The ravens are looking a bit sluggish. Tell Malcolm they need new batteries.

I Hate It When...

I hate it when a huge and complicated report running against a huge and complicated database (doing backwards aging and analysis of 80 million invoices and payments), after running for 36 hours, coughs and dies with a nonexistent error code.

I hate that.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:06 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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A Retraction

Ez Web Hosting have proven themselves to be the least irresponsible link in the not-actually-spam chain, and have stopped using SPEWS to bounce incoming mail, going back to relying on the excellent SpamAssassin.

Which is good. Using SPEWS to filter incoming mail throws out the good with the bad - a lot of good, since SPEWS often lists thousands of IP addresses where there are only a handful of spammers. SpamAssassin, on the other hand, simply marks messages that look like spam (and it's almost always right) and passes everything along to you. Any halfway-decent mail client can then sort the good from the bad for you - without throwing away false positives. And SpamAssassin gives a much lower rate of false positives than SPEWS. It gives you the baby and the bathwater, with the bathwater neatly labeled so you can't miss it.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:10 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Yawn

As James Taranto would say, Generalissimo Francisco Franco Is Still Dead.

Another worm has run amok among the Windows Boxen of the world, spreading joy happiness chaos wherever it goes. Admittedly, Microsoft already had a patch out for this one, but who installs every patch Microsoft put out? Particularly when there's a history of some of Microsoft's patches not exactly working as advertised (read: Uh-oh. You do have a recent backup, right?).

If you're lonely - or just bored - and think you don't get enough email, and you're the lucky owner of a Netgear firewall/router, try turning on the automatic attack warning messages. I'm up to a couple of hundred an hour on my home network.

Of course, Linux just shrugs at these attacks. Like Code Red and Nimda, they just bounce off. Which is why SCO had to engage in their sad little lawsuit to kill Linux instead.

Curiously enough, senior SCO suits (I like that term; it suggests that the management of SCO consists of various uncomfortable articles of clothing rather than actual human beings) have been taking advantage of the post-lawsuit share price hike to dump their stock. Who'da thunk?

(Thanks to The Inquirer.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:55 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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The Wonders of Modern Technology

Ah, my wonderful reliable new ADSL connection....

Not.

Sigh.

And if I wasn't up fiddling with this darn aged debtors report, I wouldn't have even known it went down.

Meanwhile, only a true fansub would subtitle the words "Rizel-chan, ganbatte ne" as "Rizel-chan, ganbatte ne".

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:01 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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2.91 > 3

It's a good thing that Winamp didn't stop working on Winamp 2 when they released Winamp 3. It's not that 3 is bad, it's just that 2 is better. In almost every way.

There's a reason it's been downloaded 273,375,923 times (when I last checked).

And now it plays videos. And because it allows me to easily set it to realtime priority, it doesn't suffer when I'm running things in the background. Which is good, because I'm always running things in the background. The alternative would be a dual-processor machine for Windows, but that would require some of that money stuff I've heard about...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:32 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Wa-Hey!

It's alive! It's alive!

Woo hoo! Whee! Yeehaa!

Happy happy ADSL! Happy happy no evil "transparent" proxies! Happy happy no blocked ports! Happy happy no evil $150 per gigabyte excess! Happy happy static IP! Happy happy 512kb uploads! Happy happy $70 per month cheaper!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:04 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Nearly There

Just got confirmation from my new ISP that my line will be transferred to them very very soon.

I can't wait.

I ran over my download limit last month; that extra 600MB will cost me $90. At my new ISP, that would have only cost me $3.60.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:52 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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The Open Toad

In this world of unceasing wonder, a mainstream publication - Canada's National Post - has an interesting and well informed article about the SCO vs. Linux brouhaha.

Weather forecast in Hell: 1C to 7C, chance of overnight frost.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:01 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Oh, That's Charming, That Is

The lovely people at relays.osirusoft.com have listed me as a spammer. Why? I don't know. I can't find out, because their site is almost-but-not-quite unreachable. Five minutes to bring up maybe one quarter of a web page - and then it times out.

Yay. Not.

Update:

Looks like my hosting provider has been harbouring spammers, and I've been caught in a net cast too wide. Wonderful.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:50 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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The Other Shoe

According to news.com.com.com, the other shoe has finally dropped, and it's a size 13 steel-capped boot. IBM has countersued SCO for patent infringement and business interference. A major difference between the two suits is that IBM specifically name the patents involved, where SCO can't even decide if their suit regards copyright, patent or trade secret infringement. If you were wondering why IBM hadn't responded earlier, it would seem that they were combing through their vast patent library to see just what they could nail SCO with.

IBM have also pointed out that since SCO themselves distributed the Linux kernel, SCO is specifically prohibited from claiming any rights to the Linux kernel code under the terms of the GPL (GNU Public License).

Apparently Novell, the company that sold Unix to SCO (after buying the rights from AT&T themselves) are also considering suing SCO.

Dogpile!

(via Slashdot)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:01 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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