Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Making Vimperator 2.2+ work with Delicious keywords

This blog post echos the same information as issue 138, which describes a tiny plugin delicious_addon_kw_hack.js that can be used to restore compatibility with the Delicious add-on.
As discussed in issue 120, as of changeset da9c0a1a532d of Vimperator v2.2b1, Vimperator's ":open" will stop recognizing keywords imported from Delicious bookmarks via the the Delicious Firefox add-on.

A simple way to fix the problem is to drop the following code:
bookmarks.getSearchURL = function(text, useDefsearch) {
let url = null;
let postData = {};
let searchString =
(useDefsearch ? options["defsearch"] + " " : "")
+ text;

this.getSearchEngines();

url = window.getShortcutOrURI(searchString, postData);

if (url == searchString)
return null;

if (postData && postData.value)
return [url, postData.value];

return [url, null]; // can be null
}
into a file like delicious_addon_kw_hack.js into your ~/.vimperator/plugin/ directory (or the equivalent directory under Windows; see :help plugins for more details).

Monday, November 02, 2009

"Administrative e-mail" from Ticketmaster

By the CAN-SPAM Act of George W. Bush, Conrad Burns, and Ron Wyden, SPAM can be sent to your e-mail address as long as it provides a way to opt-out of it at the bottom of the e-mail.

Today I received this message from Ticketmaster about an upcoming Bluejackets promotion (which I took a screenshot of for you to capture the full effect – click on the image for a larger version):

OF COURSE, to be in compliance with CAN-SPAM, they need this little blurb at the bottom:

That's strange that it says "This is an administrative mail." Moreover, it's very strange that when I click on the "Link t- e-mail preferences page" link, I get a web page with a little blurb saying:
The e-mail you are coming from is administrative so you cannot unsubscribe. You may update your account preferences for non-administrative e-mails below.
Underneath the blurb, it shows that I have previously unselected all Ticketmaster spam sources. So evidently advertisements about upcoming Coors' sponsored events are purely administrative.

I should note that I haven't purchased a ticket from Ticketmaster since the summer, and I haven't purchased a BlueJackets ticket in years. There's no way this e-mail is in response to any action I have taken at Ticketmaster.

Thank you, George W. Bush, Conrad Burns, and Ron Wyden! Way to revolutionize AMER-I-CAN-SPAM.