My (DNSBL) Blacklist list

Here is my current list of DNSBL’s that I use for blocking [much] spam, proxies, hijacked PC’s and “problem” IP’s.  Note that even using all of these DNSBL’s at the same time still will not prevent all spam, but when used in combination with Akismet, your site can be 99.9% spam free.

The real use for these DNSBL lists is to block open proxies and other IP’s that can cause trouble:

  • rbl.efnetrbl.org
  • spam.spamrats.com
  • combined.abuse.ch
  • xbl.spamhaus.org
  • web.dnsbl.sorbs.net
  • dnsbl.ahbl.org
  • problems.dnsbl.sorbs.net
  • opm.tornevall.org
  • cbl.abuseat.org
  • dnsbl-2.uceprotect.net
  • dnsbl.mags.net

Ghosts And Sex

For the last year or two one of my personal hobbies has been “paranormal investigation”. I don’t mean ghost-hunting like those fools you see on the TV shows chasing shadows in the dark with useless gadgets with absolutely zero basis is science or reality. My interest is more in documenting claims, and usually debunking them, or showing if for no one else but myself that the person making these claims are mostly full of shit, looking for attention, or, just plain crazy.  Of course I do remain open-minded in the event I should actually come across any sort of evidence of any kind of supernatural forces or entities.  If I were to do so, I would surely become rich and famous!  Unfortunately, I haven’t come across any real evidence yet.

In keeping with practicing what I preach (“build websites about things are you know about or are interested in..“), some of these interests have been creeping into a couple of my websites, InsideTheIE.com and www.Everythingaboutghosts.com.

Part of this hobby of mine is reading up as much as I can on the internet about all of the [crackpot] theories on what ghosts or spirits are, etc. Of course none of these ghost theories have any testable basis in anything even remotely close to something you could call scientific, but they are at the very least entertaining. Many of these ghost theories revolve around the idea that ghosts are somehow leftover or residual ‘energy’ of a person or event that somehow replays itself over and over at a location, or perhaps is ‘implanted’ into the environment, allowing people to sometimes see this energy either visually, or perceived visually but actually somehow transmitted directly into mind of the person sensitive enough to see it.

The energies required to implant themselves at a location (haunt a location) must be very strong, and as some of the theories go, usually arise as the result of a traumatic event such as a violent murder, an extremely evil person (such as a murderer) or, a combination of the two. Many ghost stories have these reoccurring themes, so of course this makes perfect sense to believers.

Today, as I was putting on my shoes and my mind was wandering aimlessly, for some reason the thought of ghosts and sex entered in. In these claims of hauntings (residual energy of traumatic events or evil people) why do we not hear of hauntings or ghost stories staring naked ghosts, or, of ghosts having sex? Surely there have been traumatic deaths of honeymooners being murdered while consummating their love? And of course there are hundreds of sexual related crimes (rapes, etc) ending in murder every year going back thousands of years.  Any one of these events should be traumatic enough to ‘imprint’ itself on the environment, or cause a lost soul to wander the earth!

So why then, are there no, or so few stores of ghosts engaging in sex? I have a few theories on naked ghosts or ghosts having sex:
1) The immutable laws of the spirit world simply do not permit naked ghosts or any activity with a rating of higher than PG13
2) The people imagining their ghost sightings are pre-conditioned (based on movies, previous ghost stories, etc) to only make up stories in their heads of fully-clothed ghosts
3) It’s all bullshitery

Google Sells PEOPLE, Not Products

“They have lots of people, lots of servers, they have Android, they have Google Docs, they just bought Motorola. Most people would say ‘we’re the users, and the product is advertising’,” he said. “But in fact the advertisers are the users and you are the product.”

“Google doesn’t understand people,” he said. “Have you ever spoken to a Google support person on the phone? They don’t have them. Sure, they’ll direct you to their blogs — where you’ll be lucky if you can find the answer you’re looking for — or they’ll let you give feedback. But do they ever give you feedback on your feedback?”

Ouch – and oh so true.

You can read the entire article here: Google sells people

Google Killed The SEO Pro

(Read to the tune of Video Killed The Radio Star)
I can remember, a long time ago, way back in my early days of webmastering and SEOing circa 2006, many blogging and SEO ‘experts’ were predicting that the end of SEO as we knew it would soon be upon us. They pointed to many of the changes that Google was beginning to make for determining search-ranking results such as personal web-browsing habits, bounce-rate, time spent on-page, etc – metrics that were not easily controlled or gamed by webmasters.

Fast-forward to 2011: Google now has Chrome, Google+, Android, near-full saturation of websites using Analytics, and a variety of services, websites, and systems all with the ability to do one very important thing: Collect user data and browsing habits.

It now looks like with Google’s Panda updates beginning earlier this year, the search engine giant is beginning to leverage all of that data to rank websites more on this new data than on the traditional metrics such as inbound links and keyword saturation that spammers “SEO Experts” have been using to game Google search results for years.

ZDNET’s Tom Foremski wrote an article this week underscoring the apparent fact that effectively, Google has killed SEO. In the article, he points out a few items about our new non-SEO reality:

- If you are negatively affected by Google’s new search rankings, no matter what you do (based on ‘old style’ SEO), you probably will not be able to regain your previous search engine ranking

- The seemingly random elements of Google’s recent updates could be a way to prevent webmasters from putting their heads together to reverse-engineer the changes (Google is smarter than we are)

- Blogger.com (owned by Google) has been unaffected by the recent changes. Perhaps Google is protecting their own interest – or, maybe they are saving the spammer-haven for last.

What does all this mean to you?

Hopefully it means that as the owner of a quality, original, content-rich website, you will now be able to reap the rewards of all the new traffic coming your way and will no longer have to worry about “SEO”.

Or..

If you are the owner of shitty, copycat, spammy, worthless websites, it’s time to quit being a lazy slacker and go start your new career at McDonald’s.