My poor abused laptop has a habit of loosing it's DVD drive on a regular basis, after a few drops too many. Normally I had simply rebooted after pushing back in the drive, but I was feeling like a dirty windows user with that method :)
As it turns out, Linux provides the answer. In Ubuntu, simply install "hotswap" using apt-get or your preferred method. To rescan for IDE devices run the following command:
sudo hotswap -c 1 rescan-ide
I have been using IE4Linux for a while in order to test some websites I'm responsible for and make sure that they are useful to people who still have to use Internet Explorer. To make it even handier, the IE View extension for Firefox works well under Ubuntu.
The only problem I've run into is that the "find" button in the IE View preferences doesn't like Linux file paths, so to use it you have to enter the path to IE manually. In my case this is /home/niall/bin/ie6. Once it's setup properly, I can rightclick on the link and select "Open Link Target In IE" and suffer for a few minutes in the name of testing!
It looks like Dell are beginning to see the light! They are now commiting to use only hardware that has drivers in the mainstream kernel where possible. It will be very interesting to see if they can put some pressure on the makers of graphic cards, namely ATI and Nvidia, to open up more.
A Dell laptop with no binary blobs to cause random crashes appeals to me after living with a laptop with an ATI graphics chipset for a few years.
One of the better reasons for using Firefox are it's extensions. Currently I am using the following:
Have come across some strange captchas before including one where you had to select kittens. Hot Captcha has to be the strangest though. It takes three high scoring female (or male) pics from Hot Or Not and six not so hot pics and you have to select the three hottest. How long before this will be implemented on a production site?
I have had no optical drive in my Laptop for a while since the original fell out a couple of months ago. I finally put in a DVD Drive this evening and attempted to watch a DVD. I started up MPlayer and got the following error:
libdvdread: Error cracking CSS key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_0.VOB
Run it as root (sudo regionset) and tell it that yes, you do wish to change the dvd region. Then put in the number for the region you're in. Once this is done, you can then hopefully enjoy your movie.
One of my pet annonyances when browsing around on the net is sites where you have to register for no good reason. I have enough useless accounts as it is. What's even more annonying is when they return a different result to the search engine bots so that more than just the registration page is indexed.
A prime example of this is Unison.ie. When searching for current Irish news it usually ranks fairly high on Google, however all the pages require you register first before you view them. The registration gives no advantage to people like me who just want to a quick look at the latest news. I suspect that I'm not alone and that lots of people will just go back and look for another site.
Unison's simple user agent checking makes it very easy to get in unmolested though. The User Agent Switcher Plugin for Firefox allows you to easily set exactly what user agent you want your browser to appear as. The GoogleBot isn't in the list of Useragents available, but it is easily added. Switch to GoogleBot as your useragent, and magically you will have full access to the Unison site.
I know that Unison will probably close this hole within a few days now, but it's nice to be able to make a point. According to Google's Webmaster Help Center "crawler only" pages are a thing to avoid. I would class pages that react differently to GoogleBot as "crawler only" pages.
If Unison want to require people to register in order to get nice features such as customization, then grand, I have no problem with that. However, how much traffic are they missing out on by having the register page for everyone? And how many advertising impressions are they missing out on? I know that if I go to the BBC News site I will usually end up going to other stories which interest me, which means more page impressions on the BBC site. More impressions, more chance of clicking on ads, more money!
In this day and age it is senseless to have such stupid restrictions on a site like Unison that has enough content to be a massive earner on advertisments alone.
Update: I somehow managed to forget the user agent I'm using, it is:
Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)
I came across Damn Interesting in my wanderings. I shouldn't be allowed near sites like this as it's too easy to lose hours of my life which could probably be put to more productive use :)
Due to a bit of a cold I'm having a quiet night in with a few DVDs. I'm currently trying to figure out the whole idea behind the few minute long "Copyright Theft Is A Crime" crap at the start of some DVDs, which can't be skipped on most DVD players. I'll be the first to admit that it is a crime, but I have bought these DVDs legitimately and so am not really their target audience.
I'm pretty sure that if someone is counterfeiting the DVDs, they will already know that it's a crime. They have probably gotten over that hurler a long time ago.
Unforunately there is no way to easily find out what DVDs have this crap before buying so I can't really bycott the offending products :(
Just in case this woman gets her way:
By using a RSS Aggregator to view this post, you are consenting to buy me a pint next time you meet me in the pub.
If her claim actually succeeds in court, and I hope the Judge has more sense than that, how long before stuff like this becomes common place?
What were Ubuntu thinking when they designed the new logo?
Or am I just too dirty minded from exposure to the net?
Originally seen here.
Adam has pointed out that SEC are planning on planning on taking action to combat the pump and dump spams doing the rounds. So far trading in 35 companies has been suspended in the aptly named "Operation Spamalot".
It is a logical step to take in order to curb the amount of such spams going out, however you would have to wonder how long before spammers twist the situation to their advantage? Blackmail anyone?
AuthUserFile /path/to/htpasswdSome info has been changed, enter valid ips and a proper path to the htpasswd file. When I go to my FeedOnFeeds folder now, Apache will check to see if I'm coming from an allowed ip address. If I am, it will allow me straight in unmolested. If I am coming from an unknown ip address, it will ask for a username and password, and check it against /path/to/htpasswd. Once I enter the right username and password, I will be allowed in. For FeedOnFeeds, the "allow from localhost" line is important. You tell FeedOnFeeds to check the rss feeds you are subscribed to by calling "/usr/bin/GET http:/site.com/feedonfeeds/update-quiet.php" from cron on a regular basis. Without the "allow from localhost" line, you have to give GET a valid username and password. The net result of this, is that now I only get asked for a username and password when I'm out and about, which makes me a little less cranky :)
AuthName "FeedOnFeeds"
Authtype Basic
require valid-user
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from 1.2.3.4
allow from 4.5.6.7
allow from localhost
Satisfy Any
Last January, I headed to the Godfather Pizza website to view their menu and order my uber-healthy supper. When I attempted to call the number for Godfathers Carlow on their website, I got nowhere. I checked a " Take-Away Express" booket that was in the house and got the right number. The number on the website is (059) 941 6666 while the actual number is (059) 914 6666. Being a nice lad :) once I ordered the Pizza, I emailed the only email contact I could see on the site (info@....).
I got a reply back saying that the information had been passed to Marketing Department, and I promptly forgot all about it. I'm just after going to the site to see the menu again, and the number is STILL wrong. I would have thought that something as simple as swapping 2 digits could be accomplished in 2 minutes, never mind 2 months.
I have no idea how much traffic Godfather Pizza get to their website, but seeing as Dominos have recently started taking orders online, I'm betting that the internet using public is a sizable percentage of their customer base. Godfather Pizza don't have the facility to order a pizza online, so the only contact you can have with them if you want a delivery is by phone. How much business have they lost by not having proper contact details on their site?
Update Mar 22th: Looks like the number has been changed. I'm not sure when, but the current last modified time for the page is: 03/20/2007 11:20:18 AM
I'm currently in the market for a new MP3 player. I currently have a Creative Zen Touch 20GB which, in fairness, is a great device. The main points going for it are good battery life and a decent interface. However it lacks USB Mass Storage support, and has a very very annonying "Random" button on the front which I'm too good at accidently pressing.
Standard USB Mass Storage support is the main feature that I will be looking for in the new player. I have about 10G of music on the Zen, which means 10G free. You can transfer normal files to it, however unless the computer at the other end has the correct software, it's not all that useful. If I'm using Ubuntu or Debian, it's not too big a deal as I can simply apt-get install gnomad2, but on a Windows PC the Creative software is up to usual Creative standards. In order words, not the best.
Another nice feature would be Ogg support. I'm not going to re-encode the big pile of CD's in the corner of my room, but I would have no problem encoding new CDs using Ogg. WMA support is very down on my list of priorities for some odd reason :)
From searching around the internet I've come across the following options:
After reading a response to a post I put up on the Irish Webmaster Forum, I headed to the Garda website. From what I can see of it, it is absolutely useless for any informative purposes under Linux.
To give an example, say I want to get the phone number for the Garda Station in Listowel, Kerry. First of all I will go to www.garda.ie. This will present me with a page with the option to click on "New Visitors" or "Previous Visitors". The only different between the two is that "New Visitor" forces me to read a message from Noel Conroy before having to click the "Enter" link in order to get to the same page as "Previous Visitors" would have originally sent me to.
Once I get to the home.html page I can try to get to the "Contact Us" link. This will do absolutely NOTHING in Firefox. When you click on the link it goes to "javascript:hili('cux','cu');" My Javascript isn't the best at the moment, so I can't figure out exactly what this is supposed to do, but I can tell you for fact that it doesn't work on Firefox 2.0.0.2 on Ubuntu.
I eventually clicked on the "FAQs" button in order to see if there is some reason for the lack of any standards support. I clicked on the "I want to email a Garda Station" link. This kindly informed me that the Gardai "do not have external e-mail facilities for the general public to contact Garda Stations", but gave me a "local stations" link to click. From here I was able to click on Kerry, and was able to find the number for the Listowel Garda Station in a couple of seconds.
What I would love to know, is why the link for "Contact Us" can't be changed from "javascript:hili('cux','cu');" to "stations.html". It takes less characters ( :) ), is compatible with every browser that I know, and is a LOT simplier to implement. It is the same with every other link in the blue box at the top left of the page, every one of them uses the hili javascript function. I don't really care what the hili function is supposed to be able to do, but it is unusable under Firefox.
The Garda website should be a public website which should be available to everyone. The unnecessary complication that has been added to the links on the website means that I cannot use the site. I don't even want to think about how bad it must appear to people who with disabilities who use.
To quote from the NDA website:
Irish public policy includes requirements for government departments and agencies to procure accessible ICT solutions where possible. In particular, all government departments are now expected to have their websites accessible to Priority 1 & 2 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0 from the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). The National Disability Authority have adopted WCAG for these guidelines.
I have every respect for the job that the Gardai do, however I would have hoped that the Garda Website would be usable be every Irish Citizen. With a little work the Garda Website could be a great resource, but as it stands it is unusable for a sizable minority of Irish Citizens, and not following EU Guidelines for IT. Surely the Gardai should be able to provide a usable website, there is plenty of people in Ireland who can do a lot better job than the current website.
Target[sbl.spamhaus.org]: `perl /etc/mrtg/rbldnsdstat.pl sbl.spamhaus.org` MaxBytes[sbl.spamhaus.org]: 4800000MRTG should then be run every five minutes using cron.
Title[sbl.spamhaus.org]: RBLDNSD - sbl.spamhaus.org
PageTop[sbl.spamhaus.org]: <H1>sbl.spamhaus.org requests </H1>
I have recently had reason to convert an Access MDB file to CSV for use in a mysql database. I don't like the idea of an Access database on a production server and Microsoft has been agreeing since 1999.
As it turns out it is actually very easy, there is GPL software available for the job at http://mdbtools.sourceforge.net/. If you are using Ubuntu or Debian you can use apt-get install the mdbtools package.
To get the list of tables, you run the following command:
mdb-tables database.mdb
mdb-export database.mdb table_name
mdb-schema database.mdb | mysql -u username -p database_name
mdb-export -I database.mdb table_name | sed -e 's/)$/)\;/' | mysql -u username -p database_name
After running this, you can now be rid of the horror that are Access MDB files :)
I have a nice plugin for Firefox from HostIP which shows you the country the url you are going to resides in. I was more than a bit surprised when I went for clicking on a link to Gaa.ie and saw "Canberra, AU". As it turns out the main Gaa site is being hosted by Telstra Internet in Austrailia. Local GAA sites are being hosted in Ireland, for example kerry.gaa.ie is being hosted by Imagine.
On a purely technical basis, this is absurd. From my Magnet DSL, www.gaa.ie has to go over 20 routers in order to get to Telstra's server. It has to go through less than 10 to go to kerry.gaa.ie. I would presume that the biggest audience for the GAA's website would be in Ireland. Surely it would make sense to host the site close to it's intended audience?
Getting away from the technical, the GAA receives a lot of money from the Irish taxpayer. I believe that this means that GAA should support Irish business unless there is no local alternative. For web hosting, there is no shortage of competition, my own employer among them. Why aren't the GAA obliged to support local business?
I do believe that the GAA do great work in Ireland. I would prefer to watch hurling or football over a Soccer match anyday. This is why seeing "Canberra, AU" in that little popup was such a disappointment. If anyone from the GAA reads this, please bring your business local!
According to greatfirewallofchina.org, Chinese citizens are unable to get to my blog. Not that this bothers me all that much. What is strange, is that Akismet is catching plenty of spam comments coming from Chinese ip space. Chinese spammers are also having no problem sending lots of spam email.
Are the spammers in China just technically advanced enough to get past the Great Firewall? Or do the Chinese authorities not care about spam traffic? All this is making my decision to drop all email from China at MTA time seem a lot more reasonable.
I mentioned last week how I managed to recieve a unsolicated message on my phone from vkap.net. Since the message was not a SMS, but rather a service message, Vodafone couldn't give me the five digit number which RegTel require in order to do anything about it.
The solution as it turns out is to contact the office of the Data Protection Commissioner. They can act on any complaints about unsolicited spam messages. Details for how to procede with reporting the spam are here.
Since I did the original post, I have gotten a lot of hits from other European countries. For these visitors, I can only suggest that you contact your local Data Protection Commissioner.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^domain.tld$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.tld/$1 [L,R=301]It looks like Nasa are now releasing satellite pictures of space as fast as they can take them. You can get them here. They are not as high a resolution as what you'll get from Google Maps, but they are still very impressive.
