h0bbel.p0ggel.org

Missing a plane, as the first thing you do in the morning, is not fun. Not fun at all. Thanks to the traffic to the airport, I missed my flight to Stavanger where I'm implementing a new firewall/vpn solution for one of Sea-Cargo's branch offices.

The next flight is in two hours, so I'm stuck here waiting. Thank god for wireless access at the airport.

And now my laptop runs out of power as well.

Sigh, could this day be better??

Oh, I guess it can. After all, the new connection at the branch office might not work, and the firewall might be configured wrong. This could turn out to be an extremely productive day. And who can I blame? Myself. No one else. Sadly.

I've had it. People are hotlinking images from my site like crazy, using them (in full size no less) in forum postings and even as backgrounds for their own sites. They don't even bother downloading the images in question, they just link directly to the files on my server.

Earlier I've replaced images that were hotlinked with other, not so nice, pictures. For those of you curious enough, google tubgirl and goatse.

Most of the hotlinked images reside on my old Gallery 1.x install, which has no real image protection scheme. I've since migrated to Gallery 2, but left my old install in place. So, step 1 now is to remove the old albums dir. That should stop most of the existing links out there, but I also want to be able serve "alternative" images to hotlinkers, if I feel like it. So, I hope to do a general rewite for all image files in the old albums location and feed them to a php script that determines what to do with it.

So, the sites looking at getting images replaced on their site right now are the following:

• www.majorwager.com
• www.myspace.com/poppiwhatitdo
• profile.myspace.com
• forum.pcdiscuss.com
• vpro.react.nl
• www.geenstijl.nl
• rukazone.myfreebb.com
• mikadosoc.ie
• www.bah4ever.com
• www.dvd4arab.com
• www.student.uib.no
• lnx.calciolinks.com
• docet.mastertopforum.net
• patchtimer.org
• www.kwick.de
• www.atima.com.br
• words.globalsearch.cz
• www.infoautoemoto.com
• www.onlinesoccermanager.nl
• fwrestling.com
• forums.probetalk.com
• www.prisjakt.nu
• lens-forever.forumactif.com
• suicidegirls.com
• zonaforo.meristation.com/foros
• www.pariando.it
• www.fcbahis.com

There are probably more to come as I continue to check my logs...

Paul Thurrot news editor for www.windowsitpro.com has spoken out against Microsoft and the current development status of IE7.

My advice is simple: Boycott IE. It's a cancer on the Web that must be stopped. IE isn't secure and isn't standards-compliant, which makes it unworkable both for end users and Web content creators. Because of their user bases, however, Web developers are hamstrung into developing for IE at the expense of established standards that work well in all other browsers. You can turn the tide by demanding more from Microsoft and by using a better alternative Web browser. I recommend and use Mozilla Firefox, but Apple Safari (Macintosh only) and Opera 8 are both worth considering as well. Source: http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/47208/47208.html

While I agree with Paul that Firefox and Opera are better browsers than IE currently is, I can't help feeling that Paul and many others are jumping the gun a fair bit here.

The most critical point in Wilson's post, in my mind, is Microsoft's admission that it will fail the crucial Acid2 browser-compliance test , which the Web Standards Project (WaSP) designed to help browser vendors ensure that their products properly support Web standards. Source: http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/47208/47208.html

While this is disappointing, try running the same test in FireFox. It fails as well. The acid test is not a be-all, end-all test and as a michel_v in #wordpress said:

[michel_v]it's not like Acid2 is THE definite goal to attend [michel_v] it's not like it's the ultimate testcase to end all testcases [michel_v]and it's not like, once all browsers pass the test, they'll stop having bugs of their own

And thats where I believe IE7 will either fail or succeed. If they manage to rid the bug-plague and security issues that has been pestering IE6 since day one, they stand a chance. As far as CSS and standards compliance goes, Microsoft does have some problems they need to work out. One of the biggest problems, in my opinion, is that IE7 needs to be compatible with IE6. Now, there is a challenge. Microsoft aims to strive towards better standards compliance, but at the same time need to support IE6's various extensions to the standard, and bugs. Lots of websites out there are made for IE only, and I don't see that Microsoft will ship a new IE version that doesn't display those right. It would be a gutsy move if they did, but I seriously doubt it.

Whatever Microsoft and Chris Wilson say now, I'm still going to wait for the final version to be released before I judge it. It's only in Beta 1 at this stage, not a finished product. Lots of changes can still be made, and I'm sure that lots of changes will be made with the feedback that they recieve from this beta version.

I haven't given up on IE7 yet, and neither should you. IE7 Beta 1 is a step in the right direction, and it'll only improve from here.

Did I mention how quickly it renders pages? I was very suprised when I started IE7 inside VMWare, and saw how quick it was.

Added:

www.soulhuntre.com has a great post highlighting some of the main causes for the anti IE7 "movement". Well worth a read.

XeroCool has, to my knowledge, posted a small apology for ripping content from my site. I say apparently since he is still blocking me from viewing his site.

Thanks to Podz for letting me know.

http://xerocool.innereyes.com/bad_msn_bad.php and http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/item/msncom-not-playing-nice. Compare the two, make up your own mind.

Fun to be copied, not fun to be plagiarized by someone of his caliber.

Thanks XeroCool, that really made my day.

Update:

XeroCool has banned referrers from this site to his "site", so copy and paste the url of you want to see it yourself. I'm leaving it at that, and his comment below kinda summarize the whole thing. And if you are interested in how much of a dick I've been in the Wordpress forums, check http://wordpress.org/support/topic/37092.
He's also altered his original post so that it doesn't look like a verbatim copy anymore.