Dilbert: I combined an online dating service with an online job site and an auction site. You tell the system everything about yourself and see if anyone wants any of it.
Message to a User: I wouldn't date you or hire you, but I'll bid a dollar for your refrigerator.
Appeared in a Dilbert strip published 2004.12.23.
Nearly half of all Americans believe that the civil liberties of Muslim Americans should be restricted. Now, the article doesn't mention which liberties should be restricted, and it also doesn't mention if it's only the liberties of Muslim Americans. After all, if the poll asked about restricting the freedoms of all Americans, it would include the Muslim count, yes? But I suspect that it was aimed specifically at this group.
I've decided to make a change to the hash in MT-Approval 0.1.2. That version's hash included the author's password hash from the database. In MySQL, this is simply an encrypted value, that, even if displayed, wouldn't be of much use to anyone.
But in other systems it may display differently, and well, even giving someone an encrypted password to work with isn't a good idea. So I've removed it. Starting with version 0.1.3, this value won't be used any longer.
It's really rather interesting that all the recent flutter about comment spam has already happened (two years ago, when comment spam appeared on the scene en force). At the time, more than one (1, 2, 3) person talked about the very same issues that we're rehashing now.
MT-Approval is, in fact, simply an implementation of one of the ideas floated during those discussions - putting a field into the comment form that must be there in order for the comment to be posted.
For anyone trying to leave a comment today, you might have had some difficulty. Sorry, my fault. I was playing again. But I think that it's all straightened out now. You may notice some differences in the comment preview template, but I think you'll like them.
For starters, I finally updated the comment preview template so that it matches the look of the site. Any longtime readers will know that it has probably never matched the look of the site. Now it does.
I also took some effort to make the preview process easier. There is a preview at the top of the screen that you can submit, or further down you are able to submit any changes to your preview. I think it will make things work a little bit easier.
Finally, I've put the other comments on the screen, as well as the original entry, in case you need to reference any of those for any reason.
During this update, I made some heavy use of the awesome Compare plugin on this page to display things appropriately if data is there or not there. For instance, rather than seeing "0 comments" under the "Previous Comments" header, you will see nothing if there are none. Small touch, but I think it makes things look so much nicer. Anyway, let me know what you think (if the comment system doesn't work for some reason, check out the contact page)!
Those of you who are inquisitive may have noticed that the hash provided by MT-Approval is pretty simple. You are correct. It is very easy, as the plugin was created as a proof-of-concept. That is to say, I wanted to see if it would work. Now that it appears to work, it is possible to build on the existing solution, and that is where the new version comes in.
You must be using Movable Type 3.1 or higher to use any version of MT-Approval.
Version 0.1.2 of MT-Approval is a simple upgrade. If you are already using version 0.1.1, you can just replace the approval.pm file in your installation. If you are a bit anal-retentive like myself, you will want to replace all the files so that the version and dates and stuff match. That's okay too. But the only place any code has changed is inside the approval.pm file. If you are using version 0.0.1 or 0.0.2, you will need to replace, at a minimum, your Approval.pl file and the aforementioned approval.pm file.
Last week in our Sunday School class, we reviewed the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32, some versions call it the parable of the lost son). This is a story with which most anyone - even non-Christians - are familiar (though they are perhaps less familiar with it). The story is a simple one. A wealthy man has two sons. One of these sons, being impatient as most of us are, wants his inheritance up-front. He's waited too long and is ready to get on with the process of spending it.
The man, who wishes to please his son, gives him what he asks. The son then takes his inheritance and spends it wildly (really - the Bible says he spent it on wild living). He finds himself working as a servant for a famer, realizing how the pigs he is feeding are eating better than he. So the son realizes that his father's servants eat better than this, and decides he will return home, not to be a son but to be a servant, so that he may be treated better than the pigs in this strange land.
While he is still a ways out, his father ran to him and welcomed him home, giving him robes to wear, rings for his fingers and even bringing in the fattened calf for a feast. The son, naturally, was amazed, but nonetheless enjoyed this welcome.
After reading this, you might be likely to think that the lesson is a simple one: Don't waste your resources. You may even take it a step further and get from the story that you shouldn't waste your time holding a grudge. Open your arms to them, don't get caught up in the little things. The image may very well be an illustration of serving and eventually reaping the reward. And you might be right on any - or all - of these counts. But there's another part to the story that I never particularly noticed until now.
While all this was going on, the man's other son decided that this was too much. The younger son had squandered everything given to him, come crawling back, and was still being welcomed as a prince. Why did he feel this way? Because he felt that he had stayed the course, that he had done The Right Thing and that he had never received the fattened calf for his efforts!
Does the moral of the story change for you now? It did for me. There are so many times in my life that I see this. And I'm not pointing the finger at anyone. I do this all the time. When I'm driving and point out how the other idiots aren't paying attention (while I'm obviously not either, since I am watching them). When I look down the street and see the larger houses and newer cars and harbor ill will that we work and save and can't afford such things. I do it all the time.
And I think that might be the true meaning of the story. Don't spend your time worrying about what other people are receiving for their efforts. If nothing else, you are then not tending to your own worries. More often, you have more than you know and simply don't see it because you are so used to things the way they are. There is an old saying that says something like you don't know what you've got until it's gone. The younger brother didn't know. The funny thing is, neither did the older brother. While you might think he was the responsible one, he was, in fact, taking the exact same road taken by his younger brother. He might have just been travelling along this road a little bit slower, but he was still on the same path.
Now that you have installed MT-Approval, you may want to take a few more steps to make things work just a little bit better. Unfortunately, if you are using the <$MTCommentFields$> configuration mentioned earlier, you will not currently be able to take advantage of these enhancements. I'm working on it. Please be patient.
MT-Approval requires a comment to be previewed prior to generating the hash field, so you must preview at some point prior to posting. This is not an option. Yes, it is true that you could submit a hash yourself with your post, but you may not be able to get the correct hash, which is the whole point of MT-Approval.
As I mentioned yesterday, I've been working on a new Movable Type plugin. As you may or may not know, there has been a lot of talk about comment spam recently, and I was hoping to address it. I created the MT-Moderate plugin not too long ago, and it helped for a while. But it mostly helped with human spammers. People that posted on old comments and the like.
This week's problems are different. They are simply overloading the servers. Unfortunately, even MT-Moderate does not address this issue, because to get to the point where it is moderated takes a bit of processing power. Multiply that by a huge number of times and you see the problem. What is needed is something that doesn't take quite as many resources.
After keeping an eye on things for the better part of the day, it looks like all is normal again. Most importantly, comments should be functional once more. You will notice a difference however. Notably, you are not allowed to post a comment without previewing it first. What's more, if you preview your comment and then change it, you will have to preview it again before you can post it.
Currently working on a new plugin to better handle comment spam. As a result, comments may not be available for a bit. If you have problems, please wait for a short while and try again. If you're the person currently leaving comment spam, rest assured that this is because of you, and that even though your posts no longer show up on my blog (at least, most of them don't), even that will soon cease. Thanks for dropping by to visit!
Update: Apparently something somewhat seriously wrong with my server. Haven't had access to it for several hours. FTP and HTTP both appear to be working, so I'll update this via FTP. Might be a little while before I'm completely back online. Sorry for the delay.
Update: The problem has been at least somewhat tracked down to my previous install(s) of Movable Type. So I have a new one. It's possible that I hacked too much at the old one, so something was amiss. It's also possible that I had installed something recently that was causing a problem. Nonetheless, going to see if things continue to run quietly for a while.
Actually, they probably won't be down - as in completely unavailable - for long, if at all. But I am working on solving the category problems. Turns out that there is much more to work with than I would have liked, so it's taking me a lot longer than I would have liked. Hopefully everything should be straightened out shortly. Thanks for your patience.
Update: The categories are available again (if they were ever missing). However, online documentation for plugins will not be available for a while. Because of some location changes, it just became too difficult to get everything working again. Since all plugins come with their own documentation in the distribution archive, please use this for the time being. I hope to have the online documentation back before long. Thanks.
