INeedAttention.com

Extreme Tracking (dot com) is a basic web site statistics service. They offer free web site traffic reports, viewable to visitors and the site owner alike, as well as a paid version of the same service that is private, and viewable only by the person that pays the bills. In the past, it was possible to modify the Extreme Tracking code such that a public tracker could be made essentially non-public. By changing the image’s size properties to to 1 pixel wide and 1 pixel high, the tracker would appear only as a faint dot on the screen.

<img xsrc=”http://t1.extreme-dm.com/i.gif” mce_src=”http://t1.extreme-dm.com/i.gif” height=38
border=0 width=41 alt=””>

Would become:

<img xsrc=”http://t1.extreme-dm.com/i.gif” mce_src=”http://t1.extreme-dm.com/i.gif” height=1
border=0 width=1 alt=””>

At some point today, their system implemented a code-checking mechanism. Modifying their tracker source code is against their terms of service apparently, so they implemented an automated solution to combat this tampering. Now, their systems load a client website and ensure the code is properly embedded in the HTML source of the page.

However, a simple combination of HTML and style sheets (or inline CSS) can conceal the tracker code as-is but leave it loaded properly. Adding a “<div>” tag around the tracker code, and setting the style property “visibility” to “hidden” causes the code to be loaded and the javascript wrapper to be executed properly, while avoiding direct tampering with the tracker code.

After embedding the Extreme Tracking code in a page, add <div> tags as follows:

<div style=”visibility:hidden”>
— Extreme Tracker code goes here —
</div>

The tracker code will be invisible, albeit still clickable, and will still pass code validation. Note that this service is pretty sweet though, so although it’s a bit uncool to hide the code, if you want your reports to be private, you should consider paying for the non-public tracker. Of course if you’re not interested in paying, Google Analytics offers free tracking of arguably higher intensity, at the cost that your website becomes a part of Skynet.

Hon. Mr. Schumer, Hon. Ms. Clinton,

Greeting and salutations; this is my first time writing to you as long as you have been my senator. Though occasionally various issues make me want to write a letter to you, I rarely find the time. However lately I have become gravely concerned with the direction of the United States based on what I have seen and heard. I felt that if I failed to act on my concerns that I would be failing as a citizen, and so I write to you today. I am publishing this letter on my personal website should anyone be interested in what I have to say.

While we sacrifice our civil liberties to stand guard against threats to our homeland, we forget that the Bill of Rights is meant to guard us against threats from our homeland. I am saddened that we have allowed ourselves to forgo the mechanisms that we fought to establish, such as the right to a fair trial, and the rights protecting us from unreasonable search and seizure. Fifty years ago, the war drum was beat to fight the “reds”, and we let Sen. McCarthy parade American citizens in front of a Congressional circus. Today I would hope that we are better, but instead of parading the citizens in front of Congress, we lock them offshore in places like Guantanamo Bay, where they’re hidden from the public. I suspect that it is because some of the programs that the United States engages in right now are “too horrible” for prime time. Perhaps Americans today don’t have the collective stomach to watch another Rosenberg trial. I’m sure that there are elements within the federal government that are eagerly awaiting the coming of the next Rosenbergs, however as citizen I can say that I do not want it to be me.

I’m not really too worried that I’ll be made an example of by the criminal justice system – after all, my name doesn’t sound middle eastern. However I am worried for my life. My next door neighbor died the morning of September 11, 2001. I didn’t know him very well, and this is what bothered me the most – even someone living right next door was alien to me, and I only wanted to know him more because he was no longer there to know me. Then in 2004, I received an email from my grandmother that one of my cousins had died in Iraq. I didn’t even know him, either, even in my own family. I can blame disparity of modern society, but in reality it was my fault for not knowing my family well enough, nor meeting my neighbor. There are conspiracy theories out there that the federal government was complicit in the 9/11 attacks, but here forth I’ll assume that there was absolutely nothing that could have happened to prevent 9/11. My cousin, however, did not die because of a faceless coward that hijacked a plane with a five-dollar box cutter.

My cousin died because you, amongst your peers, allowed yourself to be convinced that a war in Iraq was righteous. Whether we went to avenge 9/11, find weapons or mass destruction, or simply de-despotize the Saddam Hussein we installed years prior, most of America, yourself included, followed the call to war blindly. This is no surprise; the American public is mostly politically unaware and apathetic, but I assure you there are people like me out there that are genuinely heartbroken to see this state of affairs. At the time, I even believed that there would at least be weapons of mass destruction in Iraq because it was based on the reasonable belief widespread in America that as a dictatorship in the Middle East, Iraq probably aspired to destroy us.

Except instead of waiting for Iraq to send missiles to destroy our people, we’ve instead sent our people to Iraq so that we can be destroyed.

But not only are we allowing ourselves to destroy other nations, we are destroying our own. We the people are asked to sacrifice our freedoms so that we do not die, while our soldiers are dying to defend our freedom.

My grandmother needs to remove her shoes to board an airplane today. Even Israeli airline El-Al does not take such drastic steps, because they are at least humane enough to spare passengers that indignity. I make phone calls every day, and thanks to the cooperation between major telecommunications companies and the federal government, I can be assured that if I were potentially even calling politically undesirable people (probably of middle eastern descent), “they” would know. And finally, I am amazed that even before 9/11, that the United States had the 2nd largest prison population per capita in the world. I suppose prison is just part of the cost of freedom. Or is obedience the message of today’s America: free to be any way as long as it’s our way.

Am I supposed to not be afraid now? Am I supposed to trust that yourself and the other Honorable members of Congress will not make mistakes like Iraq again? Even if I choose to ignore global politics, I can’t ignore that my banker suddenly scrutinizes me when I open a new personal checking account. After all, what responsible small town banker wants to promote global terror? It would certainly be a shame if a bank were to lend a line of credit to a citizen like David Banach, who would then go turn that around and ungratefully buy a laser to disrupt air transit. It’s amazing what one man can do with a little laser pointer, isn’t it? He could have crashed airplanes. I don’t think he would have; but I certainly remember the scare that Mr. Banach “caused”.

Mostly I can’t ignore that there are still concrete barricades around some of our national monuments as if they are in a war zone. The only people the barricades keep out are citizens. Sure, there could be a terrorist in there, maybe. It’s certainly enough to warrant a regular, paramilitary patrol of the nation’s capitol, according to some people. However, I suspect that as a member of Congress you have never been subject to seeing the business end of a patrolman’s service pistol, nor will you. I can assure you that if you put a gun in a man’s hand, no matter how steady and well-trained the hand – it will be fired some day. Should I too wear body armor, as police do, since I too fear the wound of a bullet? Sure, police encounter threats daily, but am I too not subject to the same if not similar threats?

I don’t want to die like my cousin or my neighbor died. But I’d rather be shot dead by Osama Bin Laden himself than to be shot dead at the hands of a cowboy cop and his “cell” of a S.W.A.T. team. I know plenty of young middle eastern men, and some of them even hate the United States government, but I fear that same government far more than I fear any of these young men.

I posit that fear is not appropriate in our country and cite the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as my source for this claim.

I don’t necessarily have a platform that I would like to see you to enact. I’m not a politician; you can develop your own platforms. But how can it be so that all the platforms I am permitted to chose from insist that I must sacrifice my rights to be secure?

I could care less about how you use your platforms to advance your political career. However I do care greatly about these five issues:

1) Safeguarding the basic protections of the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights, even during times of crisis, including a comprehensive Congressional and Judicial review of the application of the Bill of Rights in the post-9/11 world; and
2) Ensuring that elections are carried out fairly (even if that includes abandoning relationships with companies with questionable track records such as Diebold) and stopping gerrymandering at the risk of having to face a more demanding electorate; and
3) Ensuring that the companies responsible for delivering media, namely print, radio, television, and especially the internet, are free from government interference and bias (as part of this I support efforts to ensure “Net Neutrality”); and
4) Reforming intellectual property law in such a way that it is not acceptable for recording associations, publishers associations, and the like to use “John Doe” lawsuits to bring litigation amongst persons possessing unauthorized copyrighted works for personal use only; and
5) Reform of drug law, especially including the legalization and regulation of marijuana possession in amounts suitable for personal consumption.

I would like to know how you feel about these issues as well. Though I would love to get the chance to meet you personally and discuss these issues and more, I’m sure that it would be next to impossible to ever get to actually sit down face to face and discuss current events with you. If you should decide I am worth your time to see, I would gladly travel to the capitol just to stand in your presence even for a passing moment.

But assuming that I’ll never get the pleasure of meeting you, if you can find the time, I’d like to know more about your feelings on the issues that I outlined above. I would like you to be honest and not provide a canned response, since I was honest and did not provide you a canned response. I did not have an aide write this so that I could apply my signature later, and I would appreciate that you respond without the assistance of your staff. I beg you to be open with me about the issues that as a voter, and above all an American citizen, I care about.

Your Sincerely,

-Peter

Yes, that’s right. After searching 6 years for someone hardcore enough to drink a gallon of milk in an hour, our search is over. Congratulations to my father, Joseph Ubriac0, and Raymond Donnelly, both of Rockland County, NY, who completed the challenge. My father finished with about 8 minutes left, and Ray completed the challenge right on time. Both competitors agreed to share the championship title, although my father announced his immediate retirement from future challenges.

We’re (and by we’re I mean Fatman is) on the FRONT PAGE of the Rockland Journal News (and we’re a half page spread on page 3A… still not too shabby). The online version of the Rockland Journal News’ coverage of the gallon challenge is available here.

But don’t forget to check out the official photos from the 6th Annual Gallon Challenge, on gallonchallenge.org.

Perhaps now I can remove that video of him dancing?

Please repost this anywhere you can (or your milk will be cursed for 6 years)!

We’re throwing (up) the 6th Annual Gallon Challenge on Saturday, August 12 at 5PM, at Rockland Lake State Park near Parking Area 2.

If you don’t know what the Gallon Challenge is, check out our photos from the 2005 Gallon Challenge.

We’re looking for spectators, participants, and donors! Check out the official Gallon Challenge Foundation homepage for more info, including the online registration.

Come join us Saturday August 12 at 5PM!

Note that you MUST register for the event at least 12 hours in advance to participate.

If you want to help us get people involved, link to http://gallonchallenge.org/ from your blog or your Myspace.

Or, if you have a Myspace, it would be even better if you post a bulletin announcing this year’s Gallon Challenge. Here’s the code:

Please repost this anywhere you can (or your milk will be cursed for 6 years)!

We’re throwing (up) the 6th Annual Gallon Challenge on Saturday, August 12 at 5PM, at Rockland Lake State Park near Parking Area 2.

If you don’t know what the Gallon Challenge is, check out our photos from last year, at <a xhref=”http://gallonchallenge.org/photos/2005/” mce_href=”http://gallonchallenge.org/photos/2005/”>http://gallonchallenge.org/photos/2005/</a>.

We’re looking for spectators, participants, and donors! Check out <a xhref=”http://gallonchallenge.org/” mce_href=”http://gallonchallenge.org/”>http://gallonchallenge.org/</a> for more info, including the online registration. So come join us Saturday August 12 at 5PM.

<hr/>

Note that you MUST register for the event at least 12 hours in advance to participate.

<img xsrc=”http://gallonchallenge.org/images/2005/IMG_6733.JPG” mce_src=”http://gallonchallenge.org/images/2005/IMG_6733.JPG” />

INeedAttention.com is not just about sweet content loaded with interesting ideas. It’s also about sweet content loaded with interesting ideas that’s free of comment spam. Mostly, this is because I actively monitor the site. I also run a message board about The Pines Hotel (I also run a site about The Pines Hotel, which links to that message board).

Every once in a while, that message board gets spam. Spam users registering to spam the server. What is a message board administrator to do other than sit and watch their server? Well, there’s CAPCHA, but that’s not foolproof either and also makes the site way less accessible. Frankly, this is why the best method is the most classic method: watch your boards, and block offending users and IPs. It’s the only truly effective way to truly eliminate it. But as far as cutting down the number of spam messages, probably the best way is to implement a simple and robust comment script custom designed for your site. The power here is that if you develop it properly, someone wanting to generate automatic requests has to code their application specifically to understand your site. My message board runs YabbSE, which is not only used on thousands of other websites, it’s also is now obsolete (it’s been replaced by SMF).

There is more to read about the actual message board spam that pushed me to write this story.

But speaking of changing software, INeedAttention.com is moving to a new server soon and will receive a complete makeover and cleanup. Of course, this is a huge project so stand by and keep a lookout.