Posts by Doctor_Wibble 713 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Jul 2009
As I had already moved stuff I would have done the announcement to world+dog and pointed it at a nonexistent IP to let stuff queue up while the respective companies got their act together.
If this sounds too altruistic to be real, I venture to suggest that an accompanying 'send me a beer token' web page might also have featured in this cunning plan, even if that did have the chance of turning out to be the proverbial triumph of hope over experience.
From the network logging I have permanently running:
The test email I tried to send on 3/8/20 tried to go to an Amazon hosted IP where it was greeted by an identifiable host name (domain reg'd with gandi) which is still there at the same IP, but unfortunately it did TLS though that did mean I got the public cert and contact email address (hosted with gandi) but as it was a short test message I can't tell for sure at first glance if the exchange was an immediate reject but fortunately I had already moved everything.
The mail server here just logged it as "550 relay not permitted" which I had thought was an intentional thing to bounce things off a dummy server but started too early and didn't think it needed investigating. More fool me!
At this point I don't know how sarcastic to be when congratulating the selfless individual who generously registered the domain to protect us all from fraud and villainy.
Clearly this is from all the iron being used by the space Nazis to build their invasion fleet in their base on the dark side. I understand this was the focus of a speculative dramatised documentary a few years ago where the only thing they had wrong was the date.
Noting also that the sequel was one of those whose existence is subject to a certain amount of denial.
> b) Nobody since has used Xt. Gtk doesn't use it. Qt doesn't use it.
I do! Though I realise the point wasn't about individuals. I use Xt and Xaw for basic remote display and remote menu stuff for simplicity and portability, in particular for clean/new systems.
The extra gui toolkits just added extra layers of indirection, at a cost of large sets of extra package dependencies, some scary-scale bloat, and some rather annoying technical issues when trying to statically compile or strip the executable.
Horses for courses I suppose. And the old-person attitude of preferring something that takes less than a week to copy over a modem link or can fit on a floppy disk, preferably both. I know the icon says Windows User but it fits my 'what is this newfangled nonsense' too :)
Of a completely unfortunate accidental sort of course.
A departing employee completely accidentally left a floppy disk in their laptop, which was set as the boot drive and which by complete accident had its autoexec.bat consisting of just one command that would delete the contents of the C: drive if it was completely accidentally booted from.
The great thing about booting from a floppy is that it is the sort of thing that you can hear and stop with a magic word and a mystical gesture before it does any of that completely accidental damage for which the git knew full well I would be the one blamed.
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On the confessional front, have I deleted stuff I didn't mean to delete? Yep. On the other hand I still feel the stinging lesson of a disk failure that happened the day before the dvd blanks arrived upon which the much put-off backup of said disk was to be stuck.
Good idea, but needs a change to the passenger selection - as per above the 'influencers' should get priority, and since we know the lesson of it we should keep the telephone sanitisers here because their skills are needed right now.
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And being unable to mention the subject without one of my favoured remarks "social media influenzas are a plague on the internet" as it has that magical combination of both punnage and accuracy on how their infection spreads.
> and of course, while territorial claims might be extended vertically to infinity, there is no nation that can keep an orbit over their territory at all times
I believe a certain Delos D Harriman had a splendidly cunning plan in line with the logic there though this was a landgrab slightly bigger than a bunch of orbiting toasters. That said, perhaps there is not so much difference between using the moon as one huge ad banner and launching a thousand little things to deliver thousands of little banners.
I don't want to sound like some kind of cheerleading gimp for namesco but it wasn't their responsibility to tell us about the temporary nature of it, that was something Vodafone should have done and made clear instead of lying about it (even if they claim it was only a teeny tiny omission) and trying to rewrite history.
When a service is outsourced, the service continues and is never presumed to be as temporary as the contract for providing said service.
Pissed off about the way Vodafone tried to just dump us in the bin but thankfully able to move on so the boiling acid bath does have a layer of 'meh' over the top.
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[ disclaimer, sort of : I have my own domains and mail server but the fixed demon email not being an ISP freebie was good for various things including domain registration etc which I am not prepared to chance on a free webmail account regardless of apparent reliability ] [ disclaimer 2 : I have a deep permanent vitriolic hatred for Vodafone ever since they fcked up their takeover of broadband/landlines here which means everything is always their fault regardless. ]
Just to correct the record, none of the communications received had any indication that thie email arrangement with Namesco was due to be short-term or temporary.
It did not look anything different from any other farming-out of a service except that it was now explicitly charged for, and their 'teamed up with Namesco' wording had no indication that this was some kind of complete separation, especially since Vodafone still owned the Demon brand.
Public facepalm from me to me for services to unclarity.
> Worrying about activating something that may be a little dirty...
Not particularly, it was merely an attempt to point out an often-missed thing but clearly not in a sufficiently obviously not-deadly-serious manner which I had really hoped the 15-yard radius remark would convey but it seems there's that many scary clean-freaks out there that I should have done some actual obvious obviousness.
On a lighter note, how many ways are there to interpret "going to the toilet in a hazmat suit"?
> Most toilets now have the eco flush split button
You mean the one contained in the little inset ecch-collector cup at the top of the cistern that we are required to stick out fingertips into?
That's surely one of the most unhygienic locations in the entire ablutions chamber, its closest contenders being the underside of the seat and - according to some - any unprotected toothbrushes within a 15-yard radius.
Handles are easier to keep clean and can be operated with an insulating square of paper if you want. I don't recall seeing any handle-operated eco flushes for a some time now, did they go out of fashion?
Subject to correction by someone who can be bothered to STFW, 'trews' is an olde englyshe word verily spaketh by Bill of Shaking Spears, 'troos' is the one true scots word which has stood the test of time (possibly feet heroically well apart with a roar) quite obviously being short for 'pantaloons', as any fule kno.
> Then I realised it was quicker and easier to use the pocket clip on the lid of a cheap bic biro and just scratch it all off directly.
A bic biro is an absolute essential of any toolkit!
The lid is also handy for pushing into the earth pin hole so you can use that gadget that you haven't bothered to change the two-pin plug on yet. Hypothetically speaking if one were to even think of doing that, which of course you wouldn't because who on earth would ever do such a thing?
The rest of the biro is still useful so don't throw that away - other essentials include a couple of old credit/store cards, a bent coat hanger, the plastic window from the box which had the cheesecake, an old kitchen knife, and a really big bolt you found somewhere and you are sure will be useful at some point in the future.
> Those 'your device is incompatible' notices are configured by the developer
I had wondered - obviously I'm still completely outraged at this devastating tragedy and will be writing weekly letters to my local paper about it just as soon as I find my green ink.
My super el cheapo smartphone cost an outrageous 49.99 and I doubt this extra charge will suddenly remove all those 'your device is incompatible' notices the Play Store puts on apps that turn out to run just fine.
What about custom hardware? Would that be cheaper for Play Store access, or will there be some extra high premium charge for anything made from a small aubergine?
> ... I think that's the source of your downvotes.
That helps, though it does suggest some serious over-thinking on their part where there just doesn't need to be any.
[ TLDR: I meant stupid to assume no complaints on adding that particular feature, really didn't think I'd touch any nerves ]
Surely you would still be finding the character sexually attractive if the animation did not include the extra jiggle? Though I'm not sure how that's even remotely relevant.
It's a silly extra feature that was unwise to include without making sure there wouldn't be any complaints and that there would be full management support (ho ho) and that there could be no accusations oif imbalance or improper representation and a whole load of other considerations that are involved in the release of any feature and which it would be stupid to ignore, hence the one-word summarisation that seems to have touched a nerve for some.
On its own, it's no big deal, and I have no doubt would be a source of amusement for many but I remain unconvinced that the completely mature grown-up decision for its inclusion didn't involve giggling and puerile comments about 'jiggling boobies'.
Having an understanding of what lies behind the downvotes here means I can now wear them as a badge of pride.
OK so either there's at least three spotty teenagers I've offended, or three people who think this wasn't bad for PR, or something I had completely missed?
It's good to know if I've missed the mark but if I don't know how or why then I'll end up offending people again, and it's really annoying if I do that by mistake rather than clearly and obviously after careful forethought and planning.
Some time late last century I was amused by the female combatant in an arcade game having very clearly been created by the proverbial spotty teenager, complete with bouncing that was not limited to any particular move.
This latest one strikes me as more stupid than anything else, and to me proves my contention that 'spotty teenager' is a state of mind rather than a physical description.
Icon because I'm not sure why anyone would think this was a smart thing to do.
This is clearly an attack by a coalition of Siri, Cortana and OkehGugle who were feeling a bit left out and wanted to show Alexa as not being invulnerable, just in time to launch their own respective 'use us for your gifting shoppagement this winterval' campaigns.
This is the opening salvo in the war of the gods, which will leave a trail of destruction and incorrect orders in its wake.
> Or the government can completely ignore it. It was an advisory referendum.
I'm not sure they can do that now parliament voted to accept that advice? Or at the very least it's now extremely non-trivial...
And I think this is 'advice' in the 'legal instruction to representative' sense, rather than e.g. 'avoid the squid ink soup'.
So while the Act didn't say it was binding (not sure it said advisory either?), they chose to make it binding. The same people who approved the referendum and the wording of the question and the timetable etc etc. Cameron is the prime culprit but he was by no means alone.
Good advice there, familiar but worth repeating, except the one assumption that you still somehow have the bit that went 'ping' and sounded like it bounced off at least two walls and some unknown thing that might be a lampshade but surely couldn't have been because the only one of those in here is metal and that would have gone 'ting' or 'ding' at the very least...
Hence the 'not a complete solution' remark.
Even a PAYG phone has a legal agreement attached to it, so enforce the requirement for being old enough to consent to it, make sure the grown-ups who approved any agreement (i.e. both buyer and seller) are held responsible for it, and if everyone denies any knowledge then it goes under the hammer.
Yes there will always be the ultra cool kid who's big and clever but they are less of a problem than thinking that's a reason to not bother trying. Better ideas are what we need.
Obviously it's not a complete solution, but you remove a major part of the problem by stopping kids having smartphones. They can have non-smart phones if actually necessary, noting that yes they do tend to have cameras now but the important bit is the reduced convenience and unavailability of the internet.
If you want to be nanny-statishly cynical then added pressure to stop people ignoring the ban is easily added by lots of public 'endangering your child' statements etc though if it comes from government people might ignore that by default.
I might change my mind if I ever saw any justification for a child to have a fully-functional internet-accessible two-way audio/video communication device which has only the barest of useless protections from others as well as themselves.
I agree with the points about privacy but when it comes to blocking ads or stats beacons etc it's less about the tracking or ads than it is about whether I am inconvenienced.
Most of what I have blocked are the ones that drew attention to themselves e.g. by appearing in log files for doing weird shit or by holding everything up while being featured in the browser status bar as 'waiting for...'.
Requiring Flash (autoplay*, loud sounds etc) could be argued as falling into the 'malware' category, and then there's scripts that do 100% CPU by being badly written and/or by going into a spin when encountering a DNS lookup fail or a 404.
If the gentle hum of the laptop fan cranks up to full-on hairdryer mode then I find the cause and block it. If a site becomes unusable then unless it's unbelievably exceptional it's not worth the annoyance.
I understand the need for ads and was always OK with 'the deal' but (on top of usability issues) when everyone is using the same ad agency and stats processor (or one from the same tiny handful) everywhere then it feels like that deal changed in ways that neither the readers nor the publishers intended.
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* disabling autoplay in browser settings is remarkably ineffective against determined attackers like youtube
> I don't think "inconsistent notation" is a problem for v6.
It is when you are trying to convince people that it is an improvement, and no amount of 'operational experience' willy-waving is going to matter if you can't convince people to take up v6 in the first place.
It's not the specifics, it's the lack of overall consistency of presentation of it, as I said in my remarks about the way it is put forward, and already being a difficult sell, i.e. to people not already using it.
Perhaps weirdly the inclusion of zeroes would probably be better because then the audience can be sure you didn't do a typo on the slide. There could even be a 'this massive set of zeroes is due to be split/used for x' remark to hint that there's an actual plan beyond just adding more numbers.
> You do know that you don't have to type all those zeros, right?
I think this 'convenience' is one of the things that puts people off as it results in what always looks like an inconsistently presented notation that on the face of it is less clear than the thing it's supposed to be an improvement on.
It's already a difficult sell and I'm wondering if they should have just left that out - we are not incapable of dealing with long numbers, even ones with letters in them.
And more emphasis on likening the prefix to country/area codes as a familiar concept would have helped, perhaps even without the apparent randomisation of prefix length and its representation.
At the most basic level it's a new numbering system that just looks too weird and quirky to enthuse people.
> But as a comedian once said, "You can't fix Stupid." So what do you propose?
"Ex-ter-mi-nate", as should be done to anything that isn't a perfection-inspired shapeless tentacled blob living inside a personal mini-tank pretending to be a robot.
The great thing is that the losing side pays for your footsoldier and transports them to the correct location before it is even activated and even after that it is jealously protected by a noisy alarm system that thcweamth and thcweamth and thcweamth if you try and remove it.
It's a total foolproof win-win.
> the last time was that cash stopped working.
A word in your shell-like? 6th July 2014, London buses...
Though maybe that doesn't count as it wasn't accidental, what with being part of the overall plan to stop us peasants using real money?
Similar experience here, several domains over the years, still have a few, spam quantity is similarly miniscule, even when daring to turn off all the filtering just to get an idea of the scale of it.
Weird theory time, it's possible spammers were using the whois data to remove addresses that went to people who might be in a position to, or bother to, make an actual spam report/complaint to someone. Or at least that's all I can come up with right now to explain why I get less spam to those addresses than any other mailbox.
Thinking about it, I do remember years ago getting actual letters from competing registries with a sneaky sign-it-over small print bit as well as some really scary dramatic ones from people flogging SEO services. But a handful, at most.
I think this is the only time I've seen these used correctly - i.e. for a specific test that then results in something actually being done to resolve it rather than completely ignoring the end users who are the ones who end up having to pick up the pieces, possibly with the privilege of paying for them too.
This does not change my opinion that the primary 'benefit' of these services is to enable rapid botnet deployment and mass hacks.
Excellent idea and if they need extra thrust they can use one of those sun-powered lightbulb things with the twirly fan thing inside - just attach a propeller to the other end of the shaft and you have even more free power.
The only caveat is you have to make sure you get the fan and the propeller correctly aligned or it will just twirl and not go anywhere.
> The laws we know of now were very, very different during the BB, and they changed as the Universe formed and began expanding.
Not so much laws as general guidelines then! The great thing is we change them as required to make them accurate as at the time of writing. No laws broken, just edited to fit...
The real disappointment here is that it's looking like we won't be able to make spaceships with just paperclips and a couple of AA batteries*.
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* not included, each sold separately contents may vary etc
There's this smart learning one, there's the system that watches and tracks shoppers and records which shops they are going into, and there's the police facial recognition one that thinks I'm several other people all at once.
This is the kind of stuff that will be combined and will be let loose, and it won't end well.
Paranoid? Maybe. Doesn't mean I'm wrong.
> It just needs to give you some warning before the update is installed - say 2 weeks.
It's a good idea but ultimately relies on someone else doing some particular thing and if everyone follows the same advice then nobody does the 'beta testing' and everyone still bricks their cars, all at the same time, just two weeks later.
The cost is not just financial, there's also the carbon footprint. Maybe on that basis we can get botnet spreaders/herders multiple-classified as moneto-cyber-eco-terrorists and therefore requiring of three lots of government resources being thrown into the search for them with a view to shoving them into Gitmo?
I like the logic, even if it isn't sound...
> Where did you learn about sex?
For many of us that will be some basic mechanics at school, little if anything from parents, with all the really important lessons being learnt in one go, that oh so wondrous 'first time'.
That's where as the disaster unfolds we discover that a roll in the hay requires actual hay, the difference between hay and straw is the degree of pain involved as it pokes everything everywhere and not in a good way, and that trustworthiness, a sense of caution and at least some judgement of character are an essential part of any relationship.
Icon for 20/20 hindsight...
It's not porn that's to blame, it's all that warm fuzzy fluffy idealised romance crap that causes the problems and disillusionment. And the subsequent unending bitterness, seething spite etc and possibly even a permanent state of angst unless that's a teenagers-only thing - even if we did move on the bitemarks still sometimes itch.
They want as many confirmed-unique identifiers as they can, on the off-chance that if one or more of these appears in their data somewhere it can be tied to your specific record as an exact match. It's better than having to mess about with the address-matching algorithm trying to understand that a house called 'goes to eleven' is in fact 13a.
But more to the point it stands a good chance of opening the door to a longer history than three years of gas and electricity bills - up to ten years from your current passport and if there's a note somewhere about your previous passport number that's another decade of history there.
New icon needed: machine overlord in a black helicopter...
And note what else they have told us in the reassurances!
e.g. no indications of anyone outside the company being able to even view the file tells us nothing:
- as there was no indication of the logfile accidentally saving all these passwords completely by accident in the first place
- it could have been accessed by anyone inside the company any number of times
- how do they know, was access to the newly-discovered unknown file being logged somewhere?
I have a TV Tennis box in a cupboard somewhere. It also does squash and hockey (two bats each), and has a setting called 'practice' though I can't remember if that is one-player squash or tennis against the machine.
The output is of course analogue but I think I still have a TV that can cope with that. Time for an electronics excavation!
When I first saw it appear on the toolbar I thought it was a function along the lines of 'save to read later', not something that involved yet another third party like those share bar things or even those 'copy this link' buttons. I removed the icon anyway as for me it was just clutter,
The wake-up on these came when giving someone a direct i.e. non-published link to a data file (not porn or warez, crazy I know) that was too big to sensibly email, they did 'copy link' of some kind from the email with the details and immediately there was an attempt to fetch the file from whatever (legitimate!) service had processed the 'sharing' of that link between an email and their browser.
I think it was simply a 'does it exist' probe rather than an attempt to download the whole thing but I quickly killed the temporary thttpd anyway before renaming the file and using that old fashioned speaking thing to communicate the change.
> I just bought a new car. I used the web to look at pricing and read reviews. I am now constantly seeing ads for this car.
Obviously the answer here is to open up all of your purchasing information to the advertisers so that they don't pester you with these ads, they love you and want to keep you happy, you make their life complete and this will make you completely happy and it's all for you own good and if you don't comply they will bombard you with popups that even a text terminal would struggle to block.
Of course they could just use the data they skimmed off those credit card detail and purchase confirmation pages where they have ads and trackers...
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