new worm suddenly surfaced that, amongst others, added the word "Opera" to Internet Explorers User Agent? Looking at Changing your User Agent it looks quite trivial.
Since the User Agent string has nothing to do with the functionality of a browser (it doesn't change if you disable Javascript, cookies, Java, ActiveX, Active Scripting, Flash), so to rely on it is something close to muppetish.
I'm running NetCaptor at the moment, so the User Agent changed to:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 4.0; NetCaptor 6.5.0RC1)
My rendering engine hasn't changed at all, I just have the ability of tabbing between multiple pages - one of the neat things about Opera and Mozilla 0.9.5
I thought we had convinced everyone of the pointlessness of using User-Agent to make decisions on. Looks like the lesson needs to be taught again.
or whoever goes ahead and provides a nice open alternative to passport, because it's not a bad idea.
Yes, in principle passport is a good idea. But there's a big flaw in its design. You have to go through passport.com to authenticate. That's one single point of failure.
Yes, Microsoft has stressed they want passport to be a federated service, where details can be stored in other systems - like your pin number for ATMs (hole in the wall). Fine, so someone other than Microsoft holds your data - but they still need to go through passport.com before they can get to the federated other party.
There is a nice open alternative coming, in the form of dotGNU - which I believe has a much better security and availability structure, and not reliant on one company's server to always be there.
don't be surprised if the next version of your window manager has an option "automatically position off-screen windows with this title".
Proxies that modify src attributes and replace them with blank images can go one step further: Just chuck a <div style="visibility:hidden">... </div> around the banner - so it still gets loaded, just never seen.
As an addition - get the proxy to request the banner ads, but ignore what gets returned - that will keep the web server very happy.
The only way I can think of doing this is by embedding some JavaScript that checks to see if the page has been rewritten
Sorry, I'm being a muppet! No client side functionality is required - it can all be done using a web server module.
Its really simple:
create a session for each "visitor"
Initialise two counters in the session - number of pages requested and number of banners requested.
For each page request received from this visitor, increment the page counter
For each banner ad object (image, applet, flash, activeX etc) increment the banner counter
Every now and again, divide on by the other.
If the ratio is not good enough, warn user.
Since each banner ad needs to be HTTP requested from the server - and proxies tend to remove instances of <img src="bannerad.gif"... with their own blank image, its a doddle to track.
The only way I can think of doing this is by embedding some JavaScript that checks to see if the page has been rewritten en route, and if so, posts something back to the web server
All the Javascript would have to do is make sure the url property of the image element, or embed element, or object element is correct, and that the isLoaded property is set.
Although this would force people to surf with Javascript enabled - something thats proving more dangerous every day on a Windows based platform.
Or they could be complete muppets and force surfers to accept ActiveX objects - which would probably sideline most of the X community.
On the other hand, this company has decided adverts and banners is more important that the content - so be it. I prefer sites with content, and having a "This site is full of banners" type message in the form of "Remove proxy or else" is an excellent way of avoiding these sites, it happens to match with my surfing preferences.
These marketing companies should take a lesson out of Google's book. Their advert placement is unobtrusive and normally relevant to the search topic on hand - without the intrusive methods marketing types have forced on its visitors.
When I tried installing 8.0 on the Thinkpad 770, it would not recognize the trackpoint mouse.
This has been covered a few times recently, even in the messages above. Mandrake 8.0 installer uses an early 2.4.x kernel where the Thinkpad trackpoint is broken. This was fixed in 2.4.5.
So the solution to installing Mandrake on the 770 is to create a boot disk using a 2.2.x kernel, then install Mandrake as normal using said bootdisk. Then upgrade your kernel to 2.4.5 or later.
Or use Mandrake 8.1.
Re:What we must do
on
More WTC News
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
We can begin with Afghanistan, then proceed with Iran, Sudan, and Yemen, assuming those regimes are not toppled by their own people when they witness the destruction we inflict upon the Taliban.
Logically this would make sense, but religious fanaticism is not based on logic but something more like brainwashing and indoctrination.
Remember these terrorists committed their acts in the belief they were doing the right thing. Even though there is no religion that I know of that could possibly condone such barbarism - this is not about religion, religion is a victim, along with countless innocent people. In that regard, there would be no "toppled by their own people" since these fundamentalists would rather die for their beliefs/brainwash.
A conventional war in Afganistan would be very costly. Remember the invincible Russian army was decimated. The problem is that there isn't a visible standing army, but a guerilla army that hides in the towns and cities. To push for victory in this theatre would involve levelling every village and town and leave nothing standing, which would involve thousands more innocent victims.
There isn't an easy answer, but a decision must be made. Why is US/Nato nuking/destruction all of Afganistan better that Tuesday's actions? To me it is still genocide.
Concentrate on eliminating all sources of indoctrination, remove the tools for brainwashing and intolerance - remember that the freedom of choice ends when the actions are criminal, fundamentalists behind this attack have abrogated their rights. Root out the organisations responsible. There is no quick solution, only a path that needs to be travelled. Once everyone on the planet has the freedom to choose their destiny can the barricades these terrorists have created be broken down.
"It is not the United States of America versus terrorism, but the free democratic world against terrorism".
"Acts of the terrorists will live in shame for eternity"
He is visibly shocked.
NATO have convened an emergency meeting 9:00 tommorrow morning. All UK forces are on highest alert all over the world. No flights over London allowed, all private flights grounded. No commercial flights will take off unless completely safe.
All flights from UK to US have been cancelled. All military and security operations in the UK have been moved up one level of alert status. Yasser Arafat has condemned the attack. Afganistan Taliban have said this operation is too big for someone like the main suspect Osman Lad Bin (no idea - someone correct his name!) to undertake.
FTSE down 300 at close
I heard (unconfirmed) the $/£ exchange rate hit $2 per pound - normally $1.40 per pound.
Slashdot Mirror
Some of the programs encode the IP address of the harvester in the bogus addresses, which is nice for tracking down the real culprits as opposed to just blocking some open relay in Korea.
I do like this idea. From this it would be possible to build up a list of IP addresses of known email harvesters - which could then potentially be blocked, or shut-down.
Is running an email harvester on an ISP dial-up connection a breach of terms and conditions, or legit?
I recently wrote such a CGI script for my site. It creates html pages with randomly generated paragraphs, dotted with random email addresses and links which loop back to the script.
However, my problem is that my site already over-runs my bandwidth limit every month
Why don't you introduce a sleep of a few seconds before starting to deliver the page. And then sleep every paragraph or so. If you can keep an email harvester busy for a while _waiting_ for data - that's less resources that harvester can use.
There needs to be some type of HTML standard for printed documents
HTML encapsulates the document structure of the content - and not tag soup that some people call "web design". So in its purest form it already has the ability to be a printed document. Just stick in a print-orientated Cascading Style sheet, and off you go.
When you then take HTML, stick all your content in an x-pixel wide table - you break it in everything other than a browser running a window x-pixels wide or wider.
I guess it wouldnt be too stressful for every linux based company to have 1 single windows machine, set up to accept .doc files and return them as .rtf,.txt etc.
Unreliable as it may seem, why not take one windows box, stick a webserver on it, and do an ASP page that allows you to upload a word document, converts it to a rtf, and allows you to download that.
Then we'd only need one windows machine connected to the Internet (or two for 'resilience' *smirk*), that the rest of the world could use.
IMNSHO, the problem with spam block lists are
1.) They have a lot of false positives (blocking people they shouldn't),
That should encourage those positives to ask their ISPs why they are conducive to spammers, and start to convince ISP's that spammers are the source of the problem
2.) a lot of false negatives, (they don't block very many spammers),
Outta sight, outta mind. A little spam is still spam.
3.) they are a lot of trouble to maintain, and
So certain people have decided that they can accept the maintenance problems in an effort to clean up the internet - kudos to them.
4.) they don't mesh well with the general spirit of the internet.
Spam block lists are merely opinions of a group of people. Other organisations may agree that their list is good, and thus adopt it as their main filter - that's the organisations right.
Adopting block-lists is nothing more than exercising the right to disassociate from a known group of people.
This freedom of choice - what the general spirit of the internet is about. The ability to say "No, I don't want your crap."
Large South African companies, such as banks, make it a habit to upgrade their computers every two years or so. These old computers are scrapped, or sold cheaply to employees - but mostly without software - and you don't get the software licenses.
Open source gives someone the _opportunity_ of legally acquiring software for a PC without restrictive licensing fees. This makes old computers that much more accessible to the general (and electrified) public.
Note, I said "opportunity" which means people can decide for themselves, and not have it forced upon them. Your opinion is that people won't bother - I disagree. By lowering the cost of owning a computer, you have a better potential to get people involved in using one.
Yes, these people will need support. That's what user groups are for. That can be done informally friend to friend, or child to parent.
Take these discarded PCs to a not-for-profit volunteer organisation that will install and set-up the PC with Open source software. This will create a range of PC's that can be delivered and powered on, and used.
Heck, South Africa has already realised the benefits of low cost computers using a television instead of a monitor - they can do this just as easily.
Accessibility and visibility of open source is a good indicator to its presence. Take an example:
Walk into a top South African computer store - like Incredible Connection - look for a copy of Linux or BSD. I tried this in early December 2001, nothing.
Walk into "Books etc" in the UK, there's a brand new copy of Suse 7.3 on the shelves (both personal and professional). Most computer shops (MicroAnvika) have a tidy range of linux distros (Redhat, Mandrake, Suse).
Remember, you just need to buy one copy, and that can be installed on all the computers in the world without paying extra - and get support for it. But its that first step SA hasn't achieved yet - and this document can be that first step.
My introduction to Open Source was at Wits University (Johannesburg, SA) - but I was fortunate to have a friend that knew about these sort of things.
Without doubt, at grassroots level, Open source is there - but the stamp of approval (the "will not reduce the availability of Open Source") will open many more eyes than geek-speak alone. It will "legitimise" Open source in a country where Microsoft has an overwhelming dominance.
A computer is a means to an end, not the end itself. Its the same with miners. You can't eat gold, but you can sell them on an international market at international prices, that gives you income to buy food.
The same with computers. With a computer, you learn new skills, these skills you use to deliver quality goods, which produces income to buy food that you can eat.
Look at how far India have come in the last decade by offering their computer skills. I know IBM SA were largely dependant on Indian talent to fix the Y2K problem. India's investment has paid off handsomely - SA can do the same, if it really wants to succeed.
Open source makes it easier to legally start down that road. I believe Mexico or Brazil are trying the same road at the moment - so it will be a great experience for South Africans that do participate.
I'd have to disagree on 5 (capatalist/market economy) somewhat. With four companies (Anglo-American, Rembrant, can't remember the other two) controlling 75% of available stock, its not a true capitalist economy.
Comparing the road and rail infrastructures -SA's
road network and quality is so much higher than the UK, but the UK's rail is by far superior to SAs.
Its difficult to classify SA, and I always think of it as a meld of 1st and 3rd world technologies - it is as you suggest, a duality. Open source is the tool to lower the barrier of moving third world stuff to be competitive in a first world arena.
I thought they closed down the Koeburg reactors well over a decade ago - have they reopened them?
Although ESKOM is a critical part of the success of Open Source in South Africa, since households would require electricity to power a pc in the first place. How much of SA is still without electricity (from a non-availability view, not non-payment)?
I'm glad to see SA taking a fantastic step in an excellent direction this time (unlike the malnutrition/Aids argument!).
I find word very cumbersome when trying to format documents correctly. Though earlier this week I found a cute way of formatting documents properly in Word:
I use a wiki for my own documentation - nice simple stuff like == 2nd Level Heading == and a few in-line HTML tags.
I then copied the htmlised text from IE5, pasted it straight into word - self formatted - looked like any other document we have here.
The bonus of this trick is that I've built myself a wiki to DocBook converter (partial at the moment), so my wiki is a neat document management system that I can use from any web browser.
I'm a big fan of wiki's - its a useful catch all solution
I can't think of too many sites out there that Mosaic 1.0 can't read
:-)
.xsl file, then run the transform - new website without changing any content.
I'm just having a look at the web through Netscape 1.1 - msn won't let me in (but NN1.1 is standards compliant - surely it complies with HTML1.0). At least my site works fine in it
An Apache module might be useful for something like this. Strip out useless tags and format it so it is still useful, but just contains the facts.
That's approaching accessibility from the wrong way. HTML was never meant to be the root of all documents, but the end-point. Start with a syntax that allows information and content the highest priority - then transform it to the required output.
For me, I'm building a DocBook editing enviroment for all my content, then use simple XSL transforms that can produce any desired output from HTML for browsers or palms, to text only, to RTF, to PDF and PostScript. That way one source can be used to create multiple looks and feels.
Want to change the layout, edit one
Standards-compliant HTML which works in all browsers is nice, but contradictory.
First off, there is no HTML Standard - only a WWW Consortium Recommendation. Secondly, there is more than one Recommendation, based on the DTD used to author the page. So making pages largely compatible involves using the relevant DTD for each User-Agent (note User-Agent, not browser). There's no point hacking an HTML4.01 Strict DocType to work in Netscape 3, since this browser implements a form of HTML3.2.
A lot of these myths and fallacies are covered by the document Publishing on the Web Is Different
Detecting browsers is often misused, but with older Javascript implementations the only way is sometimes to use a browser sniffer.
Never use a browser sniffer. MSN.com proved conclusively the idiocy involved in relying on User-Agent strings.
If only there was a standard function like browser.does("DOM_2") or something so you could switch by features rather than browser...
There is, and always have been. Javascript object-detection is a recommended way of determining a browser's functionality, so if(document.getElementById) {} identifies browsers that comply with W3C recommendations to DOM.
The one thing most web-designers are completely forgetting is that plain old HTML is supposed to be a document structure, not a layout format. Trying to force it to layout can only reduce the effectiveness of the structure, thus impair its future as a www-document.
With ideas like the Sematic Web approaching fruition, it is essential for webdesigners to concentrate on getting the document structure right first, then use CSS for layout.
Lets move beyond the fuzzy effects, and concentrate on the web's future. Its obvious msn have no clue about the web's potential as a global and open medium.
User Agent String: ;Photon)
Mozilla/3.04 (compatible;QNX Voyager 2.03B
Having a look to see where Internet Explorer is for QNX - quelle surprise, nothing returned from the search engine.
IE has been losing marketshare for several months now, and Opera and Mozilla are the two browsers that have been taking most of that marketshare away from them.
Really? Could you post the source of this information, please?
I'm not sure what would happen if you made a copy of IE using the IEAK that contained a custom UA string that had the word "Opera 5" in it. I wonder if it'd get blocked too.
What would happen if a new worm suddenly surfaced that, amongst others, added the word "Opera" to Internet Explorers User Agent? Looking at Changing your User Agent it looks quite trivial.
Since the User Agent string has nothing to do with the functionality of a browser (it doesn't change if you disable Javascript, cookies, Java, ActiveX, Active Scripting, Flash), so to rely on it is something close to muppetish.
I'm running NetCaptor at the moment, so the User Agent changed to:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 4.0; NetCaptor 6.5.0RC1)
My rendering engine hasn't changed at all, I just have the ability of tabbing between multiple pages - one of the neat things about Opera and Mozilla 0.9.5
I thought we had convinced everyone of the pointlessness of using User-Agent to make decisions on. Looks like the lesson needs to be taught again.
Unfortunately, natural selection only works when there is competition
What does MSN offer that can't be gotten elsewhere?
Yes, in principle passport is a good idea. But there's a big flaw in its design. You have to go through passport.com to authenticate. That's one single point of failure.
Yes, Microsoft has stressed they want passport to be a federated service, where details can be stored in other systems - like your pin number for ATMs (hole in the wall). Fine, so someone other than Microsoft holds your data - but they still need to go through passport.com before they can get to the federated other party.
There is a nice open alternative coming, in the form of dotGNU - which I believe has a much better security and availability structure, and not reliant on one company's server to always be there.
Proxies that modify src attributes and replace them with blank images can go one step further: Just chuck a <div style="visibility:hidden">
As an addition - get the proxy to request the banner ads, but ignore what gets returned - that will keep the web server very happy.
Sorry, I'm being a muppet! No client side functionality is required - it can all be done using a web server module.
Its really simple:
Since each banner ad needs to be HTTP requested from the server - and proxies tend to remove instances of <img src="bannerad.gif"... with their own blank image, its a doddle to track.
All the Javascript would have to do is make sure the url property of the image element, or embed element, or object element is correct, and that the isLoaded property is set.
Although this would force people to surf with Javascript enabled - something thats proving more dangerous every day on a Windows based platform.
Or they could be complete muppets and force surfers to accept ActiveX objects - which would probably sideline most of the X community.
On the other hand, this company has decided adverts and banners is more important that the content - so be it. I prefer sites with content, and having a "This site is full of banners" type message in the form of "Remove proxy or else" is an excellent way of avoiding these sites, it happens to match with my surfing preferences.
These marketing companies should take a lesson out of Google's book. Their advert placement is unobtrusive and normally relevant to the search topic on hand - without the intrusive methods marketing types have forced on its visitors.
This has been covered a few times recently, even in the messages above. Mandrake 8.0 installer uses an early 2.4.x kernel where the Thinkpad trackpoint is broken. This was fixed in 2.4.5.
So the solution to installing Mandrake on the 770 is to create a boot disk using a 2.2.x kernel, then install Mandrake as normal using said bootdisk. Then upgrade your kernel to 2.4.5 or later.
Or use Mandrake 8.1.
Logically this would make sense, but religious fanaticism is not based on logic but something more like brainwashing and indoctrination.
Remember these terrorists committed their acts in the belief they were doing the right thing. Even though there is no religion that I know of that could possibly condone such barbarism - this is not about religion, religion is a victim, along with countless innocent people. In that regard, there would be no "toppled by their own people" since these fundamentalists would rather die for their beliefs/brainwash.
A conventional war in Afganistan would be very costly. Remember the invincible Russian army was decimated. The problem is that there isn't a visible standing army, but a guerilla army that hides in the towns and cities. To push for victory in this theatre would involve levelling every village and town and leave nothing standing, which would involve thousands more innocent victims.
There isn't an easy answer, but a decision must be made. Why is US/Nato nuking/destruction all of Afganistan better that Tuesday's actions? To me it is still genocide.
Concentrate on eliminating all sources of indoctrination, remove the tools for brainwashing and intolerance - remember that the freedom of choice ends when the actions are criminal, fundamentalists behind this attack have abrogated their rights. Root out the organisations responsible. There is no quick solution, only a path that needs to be travelled. Once everyone on the planet has the freedom to choose their destiny can the barricades these terrorists have created be broken down.
"It is not the United States of America versus terrorism, but the free democratic world against terrorism".
"Acts of the terrorists will live in shame for eternity"
He is visibly shocked.
NATO have convened an emergency meeting 9:00 tommorrow morning. All UK forces are on highest alert all over the world. No flights over London allowed, all private flights grounded. No commercial flights will take off unless completely safe.
Knock-on effects of terrorist attack
All flights from UK to US have been cancelled. All military and security operations in the UK have been moved up one level of alert status. Yasser Arafat has condemned the attack. Afganistan Taliban have said this operation is too big for someone like the main suspect Osman Lad Bin (no idea - someone correct his name!) to undertake.
FTSE down 300 at close
I heard (unconfirmed) the $/£ exchange rate hit $2 per pound - normally $1.40 per pound.