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Blog
Cottage Pie
This morning, while picking up my microwavable Cottage Pie from Somerfield (the best microwave meal I’ve ever had – it’s really quite good considering that it’s re-heated mincemeat and dehydrated mashed potato), I noticed a new product – a similar item but in a slightly smaller container, as part of their “So Good” range. Upon examining the back of the packet, I realised that the major differences by weight ratio were that the “So Good” version – apparently better for you – had very slightly less salt, potato and onion, and worcester sauce added. It seems that the biggest reason this new product is better for you than the old one – and worthy of an increased price tag once it’s introductory special offer expires – is that there isn’t so much of it. I’ll be sticking with my normal cottage pie, thanks.
While I’m busy complaining, why is it that I have to work somewhere that’s to the East of where I live, which means that when I cycle to work in the morning the sun is in my eyes, and it’s still blinding me when I cycle back home in the evening? Bring on the winter, I say! Back to the blizzards and the short daylight hours when I was able to cycle both directions in the dark with no lights on. That’s the way forward!
Stealing From A Police Officer… In A Police Station
What kind of idiot steals a police officer’s sandwich, in a police station, while taking part in an identity parade? BBC News reports.
Sheep
Outside my office window is a large field, which several months ago was divided into three smaller fields, each of which was planted with a different mixture of grass and some other leafy plant. Yesterday, half a dozen sheep with large numbers sprayed onto their flanks were moved into each of these partitions. This morning, a number of postgraduate researchers from the Department of Rural Studies moved in and watched them for awhile. I’m told this is an experiment to see which food the sheep prefer. It’s still quite amusing to watch while I really should be working. I have lots of work to do.
I see that The Register is onto it’s third story relating to the VeriSign/DNS issue I mentioned the other day. It’s good to read that the internet community is ‘fighting back’. In addition, today’s UserFriendly has a sweet and subtle parody of the current ‘wildcard DNS’ situation. Geek humour only.
Term starts in just a few more days. I’m excited and glad to be returning to academia ‘properly’ again – and actually planning to get a degree at the end of this year. So long as I can keep my finances sweet, it’ll all be great.
VeriSign Kicking Up Yet More Of A Fuss
Still no word from BBC News on the bastards that VeriSign are being, but The Register are on to their second news report on the subject, and SlashDot have information about the technological “fight back”. What does a person have to do to keep their state news agency up to date these days?
Have you seen VeriSign’s web site at www.VeriSignSuckCocks.com (only works thanks to their own controversial configuraion changes)
In other news, I’ve worked out how to set up wildcard DNS of my own in BINDs configuration files. Now all I need to do is buy an interesting domain name, and I could run the next IsGay or YouAreLame site. Which would be cool. I have a few ideas… suggestions welcome…
Darwin Was Wrong
The more and more humans I encounter, the more I come to the realisation that Darwin was wrong. The internet provides endless examples of humans so biosociologically defective that whatever it is that makes them tick should have died out eons ago. Us and our damned supportive society harbouring counterproductive genes will be the death of us. But hey, who cares.
In particular, TimeCube.com is a great example of why some people shouldn’t be allowed to see sunlight.
In other news: I’m not getting enough work done. Back to it…
First Aid
Yesterday was a long day. After nine hours at work, had two and a half hours of First Aid refresher training at Aberystwyth ambulance station.
On the upside, I’d forgotten how subtly dark paramedics’ sense of humour can be… when one particularly overmoral woman expressed concern at a particular element of the training: “But they could die!”, one of the ‘medics responded, deadpan, with: “No; they’re already a corpse. They’re dead. They’re just lying there, being completely useless.” I like paramedics.
I have a lot of work to do this week – my final week full-time before starting again as a part-timer while I put some work towards graduating – and I’m getting bogged down in other people’s bureaucracy. I can’t get my client’s clients’ computers to connect to my client’s computer because my client’s network administrator has put a particularly secure firewall in the way, and he needs a list of IP addresses (unique identifiers for computers on TCP/IP networks, like the Internet) of all the servers on my client’s clients’ networks, but everybody’s got meetings at stupid times and I can never get hold of the people I need when I need them and… aarrgghh!!!
It’ll all be fine.
UserFriendly And VeriSign
Today’s UserFriendly cartoon strip plays on the issue highlighted by yesterday’s entry about VeriSign trying to take over the Internet. Really – the geeks are up in arms.
Still no word from BBC News, but the following other agencies have picked up on the story:
“VeriSign redirects error pages” from C|Net News
“VeriSign slammed for helping spammers” from ZDNet Australia
“ICANN up in arms over Verisign DNS hijacking” from The Inquirer, UK
And tongue-in-cheek technical debate on morons.org.
Told you this would kick up a fuss. You read it here first.
Egobot
Try this fantastic PHP tool for extracting information from the Google search engine. Quite simplistic, but infinitely cool.
Smart Alex
Alex, my incompetent co-worker, came up with the following gem in today’s meeting when talking about a product that would aid employers in securely tracking how long their employees actually spend working:
“It’s not going to have any of that… security… nonsense.”
I shall have to beat him to death later.
P.S. told you that this thing was going to get big, quick. The Register reports “All your Web typos are belong to us”, and I quote: “Already a backlash is building, with Net admins being urged to block Verisign’s catch-all domain. This could get very messy.”
VeriSign Adds Wildcards To TLDs
I am outraged.
VeriSign, the company which manages the .COM and .NET domain names, has done the unthinkable. They’ve taken advantage of and abused their power by setting up a wildcard filter on the primary DNS, pointing to their own server – sitefinder.verisign.com.
Now for those of you who are less technically-inclined, this basically means that every mis-typed .COM or .NET domain name will now go to them, and they can do whatever they like with it. They’ve said that their goal is to provide a list of ‘did you mean?’ links, but it’s been demonstrated that their search engine is powered by a pay-per-click advertiser. In other words, if my company’s web site is at www.hardtospelldomain.com and somebody mis-types or mis-spells my domain name, VeriSign could well give a list of ‘who you might have meant’ with one of my competitors, who’s paying VeriSign for the priviledge, at the top of the list!
In addition, many existing types of anti-spam software, which check that the domain names that suspicious-looking e-mails come from, will fail (remember that now, technically, all .COM/.NET domain names act as if they were valid). We can all expect to get more spam as a result of this disgusting abuse of power.
Do not stand for this! The Internet must not be allowed to be so misruled!
See also SlashDot “Resolving Everything: VeriSign Adds Wildcards”. This news doesn’t seem to have made it around the globe yet, but I’m sure we’ll be seeing it on The Register by this afternoon and BBC News by the end of the week.
Ding! Fries Are Done!
Here’s to Paul, who’s now working at Burger King Aberystwyth.
Especially for him, please click here and listen to “Ding! The Remix!”. [download removed]
I’m not getting enough work done today.
Cyberethics Of Artificial Intelligence Slavery
Claire drove me to work this morning. We had a fascinating discussion on the way, on Cyberethics Of Artificial Intelligence Slavery. Cool.
This morning I gave a tour of the office to our new interviewee, Phil, who for some reason I keep trying to call Chris. If he gets the job, he’ll be working full-time as an industry year student when I become a part-timer again later this month.
Now I have to go get some work done…
Caution: Bridge Out Ahead
Second Place
I came second in the Cymru Prosper Wales “Enterprising Student” competition, which earned me £100, this morning. Pretty much made my late night and early morning worthwhile. Now I’m back at the office. Needed to come in this afternoon to deploy a new version of a piece of software to a client.
Think I pissed Claire off by trying to bum a lift into the office. Gave up and hoofed it in the end (tried to get the bike fixed – something’s gone wrong with the gears – but the bike shop didn’t have enough hands-on to get it done ‘while I waited’).
Knackered. But full of creamcakes, which is good.
In the absence of this work deadline and CPW, things should return to normal tomorrow. Then I can get back to some much-needed Three Rings code.
I need to get a t-shirt printed with “I’m blogging this” on it. Yes, I know ThinkGeek do one, but it’d be cheaper to have The Don here in Aberystwyth print one for me than to pay international shipping charges, considering it’s only a one-colour print.