Dante should have created a separated level of Hell for comment spammers. I got hit with over 400 spams yesterday. I’m seriously contemplating taking out a contract to find these scumsacks and introduce them to the joys of ventilator-assisted breathing. I saw that the creator of MT-Blacklist won the award for best plug-in for Moveable Type 3.0, which gives me hope that better protection may soon be available to ward off the evildoers of capitalism.
Seth Shostak at the SETI Institute thinks that we will discover a radio signal from another intelligent civilization within the next 25 years. And with any luck, my computer will be the one to find it. It’s fun to contemplate the effects of such a discovery on society. After the initial freak-out, I wonder if it would be kind of anti-climactic. After all, any response we sent would take decades, if not centuries, to get there. And that’s assuming we would even be able to decipher their message. Still, a lot of organized religions would have to seriously reevaluate their cosmologies. But I bet a lot of adherents would simply refuse to believe such a discovery, no matter how much evidence you shoved in their faces. It would be Evolution vs. Creationism, Part Deux.
I use MT 2.661 and mySQL for the database. I wrote a script to close comments on all entries over 14 days old. Spammers usually always hit the older entries hoping you wont notice. I use phpmyadmin to attach to my database and then run this sql script. It takes about 30 seconds and I try to run it every week or so. Thought I’d medntion this in case you have a similar setup.
UPDATE mt_entry SET entry_allow_comments = 2 WHERE TO_DAYS(NOW()) – TO_DAYS(entry_created_on) > 14;
You need a catchy warning graphic: “No comment spam allowed. Violators will be suctioned!”
<shameless plug>
Ok, so it doesn’t have quite the same coolness factor as SETI@home, but you might be interested to know that you can run Folding@home at the same time as SETI@home, and help study protein folding and related diseases. You’re welcome to join Team_Dejerine; just plug in team number 38572.