December 2004 Archives

From here it looks like the comment spammers have finally declared out and out war on bloggers. For the past three days I've had a constant stream of spam comments added to this site. This morning there were 400 new ones.

The comments all seem to point to randomly generated URLs, so I think that the spammers are just trying to overwhelm us with the quantity of spam in the hope that we'll give up trying to filter it. Of course they're cutting their own throats as the most likely outcome is that I'll just disable all comments until I can come up with a better solution.

Anyone else seeing this behaviour?

In the tube station on the way home last night I saw a few of these posters. They have a large picture of a rat and a link to the web site www.hungryrats.com. This turns out to be a link to the people who run the "Keep Britain Tidy" campaign. The thrust of the argument is that as we drop more litter, we just encourage more rats and no-one wants that!

I remember that soon after I moved to London, someone told me that in London you're never more than 40 feet from a rat. This site claims that it's now 5 metres which, by my calculations, is about 16 feet.

So they're getting closer. I've seen probably three or four rats in London over the last ten years. I'm not keen on that becoming a common occurance.

It must be a quiet news day. I really can't see how the announcement of the publication date of a children's book can be considered news.

I suppose it can be considered advance warning that the news in July will be full of children explaining why it's vitally important that they queue all night outside a bookshop so they can buy the book the second it goes on sale. Oh and the tube will be full of people showing how they're in touch with their inner child as they can read a children's book in public without embarassment. And don't get me started on the people who will be discussing it like it's some kind of great literature.

I just hope Rowling has got a better editor this time. If the books get any bigger children won't be able to carry them.

Oh look. I seem to have come over all grumpy.

Maybe they should all just read Harry Potter and the Call of Cthulhu instead.

Update: It seems the book has already gone to number one in the Amazon bestsellers chart on the strength of the pre-sales. Why pre-order a book that you won't get for over seven months?

There are rumours abounding that the brothers who (mis-)managed Bibliotech when I worked there in 2002 have finally been removed by the shareholders. It's a couple of years too late for me but I hope that the few people left there can turn the company around and make it work.

It's the time of the year when the UK starts to close down for Christmas. I estimate that there were about two thirds of the usual number of people on my tube this morning and that number will fall further during the week. From what I've heard around the office, Tuesday and Wednesday are popular days for people's holidays to start. And most people won't be starting again until Tuesday 4th January.

I'm leaving this job on Friday, but it looks like there's a good chance I'll be the only person in the office.

Good piece by Ben about the increase in comment spam which is apparently crippling some servers running Moveable Type. This site runs on MT and I get quiet a lot of comment spam, but it doesn't seem to be having a major impact on the site's performance yet (I hope no-one sees that as a challenge!)

Of course the comment spammers are slowly cutting their own throats. They do it because getting links from other sites will increase their site's Google ranking. But if a site gets so much comment spam that the site goes offline then it becomes useless to them.

Moveable Type is particularly targetted as it's so popular. Users of other blogging software don't get the same level of problem. I've been thinking of moving to something else for some time. Perhaps I'll give that some more serious thought over the christmas break.

blech points out obvious differences in the priorities of two of our daily newspapers.

Because if you're a Daily Mail reader then you're not interested in global catastrophes. you're only interested in how political correctness is destroying the traditional British christmas.

My copy of the extended edition of The Return of the King was waiting at home when I got in last night. It was a day early thanks to the vagaries of the British postal system. Now I just need to find about ten and a half hours to sit and watch all three films together.

I've one niggling little disappointment with the packaging of these films. Ever since I first read the books almost thirty years ago there has been a colour scheme for the three volumes[1]. The Fellowship of the Ring is green, The Two Towers is blue and The Return of the King is brown.

But these DVD sets change that. They use the same colours, but in a different order. The Fellowship of the Ring is green (so far, so good), but The Two Towers is brown and The Return of the King is Blue.

Like I say, it's a very small thing. But someone, somewhere made the decision to change the colours associated with the last two films. I'd like to know why.

[1] Actually I think the scheme goes back to when the individual volumes were first published.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any article about Pride and Prejudice must start with the words "it is a truth universally acknowledged...".

The Guardian likes the joke so much that they used it twice today. In a real news story and also in feature.

This makes me really angry. I was really happy that they were planning to make films of His Dark Materials but now it seems that New Line Cinema have decided that the subject of the trilogy (an attempt to overthrow god) would impact its saleability in the US. So they've decided to replace god with some other authoritarian figure.

Can't we find some other studio with a bit more balls to make the film instead?

Last month we were encouraging everyone to stop using Internet Explorer and use Firefox instead.

This month, it's the turn of Outlook to be replaced. If you're bothered by the insecurities of Outlook, then you should take a look at Thunderbird. It's from the same people as Firefox and it's a very stable, very secure and standards compliant email program. Now you have no excuse for picking up viruses from dodgy emails.

And sometime next year you'll also have Sunbird - which will replace the calendering parts of Outlook.

Summary of a conversation that took place between me and an recruitment agent a couple of weeks ago:

agent: So we've got a job going at [large media company].

me: Is that working at [location] for [rate]?

agent: Yes. That's the one.

me: Well in that case my CV has already been put forward for that.

agent: So you don't want us to put you forward too?

me: No. I think that would be unhelpful.

agent thinks

agent: But what if we put you forward for more money?

Imagine the conversation at [large media company] - "Oh look, this chap looks like he would be ok." "Ah yes, but here's his CV again at a more expensive rate - which one should we go for?"

I suspect it was the agent's first day on the job. I hope he doesn't last too much longer.

It's about time I read The Golden Bough, but the problem is deciding which version to read.

I've got a copy of the Wordsworth Classics version that I picked from from a second hand bookshop a few years ago, but it seems that this is a reprint of the 1922 edition and in that version, Frazer removed most of the contentious material about christianity.

There's another version that makes a big thing about including that material, and then there's a new edition which is twice as thick as the other versions.

Decisions, decisions.

Jeremy Zawodny speaks much sense about the dismal state of corporate email.

Important Note: This site has no connection at all with Ebay. I cannot help you with any problems that you are having with Ebay customer support. I would have thought that this was obvious, but it seems that there are some very stupid people out there.

Customer service is one of those things that it's really important to get right, but it's amazing how many companies who don't seem able to make that effort.

My latest example is Ebay. Whilst browsing their site recently I came across a description of the eBay toolbar. It looked interesting, but I couldn't investigate further as it only works on IE or Netscape Navigator 4.x (I mean, is anyone still using NN 4.x?)

So, as I like to do in these circumstances, I send an email off to their customer support address asking when the toolbar would be available for more modern browsers like Firefox, Safari and Opera.

This morning I got a response. Kudos to them for working on a Sunday, but the content of the reply was useless. Here it is:

Hello Dave,

Thank you for taking the time to write to us with your concerns. I would be happy to assist you further.

Currently, the eBay Toolbar is only compatible with the following browsers:

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01, 5.5, and 6.0
Netscape Navigator 4.51 through 4.79

Note: Account Guard is only available for Microsoft Internet Explorer.

As a result, the toolbar will not show in a "shell" browser like AOL, Yahoo, or MSN. You will need to use Internet Explorer or Netscape to view and use the toolbar successfully.

It was my pleasure to be able to assist you. We appreciate that you choose eBay.

Can you see anything in there that even attempts to answer my question? I can't. All they've done is repeat information that is available on their web site. I know which browsers the toolbar currently works on. I just wanted to know what their plans were to make it available for decent browsers.

I've replied attempting to clarify my question. I'll let you know if I hear anything.

Update: This morning I got an email from eBay asking me to fill in a questionnaire telling them what I thought about the service I recieved. I told them :)

Update 2: I got another response from them. This time they actually try to answer the question.

At this time it is unknown as to when or if the toolbar will be available for browsers such as Firefox, Safari and Opera. I believe the developers are looking into offering support for these browsers but no information about this has been released at this time. I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

So the answer, there is no answer :)

Podblasting hits the mainstream. Or, at least, Ben Hammersley writes about it in the Guardian - which in my limited view of the world amounts to much the same thing.

Update: I should point out that I consider "podblasting" and its derivatives to be non-words. This is because they carry implications that all listening to digital sound files is done through an iPod. iPods are the work of the devil and they will continue to be so until they support the playing of Ogg Vorbis files.

Welsh Assembly member Leanne Wood was ordered out of the assembly chamber yesterday after she called the queen "Mrs Windsor" in the debate.

I can understand why people got so upset with her. It's clear that the correct term of address should be "Mrs Mountbatten-Windsor".

Last night the Evening Standard was nicely angry about Ken Livingstone's plans to raise the congestion charge. The Standard has been firmly against the charge ever since it was introduced. but as far as I can see the Standard is massively out of step with the majority of Londoners who seem pretty much in favour of the charge.

Of course this isn't really surprising. The Standard isn't really read by people who actually live in London. It's largely read by people commuting out of London, back to their dormitory town in Kent or Berkshire. But I don't know why the Standard thinks these people are concerned about the congestion charge. They rarely, if ever, drive in London.