Another day, another frightening email from Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council begging for money (sorry, asking for a “generous gift”) so they can do God’s work. Why God can’t handle this himself (for example, by smiting the guilty) isn’t explained. What do they need the money for? To fight the “rampaging persecution of the American Church!” Does the FRC mean that churches are being closed by the state? Are Christians being forced to disavow their religious beliefs?

Rep. Louie Gohmert is quite likely the most ignorant, bigoted, just plain stupid representative in the American House of Representatives. Yet I’m still surprised when I hear him say something that lowers my opinion of him. Listen to the following where he claims that Christians are the only group in America that it is politically correct to abuse and misuse: [https://www.youtube.com/embed/7ersD4oEao4?feature=oembed] Mr. Gohmert, I have news for you. Atheists are on the receiving end of far more abuse than any religious group.

This week I saw “Mozilla/0.6 Beta (Windows) advertised by a system in the Ukraine that has been attacking me for two weeks. That version was released December 8, 2000 (15 years ago). The same system also advertised “Mozilla/4.0” a few hours later. Yeesh! Malware writers are morons. I recently reported a HTTP (i.e., web server) attack to a small business owner whose network was infected by malware. Their abuse contact told me that the attack couldn’t have come from their network because

Malware authors tend to be egotistical as well as stupid. Some malware authors include their signature in the HTTP user-agent string they send. Such as “ZmEu” and “DataCha0s”. Or they do something stupid like surround the user-agent string with double-quotes (see the first RewriteCond statement below). Adding the following rules to your .htaccess file (or Apache config file) provides an inexpensive means of blocking requests from such malware. These rules catch a surprising number of malware attacks against my WordPress blog.

Invalid HTTP POST requests to /wp-login.php are by far the most common attack I see against my WordPress blog. For some unknown reason the vast majority of those attacks are from computers in Italy (see my first and second articles about it). These .htaccess rules block them: # Block bogus login post attempts. Most bots are stupid. They don't use a # modern HTTP header, don't include the referer header, or don't include the # WP cookie that would be included in a legitimate request.

This will be my first of many posts detailing how to configure a web server running the WordPress blogging software on Apache. Specifically, configuring the Apache web server or WordPress to reject (or make it possible after the fact to reject) attacks. I’m going to start with a simple attack that is easy to detect and reject: Shellshock. Add the following to your .htaccess file: # This protects against attempts to exploit the Bash execution bug.

I appreciate the flexibility of Dtrace. But, at least on Mac OS X, the dtruss command is inferior to the classic truss command of UNIX System V that I’m used to using. Primarily because a) You can’t run dtruss as yourself against a process you own. You have to run dtruss as the root user. b) Using dtruss has a very noticeable impact on every other process even when tracing a specific PID (process ID).

If Andy Borowitz were correct in this satirical piece at “The Borowitz Report” I would be a very happy camper. Here is the first paragraph: WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s constant references to Jesus Christ in his speeches and campaign ads are sparking a strong interest in atheism among millions of Americans, atheist leaders report. Yes, the article is satire and full of snark. Still, I can’t help thinking that Mr.

Andy Borowitz nails it again at “The Borowitz Report” from which I give you a couple paragraphs: SACRAMENTO (The Borowitz Report) – A new poll shows that Americans who were unconcerned about climate change as it wreaked havoc around the world are beginning to worry, now that global warming is affecting the appearance of their lawns. and In interviews across the state of California, residents expressed anger and outrage that climate change had been allowed to worsen to the point that it has now severely limited their choice of ground cover, shrubs, and other decorative plantings.

Holy Shit! I visited my California DMV office yesterday to renew the registration for my car. I expected the three hour wait before I could conduct my transaction. What I did not expect were the two persons behind a table of evangelical Christian material just outside the entrance and unambiguously on the DMV property (two meters from the entrance and ten meters from the public sidewalk). This is what I saw as I entered and left the DMV office: