Strange GMail error

Got a strange GMail message that persisted with a single message.  I composed an email, and clicked on send.  Up popped the following message:

Oops... a server error occurred and your email was not sent. (#793)

It persisted.  I was able to create and send another message, and yet when I went to my drafts folder to send it again, I got the error again.

I finally solved it by closing the browser and re-signing into GMail.  

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MySQL Can not issue data manipulation statements with executeQuery()

Had an interesting MySQL error.  It was:  Can not issue data manipulation statements with executeQuery().

This was the code snippet that caused it:

try {
stmt = conn.createStatement();
myQueryString = "delete from groupnames where id=" + gid;
stmt.executeQuery(myQueryString);

The thing to notice is the query string.  What it was doing, was deleting a record in a table.  It wasn't a query so the line in red is incorrect.

It should have read:

try {
stmt = conn.createStatement();
myQueryString = "delete from groupnames where id=" + gid;
stmt.execute(myQueryString);

Notice that instead of executeQuery, because there is no query in a delete, it should merely read execute.

Hope this helps someone.

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Traffic Faking Saga continues

Well the traffic faking saga continues.  In a previous post, I outlined how I contacted the .PW abuse desk for the PW registrar where the internet rectums and societal scourges called blogsrating.pw were hosted.

The registrar asked me for proof, and I sent back this reply:

Hello:

For supporting evidence of the spammer in your midst, please google blogsrating.pw and you will find the internet is full of complaints of these spammers/traffic fakers.  They operate under a few different domains but the blogsrating.pw is front and center.

It is highly annoying to me, but highly damaging to your good name as a registrar.  I would seriously suggest that you perform a simply google of that domain for all of the evidence that you need.

And they sent back this reply and closed the ticket:

Thank you for contacting us.

However, in order to proceed with suspension of the domain name, we require corresponding evidence supporting the same. 

Once, we receive the necessary evidence, we shall definitely take strict action against the domain name.

Best regards,
Abuse Mitigation Team
.PW Registry



Ticket Details

---

Ticket ID: ZTV-616-97794
Status: Closed

So in essence, they are a bunch of ticket-closers who have no interest in doing simple investigative work of their own.  It is my job to police the internet according to them.

If the assholes at blogsrating.pw are polluting your blog, you too can contact the abuse desk and have them do nothing as well.

Here are the frustration particulars:   .PW Abuse Desk <abuse@registry.pw>


 In the meantime, the dickless wonders have put 32 fake hits on this blog in the past few minutes.  Here are the offenders:

http://r-e-f-e-r-e-r.com   - 12 hits

http://t.co/MaAptuGFVu  - 12 hits

http://www.vampirestat.com  - 8 hits

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More of why Facebook is finished

Since CNN doesn't have a blogger button to share, I am cutting and pasting this article from CNN.   Here is the URL:  http://us.cnn.com/2013/06/21/tech/social-media/facebook-contact-bug/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Facebook bug exposes some contact information

By Heather Kelly, CNN updated 10:46 AM EDT, Sat June 22, 2013 | Filed under: Social Media

(CNN) -- A newly discovered Facebook bug may have inadvertently compromised the contact information of 6 million users, the company says.

The bug, which has since been repaired, was part of the Download Your Information tool, which lets Facebook users export all the data from profiles, such as posts to their timeline and conversations with friends. People using the tool may have downloaded inadvertently the contact information for people they were somehow connected to.

Some people upload their contact lists or address books to Facebook, which the company then uses to suggest new friends they can connect with who are already using the service.

Though the number of people impacted is sizable, the actual spread of their contact information appears to be limited. The phone numbers and e-mail addresses were not exposed to developers or posted publicly. It is only shown to people they had at least a tentative connection with, and who may have already had their contact information. Even in that pool, it was only exposed to people who had used the data-exporting tool.

"For almost all of the email addresses or telephone numbers impacted, each individual email address or telephone number was only included in a download once or twice. This means, in almost all cases, an email address or telephone number was only exposed to one person," Facebook's security team said in a post.

The company says it has no evidence that the bug was "exploited maliciously" and that there have been no complaints so far.

The social media company announced the bug on Friday afternoon. The issue was discovered by a third-party security researcher who submitted it through Facebook's White Hat program.

Facebook's White Hat program is set up so that people such as security researchers can report any vulnerabilities they find on the social network and get a reward for $500 and up in return. These types of programs are common at Internet companies.

"Your trust is the most important asset we have, and we are committed to improving our safety procedures and keeping your information safe and secure," read the post.

People who were affected by the bug will receive an e-mail from Facebook.

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Eclipse Java -- Classes Will Not Build

We had an interesting problem.  After checking out the latest project out of our repository (Subversion), we couldn't get a build.  After a clean, the WEB-INF/classes directory was empty.  We checked the build path stuff under the project properties.  All was in order.  We rebuilt several times.  Nothing.

It turns out that somehow a corrupted .classpath file was checked into the main trunk.  This is the .classpath file automagically generated by Eclipse.  When we reverted to the previous version of the .classpath file, everything worked and we got a build.

Hope this helps someone.

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Reporting Abuse for Traffic Faking

In a previous post, I told you that I was sick of the scum bags (or is it scumbags) doing Black Hat SEO  traffic faking on my blogs.  I did report blogsrating.pw to the .PW registrar and this was the response that I got:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us.

If you believe that the domain name "Blogsrating.pw" is involved in fraudulent activities, then we request you to provide us with evidence supporting the same.

You may provide the necessary evidence to us or could directly provide the same to the Registrar of the domain name.

Feel free to contact us, in case of further queries.

Regards,
Abuse Mitigation Team
.PW Registry


So you see, it is up to me to police the internet.  I may do a write-up and send it back, but right now I haven't got time.

But I do have time to add some more scum bag domain names to the traffic fakers list:

vampirestat.com
adsensewatchdog.com
kmzackblogger.blogspot.com
r-e-f-e-r-e-r.com

The adsensewatchdog.com is using a Google trademark so I think that I will report that one.  I will let you know what happens.

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Really Getting Tired of these Traffic Faking Domains

I am really getting tired of traffic faking domains.  These are domains that fake traffic hits to a web site.  They know that webmasters look at the web analytics, and when they see a whole pile of hits from a website, they are curious as to why that website is sending traffic their way.  So they check it out, and it ends up being a spam site that wants to sell you drugs, or weight loss programs.  They are a blight on the web community.  They practice Black Hat SEO.

Two of the worst domains that are traffic faking my blogs are:

blogsrating.pw
flf-course.com

These internet rectums are jerks of the worst kind.  The .pw domain name stands for professional web, and I sent an email to PW registry because traffic faking seems to violate their terms of service.  We shall see if the pw registry takes itself seriously and curbs those traffic fakers.  If not, then I wouldn't suggest patronizing the pw registrars because your website will be considered in the same group as spammers and traffic fakers.

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Best Open Source, Free Blogging Software

We are a java shop.  We are committed to J2EE, Java, JSP as the best web delivery system for what we do.  Recently I was asked to implement blogging software.  Without a doubt, the best open source JSP blogging software is Apache Roller

Apache Roller is a full-featured, multi-user and group-blog server suitable for blog sites large and small. It runs as a Java web application that should be able to run on any Java EE server and relational database. Currently, Roller is best supported on Tomcat and MySQL -- but users have reported success running Roller on Glassfish, Websphere, JBoss, Resin, Geronimo, Derby, PostgreSQL, and Oracle.

Here are some of Roller's key features:

• Multi-user blogging: can support tens of thousands of users and blogs
• Group blogging with three permisson levels (editor, author and limited)
• Support for comment moderation and comment spam prevention measures
• Bloggers have complete control over blog layout/style via Apache Velocity-driven templates
• Built-in search engine indexes weblog entry content
• Pluggable cache and rendering system
• Support for blog clients that support MetaWeblog API
• All blogs have entry and comment feeds in both RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 formats

You can get the software here:

http://roller.apache.org/

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MySQL ROW_COUNT() Bug?

Had a strange bug with a MySQL stored procedure.  Consider the following line:

START TRANSACTION;

Insert into conversations(subjectLine) values(subjectLine);

IF (ROW_COUNT() > 0) then

set @pass1 = 1;

end if;

 Look closely at the IF statement.  It works perfectly on a Windows server.  When you put the CREATE statement on a Linux machine in the mysql command line, it fails and fills with garbage.  

The fix took some head-scratching, but here it is:

START TRANSACTION;

Insert into conversations(subjectLine) values(subjectLine);

IF ((SELECT ROW_COUNT()) > 0) then

set @pass1 = 1;

end if;

I had to put (SELECT ROW_COUNT()) to make it work in the Linux command line.

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