Gremlins
The Reasonable Anonymous, known more often here as simply “tra” just posted the following comment. Due to the same glitch he describes I can’t leave a comment in response.
For some reason, on my screen, the fields for “Name” and “Email” are autofilling as “Mitch” and “[email address redacted]” Some kinda little gremlin in the system somewhere, I guess.
Just thought you should know that this little quirk is happening again. If this keeps up it could become a real annoyance as sooner or later I’m going to fail to notice that the name field is autofilled with Mitch’s (or somebody else’s) name, and as a result, the comment will end up posting under the wrong name.
And if this is happening on my computer, I assume it’s happening to other folks as well.
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The Humboldt Herald 
Testing.
testing
At the Herald we are all Mitch. At Sohum Parlance, we are Tom Sebourn.
I’m still just longwind. You win.
Thanks for your feedback. Perhaps the problem is isolated in NoHum.
working for me.
working for me too.
JL
I am not Mitch either, but apparently someone who didn’t like his politics has paid someone to sabotage Heraldo! Who would do such a thing? I guess it’s a complement.
OK, perhaps the problem is the internet provider. Anyone not on Suddenlink having a problem?
I’m cool
Yeehaw! I’m Mitch.
McK is NoHum last I checked. Not on suddenlink though here I am posting from SF via AT&T dsl.
I think we have the culprit.
and now I’m told I am posting from a fixed IP address via Uverse, which is At&T. In case that helps.
Any SuddenLinkers out there who can read this comment?
O.K., now the “Name” field is autofilling as “tra” again, and nothing is coming up in the “Email” field, which is the way it should be.
The Mitchification first occured yesterday, on and off, and then again just a little while ago.
Suddenlink, ATT, Comcast, WordPress, Gravatar…Nah, that’s not it. You’re ignoring the obvious explanation: Mitch is celebrating the perceived downfall of Hank Sims by uploading cybergremlins into the interwebs and attempting a hostile takeover of the entire local blogcommentsphere.
I think it’s safe to say that Richard Salzman is probably his co-conspirator in this. I’m guessing that both of them have been guzzling way too much champagne as they gloated over the downfall of the Dastardly Dandy and somewhere along the line Salzman said “So, they don’t want comments under multiple names? Fine, we’ll give them all comments under just one name, and see how they like that!”
For a moment, they both fall silent, staring intensely at each other, then at the computer screen, then back at each other Then Mitch and Richard begin to chortle, then titter, giggle, guffaw, cackle, and finally break out into full-blown maniacal laughter, whereupon Mitch pulls out a thumb drive labeled “cybergremlins: use extreme caution” and without hesitation thrusts it boldly into the USB port. Within moments, the Mitchification takes hold, we are all Mitchified. More maniacal laughter, spooky, dischordant music, and the scene fades to black.
Hey, it’s a theory.
Well, Rose did say she and Mitch were being “targeted.” And she said it under her own name so it must be true.
This much we know: Mitch broke the internet.
This baffles me. (And I’m a renown Web guru!)
If I weren’t confined to the phone at the moment I’d Firebug the hell out of it. But I just can’t imagine how this could be a Suddenlink problem. Those fields are read in from a cookie, no?
I did a very cursory Web search — again: phone — and could find no other reports of this problem.
I’m calling out Mitch and Mr. Nice for a Christmas truce. Let’s crack this thing, boys.
Curiouser and curiouser.
Yet another glitch: Now the “Recent Comments” column on the top right of each page is not updating when the page is reloaded. Not updating even when that tab is closed and the page is reopened as a new tab from a link on the HH homepage. Only updating after I post a new comment on that page.
On the other hand, “tra” is staying in the name field, and that’s handy given that I am in fact…
– the real tra.
test
I’m still me, Northern Hum, Att… (on a Mac)
I’m a Suddenlink user. In the previous thread I saw a post by ‘tra’ that was labeled “Your comment is awaiting moderation.”
There are four possibilities.
1) WordPress is incorrectly identifying a group of IP addresses as being the same person or group of persons.
2) Suddenlink has begun issuing dynamic IPs (which change every time you logon) and we’re all very lucky to be getting each others’ previously used IPs.
3) Suddenlink is sending our traffic through a proxy, making all of us appear to be coming from the same IP.
4) Bad cookie recipe.
My bet is on #1. Hank knows more about the cookie situation, but I know I can post comments from multiple locations, having never done so from those PCs in the past, and as long as I supply the correct username and e-mail address, WordPress auto-attaches the correct customized user icon. I don’t have to be logged into wordpress.com for this to happen (yeah, making it really, really easy to post fake messages as someone else).
not tra. on suddenlink.
Hank, clearing cookies doesn’t solve it. And based on users who appear to have the glitch, it does look like a SuddenLink problem. Help us out, oh Web Guru!
I am still Tiger, but my partner on Suddenlink had Mitch’s name come up on this blog and Rose’s name come up on that retched mirror.
All is well here in Eureka/Suddenlink/Firefox/PC land. The Herald is its normal provocative self as always.
Don’t blow my theory!
The issue seems to clear itself up after a spell, but then strikes again a day or two later.
For the record, Decline to State is the first SuddenLinker to give a thumbs up on this thread since the question was posed late last night. I doubt most SuddenLink users could actually see this post until this morning.
I am not “Outsider” though the page auto-filled me as such (no auto-filled email, at least).
I noticed this problem a couple of days ago when checking out SoHum Parlance…
There I was Mitch, along w/ his (?) email address
Good luck with this !
Huh. So as a warning to anonymous posters, the name on the comment form was “Outsider” yet my name showed up in the post…
Thanks for posting that strange new detail.
Mitchification! I LOVE IT
OK this is now officially creepy.
I am Mitch, you are Mitch, we are Mitch and we are all together.
coo coo cachoo
I had a random name in my field (Outsider?). I am sudden link in Eureka. Funny, Im apparently ‘tra’ at the Parlance.
This must be a Worldpress issue?
My current working theory is that when SuddenLink and WordPress meet, the universe bends a little.
I can confirm that the name/email autofill problem exists at another Word Press blog as well. I’m on Suddenlink.
And I didn’t even know I needed a truce with Mr. Nice. I like Mr. Nice, prolly.
Don’t have a problem and never did
And is it a surprise that suddenlink is the problem? I think not.
test.
One supposes this is not a good time to switch to SuddenLink’s phone service.
Mitch’s name & e-mail address showed up on mine yesterday as well. But it was only in the morning.
Today the only problem I have is with the content of most of the posts.
There is a new post up, but if you are viewing this blog via SuddenLink you probably can’t see it.
I think it is all part of a quantum shift what with the solar system going through some energy field that is messing with the sun and the planets and newspaper/blog boundaries.
What with Hank taking over the Eye, and Kevin moving to Savage Henry, I am not surprised that Mitch tried to hijack your blog Heraldo. Things are changing fast.
Shame on you Mitch. Is this what intelligent and articulate commenters do for fun?
I’m normally a lurker and rarely post so I don’t have a regular ID here. I have used a couple in the past though, so didn’t think much of it when I saw “Outsider” had autofilled in the name field last night, but then I saw that same name had popped up for several others too. More recently, I got “Mitched” as well.
Ominously, my wife just called to ask me to log our computer out of her Facebook account since she’s hearing multiple people this morning went to Facebook on machines where they normally stay logged in and found themselves logged into other people’s accounts.
It’s probably just a coincidence that these two anomalies pop up at the same time that entire nations are disabling their citizenry’s access to the internet, but either way, something’s not right in cyberworld today.
Outsider,
If you and your wife are inclined, you could each go to this link:
http://whatismyip.com
If the address the page returns with begins 75.111 — mine does — it’s a safe bet you are on Suddenlink. I don’t know exactly how many such numbers belong to Suddenlink.
While it’s impossible to be certain, it seems quite likely to me that Suddenlink or one of its backbone providers has screwed up something connected with “caching” — that’s a technique used to avoid resending data that the system thinks it already has sent once. It speeds things up, but if the system ends up assembling something to send out of the wrong little bits and pieces, poof, you get the wrong email in an autofill field.
It could be that Suddenlink has changed something, or it could be that Word Press has changed something which causes a preexisting problem at Suddenlink to get exercised.
If I could answer such questions with any degree of confidence, I’d have a much higher income than I do.
As for Suddenlink phone service, I think Heraldo’s comment is apt.
Using Suddenlink, new column came up fine, no autofill, no MiniMitch, all posts from last night came back, seems OK. Ran bug check at the time this started on the 26th, had a small one, advised to ignore it and close out applications. It’s not found in my log this AM to report back and was likely unrelated.
Glad you’re back in the saddle. Let’s see what happens later as the gremlin hit me evenings of 26th and 27th.
…Wait! I’m mistaken. Refreshed my screen, ‘Tra’ is back as autofill, changed it back to skippy. Sigh.
‘skippy’ now comes up rightly as autofill name in this column, but moving to the newest column brought up ‘The Real Mitch’ and an e-mail.
Those bastards, I knew they were rotten. Whoever they are.
This is 69er and it appears that I am showing up as “skippy”.
I am on Suddenlink
Who is skippy and is anyone out there showing up as me, 69er???
OK, here’s one way you can make sure you get a clean, updated page.
When you bring up a page at the Herald (or any blog), your browser’s title bar will show something like this:
humboldtherald.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/gremlins/
If you add something beginning with a question mark and including an equals sign, like this:
humboldtherald.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/gremlins/?a=b
that should cause you to get the most recent version of the page available.
You’d need to change it, say from ?a=b to ?c=d to get a newer version.
This is hardly the ultimate fix, but for blog junkies, it will at least allow you to see the latest and worst.
On a mac and on Suddenlink in Eureka. Nothing autofilled even when I entered my email address. So maybe not happening to Anonymous posters?
I am showing up as “skippy” and posted twice and they appeared and then I refreshed and both disappeared. and auto fill “skippy is back. By the way I am ’69er”
I just erased skippy from the auto fill and typed in my own handle, 69er, lets see if it keeps???
I am back auto filled as 69er.
Suddenlink here and autofilling to skippy….but I sort of like it.
This is 69er and autofill says I am skippy?? Have posted 4 times and they all disappeared when I left site??? See how long this one lasts.
Now it is making a liar out of me??
And “skippy” is now appearing as autofill on my screeen, but I’m…
– the real tra.
On suddenlink. Just did several refreshes, several poster names and emails poped up. One a city of Eureka email. You can put the email in a google search and up pops who they are. It looks like the anon of this place has been peeled away.
Ruh-Roh!
Well, now I am skippy – I’d say it is a wordpress problem, since it is also happening at sohum and the mirror.
And, LOL, I would hope you KNOW if you are on Suddenlink, since you probably cut them a check every month.
Rose
Rose,
Some people access the internet from places where they don’t cut the checks to the service provider. Like work, libraries, and coffeehouses. So there’s really no need to LOL.
Viewed the newest column at this time (‘By His Aftershave Ye Shall Know Him’) and only the first 2 posts are seen. While posting there, 8 more posts appeared for a total of 10. Autofill reads ‘the real mitch’. The word ‘test’ at 10:46(?) came through and seen.
Refreshing back to the newest column again, only the first 2 posts seen again, the rest remained hidden.
Did a bug test on my end and visited other sites– nothing noted.
Somehow a bunch of other posts have appeared here. And only the 10:35, 11:56, and this post are of the real skippy. Seems 69er, Tra, and Rose are also skippy. Egads, has the world turned upside down? I mean, really, I love her and she’s smart and sweet, but… me and Rose?
signed, not really the real dude… but the real skippy and I’d like my name back, folks. I’m also trying to stop smoking and you’re not helping. Thank you for your kind consideration in this regard. Love you all. skips
This is Tom Sebourn testing from Suddenlink
Whoa. I don’t even have the same email address anymore.
test.
Suddenlink looks to be caching pages, giving old pages to its customers rather than what’s live on the Internet.
As an example, going straight to this page normally like anyone else, this page contained 47 comments. When I viewed this same page 15 seconds later through a proxy, one that no Suddenlink subscribers are likely to have ever used before, I saw the *real* current page that reported 70 comments.
Sorry Suddenlink subscribers, but you’re being screwed.
I’m showing up logged in as me and I haven’t had any problems on my blog but both Heraldo and Eric have. I blame the com trails.
Nah…skippy again. waiting moderation… and getting data.
ifconfig spd:7 down
test
I am me. Ha! Maybe it all has to do with whom you voted for.
Im still getting a random name in the field, which changes depending on what thread I look at. On your new thread, Im mitch, and there is a email listed (not mine), which I wont share, but that’s a little disturbing….
Back at the Parlance my name is correct.
Hacked?
I used to regular a forum that had tons of activity. One day there was this new thread that keyed who ever was viewing it to the title of the tread. It was set up like an insult: e.g. I would see: “Bolithio is a dick!” As a topic title. Then when you opened the thread every comment was keyed to the viewers name. A funny hoax/hack, frustrating to the forum owners no doubt…
Same-same but different? Or is a hacked blog unreasonably paranoid?
Another possibility is that this blogs ‘cookie maker’ is corrupted and it is randomly assigning other IPs visiting the blog to other IPs.
Hey, I’m not skippy!!! 69er’s my handle.
someone broke into your interwebs and stole the masks.
I am not skippy either.
Nope, not skippy neither.
testing
test
Well, since it is happening at so-hum parlance and at the mirror and at the Mck Press Blog, it is not just heraldo but is all wordpress blogs – there’s some speculation that it could be related to ipv6 switchover.
It does not seem to be happening to wordpress blogs elsewhere.
(not outsider, but that and his address are in the window – rose)
Look, let’s try to stick to the facts, shall we?
Fact: The first noted instance of this problem involved the name Mitch and Mitch’s e-mail address autofilling the name field and e-mail fields on other people’s browsers.
Fact: During the first full day of the Mitchification, Mitches and mini-Mitches proliferated wildly, accounting for most of the misplaced names and e-mails.
Fact: This all began to happen in the immediate aftermath of the staff shakeup over at the NCJ, of which Mitch has been a vociferous critic.
Fact: All the WordPress blogs that have been reported to have these problems are blogs frequented by Mitch.
Fact: Mitch is a computer whiz.
So, when you add up all these indisputable facts, the obvious conclusion is…
I conducted a simple test. Upload webpage to my website. View webpage. Restart browser with cache flushed. Upload new webpage at same location. View webpage. Wow, huh, I’m seeing the old webpage instead of the new one. FTP download the file from the server to confirm the new page is on the web server and I’m being shown the old page via my web browser. After an undetermined period of time (hours?) the new webpage eventually becomes accessible.
This makes me believe web pages are being cached by my ISP and being shown to its customers instead of the real live webpages, presumably to save bandwidth.
Said ISP has been experiencing periods in the past week where seemingly all websites become temporarily inaccessible, implying to me there is a bandwidth issue.
Who knows for sure, but my test has convinced me.
Sounds plausible, 8:40.
But I still like my theory better.
skippy was here!!!
Now it’s Mitch along with his e-mail address. I removed the e-mail address, never fear!!
I have many many websites. When I post pages, it takes several hours for the changes to appear. These sites are being hosted all around the country. It’s happening with all of them. Use a proxy… they are fine. Had all my server people check it out. It’s Suddenlink. Yes..they are doing it. Just started. Good luck with other theories. I had over 20 people across the country confirm my servers are just fine. When I make a change, Comcast customers are seeing it immediately. I even killed a site and still saw it for 4 hours, refreshing regularly. The site was totally off line, yet I was seeing it. The only people seeing the old stuff are Suddenlink customers.
I’d bet a lot, it’s Suddenblink caching files.
DSL doesn’t have these problems. Just sayin’.
Click Start Now in the DSL box to check for availability. Sorry, if you’ve bundled your telephone service with Suddenlink, your phone number won’t be recognized as real.
Ever try calling someone who uses cable telephone service when you yourself have cable telephone service. Ohh, the joy of echoes and dead connections.
Suddenlink sucks.
Switching to AT&T DSL.
Not a joke at 1:51 is almost certainly correct.
But tra is right that his/her theory is more interesting. tra — here’s an experiment you can carry out. Deliver $1 million in small bills to your suspected culprit, and see if the problem clears up.
agree with not a joke. suddenlink has been intermittent lately as well.
Use Proxy.org to see the latest version of web pages. If you’re a Suddenlink user, you could be viewing a version of this page that is several hours old.
Proxy.org will send you through one of a variety of proxies that makes Suddenlink think you’re requesting a page it hasn’t cached yet. So, it’s good for a single visit to a page to see the latest version.
But, if too many people use the service, it’s possible someone else used the same proxy before you to see the same page, in which case, you’re screwed in that one instance. Also, a few of the proxies don’t let you post comments on blogs.
Welcome to life as a second class citizen.
Oh, but don’t send confidential information through a proxy. Don’t log into any websites through one.
Thought the problem might be resolved as all the posts came up… but see I was married to Dorine this morning upon waking. That was one helluva night, don’t remember much, what did we do? Well, you were good, really good, Dorine, but we gotta split the sheets, dear.
A lot of other folks have stolen skippy and wonder who the hell he is. For the record, there’s only one skippy, a mysterious dude all would know in real time… now lost in the doldrums due to his stolen identity. Stll love you all.
skippy also notices Hi-Fi and Plain Jane have mysteriously avoided this thread. Everyone is suspect.
We are accumlating all your names & addresses. We will be coming to get you soon.
Checking out Sohum Parlance today, I once again got Mitch’s name autofilled in the name field, and his original, real e-mail address autofilled in the e-mail field.
tra,
I’d just like to take this opportunity to remind the public that I am a heterosexual Christian male, in awe of how peachy-keen Humboldt newspapers and governments are. I love Robin Arkley. Virginia Bass, well, va va va voom!
I have only one concern with the area: why are there so many hippies littering the streets?
Go Tea Party! Go Hi Fi!
That is the way heterosexual Christian males would put it, isn’t it? Va va va voom?
Fraud! The spelling, punctuation and grammar are too good. Keep practussing, tho. Cowboy up.
Oh yeah. Rezistunse is fewtil.
HiFi is so scary now that he’s “anonymous.”
Don’t get paranoid, Skippy. I don’t use Suddenlink and haven’t had a problem. I use a junk e-mail address that doesn’t identify me if my information happens to end up on someone else’s post.
Thank you, Plain Jane, you’re right. You usually are.
‘the real mitch says’ was also right in his quick advice:
Tra and Owltotem made us laugh, even though Heraldo isn’t :(
And as many folks said, it’s probably a caching problem with Suddenlink. Bastards. I knew they were rotten.
So, I’ve split the sheets with MiniMitch, shacked up with Rose and Dorine, and now hooked up with Outsider. And smoking like a chimney. Went to the Community Radio Day at Access Humboldt and the media folks were all over this shit. Suddenlink!!!@#%^.
… still love you all though.
signed, the real and screwed skippy
You mean they were all over this rotten problem with SuddenLink?
Curiouser and curiouser…I have never posted on here before this (lurker)…I do have a wordpress blog that I haven’t used in a LONG time but my name (Dorine) came up in the thread shortly after I checked this page, then left for work. I too use suddenlink tho.
Strange, having never been married…my autofill on another thread was tra, here it is outsider.
I must really be bipolar!
gremlin test?
works fine for me…
I cleaned up my computer caches etc and all seems well now. I’m still curious where the autofill got my name from yesterday. I really don’t recall posting on this blog before this morning…but I have posted on NCJ in the past and I know I’ve posted on Lynette’s blog too. I’m just happy that things seem back to normal. It was odd seeing my name flash by on the screen when I rarely use it online.
Let’s feed the gremlins some cheese and hope they stay away.
Dorine, the problem persists. It’s not simply usernames appearing or not appearing. Humboldt Suddenlink customers are being given cached (old) copies of webpages. The cached copies are updated every so often. It doesn’t matter what you change on your computer. The issue is what Suddenlink gives us when we use our browser intending to receive the current version of a webpage and are given something inferior as a substitute (read: oudated information = inferior).
I’m still getting peoples’ usernames and personal e-mails in the comment form… just now, ‘the real mitch’ and ‘goldie.’ Mitch is smart enough to use a fake e-mail address, but Goldie’s real address is being revealed. It appears to be based on the first two initials and Goldie’s real last name.
To expand on what 11:38 just correctly pointed out…
Caching is a very commonly used technique in many areas dealing with computers and networks, and there’s not a thing wrong with using it. See Wikipedia’s entries on cache and web caching if you have questions.
But you have to implement it correctly — when implemented correctly, it is invisible to the end user except as faster service than would otherwise take place (or equivalent service but more customers).
It appears that Suddenlink has blown it. I’m still not certain whether Suddenlink made a recent change to its system, or whether Suddenlink has a longer term problem that is only now getting exercised.
Either way, I truly hope Suddenlink is forced to pay for this disruption but I won’t hold my breath. My expectation that Suddenlink will be forced to pay is about as high as my expectation that Fox News will suddenly go bankrupt.
If anyone has truly suffered from loss of privacy, you would be doing us all a great service by suing Suddenlink. It might be a profitable class action suit for any attorney’s not too busy defending herb farmers.
Heraldo @9:56; No, not the culprit as they were simply aware of the problem being thoroughly interconnected with web and media. Yes, Heraldo, they pay attention to your site– and others.
As an aside, can I relate the 7-station radio workshop with Access Humboldt for others? Readers; they’re going places, need volunteers, and building community in a big way. Tom Abate’s ‘hybrid journalism’ is already alive and and well here.
Skippy’s report:
Access Humboldt and the brilliant Sean McLaughlin (Charles Douglas and fellow staff) sponsored Community Radio Day at their very sweet and first rate Eureka High School studio, classroom, and theater. They got it going on, folks. $5 got you a fast moving and stimulating 5 hour conference, workshop, collaboration, even snacks; the $25 (an ongoing bargain, IMO) enrollment allows use of Access Humboldt’s space, training, and stellar equipment for a year). Yours truly was impressed.
Reps from KHSU, KHUM, KMUD, Hoopa’s KIDE, Blue Ox School, 2 pirate stations (one far beyond ‘pirate’– more like guerrila radio on wheels), Patrick Cleary and others were there for an informational and entertaining Q and A panel addressing big plans– and how others can help or volunteer. The keynote speaker, Gavin Dahl, related serious national issues of import affecting the future of radio, the Local Community Radio Act, and investigative news reporting which looks bleak and beleaguered nationally but far stronger locally given our independent spirit of Humboldt community, values, and far-flung stations, Mr. Gavin noted.
The latter part of the day split into two workshops: strategic planning and collaboration with the 7 community radio organizations; journalistic techniques, ethics, interviewing and hands-on practice using Marantz PMD660 audio recorders taught by the most capable, smart, and livewire news coordinator of KMUD, Ms. Terri Klemetson— who completely rocked in her vigorous presentation. KMUD staff there, en masse, seeking more valued volunteers to obtain audio recordings and interviews for their expanded news coverage of Northern Humboldt; there are also other avenues of volunteer participation to consider.
An exciting workshop and day– a unique collaborative and strategic planning of our local stations with Access Humboldt certainly having an impact for the future.
Consider volunteering or joining the above organizations if interested; they welcome everyone, were very nice and accomodating in their outreach efforts, and offer an invaluable learning experience with immediate immersion.
Thanks, Heraldo, that’s the community radio news; now back to the topic– Gremlins!
Real Mitch, no one pays an Internet provider to be shown old content, whether seamlessly in a secret fashion or not.
In the physical world, that’s like paying the Times-Standard to have the Saturday newspaper delivered Sunday morning and being told it’s Sunday’s paper. Then, receiving Monday’s newspaper and being told it’s Sunday’s paper. As long as you never talk to anyone else to realize the truth, I suppose ignorance is bliss.
No, NOT ryan, of course not. Nobody wants old news.
But when caching is performed properly, you don’t get old content — you get local copies of information that has not changed, and updated copies of any changes. There are large technical task forces which have created extensive mechanisms which are documented online, for anyone geeky enough to want to look.
Believe me, I’m not trying to defend Suddenlink or whoever is the culprit here. I’m just saying that the problem is not as simple as “somebody turned on caching” — the problem is that somebody is not doing caching correctly.
To carry on with your analogy, when caching is done properly, it’s like getting a Times-Standard issue with its new paragraph or two of news, with all the ads from yesterday simply pasted in after being clipped out from your last issue, the one you put in the recycling bin. That would save a lot of newsprint, and you’d never know, as long as the pasting was done neatly.
Mitch, do you have any evidence to suggest Suddenlink was trying to implement the type of caching you’re referring to? This doesn’t seem like an attempt to improve service. The time between refreshes of the cache is absurdly out-of-whack. How could such a mistake be humanly made? It seems more likely to be intentional.
Anonymous,
The evidence is in the behavior… if you are comfortable with the navigation bar in your browser, you can get a current copy of any Word Press page by eliminating any # and anything that follows it, and then appending ?x=y to what’s left.
All the different types of odd behavior can be explained by pages that had been destined for one user being stored in an intermediate server and served up to other users. If you look at the headers on what comes from Word Press, you can see that there is no use of the Cache-Control header.
I think people are misunderstanding the meaning of caching. The idea is not to serve people a single version of changing data, letting it get out of date for, say, an hour. When properly implemented, caching ensures all users get the most recent version of all data that changes, but get cached versions of data that changes never or very rarely (stylesheets, etc…).
I’m not an expert on this, but a major screwup in caching is my best explanation for the observed behavior.
How could such a mistake be humanly made? I’ll leave that to others to discuss. I blame society ;)
So your workaround is for people to manually add text to every webpage they visit. Great! That’s just how I want to spend my time! It’s so much nicer than Suddenlink just giving us live access to the world wide web.
Anonymous,
I was just answering your question, not recommending anything. The only thing I’ve recommended is that if anyone feels they’ve been damaged by the privacy violation, I hope they seriously consider a lawsuit.
Why are people bitching? If Soddenlunk isn’t providing good service, move to somebody else.
The problem, Walt, is that Suddenlink violated people’s right to privacy with their “glitch,” providing others with names and addresses without permission. If I were a suddenlink customer who was outed, I would consider suing them. I would also change providers, of course.
Or you could consider using your own name, Jane. It’s not all that scary. Really.
Rose
PJ,
Two things. First, suddenlink is the only high speed internet option for many of us. I can’t get DSL.
Second, the pages of information that appear in your browser are preceded by information that is used by machines on the network; these bits of information are known as “headers.”
The headers were just flat out wrong before. Last night I checked them again and someone had added a Cache-Control header and one that read X-nananana: Batcache. There’s been an X-hacker header throughout, advertising a tech company’s job offerings.
Doesn’t that give you confidence that our network infrastructure is in the most professional hands possible?
If it’s Suddenlink, I hope they are sued.
So who is HiFi? Inquiring minds want to know!
So who is A-Nony-Mouse? Inquiring minds want to know!
Oh, wait a minute. We don’t. What is your problem?
Don’t panic, the Herald has not been hacked. The company offering jobs is the company behind WordPress. They probably assume anyone looking at the code is tech savvy.
I used to write letters to the editor (T-S, SFC, NYT and WaPo) to express my views and received lots of phone calls from people across the country, not all of them pleasant, some frightening. People, and women especially, who use their names when expressing unpopular views (all views are unpopular to someone) draw unnecessary attention from unstable people. Today especially with the demonization of the left and veiled and not so veiled threats from the right, being opaque is a wise choice based on risk / benefit evaluation. The risks are attacks from crazies and career problems. The benefits are the ability to express yourself without a filter while understanding that your words are the only tool you have to persuade, not your socioeconomic or political position. In that sense anonymity is an equalizer which is undoubtedly why Rose uses her real name to post her nonsense.
I’ve been corrected on the nananana Batcache header — it is apparently not related to Suddenlink. And I’ve been told that Automattic is the company behind Word Press.
As I said, I’m no expert on this stuff. I just know that somebody in the chain from Word Press to Humboldt Suddenlink users has exposed people’s anonymity.
Before I get attacked as a sexist for my “especially women” above, it’s well documented that “uppity women” get bashed and threatened in much greater numbers than men (or anonymi) who voice the same views.
Oh bull. The only posters or Letters to the Editor writers who are bashed are the conservative ones.
testing
YAT (Yet Another Test)
Suddenlink users have enjoyed a properly working ISP for almost 24 straight hours. Pray it is not a hiccup.
Thank goodness the T-S has been on top of it.
HiFi escapes again! RATS!