"Hotlinking" an image is when a web designer embeds an image tag into his webpage that pulls an image from another site rather than making a copy of the image and hosting it himself. It's lazy, and it "steals" bandwidth that the person hosting the image is paying for. The image appears normal on the hotlinker's site, but it's being loaded from the host's site without any credit being given. That's not cool! And so, I've been forced to protect my images from hotlinking by modifying my .htaccess script.
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The comment login system is acting strange. If you get an error message saying you aren't logged in when you are, just reload the comment page and try again. I'm trying to track this bug down, but it's not easy.
You are missing out on all of the fun opportunities for mischief! See these two hilarious examples of how you can get back at hotlinkers:
http://www.bryantchoung.com/archives/2005/12/dont_leach_band.shtml
http://www.cockeyed.com/pranks/imposter/cres.html
Yeah, that's good stuff. I hate doing IT crap though like messing with .htaccess etc., so even if the prank would be funny the payoff for me just isn't high enough to bother most of the time. It would be nice to find out who was hotlinking the image though... eh.