I have recently been hit with a whole bunch of online poker comment SPAM. My SPAM filters have been happily blocking it however. While doing some lookups on the hosts sending the information I was worried to see how many appeared to be trojaned legitimate webservers.
One of the methods I use to prevent comment SPAM are Completely Automated Public Turing tests to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHAs). These have long been in use and it seems some research is being done to try and defeat them (one, two, three)
Possible solutions to the problem involve using audio files, logic problems (e.g. 5 + 2 = ), and Anti-OCR fonts. So far I have found a simple word filter to be the most effective, particularly with SPAMmers using the same words all the time.
While going through some of my step-father's things I found an e-mail he had sent to his long time friend, Homer, describing his view on the Middle East and America's handling of it. Now Homer is a hardcore Republican and Don was a Democrat, hence the jibes. Don was an ex-pat American who fought in the Korean war and lived in Saudi Arabia for many years working for Aramco (a big oil company). Below is a copy of the e-mail which I found very enlightening from a man who has a thorough understanding of America, the Middle East and Oil.
Continue reading "On the Middle East and Lebanon"
Carl and I are in the car driving back to Grahamstown and Rhodes University after a very eventful two weeks. I have managed to meet two of my heros, Maddog and Lessig, and have learned more than I could have in two weeks of lectures.
I know the people from 'developed' nations reading this will think it boring, but GPRS via Bluetooth on a laptop in the car is just very cool. I patched my machines using some fairly bog standard unix tools (apt) in the car. Mobile patching, I swear I could get a paper out of it :).
UPDATE: We are now home, and I have a bad case of sinusitis and a lot of work to catch up.UPDATE: Here is the official decision from the court. Also Bug-E has some nice references.
UPDATE: Changed cyber lawyer to cyber-law researcher at Lunda's request. Supposedly SA is quite strict on the distinction.
I have just got home from the conference launch of Creative Commons South Africa. To honour this my blog has been relicensed under the Creative Commons South Africa license (ok I haven't yet, but the second I get this plugin sorted...). This is the same license as the universal Creative Commons but interpreted for South African law.
Check out the coverage of the conference at The Rhodes New Media lab. They have done a great job, they even have moblogging.
Continue reading "Creative Commons South Africa Launch"
We arrived early Tuesday morning and started working for the conference organisers straight away. This mainly consisted of sorting out the awful registration system. I then maned the door and make sure people filled out speaker evaluation forms. D-Arb set up the speaker's laptop, and I got to use some geek-fu to killall xscreensaver, dialogs are for sissies. It was pretty menial labour, but a free pass is a free pass.
I did get a brief chance to shake Mark Shuttleworth's hand, but no real conversation. Mark gave the first keynote. His focus was mainly on how the industry will change to adopt open source and what is needed on a desktop. Here is a summary:
Continue reading "Linux World Day 1"
There are two advisories already available and a decent FAQ to explain things better than I have.
i am getting up in a few hours to travel to the Sandton conference center for Linux World! I am quite excited. A huge thanks must go to the Go Open campaign for sponsoring near on R20k of conference fees for us. Also to the Rhodes University Computer Science department for the transport, then to Darb for organising it all and doing half the driving with Ingrid.
I am off to polish my biceps for the heavy lifting we will be doing in return for Go Open.
Continue reading "Don Stuart Mastriforte"
