Author Archives: Maria Langer

Fighting Spam — All Kinds

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How I deal with comment and pingback spam.

I start each morning pretty much the same way. I make myself a cup of coffee, make a scrambled egg for my parrot, and then sit down at the kitchen table and check the comments that came into my blog overnight.

About Spam

The main thing I’m checking for each morning is comment and pingback spam. These are similar but different.

  • Comment spam is a comment that exists solely to provide one or more links to another Web site, usually to promote that site or its services, but possibly to just get links to that site to improve Google rankings. Comment spam ads nothing to the site’s value. Sometimes disguised as a guest book entry or general positive comment — for example, “Great blog! I’ll be back!” accompanied by a link or two — it simply isn’t something the average blogger should want on his or her site.
  • Pingback spam is a comment that appears as a result of a link on another blog pinging your blog. Although many pingbacks are legitimate (as many comments are legitimate), there appears to be a rise in pingbacks as a result of feed scraping, which I’ve discussed here and here. Pingback spam is usually pretty easy to spot; the software that scapes the feeds isn’t very creative, so the excerpt is usually an exact quote from what’s been scraped. Sometimes, oddly enough, the quote is from the copyright notice that appears at the bottom of every feed item originating from this site. Pingbacks automate the linking of your site to someone elses — in the case of pingback spam, it’s likely to be a splogger.

Lucky me: I get both.

Tools to Fight Comment Spam

Fortunately, I use both Bad Behavior and Spam Karma 2 (many thanks again to Miraz for suggesting both of these), so the spam comments that get through their filters and are actually posted to the site are minimized. On a typical day, I might just have 3 to 5 of them. Compare that to 3,400 potential spam messages stopped by Bad Behavior in the past week and the 51,000 spam messages deleted after posting by Spam Karma in the past year since its installation. Without these two forms of protection, I’d be spending all day cleaning up spam.

Anyone who doesn’t use some kind of spam protection on a blog with open comments is, well, an idiot.

Neither program is very effective against pingback spam, although Spam Karma seems to be catching a few of them these days. Although I’m pretty sure I can set up WordPress to reject pingbacks, I like the idea of getting legitimate links from other blogs. It helps form a community. And it provides a service to my readers. For example, if I wrote an article about something and another blogger quoted my work and added his insight to it, his article might interest my readers. Having a link in my comments right to his related post is a good thing.

My Routine

So my morning routine consists of checking Spam Karma’s “Approved Comments” and marking the comments that are spam as spam. Then I go into WordPress’s Comments screen (Dashboard > Manage > Comments) and marking pingback spam as spam and deleting it.

Why do it both ways? Well, I’m concerned that if I keep telling Spam Karma that pingback spam is spam, it’ll think all pingbacks are spam. I don’t want it to do that. So I manually delete them. It only takes a minute or two, so it isn’t a big deal. If I had hundreds of these a day, I might do things differently.

The other reason I delete the pingbacks manually is because I want to check each site that’s pinging mine. I collect URLs of splogging sites and submit them periodically to Google. These sites violate Google’s Terms of Service and I’m hoping Google will either cancel their AdSense accounts or remove them from Google’s search indexing (or, preferably, both). So I send the links to Google and Google supposedly looks at them.

I’m working on a project to make creating a DMCA notice easier — almost automated — and would love to hear from anyone working on a project like that.

This morning was quiet. Only three spams to kill: one comment spam and two pingback spams. I’ll get a few more spams during the day and kill them as they arrive; WordPress notifies me via e-mail of all comments and pingbacks as they are received. (I don’t check my e-mail at the breakfast table anymore.)

Do you have a special way to deal with comment or pingback spam? Don’t keep it a secret. Leave a Comment below.

Aircraft User Fees

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And why general aviation pilots and businesses should be fighting back.

There’s been a lot of talk — and fighting against — the Bush Administration’s “Next Generation Air Transportation System Financing Reform Act of 2007.” I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t have all the details. But here are a few things that seem pretty clear to me.

Higher Fees Hurt Business

The User Fee system proposed by the Bush Administration may severely cut the activities of general aviation pilots. According to AOPA President Phil Boyer, “Nine out of 10 AOPA members have told us that this would reduce, curtail, or end their flying.” What’s that going to do for the aviation industry? As current pilots who can no longer afford to fly regularly sell off their aircraft, the used aircraft market becomes flooded. Fewer people will be buying new aircraft, so manufacturers will suffer. Suppliers to those manufacturers will suffer, as will employees all around.

As costs increase for general aviation businesses like flight schools, charter services, and tour outfits, those costs get passed along to consumers. That drives prices up, possibly making these services too costly for the marketplace. There are fewer customers. Businesses fail. This continues the cycle of used aircraft sales and unemployment.

Proposal Seems to Ask General Aviation Pilots to Bail Out Airlines

Shifting the cost of ATC services from airlines — which are responsible for hundreds of thousands of passenger hours a day — to general aviation is simply unfair. Many of these companies are failing financially because of their top-heavy management organization and unreasonable pay scales. Why is it that some airlines — Southwest comes to mind — are financially fit and offer good service to their customers while other airlines — think United — can’t stay afloat without government funds and pension rule changes? Could it be that some companies are simply managed better than others?

Do you think it would be fair for all people who use banks to pay a certain tax to the government for a fund that’ll bail out mismanaged banks that go under? Like the ones that gave out mortgages to anyone capable of writing their name on a form, no matter what their financial situation was?

Or how about a tax on drivers to be put in a fund to bail out automakers who don’t build the cars we want to buy at a price want to pay?

Or a tax on homeowners living in the desert for a fund that rebuilds oceanfront summer homes destroyed by hurricanes?

Is any of that fair?

Get Involved!

If you think the administration’s proposal is a bad one — or even if you want to learn more — get involved. If you’re an AOPA member, you can sign up to get e-mail notifications of developments, as well as instructions on how you can contact your government representatives to tell them what you think.

You can also go to this page to get more information about the funding debate.

Don’t wait until it’s too late. Act now.

Is America a Free Speech Zone?

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Apparently not.

I just read an article on Wired.com, “NYPD Intellligence Op Targets Dot-Matrix Graffiti Bike.” The article provides background information about a bicycle built by Joshua Kinberg which uses computer technology to spray dot-matrix characters in water-soluable chalk on pavement as he rides. This same bicycle was featured on a number of popular Web sites, as well as Popular Science magazine.

Kinberg, a proponent of our First Amendment right to free speech, had planned to use the bike to spray messages around the streets of New York during the 2004 Republican National Convention. As reported in the article:

Though they’d never seen him use the bike, the police arrested Kinberg on criminal mischief charges prior to the convention start, during an interview on Broadway Avenue [sic] with MSNBC’s Ron Reagan. The arrest took place on a spot where, two days earlier, Kinberg had printed out the water-soluble message, “America is a free speech zone” during an interview with MSNBC’s Countdown With Keith Olbermann.

The article goes on to provide information about how the NYPD had been collecting information about Kinberg and his bicycle long before the arrest was made, thus proving a “premeditated desire” to prevent his project.

It’s been more than a year since the arrest. Although Kinberg has gotten his computer and cell phone back — both of which were part of the bicycle’s equipment — the police still have the bicycle. In addition, the NYPD will not release Kinberg’s file, so he has no idea what kind of “information” has been collected about him. (Sounds a bit like Big Brother style secrets to me.)

You can learn more about Kinberg’s efforts on his Web site, Bikes Against Bush.

24

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For what they’re worth, some of my thoughts about this hit television series.

I don’t watch much television. Frankly, I have better things to do with my time. And the commercials absolutely drive me bonkers.

We have a DVR — that’s Dish Network’s version of a Tivo. You set it up with the television shows you want to watch and it records them. You can then watch them any time you like. This is one of only two ways I’ll watch television these days because it enables me to fast-forward through all the commercials.

The shows I watch regularly include Boston Legal (which a friend told us about) and Monk (which I discovered on my own). Boston Legal is hysterically funny, but each episode gives you something serious to think about. Monk is pretty stupid, but I like the Monk character’s idiosyncrasies. We used to watch Stargate SG-1, but it appears to have gone off the air. I watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, although Mike doesn’t seem as interested in their brands of comedy as I am. I also occasionally watch Modern Marvels, Nova, Scientific American Frontiers, and various other shows on the History, Discovery, and PBS channels.

Netflix, Inc.Ad

The other way I watch television is on DVD. We’ll discover a show — like Boston Legal — decide we like it, then start renting previous season episodes from Netflix. When the disc comes, we’ll watch two or four episodes in a single night — a kind of television marathon. It isn’t bad, since each hour-long episode is only 40 minutes with the commercials stripped out. That’s 2 hours and 40 minutes of tube time if you watch all four episodes on a disc in the same night. We’ll do that until we’re caught up with the current season, then let the DVR take over.

24 was a bit different for us. I heard about it a bunch of places, but not having a water cooler in my office, I didn’t get much information about it. Then I heard an interview with Bill Clinton and he mentioned that he likes the show. Say what you want about that particular former president, but one thing that’s indisputable is his level of intelligence. He’s a smart guy and he likes the show. Maybe there was something to that. I decided to give it a try.

Apple iTunes

Of course, we didn’t want to start watching it mid-season. I knew enough about the show to know that it was a season-long story and coming in in the middle of it wasn’t the best way to get the whole thing. And I worried about the DVR screwing up recording and skipping an episode here or there — which it sometimes does, if you don’t monitor the timers. So we went straight to DVD.

The first season’s first four episodes arrived right before our trip to Howard Mesa for Christmas. Howard Mesa doesn’t have a television. It doesn’t have much of anything in the way of after-dark entertainment. So we brought along my MacBook Pro and, in the evening after dinner, set it up on a folding table in front of the sofa. And that was how I watched the first four episodes.

I could see the appeal. Lots of action and drama. A mystery to draw you in. Uncertainty about the motivations of many characters — who could you — or should I say, Jack Bauer — trust? And that damn ticking clock.

After the first four episodes, we were hooked.

But we weren’t hooked in a good way. Each episode’s cliffhanger made us want to watch the next episode, but on discussion of what we were watching, we agreed that it wasn’t all that good. There was a lot of secondary plot stuff that was obviously in there for fill. (This is truer about the second season than the first.) And the characters — especially Jack Bauer’s wife and daughter — did dumb things that got them into trouble. Really dumb things. Big trouble. It was hard to have empathy with them because they were such big screw-ups. In fact, more than a few times, I wished they’d just go away. (So the end of the first season didn’t upset me in the least.)

And let’s not even get into how implausible many of the plot points were. The idea that so many characters could do so much in a 24-hour period without dropping from exhaustion is very difficult to believe. Adrenaline only goes so far. I remember the last time I pulled an all-nighter and how I felt at Hour 20. The first season started at midnight, so you have to assume the characters were up since at least 8 AM the previous morning. So midnight is already at least Hour 16 for them. And what is it with CTU? Don’t those poor people ever get to go home?

I don’t want to go into plot details since I don’t want to spoil the show for people who haven’t seen it. Implausibility aside, the plots aren’t bad. Lots of twists — perhaps too many? — that lure you into trusting people who turn out to be bad guys (or gals). That in itself is very distracting. Once you get the rhythm of the trusted-character-is-really-bad discovery cycle, you start wondering which one will be next on the block.

Of course, all this might have to do with the way we watch 24 — four episodes in a single night, sometimes a week or more between viewings. No commercials, so the plot and action is packed right in. That’s definitely one way to catch errors in continuity — like lost cell phones that suddenly re-materialize (How is it that they can always reach Jack Bauer by phone in Season 2 when his daughter needs to speak to him?) and injuries that are serious in one episode but barely noticeable four hours later? And how about Season 2’s violence in Georgia that’s a big deal in one or two episodes and never discussed again?

And then there’s the character of Jack Bauer himself. A counter-terrorist superman who is a bit too human at the wrong times. Sure, he doesn’t have any trouble blowing away a character and cutting off his head, but when his daughter is on the phone, his brain shifts into neutral while he melts into his daddy role. It’s hard to believe that a man so toughened by his past can have such a soft side. And when did he get that tough past? He’s not that old and his daughter is in her late teens in that first season. Doing counter-terrorism missions for the government isn’t like going to a sales conference in St. Louis. It takes training and time. Can they really expect viewers to believe that a man like Jack Bauer could have a solid family relationship?

Whatever.

Last night we finished Season 2. Now we are debating whether we want to dive into another season. I was very surprised to learn that the show is already up to Season 6 (I think). I didn’t know it had been on television that long. (I really don’t keep up with these things.) It’s obviously a big hit. And it is entertaining. But I don’t like the idea of feeling that I need to watch every single episode of a television show.

I’ll let Mike decide.

In the meantime, I moved The Good Shepherd up to the top of my Netflix queue. We’ll take a nice, long break from the world of Jack Bauer. I don’t think we’ll miss him.

Tennessee Tea Cakes?

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No. T-cakes!

A few weeks ago, I offered helicopter rides at the Big Sandy shoot, northeast of Wikieup, AZ. (I wrote about it in “The Big Sandy Shoot, Take 2.”) Among my passengers that weekend was a man and his two sons. The man, Steve, was so thrilled with his ride that he took my mailing address and promised to send me some Tennessee tea cakes.

Tea cakes? Anything that’s a cake is fine with me.

Time passed. I never really expected Steve to remember about the tea cakes. So imagine my surprise when the UPS guy rolled up with a small box from Tennessee.

I opened the box. Inside was a tin full of Tennessee T-Cakes.

T-Cakes! Not tea cakes. I’d heard the letter T as the word tea. Silly me.

How can I describe these things? They’re small cookie-like cakes that are sweet and covered with powdered sugar. They’re soft and a tiny bit chewy. Quite tasty.

The cakes came with a thank you note from Steve and a little card that reported the Legend of the Tennessee T-Cake. A nice little gift.

Thank you, Steve!