Faith in humanity: Threat or Menace?

Yesterday, an associate of mine, Gary Olsen made mention on his journal page of doom about a little plug-in for Internet Exploder called Third Voice. Third Voice allows people to 'post messages' on your site which, to other people with Third Voice installed, appear as 'post-its' overlaying your stuff. This is apparently done by having Exploder pull down your page, query the Third Voice site, then insert bits of Javascript into the page to display the post-its.

This is a Bad Thing. For several reasons, which I'll summarize here for the purposes of those who're too lazy to look up info on Third Voice themselves. For one thing, it's modifying your content. This is a no-no, although it may not legally be a no-no, because what's legal and what's moral are rarely the same beastie. I'll be the sole creator of my content, thanks. And secondly, Third Voice involves several great tastes which go great together, namely the keywords "Internet", "unmoderated" and "free speech". To summarize what this confluence means, it equates to, in short, "porno ads".

Thank you, no, I'd rather not be the first victim of the porn spammer who figures out an exploit which crawls the web sticking Third Voice stickies up everywhere with links to "Bonda O'Tightly's Home for Wayward Submissives" or some such. And you know someone will figure out how to do this in a matter of weeks. Few people are as patiently obnoxious at figuring out how to exploit unmoderated forums as your average porn spammer.

Let's face it, Third Voice is a nifty idea, but it sucks when someone who creates a page has no control over their content. None. And Third Voice insists on, when called on this point, whining and playing the "But It's Free Speech" card over and over again. Not on _my_ pages it ain't, sparky.

Thankfully, the only thing more persistent about figuring out how to make something go boom than a porn spammer are surly hackers, who quickly figured out a javascript exploit which will implode Third Voice stickies and prevent them from showing up on your pages. This will go in very shortly. I considered a few additional exploits (since obviously with that already-extant chunk of Javascript you've got code to detect Third Voice stickies) to harass users of Third Voice, but in the end, I chose to merely block 'em. This update will also possibly motivate me to get off my duff and put in some 'forward' and 'back' tags at the bottom of each page. Or not. But for your enjoyment, I now list the exploits I considered...

Forwarding them to a topical page, such as the 'Say no to Third Voice' site.

Forwarding them to a page that makes their pointy little heads explode.

Such as the 'Urotsukidoji Hard-Core Fan-fiction Page'.

Popping open a 'persistant' window which explains, in patient terms, why they're an idiot for using Third Voice, and why they're being harassed this way.

'Persistant' windows are ones which re-spawn themselves when closed, thanks to the wonderful fact that Javascript can detect a window close event.

Popping open a 'viral persistant' window.

'Viral persistant' windows spawn _two_ copies of themselves when closed. This can quickly become highly amusing.

Cascading Windows Of Death

Well, Javascript contains code to spawn new windows, see... And there's nothing really stopping you from saying something like "while 1=1 {window.open(new,"youreaweinerforusingthirdvoice.html");}" Note that this is not valid Javascript, but the point's the same. Write your own if you feel like it, and watch with glee as their system's entire resources are devoted solely to spawning more and more windows! Even if somehow they don't crash, they'll havee to figure out a way to kill Internet Exploder as it patiently fills their screen with little windows telling them what an idiot they are.

And on the Light Side of the Force...

I ordered 'tan box' Civilization II for the Mac from MacMall. I don't have a PowerPC Mac (yet) as I'm waiting for those $1,600 350Mhz G3 Big Blue Boxes to hit the market, and I want to play Civ _now_, dangit. Civ is apparently a Holy Game(tm), and as I'm a big fan of Empire-Building Strategy Games(tm), I simply must have it. Mmm. You can keep your damn 'First Person Shooters', I'm commanding entire bloody _armies_, sending forth my troops to glorious conquest and... ahem.

Anyway, I did the order on their web site. I've ordered there before, and they have an adequate interface. Their main problem is that they're idiots, and apparently leave off my apartment number from the packages they send. I don't know why. I think it makes the 'address' line too long and it gets trimmed by their printer, which is stupid. Suffice to say I'm used to having to go pick up the darn package from the UPS place (which is only 5 or so minutes from where I work, so it's not an issue). But time passed. Two weeks, in fact. This was a bit long, even when I picked the cheap "yeah, whenever" shipping option.

So I sent an email (including in the body the entire text of the confirmation message their auto-responder coughed up when I placed the order) and within an hour got a reply that, while not actually admitting that anything had gone wrong, stated that they were overnighting the software to me at no charge. Hmm. Fortuitous, I thought.

Unfortunately, they left my apartment number off _again_.

Fortunately, the FedEx guy for my sector of the city has been working there for a while. While the UPS guy is plug-n-play, to overnight it, they had to use FedEx, and FedEx is more reliable. I've been getting FedEx packages for quite a long time, as I tend to order stuff a-plenty on-line, and pretty much every variation of problem that can come up already has.

Unfortunately, the package went to my apartment, and even though I swung by on an early lunch break to await it, I was still beaten to the punch by the FedEx guy, who left a dangly thing on the doorknob. At least he knew the right apartment number.

Fortunately, he came back down the road while I was still there (there are a lot of apartments on my street) and noticed the dangly thing was missing, so he stopped and ambled over to see if I'd shown up. I had, and the package was delivered. While it's somewhat of a cliche to have ordered so much stuff on line that the delivery guy actually recognizes your name and address, it's also rather helpful. FedEx definitely gets high marks.

It's almost enough to make me a little less cyni... naaah.

But suffice to say, I now have Civ II. If my journal entries get suddenly more terse, this is no doubt due to Civ-induced sleep deprivation.

Goku is still en-route.

Frieza is hanging out in his ship, lording it over his surviving wimpy henchthings and considering what planets he'll conquer next when he's all-powerful god-thing of the universe.

The Ginyu Captain is still flying back towards Frieza's base, juggling the Dragonballs (the idiot almost drops one, too).

And the main plot - the rest of the episode is one big fight scene (shock! surprise!). Vegeta takes on Racoome, the tall, burly, surly Ginyu Force member with red hair. Racoome isn't like Guldo, who was a wimp with Special Powers. Racoome is a Brick. He's tough. He's strong. He's a fighter, not an "I immobilize you with my Flying High Kick Technique!" sort of guy. He does pose a lot, but seems to use it to confuse his opponents rather than merely looking like an idiot.

Vegeta initially pours it on, smacking Racoome around, hurling him into a mountain, then detonating the mountain with a blast so powerful it forces everyone else to dive for cover as bits of the landscape go flying everywhere.

Racoome gets up, dusts himself off, and he and Vegeta rassle some. Vegeta blasts him some more, Racoome gets up, smacks Vegeta down. Vegeta gets up, attacks again. Racoome smacks Vegeta down. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Finally Vegeta's simply worn down to the point where he can barely even stand up, and Racoome prepares the coup d'grace, a flaming breath attack (?!). Krillan and Gohan finally can't take it any more, and intervene to save Vegeta from death by Halitosis. Krillan punts Racoome in the jaw as the Ginyu Force member is blasting at Vegeta, while Gohan tackles Vegeta out of the way. Racoome, surprised, breaks a few teeth and snorts flaming breath attack out of his nose, causing him to fall down again.

Vegeta, predictably, surls at Gohan. The trials of being heroic...

Racoome gets up, bickers with the other two Ginyu about who gets to take on the two Earthers, and finally wades back into the fight, taking Krillan out with a single kick. Yowza. That was just pathetic. One shot?

Gohan is left as the only person still standing, and makes a worthy showing against Racoome, blasting away at the bigger warrior, but by the end of the episode it's clear Gohan's over-matched, while Racoome has merely suffered the loss of his hair, a lot of damage to his uniform, and a few missing teeth.

Next episode: More whup-ass? More whup-ass.

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