| LED Digest 2133: "It Can't Be Done" |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. April 6, 2006 Issue #2133 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== HTML Structure Validation ==-- ~ Mark Whitman "If anything, using quotes when not necessary increases file size..." --== Protecting Images ==-- ~ Scott Marino "I am forever policing unauthorized use." ~ Tom Aman "If it can be experienced, it can be copied." ~ Kerry Branham "One other aspect of using a javascript to disable right-clicking..." ~ Will Bontrager "Maybe I should say 'It can't be done'..." ~ Claudiu Spulber "I use...a plug-in called EnableRightClick." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Googling Tom Foolery ==-- ~ James Miller --== Stopping Spam - An Experiment ==-- ~ Tom Aman --== Google Spidering ==-- ~ Baruch Avraham ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Mark Whitman Subject: HTML validation > To leave [quotation marks] out forces the parser into > performing extra operations to determine the intent, > not only to find the beginning of the value, but also > to decide when it has reached the end. - Tom Aman, LED 2132 White space is interpreted the same way as quotes - that's why you need quotes around multi-word tag attributes. There is zero additional overhead when not quoting single word attributes, at least not with Apache - I assume it's the same on a Windows server. If anything, using quotes when not necessary increases file size therefore making the page load slower (by a millisecond or 2 :) > The second problem with leaving out quotes is that there is no > guarantee that all browsers will handle it correctly or that future > version of existing browsers will continue to handle it correctly. In the 12 years I've been using HTML this way I have never found a browser, graphical or text, that can't tell the difference between a quote and white space (where tag attributes are concerned). I doubt this will ever change but who knows, usually however software is as backward compatible as possible. Getting [uptight] about quoting tag attributes achieves nothing, it never has and probably never will. Mark Whitman -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Scott Marino Subject: Image theft > Here is a page from my site, try to > copy or download these images... - Robert Bass, LED 2131 The scripts themselves are really quite nice. Disabling right-click will keep many from getting the images. Obfuscating the code within the JavaScript is a plus as it might discourage a few more. The one thing it did not do was to stop the browser (I used Internet Explorer 6.0) from caching the images. After seeing the script disabled right clicking and the code was obfuscated, I immediately went to the browsers cache and found the images. You should also know that if someone has scripting disabled, your site will not load as the obfuscated HTML needs JavaScript to be enabled to render. Sorry to knock a hole in your defenses about keeping your images safe, but you should know your method is not fool-proof. Even if you stop them from getting into the cache (not sure if you can because I never tried), they can still be had by a screen capture / copy (ctrl-printscreen in Windows) and then pasted into a photo editing application and cropped to make a new image. I have the same issue of protecting my images. With over 3,000 pictures of merchandise on the site, you would not believe where they end up. I have seen them on big commercials sites (competing with me) and on EBay. I am forever policing unauthorized use. Adding a watermark is also a very popular technique, especially for artists and photographers. We just had some baby pictures done and after looking at them, it would be a real pain to try to undo the watermarking with Photoshop or some other editor. Regards, Scott Marino www.webundies.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Tom Aman Subject: Image theft > It's useless to stress out or waste time trying to > protect against image theft. There is not one single > thing you can do to keep a competent developer > from taking any and every image from any site > any time no matter what you do to try to prevent it. - Mark Whitman, LED 2132 Mark is 100% correct. There was some recent very bad publicity about one CD producer who had added some protection stuff to their CDs so that they could not be copied on a computer. Aside from the bad effects this had on some systems and the incredible negative publicity it generated, it did not really protect anything from a dedicated copier. How can any scheme prevent me from playing the CD in my stereo with my stereo connected to my computer where I can record it the sound thus produced? Granted, the sound quality may suffer a little but, except for a real audiophile, this is not an issue and this method would let me copy any audio CD that I can play on my CD player. A similar approach would work for copying most VHS tapes and DVDs provided my computer has an appropriate graphics card or TV tuner. Copying images from Web pages is really very simple in comparison and, as has been shown LEDers, there are lots of ways to do it. In a recent issue of PC World, there was an article about copy protection being used or planned for CDs and DVDs. The writer made one very telling comment (speaking of any aural or visual medium) of the futility of all this: "If it can be experienced, it can be copied". Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Kerry Branham Subject: Image theft One other aspect of using a javascript to disable right-clicking and taking images is that if you turn off Java and Javascript in your browser you get nothing but a blank page. So, anyone thinking of using that technique needs to think about those visitors that turn off those utilities in order to browse faster on the net. Kerry Branham K-S Marketing kib, ksmnet.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Will Bontrager Subject: Image Theft > Here is a page from my site, try > to copy or download these images. - Robert Bass LED 2131 Your challenge grabbed my interest :) With Firefox 1.5 on Win XP, I loaded the page, turned JavaScript off, right-clicked on the image, and selected "Save Image As..." Sending the page to the browser as obfuscated JavaScript code is a good idea. It can hide program and HTML code for those who want to keep their methods secret, and can do a pretty good job of it. But images and sounds are harder to hide. At least this was something new. I watched an earlier related thread with high interest hoping somebody would come up with a really effective method. Anybody? Maybe I should say "It can't be done." It seems whenever I do that, somebody proves me wrong :) Will Bontrager TellThePresident.US -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Claudiu Spulber Subject: Image theft Sorry to disappoint you but it's quite easy to copy your images. I use Maxthon and by default it comes with a plug-in called EnableRightClick. One click on it and I'm able to right click an image on your website and save it locally. Regards, Claudiu Spulber http://www.backup4all.com// http://www.novapdf.com// ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: James Miller Subject: Tom foolery > [We want] to show page A if it is the Google bot, > and page B if it is a person - allowing the content > to be tuned to the audience. Will Google catch me > out and punish me by dropping my beloved site? - John Smart, LED 2132 How does Google respond to an instant page change? Suppose you have two pages, one which is Google-friendly and the other user-friendly. You make the top part of the Google-friendly page, the same as the user-friendly. So if the pages swapped after say a second, the user wouldn't see any difference. I suspect Google never takes longer than a second to read a page. James Miller Daisy Analysis www.daisy.co.uk -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Tom Aman Subject: Stopping spam - an experiment > I've not been able to block some of the messages no matter > what I do. These are mostly the ones that contain messages > in the form of images... Any idea how I can block these? - Gurdip Singh, LED 2130 This may sound silly, but the easiest way is to quit trying to filter out SPAM. Instead, filter the good messages and send them to a "Good" folder. Almost everything left will be SPAM. Of course that doesn't work too well when you receive 200+ SPAM per day since you really need to scan those to make sure you don't miss a good message. But that is what I do now and it is proving to be well over 99% accurate. Of course, I first reduced my incoming SPAM of 295 per day by almost 91% (to an average of 28 per day). In an earlier post, I wrote about my experiences in doing that big *no, no* - unsubscribing whenever the SPAM (or sometimes the site pointed to by the SPAM) gave the option. The *experts* tell you that this will just get you more SPAM. My experience has been, and remains, just the opposite. My average incoming SPAM is now 28 per day. Using a few rules, I can now route almost 100% of my good email to a "Good" folder, whatever is left in the Inbox is SPAM and is easily and quickly dealt with. I wrote about this experience in some detail to a number of so-called gurus and experts. Without exception, the responses I got said that I was just lucky, I must be a special case, this wouldn't work for most people, this could get me into all kinds of trouble from mal-ware, etc., etc., etc. Basically, there was no interest in exploring the subject further, just the routine reasons (excuses???) for not unsubscribing. I even suggested that I would some further study and pass along the results to which the response, when I actually received one, when stripped of extraneous words, amounted to "my mind is made up, don't confuse me with facts". So much for the experts. Now to the purpose of this post. I would *really* like to explore this unsubscribe matter further and really determine if the experts are right or wrong. To do this, I would like to enlist the aid of 20 or 30 (or more) people who receive a lot (at least 50, preferably 100 or more) SPAM emails per day to take part in a study. The approach would be to have some of these individuals become a control group who would do nothing but keep a record of the quantities of incoming SPAM that they receive while the rest would, after an initial period to establish their true average incoming SPAM, start unsubscribing and keeping track of the results. This would have to be done in a controlled manner so everyone is keeping numbers over the same periods of time and the whole study would last from 60 to 90 days. There would be some definite procedures, rules and specific requirements to be followed by these individuals to ensure the results are valid and statistically significant. So, I would appreciate having any LEDers who would be willing to take part in this study contacting me directly for more details. Assuming I can assemble the required number of people so this can proceed, I will report back the results in future issues of the digest. Anyone interested can contact me by emailing me directly at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it with a subject line in the email of "Spam Study" (so I can filter these emails into my "Good" folder). And no, I am not particularly worried about having my email address appear in a posting. Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Baruch Avraham Subject: Google spidering I have noticed in my statistics now for three days, that Google does not spider my site www.aris-titanium.com . It still gets referals from Google. So the site is searchable in Google. Has anyone else seen anything like this? What should I do about it. Best regards Baruch Avraham Aris Jewlery ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains © Copyright 1995-2006 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 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