Akismet, Stopping Website Comment Spam The Easy Way

20 March 2007Blogging, SoftwareAlistair Lattimore

By now, everyone should be acutely aware that I hate spam. In fact, I hate it that much that I think I’ve written about it every couple of months:

This time around it is no different, as Akismet just keeps on keeping on. I first installed Akismet toward the start of August 2006 as I was being overwhelmed by the volume of comment spam I was receiving. Initially, it was just one or two website spam messages but it soon increased at a rapid pace. I was receiving so much comment spam, I just couldn’t handle it manually anymore and I needed a way of stopping the spam for good.

After looking around at various WordPress comment spam filtering solutions, such as Bad Behaviour and Spam Karma; I ended up deciding on Akismet. There were a couple of reasons that I felt that Akismet was going to perform a better job stopping website spam, the main one being it was driven by the community. Spammers just love to prey on the masses and there sure is a mass of blogs on the internet. If the blogging community backed Akismet, then it seemed reasonable that as soon as enough bloggers flagged something as being spam – I wouldn’t have to worry about it either. As it turns out, this is absolutely the case as very few comment spam messages actually get through the Akismet filtering. I hate web site spam so much that I have comment moderation on as well; I know it might frustrate some commentors but I would prefer to vet a valid comment than see spam land on my site.

Akismet has now been protecting this site from website comment spam for approximately nine months and in that time it has successfully axed about 100,000 spam messages from ever appearing on the site. I can only imagine how hard it must be for people running web sites or forums these days that don’t have easy plugin access to a service like Akismet to stop website spam.

Pretty significant milestone I thought, go Akismet go!

The ConTest Game Show: Slightly Less Crap Than Before

14 March 2007TVAlistair Lattimore

Last month I voiced my opinion about the new Channel Ten game show named The ConTest and noted that I thought it was some what anticlimactic.

A month after my initial review of The ConTest game show and one of the items on my hit list have been addressed. This makes me think that either Channel Ten deliberately launched a crap game show, knowing they were going to make improvements or they’ve been scanning the headlines on the internet and maybe they’ve stumbed across my ever so slightly critical view of their game show; who knows but it is one less thing on the list so its definitely improved the show.

You’re probably wondering which item on the hit list was addressed, well it was the one regarding knowing whether the contestants story was real or not. It’s such a small thing but knowing if they are telling the truth about that helps set the scene for their future habits on the show. The thing I find funny or interesting is to see just how far a contestant will push the truth about their story – some tell the truth, some stretch it a little bit while others try to reinvent themselves for the duration of the show. There also seems to be a reasonable relationship between how far someone pushes the truth regarding their story and what their behaviour is regarding the con.

Now Channel Ten just need to work some sort of a challenging system into their new game show and it’d get really interesting. The obvious implementation involves a contestant being able to optionally challenge an opponent once per round. If they get the challenge correct, they get to keep their opponents money; if they get it wrong they lose all of it.

On the surface, implementing a challenge system into The ConTest is nice in theory and hard in practice as it’ll add other problems which would change how the current game is played. First off, if a contestant bluffs and gets caught out and loses their winnings – how would they bluff during the elimination if the other contestants know they don’t have any money.

One possible solution might be rolling the challenge and elimination into the same event. At the end of a round, the winning contestant can, if they choose, challenge one of their opponents about their winnings. If they get it right, they person caught out is eliminated. If the contestant gets it wrong – the normal elimination takes place.

I’d personally love to see them implement the challenge system into The ConTest but I appreciate that it might be a relatively complex task. However, if they are confident that it’d improve the game – then I’m sure Channel Ten could hype up a new feature which would let them change the rules a little.

Either way, I’m glad to see the small slice of information about the truth behind each contestants story being presented; it definitely improves the game I think.

Snail Mail Spam

12 March 2007Life, PhotosAlistair Lattimore

Anyone that runs their eyes over this site knows just how much I hate filthy filthy spammers.

This evening I collected our snail mail from the letter box and was confronted with an enormous amount of plain old fashioned junk mail. What I couldn’t believe was that it was so full, I actually struggled to get it out of the letter box; having to brute force the bulk of it out because it was stuffed in so tight.

I’m all for a company advertising their products and making a dollar or four but at some point these big businesses just have to stop and think about what they are doing. In a single week, I received a whopping 1.3 kilograms of spam mail in my letter box. It doesn’t matter what way you cut that, its a huge amount of paper that is just going to waste.

Being a little curious, I ran my eye over the other roughly 100 letter boxes to see how many of them were the same. You’ve probably already guessed, the majority of the mail boxes were exactly the same – choc-o-block full of spammy junk mail. What was even more amazing was that nearly all of the letter boxes have an ‘Australia Post Mail Only’ or ‘No Junk Mail’ label on the lids of their mail boxes.

You’d think that if the senate can pass electronic anti-spam laws, that they’d have dealt with the low tech equivalent version first. Nope, instead people are happily flogging our forests for everything they are worth to help send out huge volumes of spam. If the companies were a little smarter about it, you’d think they’d selectively send spam instead of applying blanket tactics. I hate email spam just as much as paper spam but these companies could save some serious dollars if they invested into email marketing instead of the antiquated paper equivalent.

Save a tree, try killing an electron instead – you’ll find they’re a lot tougher.

ORA-06552: PL/SQL: Compilation Unit Analysis Terminated

9 March 2007Database, ProgrammingAlistair Lattimore

Today I received a strange error from Oracle, for what appeared to be no good reason:

ORA-06552: PL/SQL: Compilation unit analysis terminated
ORA-06553: PLS-320: The declaration of the type of this expression is incomplete or malformed

I received the error when attempting to create a trigger on a newly created table. I could create triggers on other tables without any errors, however on the new table – it would error every time.

The table definition included a column named timestamp with the data type timestamp. Oracle was happy enough for me to create the table, however it refused to let me create a trigger on the table with a column name over lapping a reserved word.

The solution was simple, renamed the column in question to use a non-reserved word and everything continued as normal. I must say though, I think it is strange that it would let me create the table using the reserved word in the first place if it was going to complain about me using other standard Oracle features which would error as a by product of the reserved word.

1 Vs 100 Game Show

7 March 2007TVAlistair Lattimore

Eddie McGuire is back hosting the latest Channel 9 game show offering, 1 Vs 100. The new game show goes something like this, someone is picked as the one. Once selected, they have to answer a series of questions and so do the mob of 100 opponents.

The contestant is also given three chances or from the millionaire days, three life lines. Each of the changes or life lines can only be used once each, just like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. The twist on the chances or life lines this time is that they all involve the mob in some way:

Ask the mob: Two of the mob are singled out who have a correct and incorrect answer. Each mob member can tell the contestant why they chose that option and the contestant can also discuss their choice. Since there are only two of the mob selected, this in effect acts like the 50/50 from the days of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.
Poll the mob: Polling the mob will tell the contestant how many of the mob voted for each of the three options
Trust the mob: The contestant rests their game show fate into the hands of the mob. Whatever option the mob has the most votes for, is the option that is selected on behalf of the contestant and they don’t have a choice but to see the decision followed through.

After successfully answering a question, the answers from the mob are revealed as well; at which point everyone with an incorrect answer are eliminated from the following round. After the results of the dwindling one hundred opponents are revealed, the contestant then gets a choice to complete the game and leave with the money he or she has accumulated or play on.

The decision making process of the contestant was the most painful point in the entire show, where the mob are just yelling at the contestant trying to convince he or she to play one more round. Of course, they are all waving their hands and gesturing, yes, come on, just one more round. This went on and on for far too long in my opinion and it has no real bearing on the game; its as if it was there to simply amp up the noise level and the crowd a little for the sake of it.

Overall, it was a pretty reasonable game show I suppose. 1 Vs 100 bears striking resemblance to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire on many fronts, however the one which it doesn’t complete on from what I noticed was the difficulty of the questions. It seemed as though they were considerably easier than what you’d expect on millionaire – then again, it is a different show, which should draw different contestants; so that is probably ok.

On a side note, does anyone else think it is inappropriate for Eddie McGuire to be hosting a game show when he is the Chief Execute Office of one of Australia’s largest television networks? I was quite shocked in February 2006 when he was appointed as the CEO of Channel Nine and to see him still hosting a game show; it just seems wrong.