(Obviously not, or someone else would have mentioned it.)
For the last 36 hours, when I smash my Hotmail button, I get a little Japanese-looking cartoon in the upper left corner of a white screen. I presume this is some sort of hacker tagging.
Now remember:
I am using some sort of open server that everyone in Saudi Arabia must use.
Because of this I choose to enter my name and password for each Hotmail experience. I cannot even get to the sign-in screen.
I believe it means, “please keep your answers short.”
“Blue books” are little stapled composition books with, say, 16 blank ruled pages inside. They are frequently used for essay tests in college courses. Hence, limiting yourself to only one blue book would keep your essay of a reasonable length.
I used Hotmail this morning about 11am Arizona time and noticed nothing unusual.
But what exactly does ‘unusual’ mean, when using Hotmail? Is one using the Beta test, or the ‘normal’ Hotmail? In order to answer these questions, we must…
Sorry, ‘Blue Book’ kicked in old reflexes, Hotmail’s fine, it’s just you, Paul. Or else they got the hack fixed post haste, which is very likely, actually. Wish I’d seen it.
How very, very odd. When I hit my bookmark for Hotmail, I still get redirected to the same cartoon. When I use Q.E.D.'s link, I get to Hotmail just fine. So, problem solved.
Still it is one of those odd things that seems to have no explanation. What the heck happened?
I doubt it is malware, if for no other reason than I am running a Mac.
As for Number One, I mean to say that everyone in Saudi Arabia goes through a single server, and that server is censored. It is possible, I suppose for that server to be hacked. Given my lack of a technical background, I hope that is clearer.
Do you have anybody near you you can ask to bring up Hotmail? Also, could you copy and paste the URL that the cartoon takes you to (breaking it up so it’s not a direct link)? Or at least copy and paste the location of the picture?
When I smash my Hotmail bookmark, Safari goes to some site or another (very quickly) and comes back with Hotmail in the browser window, but displaying a file called ‘Vegeta18.gif 80x80 pixels.’
Does the URL in Safari’s location bar say “hotmail.com”?
I’m not sure how to do it in Safari but in Opera you can right-click the image and grab the absolute URL of the image. Perhaps you can do that and get some clues.
Also, view the source for that page and post it here in a “code” tag.
When I hit my bookmark, the address bar says ‘http://hotmail and stuff’ then it pops very very quickly to some other address, which I cannot capture, then it downloads the image and the address bar goes back to Hotmail. In the Safari frame, above the address bar, it tells me the name of the file I am looking at (‘Vegeta18 and stiff’).
When I control-click, in Safari I can capture the image’s URL address. (Or so the contextual menu tells me.) So I control click and nothing seems to happen. Where did the supposed URL go?
Crazy Paul. Perhaps it’s not a redirect but a replaced bookmark. I’ll have to look and see if that’s do-able in Safari. If I find something I’ll let you know.