Honors Robots.txt My Ass

I thought I'd seen everything until I stumbled onto a service called "All Site Search" which has to following to say about robots.txt:

Do you care about robots.txt?

Yes, we do, but we will still index everything. However, the things indexed that match the statements in your robots.txt file, will be marked. This way, you can yourself decide if those things should be visible to the visitors to your site, or perhaps you want it to be visible only to you. This is easily done by a parameter setting.

The purpose of robots.txt is to tell the spider not to crawl the pages in the first place, not to ignore it while crawling only to enforce it when indexing.

If the webmaster has installed a robots.txt entry for their spider "alsRobot2" or "alsRobot3" then why in the hell would they need to define it again? The webmaster either wants it crawled or they don't. Period.

It also means someone could use this free service to index anyone's website, since they basically ignore robots.txt, to get access to the entire site regardless of the webmaster's wishes.

Another bot best blocked in .htaccess since they don't use robots.txt properly just in case their service gets used maliciously for whatever reason.

App Programmers or Crap Programmers?

The more I use these so-called programs or Apps for mobile devices I'm beginning to realize that these people claiming to be programmers cranking out this crap for $0.99  don't know their collective programming asses from a hole in the ground.

OK, forgive me for leaving the Wifi and 3G off when I start your program. Is that any reason to just exit the fucking APP without so much as an error like "Cannot connect to server, please check that Wifi is enabled?".

Then there's my favorite, the game apps that remember their last state so when you close and reopen the fucker it's still fucking STUCK where it was when you got hosed and had to close it in the first fucking place! One was so goddamn obnoxious with bad error handling that I had to use Task Killer to dump it's ass just to get it to start over. I was real close to uninstalling the fucking thing if it didn't start over but thankfully Task Killer did the trick.

Even worse IMO are the ones that although they appear to stay in memory, or at least some notification component does to tell you when someone has taken their turn in the game, will make you sit and wait with your dick in your hand every time while it revalidates your login or something as stupid. I really can't tell what it's doing but it does it every fucking time, while most others don't, and takes forever.

Piles of poorly designed sloppy shoddy shit being cranked out as quickly and cheaply as possible to go into Google Play, or as I like to call it "THE DOLLAR STORE".

Maybe Google should take a little responsibility here and create a bug reporting system attached to Google Play and when enough people start bitching about some shitty program they suspend it from Google Play until the author fixes that shit.

That's right, I'm suggesting vigilante bug reporting and mandated bug fixes based on reports from an angry mob of users. If the app writers don't want to fix their fucking apps then they simply drop from the app store and their little river of $0.99 kachings dries up and blows away. Too fucking bad.
 
I know about 10 games I'd report in a flash, and we're not talking the free versions either as I can tolerate bugs when that shit's free but make me part with a whole whopping $0.99 and that shit better work right!

Why Bother WIth Even Having Beer Taps?

Went out for dinner tonight and I got all excited when I saw the place actually had beer taps.

Then, with much dismay, I quickly realize they're the same beers on both ends of the bar, just 2 beers which were Bud and Sam Adams, ugh.  So I suffered through a Sam Adams and barely gagged the last of it down.

Sam Adams is just OK, probably better than Sierra Fucking Nevada, but neither are exactly my cup of about-to-be-recycled-as-pee.

I'm all about the IPA these days and all the finest places serve it, like Big Daddy, Double Daddy, Racers, etc. OMFG! I love Double Daddy, it's double the hops and malt of Big Daddy and will knock you right out of your fucking socks with it's hoppy IPA goodness. Try Big Daddy, you'll be very hoppy if you do. :)

Anyway, I'm bummed, dinner was fine but the beer was a bust so I stopped at one.

Yeah, yeah, I know they had all sorts of good shit in bottles and cans but I can do bottles and cans at home. I don't go out to get the same pedestrian experience sold at the local grocery store when I go out for dinner, I go out for something better that I can't get at home and FUCKING BUD AND SAM ADAMS ON TAP AIN'T IT!

[/rant]

Testing, Testing, Is this thing on?

I've been ignoring the blog, shame on me.

Got lot's of stuff going on like playing with my new toys, a Nexus 7 and a Samsung Galaxy, Android Jellybean all the way! Also writing software, experimenting with HTML 5 frameworks, blocking bots like crazy, playing in several sandboxes at once and just need to set aside some time to post about it.

Most importantly I'm probably going to make a cameo appearance at SES SF this week. If anyone else is going, there could be some beer time if you're interested as I'm in the mood for some quality time with my ass parked in a pub, I'm due.

Even contemplating Vegas Pubcon in October. No clue yet if it's in the cards, but I'm definitely contemplating it. We'll see how my excursion to SES SF pans out before I make a commitment to a week of nerds in Sin City.

Stand by for further instructions.

EOM

HTACCESS Code Generator Now In Beta

Check out the new .htaccess code generation tools currently in beta on IncrediBILL.me. The current modules available will generate htaccess code to block IPs, block user agents, block by referrer, block by browser language, block by country, and a whole bunch more coming soon.

The most interesting tool is the htaccess rewrite wizard  that provides a list of fields to choose from. It allows easy creation of custom htaccess rewrite conditions and rules. It's just a prototype so play around and let me know what more you might want it to do!

The site isn't pretty yet but it seems to work which is the important part!

Try it out and give me some feedback.

If you want to keep up with the new tools as they become available, follow me on Twitter as that's where I announce new stuff as it's being released.

Don't Stop Phishers, Turn Them Into Educators

I think we should stop shutting down phishing sites when we regain control of them and turn them into educational opportunities instead.

First, change the message on the phishing landing page so when some idiot lands on it they get told in big bold letters "HOW FUCKING STUPID ARE YOU ANYWAY?" and explain how they've just been saved from credit card or identify theft with links to resources to educate them further.

Second, log the IPs of all the idiots that click through to the phishing sites and send those IPs to their associated ISPs so they can address the problem by sending educational material to their customer. I wouldn't mind seeing the ISPs block access to the IP until they're forced to read and complete an online educational course on how to avoid being phished and infected with Trojans as it's in everyone's best interest long term.

Third, leave the phisher/spammer sites running, pumping out email, etc. Find out the full extent of their network by NOT shutting them down. As long as someone else has regained control of the landing sites, let the phishers keep pumping out tons of email that will drive idiots that click to get educated about being phished.

Perhaps with such a different strategy aimed at educating the idiots instead of simply stopping the phishers the end game will be more successful because hopefully better educated internet users will stop clicking on bad things thus removing the incentives for the spammers and phishers in the first place.

Call me crazy if you will, but the current methods aren't working and it wouldn't hurt to try something new for a change.