Lessig asks questions, Powell evades with the usual.

I must say that Instiki isn’t the most efficient wiki implementation I’ve ever seen.

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 32296 aredride 16 0 869m 543m 8224 S 0.0 53.7 14:31.37 ruby 32354 aredride 16 0 869m 543m 8224 S 0.0 53.7 0:00.00 ruby 32355 aredride 15 0 869m 543m 8224 S 0.0 53.7 0:00.07 ruby

This was in our access log. Nothing removed to protect the guilty, either.

217.8.227.181 - - [26/Nov/2004:02:54:59 -0700] “GET /wiki/NBTSWikiWiki?edit HTTP/1.1” 200 7843 “http://www.google.ru/search?q=wiki++inurl:edit&num=20&hl=ru&lr=&start=120&sa=N” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; dial; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)”

That a GET for the edit page directly, referred by google.ru.

217.8.227.181 - - [26/Nov/2004:02:55:02 -0700] “GET /style.css HTTP/1.1” 200 984 “http://community.nbtsc.org/wiki/NBTSWikiWiki?edit” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; dial; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)”

217.8.227.181 - - [26/Nov/2004:02:55:04 -0700] “GET /wiki.css HTTP/1.1” 200 707 “http://community.nbtsc.org/wiki/NBTSWikiWiki?edit” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; dial; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)”

Getting the style-sheet. Weird, for a robot, but not unheard of. By the user-agent tag, it might be an automated Internet Explorer process. Six seconds.

217.8.227.181 - - [26/Nov/2004:02:55:34 -0700] “POST /wiki/NBTSWikiWiki HTTP/1.1” 302 - “http://community.nbtsc.org/wiki/NBTSWikiWiki?edit” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; dial; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)”

Standard POST, just like all edits. I did not log what fields were filled in, but it might be interesting to see. Thirty seconds. Done by hand?

217.8.227.181 - - [26/Nov/2004:02:55:50 -0700] “GET /wiki/NBTSWikiWiki;1.255 HTTP/1.1” 200 65875 “http://community.nbtsc.org/wiki/NBTSWikiWiki?edit” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; dial; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)”

A GET on the updated page. Probably just because IE does it, not because they’re checking their work. Twenty-five seconds. Or maybe they just have a slow (or distant, they’re coming from Siberia) connection.

Whois says they’re from Siberia, anyway:

inetnum: 217.8.224.0 - 217.8.235.255 netname: SCS-900 descr: Siberian Cellular Systems - 900 descr: GSM provider in Novosibirsk country: RU admin-c: SY27-RIPE tech-c: SY27-RIPE status: ASSIGNED PA notify: hostmaster@scs-900.ru mnt-by: SCS-MNT changed: ip-dbm@ripn.net 20021021 source: RIPE

SORBS says that perhaps that’s a façade:

Address and Port: 217.8.227.181 Record Created: Mon Sep 20 06:39:07 2004 GMT Record Updated: Mon Sep 20 06:39:07 2004 GMT Additional Information: Likely Trojaned Machine, host running Korgo3 trojan Currently active and flagged to be published in DNS

In the process of writing a LALR(1) parser for the NBTSWikiWiki, and then seeing the front page get spammed a second time, I wonder now if stricter parsing would have avoided the problem. If pages couldn’t contain invalid markup constructs, and you just rejected the edit…. Then that last spam would have failed since NBTSWikiWiki’s syntax is a bit different than the spammers were suspecting.

It’s probably a bad idea, but it’s a thought. In a more geeky use of a wiki, it might be very smart.

This is totally stupid, but it made me think of Fuzzhead.

One of the most bizarre things to track down in a while, but this is what happened. We had a standard left-column navigation. An unrelated block was set with margin-top: -10px;. By changing that to position: relative; top: -10px;, things started working. Talk about a bizarre bug.

Ego surfing is fun. There’s 13,100 references to me out there.

Oddly addictive.

P.S. I’ll find my frog.

Talking to people when they’re hurting is something I seem to do a lot of. I must be a Libra.

I had the morning from hell, just running behind. There was a technology advisory meeting at the school which ran over by an hour. I got up just in time to leave the house, so I hustled up there and did that. It was interesting, but the usual school-headed bureaucracy. I think they may skip buying expensive desks to put desktop computers on and put the $200 or so per station into just buying laptops. And just put 802.11 ethernet in every classroom.

I only butted heads with the network manager once, too. I was impressed. It doesn’t look good to do that in front of the superintendent.

I ran down to Fishbone, and helped them get their T-shirt screen film printer back online. I think their new switch might be a bum one.

Off to lunch after that. I brought Chris at the Shining Mountain Café some tea to try (he really liked the pu-ergh I brought him), and he wouldn’t let me pay.

Work was intense, Marc Gordon needed his machine fixed, that’s always a lot of time since he Talks So Damn Much.

I finished fixing Tessa’s machine, software-wise, so it’s time to re-assemble it and make sure the keyboard gets firmly attached again (it’s amazing what one loose screw does to one’s typing accuracy…). I left the office at ten-thirty, and then realized that where I was going to get dinner was closed already. Guess the universe wants my pocketbook to stay fat today.

Like, duh.

I just had the best getting-to-know-you conversation ever with Ali. Wow.

I love reading something and finding some part that just makes you gasp with the rightness of it.

[00:16:20] Aredridel says “I like my sink!” [00:16:39] crculver says “Yeah, but is your old sink infinitely customisable with LISP like sink-mode?”