For those who have found it hard to get the site or to post comments, we are under a massive and concerted spambot attack. See this:
The interesting thing is that this is disguised as commercial spam but it isn’t – there are no real car dealers, fake watch salesmen and loan sharks at the end of the links.
Tim and Wibbler have repeatedly said they will look into a simple Captcha device to eliminate these attacks, but it appears not possible, perhaps due to our rickety old blog platform.
Craig, back in the mists of time, your blog required registration (username and password) to comment; maybe you could turn it back on.
Well don’t blame me.
test
“perhaps due to our rickety old blog platform”.
It is not mandatory to be on a rickety old blog platform.
So can someone build a better site to compliment what is one of, if not thee best political opinion, satire website on the web.
MJ,
Moving all the content to a different platform is apparently a major problem.
Craig: from what I remember you need volunteers to take a chunk each, I think.
If you look over on another thread, you’ll see that the spambot generator appears to have responded to my call for them to onanise and go to Hell. This proves that these things are issuing from a sentient organic being. Silly, silly, subcontracted wannabee spook! They fell straight into the trap. Not well-trained, it seems.
It’s on the Julian Assange thread, at the end. A plaintive little, “shan’t”.
“Moving all the content to a different platform is apparently a major problem.”
Craig, how about not moving all the content. Just start afresh. Leave this one here, and have links in the side column of your new one, back to all the posts here.
I’ve found it difficult to access you, all day.
Dead right, Suhayl. That’s no bot. You wrote “Go to Hell, SISspambot wankers” and the silly fecker quoted you and replied “Shan’t”. It’s all here:
http://tinyurl.com/339ajxp
Clark,
If the IP address can be captured on Craig’s server then we are in business to compare the IP to a filelist of ‘black’ IP’s before the post.
Put this code between the tags
var ip = ”;
alert(“Your IP address is “+ip);
If it works we can set-up an array and compare to a simple text file of ‘black’ IP’s
What do you think?
Yes, the use of “shan’t” suggests a southern English origin, because a northern English/ Scottish person would say, “won’t”. “Will” and “shall” have opposite usages in Scotland and England, for example.
If Craig can get a high, high-techie onto it, maybe he’d be able to discern the source?
@ all,
I did mention that I noticed that as I posted there were these weird “commercial posts”.
Well – if there is nothing to buy at the sending end of the posts, clearly somehthing is afoot.
Murray is speaking the truth and that becomes a problem for special attack?
Pathetic!
sorry
script here:
http://www.coia.org.uk/antispam.txt
Hi Mark,
well it wouldn’t stop me commenting. It’d probably scare off some of the nasty trolls, but some genuine commenters would be put off, too. The spammers probably wouldn’t stop. If they’re real spambots, they wouldn’t notice their IP address being displayed, and if they’re fake, they should try to act as if they’re real.
Registration / username / password, I reckon.
Hey, there’s a secret post!
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/11/daylight_saving.html
Suhayl,
The allocated user ‘addresses’ or ‘telephone numbers’ used on the web are either permanent ie ‘static’ or change ie ‘dynamic’ – if it is possible to capture the address and it’s static it can be blocked by a ‘deny’ statement or if it is dynamic it can be blocked until it changes.
Thanks Clark – yes understand – but we would first do that simple test to see if the server will run the script – if it can then it will also be capable of using the ‘deny’ statement to block that user – as I mentioned to Suhayl – until the address changes – that would cut down a good percentage of dumb bots.
“Hey, there’s a secret post!”
I know, but you can’t leave comments on it any more. I tried to leave a brief response to your comment about clocks and the sun but it couldn’t go through.
“Hey, there’s a secret post!”
How did that happen? If you go forwards or backwards from ‘Main’, it disappears?
It’s great, this blog; it’s like an old, ramshackle house. Junk mail keeps arriving, but no one takes any notice, and every so often, you find a secret room!
Hilarious.
It’s great, this blog; it’s like an o
htaccess rules!
databases migrate 😉
Uh-oh!
“A Russian secret services expert denied last week that WikiLeaks poses a threat to Russia after founder Julian Assange revealed that this country is next on its hit list ?” and simultaneously warned that the “right team” of people could simply shut down the whistleblower website forever…
…Assange told Izvestia that he has already amassed kompromat on the Russian government and businessmen, although he admitted it is “not as much as I’d like”. He said the website plans to publish 15,000 more documents on the war on Afghanistan, and then turn its full attention to Russia and China. According to an aide to Assange: “Russian readers will find out a lot of new things about their country.””
http://themoscownews.com/news/20101101/188173813.html?referfrommn
If Assange is employing “kompromat” against the Rooskies now then I would submit he’s playing an even more dangerous game.
Now, I am sure somewhere down the line this will fuel more conspiracy theories.
Angrysoba, I realised I’d not answered your question about Hume from an earlier. Well, you’re an expert in this filed, while I’m not even a dilettante, so I won’t presume to anything!
But I was thinking, really, of his general approach of skepticism as first outlined in his ‘A Treatise of Human Nature’. People act is their narrow self-interest, often for short-term gain. The Scottish Enlightenment guys – and thence the US Constitution – attempted to deal with this through constructing a complex system of counterbalances and different, often competing,loci of power. I think that this system has come under threat in recent decades, so that narrow, short-term interests – the arms cartels et al – have come to drive the agenda in an unbalanced way; Eisenhower’s farewell warning, etc.
In short, it is better to do business with other states than to engage in war with them. I think that democracy needs to be rebalanced.
Suhayl Saadi: ‘Yes, the use of “shan’t” suggests a southern English origin….’
Yeah. Not even just a southerner, but a very middle-class one (as you’d expect of that profession). (I guess theoretically it could be a very middle-class northerner, but it’s not likely.)
“Shan’t” rings a literary bell. Doesn’t one of the characters in Richmal Crompton’s ‘Just William’ stories – the little girl – say ‘shan’t’ all the time, in that short, defiant way? Agree with Sam, it’s a class thing too. William himself says ‘shan’t’ a lot, but his gardener never does.
just say no
You sound like someone advising teenage girls about sex.