Simple Wikipedia article on Simple is Simple Fail.
Simple Fail
URL Manipulation in Targetted Adult Ads
December 3rd, 2007Sony Playstation 3 UK Failure
April 11th, 2007The lads over at UK:Resistance have been keeping us entertained for weeks with the massive buildup and subsequent catastrophic failure of Sony’s PS3 marketing machine. The Playstation 3 – arguably the most powerful console in the world ever, hit the UK shores with a resounding ‘Ho hum’ and has completely and utterly failed to sell in any noticable volume.
The latest photos say it all: Snaps of Argos stockcheck machines showing an average of 35-40 unsold PS3s in every store, while the Nintento Wii continues to outsell Sony’s white (black?) elephant, even though it’s incredibly difficult to find them on the shelves anywhere. Think about that – a machine you can’t get hold of for love nor money is outselling a machine that is available everywhere you look. Nice one, Sony!
Some good news though! Apparently the PS3 outsold the XBox 360! Er.. in Japan. Where Microsoft have traditionally had a hard time selling to the gaming crowd. At least the Playstation 3 isn’t last everywhere now.
Ubuntu on the Desktop – not ready?
February 9th, 2007Nope, Ubuntu doesn’t apppear to be ready for every day usage. not for me at any rate. After all the hassle of getting it installed and working, several niggles have cropped up which basically annoyed the hell out of me, and right now I am in two minds whether to reformat (again) and stick Windows 2000 on there all on it’s own. Where to start?
Epson Perfection 2480 Scanner and Ubuntu? Finally!
I finally got my trusty old Epson 2480 working but nowhere in the install did it say ‘You need the firmware from the driver CD, it’ll be in one of the cab files so you’ll need a utility to extract that, then copy it to this folder and then edit this config file’. For the love of god – this crap should all be built into the SANE installer/config thing and should not require a user to hunt around Google for an hour trying to find out why the hell it doesn’t work.
Networking keeps.. not working. Only on Ubuntu!
When I originally installed Ubuntu it picked up my network cards (dual board, see) and installed working drivers for them without fuss. So why don’t they work anymore? I started last week sometime when I couldn’t get connected for love nor money, but Windows 2000 (which I dual boot this machine with) would work without problems. On that occasion I turned the machine off overnight and tried the next day – instant connection!
Today, or rather last night, I had the same problem – no connection, left the machine off overnight. No such luck this time though, I simple cannot get connected to the Internet. Once again, Windows connected without problems on the same network card, connected to the same router via the same Cable modem and with the same LAN IP. Ubuntu? Not a chance.
These are just two of the things that have been annoying me, but it’s painfully obvious that, unless you’re going to supply someone with a fully-configured machine so that they don’t have to do anything, the average user is going to get pissed off with things just not working and give up – much like me – and go back to something that does work.
I shall be hunting for a fix for the networking problem tonight, but if I don’t find it there will be another reformatting session pretty soon.
Soy Sauce – the truth!
January 23rd, 2007I have no idea how I ended up at the Wikipedia page for Soy Sauce but I was certainly didn’t expect this…
The Truth about Soy Sauce
Personal SpamAssassin Spam Score Record Broken.
December 22nd, 2006Holy shit. I wasn’t going to post so soon after yesterday’s but this is insane. I am running SpamAssassin on this server which awards to emails it considers spam based on various criteria. Bearing in mind the default (afaik – mine is anyway) cut off is 6 points, I was somewhat suprised to see a message that scored a whopping 49.8 points in my junk tray – a good five points over my previous record.
Here’s the summary – why the hell did the sender think this would ever get anywhere?
Spam detection software, running on the system "xxxxxxxxxxxxxx", has
identified this incoming email as possible spam. The original message
has been attached to this so you can view it (if it isn't spam) or label
similar future email. If you have any questions, see the administrator
of that system for details.
Content preview: email advertise like this to 8,000,000 people... free..
http://www.advertisingemailcorporation.com/ the above noncommercial
offer is only for noncommercial charities only. press on charity info on
our web site for full and complete details. this offer is not a
commercial service and is not at all for sale or lease or trade of any
kind. [...]
Content analysis details: (49.8 points, 6.0 required)
pts rule name description
---- ---------------------- --------------------------------------------------
2.4 MSGID_YAHOO_CAPS Message-ID has ALLCAPS@yahoo.com
4.5 MIME_BOUND_DD_DIGITS Spam tool pattern in MIME boundary
1.0 NO_REAL_NAME From: does not include a real name
1.5 FROM_BLANK_NAME From: contains empty name
2.2 HELO_DYNAMIC_SPLIT_IP Relay HELO'd using suspicious hostname (Split
IP)
4.4 MSGID_SPAM_CAPS Spam tool Message-Id: (caps variant)
0.0 UNPARSEABLE_RELAY Informational: message has unparseable relay lines
3.5 BAYES_99 BODY: Bayesian spam probability is 99 to 100%
[score: 1.0000]
1.5 RAZOR2_CF_RANGE_E8_51_100 Razor2 gives engine 8 confidence level
above 50%
[cf: 100]
1.5 RAZOR2_CF_RANGE_E4_51_100 Razor2 gives engine 4 confidence level
above 50%
[cf: 100]
1.0 RAZOR2_CHECK Listed in Razor2 (http://razor.sf.net/)
0.5 RAZOR2_CF_RANGE_51_100 Razor2 gives confidence level above 50%
[cf: 100]
2.2 DCC_CHECK Listed in DCC (http://rhyolite.com/anti-spam/dcc/)
3.9 RCVD_IN_XBL RBL: Received via a relay in Spamhaus XBL
[83.45.130.42 listed in sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org]
1.9 RCVD_IN_NJABL_DUL RBL: NJABL: dialup sender did non-local SMTP
[83.45.130.42 listed in combined.njabl.org]
3.7 RCVD_DOUBLE_IP_SPAM Bulk email fingerprint (double IP) found
1.8 MISSING_SUBJECT Missing Subject: header
0.8 DIGEST_MULTIPLE Message hits more than one network digest check
1.6 MISSING_MIMEOLE Message has X-MSMail-Priority, but no X-MimeOLE
2.1 REPTO_QUOTE_YAHOO Yahoo! doesn't do quoting like this
3.7 FORGED_MSGID_YAHOO Message-ID is forged, (yahoo.com)
4.1 FORGED_MUA_OUTLOOK Forged mail pretending to be from MS Outlook
The original message was not completely plain text, and may be unsafe to open with
some email clients; in particular, it may contain a virus, or confirm that your address
can receive spam. If you wish to view it, it may be safer to save it to a file and open
it with an editor.
--
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.15.25/593 - Release Date: 19/12/2006 13:17
I don’t like Mondays.
July 24th, 2006Especially when the work’s web server disappears off the face of the Internet sometime on Sunday and then reappears full of out-of-date websites. Oh I really don’t f*cking like THOSE kind of Mondays.
And the ones where you ring the server company and give them an earful, only to get an imbecile who doesn’t understand that you’re renting the entire server, not just one domain thereon, and then says that your usual contact is no longer your contact, and who arranges for an email reference to be, well, emailed to you.
Only to have the email server fall over. And the SSH server. And the Admin server.
And then the customers – oh God, the customers – who all discover that they can’t get at their email at roughly the same time on a Monday morning, and decide to ring you at the same time. Understandable, because it’s their business suffering here, but it’s not fun while it’s going on.
Did I mention that I really really don’t like Mondays?
Well something’s amiss…
July 7th, 2006Just checked the admin email account for the other company I work for and we’ve suddenly got 20,000 emails clogging everything up. What the blinking flip?!? Almost every one is a message from Cron along the lines of:
- /bin/sh: /usr/bin/fix-mysql.sock: Permission denied
which I’m sure never used to happen.
We only actually found out about this because I checked the email account to see if there was an error message from sendmail. A client’s new server has decided to stop sending out email shortly before their site goes live (and right before I demonstrated how ace the site was – argh!) and it turns out that somewhere in the bowels of the machine the IP address for domain.com is still pointing to the old server. www.domain.com is fine, and domain.com is still resolving correctly from anywhere on the internet, but internally the IP address for domain.com is wrong.
Or at least is was. Ping from within the server now resolves correctly but email still isn’t getting out. I’ve given up for the weekend, too – heheheh.
Paypal – Notification of Limited Account Access… again.
June 20th, 2006As if it wasn’t bad enough Paypal getting me to change security questions that anyone could guess, I received the exact same email the next day asking me to do it all over again. Truly, the Department of Redundancy Department at Paypal is second to none.
The difference this time was that I didn’t have to confirm my telephone number – instead I had to enter either my full bank account or credit card number. I suppose this is marginally more secure than asking my mother’s maiden name, but not much. I had to redo the security questions and password again as well – hurrah.
But this time there was a clue! Apparently someone had tried to access my Paypal account from a foreign IP address. Still no word exactly when this occurred, but that seems to have been the problem – hacker wannabes. Unless of course Paypal’s idea of ‘foreigh IP address’ is ‘another ISP address’, in which case I could have restricted my own account simply by accessing it from work. That would be fun.
Anyway, we’ll see how this latest runaround goes. I won’t be a hundred percent suprised if I get another email tomorrow telling my account has been limited due to third-party nonesense. Sigh.
Servers, Firewalls and Dialup on the Powerbook. Oh my!
June 6th, 2006The fun all started when we moved offices. We actually stayed within the same building but moved from the slightly-newer part of the building into the slightly-older part. This meant that the fibre cable transporting our Internet connection across the entire roof of the building was redundant and BT had to be called to connect it to a different – hopefully much shorter – piece of cable. BT have been called, and in their infinite wisdom they won’t help us until we find an account number for them.
So, no problem, as a temporary measure we’ll use the high speed Internet access that comes with the building. We track down Dave the Network Bloke and he fixes us up with a couple of live ports so we have Internets in t’office. Unfortunately, since several large companies have moved into the office complex it’s no longer ‘High Speed’. In fact it’s absolute shite. No matter! It’s only for a few days. Possibly.
The next problem to rear it’s ugly head was regarding sending mail using SMTP. No problem, we’ll just use our own server as usual. In order to do this I need to add the IP of the connection to the list of permitted relayers on the server – pretty straightforward stuff. Unfortunately I remember why we left the built-in (Once) High Speed Internet – they block a port required for us to configure our server. It’s an outgoing port, but they’ve blocked it nonetheless. Hnnnng!
O-Kaaay. The only available option at this point is to hook my 15in Powerbook up to my Sony Ericsson k750i via Bluetooth and create a dialup connection that will allow me to bypass this shitty firewall and configure the server. I run through the pretty little OSX configuration wizard and the Powerbook connects to the k750i without problems… but it won’t dial. It prompts for permission to connect to the Internet and does nothing. Eventually it transpires that I need to select the ‘Ericsson T39 14.4′ script, and hey presto – it dials the 123-Reg’s 0845 Dialup number and away we go.
Except that, because the walls are full of wire, I only get two bars on my phone and the connection is pretty much halved from 14.4. Eventually it crawls through the login process and I remember which buttons to click on the first go (saving me several minutes on the phone bill, no doubt) and I get to enter the IP address of the Formerly High Speed Internet Connection. Huzzah! I can send email!
Unfortunately so can everyone in the office complex, but I won’t tell them if you won’t.