Warning: Killinginthename is infected with a Trojan. Please ensure your virus software is up to date if you choose to visit that website. Note that the trojan seems to be referenced via JavaScript, therefore any NoScript Firefox extension users can safely browse the site.
It’s been a while since I’ve done a review or proper Pants Award so bear with me, I’m rusty. That said, I don’t hold out much hope for this one… we’re quite openly told on the front page of the site in question: “I must warn you again, all the stealing stuff is gone
” and “Everything on this website right now was made by me
“. Hmph. What would a Pants Award be without criticism of blatant copyright infringement? Oh well, I’ll struggle on.
Today’s lucky winner is one Killinginthename (link removed because of trojan). I was made vaguely aware of this website last year, when the owner was accused of stealing brushes and other tacky graphics crap from people like Jessica (swimchick). I don’t understand the whole brushes lark — they all look the same to me anyway — so I didn’t get involved. However, I was brought smack bang into the middle of it all when the owner (Jordan) left a comment on my blog telling me to get involved:
Hi, I read your blog about swimchick.net that you wrote in 06, and I think you should make another one.
This time, you should write about when she doesn’t get her way, she writes blogs about people ‘stealing’ because someone made a graphic similar to hers.
I had made a few brush sets with inspiration from hers, and I guess that just wasn’t ok. So she finally decided to contact my host, and lie, and say I stole a bunch of graphics (which is funny, because shes the only one actually stealing. she even sold layouts with stolen images, and used my brushes in one of them when I said no commercial use) therefor having my site terminated.
Before it was terminated, i got over 100 comments of hateful things, just because of her blog. She is an immature 18 year old, that only knows how to be a smart as. I recommend you write another inspiring blog about her.
Unfortunately, I don’t think he quite banked on the fact that I’d use it against him. If there’s one thing I despise it’s being told what to do. Add that to the fact that he is known for stealing and redistributing other people’s content? Not really a good combination.
Anyway, back to the website. There’s nothing particularly shocking about the layout, nor does it contain any of your typical “celebs”. The font is a bit small for my liking but that’s nothing that Firefox can’t fix for me. I missed the top navigation for a good 10 minutes because my eyes scanned over it as part of the layout, but as the main content is available through the sidebar it wasn’t a massive problem.
What I do find a problem (before I even get to the content) is that the blog has the nice little note about how all of the “stealing stuff” is gone, but the Terms of Use page states “All photography belongs to their rightful owners.
“. Doesn’t sound like everything on this website really was made by Jordan to me. Of course, must not be too hasty — the TOS could simply be out of date, right? Only one way to find out…
Ooh look, is that Mr Wentworth Miller I see? He’s a stern looking chap. I think Jordan was pretty lucky to have the opportunity to meet and photograph him. Likely? No, I didn’t think so. So much for “Everything on this website right now was made by me
“. Let’s not dwell on it though, what’s a few celebrity photographs between “friends”?
The tutorials are typically crap; the same ridiculously unhelpful tripe that every other webmaster has. Why strive for originality when conformity is so much more fun? As per usual, the code is displayed in a teeny tiny textarea when <code> would be more appropriate. Some are inaccurate (“CSS Shortcut” is not a shortcut) and others plain lacking in any information (“Favicon” doesn’t cover saving the icon, transparency issues, lack of IE support, etc). “Hit Counter” fails to credit the code to its source, and doesn’t mention the JavaScript reliance. “PHP Includes” doesn’t mention anything about PHP support, what an include actually is or the fact that using URL includes only works if allow_url_fopen() is enabled.
Apparently, sticking a few colours in an 11×11 box and putting them on your website constitutes a copyrightable graphic these days. Who knew? Can someone explain to me what a “Color Box” is?
The “Icons” are all made from unoriginal materials, the same goes for “Blends” and the same goes for “Stocks/Scans”. I wonder what planet Jordan was on when he decided that his content was no longer stolen, and that it any way warranted his copyright notice at the bottom.
Yawn. Yet another boring, predictable attempt at a graphics/resource site. Dodgy/stolen content, CSS bloated beyond belief, and a mix of HTML and XHTML with no doctype to serve it all. Well done Jordan, you’re pretty darned pants.
Feel free to direct link :3
31 Jan at 5:54 pm
I didn’t finish reading this yet. But when I click on KITN, my Windows Defender comes up with a Trojan warning. :( It did it twice. :'( Are you trying to put viruses on my computer, Jem? *big eyes*
31 Jan at 5:57 pm
Nope. I wonder if I don’t get it because of NoScript? I’ll put a warning..
31 Jan at 5:58 pm
How about the fact that as soon as I clicked on the link to open the website, I got a trojan warning from my antivirus from killinginthename? Not a good sign.
31 Jan at 5:58 pm
I had a “hacking” warning come up when I clicked the site, too. Tsk, tsk.
31 Jan at 6:00 pm
I’m sure this constitutes one big LOSE for KITN.
31 Jan at 6:05 pm
Why does he have to have my name? :(
31 Jan at 6:15 pm
the fact a virus warning comes up puts me off straight away =|
31 Jan at 6:25 pm
WTF a trojan? *dies* Thanks for the warning, I’m not even visiting. I’ve been to the site before and heard about the whole jordan – jessica conflict, and I agree, he definitely deserves some pants. Those are too sexy though XD
31 Jan at 6:30 pm
Thank god AVG picked taht virus up there, wtf… I went on and 4 seconda in BAM, AVG trojan….
31 Jan at 6:31 pm
Trojan, eh? Nice.
31 Jan at 6:35 pm
Would there be any chance of a screenshot? I’d love to see his site. Though I guess that might cause problems for you. I like the pants, are they boys pants?
31 Jan at 7:00 pm
Thanks for the warning, I won’t risk my notebook’s safety despite it being protected.
31 Jan at 7:50 pm
Hmm, stripey pants. Thanks for mentioning your Demo of Styled ‘Boxes’ page. As it happens, I was fruitlessly searching for something like that the other day.
31 Jan at 7:59 pm
Thanks for the warning Jem. My computer’s been a little iffy already so i didn’t risk it. Your beautifully written review sparks all the images in any case ^^
31 Jan at 8:01 pm
Finally! Another pants awards and by the looks of things this guy deserves it. I mean, I have heard of him from all the Jessica-Jordan hatin’ going on about the brushes. But a trojan? Noob tutorials-which-he-probably-copied-and-pasted-from-somewhere-else? Yeah, he deserves them. Nice pants though, I think I used to own a pair myself. :(
31 Jan at 8:04 pm
Very nice. I’ll look at the site when I get home (last thing I need is to put a trojan on my work computer!).
31 Jan at 8:11 pm
It wasn’t as witty as usual D: Perhaps you’re losing your touch :O (or maybe I’m just trying to freak you out — either works for me (: ) Well yeah. I managed to get the front page to load (after it crashed Firefox twice), only to find this kid is desperate for attention. I mean, why on Earth else would you inform the planet you’re under mental treatment? I don’t mean it in an insulting way, or that it should be a secret, but you don’t just tell everybody :|
31 Jan at 8:55 pm
You know, I thought that. To be honest, when you’re working with the same material over and over there’s only so much you can say. I need new crap sites to LOL at.
31 Jan at 9:30 pm
The second I saw the title of this Pants Award I went on killinginthename through google, because I knew the site, without reading this. And now I have a trojan or two in my Virus Vault. *is an idiot* I love your Pants Awards.
31 Jan at 9:49 pm
Oh I remember when “kitn.com” was down (or rather I remember the thread at Snark). Maybe the color boxes are meant to be color schemes?
31 Jan at 10:10 pm
But there’s already a colour schemes page o.O
31 Jan at 11:45 pm
I looked through his coding and didn’t recognized anything off of the bat that could’ve trigged the Trojan warnings–however there are some javascript entities in there that do have some encodes.. Maybe that’s it?
01 Feb at 1:46 am
I suppose the hole ‘blog turned myspace layout site’ theme does get old after a while :| Perhaps you should venture into the never-ending tunnel of doll sites for some new… ‘crap sites’.
01 Feb at 2:29 am
Haha. Those color boxes are ridiculous. I’ve seen people use them on their avatars before. He should have just made an icon textures page and put them on there. Otherwise, a lot of visitors will be confused and not know what the point of them are, at least this way they will know what it is.
01 Feb at 2:36 am
Head, meet hand. *stares at color boxes for 10 minutes* I have no bloody idea what they can be for. Maybe they’re just tiny little icons, like the blue/gray del.icio.us icon?
01 Feb at 3:12 am
I think the colour boxes are either for favicon or for 100×100 icon corners. What a waste of space =X Makes me lose hope on content-worthy sites on the Internet.
01 Feb at 3:48 am
No matter how crappy a site is, spewing copies of a Trojan at unsuspecting visitors is just… gah. Who the hell lets that happen to their site? Unless… omg he put it on his server intentionally in retaliation for the pants award! /conspiracy
01 Feb at 5:37 am
I don’t even want to take the risk to even visit that site. Thanks for the warning Jem.
01 Feb at 8:54 am
LOL. I like the pants ;-) As for the site, well the layout was not the typical celebrity layout, but it’s still rather boring. And the font was much too small for my tastes… so I didn’t really browse around. As for the “no looking for stolen material”… L-A-M-E.
01 Feb at 10:14 am
So if I tell you to get juice you’ll hate me? xD Those pants look like my brothers. Kidding.
01 Feb at 3:18 pm
I don’t dare visit this site since I am at work and do not want to kill my computer, but I am very curious about the mysterious, useless color boxes. Hmm…and I would have to agree with Mackenzie about it not being as witty as usual. In fact, it comes across as kind of… tired? But you’re right Jem. After a while, it all just gets to be old news and redundant probably.
01 Feb at 10:18 pm
I think the colour boxes are decorations for icons or something? Well I’ve seen them on icons. But I don’t understand why people would want to steal that! Its just squares.
02 Feb at 1:22 am
I don’t have the slightest idea what the colored boxes are for, but they look like they would take all of 5 minutes to do in paint. As for the trojan, I think it probably has something with that iframe after the tag. I don’t know why anyone would steal anything from that site anyways…
02 Feb at 7:17 am
“omfgz u stole my brushz dat look just lyke every1 elses brushz!” XDDDD Oh, “graphics” sites. *wipes away tear* Whew. Never stop getting a kick out of that one. You know I’ve found most “codez” and “grphkz” sites use textareas because they don’t know how to manually escape code. I keep wondering what “color boxes”, “blog boxes” and “comment boxes” are, and why they come with 400×500 stolen celebrity graphics and godawful CSS courtesy of MS frontpage. I agree with and second whoever first said it: We would love a screenshot! Hmm, the obviously awful is becoming boring for the mighty Jem? The Internets will just have to work harder to be more awful. XD
02 Feb at 10:11 pm
I hope that website explodes.
03 Feb at 1:14 am
Wow, that’s pretty pathetic. I have heard of his problems before, and I knew he was not someone I should get involved with. The trojan, and virus attacks just make it that much worse.
03 Feb at 2:32 am
People like that are annoying. I’m glad you saw through his garbage.
03 Feb at 5:59 pm
Oooh I have a mac and didn’t realise there’s a virus? Could it infect my mac too? That guy freaks me out big time, he was complaining on his blog the other week for being arrested for graffitti and saying that it’s pathetic etc.
03 Feb at 6:06 pm
I haven’t a clue, I’m not really familiar with the effect of various individual Trojans on Mac OS. :S
03 Feb at 8:08 pm
He had it coming.
04 Feb at 7:36 am
“Stolen” is a harsh word for some people, and has no meaning on the internet – Instead, they probably like to think along the lines of “borrowed” or “found”. Which, of course, is wrong. Actually I think this Pants post is very LOLworthy. It serves as a reminder that there will always be crappier sites than mine. :P
04 Feb at 11:42 am
As soon as i visited that site, my virus protecting program gave me a warning that It has found a virus.
04 Feb at 2:28 pm
Tried at my own risk on this Mac. Nothing abnormal happened. However… http://www.ambrosiasw.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=102379
04 Feb at 8:43 pm
*misses Jem’s witty banter on her blog……….* hint, hint…
06 Feb at 5:22 am
I’ve been there a few times.. I pondered about the color boxes as well, until I saw more on other sites, in different sizes. They seem to be popular among the doll sites, and sites that use iFrames, for outlining their layouts. Most sites call them sugar blocks. Hopefully, that will resolve the confusion about the color blocks =P
12 Mar at 9:58 pm
I think those color boxes are used for bullets next to text. I think you can animate them and such, usage can be found on goingdead.net
14 Mar at 9:42 pm
I hate that site anyways. Please get it deleted again. Jordan had crappy layouts anyways. About the trojan, I’ve opened the site with my computer, and nothing unusual happened right then. Now, my computer is randomly disconnecting from the internet… Any advice?
14 Mar at 11:20 pm
Pants awards are wonderful :) The pants are lovely. I’m not going to say I want a pair because I know what price I’d have to pay… I used your BellaBook, it’s awesome.
16 Mar at 9:15 pm
I just visited killinginthename – am I seriously at risk?! :/ I was vaguely aware of the whole graphics/brush stealing drama and it seems really pointless. You’re right, all the brushes and ideas do look the same, I can’t stand it. :/
24 Mar at 8:43 pm
Haha Pants deserved =) I just visited that site but no virus decided to sneak up on me….yet :S I’d better not speak too soon..
11 Apr at 4:42 pm
[…] like my my last Pants Award, I almost skipped right over the navigation — despite the fact that its about 4 inches high […]
07 Jun at 8:08 pm
You know what else is funny about that site? 1) He has been saying that everything is “coming soon!” for SOOOO long, but has he done anything? No. 2) It says he has like 1141656 visitors, but whenever I get on, only 1 person is actually online.
Odd.