It turns out that there’s been a huge fire in a BT service tunnel, knocking out 130,000 phone lines and numerous data links in the Manchester area.
This, in turn, has caused Microland UK to be unable to process our credit card details and deliver me my new work PC, a swanky-looking Athlon 64 3GHz box.
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[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]
[further fragments of this post were recovered on 12 October 2018]
First, some info for the non-geeks out there, so you can truly appreciate the irony in what’s to come:
Lindows – manufacturer of a distrubution of Linux which is designed to be easy to migrate to for former Windows users – have been in court with Microsoft in the US for some time, who claim that their name infringes upon their trademarked name, Windows. The courts haven’t been friendly to Microsoft extending their tentacles in this way so far, and so Microsoft have mostly been trying to buy time, stalling proceedings, while they bring the case to courts internationally. The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxumberg have already caved-in and declared Lindows illegal (interestingly, it’s now being marketed in these countries as Lin—-, pronounced Lindash, which Microsoft also claim they own).
Okay, now you non-geeks are up-to-speed:
Just announced – Lindows are taking …
The Register brings a report about Harvard University Professor Terry Fisher’s plan to make piracy pay for itself. Not by making it yet more illegal, but by stopping it from being immoral. Go read the article. It’s great.
As this article [The Sun] shows, a man was caught speeding in Cheshire this week at 406mph.
Quite impressive, I thought, as he was driving a Peugeot 406, who’s maximum speed is listed as being 129mph.
I suppose it stands to reason that we Brits, the nation who currently hold the land speed record of 766mph [CNN], would be the first people to have a speed safety camera pick one of us up at over half the speed of sound. And such a clear picture, too…
Despite the obvious mistake, a spokesperson for Cheshire Safety Camera Partnership has stated that they will still be taking legal action.
An article on the Register amused me this morning. Go read it.
In other (slightly more geeky) news, there’s a plan to put a wireless internet point in every lamp post. It’s a very clever idea. If the market’s feeling healthy enough, it’ll grant the conceivers some venture capitalists, and it’ll go-ahead. Here’s hoping.
As this news story from the BBC relates, a certain Alan Shirkey from Aberdeen was this week given a life ban on driving, as well as a £300 fine and a year’s probation.
He’d started learning to drive over a decade ago, but then stopped. Then, on the day in question – 10 years after he’d last been in a car and with only a provisional license – he drove (without L-plates or supervision, and with no insurance whatsoever) towards Perth. He stopped to fill his car up at a petrol station, and then left without paying. Realising his mistake, he began to reverse back down the dual carriageway, colliding with several cars as he went, and injuring several people. When he was arrested, he refused to give a urine sample.
And they only fined him £300?!?
In the news this week, a device that allows women to have an orgasm at the touch of a button, perhaps even by remote control… but the inventor is having difficulty finding volunteers for a trial.
I’m not sure which part of that sentence is wierdest.
…and one day, on your beat, you catch a guy driving the wrong way down a residential one-way street. Well; that’s not very good, so you flag him down and investigate. Upon reaching the car, you discover that he is driving the wrong way down the road as a result of a lack of due care and attention – he was using his laptop. Moreover, his pants are round his ankles and he’s using his laptop to look at kiddie porn. As if this isn’t enough, he’d been downloading said illegal porn using an internet connection hijacked using wireless networking gear.
What do you charge him with?
Apparently it’s our duty to the British economy to call in sick whenever we feel like some time off. This web site, Anxiety Culture, is the inevitable result of a confused fusion of the directive, business-driven mind of a free market capitalist, and a plethora of "very 90’s" confused and complicated morals. It’s rather odd. Very pretty site, though. Take a look.
Both The Register and the BBC have stories today on bluejacking – that is, the practice of sending unsolicited messages to open Bluetooth relay points, typically mobile phones. There’s even a web site dedicated to bluejacking.
One of my personal favourites is the cinema. It’s fun to fire off pictures of fridge magnet letters with my web site URL, or note text, to random people as they come in to the cinema or as they turn their phones on and leave. Lectures, too: had a bluejack-chat with somebody a little while back. As always, us geeks are well ahead of the technological fashion trends.
I’ve gotten no work at all done so far today. Hmm.
I’ve registered for modules this year which better than last year reflect my individual interests within my field – an emphasis on telecommunications and the internet and on software engineering practice, and away from artificial intelligence and from hardware-layer stuff. Some of my new modules – many of which were not available as courses last year – look quite stimulating.
As the end of the week approached I helped Nightline to lay their new carpet – the benefit to the organisation that the money we raised by selling hot dogs – in their office. This involved first removing their old carpet, laying it out on the road, and using it as a stencil for the new one, such that the new one fit almost exactly before we began to stick it down (an important consideration when laying flooring in a room no larger than 11 by 11 feet). I made hats for us all out of the offcuts of the carpet and masking tape.
Saturday Night’s Troma Night saw Liz bringing a date along, Rob (or was it Bob?), who we managed to scare off before the opening credits of the first film had finished rolling or any pizza had been consumed. Apparently all is well, though.
Aberystwyth’s first sex shop, part of the Little Amsterdam chain, is due for it’s delayed opening on Wednesday. I’m arranging for a party to go and visit on it’s opening day to applaud it on it’s success over the efforts of many members of the council, and for it’s manager’s success so far in court in another (possibly related) case.
Update: 25 October 2017 – fixed a minor spelling mistake.
Yet again I was correct. The BBC just released this article on Verisign.
VeriSign’s controversial abuse of the domain name system on Monday led to the first lawsuit against them, today, as reported by SlashDot. In addition, today’s UserFriendly cartoon, too, takes the piss out of them.
In other geeky news, did you know that it’s now possible to get broadband internet on a Commodore 64. It takes all sorts, eh?
My last day at work. I have lots to do.
What kind of idiot steals a police officer’s sandwich, in a police station, while taking part in an identity parade? BBC News reports.
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…