11-25-07

Spammers, Malware Authors, and Other Idiots of Scale and Substance
I'm in one of those moods where my urge to kill has risen beyond acceptable levels, so instead, I'm just going to bitch people out for being the annoying little jackasses they know they are. 

First off, I suppose you noticed that the Tagboard is gone.  Like the Forum before it, the tagboard got to be more trouble than it was worth.  I was getting 5-10 spam tags a day, which is annoying in itself, but they were pointless tags, too.  Due to a hacking incident a few years ago, I had already rigged the tagboard routine to strip out any html, php, or shtml control codes before the Post, so none of the imbedded links in the giant linklist tags were even there.  Don't you people have some sort of feedback-checker to see if your spam is even working for you?  Or do you just throw your shit in the water and hope someone bites?

Anyway, it's gone.  Maybe later, I'll try to kvetch Amber Greenlee into giving me space on her Panel2Panel forums, but, for now, we'll just go with the LiveJournal.  I'll mirror every rant and review there, and post a link to the comic when it updates, and you can get my attention there.

Banners of the Damned
You knew it was going to happen:  those wonderful people who spend all their time trying to find new and more efficient ways of breaking into your computer have wheedled their way back into the banner ad services.  If you remember correctly, a bunch of...oh, let's call them "advertisers", got banned from Google Ads, Adsense, and a few other banner providers last year because they were using their ads to distribute spyware, trojans, and other forms of malware.  Well, they found a way back, using shadow ads and corporations, to make their activities seem innocuous to the sort of casual security that the ad companies have to employ, but bearing the seeds of destruction (or at least the seeds of ten minutes of annoying popups).

What's happening is this:  Vicious Evil Software, Inc will create faux subsidiary Sunflower.  Now Sunflower will buy space and submit an ad for "Sam Kennison's Greatest Screams of Rage (a 10-DVD set)", this will have an innocuous-seeming Java call which will call out to an intermediate site, presumably for an image.  The Java routine on the intermediate site will send the image, but also make a Java call of its own to the home site where the malware Java call is hosted.  All of this happens in the time it takes to load the site you want to look at.  Before you can see (for instance) the Major League Baseball home page, you are wafted off by one of these adverts of the devil to a popup that claims you are infected by a virus.  Closing the popup, just opens another, minimized popup, and possibly a dialog box.  Twenty minutes later when you've closed, cancelled, and aborted every "security operation" imposed on your computer by the ad, you have to run your virus checker to scan your whole system.  With any luck, you, and your firewall have managed to prevent the attack from being successful.  Otherwise, you have to go through the long and annoying process of removing the virus from your system.

If you've avoided this fun situation, yay for you.  If however, you happen to pop into your favorite site and get slammed by these guys, do everyone a favor (after you've cleaned up the mess at home) and drop a line to the site's operator.  He'll thank you for it.

General Stupidity and Annoyance
In the interest of making this a happy Ramahannakwanzmas (technically, Ramadan was in October, this year, but it scans better if I leave "Rama" in), I'm going to have to remind everyone you are not the only person in the world.  Contrary to the ruminations of Mr Descartes, no one else is an illusion created by your mind to explain your current state of being.  When you take up three spaces in the already over-crowded parking lot at Fry's, a very real person, who also thinks (and therefor, exists) is going to have a slightly worse day because you decided to be a dick.  Those people strolling up the aisle at Walmart are not going to phase through you when they get to where you've blocked the aisle (although they may comment on the amazing talent it must have taken for you to block a ten-foot aisle with just a shopping cart and your giant butt).  No one at the mall wants to smell your smoke, step in your unfinished food court meal, or listen to your loud BlueTooth discussion about all the rude people and how everyone keeps looking at you like you're a jerk (news flash:  you are).  Get off the phone, find a garbage can, and go outside to smoke.

If you're around kids, try not to say stupid shit about Santa Claus and his existence or lack thereof.  Just because you've allowed cynicism and whinyness to turn your life into a constant stream of grey, cloudy days doesn't give you the right to suck the magic out of a child's Christmas.  They have precious few of them before they have to learn how to say "You want fries with that?" without being sarcastic.

Don't taunt the Christians.  They didn't steal your fucking holiday.  No one in any country where you have internet access gives a rat's ass whether you celebrate Christmas, Yule, Imbolc, Hanukkah, or annual Throw Grampa To The Wolves Day.  Just be glad that you're surrounded by people who would like to celebrate a few weeks where everyone is supposed (for one reason or another) to try and make peace with everyone else.

In all things this coming month, remember:  Try not to be a dick.