Sunday, August 24, 2003
- Mark Nottingham: The Atom Syndication Format (PRE-DRAFT).
- Mark Nottingham: Atomic Draft.
If you have been participating in the Atom project, go to the ContributorsList and add yourself, so you can get credited [in the spec].
- Joe Gregorio: The HTTP verb PUT under Apache: Safe or Dangerous?
- ReUSEIT: a contest to redesign Jakob Nielsen’s site. Hope it’s more successful than the last attempt.
- Raymond Chen: Why does Windows 95 have functions called BEAR, BUNNY and PIGLET? I’m not sure which is more disturbing, the question or the answer.
- Use an extended desktop with your iBook.
- Sinjin’s Oddworld Walkthrough.
- Michael Barrish: Toast.
This is true, and anyway when have I ever lied to you.
- Joe Gregorio: Eco-Scooter. Insert your own
Echo
joke here.
- To everyone working overtime at an ISP or datacenter during the latest round of Microsoft worms and viruses: you have my utmost sympathy and respect. To everyone whining because their obsolete designed-for-casual-use mail software and their default ISP’s non-filtering mail server didn’t protect them: shut the fuck up and learn to protect yourself. I use a combination of SpamAssassin, SpamCop, Mozilla Mail’s junk mail filter, additional hand-coded filters, and IMAP to keep my inbox sane. I use ad-blocking software, user stylesheets, and a custom hosts file to keep my web browsing sane. I maintain rigorous script filters to keep my referrer logs sane. I use .htaccess to ban abusive robots, dynamic spambot traps to catch new ones, and nightly reports to find the ones I’ve missed. Everything requires maintenance.
Filed under apple, linkdump, security, spam, webservices
Yes, but should being online require THAT MUCH? You and I do this for a living, but the average user can’t spend the time to write his own user definable CSS and custom filters. Silly rabbit :)
Comment by James — Sunday, August 24, 2003 @ 10:29 pm
You assume that everyone can protect themselves. At home I am Master of all Computers. At work, however, I’m not given admin rights nor allowed to install or update anything. Your STFU doesn’t apply to most of the people I know who were hit; they know how to do protect themselves but are at the mercy of professionals.
Comment by Bryan L. Fordham — Sunday, August 24, 2003 @ 10:38 pm
Obviously if you’re in a restricted environment then you’re at the mercy of that environment. But the people I heard whining last week have had ample opportunity to protect themselves. Instead, they chose to fritter away their time until it became a crisis, and then moan that email was useless.
I rely on my inbox as much as the next guy (I work remotely for Pete’s sake), but I actively maintain it and it weathered this latest crisis just fine, thankyouverymuch. In fact, the last time it was flooded with crap was when someone specifically targeted me and incited his readers to mailbomb me.
Comment by Mark — Sunday, August 24, 2003 @ 10:56 pm
To keep my email sane, I’ve been using SpamBayes for Microsoft Outlook (a client-side bayesian spam filter for Outlook). I discovered a simple truth about email viruses: if I don’t ever see them, I never have to worry about accidentally opening one.
http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/
Comment by Ken Walker — Sunday, August 24, 2003 @ 11:21 pm
The incited emails might be insightful. You ought to publish them!
Comment by Robb Beal — Sunday, August 24, 2003 @ 11:32 pm
Mark,
Would you care to publish somewhere your user stylesheets ?
They would probably be useful as a starting point for people who browse but do not maintain a site, and thus have little incentive to start learning CSS.
Thanks in advance.
Comment by txm — Monday, August 25, 2003 @ 8:47 am
Many tutorials and examples of ad-blocking user stylesheets can be found with a Google search of “ad block css”. Here are some examples:
http://www.beatnikpad.com/archives/2003/03/08/000430.php
http://www.codepoetry.net/archives/2003/04/12/block_those_ads_in_safaricaminomozillaphoenix.php
http://www.floppymoose.com/ (this is the one I use)
Comment by Mark — Monday, August 25, 2003 @ 10:25 am
Do your spam filters are really safe? Maybe they catch clean email… Ever happened?
Comment by Lawrence Oluyede — Monday, August 25, 2003 @ 4:05 pm
Gosh! I entered my email instead of the URL :)
Comment by Lawrence Oluyede — Monday, August 25, 2003 @ 4:06 pm
Here are some non-destructive things I do with my user style sheet:
* Highlight unvisited image links with a solid blue border and visited image links with a dashed purple border.
* Put a red icon next to each link to mozilla.org.
* Show named anchors.
I also use it to avoid and disable some things:
* Disable the BLINK tag.
* Hide form reset buttons.
* Cross out links to certain gross-image sites.
* Replace Flash with a “Click to play this flash animation” button (uses XBL).
These and other examples are at http://www.squarefree.com/userstyles/ . A copy of my user style sheet is at http://www.squarefree.com/userstyles/userContent.css.txt .
Comment by Jesse Ruderman — Monday, August 25, 2003 @ 5:36 pm