Archive for January, 2007
Of all the good things I like about WordPress, the first thing I noticed when I installed it was how little time it took the spambots to find me. Within minutes of switching dotCULT over to WordPress I recieve the common “refinance your house while playing poker and enlarging your penis” comments. I’m sure that sentence will provoke many more.
Anyway, to combat this I installed the Akismet plugin. It’s doing a good job. It has caught 11 spam comments so far in the time it took me to type this post – which says something about just how bad the spam problem is.
To further my point, look at This Graph from the Akismet webpage. It says that 94% of all comments it looks at are spam. That’s a lot!!
Granted, it’s probably skewed a bit (since the more heavily spammed you are, the more likely you are to use Akismet) but still.
The problem is that every WordPress blog is set up the same way – making it very easy to write a script that posts comments. Captcha is one way to stop this, however captcha’s are getting very easy to solve. I’ve even heard of free porn sites where every time you view a video you have to solve a captcha. It’s ingenious. When you request a file, the website hits a blog it wants to spam, grabs the captcha, you solve it, it shows you the video and spams the blog – all behind the scenes.
The problem with captchas are simple too – they can all be solved in the same way. Math captchas may work for now but when it comes down to it, they’re easier to solve.
So what’s the trick? I’ve been preaching it for years: Do something different. You’ll notice the old dotCULT had a “type Ryan here” box. It worked not because it was hard for a computer to do, but because it wouldn’t be efficient to write a program that had to act differently for just my site. That’s the key to fighting spam: Don’t be the same as everybody else.
January 17th, 2007
In what’s sure to be a landmark case in London, a jury is being asked to decide whether or not poker is a game of skill or chance. The case stems from the arrest of a club owner accused of illegaly hosting poker games.
Under current British law, games of chance are prohibited in a bar (unless licensed.)
So what does this have to do with the NFL?
The prosecutor’s main argument is that if poker is a game of skill it’s legal. If it’s a game of chance, it’s illegal. If it’s a game of skill with elements of chance (the best definition in my opinion), then that element of chance still makes it illegal.
But what about American football? In the NFL (and NFL Europe) tied games are settled by a sudden death overtime. Sudden death is where the first team to score wins. Can you see where I’m going with this?
Since a coin flip is used to determine which team will get the ball first, (and statistically, the team who usually wins) that makes football (at least in overtime) a game of skill with an element of chance. By the prosecutor’s definition, football is illegal outside of a licensed casino.
Now, one could argue that since nothing is wagered it’s not gambling – but there are many wagers. Player salaries are tied to wins (and post season advancement), players recieve rings for winning, trophys, endorsements, etc.
It’ll be interesting to see how this case plays out, and what (if any) implications arise.
January 16th, 2007
FEEDBUTTON
Have you noticed that the standard RSS links aren’t in my sidebar anymore? Instead they’ve been replaced with the little 
icon. It’s called FeedButton and it’s a website that I run.
Anyway… Today I released some new features for feedbutton. If you click on the button (the one in the sidebar), you’ll notice 2 new links at the bottom. The first one is a preview – it allows you to preview the rss fead, and presents you with some buttons to add it to your favorite readers.
The second is the stats button. This is the cool stuff. Here’s the stats for dotCULT’s new feed. You’ll see a preview of the feed at the top (and a link to add this feed to your reader of course). But then you’ll see the stats.
The first stat shows what readers your feed has been added to (the top 5), and the total number of readers subscribed to your feed.
The 2nd column uses Amazon style logic to show you the top 6 feeds that your readers also subscribe to. It works just like the “users who bought this product also bought these” type logic. For example, the feeds currently showing for dotCULT happen to be the old dotCULT rss feed, and 2 of my friend’s websites.  This makes sense considering I’ve added my feed and my friends, and they’ve added their feeds and mine.
For you privacy advocates out there, don’t worry. It’s not tracking any identifiable information about you at all.
So go check it out, and let me know if you have any comments, questions, or feature suggestions. I’ll be glad to listen to them.
January 15th, 2007
Chalk up more bad publicity for the Wii. First the straps were faulty (nevermind the fact that people couldn’t follow instructions, or hold on to the controller. Then it was the case of Porn on the Wii. Ignoring the fact (as the article I linked mentions) that the Wii actually does a better job of shielding your kids from porn than your local computer can even dream of doing.
So what now? Well, death of course. It seems that a woman died of water intoxication in a wii contest. Actually, it was a water drinking contest put on by KDND 107.9 where the winner got a free wii. The contest was titled “Hold Your Wee for a Wii.”
A simple idea – everybody drinks water, the last to pee wins the Wii. Of course, there comes a time when one can drink too much water.
I’m not sure what’s worse… the radio station who didn’t research the effects of their contest, or all the media outlets who put Wii in the title in an attempt to either cast blame or grab more readers.
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January 15th, 2007
This quote comes courtesy of Time Magazine, however it was too good to NOT put out there…
It’s Dick Cheney talking about “Scooter” Libby, who is on trial for lying to a grand jury.
“I believe he’s one of the more honest men I know”
If that doesn’t tell you anything about our government, I dont’ know what does.
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January 15th, 2007
Today is Martin Luther King day. Many of you may have not noticed, but to us Detroiters it’s actually a rather big one. (although not big enough that I get today off of work.)
Anyway, if you haven’t yet heard MLK’s “I have a Dream” speech, go Listen to it. That website has it in audio, video, and text – so no excuses.
I’ll try to put this as politically correct as possible: This speech isn’t jsut for white / black / red / yellow / purple / green people… it’s for everybody. Today is a good day to remind everybody that racism doesn’t just exist in white against black, black against arab, or any other combination. Racism exists in all categories. There are blacks who hate whites too.
Racial hatred is an ugly thing – regardless of which race you are. I’ve heard a few people refer to today as James Earl Ray day and well, that’s just not right.
So regardless of what color you are, or whether or not you’re a victim or racism or part of the problem, whether or not you’ve heard the speech before, or even if you’ve never heard of martin luther king – today is a great day to listen, watch, or read the “I have a dream” speech.
January 15th, 2007
Those of you that know me know that I’ve been blogging since before blogging was a word. Back then we just called it writing, and not everybody had their own website. Back then only people who had something to say were blogging. Why?
It cost more. My first domain name was $35, and that was cheap! My hosting cost me $12/month for the most basic plan. There wasn’t even any blogging software like wordpress around. If we wanted to post, we learned perl and wrote our own content management system. My first site was stored entirely in delimited text files.
Anyway… I’ve been reading the A-list blogger sites, and I’ve realized there are 2 main reasons why I’m not an A-List blogger.
1. I don’t work for Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, or any other company you’ve heard of. I work for Car Guys, Inc. Because of that, I don’t have to run my posts through a lawyer or post the obligatory “the views expressed herein aren’t the views of Car Guys, Inc.” statement – even though they aren’t.
The downside though, is that most of you don’t care about my opinion on things. Would anybody care what Scoble had to say if he never worked at Microsoft? Would you even know who he is?
2. I don’t post cute kitten pics
It seems like everybody else posts Cute Cat Pictures.
Until Now…..
In the spirit of being a tech blogger, I just got myself a cat – sorta. It’s a bengal. A bengal is a cross between an asian leopard and a domestic cat. You can read more about them on Wikipedia. They’re really cool.
Bengals are like regular cats only faster, friendlyier, longer, and more curious. They also like to take walks on a leash, play fetch, hide and seek, and swim. That’s right, this cat isn’t only super cool looking, but he swims too! Pretty soon I’ll be teaching him how to use a toilet instead of a litter box. I’ll upload some pictures once he gets the hang of it.
Here’s another picture:
FYI, those aren’t my pink baseboards. The cat (who I’ve named whodey after the cincinatti bengals mascot) is currently visiting my aunt in Dallas. I’ll be picking him up soon.
January 12th, 2007
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