Posts by Stephen Baines

Facebook testing "announce important post" feature

Announce

Yeah, it's been there since the weekend. I can't think that any of my drivle is so important I'd have to announce it. Only available via the web browser version, it's not there if you use the Facebook app on iPad or iPhone.

Sites downed by 1&1 web outage

SLA

Managing your own DNS and colocating doesn't help when it's the network itself that's been screwed up. All through the outage my server was "up" 100% of the time - you just couldn't get any data in our out of it.

O2 gets legal on Ofcom

1900?

> or the 1900MHz used by T-Mobile and Orange for their 2G networks

Erm... UK is 1800MHz. Shurley shome mishtake?

Bing search bribery a retailer magnet

If only Bing had viewers...

I've been trying Bing for one of my websites, and running some adverts on Microsofts ad platform.

It's now Day 23 of the month and out of my monthly marketing budget, Bing has managed a grand total of €0.46 of ad spend. Woopidoo.

Guess I'll be sticking with Google.

Missing dot sends Sweden tumbling off internet

Urgh!

Caused me lots of fun. My servers have .se addresses, and suddenly failed sanity checks and fell over.

Trading in The Pirate Bay bidder stopped over deal funding

Debt collectors called in...

From The Local http://www.thelocal.se/21610/20090821/

"Hans Pandeya, the CEO of Global Gaming Factory (GGF), the company planning to buy The Pirate Bay, has been reported to the Swedish enforcement service (Kronofogden) for mounting unpaid debts.

Johan Sellström, a Swedish IT pioneer and former board member of GGF, has reported Pandeya to the service asserting that he is owed more than 6 million kronor ($840,000), according to a report in business news website DI.se.

Johan Sellström has also confirmed that he is considering suing Pandeya for the money he claims he is owed as the enforcement service procedure can take time, he told the newspaper."

Spam regains pre-McColo reach

Yeah, spam is definitely up

Grrr. Checking the logs, my domain that's over 12 years old got 12 952 spams yesterday and 35 real ones, the one that's 9 years old got 4 965 spams and 16 real ones. If it wasn't for tight filtering, those domains would be useless to me today for mail. Across all my domains it's a staggering 98,02 % spam.

Email's dead.

Did Parallels ship pre-release version 4 code?

Not only boxed copies

On the day of release, I went to the website to download the trial version.

That was the RC version, also. So for a while the RC version was there for everyone to trial. I've still got it in my download folder.

BT's third Phorm trial starts tomorrow

Whoops

>> In fact not just visited but pretty much ever page spidered!!!!

>Perhaps this is their workaround for opted out sites? URLs requested for pages on opted out

>sites are profiled from a cache of the page held by phorm, which perhaps sticks to the letter of >the opt out, but not the spirit. Obviously such pages might change over time, but I suppose they

>could have a 'third party' scan the pages and use them for profiling, or simply produce

>pre-canned profiles.

That's going to work well, then, if it's true. Those IP addresses are blocked at my firewall, so how are they going to make that work?

AVG disguises fake traffic as IE6

@Pat Bitton

I no longer trust a word AVG says. Your words mean absolutely nothing.

In the last story, you said if people contacted you, you'd work with them and try and sort out the problems to do with bandwidth.

I did contact you.

You responded and said you were passing it onto someone else, who in turn passed it onto someone else, and nothing has been done. No one has contacted me since, and the traffic continues, and my logs remain hideously polluted which is causing me massive problems setting up a new business and trying to decipher what is real and what isn't.

Sweden ushers in bugging for all

Proud to live in Sweden

Not.

I can hardly believe that we've passed a law like this. Sure, you expect it of Blair/Brown, but Sweden....?

AVG scanner blasts internet with fake traffic

Pat did ask for help....

... And I offered straight away. But so far he passed the offer on to someone, who passed it onto someone else, who has chosen to do nothing.

So that was a waste of time, wasn't it? It's getting on for a whole working week later, and it's no further on. Pathetic.

Firefox 3 Download Day falls flat on face

@Sim - autocomplete

Agree about the URL bar. That for me is a deal breaker and absolutely horrendous. I really loath that feature, it doesn't make it easier, it makes it harder. It lasted all of 5 minutes, and most of those hunting for the option to turn that feature off. I'll stick with 2 as long as that feature remains. Or perchance I may peruse other options.

Microsoft slams OEMs over XP SP3 install cock-up

Not only AMD and not only HP have problems...

OK, not a reboot situation, but equally nuts.

PC 1 is a HP with an Intel processor. Service Pack 3 installs, reboots, then refuses to do DNS lookups from that point onwards.... Uninstall Service Pack 3 and all is fine. Grrr.

PC 2 is a QBic AMD machine which it refuses to install on - it starts to, gets to the end, then says 'whoops, can't do this anymore, must install again' and takes you back to where you were.

Both of these are with the CD...

Guess this is Microsoft's way of trying to make Vista look good?

Orange eyes up TeliaSonera

That explains it....

Now I know why Telia keep on offering me a big discount if only I'd extend my contract for another year or two. They know what will happen if this happens...

Seeing how well France Telecom did with Orange in the UK when I lived there, and how superb their internet services are in the UK, I'm glad I wasn't tempted.

I guess us Telia users can look forward to the high value tariffs that Orange offer in the UK. Oh joy. Guess my telephone bill will increase from its current 69 öre a month.

I know it's rare, but TeliaSonera is one of those rare entities - a state controlled company that actually seems to know what it's doing. After suffering with BT in the UK, I find Telia an absolute joy. They actually apologised to me because I live in the countryside, miles from anywhere, and they could "only" offer me a 24Mbps connection with around 19Mbps after negotiation.

The Guardian ditches Phorm

Values restored

It always seemed to me bizarre that The Guardian of all newspapers would partner with something so alien to the values of the Scott Trust.

Net think tank: Phorm is illegal

BT to comply with Swedish Law

As a webmaster with sites hosted outside the UK and operated from Sweden, I wrote to the Company Secretary of Phorm and Webwise telling them that under Swedish law such interception is absolutely illegal and it must not happen on communications with my server.

I have had no response from Phorm yet, but I have had a response from BT:

>Dear Mr. Baines,

>

>Thank you for your letter to our company secretary Mr. Larry Stone.

>

>I acknowledge the receipt of your letter and confirm that we will take

>the necessary steps to honour your notice.

>

>Regards,

>

>Mangesh Kulkarni

Anyone on BT webwise who wishes to check for me later, please let me know!

BT admits misleading customers over Phorm experiments

Run an apache server?

Are you a webmaster and want to say you don't want your server snooped? Do you want to make it clear you don't consent to Phorm?

If your apache server supports mod_headers try adding a modified version of this to your .htaccess files:

Header add Phorm-Consent "No"

Header add Phorm "Phorm Inc, All Subsidiary Companies of Phorm Inc, OIX Network, Internet Service Providers using the technologies provided by the former mentioned companies; NAME specifically denies permission for the former mentioned companies to intercept any communication between a remote user accessing content on any NAME Server and that person's Internet Web Browser, or any other Interface that such a remote user may use to obtain NAME data."

BBC calls DRM cops on iPlayer download party

Broken downloads

Downloads have been gradually breaking since Monday.

Monday night 2 out of 3 available programmes I wanted would download, the remaining one threw up the strange error message, but most new episodes said they weren't available at all to download.

Tuesday, almost nothing would download, just error after error, but eventually I forced one program to download. Most series said "this series is not available to download".

By Wednesday it was totally broken. Last night, even the streaming was broken on some episodes, and would reliably break in the same programme in the same place every time.

@ Vince - second layer & timeframe

I'd guess the real reason is the old "time shifting" argument. That it's not illegal to video tape a program for time shifting purposes, but keep the tape and technically it's not ok.

BBC admits it's broken!

Ah, the BBC iPlayer service now actually does say

"Sorry, downloads are currently unavailable."

Nice.

Downloads broken anyway

The BBC download strategy is buggered anyway at the moment - they've not updated the iTunes store for weeks and seem to have totally lost interest (Hotel Babylon, for example, is still on episode 2 whilst they've shown episode 4 on TV and Torchwood is weeks behind!), whilst the iPlayer download service has been broken for about two days giving strange messages about contacting support because it can't be bothered to work...

Top security firm: Phorm is adware

Phorm share price

I don't think it's that bad it's going back up a bit. That's what markets do, over react then correct.

This month, it reached a peak of around 3300, reached a brief low of 1800 and spent most of the last week bouncing around 2000, and now is back at 2250. So it's still lost around 32% of it's value. That's a significant correction in anyone's books.

The other party to the conversation

As a British citizen domicilled in Sweden with servers located outside the UK, and the other party to conversations between my website users and my servers, I would really like to see what BT and Phorm make of the privacy laws here... I've already sent letters to Phorm, BT, Virgin Media and Talk Talk informing them that I do not give permission for such monitoring of my conversations on my Swedish operated servers and that they must cease and desist.

I've already got the Read Receipt from BT's company secretary on whom notices should be served. It'll be difficult to argue they've not received it.

As each page on my websites is generated by scripts, and personalised for each visitor, that makes them a private communication, especially the areas protected by usernames and passwords.