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July 17, 2007

Captions without pictures

OK, Time managed to do what I initially didn't think (easily) possible -- write about lolcats (and I Can Has Cheezburger?) without really showing one (not counting the one at the top of the online version of the article, which doesn't appear to me to be an example, and if it actually is, it's not as funny as other lolcats out there).

(Tonight, someone mentioned to me about the ICANN Has Cheezburger! one. Which reminded me, as I spotted at least one InternetNZ person in the photo and the photo credit to a InternetNZ I know that it's AGM time, once again. Pity I'll be in Dunedin on the night. Yay for proxies!)

July 15, 2007

Kiwi losers (uh, spammers) not to buy scooters from

OK, now and again I get advertisements sent to me, and I just know it can't be permission marketing, because they're not often addresses I give permission to send me crap at. (Yes, I know they're not the first people to try this.)

So, when a New Zealand outfit that shall remain nameless within the .co.nz domain with the words 'me' and 'bike' in it (not in that order) send me spam from a United States-based IP address (and upstream appear from that that they may be sending it from a Chinese IP address), I'm suspicious about them.

I'd like to give them benefit of the doubt, but wouldn't using a New Zealand Internet provider instead of a Chinese one be cheaper? It does sound like someone's got something to hide. (On balance, if they are indeed using a private computer of theirs to send the mail, dialup to China is surely expensive. They could be using a VPN setup, but then the question is why bother?) Some further analysis of the domain shows they appear to be using the same provider for their mailout as they are for their domain's website, mailserver and nameserver, so the immediately preceding IP address can be explained, but not the Chinese IP address they appeared to use upstream, nor that I can't find that I've ever communicated with this outfit before.)

So if you get an advertisement to buy scooters imploring you to save on carbon emissions and all that emotive stuff to get you to buy, don't do it from these losers. Well, guys -- keeping your computers on sending this spam is helping produce carbon emissions.

Heck, even the whois points to a marketing company. Guess they haven't done their homework.

The new anti-spam law could not come sooner. Don't buy the scooters from these losers -- don't encourage them to send spam.

(And a final note to the company in question: don't spam me again.)

May 30, 2007

Welcome back to New Zealand, locked mobile handsets!

Coincidentally, I hear of a certain something while I am looking for a new handset to use on Telecom NZ's CDMA network (think worn out buttons) -- the sooner I get it the better, as Telecom are going to make it obsolete by moving to GSM, or the network type Vodafone NZ currently use. (Albeit for voice they're using GSM for, anyway, it seems... data might run on something else if I read things right. If I have.)

Which can only mean one annoying thing for someone like me -- I'll have to put up with locked handsets once again. It's something I recall Vodafone did when I had my first (prepaid) handset with them (oddly, that Alcatel One Touch Easy was locked so that their postpaid SIM cards couldn't use it, though I see that Telstra Australia still do that sort of thing), but I found that by the time I got mine, they were already it seems giving out the unlock code for phones at that time fairly readily (I recall being told at the time that they didn't bother with locks anymore because handset subsidies were no longer being made; it also seemed they weren't too worried about losing roaming revenue from customers putting overseas operators' cards in while overseas). Doubtful they'll be doing that once Telecom gets their GSM act together.

Sure, I want phone companies to recoup their handset subsidies, but I don't want even a slightly confusing unlocking regime like that used in Australia (what I dislike there is at least two carriers' attempts to extract money after what would seem to be a reasonable length of time). The best I've had so far for locked handsets is T-Mobile USA: 90 days' account standing and they give it to you the unlock code with no questions or fee. At least that's what they told me when I signed up. (Which I should check seeing I have an 850/1900 MHz handset somewhere they sold me that's ripe for asking about. Too bad what I have read about Telecom's proposed network build doesn't mention whether it'll work on their network if it does end up using 850 MHz for voice. Gut feeling says no, though.)

So, the returning spectre of locked handsets to New Zealand would appear to be imminent. Tasty.

April 30, 2007

Another patch in the works

Oh, brilliant. I'll need to load up another blasted time zone patch, so my computers back in NZ don't get too confused. That's in addition to the one I already had to install for dealing with the US changes, too.

Now, will all the major operating system vendors issue patches in time for the 4,182,612 people that will be directly affected by this, I have no idea.

Sigh.

February 21, 2007

Hackers fake Howard heart attack

I just got a rather large stack of spammy e-mail messages saying that the John Howard we all know as the prime minister of Australia just 'survived' a 'heard attack (sic)'. Another says a 'hear attack (sic)'. Yeah, whatever. I'm not the only one to get the spammy/phishy e-mail messages, though. There's other variations of the e-mail message, and it's been happening for a while.

Sigh.

December 25, 2006

Safety

Here's a good reason to RTFM with those presents these holidays: setting those WPA passphrases to stop hackers (and possibly neighbours, depending on circumstances) can be a rather useful thing to get done.

October 31, 2006

MySpace to use recognition software to block copyrighted multimedia

The NZH has grabbed from Reuters a report that MySpace wants to use new technology to stop users from posting unauthorised copyrighted music on the social networking website and oust frequent violators of its policy. OK... I guess there must be no one at all that'd be able to claim fair use rights nor claim that they were licensed, then, and that anyone that uses so-called copyrighted music or videos must be doing something illegal and have something to hide -- or so this scheme appears to assume. I'm not necessarily disputing such an identification system, but what if someone does honestly and in good faith try to claim fair use or licensed use? What mechanisms would there be to claim fair use or for licensed uses to be noted? I'd need to know more information before I passed judgement on such a scheme.

Sigh. It'll be interesting to see the answers. :)

October 21, 2006

It's the telly -- no wait, it's the programmes they watch... no wait, it's...

Whoever said New Zealand's biggest threat was a moral decline? Maybe even a moral decline thanks to dodgy television programmes and dodgy films? (And with that, dodgy by whose standards?) Anyone thought of all those screens of varying descriptions wasting childhoods? Sometimes it isn't totally the blame of the media or the programmes carried on the media -- it's the use of the media, too, to some extent.

The NZH also run an intergenerational comparison on the abovementioned topic.

Of course it's dangerous to get blinded by one factor, so I won't venture more in to this particular debate.

Other things -- I'm planning a study trip at the moment. For those that don't already know what, I'll mention it if (and once) all the details fall in to place. And Klaatu's Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft is currently playing on my Pandora.com station. Hmmm. I liked the Due South version that they did; it just seems to sound different now.

New on hydro.electric.gen.nz is my take on the 'new' tabbed browsing feature in IE7. It's all right, but tabbed browsing did take a while to get added as a feature (for those our there not having been pestered or nagged by Windows yet to install IE7 yet -- if you're using the operating system at all, I've left the original message window available). Loading third-party solutions (OK, so one was engineered in the form of Microsoft's own Windows Live Toolbar) just isn't my cup of tea for tabbed browsing.

It's a pity that I find Firefox's memory leaks in its current releases on some of my systems at home a little bit too much.

October 6, 2006

RealPlayer 10.5 fiddling with Google Toolbar 4 without permission

At least I don't recall knowingly giving permission while updating my RealPlayer 10.5 installation. Noone should dare tell me that they just mysteriously appeared in an unrelated phenomenon.

Right now my Google Toolbar 4 installation in Internet Explorer is sitting shiny with a Rolling Stone dropdown button that wasn't there previously and a similar RealMedia icon that wasn't there previously either.

And here are the two offending icons. Clicking on the dropdown bit with one comes up with headlines, as if they were headline feeds, the other with tracks to listen to.

Poking around, these are 'custom buttons', so had I added them myself or added them with explicit permission, that'd have been my fault. Fine. But these weren't added as such. (That said, they seem rather innocent at first. Some technical information from Google Toolbar's options menu window: the Rolling Stone button says 'Sends your query to www.rollingstone.com when clicked' and 'Receives information from www.rollingstone.com periodically' and the Rhapsody.com one says 'Receives information from feeds.rhapsody.com periodically'. It still does not excuse what Real has done, though.)

This is damned immoral. It's wrong. It's as bad as spyware/badware, malware and home page hijacking. Losers. Anyone else had this?

His Majesty King of Interface -- oh, and Telecom implies that Jabber is peer-to-peer stuff

Right, two things, while I should be doing work/finishing off at Women's Studies for the university year: my friend Donald Gordon is now King of Interface, or, put simply, a life member, and (in an unrelated madness) the open standards-based Jabber instant messaging protocol is a peer-to-peer technology, Telecom Xtra implies. Egads.

September 28, 2006

And another registrar...

I'd a poke around today and switched registrars for electric.gen.nz.

It's no real reflection on the previous registrar or even the new registrar (all right, so there was the price difference; I've had three different registrars, and I only switched from one back to another in less than 15 minutes because they only allowed two or three nameserver entries). If anything, it's a reflection of how smooth the domain market works. None of this pesky wait 60 or whatever days after registration stuff -- pony up with payment and your UDAI which your (soon to be) previous registrar should have provided (and if not, they have to pretty much straight away, give or take). If anything, poke around for a few minutes to create a customer account at a new registrar, arrange payment (if asked for; some don't ask for one until it's renewal time) or ask for an invoice and hey, presto.

Oh yeah, and hunting for the UDAI can add in a few minutes of waiting if one decides to insist on searching old e-mail or printouts for it instead of requesting a new one.

Well, that said, it was done in minutes, maximising time for more important things, like homework.

Bloody painless, it all was.

September 8, 2006

Now, if only...

...Google Maps had street level coverage of my street. (Now, if you don't want my mini-essay which I wrote for my own amusement, you may want to skip straight to the thoughts I have on my latest batch of scanning for S27(1)'s scanned books collection. Hehe!)

They do do street maps -- it's just got no satellite imagery at street level for my suburb and then some: a good chunk of Lower Hutt is missing from the coverage (at time of writing).

With the new address to location translation on offer, it would be nice if the, uh, hole (no pun intended) in coverage were fixed. (Incidentally, the Windows version of the Google Earth client isn't much better when looking at Lower Hutt [see also below]; it appears to currently use the same data set as Google Earth for Lower Hutt -- you could also try these same coordinates in Google Maps if you can be bothered.) If it were, maybe I could put together some nice mapping stuff.

But then, there's a million other mapping websites with New Zealand coverage around, with at least one with apparently better street level aerial coverage (as in no holes in coverage, actual image quality being another matter -- hey, at least it's consistent!), and most that I use for every day purposes are developed in and for the local market here. That's not to mention the city council's property information database has really good images of individual properties. Some, though, concentrate on street maps as opposed to aerial maps or satellite imagery, but make up with their trip planning features (two, Metlink and Yellow Pages, claim they do walking directions, too).

I wonder if I should re-learn some programming to get myself away from all the stuff I'm doing for graduate school for a nice little bit of recreation and perhaps do a localised mapping thing (Jabber map stuff sounds like an idea here) for amusement.

Anyway, here's what Google Maps currently looks like to me with its gap in street level satellite imagery coverage when I search for Lower Hutt. Here's a closeup of what Google Earth sees of Lower Hutt at the moment -- note the change in detail. Now, here's the extent of the gaps in street level coverage of Lower Hutt in Google Earth at the moment; it's currently the same as Google Maps.

And, another book scanned

On other matters, I scanned another book today. Yay for high speed multifunction photocopiers that e-mail on stuff in PDF! Which while I'm on that subject, I've done the same for a few other books that will be released on to Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders on September 20 as birthday texts for proofing.

I'll announce what those ones are closer to the day, but in the meantime, I've scanned A Plea for the Criminal (1905). It's a response (and on first skim through while scanning it, a critical response) by an ordained minister to a book I got through PG earlier that sounded to me like something on eugenics, and that went by the name of The Fertility of the Unfit (1903).

I'm debating if I want to have images up as I've done so previously, or just have the PDF (that the photocopier spat out at me) available -- or both. Feedback would certainly be appreciated on this. (Thanks in advance!) If someone wants A Plea for the Criminal before I get around to properly posting it online, let me know and I'll either email it through somehow, or actually get around to posting it. I blame grad school for my lack of alacrity. Heh.

It doesn't mean that my attempts to find additional sources for material to scan (legally, of course) that is Section 27(1) compliant is bearing some success, necessarily, or even at all -- I do hope it does -- but I have found some stuff that should keep me occupied while I do look for things more relevant to my grad school study and research -- though today's scanned book is very much related in some aspects (say, related to the eugenics stuff someone found in a text I'd also scanned and put through PG).

ibiblio server move

The wonderful folks (ibiblio) that host Section 27(1), the dr-fun-changes mailing list, this diary you're reading right now, the SCM e-book editions, and even some teddy bear satire (which I must admit is not really being updated at the moment, partly due to worries over chewing up ibiblio's precious disc space), are having some stuff happening from Saturday, 9 September at 10am (NZST) until Sunday, 10 September at 10am (NZST). Apparently there may be some interruption in service; mail will be down for a wee bit and I won't be able to post, but the site should stay up.

One more time, thanks people for the hosting! Trying to host lots of scans of books to show the publisher's original intent (something I don't think a formatted e-text like what Project Gutenberg do) is rather (though methinks for the value of the intent, not unreasonable or overly onerous) disc intensive (not to mention slightly more demanding on bandwidth and traffic if you get the Slashdot effect or even a comparatively minor 'Public Address effect'), so everything's appreciated. :)

August 31, 2006

Sold your phone lately? Or checked your antivirus program lately?

So, you erased the information as the manual said? Seems like flash memory on phones is a little bit more resilient than you'd want it to be in this situation. Also from MSNBC today:

  • Write an e-mail that actually gets read -- one (opinionated?) person's view on the matter.
  • I'm glad my only potentially difficult encounter with a cell phone company (Vodafone New Zealand) over a billing issue (I was happy to pay the money in this case, I should add, so there wasn't a dispute there) wasn't hard to solve -- one phone call and I never (as they promised) heard back. Apparently it's no fun at all in a certain other place. Mirroring that, credit reports aren't either.
  • Last up for me, there's a debate about the ethics of creating variants of viruses for a consumer test. This is an interesting one -- I can see how creating variants can help antivirus vendors develop better heuristic logic and so on, but it just doesn't seem right.

I've also had a bit of an enlightening day on some new sources of volumes for scanning from for the Section 27(1) books today. If it comes to something, I'll write again.

July 22, 2006

One reason you wouldn't want to bother with getting broadband in New Zealand

Why wouldn't you want to bother? Why wouldn't you want to dare switch your DSL-based ISP to another one once local loop unbundling is ready? Now there's another reason. In some areas, there isn't enough space in some telephone cabinets, not to mention that it's just as bad in the main exchanges.

This isn't just the rural or supposed 'lower income' areas. Remuera supposedly has a significant waiting list, and one person in New Plymouth has been told to wait four years.

Hmmm. Charming.

I'm not sure what I would do.

Meanwhile, the ISP bidding war continues.

July 20, 2006

The great ihug bidding war

So who'll it be that gets ihug, folks? The NZH says it might be Orcon, while Computerworld claims it'll be Vodafone.

June 28, 2006

Wi-Fi flaw discovered in 802.11b network protocol

Oh, bugger.

June 22, 2006

Postgraduate school

Yeah well, it will be over for the term by Monday. Methinks.

Which is what I've been up to. 'Regular service will resume shortly.'

On other matters, my Jabber server, greta.electric.gen.nz, is back up! Turns out all I needed was five minutes to read through and configure jabber.xml, and then three more minutes to generate a certificate and turn on port 5223. Easy! Why I didn't do it sooner... sigh. All this getting busy at postgraduate school seems silly if it was only going to take this little time.

Just in case it comes in handy for anyone else consider a move (albeit on jabberd 1.4), I'll write up the painless experience next week. (Actually, it was painful. Once I realised how simple it was.) At this rate, maybe I'll look at ejabberd as well and open registrations a little more for fun.

See y'all Monday evening, hopefully. :)

May 8, 2006

Noone Usenet?

Not at Xtra anymore, it would seem -- or 'a few hundred' rounded to the nearest thousand below. Hmmm.

May 5, 2006

Privacy and soft drink

Which have nothing to do with each other, but off MSNBC's news website, happenings in the US:

From the latter:

The phone records are generally acquired by the resellers through fraudulent means and would not be admissible in court as evidence, but they are still helpful as an investigative tool, say officials familiar with the investigation.

The alleged use of the customer records by law enforcement officials could raise legal and ethical questions, as it would circumvent due process and years of established laws protecting consumers from random eavesdropping on electronic communications.

And, on a random note: The Style Contest for Movable Type, Typepad and LiveJournal.

April 20, 2006

Google in China: The Big Disconnect

Via David Goldstein, something from NYT: Google in China: The Big Disconnect. David describes it as: what I reckon is an 8,000 word story that deals with China and Google, censorship, internet use in China, cultural differences on the use of the internet between China and the west.

He suspects it won't be up for long. I guess we'll see.

February 13, 2006

Uploads again

So now, faster upload speeds, if you want to pay more. Possibly not me at these prices, anyway.

February 8, 2006

A start on broadband

But will the strong words follow through, though?

I could do with the upstream bandwidth. I can't be the only one that does uploads at home for reasons other than violating copyright.

November 2, 2005

Get a free rootkit with your next music purchase

That's right, people, according to Sysinternals. Buy the album Get Right with the Man by the Van Zant brothers, and courtesy of their record label, one apparently will get a rootkit installed on their Windows system that's difficult to remove.

And if you buy it in the next fifteen minutes, I imagine that, instead of steak knives, you'll get a lot of frustration instead.

October 16, 2005

027 versus 021 voice quality

Is it me or is the voice quality on my 021 GPRS/GSM handset better than the 027 CDMA handset I have been checking out for a couple of days now?

Either way, both of them are working, which is what matters. I hope both of them will, at least until number portability finally comes about -- which I'll believe when I see it happening.

September 8, 2005

Charging and charring

Guess who's going to start charging for viewing content?

Mutter.

Update: DPF and Jordan Carter have both mentioned this, plus some clarifications. So, not so bad, actually. Yet. Phew!

September 6, 2005

Flashers

Now I've heard it all: Passenger snaps flasher on New York subway.

On the subject of really short stories, the New Zealand Herald really, really need to elaborate a little bit more on what services Telstra are supposedly cutting, even as an initial published story.

September 5, 2005

Radio New Zealand streams

Seems like Radio New Zealand have finally made the official release of the meta file addresses for their Windows Media live streams. Their audio website lists http://meta.radionz.co.nz/live/national.asx and http://meta.radionz.co.nz/live/concert.asx as a Live Stream Test, whatever they mean by that; http://meta.radionz.co.nz/live/rnzi.asx, while also listed, has been available on RNZI's audio website for some time now.

This will be extremely useful, especially if the peering issues can be sorted out. I still remember the RealAudio stream of yonder ago. It was a pity that was stopped and we had to wait quite a few years for this. Hopefully it lasts.

August 20, 2005

Peering in

Now, Radio New Zealand, bless their souls, are running a live National Radio stream especially for coverage of the David Lange memorial service (and bless him, too). Now, this setup is the prime example of the effects of peering -- the primary server hosting the full rate stream is pretty much firewalled to anyone off a Telecom- or TelstraClear-sourced Internet feed. I'm getting the United States-based feed that's a vastly lower rate on both Xtra and Paradise.

The ironic thing about this setup -- and Computerworld has suggested that this is it -- is that Xtra license some Radio New Zealand content on their streaming media page. Perhaps they'll be nice to their customers and host a mirror of the live feed. Unmetered too, if we're lucky, maybe?

There's so many potentially political issues I'll just leave it there. But it'd be nice to get a universally accepted access arrangement.

August 19, 2005

Zotob

I don't know why people don't patch their machines so regularly, but it seems my, uh, paperwall is picking up a lot of port 445 attempts, as well as the usual naughty behaviours on port 138.

Come on, the bloody outbreak is happening, people. Really, it is. There's even a rival infection going around, too.

Oh well. Back to the idle monotony of homework.

August 8, 2005

Diebold in Wellington

So, Diebold is definitely in New Zealand. Yay -- that is, in their perennial ATM business (not their other business in voting machines, I should add). Well, if anyone hadn't noticed, anyway -- at your favourite Kiwibank machine, at least. They're also it seems arrived in Victoria, Australia, too:

Diebold on a Commonwealth Bank machine in Melbourne.

The above Flickr photograph also links to a machine at Carnegie Mellon University turned into a Windows Media Player box.

Then, of course, there's the inevitable Windows boot screens and diagnostic screens that apparently instill confidence in some. Me, I'm not sure what to think.

A Diebold-supplied automatic teller machine rebooting Windows after a crash. A Diebold automatic teller machine running diagnostics on itself after crashing.

Anyway, it's not the best of photographs of the back of automatic teller machines, but it does clearly say 'Diebold' on the back screen of this Kiwibank one in Civic Square, Wellington:

Yes, Diebold do Kiwibank automatic teller machines, too.

[Listening to: dig Jazz: "Music With Depth" -- Australian Broadcasting Corporation]

Update: naturally, I'm not the first to notice and post pictures of Kiwibank machines with errors or other (supposedly, I'm told) tell-tale Diebold stuff labelled on them.

Free local telephone calls could come under scrutiny

I wonder what does under scrutiny and up for a rethink mean in this particular context?

August 4, 2005

Projects and news

I've been working on a few GEND-related projects and assignments lately, so while the scanning is related, that's been put back a little. So, if anyone's looking for a reason why I've decided to leave the InternetNZ council, there you go.

Anyway, one's a short 20-shot photographic essay of supermarket shopping, which I've titled I Promise I'll Be Gentle. More about it once I hand it in.

July 27, 2005

Leap second

Ha. You're getting an extra second this year. So there.

SCMA news now. Now that the WSCF-AP books have been uploaded, I've been working on arranging the DVD Our Stories, Our Struggle: Life and Mission of World Student Christian Federation Asia-Pacific to be put online. Thanks to those doing that -- I'll post details and credits when it's done.

[Listening to: We Belong Together -- Mariah Carey -- We Belong Together (03:23)]

July 7, 2005

Net users change habits to avoid spyware

NZH: The Pew internet and American Life Project found that an overwhelming majority of internet users have stopped opening questionable email attachments, or taken other steps to avoid a plague of stealthy, unwanted programs that can disable computers or secretly monitor online activity.

June 27, 2005

Friday night at Jet Bar

Wine glass and lamp shade, Courtenay Place.

Wine glass and lamp shade, Courtenay Place.

Originally uploaded by Jonathan Ah Kit.

Friday night, downstairs, over at Jet Bar in Courtenay Place, Wellington.

In unrelated news, Judgments of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand on Proceedings to Review Aspects of the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Mount Erebus Aircraft Disaster and Safe Marriage: A Return to Sanity got posted to Project Gutenbery today as 16130 and 16135 respectively. Yay! The Section 27(1) pages will also get updated this week with the links.

June 26, 2005

It's all expensive

The US situation: Beyond Wi-Fi: Laptop Heaven but at a Price. Plenty of technologies can get you online wirelessly these days, but there's always a catch. Wi-Fi Internet hot spots are fast and cheap, but they keep you tethered to the airport, hotel or coffee shop where the hot spot originates.

June 25, 2005

Rats! Lines Companies! Rodents! Telecom!

So, it was a rat, after all, and lines company contractors. And now it's time for Telecom to talk compensation for themselves. This will be fun for them.

And there's little demand for business DSL upstream speeds faster than 128? Someone tell me that Telecom are joking. Really. They must be.

June 21, 2005

Rat blamed

Um, a rat isn't exactly a road contractor, though a (possible) rat and a electricity contractor hitting a cable probably is. I don't even want to know the cost of the fibre cut. Things were a bit crazy around town, after all.

June 20, 2005

Sliced fibre, anyone?

All right, who smells that Xtra's and Telecom's problems today are thanks to someone (last time I remember something similar, it was a road contractor, but of course it doesn't mean it was them this time) slicing a little bit of Telecom fibre optic cable?

If it was just one cable, perhaps having a backup route might actually be a good idea...

I'm typing this over dialup. Helps having backup connectivity off a provider that avoids the telco that provides your usual network access. :)

June 19, 2005

Burke defeats Burke

Sometimes life doesn't seem fair, does it, like being defeated in a grand electoral steeplechase by not only a landslide, but getting defeated by a namesake