Anyone who runs a wordpress blog (and I suspect a number of other blogging tools) would be aware that as soon as your get any sort of notoriety on the web, you start to get hit by comment spammers.

These are automated scripts that seek out blogs or forums, and place messages that almost always contain one or more links to sites advertising drugs, gambling or the labour party.

I can’t speak for other tools, but wordpress handles this pretty well. I’m still on 1.5, so can’t speak for how it works in 2.0 (that’s a discussion for another day) but the fix is pretty simple.

Go to ‘Options > Discussion’

In the ‘Comment Blacklist’ section at the bottom of the base you can chuck phrases that will permanently block any comment with that phrase. I went through a process of putting the drug names in, until I realised that the best solution was to put ‘[/url]‘ in. This piece of code is almost always put into the spam so that the link appears in phpBB forums that use this format.

However, in wordpress it doesn’t do anything, so no real comment would ever put this in.

It’s working quite well for me. We had 18 spam comments overnight, that otherwise would have had to be manually removed (from moderation). Happy spam killing.

Posted in Tech | | 2 Comments »

It occured to me just now to wonder if New Zealand pricing had been set for the Playstation 3.

It would appear that the answer is yes.

gpstore.co.nz – $1199.95
gamesman.co.nz – $1199.00
dse.co.nz – $1198.00

They are all in agreement of a release date of 17th November. There’s 0.0001% chance (there is a chance I’ll win that reader’s digest sweepstake) of me shelling out this much on the PS3 (mainly due to the fact that I’m a PC gamer) but it’ll be interesting to keep an eye on these prices and the release date over the coming months.

Update: PS3 Release has been delayed in New Zealand until 7th (gptore.co.nz estimate) or 17th (ebgames estimate) of March 2007.

Posted in Xbox 360 | | 7 Comments »

No, this post isn’t an attempt to gain hits from those looking for free MP3 downloads. If we are to believe the news, free, legal music may soon be available to the world. I can see Steve Jobs quaking in his golden clogs.

Universal is proposing allowing all of it’s songs to be freely downloadable, as long as consumers watch ads as they are being downloaded. They believe they can make enough money from these ads to be profitable.

I’m personally trying hard to fight back the euphoria. This is only a trial, so may be scrapped. If I was going to be cynical, I might say that they’re going to run the trial, declare it a failure and use it as evidence that there are no other options other than forcing people to pay for downloads.

But I sincerely hope that this is the first step in bringing some logic to web media distribution. I’ll gladly view ads to watch videos or listen to music, but I demand a ‘what I want, when I want it’ service that conventional tv or radio cannot provide.

My dream is that within five years, I’ll be able to throw away my sky dish, from the internet click a program that I want to watch from a directory of available programs, and watch it, complete with ads, at my selection, and importantly, legally.

I guess only time will tell whether this is a view of a real future, or just a dream.

Posted in Music, Tech | | 10 Comments »

I was reading a thread over at spacefellowship.com when I saw this:

Please note – YOU CAN’T GET OXYGEN WITHOUT PRODUCING FOOD! Photosynthetic oxygen comes from the Carbon Dioxide consumed (and recycled) and the carbon must be removed as a product. Similarly the Amazon forests can’t be “the lungs of the planet” (producing Oxygen) unless timber or other forest products are continuously removed. The Ocean can produce Oxygen continuously, as it has organisms which shed Carbonates into the depths (creating chalk and limestone eventually) or deposit it as coral. In a closed forest system, the Oxygen is reabsorbed by the decaying dead wood and litter with no net production.

To my unstudied understanding of chemistry and biology, that seem to make perfect sense. So all the greenies that are telling us we should leave the rain forests alone to protect our oxygen supplies are potential full of the proverbial.

What we really need is a sustainably managed forest resource, selectly harvesting trees and allowing new ones to grow. Interesting.

Posted in Life's happenings | | No Comments »