The Blogroll
Here are some blogroll items I've been meaning to do and/or ask about:
asisaid Blogroll now with a personal touch: I decided to give my blogroll a more personal touch by switching from blog names to the names of the bloggers. Here's how I did it: if you publish your whole name on your site, your whole name went on the roll. If you publish only your first name and/or I am aware that you don't really want your whole name tied to your blog, I only included your first name or first name plus last initial. If I made a mistake, let me know. If I didn't put down your last name and you don't care if I do, comment below; if I did put down your last name and you don't want it listed, let me know that too. Thanks!
I also added a link to a blog by a friend of mine who just joined the blogosphere. Go take a look at Deep Thought and give Chris a hardy welcome! It looks like it should be an interesting blog for those interested in Macs (Chris has contributed a couple commentaries to OfB.biz, including one I mentioned the other day).
please ping weblogs.com: I'd like to ask a favor, if I may. If you have a blog, please “ping” (your weblog software should support XML-RPC pinging) weblogs.com and/or blogrolling.com when you update your blog. If your blog is at the bottom of my blogroll, that probably means you never ping and therefore blogrolling never moves your name to the top of my list. If you ping, then I'll know when you've updated and that means I (and others using BlogRolling's or Wordpress's ability to denote updated blogs) can enjoy your new posts.
blogrolling asisaid.com: In a similar vein, if you are blogrolling me, remember that the address I ping is http://asisaid.com/journal/, not just http://asisaid.com/ or http://www.asisaid.com/ or any other variation. Therefore, if you are wondering why update notification never works on my blog, you now know why. It is rather unfortunate that the XML-RPC ping spec does not provide a convenient way to provide alternate URL's (as far as I know), but since it doesn't, the address must be exactly the correct one for update notification to work.
Spam Update
Here is a snapshot of my spam blocking statistics for the past two days (approximately). This is prior to re-enabling DUL blocking, something I did about a half hour ago. I'll let you know how it goes now that DUL is back on.
Total Spam Count = 17784 Total Success Count = 4914Spam detected and blacklisted, by blacklist, since last refresh of exim log (2004-12-12 04:02:09.000000000 -0500).
Note: checks against blacklists stop after first positive match, therefore lower numbers from blacklists lower down should be expected and do not indicate performance of a given list.
sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org = 15306
LAST UPDATED: Monday, 13-Dec-2004 22:05:03 EST
zombie.dnsbl.sorbs.net = 0
cbl.abuseat.org = 120
opm.blitzed.org = 0
dul.dnsbl.sorbs.net [disabled 2004.12.05 00:15 due to overactive blocking] = 0
relays.ordb.org = 3
spam.dnsrbl.net = 0
dnsbl.njabl.org = 1215
blackhole.securitysage.com = 0
hil.habeas.com = 1
list.dsbl.org = 1080
manual =0
verify fail= 290
No Relay = 158
Christmastime
Loved ones close to our hearts and strangers in lands afarThe CD is a masterful blend of tracks with instrumental, children's choir, and of course, MWS's singing as well. MWS has a knack for composition, and this CD is a testament to it. While the individual songs are good, it is best experienced played in its original order rather than being shuffled, I think. It is a Christmas experience — with a little work, it would probably make an amazing Christmas cantata service.
Together share in the joy
Emmanuel
He has come to dwell
With one voice
Let the world rejoice
Summary of Past Answers, Current Point Board, New Questions
Here's the status of previous questions:
1.1.) It was armor for the Humvees (military Hummers). [solved]
1.2.) Yes, Jason and Flip are correct that it is Borges. The complete answer for this one is still pending.
2.) Thomas Jefferson was a deist and the organization I had in mind was the Unitarian Universalists Association (UUA). [solved]
3.1.) As Kevin noted, this flew right over asisaid readers, but the answer that Kevin correctly named is none other than our new theist friend, Antony Flew. See my post from December 9 to see why this relates to this blog. [solved]
3.2.) UNIX was properly linked to Multics by Ed. Flip correctly added the words behind the Multics acronym: Multiplexed Information and Computing System. What's left is the pun that is the name UNIX. It began as UNICS (Uniplexed ICS), but the bad jokes that came from what the word sounds like (think castrated Multics) were alleviated by changing the name to UNIX which does not stand for anything. [solved]
3.3.) Kevin got this one too, the answer being the song Whisper by Evanesence (Amy Lee and Ben Moody). I don't recall blogging about this group, but regardless, Kevin got it. I was hoping the Latin would make it confusing (call me mean). [solved]
This leaves only question #1.2 remaining. Aren't there any Borges fans on here? Try to take different routes and maybe you will arrive at the answer.
Kevin pulls in the lead by taking on my two “difficult” questions from set three. Jason makes a fast rise toward the top. And the two EDifying readers Ed and Eduardo are tied at 10. For the first time in the history of this blog, Christopher has fallen behind someone in points. What in tarnation is going on here?!?!? Mr. W needs to get to work.
Kevin: 40 [30 from 3.3, 10 from 3.1.]
Christopher: 20
Flip: 20
Jason: 15
Eduardo: 10
Ed: 10
(If you see an error in this scoring, let me know.)
As long as everyone seems to be enjoying this, I'll post a few more questions. If this gets old faster than I run out of challenges, someone hit me on the head and tell me.
1.) What country recognized 5 minority languages on 1 April 2000? [10 pts.]
2.) What important event in Catholic (and, technically, Protestant) history occurred on 13 December? [10 pts] What international events happened on the same day in 1996 and 2003? [5 pts ea.]
3.) What famous Librarian of Congress was a member of Skull and Bones? (Name the activity that this person was best known for as well.) [20 pts.]
4.) What did dioxin have to do with politics this week? [5 pts.]
5.) What is the proper name of the color of the first iMac? [5 pts.]
More Challenge will appear on Tuesday.
I Hear Ya
| What kind of learner are you? Auditory Learner You are an auditory learner and learn by listening and responding to what you hear. |
| Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests. |
Post your results below (remember that HTML won't post in the comments, so just post the text of your answer).
I Found It... Finally.
Last year, I had ordered the older Michael W. Smith Christmas cd to compliment the newer Christmastime I already had purchased. I played it only once because I procrastinated and did not get it ordered until after Christmas. Today I went to pull it out, and the jewel case was… empty. That's not good. After digging through numerous other Christmas CD's, I finally located it, but I was worried for a bit. I don't even have it ripped onto my computer yet, I can't lose it yet!
That was about the biggest excitement of the day, otherwise I've been taking a day off to recuperate from the last few weeks. I slept in, read the Post-Dispatch, a bit of Voltaire's Candide and checked on the articles over at OfB. If only life was always this peaceful!
asisaid challenge: Question Set #3
Suppose then that we are in doubt as to what someone who gives vent to an utterance is asserting, or suppose that, more radically, we are sceptical as to whether he is really asserting anything at all, one way of trying to understand (or perhaps to expose) his utterance is to attempt to find what he would regard as counting against, or as being incompatible with, its truth. For if the utterance is indeed an assertion, it will necessarily be equivalent to a denial of the negation of the assertion. And anything which would count against the assertion, or which would induce the speaker to withdraw it and to admit that it had been mistaken, must be part of (or the whole of) the meaning of the negation of that assertion. And to know the meaning of the negation of an assertion, is as near as makes no matter, to know the meaning of that assertion. And if there is nothing which a putative assertion denies then there is nothing which it asserts either: and so it is not really an assertion. When the Sceptic in the parable asked the Believer, “Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?” he was suggesting that the Believer's earlier statement had been so eroded by qualification that it was no longer an assertion at all.DISCLAIMER: I do not agree with the above statement, at least in its original context and the point it tries to make.
2.) How was the term UNIX originally spelled and what did it serve as an acronym for? [5 pts.]
3.) Where did this quote come from (Hint: it is only a few years old)? The final quote had more than one person involved in “preparing it” for public consumption — if you can name more than one, you'll get 5 extra points, if you can name all three of the best answers, I'll give you 10 extra points. [20 pts.]Speaking to the atmosphere No one's here and I fall into myself
[…]
Servatis a pereculum.
Servatis a maleficum
Remember, no web search engines (other than for searching only this site, using site:asisaid.com in the query), but you can use other web resources, if you wish to really seek out this answer (as Jason is trying to do with Question #1.2).
Clarification
Here are some clarifications concerning my re-implementation of DUL blocking.
Will I still be able to send mail to ServerForest addresses?
Yes. Just to be clear, when I re-enable the dynamic users list (DUL), it will not block users from e-mailing me or anyone else on ServerForest, even if they have a dynamic address, so long as you send your messages through a normal SMTP server, such as the one from your ISP, web host, etc. The only people who will have problems are people who run their own SMTP server on their own computer that is connected to the Internet dynamically. If you don't know what that means, I can virtually assure you that you aren't doing it and this won't impact you at all.
Who runs an SMTP server from a dynamic address?
Almost all SMTP traffic coming from dynamic addresses is SMTP traffic caused by worms and similar malicious programs. Typically, this means they are either sending copies of themselves or working as zombies to send spam. Because it is likely that virtually no legitimate traffic will be sent this way, many hosts block DUL SMTP servers traffic, quite likely, yours already does (unless you are using my services, and then yours will shortly).
Checkout Those Stats!
I've blocked over 40,000 spam messages since the beginning of the week, as you can see here. I'm thinking about re-enabling the DUL (dynamic users list) to block servers on dynamic IPs from sending e-mail to ServerForest — after looking into it, I know of exactly one person legitimately doing so in thousands of messages I looked through. This won't block users with dynamic IP's on their desktops, only those trying to send through a server on a dynamic IP (which in 99.9% of the cases means the PC has been hijacked). I also think I will remove some of the non-effective lists (no sense wasting resources querying servers that never block anything), and move some of the more-effective ones up in the order of the effectiveness… thereby reducing the amount of queries my server must make.
Odds and Ends
- Christopher: 20
- Flip: 15
- Eduardo: 10
- Jason: 5
- Ed: 5
New stuff on OfB:
- linuxfor.biz: Eduardo takes on Slackware removable drive configuration and scanner usage in the Stealth Desktop Part IV.
- macfor.biz: Chris Olson takes another stab at Microsoft in his latest op-ed piece, Microsoft: Plodding Behind Into Eternity.
Did anyone notice I'm into lists today? I list for lists, I guess.
