Seems like they cracked the Hotmail captcha, or they hired a hell lot of Chinese people to register accounts for spamming purposes, but it sure is annoying.
I can imagine this will be a huge success for the spammers, because of the personal approach style, much more than e-mail spam I guess.
Lots of PHP source codes are encrypted, for a number of reasons. A method to do this is to gzdeflate(<code>) in PHP, so it gets encrypted with the DEFLATE algorithm. Sometimes other methods of encryption are used, think of base64. I have written a tool (originally for personal use but I figured more people could use it) that decrypts this code automaticly online, instead of having to write a PHP script each time you want to decrypt some piece of code. Check it out here.
So we have all seen the video of a man being trapped in an elevator for 41 hours, but have we seen the comments?
Sometimes you're not satisfied with the .com extension, or the .net or the .org or the whatever country you are in extension. You would rather have company.companyabbreviation instead of companyname666.com because the other .com is registered already. Well, after some research, there seem to be four options, which I will present you from the most impossible to the easy way. The first one is:
Now don't get whiney about this, there are lots of ways to get your own country. After doing this, you should only contact the ICANN and they'll present you a number of possible extensions for your country. Easy game. After doing this, you should be a proud owner of your very own ccTLD.
Yes, becoming rich is a good option too, you can apply to the ICANN for only US $50,000. There is one downside though, the application can be rejected.
The application fee is non-refundable and ICANN's only obligation upon accepting the application and fee is to consider the application.
No good! To read all about requesting your own TLD at the ICANN, click here. This is actually the way most "special" TLD's get registered, like .asia.
Damn it's hard to explain this, it basicly means you belong to a certain group that fits in its very own group, for example .com is intended for commercial organizations where .net is for network infrastructures. If succesful, you'll have your own gTLD.
This one is possible for everyone, actually. No more ICANN things here, just your own extension to be filled into a form and it's registered. This is really possible, it's extremely easy but has also a big disadvantage: (most) users will have to download/install special software to connect to the alternative DNS root. There are some ISP's out there that actually connect to the alternative roots too by default, but 99% of them just connect to the ICANN servers and to nothing else. For a list of alternative roots, click here or here. Not all of them are free though.
Other interesting links:
It is getting exciting for the domain buyers/sellers: the .me extension is getting near to its release. For 99% of the buyers, July 17 will be the most interesting day, then the public registrations open on a "first come, first served" basis. For the more serious buyers, the fun begins on June the 6th, when the landrush begins.
I am not sure if I will buy any domains, maybe if I happen to encounter some forgotten premium one but the chance this would happen is very small.
PS: don't even think of mailing me with "how much do you give for randombase.me" because I honestly don't give a fuck.
For the people who don't read the mainpage, we have a new crewmember: r0bin. He is currently delivering excellent design work, and fits perfectly into the team. If you are interested in reading/seeing some of his work, why not visit his blog?
Some features have been added to the RandomBase homepage, such as the hover effect for the 'projects' buttons. I'm also considering permanently adding a live users online feature, that is automaticly updated, which gives a nice dynamic feel. To test this out, just go to randombase.com, press F5 or "refresh" in your browser to make sure the cached Javascript files are also updated. Now enter this in your URL window:
javascript:liveUsersOnline()
And some text will be added next to the menu, just a fun toy. The current refresh rate is five seconds. An other change is the changed urls for some links, like the affiliate buttons. It is no longer just the plain url but:
track.php?continue=<url>
Don't worry - we're not sending personal data; it's just a method for us to track the amount of clicks sent to a link, to get an idea about the popularity. And a last not-so-major-change is the news archive url, no longer ?histpage=1337 but /history/page/1337, just for SEO purposes. I'd probally need to change the track url too for SEO purposes then.
Remember my post about stopping comment spammers with Javascript? It has proven to be a very reliable method as long as you make sure to change the data that is generated with Javascript from site to site. A little example of only today from "spam that didn't quite make it":
[root@rbox /]# cat /var/log/randombase.com.log|grep "POST /news"
87.255.64.233 - - [19/Apr/2008:01:18:31 -0500] "POST /news/33 HTTP/1.1" 200 8922 "-" "-"
87.255.64.233 - - [19/Apr/2008:01:18:35 -0500] "POST /news/33 HTTP/1.1" 200 8922 "-" "-"
83.247.31.93 - - [19/Apr/2008:02:12:29 -0500] "POST /news/33 HTTP/1.0" 200 8811 "-" "-"
83.247.31.93 - - [19/Apr/2008:02:12:31 -0500] "POST /news/33 HTTP/1.0" 200 8811 "-" "-"
85.232.230.225 - - [19/Apr/2008:03:10:46 -0500] "POST /news/33 HTTP/1.1" 200 8924 "-" "-"
85.232.230.225 - - [19/Apr/2008:03:10:48 -0500] "POST /news/33 HTTP/1.1" 200 8924 "-" "-"
In this case it is clear they tried to spam us, no useragent nor referer set.
Now we have our own server, time to put some good usage to it too: there is now an IRC server configured on randombase, for a number of reasons. We invite everyone to open a channel or join #randombase or #rootshell for more security orientated conversations.
randombase.com
Ports: 6667, 6697 (SSH)
Or a direct link for clients that support it. All credit for installing/configuring goes to Preddy.