can_something_be_done_about_these Deathofarose fucking spamheads!!!! to think, I'm actual prefer kx21 over these fucktwits. . 061023 ... Doh! *I* . 061023 ... u24 I wish there was. I've been half-heartedly compiling a list of pages that have been spammed, by linking them to blather_spam (the from page for blather_spam thus shows all spammed pages). Someone could email sage_and_dallas (or is it dallas_and_sage) and plead for IP bans or some other solution. (eg significant code changes like captchas, logins, administrators, or voting for removal of blathes, but many people may be against these ideas, also they may fundamentally alter the way blather works, socially speaking) If all else fails, I could maybe write a version of blight that looks and feels just like blather, but that silently filters out spam, but there are a few issues with that, not least my bandwidth bills. 061023 ... Doar dude!!! what are your bandwidth costs? because I would be very much interested in helping decrease the @$#@#$ spam from happening. At least kx21 was cryptic about his message. These useless twats (if they are more than one twat, no offense to other twats out there) aren't even making it interesting, in fact it's more useless than a one legged man in an ass kicking contest! 061023 ... Christ without the cross Of course something could be done. What do you want to do. Do you want to rob them of the freedom that has been given you? Do you want to remove them from blather because you do not like what they have to say? I appreciate everything posted here but i do not believe that everything posted here was meant to be read and criticized by me. Do you think that you were given that job? Do you think that you were a thought in someone's head? Do you think they were writing for you/ If you do I would not judge your view of the world. I just posted something today and someone blathered "marked" on it. I assumed (which i should not) that it was marking me as a spammer. i first felt nothing. Then i felt like making an extremely judgmental comment. then i just decided to ask questions and so i did. My blathe was so that i could have a personal space in which to document how well i was living my life according to my expectation. i do not consider it to be a waste of space. But of course if you do, i will respect that and ask you not to click on that page out of the millions of pages on this site. But for those people who don't mind putting there personal expectations or just making a comment on existance you are free to do so on my blather. See what_will_determine_my_existance. For those of you who think that is a waste of space to use blather to list what you would like to accomplish in your life and the guidelines you wish to follow please do not see what_will_determine_my_existance for it will not be to your liking. But of course you can make any comments you want. it would probably be against guideline 8 to care. I think i fell victim to justifying my actions. oh well. 061023 ... Christ without the cross Im sorry. the page is what_will_now_determine_my_existance. Does mark mean spam? I probably should have asked that question before. But if you have new resolutions for living your life you can post it on my page. I love you guys. 061023 ... u24 you have got the wrong end of the stick completely. 1) we're talking about blatant undenyable spam such as "buy viagra online" posted 100 times in quick sucession, as at [guestbook] and many other pages. 2) "marked" is a way of keeping track of potentially interesting blathes that I may read and/or comment on at a later date. co-incidently, it's usually me who marks pages, though I have no objection to other people using 'marked' as long as it's not way off my interests. 061023 ... Death of a Rose oh christ, didn't you just break your own rule #3. "I will choose not to have an opinion on anything someone is doing, saying, or being unless asked by that person." Okay....calm down Doar....let me ask you this CWAC...have you actually clicked on some of the links to the spammed pages? Or have you just not had the good fortune to not to? I cautioned temperance and tolerance for others that seemed like spammers at the time. This third assholes aren't even helping themselves as their links would have to be copied and pasted into the address bar in order to be checked out. Who, I ask you, here in blather would do that? Answer this question, and I do ask you directly so that you won't break your own rule #3! 061023 ... u24 i also mark spam pages like the comment i'mut to make below this one. 061023 ... blather_spam blather_spam 061023 ... u24 *i'mut=i'm about my keyboard is busted. 061023 ... u24 to clarify, i'm marking this as blather_spam so that people interested in blather spam will also find this page. I'm not saying that anything on this page is spam. 061023 ... Christ without the cross of course nothing on this page is spam. Of course not. You are right Death of a Rose. I think i may have went against soemthing there. thanks for the help. I think i did notice it while i was talking but i have not memorized everything yet. i am really trying to follow my guidelines. I love you guys. Good luck with all that spam blocking. Was that sarcasm? I think it was. let me try again. Good luck with all the spam blocking. 061023 ... u24 i find something disturbing about the way that whole blathe was phrased. probably just my tiredness. on the other hand.... perhaps you really are a zombie... 061023 ... Christ with a foot in his mouth I suck at this guideline thing. I did not read your comment u24. I read Death of a Rose's comment. I will admit that i have gotten this all wrong and that i suck at following my own guidelines which would make me a hypocrite. i am trying however. and thanx again (this time without sarcasm) for bringing it to my attention Death of a Rose. I think that i am losing it or something. I must try harder to follow my guidelines and i am also getting the feeling that i am talking to much Forgive guys. Good luck with all the spam blocking. 061023 ... Christ without the cross I sound like a zombie? How? I am curious about your thoughts. I won't take that personally. I do think that i trapped myself in a death trap of silence (since i can't have an opinion on anything). But anyways, if you want you can post something there that would sound non-zombielike to you. 061023 ... u24 clarification: i was refering to the blathe of yours on this page starting with "of course". i was joking about the zombie thing. something about your blathe just seemed really weird to me. like you didn't mean what you were saying (maybe that was the intention and I just missed it). i think it was the repetition and disjointedness. maybe this was intentional. even if it wasn't, I don't mean to criticise your writing style. I find it intriguing, if not a little disturbing. 061023 ... Christ without the cross why was it disturbing? i am interesting in your thoughts. Sometimes it is intentional, sometimes its not. people say i have a wierd way of saying things. sometimes i like to play that role. sometimes it just comes out naturally. Was that repetitive. it probably was. 061023 ... Ptolemy DCLVIII I'm feeling an affinity right now for all three of you. Doar, I too am wary of the empty_guest. In fact I rather detest [his] guestbook_additions, and I have really not detested much here at Blather, even my detractors. User24, I appreciate your observations made in your first post, and personally feel equally wary of changing any fundamental freedoms of blather even if made as a concession to security. Thank you for keeping an eye on those poopy-fart-buttbrains who are totally failing to make me Joyful. C-w/ot-C, I too once* mistakenly took offense due to my own misinterpretation of some aspects of blathing_culture. ``My_dear_friend`` was so aggrieved at one point that ``he`` compiled a_guide_to_accusing_other_skites_of_spamming. Just so you know your contributions have been appreciated by at least *this* other person even if our religious views differ greatly. You are most certainly not "The_spammer", nor even "A_spammer," at least not as far as I'm concerned. Hello, and welcome. These are my only-somewhat-humble opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of others here at blather.newdream.net. *Actually, like seven or eight dozen times. 061024 ... u24 doar: well I wouldn't know that until I built it now would i, silly! but seriously, my bandwidth is pushing 80% of the limit by the end of the month, so I'd (very probably) have to upgrade my hosting plan, which I don't really want to do. It's not a massive issue though. Something I can't explain is swaying me away from wanting to do this, though I do very much want to build a PHP-blather, I just want it to be starting fresh, not built on this one. I did have an idea of creating a wiki based on the content of blather, and just seeing where it ended up. 061024 ... Big Bouncy Checks either way Mr. 24. if you require monetary funds I could be persuaded to donate.... . 061024 ... u24 offer much appreciated, but unneccesary. shall we decide what of the available options we prefer and collaboratively draft an email to sage_and_dallas (or collaboratively get on my back to start coding)? My experience on puremango makes me think that IP banning will have no effect whatsoever (I tried it, they come in from hundred of new IPs every day). All other options involve non-silent changes to blather, eg user registration or captcha images. user registration would restrict the creativity, eg the ability for multiple people to 'blather spell check', or eg birdmad to use a seemingly infinite amount of variations on the 'bird' theme. captcha would be very annoying indeed. My suggestion would be to revoke access to all of blather, and have the front page require users to pass a captcha test, whereupon they can freely browse blather until another session starts. Anyone trying to go directly to a blathe would be redirected to the front page, they pass the captcha and get taken straight to the page they wanted. they don't have to enter the captcha for another 24 hours (say). A captcha is an image with a word that you have to type in to prove you're a human being not a robot. (robots can't read images, humans (mostly) can). opinions welcome. perl coders even more welcome. 061024 ... the many faces of birdmad a lot of the political blogs i read and comment have captcha set up to filter out spam i'd be amendable to something like that. 061024 ... u24 thanks for offering your opinion, Mr Bird. I'd like to ask every skite to share their opinions about any and all issues raised on this blathe. 061024 ... u24 I've emailed sage_and_dallas, inviting them to the debate and asking if they'd be willing to change the code, once we've agreed what changes, if any, are best. 061024 ... u24 awaiting further input from everyone else before doing/thinking anything else. 061024 ... u24 in communication with dallas. as was someone else, doar? 061024 ... Ptolemy DCLVIII It seems like the Empty_Guest could get out of hand. However, a question: if the rate of "blathing" by our Empty_Guest remained henceforth constant, is its current manner obnoxious enough (or just plain "noxious") to warrant serious changes? Does the current state threaten blather, or is this preventative? My extra-rough estimate is that since mid-summer '06, the Empty_Guest has added about 500k of Blathispace per week. So I'm inclined to observe that any preventative measures are being undertaken as a means for keeping "our_junk" separate from the "Empty_Guest's junk", as opposed to a matter of serverspacewaste_i. My point is that we should be very, very clear about our motives for making any changes. And as best as possible, we should contemplate the extrapolated ramifications of any such changes.... 061024 ... u24 I'm not sure what/who you mean by empty_guest my reason for suggesting changes is that the spam I'm talking about (buy meds, etc) cannot possibly be construed as useful to anyone. If anyone seriously wants a shitload of broken links to pharmacy sites here, please speak up. 061024 ... Death of a Rose Hey there you two! or is it four now? Anyways, Mr. 24, I haven't e-mailed sage_and_dallas yet, as I seem to not have their e-mail contact. All I can find is splash.newdream.net off of the home page. And Andru, or PTO (if you prefer), my motive is just the same as it was at the start of this blathe. While kx21_was an enigma, and a shameless_self_promotion entity, and others who used this as a playground (karl the weed, u24, minnesota_chris, et al), they did not infect blather like a virus that spreads to other blathes. They made their own blathes, recognizable and obviously theirs. They, in the case of kx21, may have interjected in many blathes they did not start, but they did not (to my knowledge) hide behind a spammer's IP (or multiple IP's as the case may be). Okay, what was my point again? Sorry I have the attention span of a chihuaha (sp?) on crack. I guess this experiment finally caused my calm and collected exterior to not only crack but think very evil thoughts about the destruction (FUCKING NEEDLESS) of that which I hold dear. And you may say that, "But Doar, weren't you the man of tolerance and forgiveness towards all beings in their freedom of ideas and exchange when it came to blather?". And I would say yes, I WAS. But that point was gone the moment the connect the dots picture was plastered with viagra/gayporn/gangbang/beastiality/kiddieporn/etc...etc....etc...ad nauseum fucking spam. And lets call it the name it so rightly deserves, "USELESS TRASH THROWN OVER THE FENCE CONSTANTLY". I apologize for losing my decorum in this matter and I might regret this temporary loss of sanity. At some point the "Real" blatherskites/blatherers must stand up and fight. Jebus, I'm about to start my own "homeland insecurity". Christ on a pogo stick. nuff of my rant. 061024 ... u24 but t'was a good rant nonetheless. I think it's important that we make clear that by spam we mean.. spam, rather than kx21isms or u24isms, the usefullness of which is open to debate. The key distinction IMHO is this: If it was written by a human, then it's OK. If a piece of software other than a browser was used to create the blathe, then it's not. (and yes, I'm willing to take blight offline if someone takes issue) 061024 ... u24 see: dallas_speaks for the discussion we've been having. 061024 ... ever dumbening captcha sounds good could this finally prove beyond a shadow of a doubt our turing test questions on kx21? hehe casting his vote 061024 ... ever dumbening whoa, cool, i googled captcha and found what it stands for: "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart" learning something new every day 061024 ... dallas I made a little change that will likely help keep simplistic spam bots off of here. It also may have some side-effects for you all. There's essentially now a 60 minute time limit from the time you begin a post to when you submit it. If you often take longer than 60 minutes to compose a post you should just compose it separately and then paste it all in at once. This change is pretty simple overall but it might work and wasn't much work for me. 061024 ... endless desire thank you, dallas, for helping us out. i hope it makes a difference because there's so much spam pollution on the blue pages these days. it makes reading the recent columns such a waste of time because we're cluttered with all this spam bullshit. regardless, any effort to get rid of it is much appreciated :) 061025 ... Pto If that works I am *totally* impressed with it as a solution. Three cheers for preservation of liberty whilst improving security! 061025 ... u24 if we exceed the limit, will our post get lost? 061025 ... () ( i approve of the proposed changes. thank you 24 and dallas both. it really matters to me. ) 061025 ... u24 if we exceed the time limit, it doesn't post and we get a cryptic message, but we can use our browser to go back, copy the post, refresh the page, paste the post back in and it's all good. 061025 ... u24 unfortunately, its not stopping the spammers. You are in a forest, there are exits North and West. You can either -see dallas_speaks to watch developments. -Or discuss ideas/approaches/concerns on this blathe. 061025 ... dallas Yeah, that didn't really work at all. I guess the spammers had already figured out that trick. I added a captcha image thing. You should only have to complete it once every 24 hours so it's hopefully not tooooo annoying. That also means the spammers theoretically only have to do it once every 24 hours, too. We'll see how it goes.... Let me know if it doesn't work, either by spam coming in or by you not being able to post. 061025 ... dallas oh, and... the 60 minute time limit thing is gone since it wasn't effective anyway. 061025 ... u24 cool. yeah, the captcha works for me. I'll see how I go with it. Slight problem: If a user enters the wrong captcha accidently, they have to go back *and refresh* the page, otherwise even entering the correct code will result in cave crumbling. 061025 ... u24 I'll be interested to see how everyone take this; there's been suprisingly little involvement from many other people.... 061025 ... u24 If anyone finds any bits of spam lurking about, please report it at blather_spam. cheers. 061025 ... dallas The captcha system is set up so you only get one chance to get each one right. That prevents bots from being able to brute force guess their way through. It also, though, makes it so you can't just 'back up' and try again if you make a mistake. You have to reload to get a new one to try. I can change it if it becomes a problem for people. 061026 ... u24 might be an idea to give people 3 attempts, otherwise eventually someone'll lose a post. 061026 ... u24 when you have a second, I wonder if you could you shed some light on blather.newdream.net/mystery2.jpg it's been a mystery to all since the last blather_crash. 061026 ... TK This may the inadvertent problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stumbleupon ~! http://www.stumbleupon.com/ It's possible people are led here not understanding what Blather is, or for that matter may not even -care- to understand what it is and their for are just spamming to be spamming or because they don’t realize that spamming is not what blather is about. Although I could be wrong, this at lest might explain the spammers. 061026 ... u24 nah, I think professional spammers have just set programs up to automatically recognise comment forms and fill them in with spam. If one in a million actually works then they've made a profit. 061026 ... endless desire please make this work... 061026 ... endless desire fuck yes now i can finally post. maybe i have bad eyes or something but i can't read those stupid things right. i had to finally come over here to see what the hell i was doing wrong... and then i read about how you can't just backspace and try to get it right, yada yada. okay. sorry for being lame. i hope this verifying thing works though! 061026 ... oren Just chiming in that I_am glad something is being done about this! Thank_you! 061026 ... falling_alone why did the verification appear only once? i've blathered much more but no need of a code. are there only specific pages it occurs on? 061028 ... falling_alone sorry i should learn to read entire blathes. 061028 ... Toxic_Kisses Quote: "At least kx21 was cryptic about his message." I know it's been a while since I've been around but what do you mean by "Was"? I know kx21 goes by many names, so he must still be around...right?? 061029 ... Death of a Rose geez...seems I've pissed some peeps off. . 061030 ... seg5 If you think that's bad see: 3_angry_duffles 070701 ... Death of a Rose Many thanks Dallas. I know I didn`t express it before, but thank you. . 120808 what's it to you? who go blather from