The idea was to start a dating website. Although a fairly saturated market place, I figured it’d be another one to add to my profile.

Earlier on in the year I remember coming across an article on the .net magazine website, entitled “Creating your own dating site” (part2, part3).

In the article Karl Hodge explains how PHPizabi is the ideal social networking site engine with messaging and chat features.

One of the most interesting statements very early on in this article is this:

PHPizabi is a refreshingly professional, 100 per cent open source, social networking and dating application.

But we’ll come back to this later.

We begin with the preparation steps, where we see a screenshot of the author’s attempt: “dogmeet.net” – it looks pretty neat.

Sure i’m a pretty advanced user, so I’ll skip this and jump directly to the comments to see what’s been said.

just google phpizabi and you get www.phpizabi.net – it’s open source which means you can download it all from the interweb.

Thanks Sam, this should get me started.

Visiting the site, I’m greeted with quite a pretty looking site, however the last entry in their news is a vulnerability report from back in August 2008, I figured this would be fixed by now and proceeded to download regardless.

The file I got given was “PHPizabi_0.848b_C1_HFP1.zip“.

I skip to step 2: Installation.

I quickly notice that the installation I’m using is nothing like the (better looking) screenshots in the tutorial, but I thought “never mind it must be a newer version”.

Upon completion of the fairly straightforward installation I get straight to work.

First thing I look at is the themes. There is only one provided and it looks nothing like the (better looking) one seen on the article. Strange, I thought, perhaps they are using a different package.

From here I proceeded to to investigate what other themes I can get for free. I soon found out that “not many” was the answer, although I did find a link entitled “PhpIzabi Mods, 24 mods & themes:FREE DOWNLOAD“. I figured it may be worth a look at.

Pretty wrong. The themes were no better coded than the shipped one. Poor markup, poor use of CSS, and just generally not very good looking.

This would take some time to cleanup. I started anyway.

I cleaned up the “frame.tpl” making it all XHTML, removed the table layout, and added new styles to handle it. I also cleaned up “home.tpl” and a few more of the tpl files.

I eventually started getting somewhere, so decided to browse around the site I had started to form. Some of the pages simply didn’t look right, and wouldn’t populate correctly. I decided to look at the code.

In a way, I wish I never had. In the “index.php” I noticed a lot of poor coding, stuff that I’d not seen since about 2005, makes sense since the copyright says 2005, and last modification date was September 3rd 2006.

This isn’t very reassuring, this would need a LOT of work to bring it up to speed for 2008. Perhaps I downloaded the wrong version? There must be a more up to date version or a simply better version?

It was at this point that I decided to read the included documentation starting with the “UPDATE_README.TXT”. Here I find this:

To perform an update from PHPizabi 0.4XX, please visit the PIO website to download
the latest migration tool – http://online.phpizabi.net

Interesting. 0.4XX must have been a fairly popular version for them to create a migration tool for and I also found that the “phpizabi online” contained lots of mods and themes.

However, looking at the “core” releases I found that the latest release was “Mar. 5th 2007″. This is not good for any project.

What the hell is going on here? Time to do some research.

I came across the PHPizabi demo site, which looks similar to the version I have (apart from the mention of Alicia), only it has broken pages too (see Inkspot). I’m convinced I have the wrong version now.

This is when I discover phpizabi.com, and their about section:

PHPizabi was founded in mid 2005 by Jeff Knipp whom hired Claude Desjardens to code a personal website. A short time later Claude and Jeff agreed to become 50/50 partners and the personal project became what was destined to be known as PHPizabi.

In August 2005 the first release of PHPizabi was made available to the general public to download free of charge. PHPizabi has gained international fame through various publications as one of the best free community softwares on the market and has a broad following of users.

In November 2006, Jeff was illegally removed from the PHPizabi project by Claude Desjardens. Though legal remedy has not been ruled out, the best interest of the community was taken into consideration and thus the creation of this site which was created to offer the community an alternative to the non-community oriented support provided by the PHPizabi.net site.

Where the net site surrounds themselves around those only wishing to make a buck or two by allowing people to sell 1 line code mods for ridiculous prices, we beleive in the open source community spirit. While we do have the Mod Club, we have many mods that are free, and as always support is 100% free.

Turns out there’s legal issues surrounding this product. This is no good.

I decided to return the original article and try and figure out where it all went so wrong.

On the first page, I find the following statements which I had clearly missed:

Find the file PHPizabi_0.415b_R3.zip on this issue’s CD and drag it over to your hard drive

return to the CD and find the file 0415bR3_sphfixHFP.zip

As it seems, they ARE using a different version, it appears to be the earlier 0.4XX version mentioned in the upgrade text in the newer version. I found this:

PHPizabi 0.415b R4 6.03Mb      11/23/2005      No support      Encrypted (IonCube)

Low and behold here we have the version mentioned in the article, released back in 2005, however it has IonCube Encryption on the core files. Odd because I remember the article saying that it was 100% open source. Guess not.

Further research via google news finds me an article describing a known vulnerability in PHPizabi. I also discovered that there is still no fix, dubbing PHPizabi as the most hackable Dating Script on the Internet. There’s no end to security issues in PHPizabi.

It seems I’m not alone, others have also had bad experiences with PHPizabi and apparently support sucks even when you pay.

So what now? I CANNOT use this, it’s unprofessional, barely usable, unmaintainable, poorly coded and worst of all vulnerable to exploitation. This project is dead.

So with the help of my earlier research, and wikipedia, I found some alternatives:

• OSDate
• Boonex Dolphin
• DZOIC
• SocialEngine
• phpFox
• AroundMe
• PeopleAggregator
• ELGG
• Mugshot
• Drupal
• Community Server
• Joomla!
• ODS

Also checkout this social networking solution comparison table at techcrunch.

What did you decide to go with and why?

Hopefully a “refreshingly professional, 100 per cent open source, social networking and dating application”, but I don’t hold high hopes.

UPDATE: I decided to share my article with the PHPizabi.com forum, however I guess they didn’t agree with me as I’m banned. The reply post notification via email from blackbook says: “yea ya like giving links to my paid mods for free..your banned dude”, thanks, as good as an excuse as any I guess, but it begs the question: now who’s “wishing to make a buck or two”? Besides, let’s face it, if nobody is going to want to use PHPizabi, who’s going to want to use the mods anyway?

UPDATE2: I’m looking at writing a dating site solution using CakePHP as the framework, based on Matt Inman’s Mingle2. I symapthise with his decision to write his own solution. Wish me luck!

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Build complete.
Don’t forget to run ‘make test’.

amber# make test
make: don’t know how to make test. Stop

It made me laugh anyway.

No related posts.

• YouTube Video @ 0:51:15
• Slideshow presentation (part2) @ slide 61-64

This is because Django has only just released version 1.0 (on 03/09/08). Considering that the project was started over 3 years ago (July 2005), it’s a fairly long time.

In his insightful, yet comic presentation Cal pokes fun at Djangos low version number, suggesting that projects with a higher version number can be more trusted, while giving an an alternate (and extreme) suggestion of 10,000 (or even vista), claiming that these are “serious business”.

Another project accused of “only just releasing version 1.0″ is wine. After 15 years wine was finally “uncorked“. However, wine previously had a date versioning scheme (eg: Wine 20040505).

Although there is no right or wrong way of doing software versioning, the advice in the open source world is to “release soon, release often” – high version numbers are expected, especially for more mature projects.

In conclusion, we can learn not to be afraid of releasing with bigger version numbers, especially since it saves time continually trying to convincing people that “despite the low version number it is stable“.

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As I had known him for a long time, I felt obliged to help out, plus I was now interested in the questions that would be asked.

Based on what had been said I knew they were going to be questions on defining what a hacker is and what a hacker does, something i’ve been interested in defining for quite some time.

Here’s what I said…

What would you say a hacker was in your eyes?

It’s said that a hacker is not defined by the hacker but by others. You soon come to realise the extent of this when the media use this term in an article about you.

How I see it is the term is used based on a level of understanding. For your average Joe, who knows very little about computers outside of your basic office package may view someone who does, as a hacker.

However, it’s likely that these more knowledgeable people do not view themselves as a hacker, and also have formed their own opinion of what a hacker is or more importantly, what a hacker isn’t.

Do you know about the history of Hackers?

Traditionally a “hacker” was defined as a programmer who “hacked” up bits of code. It’s since been defined in many different ways.

Ever since the first network was constructed, there has always been hackers. If you build a system people will inevitably mess with it.

What type of things do they do?

These days hackers are most notorious for breaching the security of a system. However, hackers come in different forms and colours.

Have you ever heard of the hacker ethic?

Well, you have your white hat hackers, commonly known as “security experts” and are often employed by companies to test the security of systems if not, to prove a point or as a proof of concept. Ultimately their skills are used for good purposes, sort of hackers with morals if you like.

On the other hand you have your black hat hackers who use their skills for various “bad” purposes, whether it be for illegal activities, or purely malicious.

You also have your grey hat hackers, a cross between the two. They generally do bad things, such as breach system security, to achieve things that are in their mind, are morally “not bad” or sometimes even good. Usually for personal gain.

So do you think a modder different from a hacker?

In my opinion, and in the context of software engineering a hacker is someone who essentially makes the application do something it wouldn’t normally do, which is effectively exactly what a modder is.

If you look at some of the most commonly used software applications used at the very core of the internet including Apache HTTPD and BIND, you’ll soon find out that they are made up from many of hacks and workarounds.

However, this type of hacker would be a software hacker, a distant relative of the security expert.

So how did you get started and involved in it?

I have always been interested in computers, but I have also always been interested in how things work.

When I was young I didn’t understand enough about the “hacking” to actually be involved with it. I did however learn a little about phreaking and then software cracking.

I found it very interesting that with the changes of a few bytes in an executable file you could turn a piece of software from trial to registered. To achieve this you must understand the basics of reverse engineering software. Often a painstakingly slow process, with little reward at the end.

Eventually through increasing use of the internet, I began to learn about web servers, mail servers, rfcs, dns, irc and all sorts of scripting languages including perl and php.

It wasn’t long before I begin hacking around with these platforms and protocols.

How did you learn?

I’m very much a hands on learner. I learn by example, and trial and error, not by reading a book.

Having said that, I have read books on all sorts of computer related topics, but I find them more useful as a resource than a method of learning.

It’s taken me quite some time to fully understand some aspects of the way the things work, especially online. I think learning the basics of how computers and the internet works is a very important part of education.

It concerns me that the kids of today, although they know how to use computers and the internet, do not understand how it works.

What do you make of the new generation of hackers?

I don’t think there is a new generation of hackers. What I see are the same old spammers, but all new developers.

Hacking has evolved.

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They then proceeded to ask me “what do we rank for on google?”, my response was “your company name, unless you request otherwise”.

They then went on to mentioned that “the man from BT” can get us listed “at the top” of the search engine for “our keywords”.

Naturally I reply to this with a sigh, but how they can they go around making such statements? It’s so unethical to make these kind of claims.

After reading their marketing bumph, I found out what they meant by “at the top”. What they are offering is the ability to list as the “sponsored links” in search engines, which appear “at the top”.

They requested my email address to send me “further details” through, below is the marketing email I was sent. I couldn’t wait to pull it apart.

This isn’t at all a review of the BT Web Clicks service, in fact i’ve not used it, it’s simply an analysis of their marketing blurb.

BT webclicks is a new service that guarantees as many or as little hits on your website based on your particular need.
Example. Anybody searching search engines such as google yahoo and msn for the specific type of business they need will be presented with a choice of various differenet company’s. What we guarantee is not just a priority sponsored listing. We absolutely guarantee that we will the will actually click on to your website searching for whatever your key words say about you. Ie car hire chaueffeur driven

WRONG: You can’t guarantee anything you have no control over. You have no control over our websites or any of the search engines. No matter whether you think you do or not, even if you are using deep packet inspection for targeted advertising, which is against your privacy policy and thus against the law.

If we don’t achieve the level of clicks you want we will give you your money back for the percentage we don’t achieve. Furthermore we are that confident of our product that we will allow customers to trial the 960 package for 3 months and can terminate the agreement if they are not happy at the end of this period.

EXPENSIVE: According to the BT Web Clicks Prices, you’re charging between £1 and £15 per month per click. So, 100 clicks in a month could cost you £1,500. Why would I do that when I get get 100 clicks a month for free using organic methods?

BT Web Clicks – Search Engine Marketing for Small Businesses Running a small business is hard work, fortunately your Internet Advertising doesn’t have to be Do you run a small business in your spare time or know someone who does? If so, BT is launching a new service which could help you save time and money.

WASTE: of time and money more like. Small businesses are vulnerable, but they’re right, running a business doesn’t get any easier, just like huge corporations are going to continue to try and trick you trick you into buying something you don’t need. If your business is important, spend the time and money doing it yourself, rather than paying BT to do it.

Internet Advertising is the fastest growing advertising media in the UK, fuelled by the tremendous growth in the use of the Internet. But small and medium sized businesses are missing out on much of this usage because advertising on search engines is complicated and time consuming.

NOT ALWAYS BEST: Just because it’s the fastest doesn’t always mean it’s the best, this is because it’s very competitive, and just about everyone has some involvement these days. This is why Google have now started using other forms of media including TV, audio and print. Whatever gets results.

BT Web Clicks is a new Internet Advertising product that helps small and medium businesses by taking away the pain of advertising on search engines, leaving them to concentrate on their business. It offers customers a fixed amount of leads to their website for a fixed monthly fee. It is backed by a guarantee1 that offers them money back for undelivered clicks.

PAINKILLER: Yes, using BT Web Clicks is much like using a pain killer, it block the pain, but they don’t actually give you a solution, and just like pain killers, they wear off after a while, unless you keep paying for them. Instead invest in a consultant who can act on your behalf.

Setting up a search marketing campaign on the major UK search engines can take up to 30 hours, however, customers placing orders for BT Web Clicks will have our expert team identify the keywords relevant to their business, create the advertising text, and place and manage the adverts on the major search engines including Google, Yahoo and at least 12 other search engines.

HOW LONG?: Last time I checked, planning and setting up a search engine marketing campaign should take about 30 minutes, not 30 hours. If choosing relevant keywords, creating advertising text and signing up to Google Adwords takes 30 hours, you must be stupid.

BT Web Clicks
Get more customers to visit your business website!

# Sponsored links on multiple search engines
# Experts choosing optimised keywords
# Fixed prices to suit your budget

FREE: None of this actually costs money, just your time. How much is your time actually worth? If it’s worth more than BT are charging for this service, I recommend you hire someone else to read through this for you.

BT Web Clicks is a search marketing service for your website or online shop. This service creates your business’ very own sponsored links on both major and local search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, in order to drive relevant leads through to your site through carefully chosen keywords.

FREE AGAIN: Creating your very own sponsored links is a FREE service offered by search engines. You only have to pay for them to appear on search engines for the keywords you choose.

Who will benefit from BT Web Clicks?
Your website is the first step in getting your business online, but how are people looking for your type of products and services going to find you if they don’t know you exist?

MARKETING: There’s lots of ways people can find out you exist. You shouldn’t rely on paid online marketing exclusively, there’s plenty of free methods and other medias to explore.

What is BT Web Clicks?

Many people start researching through search engines for both local and national suppliers – so whether you’re a local business such as a florist, takeaway restaurant, or hairdresser looking for local customers, or a specialist mail order company selling nationally BT Web Clicks can help.

WHAT?: People do what? I don’t think they do, they use yellow pages for local information. Don’t let them trick you.

What do I get?

# Keyword generation – our team of experts analyse search engines and choose the keywords that are going to generate you relevant leads to your site.
# Advertising text – we use professional online copywriters to create a text ad for your website to attract customers.
# No admin – our automated systems connect directly with the search engines to bid on keywords and upload your sponsored links.
# Fixed budget – you choose the budget so you know exactly what you will spend each month, all backed by a guarantee.
# Leads direct to your door – when a customer clicks your sponsored link they go straight through to your website and not through any other online directory.
# A monthly report with number of click through to your website – you can monitor your traffic and increase package if necessary

GUARANTEED PIECE OF CRAP: Here’s how I see it. A guy puts a guarantee on the box ’cause he wants you to fell all warm and toasty inside. But they know all they sold ya was a guaranteed piece of shit. That’s all it is. Hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed, I will. I got spare time.

What does this mean for my business?
Getting visitors to your website is the first step in getting a paying customer so promoting your site in the right place is vitally important. Search marketing is a proven way of generating leads directly from both major and local search engines, however getting it right and running a search marketing campaign to generate quality leads can be both time consuming and costly.

With BT Web Clicks you get the opportunity to use expertly chosen keywords and professionally written advertising copy that are all relevant to your business. This helps ensure that the visitors that come to your website using a sponsored link are looking for the products or services that your business supplies, and more likely to become your customer.

THE REAL EXPERT: They aren’t the real expect, YOU ARE, yes, that’s right, the real expert is YOU! After all, it’s your business, you know your customers better than anyone else, right?

If you need anymore information don’t hesitate to call Yours sincereley, Mark Clark Sales Executive: Cheshire and North Wales BT Directories
Email: mark.d.clark@bt.com
Mobile: 07918717465

THANKS: Thanks Mark, you’ve been most helpful. I enjoyed writing about this. Now watch as I rank on the first page of google for “BT Web Clicks”.

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It’s content was mainly made up of what I was researching around that time, including a few controversial topics such as hacking, trojans and warez distribution. (Oh the joys of being under 18, or at least I was at time of original creation).

Thus, I got a reasonable response saying:

Hello [name],

Thank you very much for updating your account information. I have reviewed
www.hm2k.org and concluded that it does not comply with our AdSense
policy. Our goal is to be able to extend our service to as many web
publishers as we can. Unfortunately, after reviewing your site, we are
unable to accept it into our AdSense program at this time for the reason
listed below:

-Unacceptable site content

Please check for a separate application disapproval email for detailed
instructions on how to resolve this problem. Please feel free to reply to
this email for reconsideration when you have made the changes.

Thank you for your understanding.

Sincerely,

Trinh
The Google AdSense Team

And I did understand, it was fair enough at the time…

Since then I had completely revamped “hm2k.org” 2 or 3 times, then finally in January 2007 I decided to completely redo my site, using the wordpress blog system, a whole new domain, a new design, all new content, and a new vision. It’s a whole new site.

Let’s now fast forward to over 4 years later since the original application was submitted, to April 2008…

My blog is getting ever more popular and I wish to cash in on this, but how? My first port of call is Google AdSense.

By this point I’d already had a Google AdSense account for quite some time for my business, which is absolutly fine, this time however, it’s personal.

So, I try and login to Google AdSense using my Google Account that i’ve had for quite some time now, and I receive the following message:

An AdSense account was not found under the Google Account associated with xxxxx@hm2k.org. Please check to make sure you are signing in with your approved AdSense login and password. If you’ve forgot your login, click here. If you’re not an AdSense publisher, sign up for an account.

So I try and signup again, using my existing account as per above.

So I click on signup, and go through the steps…

I get to the step entitled: “This is the account information you entered”…

It says “Which best describes you?”

I click: I have an email address and password (Google Account) I already use with Google services like AdWords, Gmail, Orkut, or the personalized home page.

It says: “Would you like to use your existing Google Account for AdSense?”

I click: “I’d like to use my existing Google account for AdSense.”

A login box saying “Use an existing Google Account” comes up, I login…

The page reloads and it gives me an error saying:

A user with the email you specified already exists
Please select a different Google Account login to access this account.

My first issue is the fact that neither of these errors are very descriptive, the second problem is that they are conflicting errors, they don’t agree with each other. I feel like I’m going round in circles and that neither error is telling me what’s really going on…

Not only do I post on the Google AdSense group, I also proceed to contact Google saying that I’m having “login problems”, which is the only way I can describe the problem I’m seeing.

I got no response from the group, but the response I got direct from Google is as follows:

Hello [name],

Thanks for writing in. I’ll be more than happy to help you with your
password issue. Based on your description of the problem, I’ve provided
two options below. If neither of these helps you log into your account,
please feel free to reply and I’ll help you further.

Your login email address is xxxxx@hm2k.org.

If you know your current password and you’d like to change it, please
follow the directions on this page:
https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=9915

If you’ve forgotten your existing password, please visit
https://www.google.com/adsense/assistlogin . On this page, you’ll be able
to submit your email address to us. We’ll then automatically send you an
email with a link that will allow you to reset your password.

Additionally, I’m happy to let you know your application complies with our
program policies and has been approved. Please check your email for a
separate application approval message providing instructions on accessing
your account and getting started with AdSense.

Additionally, please be aware that because your application was previously
disapproved, there may be a delay of 48 hours or more before Google ads
begin appearing on your site. We appreciate your patience.

For additional questions, I’d encourage you to visit the AdSense Help
Center ( http://www.google.com/adsense_help ) or the official AdSense blog
( http://adsense.blogspot.com?utm_source=txft ). Alternatively, feel free
to post your question on the AdSense Help Forum (
http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help?utm_source=txft ).

Sincerely,

Kalpana
The Google AdSense Team

Apart from this email being very unhelpful towards my actual problem, it does clearly say that my application was approved. However, I wait 48 hours and receive nothing.

What’s going on with my account? I can’t login, is it active or not? I don’t know! How could I know?

Browsing my old emails and browsing the web I discover I can have my website appealed, and re-reviewed, but only if you’ve been banned for invalid clicks.

Stupidly (perhaps), I fill out the online appeal form anyway, with limited details, as I’ve not actually been banned for invalid clicks, so I don’t really have anything to provide.

This is the response I get back:

Hello,

Thank you for providing us with additional information. However, after
thoroughly reviewing your account data and taking your feedback into
consideration, we have re-confirmed that your account poses a significant
risk to our advertisers. For this reason, we are unable to reinstate your
account. Thank you for your understanding.

As a reminder, if you have any questions about your account or the actions
that we have taken, please do not reply to this email. You can find more
information by visiting
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Google Ireland Ltd.
Gordon House
Barrow Street
Dublin 4
Ireland

Registered in Dublin, Ireland
Registration Number: 368047

It looks like a generic error they just send out when the appeal fails, there’s also a distinct lack of personal touches like there’s been in the past.

I conclude that my appeal application failed because firstly I wasn’t banned for invalid clicks, and secondly because I didn’t supply enough details about invalid clicks, which is mainly down to the fact that I never had an account in the first place to even generate invalid clicks.

I have come to the end of my tether with this…

Will I ever get a personal Google AdSense account?

And just when I think all is lost, I receive a reply…

Hi [name],

Thanks for writing in. I am sorry to know that you are still not able to
access your AdSense account. Please follow the steps below to resolve
this.

1. Please make sure that your AdSense account password is different from
your Google Account password.

2. You can reset it at https://www.google.com/adsense/assistlogin?hl=en_US

3. Once your passwords are different, you will need to log in to AdSense
with the AdSense email and password .

4. Once you log in to your AdSense account, please migrate using
https://www.google.com/adsense/migrate-login-1

Additionally, please know that your AdSense password is different from the
password you use to access other Google services. Our records show that
you have successfully reset he password for other Google services, but the
password for your AdSense account has not been reset. I suggest you visit
the link above and reset your password one more time.

We appreciate your continued patience and understanding.

For additional questions, I’d encourage you to visit the AdSense Help
Center ( http://www.google.com/adsense_help ) or the official AdSense blog
( http://adsense.blogspot.com?utm_source=txft ). Alternatively, feel free
to post your question on the AdSense Help Forum (
http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help?utm_source=txft ).

Sincerely,

Parvathi
The Google AdSense Team

SUCCESS!

After following the link to reset my password, receiving the email, then following THAT link, entering in a password over 7 chrs long, then returning to the login page, I can login!

I find there is a new set of terms and conditions, last updated 2008-02-25, I understand the gist, so I accept.

I then reach the migration link, as per the above email. I click “Yes – I’m the only one who logs in to this AdSense account” and press continue…

Which best describes you?
> I have an email address and password (Google Account) I already use with Google services like Gmail, Orkut, or the personalized home page.
Would you like to use your existing Google Account for AdSense?
> I’d like to use my existing Google account for AdSense.

Now I get the “Use an existing Google Account” dialogue box, where I can enter my Google Account details.

Final step is “Confirm your chosen AdSense login”, I confirm.

I AM IN! I AM ACTUALLY IN!

Just to check I’m not dreaming, I logout, and log back in, it accepts my Google Account details, no problem!

Once again, Google saves the day!

Problem solved, Well done Google!

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[Note: If you also received this email, it's spam, my advice is to delete it!]

From toby.yang@inveis.com Wed Apr 02 07:58:16 2008
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Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 15:01:52 +0800
From: “toby.yang” <toby.yang@inveis.com>
To: “info” <info@[host].co.uk>
Subject: Phurix. domain name
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Dear {tradename}.：

We are Beijing Inveis Network Information Technology Co.,Ltd which is the domain name register center in China.

We received a formal application from a company who is applying to register “{tradename}” as their domain names and Internet keyword on Apr 1st, 2008. Because this involved your company name or trade mark so we inform you in no time. If you considered these domain names and internet keyword are important to you and there was necessary to protect them by registering them first, contact us soon.

Kind

Regards,

Toby.Yang

Tel:

+86-10-82476192 (ext.612)

Fax: +86-10-62477798

Email: toby,yang@Inveis.com

Beijing

Inveis Network Information Technology Co.,Ltd

website:

www.Inveis.com

Upon closer inspection I realise they don’t specify the domain extension, I visited their website to investigate further. Their main page contains statistical information about .cn domain names, which is the ccTLD for China.

It’s a nice idea, it looks like a legit email, and it plays on trademark law, which states that you MUST defend your trademark in order to maintain it.

However, the first thing I notice as odd is the , they use in the email address, then the fact they didn’t specify the domain these people are trying to register, and I’ve never heard of them.

A quick google of “Inveis.com” finds a blog post entitled “Domains scam“.

Apparently, they will register your domain under .cn and try to sell it back to you if you respond with any concerns over your domain name.

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phpBBv2 was great, things like the templates, and installing mods was much to be desired, however workarounds appeared and we got used to dealing with them.

Upon the announcement that phpBB3 was coming out I got excited. Now usually I wait until the first bug fix release comes out before I start using the product, however I wanted to start a new forum, so instead of installing phpBB2 I decided to try phpBB3

This is what I found…

1. Templates are now even more complicated
   • A new language was invented in earlier phpBB for templating. You MUST learn this in order to create templates. Why use this, when there’s a perfectly good one that we already know? …called PHP!
   • Templates are split into three sections now, templates, imagesets and themes.
   • Editing files outside of the admin area is just asking for trouble, as any changes will not be noticed, as the system caches them. This means I can’t use my favourite text editor to develop this site.
   • Flexibility simply doesn’t exist, you’re restricted by all sorts.
2. It’s STILL not SEO friendly
   • We were promised that there would be native friendly URLs in this version, yet no such luck.
   • URLs are nasty, they could be so much prettier and descriptive.
   • Carrying around the SID in URLs is UGLY! Everybody has a cookies enabled browser these days.
   • Page titles are still horrible, including the “Index page”, very descriptive…
   • There’s too many links per page, it just causes issues.
   • No XML sitemaps?
3. Modifications still aren’t any easier to add
   • Still not automated!
   • It’s now using MODX which is, instead of a bunch of instructions as it used to be, is XML based, which designed to be read by machines…
   • I’m sure most people would like to add in all sorts of gadgets and widgets, yet phpBB3 doesn’t have any such support!
4. Still no RSS feeds…
   • RSS is a major part of “web 2.0″, yet phpBB 3.0 still hasn’t mastered them!
   • RSS feeds ARE NOT DIFFICULT, it’s just XML!
5. HUGE footprint, is it really justified?
   • phpBB2 was about 2mb when it was extracted, this phpBB3 is about 5 times that at around 10mb, ridiculous!
   • So there’s a new admin control panel (ACP), there’s a new default theme which looks a bit nicer, but really what’s changed that much?
6. Too many whining copyright notices
   • Shut up about copyright already!
   • If you’re that bothered about it, why don’t you make it a commercial product or get people to pay to remove the copyright and gain support?
   • You’re probably not really doing yourself any favours by having people link back, they aren’t exactly going to be quality links, because all the quality links remove it or use something else.
   • Nobody really wants to keep these anyway…
7. Quick reply
   • A feature that vBulletin has, and does very well, yet phpBB doesn’t have it.
   • This is a feature you’d have expected they would have added as a native option, yet again no.
8. HTML is no longer accepted in comments
   • Unlike phpBB2, phpBB3 does not allow the use of HTML tags in comments, forcing administrators of large phpBB2 systems with many pre-existing HTML links to choose between upgrading to the new software or preserving their existing links
9. Unprofessional
   • phpBB has never had the look and feel of a professional product.
   • The general userbase of phpBB is unprofessional.
   • phpBB is not taken seriously in the money making world of web development.
   • There’s no option of professional support, it simply doesn’t exist!
10. I hate it, but you love it!
    • Unfortunately phpBB is one of the few notable forums out there, nothing else works quite like it.
    • They pioneered things like bbCode which means users can add easy to understand markup to their comments.
    • The search is fantastic, better than any other forum out there, even vBulletin, it just works very well. Egosearch is also very useful.
    • It’s open source and GPL so it appeals to all the freetards out there.
    • Has support for multiple database management systems, including MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Firebird, OpenLink Virtuoso, and other ODBC-accessible DBMS
    • There’s quite a large community that offer mods, styles and support.
    • It works! It really works! What can I say? I godda hand it to them for that.

Oh and also, It also sort of goes without saying that the spam situation since phpBB2 hasn’t gotten any better, but some kind of question appears to be the best solution to this, but it’s less than perfect.

In conclusion, I’m disappointed with phpBB3, I had expected more improvements, there was promises of search engine friendly URLs and automated mod installations, but we’re yet to see any of this… phpBB4 anyone?

Update: Don’t worry there ARE alternatives!

• Comparison of Internet forum software on Wikipedia
• PHP Forum software on the Open Directory

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Outdated software

If your version of Windows is not up-to-date and you go online (especially without a firewall), you are prone to the very latest viruses via many different vulnerabilities in Windows it’s self.

If you are putting a new computer on to the internet, ensure it has the very latest windows updates. If you are unsure whether it is up-to-date, ensure you connect behind a hardware (often your router) or software firewall.

To find out if you have any updates remaining to be installed, visit the Windows Update website [http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/] (Internet Explorer Only).

Windows XP users can also use: Start > Run > type: wupdmgr.exe [OK]

For Windows XP users, ensure you have installed all the critical updates, including ServicePack2 (SP2).

If you are running an older version of windows prior to Windows XP SP2, I would recommend upgrading.

You can find out what version of windows you are running by using: Start > Run > type: winver [OK]

If you purchased a retail machine from manufacturers such as HP, Dell, Compaq, Packard Bell, Acer, Fujitsu, please ensure you have run their “Update Software” program. If you are unsure, I recommend contacting them and asking them how you can ensure you have the latest version of the software they supplied with your machine.

Ensure that any software you have installed is the very latest version, you can check by visiting the vendor’s website.

Additionally, it is important that you keep your anti virus and anti-spyware software up-to-date, failing to do this will leave your system vulnerable to infection.

Peer to peer

Generally peer-to-peer is the biggest problem out there.

Using software such as LimeWire, BearShare, and other such Gnutella protocol based applications cause no end of problems. Not only do some of these applications bundle their software with spyware which installs before you even use the application, but often you can download what you think are games, videos, music, software, when in fact it is actually malicious software.

If you do insist on using such software, consider LimeWire as it is one of the more respectable ones, but always be careful about what you download, as it may contain a virus.

Please also refer to the following articles:

• http://www.limewire.com/help/ftc4.php
• http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt128.shtm
• http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Parents/Yourchildshealthandsafety/Internetsafety/DG_071136
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnutella

Another form of peer-to-peer you may not have considered is Instant Messenger (IM), such as Windows Live Messenger, MSN Messenger, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Chat, mIRC, and many more.

Instant Messenger software can be a problem if one of your friends on your list is infected with a virus, this virus could sent a message to you asking you to download the virus from them. You may think that you would not be followed by this, however with a little clever wording and a forged filename, it can seem as if your friend is innocently sending you some photos. When in fact this is not the case.

This can often be the same with email, if your friend is infected, the virus could send you an infected email, in an attempt to infect your system.

The lesson here is, do not open anything you are not expecting! If you are unsure, ASK the person who sent it. However, DO NOT reply to people you do not know.

Bad websites

These are websites that are not established (in the media) that try and offer you something that you would usually have to pay for, such as, games, screensavers, wallpapers, software, music, movies, and pornography (also lyrics sites).

When you visit such sites these sites attempt to install spyware onto your machine, as this is how they get their money back for offering the service or product you’re trying to get for free.

You can attempt to avoid problems with such sites by using a browser other than Internet Explorer, such as Firefox [www.getfirefox.com] which is free to download.

If you’re unsure about what you’re downloading stick to popular known vendors that have been recommended by experts. Never download and run anything that you are unsure about.

When attempting to get rid of popups, do not ever press OK, always press cancel. Press the back button or use the drop down next to the back button until the popup goes away. If the back button is grey, close the window.

Summary

There is only so much anti virus and anti spyware software can do to protect you against viruses as there are new viruses all the time, including ones that the vendor is not yet aware of.

The best prevention out there is to use your common sense, pay attention to what is going on, if you are unsure, take steps to educate yourself by doing a bit of online research or asking an expert.

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This was all fine, but to check my personal emails I decided to find an internet café to rather than use my mobile phone to save my pennies.

After a while I managed to find a complex which had a few computers setup for people staying in the complex to use.

Unlike some of the other internet café machines I had seen these were not locked down at all, just ordinary versions of Microsoft Windows XP.

This was fantastic, as it allowed me unlimited access and I could run things such as vncviewer (for remotely viewing a machine) and putty (for access to servers via ssh).

The downside was I had to spend a while removing a whole bunch of malware before I could even use the damn thing.

There were 4 other machines in this room, and I quickly discovered that I wasn’t the only one in there who was having problems.

Before long, the old guy on the other side of the room decided to ask the girl sitting next to him how to do something, she proceeded to assist him, only to summarise her experience with…

“Next time i’m buying a mac”

I felt like standing up right then, and giving her a piece of my mind, but I didn’t, instead I got up and went in the pool, also making a mental note to write up about it later.

There’s so many issues with the comment she made I’m not really sure where to begin.

The main issue I have with statements like this is the ignorance.

If you review what she actually said, she’s suggesting that she’s got a problem with the hardware, but upon further interrogation you’ll find their problem is with the operating system (namely Windows) and the way they use it.

When I ask people why they want to buy a mac, they generally say something along the lines of:

“I dunno, I heard they don’t get viruses”, to which I reply:

“I never get viruses on windows, and macs DO get viruses, there’s just not as many”.

The next obvious question is why don’t they? Well it’s pretty straight forward, the reason why there’s not as many is because there’s not as many users on macs as windows and no where near as many people looking for bugs in it the operating system (OS) as windows.

Viruses these days are utilised in such a way that the originator makes money from you, usually by means of forced pop-ups and installing software. They target windows, because it’s a much broader platform, there’s far more users. It doesn’t take a marketing expert to tell you which is the best to target.

But regardless of which operating system you run it’s not difficult to ensure you have an anti-virus solution, your software is up-to-date, and you are behind a firewall. Whether it’s Windows, Mac OS or even Linux, by doing these three steps, you will always ensure you’re not going to get targeted, unless of course you’re stupid enough to click links on sites or emails that you are unsure about.

Ultimately security is in the hands of the user, if you’re going easily fooled by those popups that look like Windows XP default “blue” theme then you’re already at risk, however you can restore your theme to “windows classic” and suddenly you realise what’s going on there.

Another tip you can follow is to use a different browser to the default “Internet Explorer” such as Firefox, as it’s pop-up blocker is better, and generally the whole experience is more reliable.

A lot of the time security issues are down to people clicking links they receive by email when they were not even expecting the email; browsing porn and end up downloading a “codec” because they think they will then be able to watch porn movies for free or finally they use peer to peer software and end up downloading files that aren’t music or movies, they are actually malicious programs. All of these files generally download as “.exe” files, which are “executable” files (ie: programs, or possibly viruses).

Yes, “.exe” files DO NOT run on macs (unless you install windows on the Intel based machines), but it’s also worth noting that “.exe” files also do not run on Linux based operating systems, but people seem to completely overlook that.

Threats like this increase as you add users to your machine, which makes finding the source even more difficult. If you have one user per machine.

With this in mind, you generally find that computers that people keep as “personal” generally have far less issues than shared machines. Macs aren’t really used as shared machines, mainly because they aren’t designed to be, and more importantly they aren’t marketed to be, they are marketed to be a “personal computer”.

What i’ve said above is mainly talking about issues with the operating system, however this girl’s comment was that she was going to buy a mac, as opposed to a “PC”, what’s wrong with a PC?, who said a PC can’t run Mac OS or virtually any operating system for that matter?

It’s ignorant to think that buying full retail hardware and software will solve all your problems, as if you purchased all OEM hardware, and ran a Linux based operating system such as the increasingly popular Ubuntu based gOS, you would likely find that suitable for your needs and wants, all at the fraction of a price, and just as easy to use.

The problem I find is that people don’t even consider Linux, because they simply don’t know enough about it. Why? Fear of the unknown and lack of financial backing of the vendor, which means there’s no mass media marketing unlike Apple.

But why are people so scared of Linux? After all Linux is based on Unix, as is Mac OS X, unlike Windows, and it’s FREE.

Ultimately you need to establish your needs and wants, find out what the hardware/software requirements of your devices (mobile phone, mp3 player, sat nav, etc), computer games and multimedia software is, and figure out which is right for you.

I can almost guarantee that Windows will come out as the most compatible and you’ll find that there’s increasing support for both Mac OS X, mainly because the devices you own are probably made by Apple (eg: iPod), but if you look a little closer, you’ll also find that there’s support for Linux based operating systems such as Ubuntu, you may have to search for it, or request it, but nether the less, it’s there, you’re never going to be the only one with said device.

One of the compatibility issues is that certain software creators, usually of the graphics or music industry (eg: Adobe, Propellerheads) only write software for mac, and windows, which ends up leaving Linux users to create their own open source alternative or try and emulate the official version. With this in mind, I understand why people sometimes choose a mac for their specialist software, but what about windows?

The question you need to ask yourself is “Why do I want a mac?”.

If the answer is that you think they are cool or a status symbol, or that they make you feel warm and fuzzy inside, then you’re buying it for the wrong reasons, computers aren’t meant to be any of those things.

If the answer is that you believe it will solve all your problems, you’re deluded. You’re always going to have problems, especially if you’re prone to them already. Getting a fresh operating system will always solve your problems, at least for a short while, until you start using it, then low and behold before long you’re in the same situation again.

In conclusion…

There’s pretty much two reasons why you might buy a mac, they are the OS (so called “piece of mind”) or the style (so called “lifestyle upgrade”), there is also the obvious combination of both.

There are however those few that do actually NEED a mac because of the multimedia applications they use will only run on the mac OS (if only they would run on Linux, how different things could be).

Next time are you really buying a mac? Or are you buying into something else? Piece of mind, or perhaps a lifestyle?

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