Day: December 5, 2004

Categories
music

History of Linux Midi

Just picked this up on Linux Journal. Reviews of the best Midi apps for linux from the ubiquitous Rosegarden to seq24. The power of rosegarden has always impressed me. It supports Disposable Software Synth Interface (DSSI) and the LADSPA audio processing API enabling a wide range of plugins to be added (or even developed).. As a composition tool, it’s usefulness is enhanced through support for the Lilypond notational format, it’s pretty much the complete midi sequencer. If you’re serious about music but not so big on linux then tough it out. Rosegarden is one of the reasons why I love free software.

Categories
technology

Can’t Add, Can’t Post!

Picked up the following link from Jon Udell about the CAPTCHA (Computer Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers & Humans apart) preventing blog spam. This is a really (should that be raelly) tasty idea from Rael Dornfest. It can be summed up as can’t add, can’t post. He uses the Blosxom Writeback function which provides weblog comments with write-backs. An arithmetic sum is embedded in the writeback and no commets are allowed unless the answer is posted correctly. An example of this is
5 + 2 =
Neatly sidestepping more general blog spambots. The numbers are generated randomly. A definite improvement would be image obfuscation (a la Captcha!) and a bigger range.. He currently only uses 0-9 meaning a 1 in 20 chance you’re gonna get the right number. I’m not sure I want to encourage blogspammers to brute force my site, especially when a post is so tantalisingly close
I’m working on my own interesting weapon in the battle against blogspam. It currently has the catchy title of blogassasin (Apologies to jmason & the rest of the spamassasin team). Also, it doesn’t kill blogs but early versions come close. Active blacklist generation is another tidy feature. So spammers should think before thy HTTPiss Off innocent bloggers. Personally I don’t believe that my blog (or anyone else’s for that matter) needs to become any less relevant or increasingly grbled. So let’s say NO to blogspam 😉