Woo, Teamwork

I learned today that Google, MSN Search, and Yahoo have teamed up to announce support for the rel=”nofollow” attribute in link tags. But the search engines aren’t the only one who have thrown their support behind this announcement, as pretty much every major blog software company has signed on.

The purpose? To combat comment spam. The basic idea behind comment spam is that by filling in your comment fields with gibberish, but leaving a link to their own site either in the comment text, or the meta-data, a comment spammer can artificially increase his/her web popularity (when measured by incoming link count) and/or trick legit blog readers to click on the links. This is highly annoying and akin to vandalism (in my opinion). Search engines hate it because it messes up their results. Hence the impetus for a united front.

Here is the way this will work (in theory): If this new attribute is properly implemented in all blogs, spam comments will not generate any popularity boosts to the spammer’s rankings in search engines. This in turn will take away the motivation behind comment spamming. And of course the next question to ask is “Why can’t everyone just use anti-spam measures on their blogs?” Well, most people do not want to have to fuss with these measures (and sometimes the cure can be worse than the disease, if your spam blocker keeps legit commenters out) and, more importantly, a determined spammer will always find a way around a spam blocker. But if you eliminate the spammer’s reason to spam, you may stop the problem at its root. Most companies will automatically adopt ways to use this link tag attribute, so the vast majority of bloggers will have the solution automatically implemented for them. For those of you using Wordpress, there’s already a plugin being whipped up by the open source community. They sure are fast buggers!

I’m excited because I absolutely hate spam, and spam comments especially, and because I would like to be able to enable trackbacks without having to jump through hoops or having stupid texas-holdem poker sites abuse the feature.

The Enemy

Saw this post on the Wordpress Support Boards, and it really burns me up that these comment spammers are not punished for their cyber vandalism. I’m hoping he gets shut down and heavily fined.

On a brighter note, here’s a thread about Wordpress smilies.

Chilly!

It’s 15 degrees out and windy (after last week’s 70 degree weather), so it seems especially apt that this week’s Illustration Friday theme is “Seasons”. Not sure yet what I’m going to do.

Can’t Take It Anymore!!!

Today at work the heat was broken all day. Not only that, the part that had to be fixed was right outside my cubicle (less than 1.5 feet away). Apparently part of the pipe under the floor malfunctioned. Now I can ignore banging and vaccuuming water hour after hour, and even the smell of smoke… but the discussions! I don’t know what part of the pipe the “nipple” is, but I endured hour after hour of discussions about nipples. They were talking about nipples when I took my lunch break and when I came back, they were still talking about nipples. The nipple had to be wrenched, then taped, then pulled, etc. etc. I tried to be really mature about the whole thing, but damnit couldn’t they have named it something different? It’s bad enough freezing at your desk on a Monday without plumbers talking about nipples right next to your desk (the entire day)…

They didn’t end up fixing the problem either… this phenomenon may repeat itself tomorrow T_T.

Cereal Killer

I tried a different flavor of cereal (almond cranberry) this weekend and in two days I’ve eaten more than half the box… It’s nice and crunchy with real almonds and real dried cranberries.

It’s Here!

The new stove is here! It’s a little cheapie one like the last one, but at least it’s new. I think it’s actually smaller than the previous one, but the landlord said he might replace the counter on the sink!

This is cool because currently the amount of counter space is maybe 4 inches across and 2 feet deep. Now, maybe it will be 7 inches across! The sink itself is so small that a full size plate can’t even lay flat in it!!!