previosuly mentioned one site that was using my GPL‘d theme.

Further on that particular aspect, somebody in Panama bought schestowizt [sic.] dot com only a few days ago. Should I feel flattered as my site is only 13 months old? Can this registration be an attempt to ‘absorb’ IBL‘s from some misspellings? I continue to wonder, but I came accoss an article titled “Para-Sites that Live Off Misspellings of Bigger, Better Sites” Just to clarify, my family name is very rare so it could not have been a coinidence.

A quick whois.net record lookup returns:

Registrant:
   Unasi Inc. (SCHESTOWIZT-COM-DOM)
   Galerias 3
   Zona 5, Panama 5235
   Panama
   +1.3094067818
   +1.3094067818
   info@domaincar.com
   
   Domain Name: SCHESTOWIZT.COM
   Status: PROTECTED

Administrative Contact:
   Unasi Inc. info@domaincar.com
   Galerias 3
   Zona 5, Panama 5235
   Panama
   +1.3094067818
   Fax- +1.3094067818

Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
   Unasi Inc. info@domaincar.com
   Galerias 3
   Zona 5, Panama 5235
   Panama
   +1.3094067818
   Fax- +1.3094067818

Record last updated on 13-Sep-2005.
Record expires on 13-Sep-2006.
Record created on 13-Sep-2005.

Domain servers in listed order:

Name Server: NS1.MY-NAME-SERVER.COM
Name Server: NS2.MY-NAME-SERVER.COM
Name Server: NS3.MY-NAME-SERVER.COM

As I compose this item, I am told by Trevor from nntp://alt.www.webmaster that the same guys snatched a domain that he had dropped. I suppose it is indeed just a case of so-called ‘para-sites’, which I consider to be flattery.

I actually noticed that my site keeps climbing in Google quite rapidly. For example, a search for ‘roy‘ had me ranked 248^th in June, 151^st in July, 99^th in August and now I appear in the top 50! Google sourcers have recently shown some interest in me; specifically, the position of System Administration/Software Engineer that maintains the google.com site. I wonder if I am permitted to blog about this. After all, I am still employed by the University…

EVERAL months ago I read about a Macromedia (now acquired by Adobe) manager who was very much afraid from a Microsoft response to Flash. A response as such was the only thing that kept him awake at night.

The Windows maker is now releasing Sparkle, which is a Flash equivalent, striving to become a ‘Flash Killer’. While there are many people who would be glad to see Flash die¹, they would not like to see a replacement, especially not one which suffers from poor cross-platform compatibility.

My guesstimate is that Microsoft will stick to their aggressive nature in order to penetrate the market, nudging Flash aside in the process. With control over so many computers, they will be able to manipulate user preferences, exploiting an existing monopoly. Does anyone still remember Lotus? It is only one among dozens of examples. Moreover, having faced proprietary formats like wma and wmv (audio and video respectively), I know that they aim to maim competing platforms (as a side-effect perhaps). Tools that promote such formats are provided by default along with bundled software for Windows users. It is common knowledge that tools which get bundled with the operating system promote proliferation by serendipity.

What are the implications to those who snub Flash already? Some of us will not need to block not only Flash, but also Sparkle, which means a bloat in terms of plug-ins. It is worrying that a Flash equivalent will soon be bound to a vendor of a platform. Very scary it must seem that the target for Sparkle output is the open Web. That is when media serves as a promotion for the operating system while crippling the opposition. I, for one, fear such technologies.

As regards unoriginality of the name, would it not be similar to renaming their Web browser Firedog? The words flash and sparkle are almost analogous (Macromedia Fireworks comes to mind too). This is by no means the first time Microsoft are copying names, slogans, or graphics.

Related item: Microsoft to Fight PDF’s

¹ Along the lines of “Flash is evil”; confer Jakob Nielson, a Web usability authoritative figure.

A heat map showing regions where high volumes of spam come from

WO sites have recently been Slashdotted, both of which provide ‘spam maps’:

• Mailinator (jump directly to map) – an almost real-time spam map, which is refreshed every few minutes and builds upon the Google Maps API
• TrustedSource Portal – seems like a service surprisingly similar to service above, which was Slashdotted only two weeks beforehand

Was there truly really a point in recommending two tools which do practically (or roughly) the same thing? The two tools are quite similar, but one could argue that they complement one another.

When I first set up this site, which is administered using cPanel, I was blocked access to a terminal (AKA shell, console, command-line) and denied telnet/SSH access by the Web host. By default, most hosts do likewise, depriving site owners from excessive flexibility in hope that security will not be jeopardised and sites will rarely ‘break’. Nonethess, I found a terminal workaround, which I would like to share.

Run command as a cron job (widget/icon shown above). Have it scheduled to run a minute later with output to get sent by E-mail (default option) or saved to a file, e.g.

du -all >~/output_file

output_file, which gets created in your home directory, should then contain text that otherwise will have appeared in a terminal. Likewise, virtually anything including installations can be carried out. System administrators would become distressed if this practice became commonplace. In essence, this is the same as having a terminal-based interface, albeit it is slower and unresponsive.

Example cron job in cPanel – periodic mySQL backups (click image for full-sized equivalent)

NE wonders if error logs of Web sites could become the next target for spammers. Webmaster already suffer from comment spam, unrouted E-mail spam, and referrer spam.

Fortunately, error log spam appears to in its diapers. I believe it is only a matter of time before it becomes a serious plague. Below are some thoughts, all of which were sparked in recent discussions in nntp://alt.www.webmaster after we had observed odd yet identical errors in our logs.

Many requests appear to come from Seoul, seeking a file called robotsxx.txt, a variation of the usual robots.txt, which is fully-standardised. Upon closer inspection, it looked like this was related to ‘adult’ material. The IP address seems to have been associated with pornographic content.

To stress the danger of such requests becoming commonplace, our error logs could soon be accommodated with requests like:

GET /enlarge_YOUR_log_www.bigbeef.com HTTP/1.1
      (funny example from Alan)

It is worryingly easy to automate such requests and spam the entire World Wide Web en masse, leaving such invalid requests for tens of millions of Webmasters to see. Will there soon be filters for site referrers and error logs too? Let us hope we need not go down that route.

The new looks of Slashdot?

LASHDOT will become standards-compliant XHTML/CSS rather soon as new code is currently being tested. If these changes were to be confirmed, one wonders how the vast audience would react. Perhaps the new layout would have slow penetration as it gets exposed to the community already. Looking at the Web Archive and making a comparsion with the new layout, long tradition definitely gets broken. I, for one, welcome the change reluctantly.

Always store your mail in (at least) two isolated places

nfortunately for most of us, there is rarely an option in mail clients which caters for one-click backup and restoration of E-mail. We still lack an embedment in a GUI, which makes backup trivial to all, as well as quick to invoke.

An alternative to explicit backup is duplication of data files. Owing to the use of Open Source applications, my mail gets backed up on the SAN every night and on another computer twice a week (in an open and raw MBOX format). I advise everyone to install a reliable mail client and set up a repeating job that can handle backups without any user intervention (see links below).

Microsoft applications (speaking of computer crashes when backups are truly needed) rarely seem to mind portability and safety of data. Outlook and Outlook Express would lock your mail in proprietary formats, which is the reason why I ceased to be their user (having started with Netscape Mail). Anything that served Microsoft’s purpose, namely my immobility, appeared to be the grand goal. Thunderbird will save your mail in a form that is extremely painless to back up. Furtherfore, it can also easily import mail from Outlook or Outlook Express, in a way that preserves all the data and even mail settings.

Another backup option is by converting mail to HTML, which is open and standard-compliant. There exists a Ruby script called eml2mbox which bridges a gap and helps towards the generation of Web pages from individual mail messages.

Older notes about mail management:

• Local or Web-based E-mail
• Public Mail Accounts and Filtering
• Urgent Mail Account
• E-mail Address Disclosure
• Managing Large E-mail Quantities
• Autoresponder Trick
• Solution to Junk Mail
• Managing E-mail on a Personal Domain

Thunderbird-related items:

• Outlook Versus Thunderbird
• Thunderbird Aqua – an attractive theme for Thunderbird

As well as links that are related to mail, lots of resources and tips on backup reside on this Web log.