Category: FUBAR

Anyone who’s blogged likely knows about blog spam. It’s the scourge of the blogosphere — automated programs that search out blogs and auto-submit “ads” as comments — usually for gambling, erectile dysfunction drugs and porn. It forces responsible bloggers to moderate all comments.

Fortunately, WordPress’ Akismet plug-in does a good job of detecting spam, but for some reason, it considers comments from my email (using my @bigblueball.com address) as spam! A quick search on the WordPress forums shows that, yes, Akismet may have some false positives, but if you flag it as “not spam” enough times, Akismet supposedly learns to stop marking your comments as spam. So far, we’ve tried it with over four comments, but Akismet is still marking my comments as spam. Any suggestions?

This past week, a group of script kiddies found a way into my Paypal account. My Paypal account was tied to one of my bank accounts, and they promptly ran up over $500 in charges. How did it happen? Still not 100% sure, but it wasn’t through a phishing scheme. I’m savvy enough to quickly identify the all-too-common Paypal phishing schemes, and routinely report them when I receive them.

What tipped me off was when I got an email receipt from Paypal for a $160 purchase from Jelsoft. I own two Jelsoft vBulletin licenses, neither of which is up for renewal, so that made me tilt my head to the side and go “huh?”

I immediately checked my Paypal account and discovered ten transactions had been made. I got on the phone and called their customer service number. While on hold with Paypal, I forwarded a copy of the purchase receipt from Jelsoft back to them, explaining that someone has fraudulently used my Paypal account for the purchase.

The customer service representative at Paypal was very helpful, staying on the line with me while I went through the process of filling out the online dispute form — something that is desperately in need of a process redesign. She explained the process and reassured me that I’d get my money back.

Sure enough, the next day, the refund process had begun. However, this process is broken. The criminals who stole from my account were able to instantly transfer and spend money from my bank account. I got the money returned, not to my bank account, but to my Paypal account within a couple days. Unfortunately, I don’t use my Paypal account often enough to warrant keeping funds in there. What I really wanted was to move it back to the original bank account. I learned that to do so takes 3-4 business days. Unbelievable. My money was held hostage for a week.

I learned a few things from the experience.

1. If you use Paypal, you may want to reconsider tying it directly to a bank account, or at the very least, use a secondary account with limited funds to protect yourself from potential losses.
2. Pay attention to your email. I caught it fairly early, but it could’ve been a very different situation if I hadn’t been alert to my inbox.
3. Use strong passwords. I’ll admit, my password wasn’t the greatest. That’s all changed.
4. Use unique passwords. Don’t use the same password for every website and service that you sign up for.

I know that these tips aren’t anything new to you, nor are they new to me. I personally hate the fact that I’ve got a million different passwords to remember, but I’ve learned the hard way that convenience and security are mutually exclusive.

Yes, it happens to everyone. I went to digg an article this morning and found that Digg was indeed Down. No report on why or how long on their blog, but I was interested to see site recommendations from the Digg staff.

Amar recommends a BBC site about Planet Earth. As a long-time resident of this BigBlueBall, it naturally caught my eye, but it’s really more of a one-time visit type of site.

Rocketboom was Brian’s choice, which left me wondering if his selection was made in the Congdon days or afterwards.

Dan is apparently a big Oasis fan. All I remember them for is Wonderwall, but apparently they made other songs, too.

On the other hand, Daniel shares a site called Top Left Pixel, the wonderful photo blog of Sam Javanrouh. He posts one new photo each day.

Maybe his head is in the stars, but Eli gives us HubbleSite — with all things about the Hubble space telescope. I like the gallery, but I’ve never been a fan of astronomy.

Fearless leader Kevin gives us Ask a Ninja. Is this an insider view into the decision-making process of the Silicon Valley?

Jay shares one of my favorites, the Onion. Seriously, who doesn’t love good satire?

I have to wonder if Owen is the finance guy? His pick was Dealbreaker, an interesting blog on Wall Street. Did you know, for instance, that 60% of homosexuals rank online banking as important, compared to only 50% of heterosexuals. Neither did I.

If Owen is the finance guy, Steve must be the designer. He shares A List Apart, a great site for all things CSS.

They added a gratuituous, albeit “timeless” link to Wikipedia, links to the various LAMP components (hopefully they didn’t contribute to this downtime), and a plug for the Digg blog (which again, didn’t say why Digg was down). But all-in-all, an interesting way to share during that downtime. Maybe we could all take a page from their playbook.

technorati tags: digg, downtime

Stopped by Amazon to pay my month usage tax (don’t ask) and had to look twice and rub my eyes to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. Yep, right there on the Amazon home pages was my very own plog.

Of course after got over the initial shock, I had to ask — what the hell is a plog? Sounds worse than a blog, for God’s sake!

Thankfully, Amazon kindly provided an answer:

"Your Amazon.com Plog is a personalized web log that appears on your customer home page. Every person’s Plog is different (hence the name) and just like a blog, your Plog is sorted in reverse chronological order. Each post also gives you the opportunity to provide feedback to the sender as to whether you liked the post or not. This feedback loop means your Plog becomes even more relevant and interesting over time. Your Plog will appear if you are logged into our web site and is visible only to you."

The whole thing sounds stupid to me, and raises an important question. If "blog" is short for "web log," wouldn’t "personal web log" be more appropriately abbreviated "pblog?" Oh no, that would be really stupid.   

technorati tags: amazon, plog, rant

Few things irk me more than running across a “me too” website that steals my content without so much as a link back. This site was caught lifting this article from BigBlueBall verbatim, including a hotlink to an image I created and host.

I’d send a complaint letter to their hosting service, but their identity is concealed. A WHOIS inquiry yeilded the following information:

Registrant:
Domains by Proxy, Inc.

DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: ILOVEIM.COM
Created on: 12-Feb-05
Expires on: 12-Feb-07
Last Updated on: 26-Jan-06

Administrative Contact:
Private, Registration ILOVEIM.COM@domainsbyproxy.com
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
(480) 624-2599

Technical Contact:
Private, Registration ILOVEIM.COM@domainsbyproxy.com
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
(480) 624-2599

Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.EVERYDNS.NET
NS2.EVERYDNS.NET

Registry Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK

Any suggestions on how to combat this?

I’ll admit, I put a lot on my plate. More than I should, at times, but there’s a lot that I want to do. Yesterday I read how scientists are developing new drugs that will allow people to survive on only two hours of sleep a day. These ‘lifestyle’ drugs will supposedly deliver sleep that is deeper and more refreshing than the real thing in a fraction of the time.

The idea of a pharmacological solution to the ‘problem’ of sleep isn’t so far-fetched. We already have drugs like Modafinil which allow people to wake up refreshed after just four hours of sleep. It’s regularly dispensed to soldiers and pilots, and though it’s intended use is to curb the symptoms of narcolepsy, business travelers have been known to use it to counteract jet lag.  

Does this sound good to you? How about the story of a Vietnamese farmer who hasn’t slept in 33 years. I’m skeptical of the authenticity of the report, but it does raise an interesting question. We love to joke about wanting a longer day. "There just aren’t enough hours in the day…" But if we could radically reduce the amount of sleep we required, with no adverse physical impact, would our lives be richer?

If you could live on just two hours of sleep, what would you do with the ‘extra’ hours?

technorati tags: sleep, circadian

Google Gmail Chat now includes animated smileys or emoticons. Is this a sign of what’s to come for Google Talk? We’ve already seen a preview of buddy icons in Talk. Now that they are working with AOL, can we expect more of the same?

read more | digg story