Month: April 2009

bookmark_borderConficker Worm

Posted on by PaulaO

No, you can’t go fishing with it. You might be able to go phishing with it, though.

At any rate, make sure your virus software is up to date and run a scan. The Conficker worm is spreading slowly but surely.

I was pointed to a cool quick way to find out if your ‘puter is infected. The Conficker Eye Chart works thusly:

Conficker (aka Downadup, Kido) is known to block access to over 100 anti-virus and security websites.

If you are blocked from loading the remote images in the first row of the top table above (AV/security sites) but not blocked from loading the remote images in the second row (websites of alternative operating systems) then your Windows PC may be infected by Conficker (or some other malicious software).

So, like, go there. But still do an update and scan. I use and recommend AVG anti-virus.

Linkages:
Conficker Working Group (makers of the “eye” chart)
AVG anti-virus
Protecting Against the Rampant Conficker Worm – PC World article

bookmark_borderSpam River Dammed Again

Posted on by PaulaO

I tried using a new comment form that included a “human verification” bit in it. But, for some reason, it wasn’t working. The form works well as a Contact form, but I couldn’t talk it into being a comment form. I tried to fix it but decided, for various reasons, that it wasn’t worth it.

So I dumped that and now have am trying a new plugin “Math Comment Spam Protection“. It doesn’t seem to be supported very well by the designer but it does work. The idea is to stop spammers from even submitting a comment and clogging the database and site resources.

As an example of this, I took down the cforms version and put up the one I had been using for years. I uploaded and turned on the new plugin. In that span of time, maybe two minutes tops, I got THREE spams. THREE. What a mess. Luckily, SpamKarma caught them and dumped them with glee but still, geez people, get as freakin’ life!

Please let me know if the form works for you or not. If it does not, use the contact form to, well, contact me about it. Or email me if you know the address.

bookmark_borderSocial Networking Revisited

Posted on by PaulaO

How funny that another article pops up about “social networking” online: Facebook Users Get Worse Grades in College

Her study found that Facebook user GPAs were in the 3.0 to 3.5 range on average, compared to 3.5 to 4.0 for non-users. Facebook users also studied anywhere from one to five hours per week, compared to non-users who studied 11 to 15 or more hours per week.

However, Karpinski emphasized that correlation does not equal causation, meaning Facebook use might not be the culprit behind lower GPAs or less study time.

For instance, students who spend more time enjoying themselves rather than studying might tend to latch onto the nearest distraction, such as Facebook. Or students who use the social networking site might also spend more time on other non-studying activities such as sports or music.

The study did show that students who work more hours at jobs spend less time on Facebook, while students involved in more extracurricular activities were also more likely to use Facebook.

I found that last paragraph above to be the most interesting. If a student works while at college, they are less likely to use or spend less time on Facebook. Perhaps the added reality of having to work to pay for things makes one less likely to want to dive into the false reality of Facebook and other such things.

bookmark_borderAmazon Ranking

Posted on by PaulaO

Amazon.com, Amazon.com – wherefore art thou brains? Thou hast filled them with shit and verily I say unto you, thou hast really fucked up. Again.

Here’s the short story: Amazon.com has a thing called “ranking” that is based on the number of sales. So the higher a book is on that sale, the more likely the books is to show up on various related pages. The lower a book’s sale ranking, the less likely it will show up anywhere, including searches. Sounds reasonable in some realities. The problem now is that Amazon.com has decided to de-rank a bunch of books that they consider “adult”. Again, sounds reasonable in some realities.

However, and this is a big however, their concept of “adult” is very narrow. Almost all GLBTQ books have been de-ranked. Not just the erotica, but romance and non-fiction. Playboy’s books are still up there as are Kuschiel’s Dart (and related books). Why are they not considered “Adult” and have their rankings removed?

I could go on but I won’t. Instead, read more from these fine folks:

Okazu: Amazon De-ranks “Adult” Books
In Protest of Amazon’s new “adult” policy (an online petition site; the information is in the small, scrollable window at the top and you can click the “view whole petition” link on the left)
Mark Probst – Amazon Follies
Booksquare’s “Open Letter to Amazon Regarding Recent Policy Changes”
Kelley Eskridge – Tell Amazon They Are Wrong

And the Smart Bitches have gotten in on it, too. As someone else said, “Heaven help Amazon now!”. With their post “Amazon Rank”, they’ve come up with the perfect solution. A non-violent, non-name calling, mature method based on proven results: a Google bomb. A Google bomb is when folks across the great Internet use similar words that all link to the same thing. This worked well a while back when some of us had trouble from a nasty pseudo-agent. Every time her name was mentioned, a link was used to point to an article proving her lack of ethics. This meant that any search for her name resulted in the article being in the top five or so of the search results. The idea was to warn any newbie writer to stay away from her.

The Smart Bitches have created a new definition to go into the Internet lexicons: Amazon Rank. The idea is that whenever someone uses the term Amazon Rank, they link back to the page they created that has the definition. Try it now. Go to Google and type in Amazon Rank. What pops up first? Other search engines don’t react as quickly to this kind of trend. But they will.

Here is a screenshot of a Harry Potter book set:

Now here is my book:

So, bad example to use mine anyway since it never got very far up the rankings. Here is Lee Lynch’s “The Swashbuckler”. A classic that has been around a long time so it should have a decent rank, right?

Funny thing is, other books that somehow got rankings outside the Lesbian/Gay bits still have rankings showing. Here’s Brenda Adcock’s “The Sea Hawk”.

I was about to make a big purchase from Amazon. I was going to get two music CDs, several books, and an iTouch. The shopping cart total sits at about $600. Not now. There are other places to shop from. Depending on how they handle this, I may never shop there again. If my queer book isn’t good enough to be in the rankings, then my queer money isn’t good enough to line their pockets.

bookmark_borderSigns of Spring

Posted on by PaulaO

Ah, Spring is here!

And it brought along the sneezing and watery eyes.

But there’s other, more subtle signs, at least here at our house.

In the unheated bathroom, the shampoo comes out of the bottle with less effort. No more squeezing hard gel or warming the bottle in the shower’s spray first. And the adjustment of hot and cold water is changing. We aren’t quite turning the hot water level down but are definitely turning the cold water down less.

And today another major sign appeared: I got a haircut. Lorna took the shears and trimmed my hair down to 1″. I let my hair grow longer in the Winter. For one it’s too cold to sit out on the back porch to while Lorna cuts my hair. I used to have long hair, as in all the way down to my butt long. But I got tired of the knots and the flying hair when the window was down so off it came. I wish I had known about Locks of Love back then.

bookmark_borderThe “In” of Internet

Posted on by PaulaO

Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn – not only do they have us CombiningWords with CapitalLetters in weird places, it has us spread too thin. In author groups, having a MySpace or Facebook page is THE thing to have. I have neither. I have a Blogger and LiveJournal space but they only point here. I am a member of LinkedIn (not sure why, but I am). I’m not part of the “in” crowd.

I don’t understand Twitter. Verbal voyeurism, even for a writer, can only satisfy so far. I love gadgets. I have all sorts of gadgets. I even have a cell phone! It only allows me to send and receive phone calls and not surf the ‘net or check email but that’s the way I like it. It’s the way I like my food, too. I don’t eat a burger with mustard and ketchup. They tend to overpower the main tastes. I think the subtly of lettuce and tomato bring out the wonderful goodness of the dead, cooked cow. I don’t eat many casseroles unless the items put together are balanced and not overwhelmed by one particular spice. Yeah, more evidence I’m weird. But I digress….

I just read an interesting article (Are you a twit if you don’t want to Twitter?) on how “social networking” is starting to overwhelm folks.

It shouldn’t be surprising that quick-hit online communications, the stuff of 140-character “tweets” on Twitter and “status updates” on Facebook, leave some people cold. Craig Kinsley, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Richmond, notes that studies of human interactions reveal that our brains crave networking, online and off, but differentiate between the quality of the interactions.

“Many short contacts may leave the user wanting deeper, more meaningful exchanges. Like a meal of cotton candy, when you come right down to it, there is not much substance,” he says. “A good conversation with a good friend is much more life-affirming than a few tortuously abbreviated or emoticon-filled lines in a tweet that anyone can read. How special is that?”

Our brains crave prolonged social activities. Maybe this is why instant messaging and chat rooms grew to such proportions. We could have cyber conversations with instant gratifications vs Twitting or updates on Facebook.

Earlier in the article:

“Being exposed to details, from someone’s painful breakup to what they had for breakfast – and much more sordid details than that – feels like voyeurism,” says the 31-year-old public relations executive in Washington, D.C. “I’m less concerned with protecting my privacy, and more concerned at the ethics of a ‘human zoo’ where others’ lives, and often serious problems, are treated as entertainment.”

Exactly! Human zoo. Reality shows are taking over the networks, even Animal Planet! Do we really need to surround ourselves with such type of reality? We are too removed from it to fulfill that neurological need. Personally, I’d rather sit at a table at Waffle House and listen to my friend tell me of her soap opera love life. Facial expressions, hand movement, pauses here and there – they speak more than any emoticon ever can.

bookmark_borderDam the Spam River

Posted on by PaulaO

Okay, what happened the other day tried to happen again today. But, I happened to be one step ahead of the bastids!

I had already changed the comment form over to one that has a simple pre-filter installed. In the midst of making it look purty, I got the File 500 error again. I checked the webhost’s resource chart and while it said it was still within limits, the time-stamp said it was 45 minutes old. So I went to the database and SpamKarma’s log was stuffed full again. Nearly 700 spam just in the past 24hrs. So I deleted them all and the File 500 errors went away. Yay me!

I set the Settings>Discussions to turn off all Trackback/Pingbacks but all that does is uncheck the box for all future posts/pages. I went to WordPress’s Extension list and found what I needed. “Auto-Close Comments, Pingbacks and Trackbacks” is a plugin that allowed me to turn off ALL comments and trackbacks to ALL posts and pages. I could even leave open one that gets regular valid comments.

The comment form I am using now is called cforms and while the look of it is kinda gross, I do like the built in pre-filter. By pre-filter I mean it stops spammers from even submitting a comment. It doesn’t make it to the comment moderation where it clogs up the pipes. I opted to not go with the captcha images because I hate them myself and wouldn’t want to inflict them on others. Instead, it has a set of simple questions that the commenter must answer before the comment will move on. The questions are simple stuff (what is two plus two?) BUT they work. Yes, spammers can make their way around it eventually. But Shirley To Shit they aren’t that driven for this little known blog!

If anyone has any trouble with the comment form, let me know. I’ve not checked the accessibility issues of it (Elena?) yet and hope all is well on that front.

bookmark_borderOy! What Happened?

Posted on by PaulaO

I don’t really understand what happened. All of my sites are on a private server with my webhost. It makes tracking problems down quite simple since errors mean it is either on my end or theirs. No middle folks to deal with. One of the things I can do with the server is set the amount of space my websites can use. More space than it is using means the sites run faster. Less space and everything slows to a crawl or stops altogether. My space prior to yesterday was a mere 235mb. The most I had used was around 150 or so but with Mike’ new site, that had been slowly rising. But at some point yesterday, the memory usage spiked to over 450mb. And the sites shut down. All of them. But I didn’t even think to look there when I first found out the sites were down.

I contacted tech support and checked out the forum and some other places but really had no clue what was wrong. I put up a “site down” message so that folks wouldn’t wonder if they had a problem on their end. I got an answer from tech support and he pointed out the memory usage as well as a huge memory usage within the databases. Spammers were smacking one or two of the sites hard and all their blocked messages were being stored in the database. I raised the memory usage to 500mb, made some changes to the .htaccess files (which I had never ever touched before), and made a “robots.txt” file and put it on all the main directories. I went to the databases and “dropped” all the stuff in the SpamKarma tables. I left the blacklist alone, though.

Within a few hours, the extra memory was gobbled up. I waited. I checked the error logs again. I added another IP block or two to the .htaccess file. I waited and finally gave up and went to bed. We had things to do today and I didn’t get a chance to check anything until this afternoon.

So now, there it is. Everything is working. And I learned a few things. While the problem was with just one site (this blog, actually), the memory usage downed them all. I now know that when all of them is down, then there’s a few places to look first.

Spammers are the armpits of the internet, aren’t they?

UPDATE: Holy shit! I just got finished deleting well over 10,000 spam comments! All of them porn crap (surely Asian teens have more to do?) or prescription meds for men.