Paid someone to mess with Google's search ranking to make them appear higher in the list, and *gasp* Google's spider figured it out and plopped them even lower in the index.
Boo hoo hoo.
Perhaps he should have looked through the various articles online which says that Google doesn't like tampering with their pagerank process and what happens to people who do insist on doing it.
I should probably mention that many of these supposed 'free open proxies' for web browsing are usually proxy servers not properly secured by their owners, and 'disappear' when they are secured. Sometimes, they are even comprimised hosts running trojan software.
Dubious legality using them. The AHBL parses and adds the hosts from many of these sites on a daily basis for this reason.
On the family side, I swapped out the keyboard and mouse on my mother's desktop with wireless models. Sister the next day complained that the mouse was broken because there was no wire. Oui vey.
I used to work for an unnamed ISP in New York (that was really shoddily run, but amusing to work at).
1) Customer from unnamed realtor office calls in, having some sort of problem, but unable to find the problem. Customer insists that she doesn't have a keyboard. Tell her to place her hands on the monitor, and let them drop. Where do they land? "Oh, the TYPER THING!"
2) Customer calls up, saying problem with the floppy drive. Go through usual diagnostics, and the story unfolds. Customer gets floppy disk jammed in the drive, so rather then call support, decides to fix it himself. First tries with *butter* to free the jammed disk. No joy, so he uses a knife which then breaks off in the drive as well. Only then, does he try to get support. Even better, he expects support to come out and fix his computer for free. Support asks him to repeat his story for the record one final time just-in-case.
3) Joke played on other tech in office - call in to the main support number pretending to be one of the national Relay Services (you know, for deaf/blind people with TTY/TTD). Support woman asks whats wrong. 'Customer' via translator responds "I'm blind, I'm deaf, and my computer is making funny noises."
4) Customer calls up, demands give her free internet access. She gets really loud and nasty, and finally the reason why is revealed - she had a NetZero disk and didn't bother to actually read the instructions.
5) Customer calls up, is having problems getting on the Internet. After going back and forth for a while, finally find out that he didn't plug in the telephone cord. So tell him to plug it in and he starts getting all huffy and angry.
Him: "I'm not putting that phone cord in my computer. The evil hackers will take over my computer!" Me: "You need to plug in the phone line or you wont be able to get Internet access." Him: "I don't care. This is a laptop anyway, why do I need to plug in the phone line anyway? This is completely wireless. I don't even need the power cord plugged in!" Silence... Him: "God damn it, now it just turned off again. I keep having to take this thing back to be fixed after an hour and a half."
A reminder to people who use the AdSense service (and not those of you who like to spout without knowing what you are talking about) - you can set your prefs so that only text ads will be displayed.
1) Timbuktu doesn't seem to work 100% right under XP SP2 on some configurations, and especially causes problems with S3 mode (like not being able to resume from S3 without a almost 4 minute delay) 2) Video drivers - I've seen them corrupt the screen horribly on restore or even worse force you to turn the machine off completely 3) Cheapie sound cards - same situation as video
Upgrading the driver or removing the problem program usually works like a charm.
Might have something to do with the fact that if the developer were to name their project/software a name that resembled a commercial application, they'd probably get a C&D and/or copyright infringement lawsuit thrown at them (even if the name was considered generic, common language...)
Perfect example, what do you think Microsoft would do if someone created a new word processor, called it "Word" and made it look even remotely like Microsoft's Word program? Yeah, 'Word' is a generic term, but that wouldn't stop Microsoft from at least trying, I bet.
With help and ideas from an MS guy, I've managed to narrow down the bug which is causing the issue.
The version of browseui.dll (6.0.2900.2802) from the 905915 update is the culprit.
If you disable WFP, reboot with the recovery console, and replace it with browseui.dll (6.0.2900.2753 from previous update, probably 896688 IIRC), then reboot again, behavior will return back to normal. Don't forget to delete the browseui.dll from dllcache and reenable WFP.
Anyone else who's having this problem, please e-mail me. I'm working with a XP Home engineer to investigate the issue. They are just as curious about the problem as I am (and seem genuinely interested in getting it resolved).
However, I did field a call from one of my users who only uses IE (trust me, I tried to change them over to firefox or opera, but that was a wasted effort), so I'd really like to figure out what got broke exactly.
Did anyone else with XP Home SP2 notice that the IE update does some really weird stuff with IE's ability to open up pages?
Like, best way to explain it, you can launch IE and it will go to your home page, however, when you type a URL in the address bar it opens up a new window as if you pressed ctrl-n and typed it in there?
Also rears its ugly head if you have another browser set as default. Type in say, 'www.sosdg.org' in the URL bar of IE, and it opens up Mozilla/K-Meleon/Firefox instead of just opening in the open window of IE?
I've seen this behavior on two XP Home machines, while a third was perfectly fine (all running SP2)
The PPro chip, from experience, runs Windows NT and other true 32bit operating systems like Linux, BSD, etc rather well. Its only when you run 16bit OSs like Win9x, 3.1, etc where it falls short.
Because sometimes, when you work on getting an OS such as Linux to work on obsecure or unusual hardware, it can help iron out bugs and make the overall OS more portable.
Look at the work being done to get Linux to work on the latest iPod generation - Linux on the iPod could be very useful to some people, especially because of the amount of people who have an iPod who happen to be geeks or similar.
The benefits may not be seen right away, but sometimes, its the small achievements that make a difference in the long run.
A friend of mine just said to me (who happens to be a big FreeBSD user) - "think of him as a bsd manifestation of rms."
This is why the Debian camp and the FreeBSD camp turns me off of their distributions/OSs - the pig headed stuck up attitude of its leaders tends to cause friction with everyone else including people on the same side as them.
Point in case, from my experience, every Debian developer I've run across seems to be trained in the art of insulting and harassing RedHat users.
Now, thats just my experience, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who may have seen that.
"As of this writing, any filter relying on the SBL is now marking email with the url "paulgraham.com" as spam."
Where else would it be other then the body?
I think your missing the point that I am trying to make - he is being extremely vague in his meaning, and obviously i'm not the only one who got the impression that he doesn't know what hes talking about.
You have got to be kidding me. _This_ is news? Come on, this guy can't even get his facts right. First major glaring error I see:
As of this writing, any filter relying on the SBL is now marking email with the url "paulgraham.com" as spam. Why? Because the guys at the SBL want to pressure Yahoo, where paulgraham.com is hosted, to delete the site of a company they believe is spamming.
How about you do some research Paul? The SBL does not block based on domains, only IP addresses. DNSbl lists are always IP based, RHSbl lists are domain based.
I always found the SBL to be a very reliable DNSbl to use, and have never lost a legit e-mail to it before.
But hey, what do I know? I'm just one of those evil anti-business DNSbl admins (AHBL anyone?).
Anyone remember playing Command and Conquer - the original? With the Ion Cannon?
Well, if you beat the game as the Brotherhood, you end up hacking the control systems for the cannon, and you use it to level your famous building/structure of choice.
Its very simple - when they sent out your cable modem to you, they registered the mac address on it with your account. Any time you get a new modem that can't clone the old mac address, you have to register the address with them.
That is how they do access control - if you dont have a registered and authorized mac address, you can't gain access to the network to get an IP address.
Take a look at the box your cable modem came in - it probably has the mac address on it, or failing that, on the modem itself.
One of the quotes that helped Laura earn the name DiDiot:
"Within the open source community, there are a large percentage of tinkers and 'ankle biters' who are trying their hand at hacking. Some are even communicating with each other. So it only takes one or two of these groups sharing information to be able to pull something off. When you have this type of passion, it's hard to fight because these people are like virtual suicide car bombers."
If you can't stand the heat Laura, don't keep throwing fuel on the fire.
Even though Billy boy over there says that you can't get burned by being his shill, you might get an unpleasant surprise...
Slashdot Mirror
Images in signatures... *shudders violently*
What a waste of bandwidth and resources.
Well, guess he learned a lesson, didn't he?
Paid someone to mess with Google's search ranking to make them appear higher in the list, and *gasp* Google's spider figured it out and plopped them even lower in the index.
Boo hoo hoo.
Perhaps he should have looked through the various articles online which says that Google doesn't like tampering with their pagerank process and what happens to people who do insist on doing it.
Since it is based on OpenWRT, it can use many of the same extra packages to add extra features.
I should probably mention that many of these supposed 'free open proxies' for web browsing are usually proxy servers not properly secured by their owners, and 'disappear' when they are secured. Sometimes, they are even comprimised hosts running trojan software.
Dubious legality using them. The AHBL parses and adds the hosts from many of these sites on a daily basis for this reason.
Ok, got a few to share.
On the family side, I swapped out the keyboard and mouse on my mother's desktop with wireless models. Sister the next day complained that the mouse was broken because there was no wire. Oui vey.
I used to work for an unnamed ISP in New York (that was really shoddily run, but amusing to work at).
1) Customer from unnamed realtor office calls in, having some sort of problem, but unable to find the problem. Customer insists that she doesn't have a keyboard. Tell her to place her hands on the monitor, and let them drop. Where do they land? "Oh, the TYPER THING!"
2) Customer calls up, saying problem with the floppy drive. Go through usual diagnostics, and the story unfolds. Customer gets floppy disk jammed in the drive, so rather then call support, decides to fix it himself. First tries with *butter* to free the jammed disk. No joy, so he uses a knife which then breaks off in the drive as well. Only then, does he try to get support. Even better, he expects support to come out and fix his computer for free. Support asks him to repeat his story for the record one final time just-in-case.
3) Joke played on other tech in office - call in to the main support number pretending to be one of the national Relay Services (you know, for deaf/blind people with TTY/TTD). Support woman asks whats wrong. 'Customer' via translator responds "I'm blind, I'm deaf, and my computer is making funny noises."
4) Customer calls up, demands give her free internet access. She gets really loud and nasty, and finally the reason why is revealed - she had a NetZero disk and didn't bother to actually read the instructions.
5) Customer calls up, is having problems getting on the Internet. After going back and forth for a while, finally find out that he didn't plug in the telephone cord. So tell him to plug it in and he starts getting all huffy and angry.
Him: "I'm not putting that phone cord in my computer. The evil hackers will take over my computer!"
Me: "You need to plug in the phone line or you wont be able to get Internet access."
Him: "I don't care. This is a laptop anyway, why do I need to plug in the phone line anyway? This is completely wireless. I don't even need the power cord plugged in!"
Silence...
Him: "God damn it, now it just turned off again. I keep having to take this thing back to be fixed after an hour and a half."
*bang head on desk to continue*
A reminder to people who use the AdSense service (and not those of you who like to spout without knowing what you are talking about) - you can set your prefs so that only text ads will be displayed.
The times I've noticed S3 doesn't work right...
1) Timbuktu doesn't seem to work 100% right under XP SP2 on some configurations, and especially causes problems with S3 mode (like not being able to resume from S3 without a almost 4 minute delay)
2) Video drivers - I've seen them corrupt the screen horribly on restore or even worse force you to turn the machine off completely
3) Cheapie sound cards - same situation as video
Upgrading the driver or removing the problem program usually works like a charm.
Might have something to do with the fact that if the developer were to name their project/software a name that resembled a commercial application, they'd probably get a C&D and/or copyright infringement lawsuit thrown at them (even if the name was considered generic, common language...)
Perfect example, what do you think Microsoft would do if someone created a new word processor, called it "Word" and made it look even remotely like Microsoft's Word program? Yeah, 'Word' is a generic term, but that wouldn't stop Microsoft from at least trying, I bet.
Ahhh, got a temp fix that people can use to solve the issue until MS figures out what is the cause exactly.
From my blog:
With help and ideas from an MS guy, I've managed to narrow down the bug which is causing the issue.
The version of browseui.dll (6.0.2900.2802) from the 905915 update is the culprit.
If you disable WFP, reboot with the recovery console, and replace it with browseui.dll (6.0.2900.2753 from previous update, probably 896688 IIRC), then reboot again, behavior will return back to normal. Don't forget to delete the browseui.dll from dllcache and reenable WFP.
Anyone else who's having this problem, please e-mail me. I'm working with a XP Home engineer to investigate the issue. They are just as curious about the problem as I am (and seem genuinely interested in getting it resolved).
Heh. Good point :-)
However, I did field a call from one of my users who only uses IE (trust me, I tried to change them over to firefox or opera, but that was a wasted effort), so I'd really like to figure out what got broke exactly.
Did anyone else with XP Home SP2 notice that the IE update does some really weird stuff with IE's ability to open up pages?
Like, best way to explain it, you can launch IE and it will go to your home page, however, when you type a URL in the address bar it opens up a new window as if you pressed ctrl-n and typed it in there?
Also rears its ugly head if you have another browser set as default. Type in say, 'www.sosdg.org' in the URL bar of IE, and it opens up Mozilla/K-Meleon/Firefox instead of just opening in the open window of IE?
I've seen this behavior on two XP Home machines, while a third was perfectly fine (all running SP2)
Uhhh, "If 256-bit triple-DES"?
There is no such thing as 256 bit triple-DES. Triple-DES is 168 bits. Can someone please check their statements for accuracy?
The PPro chip, from experience, runs Windows NT and other true 32bit operating systems like Linux, BSD, etc rather well. Its only when you run 16bit OSs like Win9x, 3.1, etc where it falls short.
Because sometimes, when you work on getting an OS such as Linux to work on obsecure or unusual hardware, it can help iron out bugs and make the overall OS more portable.
Look at the work being done to get Linux to work on the latest iPod generation - Linux on the iPod could be very useful to some people, especially because of the amount of people who have an iPod who happen to be geeks or similar.
The benefits may not be seen right away, but sometimes, its the small achievements that make a difference in the long run.
Oh I know, I'm just saying FreeBSD as an example, since I've not had any real runins with OpenBSD zealots... yet.
A friend of mine just said to me (who happens to be a big FreeBSD user) - "think of him as a bsd manifestation of rms."
This is why the Debian camp and the FreeBSD camp turns me off of their distributions/OSs - the pig headed stuck up attitude of its leaders tends to cause friction with everyone else including people on the same side as them.
Point in case, from my experience, every Debian developer I've run across seems to be trained in the art of insulting and harassing RedHat users.
Now, thats just my experience, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who may have seen that.
"As of this writing, any filter relying on the SBL is now marking email with the url "paulgraham.com" as spam."
Where else would it be other then the body?
I think your missing the point that I am trying to make - he is being extremely vague in his meaning, and obviously i'm not the only one who got the impression that he doesn't know what hes talking about.
He was saying that any e-mail with the URL paulgraham.com would be blocked.
It doesn't work like that. Unless you use SURBL type lookups with an RHSbl, it doesn't care what is in the body of the message.
Yes, his e-mail is being blocked, but NOT because of his domain being in the body. He is being blocked because his mail server's IP address.
Yes, I know I'm being quite anal about how he worded things, but if you're going to be publishing articles, you should at least word things correctly.
You have got to be kidding me. _This_ is news? Come on, this guy can't even get his facts right. First major glaring error I see:
As of this writing, any filter relying on the SBL is now marking email with the url "paulgraham.com" as spam. Why? Because the guys at the SBL want to pressure Yahoo, where paulgraham.com is hosted, to delete the site of a company they believe is spamming.
How about you do some research Paul? The SBL does not block based on domains, only IP addresses. DNSbl lists are always IP based, RHSbl lists are domain based.
I always found the SBL to be a very reliable DNSbl to use, and have never lost a legit e-mail to it before.
But hey, what do I know? I'm just one of those evil anti-business DNSbl admins (AHBL anyone?).
Anyone remember playing Command and Conquer - the original? With the Ion Cannon?
Well, if you beat the game as the Brotherhood, you end up hacking the control systems for the cannon, and you use it to level your famous building/structure of choice.
Somehow, it doesn't seem so far fetched...
Its very simple - when they sent out your cable modem to you, they registered the mac address on it with your account. Any time you get a new modem that can't clone the old mac address, you have to register the address with them.
That is how they do access control - if you dont have a registered and authorized mac address, you can't gain access to the network to get an IP address.
Take a look at the box your cable modem came in - it probably has the mac address on it, or failing that, on the modem itself.
Any way I could convince you to upload it to one of my mirror servers so we can get this out to more people?
One of the quotes that helped Laura earn the name DiDiot:
"Within the open source community, there are a large percentage of tinkers and 'ankle biters' who are trying their hand at hacking. Some are even communicating with each other. So it only takes one or two of these groups sharing information to be able to pull something off. When you have this type of passion, it's hard to fight because these people are like virtual suicide car bombers."
If you can't stand the heat Laura, don't keep throwing fuel on the fire.
Even though Billy boy over there says that you can't get burned by being his shill, you might get an unpleasant surprise...
Its www.groklaw.net, not wwwgroklaw.net. Perhaps someone should review the article next time for errors before posting?