Ryan Jones Blog – dotCULT.com Ryan Jones Blogs About Internet Culture, Marketing, SEO, & Social Media

It’s getting to be election time again so I thought I’d chime in with some timely advice. Bin Laden is expected to reccomend voting republican so that he can stay in business. Of course if you’re in Florida you’ll probably be voting republican anyway – even if you selected democrat thanks to faulty voting machines. Consipiracy anyone?

Speaking of voting machines I don’t know what’s worse: The fact that Hugo Chavez owns them or that they’re so easily hacked.

So remember, as you head to the polls: It’s not important who you vote for. It’s not even important that you vote. What’s important is that you actually believe your vote matters when selecting the oligarchy to rule over us.

If you know me in real life you know that I’m big time anti-piracy and anti-file sharing. As a software developer and author I don’t want people taking my stuff without paying for it, so I don’t take theirs without paying for it. It’s the old do unto others.

Like all Geeks, I have an Ipod – an Ipod that has about 20 or 30 gigs of music on it. Unlike most geeks however, I actually have all the CD’s to back up the music. I estimate that I’ve probably spent over $5,000 on CDs over the years. Lately I just buy them used on Amazon for around $5 – sure somebody else has probably just ripped the songs, but at least my actions are legal. I believe that’s all a man can do, make sure what he does is correct. If everybody thought like that the world would be a better place.

Anyway, occasionally a song comes out that I like, but I still won’t justify paying $5 for the CD when I only want one song. I used to use ITunes for that. It was great for getting those one hit wonder songs. One of my favorite bands, Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, even released a special CD only on ITunes. I had no choice but to buy that one. Seriously, if you like Country, Southern Rock, or Americana, Check them out on MySpace.

Alright, enough fluff. When my computer fried (power lines went down) I was forced to buy a new one, and transfer all my data to this new computer. That’s where the problem comes in. Auchi ITunes offers no way to re-download songs you’ve already paid for. It’s not $0.99 per song.. it’s $0.99 per download! I wish I’d have known that up front. As often as I change computers I’d have been better off buying the CD even for one song – and I wouldn’t have to deal with DRM either.

It’s time to step up to the plate Apple. You have a record of me buying songs, you have the songs.. Why can’t I re download them?

Just a quick note to any of my readers who live in Florida, the latest issue of Family Times Magazine features an article I wrote on page 20. It’s about internet slang and the top 25 terms parents should know.

I’ve been dabbling in freelance lately, so if you’re interested in a fresh new writer, drop me a line. it’s ryan at noslang dot com … but you probably already knew that.

Just when you think you’re doing an act of goodwill, the city of Chesapeake turns around and spits in your face. At least, that’s what happened recently when a Massachusets based software company finally handed the chesapeake.com domain name over to the city of Chesapeake – after 10 years of being bugged about it.

That’s right, the city of Chesapeake bugged this software company for 10 years to give them the domain for free… 10 years! Eventually the software company gave in and donated the name to the city.


So what did the city do with this generous gift? Why they sold it for $120,000, that’s what they did. And people wonder why more people don’t donate things. Here’s your answer.

The city of Chesapeake should be ashamed of themselves. At the very least, they should donate the $120,000 to the software company that donated them the domain. There’s a difference between being given a gift, and pestering somebody until they finally give in.

Ok, well not really. I’ve never once intentionally sent any spam emails before, and none of my websites collect emails or even send any out…. or so I thought that’s what they were doing.

Years ago (we’re talking 1999 here) I headed over to hotscripts and grabbed a generic form email script. This particular script was written by Dennis of DarkMix.net (which no longer exists anymore, so I assume Dennis had the same problem)

The problem was with the following lines of code that I just seemingly noticed:


$headers = "From: $Name <$Email> \n";

$headers .= "Reply-To: $Email\n";

$headers .= "X-Mailer: Darkmix Mail Sender\n";

$headers .= "X-Mailer-Version: 1.1";


I’m sure many of you can spot the problem. It’s very easy to add whatever I want to that header by entering a creative email address. Worse, this code didn’t use the $_POST or $_GET variables either. It relied on register globals.

Anyway, I caught this problem well over 6 months ago, and the site it was on isn’t even on the internet anymore. I was just reminded of it while perusing some old legacy code at my company and remembered that I’d forgotten to blog about this. All in all it only sent a few emails before I noticed something was funny. No harm no foul I suppose.

Let this be a lesson to those who release free code on hotscripts, as well as to those who blindly use code found from such repositories.

It seems like the MySpace stories in the news get stranger by the day, and this one is no exception. Police in Farmington, Conn have charged a 13 year old girl with criminal impersonation for creating a MySpace profile claiming to be her teacher. The article doesn’t say what the profile said, but we can probably assume that it wasn’t nice things.

Now, I’m not denying the school should do something about this issue – they should. The consequences could be bad if a student were to send a confidential message to the teacher, or if the blog said something referencing a student. Do I think they should have charged her with criminal impersonation? Hell no.

If we look at the legal defintion of criminal impersonation then we notice some nice red text there. (note: I know this is a colorado definition. I check the Conneticut law and it’s the same. I picked this page because it highlights what I want to talk about.)

It’s hard to see how creating a fake MySpace about a teacher gives this particular 13 year old any unlawful benefits, and it clearly doesn’t subject the teacher to any legal proceedings.

Hopefully this will all be handled without lawyers or prosecutors and the girl will learn an important lesson about what you can and can’t post on the internet (although legally I think she had this right).

While we’re on the lesson train, maybe schools will take note and learn that:
a.) Matters like this are better handled with sit down talks between teachers, students, and parents.

b.) They can’t control what students do on the internet outside of the classroom.

Update: I should probably add that IANAL, so don’t go creating fake myspace profiles because I said it should be legal.

According to a recent article, the US now ranks 53rd among all countries in freedom of the press. That’s a big slide from the #17 position we held in 2002.

Speaking of 2002, that’s the same year that we arrested and sent an Al-Jazeera photographer (Sami al-Haj) to prison without charging him of a crime. He’s still sitting in guantanmo.. I’m not sure if he’s been officially charged but he surely hasn’t seen a judge yet.

From the article:

Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of “national security” to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his “war on terrorism.” The zeal of federal courts which, unlike those in 33 US states, refuse to recognise the media’s right not to reveal its sources, even threatens journalists whose investigations have no connection at all with terrorism.

So how else does one measure freedom of the press? Well there’s Josh Wolf who was jailed in August for refusing to hand over a video he shot to the government.

There’s also Nicholas D. Kristof who was jailed for refusing to reveal his sources for an article.

Does this sound like the land of the free to you? Sure, we’re not completely controling the news like Kim Jong Il does, nor are we torturing those critical of our fearless leader ala Turkmenistan but our press freedoms are worse than many african nations.

When’s the last time we’ve compared ourself to 3rd world countries and they’ve won? We Americans need to realize that the “war on terror” is really an attack on our freedoms, but unfortunately we won’t be getting that information from our local newspapers.

A long time ago I gave up my main email accounts. If I had gotten around to coding an archive for this blog, I’d link it here… One of these days I guess.

Anyway. I disabled every email account that I’d ever publically posted, and replaced all website ones with strict scripts that filter my email and forward it to me only if it contains certain strings that the web forms insert into it. I don’t recieve any spam now, because the only address I have isn’t shared among any companies.

Now, I’m trying it with phone! Whenever a company needs my phone #, I’ve always given them my parents phone number – they’re more likely to answer. So my cell phone is rather private. Now, I’ve just given up my work phone too!!

See, everytime somebody makes a sale they play this stupid rap song over the intercom. The other day it was played 7 times in 20 minutes. Great for the company but annoying for the company’s programmer.

So, no more work phone! If I need to use a call, I use a random phone around the office. If people need to get a hold of me, I give them my MSN. IT’s working great and without phone or email I’m getting so much more done now!

Dear Kevin,
I just read your Wired Article and I can’t believe you did something this stupid. Here’s why:

Kevin, I’m usually all about protecting children. In fact, I run NoSlang.com which urges parents to learn about the internet slang that their kids use.

But you’ve gone too far on this little sex offender escapade. Your code is going to get some sex offender killed.

I know you state otherwise, but there’s really no reason a normal person needs this code other than to harass or threaten sex offenders. Scraping myspace is also a violation of their terms of service, which you fail to mention.

Specificially:

#4 any automated use of the system, such as using scripts to add friends or send comments or messages;
#5 interfering with, disrupting, or creating an undue burden on the MySpace Services or the networks or services connected to the MySpace Services;

I honestly hope that if somebody uses your software to track down a sex offender and kill him, that you get charged with murder.

Sure, you’re liable to find the occasional sex offender on there who’s doing wrong… but for every one of those, there’s 100 more who aren’t doing anything wrong. Is it worth inflicting undue harrassment and threats upon them just to catch 1 creep?

What about those who have been caught peeing in public, or those who had underage girlfriends. In Michigan if 2 15 year olds have sex with each other, they’re sex offenders. Now, thanks to your code they’re going to be harassed constantly on myspace.

The fact of the matter is simple: Most dangerous sex offenders are in prison. The rapists and child touchers generallly get many years in prison. It’s the underage girlfriend, peeing in public people that your program is going to find because they’re the ones not in jail.

Congratulations, you found one pedophile and created undue harassment for many more. You’d have had better luck simply following congressmen home from work.

All of these people you find have been deemed safe to return to society by our justice system. They should be treated the same as you and me.

If we’re going to track and find them, then why don’t you start tracking alcoholics, domestic violence, and even speeders.. because I don’t want children associating with them too.

In fact, lets run the criminal history of anybody who applies for a myspace account. Only those with no crimes against them can have accounts. Then everybody will be safe.

If you put half as much effort into teaching parents to be involved in their kids life as you do into villifying sex offenders, you might actually do some good.

Instead of going after these people, why not go after the kids that seek out and add 40 year old men to their friends list. It’s a 2 way street, and there’s obviously something wrong with those kids and their parents.

There’s an easy way to fix myspace (I wrote about this on shoutwire.com so I won’t repeat myself here)

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that you’re going to be doing more harm than good, and I can’t wait to see you charged as an accomplice when somebody uses your code to do harm to a sex offender or falsely slander somebody else.

After all, considering you yourself say that it’s mostly false positives, what legit use does your code have?

Wouldn’t it be easier and more accurate for a parent to just search the registry by hand for all of their child’s friends?

–Ryan