Snap.com is running a new service, Snap Preview Anywhere. It allows websites to have the links on their site show a preview of the linked site in a floating window. I have stumbled across several sites that are using this technology, and I find it distracting. I’m reading through a page, I scroll down and the mouse randomly ends up over a link. Poof! a pop-up window appears, and I’m looking at the preview of that linked page. It is quite distracting, partially because the preview is slow to load, and partially because something is happening on the web page that I’m not expecting. I’m not expecting anything because I’m not doing anything to cause something to happen. Simply moving my mouse and not clicking should not cause something to happen. The behavior is very similar to pop-up ads.

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I am about to inherit a Plone based web site at my day job. So I’m reading through the docs at the Plone web site, and they say that I should learn Python. I am shortly at How to Think Like a Computer Scientist and am running my first Hello world program (command) in Python on my Mac. It sure looks like BASIC.

print "Hello, World!"

is the same in BASIC and Python. Cool. Let’s see what happens.

I can’t access the Network Solutions Whois database.

* WELCOME to the VeriSign Global Registry Service Whois Server.** Sorry, the Whois database is currently down.** Please wait a while and try again.  Thanks

I needed to use it to confirm the registration dates for one of my domains hasn’t passed. I got three (3!) faxes (faxes!) yesterday from a company, no name (maybe Domain Registry Support? if so, what a stupid confusing name, which is what they are going for), apparently trying to get me to panic and to switch the registration over to them.

Here’s one of the faxes. I haven’t removed or edited it, since all the information in it is in the public Whois database anyways.

After googling for “Domain Registry Support” I see that they have a history of scamming. Now they’ve moved onto flat out lying, and breaking the TCPA by sending unsolicited faxes.

The Wikipedia page for Domain Registry Support is informative.

While running the web traffic stats for some of my podcast sites, I noticed that a bunch of my MP3 files have been downloaded a bunch of times from the same IP address. And then two seconds later, it is downloaded again. Luckily the second time apache reports a 206 (file unchanged) error. The IP addresses all map back to China. Sometimes the referrer is http://www.qq.com, apparently a Chinese portal. Sometimes the referrer is listed as a web site, with an IP address, e.g. http://920.981.927.954/index.html

Is this a lame DOS attack? Or simply people in China looking for downloadable music? Maybe these IP addresses are simply the IP address of the proxy that China has to use to get out to the wider Internet. Should I simply block http-request traffic from China? My podcasts certainly aren’t being marketed to anyone in Asia.

Amusingly, I did find a referrer from a music sharing network that indexes based on mp3 tag and filename. I have no music to download, but the title to one of our reviews has “music man” in it.

I just got this spam, do these losers really think people are going to buy prescription medicine when it is advertised like this? I assume the letters making up the larger letters are randomized.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,C:H:E:C:K O:U:R S:P:E:C:I:A:L O:F:F:E:R !!!,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,ah  us    ty    mm      al  td  ep  vh    agsu  ga   zeee   ok      yk  ch  eq  jrg  ympfd  vj  tg  yc  jv      yo  vp  km  zgdadmrvdh  kr  lclyea  fp      wv  ja  au  ln bh bn gmdu   nw  vs  he  kb  ay  nq  ak  fa    ko  lt    er  pu  kqvyfs  pz   ovsc   dn    ojri  lh  yp    jc     fvzw   zogle     kqan  tq  wj   egpk   kz  se  fv  vp   hblmcr  ju  ls  zr  ji  uj      jj  ko  nc  jiwd  rf  sw  cwwrqj  ui ecx  mvhue   lexkdx evnu   fz  ha  ei  gc  ef  og  py  lc  dk  mf    fl  qd  bp   puom   ot  vk  si  po fypp   xi    ze    ki      qz   lwgyin  pt  xq   gevp   bq      ke  at  zjhp      ym  mh  pq  pe      ur  kiktc      lj  ptecon  lt      iq     iuinr  qq  nm  it  lo  cw  bt  bo  ly  qt rlpn   is  ii  pk  nteynd  fa   wptirv   lg    pa    dn  gt    jj    hu   wu vf ju    gfmp   xlj bh   bifl    fp ly  bfr    wq  ij  xgnbzk  xo  kp    aqx  tiu    ffrdpe  btzppp  cbisjv    lus os pa   fq  re  vq zdh  zq  lq   au acov   db  oh  el  od  nj  qa  qs  ll   mb