"Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town"
When you take a good hard look at the Santa Claus Mythos, you realize he's a creepy, spooky freak with some very disturbing moralistic obsessions. Let's, for the moment at least, set aside the racially pure work force and the fact that he lives in an isolated compound outside the jurisdiction of international law. For the moment, we'll also ignore the fact that he only gives to people celebrating the Christian extensions to what is otherwise a Pagan holiday. (Do some research, there's precious little about the holiday we call "Christmas" that isn't Pagan in origin. The tree, gift exchange, most the food and even the idea of a Pageant performed by the kids are all of Pagan origin) Let's look at a single song, just for starters.
"Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town"
You better watch out
You better not cry
You better not pout
I'm telling you why
Santa Claus is coming to town
Santa Claus is coming to town
Santa Claus is coming to town
We start off with an list of behaviors to avoid because "Santa" is coming to town. Clearly, there will be unfavorable consequences if this figure is displeased. Since the behaviors are ones that are considered rude and inappropriate ways to express disagreement anyway, it's not necessarily a terrible threat, it just sounds a lot like the old "Wait until your father gets home" or the "You be on your best behavior while we're at Grandma's". So far, it's more parental than anything else.
He's making a list,
Checking it twice;
Gonna find out who's naughty or nice.
Now we're stepping into unpleasant territory. He's making a list of the people who behave the way he likes, and the people who behave in a manner he does not like. While still a bit parental, we're getting into "stalker" or "Big Brother" territory. We don't know what the list is for, or what will happen to the people designated as "Naughty" on said list.
Santa Claus is coming to town
Santa Claus is coming to town
Santa Claus is coming to town
An increasingly ominous refrain. He's coming, and he's making a list.
He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake
Now we're getting into some disturbing content. This is a clear statement of 24 hour surveillance. Unconstitutional if the government does it, quite illegal if an individual or a corporation does it. You are being watched, and your actives logged for later review. Not only that, but you're being judged based on these actions.
Privacy concerns are ignored by this "Santa" as blatantly as if he were a member of the Bush Administration.
Notice that there are NO options for appeal or introduction of extenuating circumstances. The ONLY indication we have of the parameters of how we are being evaluated come from the beginning of the song and the list of prohibited behaviors above.
With little tin horns and little toy drums
Rooty toot toots and rummy tum tums
Santa Claus is coming to town
Santa Claus is coming to town
Santa Claus is coming to town
Here we have a claim that his arrival will be noisy and easily noticed, despite all of the propaganda we've heard to the contrary of him sneaking around and dropping down chimneys. What's the message here? Is this intended to sooth us with claims of the process being in the open, or is it a slip in the Claus Propaganda machine?
He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake
A repetition of just how pervasive the surveillance really is. The message is clear. YOU ARE BEING WATCHED.
You better watch out
You better not cry
You better not pout
Yet another repetition of the prohibited behaviors. Notice what you're not allowed to do. You're not allowed to express dissent or dissatisfaction with the world around you. When first stated, it was fairly innocuous, but after the lines regarding pervasive surveillance, it becomes downright frightening.
We're not just talking about being punished for making a scene, but for pouting when you're otherwise alone. This is clear monitoring of your behavior even when you would otherwise have an expectation of privacy. Is your diary being read to check for signs of dissent? You're clearly not permitted to "Cry" or "Pout" even when alone. This is becoming very Orwellian.
I'm telling you why
Santa Claus is coming to town
Santa Claus is coming to town
Santa Claus is coming
Santa Claus is coming
Santa Claus is coming to town
Yes, he's coming, He's watching your every move for any sign of dissent. If you show any signs of dissent, you'll end up designated as "Naughty" on his all pervasive and meticulously complete list. What will happen to the dissidents?
The ultimate message?
Conform, even in your thoughts and heart of hearts, or suffer the consequences.
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Meet the New Bunny!
Monday, November 22, 2004
Never buying another PalmPilot Again
The Palm Pilot I currently own is the LAST one I will ever buy. I, and many other customers, were really screwed over when the Wi-Fi card for the T2 and other models was killed not for technology reasons, but marketing ones. Palm decided they would rather keep working Wi-Fi cards and built in Wi-Fi restricted to the higher end models, even though the T2 hardware would support a Wi-Fi card as easily as any other model.
I bought the T2 because Palm's site made it sound like a Wi-Fi card was on the edge of release. The reality turned out to be they were feeding us a line of BS to push products to customers they HAD to know would be unhappy with being screwed over.
If I had gotten accurate information from the Palm web site, if they'd said "No card will be released for the T2" instead of claiming it was being developed, I would have gotten something else.
No, I'm never buying Palm again. I don't really care what they do with hardware, they've demonstrated they don't care about their customers and are happy to lie to them for short term gains.
I really don't like Microsoft or their products, but Palm is no longer on my list of options.
I bought the T2 because Palm's site made it sound like a Wi-Fi card was on the edge of release. The reality turned out to be they were feeding us a line of BS to push products to customers they HAD to know would be unhappy with being screwed over.
If I had gotten accurate information from the Palm web site, if they'd said "No card will be released for the T2" instead of claiming it was being developed, I would have gotten something else.
No, I'm never buying Palm again. I don't really care what they do with hardware, they've demonstrated they don't care about their customers and are happy to lie to them for short term gains.
I really don't like Microsoft or their products, but Palm is no longer on my list of options.
Friday, November 12, 2004
Done with Thunderbird, never to use it again
I'd like to start by saying that Firebird is my primary web browser, and I'm not a fan of Microsoft products, so it took a great deal of frustration with Thunderbird to get me to leave it entirely, but I have.
Thunderbird has two critical flaws that render it more trouble than it's worth. These are show stopper bugs for me, and I have no intention of touching Thunderbird again until they are addressed.
The first one, the one that I was going to try and ignore, had to do with upgrading from one version to another. Thunderbird would always lose my settings, and I'd have to go through a couple of hours of hoop jumping to get it to see the folders for my three work mail accounts. It was not fun, and I really didn't appreciate the fact that I had to go through all the convoluted "Migrate your settings" steps to get my messages back just because I upgraded from 0.7 to 0.8.
The second bug, the one that's wasted half a work day and a chunk of last night had to do with Compacting Folders.
Thunderbird uses the mbox format for storing it's data, and when you "delete" a message, it's not actually deleted from the text file that stores the data for that folder, it just marks the message as "deleted." Specifically, it sets "X-Mozilla-Status" to "0019".
Most mail clients do this.
What most other clients have, however, is a functional "Compact Folder" feature that can generally be configured.
What compacting a folder does is remove all of the messages that are flagged as "deleted" so the only messages actually in the folder are the ones that are NOT deleted.
Thunderbird 0.8 does not actually compact it's folders. It has menu options that claim to do it, and you can set thresholds at which Thunderbird will supposedly compact folders, but none of them actually cause Thunderbird to DO anything.
The end result, is I have a 1.5 GIG Thunderbird Mail folder.
One fun example is the Inbox on my primary account. Right now, there are NO messages in the inbox. It's empty, there's nothing there.
The inbox file is 169 MEGS.
I open the file up in VI, and what do I see? Every message I've ever received in that account recorded with the line "X-Mozilla-Status: 0019"
They're all "deleted" but they're still all there.
SO I did the natural thing. I right clicked on the folder and selected "Compact This Folder" and let it run.
Sometimes the throbber goes for five minutes. Last night was a couple hours. No matter how long I let it run, or how long it takes to build a "Summary file for Inbox" the file size does not change.
There were TWO messages in it, and lo and behold, it took Thunderbird FIVE MINUTES after launch to show them. It reports a blank mailbox until it finishes parsing the 169 MEG inbox.
I spent a good deal of time combing Google and Google Groups for answers. I even installed an extension that claimed to add a button for compacting folders, but no luck.
So I'm done. The bloated files have made the program slow and unmanageable. The hard drive is trashing needlessly, and I have massive files eating up my laptop's precious hard drive space to store messages that I deleted.
Emptying the trash does nothing.
File->Compact Folders does nothing.
I don't want to hear I should use a third party utility to compact the folders. It's a rudimentary function of a mail client, and if I have to install a third party program to do it, then the mail client is clearly note being coded properly.
So I'm done with Thunderbird. I might take another look when it hits 1.0, but if my tests show it still can't compact folders successfully, then I'll have to stick with Outlook.
Thunderbird has two critical flaws that render it more trouble than it's worth. These are show stopper bugs for me, and I have no intention of touching Thunderbird again until they are addressed.
The first one, the one that I was going to try and ignore, had to do with upgrading from one version to another. Thunderbird would always lose my settings, and I'd have to go through a couple of hours of hoop jumping to get it to see the folders for my three work mail accounts. It was not fun, and I really didn't appreciate the fact that I had to go through all the convoluted "Migrate your settings" steps to get my messages back just because I upgraded from 0.7 to 0.8.
The second bug, the one that's wasted half a work day and a chunk of last night had to do with Compacting Folders.
Thunderbird uses the mbox format for storing it's data, and when you "delete" a message, it's not actually deleted from the text file that stores the data for that folder, it just marks the message as "deleted." Specifically, it sets "X-Mozilla-Status" to "0019".
Most mail clients do this.
What most other clients have, however, is a functional "Compact Folder" feature that can generally be configured.
What compacting a folder does is remove all of the messages that are flagged as "deleted" so the only messages actually in the folder are the ones that are NOT deleted.
Thunderbird 0.8 does not actually compact it's folders. It has menu options that claim to do it, and you can set thresholds at which Thunderbird will supposedly compact folders, but none of them actually cause Thunderbird to DO anything.
The end result, is I have a 1.5 GIG Thunderbird Mail folder.
One fun example is the Inbox on my primary account. Right now, there are NO messages in the inbox. It's empty, there's nothing there.
The inbox file is 169 MEGS.
I open the file up in VI, and what do I see? Every message I've ever received in that account recorded with the line "X-Mozilla-Status: 0019"
They're all "deleted" but they're still all there.
SO I did the natural thing. I right clicked on the folder and selected "Compact This Folder" and let it run.
Sometimes the throbber goes for five minutes. Last night was a couple hours. No matter how long I let it run, or how long it takes to build a "Summary file for Inbox" the file size does not change.
There were TWO messages in it, and lo and behold, it took Thunderbird FIVE MINUTES after launch to show them. It reports a blank mailbox until it finishes parsing the 169 MEG inbox.
I spent a good deal of time combing Google and Google Groups for answers. I even installed an extension that claimed to add a button for compacting folders, but no luck.
So I'm done. The bloated files have made the program slow and unmanageable. The hard drive is trashing needlessly, and I have massive files eating up my laptop's precious hard drive space to store messages that I deleted.
Emptying the trash does nothing.
File->Compact Folders does nothing.
I don't want to hear I should use a third party utility to compact the folders. It's a rudimentary function of a mail client, and if I have to install a third party program to do it, then the mail client is clearly note being coded properly.
So I'm done with Thunderbird. I might take another look when it hits 1.0, but if my tests show it still can't compact folders successfully, then I'll have to stick with Outlook.
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Blocking some BLOG SPAM
handy URL gave me the initial code to start with. The code samples
started off with and older version of Movable Type, but I've updated it
a bit and come up with something that will block the BLOG SPAM I've
been getting.
So, borrowing some text from the parent post, here are the changes
necessary for Movable Type Version 3.01D
You will be adding some code to /{your MT
directory}/lib/MT/App/Comments.pm
Starting around line 229 is this block of code:
if (!$q->param('text')) {
return $app->handle_error($app->translate("Comment text is required."));
}Add some code to get this:
if (!$q->param('text')) {
return $app->handle_error($app->translate("Comment text is required."));
}
#Begin inserted anti SPAM-BLOG Code
else {
if (($q->param('text') =~ m/poker online/)
or ($q->param('text') =~ m/chat\.ru/)
){
return $app->handle_error($app->translate(
"Prohibited data"));
return $app->handle_error($app->errstr());
}
}#End outer ELSE
#END inserted anti SPAM-BLOG CodeThe two regular expressions will give an error message on any comments that contain poker online or chat.ru and yes, the matches are case sensitive, but that can be changed by a few quick tweaks to the Regular Expressions.
Next, you'll want to filter the URLS people enter. Around line 273, you'll see some code starting with:
if ($comment->url) {
require MT::Util;
if (my $fixed = MT::Util::is_valid_url($comment->url)) {
$comment->url($fixed);You want this block of code to be:
if ($comment->url) {
require MT::Util;
if (my $fixed = MT::Util::is_valid_url($comment->url)) {
$comment->url($fixed);
}else {
return $app->handle_error($app->translate(
"Invalid URL '[_1]'", $comment->url));
}
#Begin inserted anti SPAM-BLOG Code
if ((($comment->url) =~ m/poker/)
or (($comment->url) =~ m/chat\.ru/)
){
return $app->handle_error($app->translate(
"Prohibited data"));
return $app->handle_error($app->errstr());
}
#END inserted anti SPAM-BLOG Code
}
return $app->handle_error($app->errstr()) unless $comment;
Sunday, November 7, 2004
SPAM Whois Data
The jackass below owns a domain that is being sent to me via SPAM:
Anyone in the New York area care to check this location out and see if it's real? If not, I can start trying to get the domain yanked based on invalid WHOIS data.
Domain ID:D8018981-LRMS
Domain Name:IBASKFHE.INFO
Created On:03-Nov-2004 17:04:57 UTC
Last Updated On:06-Nov-2004 20:22:56 UTC
Expiration Date:03-Nov-2005 17:04:57 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:R123-LRMS
Status:ACTIVE
Status:OK
Registrant ID:C7071179-LRMS
Registrant Name:Jeff Smart
Registrant Street1:1005 west 52nd st.
Registrant Street2:1005 west 52nd st.
Registrant City:New york
Registrant Postal Code:10019
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.7145738593
Registrant FAX:+1.7145738593
Registrant Email:Sexygeorge6969@hotmail.com
Admin ID:C7071179-LRMS
Admin Name:Jeff Smart
Admin Street1:1005 west 52nd st.
Admin Street2:1005 west 52nd st.
Admin City:New york
Admin Postal Code:10019
Admin Country:US
Admin Phone:+1.7145738593
Admin Email:Sexygeorge6969@hotmail.com
Billing ID:C7071179-LRMS
Billing Name:Jeff Smart
Billing Street1:1005 west 52nd st.
Billing Street2:1005 west 52nd st.
Billing City:New york
Billing Postal Code:10019
Billing Country:US
Billing Phone:+1.7145738593
Billing Email:Sexygeorge6969@hotmail.com
Tech ID:C7071179-LRMS
Tech Name:Jeff Smart
Tech Street1:1005 west 52nd st.
Tech Street2:1005 west 52nd st.
Tech City:New york
Tech Postal Code:10019
Tech Country:US
Tech Phone:+1.7145738593
Tech Email:Sexygeorge6969@hotmail.com
Name Server:NS7.123MYDNS.COM
Name Server:NS6.ILUVDNS.COM
Anyone in the New York area care to check this location out and see if it's real? If not, I can start trying to get the domain yanked based on invalid WHOIS data.
Domain ID:D8018981-LRMS
Domain Name:IBASKFHE.INFO
Created On:03-Nov-2004 17:04:57 UTC
Last Updated On:06-Nov-2004 20:22:56 UTC
Expiration Date:03-Nov-2005 17:04:57 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:R123-LRMS
Status:ACTIVE
Status:OK
Registrant ID:C7071179-LRMS
Registrant Name:Jeff Smart
Registrant Street1:1005 west 52nd st.
Registrant Street2:1005 west 52nd st.
Registrant City:New york
Registrant Postal Code:10019
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.7145738593
Registrant FAX:+1.7145738593
Registrant Email:Sexygeorge6969@hotmail.com
Admin ID:C7071179-LRMS
Admin Name:Jeff Smart
Admin Street1:1005 west 52nd st.
Admin Street2:1005 west 52nd st.
Admin City:New york
Admin Postal Code:10019
Admin Country:US
Admin Phone:+1.7145738593
Admin Email:Sexygeorge6969@hotmail.com
Billing ID:C7071179-LRMS
Billing Name:Jeff Smart
Billing Street1:1005 west 52nd st.
Billing Street2:1005 west 52nd st.
Billing City:New york
Billing Postal Code:10019
Billing Country:US
Billing Phone:+1.7145738593
Billing Email:Sexygeorge6969@hotmail.com
Tech ID:C7071179-LRMS
Tech Name:Jeff Smart
Tech Street1:1005 west 52nd st.
Tech Street2:1005 west 52nd st.
Tech City:New york
Tech Postal Code:10019
Tech Country:US
Tech Phone:+1.7145738593
Tech Email:Sexygeorge6969@hotmail.com
Name Server:NS7.123MYDNS.COM
Name Server:NS6.ILUVDNS.COM
Matthew
2004-11-11 12:42:49
My plan for going after the domain is to complain to the registrar about invalid Whois data, but my work on that thus far has been less than fruitful.
Some code modifications on the other hand appear to have a shot at being useful. I've posted my notes to my BLOG.
Spat
2004-11-11 00:50:04
Can someone do something about these scumbags, Iam getting 4+ different(maybe) spammers a day with the same spam mail. At this stage Iam using contact details supplied at Canadian Pharmacy http://dhemianatropous.jofdjaef.info/callstatus.php to send invalid information to there online form, if we all did this, wouldn't they get sick of it????
Steve
2004-11-10 10:00:58
I'm getting them, too. It appears that name is an alias, associated with other spamming operations. How do you plan on going about pulling the domain?
Wednesday, November 3, 2004
Forget Bush...
Well, if the nation is dumb enough to give Bush another four years, why not go all out next time and get it done and over with?
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