What are spam comments?

From Wikipedia:

Spam in blogs (also called simply blog spam or comment spam) is a form of spamdexing. It is done by automatically posting random comments or promoting commercial services to blogs, wikis, guestbooks, or other publicly accessible online discussion boards. Any web application that accepts and displays hyperlinks submitted by visitors may be a target.

Adding links that point to the spammer’s web site artificially increases the site’s search engine ranking. An increased ranking often results in the spammer’s commercial site being listed ahead of other sites for certain searches, increasing the number of potential visitors and paying customers.

Examples of en.grand-piano.org’s comment spam. Click image to see more examples of the unrelated posts they’ve been commenting on.

If you’re in the market for a new Grand Piano, please take their questionable tactics into consideration before making your final decision. If are willing to use such lowly methods to gain customers, can you really trust the way they handle other aspects of business?

Who engages in this practice, presumable to increase search engine prominence and thus sales?

http://www.en.grand-pianos.org/

I use JS-Kit to handle comments on my blog, and so have disabled Wordpress’ native commenting system. Yet everyday I receive emails informing me that “PianoGuy”, “GoPiano”, “PianoDraft”, “PianoTrade”, “PianoFan”, “LePiano” … found posts as unrelated to Pianos as: “Write Your Own Listener Interface (you know you want to)” or “Auto-Notification of Broken Links, Fantastic Pre-Written Anti-Spam .htaccess File!” (irony?) interesting and helpful.

Right.

Mr. PianoMan, this behaviour is not acceptable. We would like you to please leave our blogs never return. Or if you do insist on reading our posts, at least wait until we write something actually related to Pianos before leaving a advertisment comment.

Thanks.

Update: the spambot has attempted to comment on this post!

What what whaaat?!

Tags: Spam, Stupid

You know those times, while coding, when it feels like you’ve drifted into a horrible nightmare where nothing you do works?

This happened to me today.

I wanted the little app I’m making to display a green tick or a red cross depending on whether the user had entered valid credentials. Simple? Yeah. Everything went really well, I extended a JPanel to handle the tick/cross display area (tickCross), got the POST code going, strung together the rest of the GUI elements.

The problem was that tickCross.repaint() wasn’t reliably repainting. about 30% of the time the image wouldn’t be painted. The method was being called, but nothing was happening. I tried Google, re-read the related Sun Java docs and was reminded that: “repaint() does not actually paint. It calls the peer repaint which enqueues a request in some platform-dependent way inside the native GUI for a repaint.” – MindProd. Great. My OS was deciding when I was allowed to draw.

Somewhat more irritated, I then had to resort to every programmer’s backup tool: trial and error.

Thanks Rob (we make websites), for laughing at this post and emailing me the following:

tickCross.repaint();
tickCross.setVisible(false);
tickCross.setVisible(true);

?! How about:

Invalidate();

I swear I tried that, honest!

After much frustration, I struck a solution. It’s not elegant, I’d even say it’s hacksih, but it works.

1
2
3

tickCross.repaint();
tickCross.setVisible(false);
tickCross.setVisible(true);

Cross or tick when I damn well want them, every time.

Tags: Java, Nightmare

Went to the park yesterday. Didn’t write about it last night because I was struggling with .Mac, which is terrible. It is like a dog defecated then rolled in it, then jumped up into your lap. I use a program called Rapidweaver to create and maintain this website. Rapidweaver is great, because I can’t be arsed actually learning HTML/CSS/PHP, but I still want to make a website that doesn’t look like I was limited to 5 colors and one frame. HTML isn’t fun, not like C++ is, because I can’t easily write cool programs with it, like my “How many primes below x?” program. HTML is lame, Rapidweaver is not. Anyway, .Mac is really awful. Every time I wanted to upload some changes to this site, I’d get some stupid “.Mac: unknown error” message. I’ve had other errors, so getting an error wasn’t so bad, it was the fact that it would not only happen EVERY TIME, it would happen on seemingly random files, with no consistency. Errors like that make me think something is seriously wrong, so I bothered to do a google search on the problem. It seems that a lot of people hate .Mac. I started to regret impetuously jumping into this pile of filth, but as I had already, I thought I may as well try to fix it.

Turns out there is no fix for this error, only suggestions that I had already tried myself, as I’m not a complete idiot (though, as I bought a .Mac account, this is no longer certain). I tried about twenty more times to upload the site, with the same outcome. Utterly annoyed, I Googled: “dot Mac refund”, and found a blog where some guy was bitching about his crappy .Mac account, and the hoops he had to jump through to get a refund. Excited by the prospect of having even ten cents refunded, as this would make me feel less of a chump, I a read through the terms and conditions, which stated that if a .Mac account is less than 30 days old (mine is), then the owner may cancel their account and receive a prorated refund. Hooray!

Finding how one is supposed to apply for this refund was not simple, but I managed it. I am now eagerly waiting for a reply to my message:

“Cancellation please:

I purchased this account so that I would be able to create a website with Rapidweaver.

This has not worked properly once, and thus I would like a refund.

Regards

Mike.”

Take home lesson: Mac make great computers, but their .Mac service is more repulsive than a hobo’s pants.

After managing (hopefully, Mac’s response pending) to wriggle out of .Mac, I needed another place to host this glorious site.

I bothered to do some research this time, and was sucked into buying from the first hosting service I saw. The company offering this service is called “Hostmonster”, which is an awesome name. Their service is cheaper, and better than .Mac. Like all real hosting services, they support PHP, which makes my life a little easier. Also they have lots of other benefits, which I can’t be bothered listing. You can read about them here: www.hostmonster.com.

Tags: Awful, Hate - 讨厌