Temporary: Need to register to comment

The ChangeLog

The comment spam problem has become so bad that I’ve had to temporarily require you to register before you can post. To comment, just hit the “register to post comment” link. You just have to pick a username and your e-mail address, and you will be e-mailed a password. It’s simple, painless, and stops spammers dead.

I have been deleting hundreds of spams a day, but the Drupal spam module folks are looking into the problem. I’ll remove this requirement ASAP.

Incidentally, if you do log in and hit “history” at the top of the screen, you can see which stories have new comments. Also, you can sign up to get an e-mail when new comments or stories are posted.

If you have an account with another Drupal blog, you can log in with that as well.

The good news: Trackbacks are being caught by Drupal now.

Looking For Text-Mode Widget Library

Programming

I’m looking for a text-mode widget library. Something that has dialog-boxes, etc. for text-mode (curses/console/xterm) programs.

I’ve looked at these so far:

  • tvision/tv/turbovision: Questionable license situation, unsuitable for Debian
  • CDK: Fine on *nix, but unusable on Windows
  • CTK: Not maintained for several years, looks dead, not as good as CDK anyway

I want something with a C library, that supports *nix and Windows, and has support for things like menus, dialog boxes, etc. Any suggestions?

Drupal Doesn’t Stop Spam

Software

I run Drupal for this site, as well as some others hosted here. My complaint about it is that the spam solutions in Drupal are ineffective and poorly-designed. The situation seems to have actually gotten a bit worse in the most recent versions of Drupal. Here are my complaints:

  • No working support for captchas. (I had lots of problems with captcha.module)
  • Spam filter is not very effective, despite being properly trained on huge volumes of spam. I get dozens, if not hundreds, of uncaught spam comments per day.
  • The “mark as spam” button has no effect on some very large spams.
  • There is no feedback to users whose comments have been marked as spam, indicating to them that the comment will be manually approved.
  • There is no auto-expiry of spam comments; they sit in the database forever unless manual action is taken.
  • Deleting spam comments — which seems to be the way that people are encouraged to use the spam module — requires: checking one checkbox per message, then selecting “delete”, and repeating this for each page of the spam comment listings (it only puts a few dozen per page; I get about 15 pages worth in a slow day.) Even with some Mozilla toolbar help, this is a slow and cumbersome process.
  • No “auto-delete” feature for spams referencing certain URLs.
  • Poor recognition of &-sequences in HTML
  • Nobody really maintains the spam filter
  • Does nothing at all to stop trackback spam

So, my question is: what blogging software has good anti-spam capabilities?

Back when I used WordPress, I used the Captcha module for it, which worked well. (Its normal anti-spam capabilities didn’t.) Drupal doesn’t have a working Captcha module, and everything else is hugely labor-intensive.

Is there something better out there for Drupal anywhere?

I often get the impression that the authors of the spam module in Drupal get less than a dozen spams per day on their blogs. It simply doesn’t scale to places that get hundreds of spams per day.

(Update: Drupal also isn’t very responsive at addressing bugs…)

Linux, Bluetooth and Mobile Phones

Hardware, Linux

I got my first Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone this week, a Motorola v551. I’ve been playing with the Linux utilities for working with mobile phones and have assembled some links. Most of the pages out there seem focused on SMS features of a mobile, or using a mobile phone for Internet access for a Linux box. I’m interested in neither, and care more about phone book syncing and transferring files back and forth between the phone itself and a PC.

There seems to be quite a community built around hacking Motorola phones as well. The Hofo Guide is the authoritative resource.

HowardForums.Com is also a great site.

The Reactionary Pedestrian

Outdoors

Living On Earth did a segment about the Reactionary Pedestrian. He tried to walk the 2,000 miles from Georgia to Maine, and wound up walking 3,000 miles just to get to Georgia. He attempts to walk across the Huey Long Bridge, but is stopped by a Louisiana State Police officer, who told him there is no bridge across the Mississippi in Louisiana that allows pedestrian traffic. He winds up having to take a bus.

He also mentions that on Valentine’s evening, a long row of SUVs could be seen driving down the beach. But he was the only one walking.

He raises a lot of good points.

You can listen to Abner Serd himself (10 minute MP3 or RealAudio), or read a transcript.

Do they really care?

Politics

Adam Kessel has an good post about terrorism and the west. I agree with him; I don’t think that the terrorists really care about “our way of life” or “our value” or even “hate our freedom”. They care about what’s going on in the mideast only, and the west is a target because we’re doing things they don’t like.

Cingular… doesn’t suck?

Reviews

Well. I didn’t think I’d ever have something good to say about a cell phone company. I don’t actually have my Cingular phone yet, but I did sign up over the phone for it. The Cingular sales rep actually seemed to want my business! Shocking, isn’t it? And — he actually knew things about his service that I didn’t, and even more, didn’t give me any blatantly incorrect information!

The guy also volunteered his direct extension to me, on multiple occasions. With Sprint, the best you can get is a username that another rep can e-mail (and the original one can then quickly delete), and that’s only after pressuring them hard. It’s nice to be able to talk to the original person if there’s a problem.

So, as a public service, I will now present a Sprint PCS vs. Cingular comparison in handy side-by-side format. So it could possibly be that I will never write a “Cingular sucks” story. We’ll see.

Sprint PCS Cingular
Seems greatly inconvenienced by the almost insurmountable burden of taking money from me each month Appears to actually want customers for some odd reason
Closes most calls by transferring me to a busy signal, the automated attendant, or saying they will transfer me, then hanging up. Closes most calls by giving out their direct number, with an offer to help with any future needs
Monitors calls to make sure nobody accidentally gets quality service Monitors calls to make sure they didn’t hire anyone from Sprint
Charged me $145 more than advertised for a phone Saved me $30 on my phone by giving me the sale price (the sale ended yesterday)
All employees try to remain as anonymous as possible. It is more likely to be struck twice by lightning than to speak to the same Sprint employee twice. Tell you how to reach them again before you ask.
Sign you up for services you don’t want. Only offer you services you don’t want.
Charges you to use your Sprint phone to find your current usage Current usage info is free
Employees seem to be annoyed they aren’t at home watching Jerry Springer (or perhaps the Indian equivolent) Employees seem to be annoyed when they have to put you on hold for more than 30 seconds
Average wait time to speak to the first person: 45 minutes, unless I need to speak to someone that can actually fix my problem, in which case it’s 45 minutes plus an incorrect transfer. Average wait time to speak to someone: about 60 seconds.
Number of time a customer support rep has incorrectly transferred me can only be estimated by advanced mathematics and supercomputers What’s this “transfer” thing I hear so much about?
Routinely claim to be unable to do things because “the computers are down”. Merged with a division of the company that invented UNIX
Company-owned retail stores require you to take a number, then wait in a crowded room for an hour, with no place to sit, just so you can be told that you must call Sprint Customer Service to get your problem resolved Company-owned retail stores require you to wait in an open place for about 15 minutes before they solve a problem. No need to take a number because the salepeople can remember faces.
Company-owned retail stores most frequently visited by people that haven’t paid their bill, or those that don’t want to have to call Sprint Customer Service Company-owned retail stores most frequently visited by people that want to buy a cell phone

So I don’t even have my phone yet, and I have only spoken to salespeople. But it seems like a positive sign that the Cingular sales people actually want to sell things. The Sprint people, from every department, usually wish that these pesky customer folks would just go away.