Posted:
April 22, 2006 12:37 am
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, passed in 1998 at the behest of the music and movie industries, has done little to benefit anyone except a select group of companies who have used its provisions to establish, maintain and expand a virtual stranglehold on the entertainment industry. The cartel which has arisen after this act does not benefit consumers at all; rather, it gouges them for as much money as they can possibly suck out, corrupts modern technology, and sets back the state of the art.
The remainder of this message is encrypted using an algorithm which provides virtually no security, but which (if I were so inclined) would open you up to lawsuits if you decrypted it without my permission.
Posted:
April 19, 2006 4:46 pm
I want to take a moment to give a warm welcome to our newest readers, the Open Source Center of the Central Intelligence Agency. Welcome to Homeland Stupidity!
Posted:
April 5, 2006 7:48 pm
These updates to stories previously covered at Homeland Stupidity focus exclusively on election and voting issues, a major issue with the 2004 elections still in doubt and the 2006 elections fast approaching.
Posted:
March 27, 2006 3:09 pm
Government bureaucrats are the same everywhere. That is, they’re stupid. And today’s stupid bureaucrat is Jerry Taylor, city manager for Tuttle, Oklahoma.
Posted:
March 18, 2006 9:00 pm
Was the 2004 presidential election stolen? Well, as it turns out, it’s easier to rig an election than to rig a Las Vegas slot machine.
Posted:
February 10, 2006 5:49 pm
Over the last week or so, you may have occasionally seen, instead of the Homeland Stupidity website you’ve come to know and love, a short message stating, “System maintenance is in progress. Please try your request again in a few minutes.” For those of you who are interested, I’m going to explain why that message appeared and what I’ve done to correct it, so that access to the site remains up and running for everyone.
Posted:
February 7, 2006 3:16 pmUpdated: February 7, 2006 6:30 pm
Last week President George W. Bush toured the National Security Agency to offer his support to NSA employees. A photo accompanying a Washington Post article about the visit showed some sort of global threat display in the background, and Boing Boing, among others, have been going crazy over the fact that this photo contains completely unclassified information that anybody can display right on their own computers. Today I’m going to tell you what that display was, where the information came from, why people are overreacting, and what NSA is really doing.
Posted:
October 20, 2005 4:48 pmUpdated: June 26, 2006 8:11 am
UPDATE: Want an account with wordpress.com? Just start up Flock, click on “blog” on the start page, then click WordPress. You’ll get the special Flock users only signup page.
Just moments ago I got an email from Flock advising that a Developer Preview was available. So I decided to try it out. It’s most definitely changed quite a bit from version 0.1, the last version I reviewed. And this time, I took a few screenshots.
Posted:
October 7, 2005 4:37 am
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, mainly because of the blasted weather. So, here’s another short collection of bits of government gone awry.
Posted:
September 30, 2005 10:35 amUpdated: September 30, 2005 11:17 am
In an obscure policy decision published last Friday, the FCC decided that the FBI would have veto power over what software Americans can run on their computers.
Posted:
August 20, 2005 2:01 pmUpdated: August 21, 2005 1:04 pm
Running behind the scenes of Matt Mullenweg’s new commercial WordPress project, WordPress.com, is of course WordPress, everyone’s favorite blogging platform. And running on WordPress.com is Bad Behavior, the premier solution for blog spam.
Posted:
August 16, 2005 10:13 amUpdated: August 20, 2005 9:01 pm
Bad Behavior 1.2 has been released. It now includes whitelisting capability and improved spambot detection. Thanks to all of you who tested the release candidates, and actually found fewer bugs than I was expecting.
Posted:
August 11, 2005 12:30 amUpdated: August 20, 2005 9:00 pm
Bad Behavior 1.2 Release Candidate 3 has been posted. Bad Behavior stops link spam at the front door by denying spammers the ability to access your PHP-based web site at all.
Posted:
August 8, 2005 10:53 pmUpdated: August 20, 2005 8:59 pm
The second release candidate of version 1.2 of Bad Behavior is now available! Bad Behavior stops link spam at the front door by denying spammers the ability to access your PHP-based web site at all.
Posted:
August 8, 2005 2:22 amUpdated: August 20, 2005 8:58 pm
The first release candidate for Bad Behavior 1.2 is now available. Bad Behavior, the bane of link spammers everywhere, has been strong and stable. I’ve added some new features and need your feedback.
Posted:
August 4, 2005 3:06 am
Are you a Google AdSense publisher? Do you worry about accidentally clicking on your own ads and being thrown out of the program? I have a solution for you.
Posted:
July 25, 2005 9:24 pm
Forbes magazine has named WordPress Best of the Web in its Blog Tools category, saying that version 1.5 puts it squarely ahead of Movable Type.
Posted:
July 13, 2005 8:55 pm
The debate rages over whether Windows and proprietary applications or Linux and open source applications are more secure, but is it the right question to ask?
Posted:
July 2, 2005 12:00 pmUpdated: August 20, 2005 8:57 pm
Bad Behavior 1.1.4 has been released.
Posted:
July 1, 2005 1:16 amUpdated: August 20, 2005 8:25 pm
Bad Behavior 1.1.3 has now been released.
Posted:
June 20, 2005 9:48 pmUpdated: August 20, 2005 8:19 pm
It’s been two months now since I started the Bad Behavior project. I’m stopping for a moment to take a look back to see how far it’s come, and to glance at the journey ahead.
Posted:
June 19, 2005 2:08 pmUpdated: August 20, 2005 8:23 pm
Bad Behavior 1.1.2, the latest version of the Web’s only portable link spam killer, has been released.
Posted:
June 13, 2005 1:39 amUpdated: August 20, 2005 8:21 pm
See also the permanent page for Bad Behavior.
Bad Behavior 1.1.1 has been released.
Did you ever do something really stupid? Well, I have. And I even did it yesterday. I released some software without completely testing it and getting rid of all the bugs.
I unfortunately made a stupid error in one of the Bad Behavior [...]
Posted:
June 12, 2005 8:01 amUpdated: August 20, 2005 8:20 pm
See also the permanent page for Bad Behavior.
Security Update: All users should update to Bad Behavior 1.1 immediately to prevent malicious attacks of various types on your Web site.
Bad Behavior 1.1 is now available! It includes a number of fixes and improvements over the 1.0 series, including:
Improved MediaWiki support. Bad Behavior now installs on [...]
Posted:
May 28, 2005 2:33 amUpdated: August 20, 2005 8:17 pm
See also the permanent page.
Security Update: All Bad Behavior users should update to version 1.0.1 immediately to prevent malicious code execution on your Web server.
A security issue has been identified in Bad Behavior 1.0 whereby an attacker can execute arbitrary PHP code. While this issue only affects a small percentage of Web hosts, I [...]
Posted:
May 1, 2005 11:45 pmUpdated: August 20, 2005 8:16 pm
Announcing the 1.0 release of Bad Behavior, the PHP-based web spam killing software.
Posted:
April 29, 2005 12:59 amUpdated: August 20, 2005 8:16 pm
See also the permanent page for Bad Behavior and the announcement for Bad Behavior 1.0.
Security Update: All Bad Behavior users should update to 1.0-rc3 immediately to prevent malicious attacks on your database.
I’ll skip the usual mumbo jumbo and skip right to the important parts:
Fixed in this release:
A security issue has been identified and fixed [...]
Posted:
April 26, 2005 12:02 pmUpdated: August 20, 2005 8:15 pm
There is now a permanent page for Bad Behavior. See also the blog entry announcing 1.0 Release Candidate 3.
Spam, spam, spam, baked beans and spam
On Sunday I announced Bad Behavior 1.0 Release Candidate 1. Go read that page and the permanent pages for all the details on what it is.
I was quite pleasantly surprised [...]
Posted:
April 24, 2005 7:18 amUpdated: August 20, 2005 8:14 pm
There is now a permanent page for Bad Behavior. See also the blog entry announcing Bad Behavior 1.0-rc2.
Have you got anything without spam?
Gone over your bandwidth quota this month? Had to upgrade your web hosting plan? Who’s visiting your site so much? It’s those pesky spambots. They suck down your web pages repeatedly looking [...]
Posted:
January 19, 2005 9:46 pmUpdated: June 18, 2005 6:30 pm
The latest release of the WordPress SpamAssassin Plugin includes the #1 most requested feature (and in fact, so far the only requested feature). Is it actually working?
Posted:
January 8, 2005 12:45 pmUpdated: June 18, 2005 6:29 pm
I’m pleased to announce version 0.3 of the WordPress SpamAssassin Plugin. Based on reports that it actually works, I’ve changed its status from “pre-alpha” to “alpha.” In addition, the following improvements are in this new version:
Posted:
January 2, 2005 6:54 pmUpdated: June 18, 2005 6:29 pm
I hate spam. I really hate spam. And I hate comment spam on my site. A few of you noticed about 764 of them yesterday morning when you visited here. I thought I was fairly well protected against comment spam, but the spammers are getting smarter. So I decided to raise the stakes a bit. Introducing the WordPress SpamAssassin plugin.
Posted:
November 20, 2004 8:01 pmUpdated: June 26, 2005 9:34 pm
I make no secret about my love for Linux, and I make no bones about it either. I understand many of you still run Windows and you have good reasons (and sometimes really bad ones) for doing so. But if you must run Windows and connect it to the Internet, please take some steps to secure it, not only for your own sake, but for the rest of us.
