Computing stuff tied to the physical world

Idiots and the Universe

In Musings on Dec 10, 2012 at 00:01

Check out this quote:

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. — Rick Cook, The Wizardry Compiled

The latest trend is to add comments to weblog posts, praising me in all sorts of truly wonderful (but totally generic) ways. The only purpose being to get that comment listed with a reference to some site peddling some stuff. Fortunately, the ploy is trivial to detect. So easy in fact, that filtering can be fully automated via the Akismet web service, plus a WordPress plug-in by that same name.

Here’s the trend on this weblog (snapshot taken about a week ago):

Screen Shot 2012 12 03 at 18 33 14

The drop comes from the fact that all posts on this weblog are automatically closed for comments after two weeks, and there were no new posts in July and August. So it’s just a bunch of, eh, slightly desperate people pounding on the door.

One of them got through in the past six months. The other 326 just wasted their time.

Something similar is happening on the discussion forum. And behind the scenes, some new work is now being done to make those constant attempts there just as futile :)

  1. jcw,

    you are awsome and you rule the jeenode world.. check out this ridicoulous crazy idiotic website … you really will like it. https://jeelabs.org

    Hein p.s. Just checking

    Hein Rigolo 10 December 2012 at 12am

  2. Hein, That was good, LOL. JCW, maybe you change all the spam links to point to https://jeelabs.org.

    John Meek 10 December 2012 at 2am

  3. The smartest spambots I’ve seen copy&paste part of a different article on the same website. That makes it look genuine, and if it isn’t filtered I find myself actually reading the comment for a few lines, before realising it’s from a different post—or before arriving at the link to the peddler’s website; whichever comes first…

    Geert Folkertsma 10 December 2012 at 9am

  4. The clear and permanent solution to this is clear. We need to hunt down and kill the people ruining the internet/comments/blogs. Not only will it send a message that you don’t want to do this, but if you do you might get killed. It also eliminates the problem at the source.

    Andrew 10 December 2012 at 8pm

  5. Just need to figure out how to find the SpamBot and use it aginst it’s own location … that way they get a sour taste of their own medicine!!!

    Bobb Craig 11 December 2012 at 2pm

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