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Category Archives: Rant
Assumption
Someone asked me yesterday “You’re good with computers, can you give me a copy of Photoshop?“. Aside from the fact I run Linux on most of my computers, I’m not keen on being accused of software piracy on the basis that I’m “good with computers” or any other reason. I made the mistake of asking why he needed it, he wanted to resize some pictures – so I suggested Paint.net.
His answer? “Oh no that’s free, it’s bound to be rubbish.”
Strange, I thought he wanted Photoshop free.
Black Ops “Strict”
Odd solution to an irritating problem – Black Ops say “Strict” in multi-player, even with “Open” NAT. Load Modern Warfare 2, go to multi-player on-line up to the point where you choose the game type and eject the disc using the button on the front of the PS3. Insert Black Ops and load it, go to multi-player and you will be open.
I have no idea why this works, I got it off a forum post. I have tried putting the PS3 in a DMZ but it doesn’t work, so it’s not as if the game uses non-standard ports – it’s just bugged. It only needs to be done once each session – you can play something else and reload Black Ops as long as you don’t reboot.
Black Ops is an OK game, it’s not the best FPS and the single player is woefully short (with a very poor story) – its multi-player where the fun is to be had. With the latest DLC out on the 10th June, it’s a shame that Activision and Treyarch can’t get it together enough to sort this out. The truth is though that until we stop buying DLC, there’s no incentive for the publishers to fix bugs.
I killed my PS3
I’ve been playing the brilliant “Assassin’s Creed – Brotherhood”. So much so that I’ve killed my PS3 – it now overheats and turns itself off after about three minutes (if its booted from cold), beeps three times and flashes the power light. Mind you I’ve had it for about four years.
I bought a new one (surprised that the hard disk size going up seems to have reduced any price decreases over time).
Seems like a faulty fan – sounds like a bearing grinding. Anyone any experience with them?
Don’t fix it, censor it
The Security Research Computer Lab at Cambridge University posted an article about industry response to a fundamental flaw in the “chip and pin” system in February. The paper, by Omar Choudary (a PhD student), highlights a flaw in the standard that permits the use of any PIN number. The University passed it to industry two months before publishing.
Now, some eight months later, the only bank known to have addressed this is Barclays. Instead of addressing the issue, the bankers’ trade association feels the best course of action is to tell the University its being irresponsible [pdf] in publishing the information! Given the Streisand Effect, is that not trying to close the stable door after the horse has bolted? The University’s response is an emphatic no, at the moment.
It is interesting that the UK Cards Association feels an offence was committed in proving the vulnerability. I would have thought they’d welcome the information, given their front page statement:
We inform and engage with stakeholders to advance the industry for the ultimate benefit of our members’ consumer and retail customers. Our work includes preventing card fraud, contributing to legislative changes, collating industry statistics and developing industry standards and best practices.
Linux is not a get of jail free card
I’ve been having line problems with my ISP – British Telecom. To cut a long story short we see a 75% speed drop, phone BT, jump through umpteen hoops and they reset the profile at the exchange. The fault is with the line and it’s intermittent.
That doesn’t really bother me. The customer support agent told me to use BT’s speed diagnostic tool. Now aside from why their tool would be better, its not really an option as its a poorly written Java applet that doesn’t seem to work with Firefox or Chromium in Linux. Now I dare say I could get it to work but why spend the energy? When I mentioned it to the agent, he told me BT doesn’t officially support Linux and helpfully suggested I keep a Windows laptop handy.
Are you kidding? Keep a Windows laptop handy? There are reasons why I use Linux, there are reasons people use Macs and Windows too – they chose to. What the hell has that got to do with my ISP? I have no software from them, it’s a wireless access point they provide. Do you know what operating system it runs? Linux.
Blogging platforms
Has anyone else noticed a large amount of ping backs to link farms from Planet Ubuntu feeds over the last few days? I’m getting a fair few. I’d give an example but if I link to a site that takes my posts from a syndicated site and creates posts that are syndicated on other sites I might create some sort of perpetual motion blog post and consume the Internet (it might seem far fetched but what if Robert Morris had stopped to think).
I find these objectionable though – they appear to be WordPress and I guess are using a plugin to pull feeds in and publish as articles. They’re not as bad as flat out plagiarism – which I’ve experienced. Mind you even that isn’t the worst, I once wrote a howto which was CC licensed and I realised it had been ripped off when someone posted a comment on it suggesting (quite strongly) that I had taken it from the thief!
So it occurs to me that maybe this is a WordPress thing. Then again maybe not. Like so many of us I get stuck in my ways and WordPress is like a pair of comfy shoes. Maybe I should try a new platform, so I wondered what was popular out there in Ubuntu-land.
I’ve tried Drupal (I don’t like it, sorry Emma), Serendipity and Pixie (I quite liked that but baulked at the theming system). Mind you I also have quite a lot of time to myself over the next four months, maybe I should roll my own, I’ve hacked around in PHP but have never developed a large project using it.
So let me know, suggestions on a postcard. Maybe just a comment here will suffice.
Ubuntu spot the difference
After writing documentation for many years, once in a while I come across a post on the Internet that makes me wonder why I bother. So I thought we could turn it into a game.
Basically it’s like spot the difference, see how many things you can spot that are wrong with it and post them here.
Here is the post in question and it is a cracker. I can think of several things that are wrong with it but see what you can come up with. Here’s a starting hint – man visudo.
A Windows post (gasp)
Windows software tends to abstract any kind of technicality from the user, except when it comes to ripping. For some reason, this requires a myriad dropdowns. I’m computer literate and I struggle.
Vim
I’ve been away from Ubuntu for a while and just installed Xubuntu 9.10 on an Acer Aspire One. While editing some of the files, I remembered that pressing the cursor keys in insert mode inserts characters.
This is because of vi compatible mode and is easily redressed by adding “set nocompatible” in “~/.vimrc”. I understood from this page that this was the default but I might be misreading. It seems to be a peculiarity of Ubuntu, I didn’t notice this in RHEL, Arch or Fedora (three distributions I use fairly regularly).
Is this an indicator that vim is not perhaps as popular in Ubuntu? I notice that most times I see a guide online it will suggest using gedit, even if invoked from the terminal. Perhaps, as I’m not au fait with Debian, our lineage prefers the compatible mode.
I’m sure its not important and we all have our preferences for editors but I do like vim and wish that this behavior was default. One of the paradoxes with OSS, GNU/Linux in particular, is the freedom afforded allowing us to configure our environments in whatever fashion we prefer creates a diversity that is difficult to train new users, especially between distributions.