thelinuxlink.net

They are crafty son-sa-beyotches. The past week or so you may have noticed some odd posts. It seems spammers are finding a way to subscibe and then posts to this forum (which should not be allowing guest posts anymore).

They have some semi-legitimate comment to make and sometimes even quote the previous person; but in there signature you can see links to typical spam sites (poker, blackjack, etc).

It almost makes one want to initiate attacks against these sites...

dann wrote: It almost makes one want to initiate attacks against these sites...

"Almost" is a good word.

If the posts can be deleted before Google/MSN/Yahoo indexes the site, no harm is done, and the spammers have wasted their time. What is the best way for us to notify if we see SPAM? Should we PM you or Pat or Linc? Would posting something saying "this is SPAM" in the thread help? I'm sure those of us who read the forums regularly would be glad to help.

Spam sucks no matter where it shows up. Currently Dan is the only person with admin privileges. We'll discuss this issue very soon.

Gomer, I usually catch it within a few hours of the first posting; so right now it is not that big of a deal.

You do a pretty good job keeping them at bay.

Since LUGRadio is on hiatus for a bit they've gotten hit lately. It sucks when the only person with admin rights is on vacation.

Gomer_X wrote:It sucks when the only person with admin rights is on vacation.

We're never on vacation! I wouldn't mind being on one of these geek cruises that Doc Searls is currently on. Eventually!

Patrick wrote:

Gomer_X wrote:It sucks when the only person with admin rights is on vacation.

We're never on vacation! I wouldn't mind being on one of these geek cruises that Doc Searls is currently on. Eventually!

Yeah no kidding man, speaking of which. Pat you once said on the show that your mother is from spain, I'm thinking about going to spain next year as a holiday, can you recommend any particular places?

Tsuroerusu wrote:Pat you once said on the show that your mother is from spain, I'm thinking about going to spain next year as a holiday, can you recommend any particular places?

I've been to Spain numerous times.

It all depends in what you're into. I would at least go to Madrid. Toledo, Segovia, Avila, El Escorial, El Valle de los Caidos and Aranjuez are all reasonable day trips from Madrid. Barcelona is great minus the natives! Just kidding

I hear the north of Spain is very beautiful but I've never been there:
Asturias, Galicia, Basque country

The south of Spain is nice too:
Costa del Sol, Sevilla, Alicante, Grenada

Check out these travel sites:
http://www.spain.info/Tourspain/?language=en
http://www.red2000.com/spain/index-eng.html

I was planning on going in November but I don't have the funds. My son has never met the Spanish side of the family.

Let me know if you have any questions.

How good are the average spanish citizen at english? You know that feeling standing like 2000 kilometers away from home, and no one knows the languages you do. I experienced that during a school trip a few weeks ago to south Germany, I and a friend were standing in the middle of Münich and was trying to find a place where we were to meet with the rest of the class.

Tsuroerusu wrote:How good are the average spanish citizen at english?

Probably average for a western European country (at least in the major cities). Much higher around the Costa del Sol which has a fairly large Brittish vacation/expat population. My advice to anyone traveling overseas is never assume they speak your language. Learn a few rudimentary words and phrases. If you know any Italian, French or Portuguese you should be ok. The locals will respect the fact that you've made an attempt to learn their language. Even if it's a really bad attempt!

Patrick wrote:

Tsuroerusu wrote:How good are the average spanish citizen at english?

Even if it's a really bad attempt!

Well, if you were a german and I demo'ed my german skills, you would be hugely offended, I can tell you that much!

Anyway, thanks for the tips

On <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/01/ ... gleblog</a> a new attribute was added to the A tag, <b>rel="nofollow"</b> by google for internal purposes. Any A tag that contains the <b>rel="nofollow"</b> parameter will not count for google rankings.

The forum could be made to automatically insert the parameter into A tags posted by people who have fewer than X posts, so that in order for a spammer to get any use out of the forum, he would have to build the post count on the ID he intends to spam with. It's not an iron-clad solution, but it could be a useful deterrent since it's unlikely that spammers would write their robots to reach a certain post count, and also unlikely (I think) that they'd make the effort manually.

I'm not familiar with the code this forum runs on, so I don't know if this is a feasible idea. But I figured it'd be worth mentioning.

There's a bunch of bogus ID signed up. These spam bots have become pretty sophisticated. You can tell they're bogus by their profiles. They usually have some gambling websites from Romania listed. As a learning tool I'd like to see their code.