Archive for March, 2006

Bad Behavior 2 Update

March 21st, 2006 by Michael Hampton

I had originally intended to have a second alpha release of Bad Behavior 2, the next generation of the Web’s only non-content-based link spam killer, ready by now. Actually by last week. So I wanted to give you all an update on why it’s delayed and when you can expect to see some code.

As I posted back in February, I wanted to have the next alpha release out by mid-March. That didn’t happen, and it’s starting to look like early April before I’ll have something out. The reasons for this are as follows:

First off, you all should understand that I don’t work a regular 9-to-5 job like most people. In fact, I haven’t since last summer. I live solely on the income that I make blogging and from performing WordPress and other programming work for various clients. And while Bad Behavior has many generous donors, one of whom helped me obtain a computer when I needed it most, it isn’t enough to live on. Because of this, the work which generates the income that I live on must always come first. Unless Bad Behavior becomes a lot more popular than it already is, it will likely always take a back seat to the other work I must do in order to pay the rent and buy the groceries.

This means blogging and slinging code for anyone willing to pay for it. Almost. I did tell a splogger to go to hell the other day, and probably lost a couple hundred bucks. But some things just aren’t worth it. I’m trying to eliminate these guys, not help them.

Anyway, enough of that. For the past few weeks, I’ve had several clients engage me for various things, and actually been able to pick up a halfway decent desktop computer as well. And I’ll be working for at least the next week on a couple of other projects. And then there’s whoever else comes along.

Once I’ve gotten all this paid work off my plate, and have enough money to live on for a couple of months, then I’ll return to Bad Behavior with a vengeance. I’ve seen the spammers who have managed to evade Bad Behavior. They’ve hit me as well. And they’ve hit hard. For the first time I can remember, Bad Behavior is less than 80% effective, and that just won’t stand. I’ll be back on the case shortly, just as soon as I’m reasonably sure that I can stop taking paid clients for a short while and still have enough money to live on.

If you have suggestions for Bad Behavior 2, please leave a comment.

(By the way, if Bad Behavior 1 has blocked you, your friends, or a robot you want to crawl your site, read this.)

Bad Behavior and DIRECWAY satellite Internet

March 7th, 2006 by Michael Hampton

If you use a DIRECWAY® satellite Internet connection, you may find yourself intermittently blocked by blogs, wikis, forums and guestbooks using Bad Behavior. Fortunately there is a fairly simple solution to restore your access to these sites.

First, the problem. The Hughes DW6000 and DW7000 series of satellite modems include a built-in Web proxy server called Turbo Page. Unfortunately, Turbo Page has a bug which causes it to trigger Bad Behavior’s built-in spam protection when sending HTTP POST requests. You will be able to browse normally, but if you attempt to login, post a comment, make an edit, etc., that is when you will find yourself blocked.

It’s not clear to me at this time whether the bug exists within the satellite modems themselves or at the NOC, but until Hughes fixes the problem, a workaround exists which allows you to disable the Turbo Page proxy server so that you can access sites protected by Bad Behavior.

I would recommend that if you need to disable Turbo Page, that you do so only as long as necessary to access specific sites. Once you are done logging in, making your edits, or posting, you can re-enable Turbo Page simply by restarting the satellite modem.

To the best of my knowledge, the DW4000 series of satellite modems are not affected by this problem.

If you have one of these satellite Internet connections, please let me know when a software update comes out which fixes this problem. Thanks!