mostly useless crap from me

I landed in Munich and waited to pick up my luggage. The new airport feels like one big BMW ad. There’s BMW everywhere, so at least I had something to look at. Eventually my bag came, and I headed out. I met up with Steve Riehm, who is hosting me in Munich. When I was organizing the last minute trips, I did not know that Munich is hosting a goodly percentage of the soccer World Cup, so all the flights were full and mine was no exception. That’s why I had to travel to Munich a day earlier than I expected.

The weather in Munich is even worse than that in St Anna, which is hard to top. Steve cranked on the heated seats in his beemer, and I was toasty in seconds.

After dropping my crap at his place, we geeked around a bit and then headed into town for a look see. I took heaps of photos, which can be found in the Gallery, here:

After walking around Munich for a few hours, my footsies were a bit sore. Luckily, there was a pub only a little distance away, so we ended up eating there, and again, I was surprised to find that Visa is not accepted widely in this fairly first world nation. Unbelievable. After a few really nice beers and some roast suckling pig and crackling (the Germans know how to do pork!), Steve bundled me home on the excellent public transport here. If only Melbourne had such good public transport!

We traded Euros for Australian dollars as the Travellex rate was insanely bad. My normal savings card didn’t work here, despite the ATM I used having a Cirrus logo. So beware if you come from a place like Australia where everyone uses electronic cash and come to a place like Munich, where it’s hard to use your own money. I wonder how many tourists to the World Cup are going to be bitten … coming here with only a tad of real money like me, and expecting to use ATMs and EFTPOS as per normal.

We watched a movie – Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Awesome film noir / comic / kitsch. Get it!

On Thursday morning, I took the very reasonably priced train up to my family near St Nicklaas. It looks a long way on the map, but it’s only 40 or so km. Europe is compact that way. The weather is still crappy and it barely makes it above 10 C.

Met up with Eddy at the train station, and we had a good old conversation about geeky stuff. Eddy is a funny bloke – he didn’t know where the coffee was, so he rang his sister, who popped over with some coffee and a filter. Then when his better half (Viviane) came home, she showed us where the coffee was… it was right in front of the cupboard. The shame of it!

We had an awesome meal of witlof and ham and cheese sauce, much thanks to Viviane’s awesome cooking. Eddy broke out the wine, and we started getting merry.

Those were taken around 7 pm… the sun finally came out, and it was still cold, but at least I’ve seen the sun whilst I was overseas! It’s supposedly summer, but it’s colder than Melbourne.

More family came around after dinner, and we had some awesome beer, West Vleteren. Eddy thinks it’s best beer in the world, and I think he could very well be right. I stayed with the family overnight, pushing Michael out of his room. Sorry about that Michael!

In the morning, I left for Munich. Europe has awesome integrated public transport. Even though the train for the airport had been cancelled, I made my checkin at the airport with ages to spare. The new part of the airport is shiny and new. They really need to demolish the old bit as it makes a terrible impression, and I’m sure with 97 gates in the new bit, they can afford to get rid of the crusty old terminal.

Well, I’ve just had my first experience with eBay of being kicked in the teeth for being honest. I’ve been a member for six years, and until last week, I maintained a perfect 100% reputation basically by being me in all my dealings. Here’s a hint – it’s simply not worth it as eBay will not back you up when the going gets tough.

A woman wins one of my four auctions last week. She bid several times on a table setting, comes to my place, asks to measure the table in a lame effort to prove that the table is smaller than I said in the listing, and says she doesn’t want it as it’s too narrow and she likes to spread out. She then leaves.

Sorry lady, on eBay, like all auction houses, if you bid on it and you win it, you own it. So I leave her negative feedback for abandoning the sale:

Refused item even though exactly as described and as per photos. Not recommended

She then leaves negative feedback for me, but in her case, she lied:

item failed to meet description. do not recommend, waste of time

This is a laugh as:

0) the description is accurate (8 seat table with 6 chairs). The table can seat eight if you must, but six is about right.
a) the description of the condition is accurate (as new, with minor dints from regular use)
b) there’s photos of the item including a photo of the only chair which has (cleanable) marks
c) there’s accurate measurements in the questions area five days before the auction ended for all to read

I complain to eBay. They suggest asking her to withdraw the feedback. I do so, even though I know she wont. She didn’t. I complain again to eBay. They tell me that due to US law, they can’t remove even slanderous postings. Sorry fellas, Gutnick proved that Victoria, Australia defamation law trumps US defamation law. All the way to the High Court. eBay have a responsibility to deter and remove slanderous postings when they occur, and not hide behind some lame interpretation of US law which simply doesn’t apply here.

So what’s eBay’s final offer? Ask the liar who didn’t pay for her winnings to mutually withdraw the negative feedback. I’m loathed to do this as a poor rating is a good warning to other sellers / buyers that all is not well with that person. But I want my 100% back for exactly the same reason, and I’m buggered if I’m going to pay some shiny arse lawyer $20k or more to get a clean eBay account again through winning a defamation case.

Six years of being “me” down the drain.

So if you want to be treated nice at eBay – shit all over the other sellers. There’s nothing that eBay will do to you. At all. eBay is not the good guy’s friend. do not recommend, waste of time.

I’ve been off the air effectively for two weeks with the temperature sensor issue. It’s been everything I could do just to do the things I had to do, like moderate the webappsec queue. Everything else – writing the Guide, responding to e-mail, doing my slides for OWASP EU, etc have all been put on hold. That really sucks.

The AppleCenter told me that my Mac would be ready at 3 pm, so when I popped in at 4.45 pm to pick it up, I was surprised to find that it was not yet done. The tech replaced the lid and I got out of the store just after 6 pm.   

AppleCenter Richmond repaired my Mac using a spare part from another G4 laptop that didn’t end up needing it, rather than wait any longer for the mythical part to come from Apple’s lephrechaun factory. The laptop now has no warranty, so hopefully it will survive long enough for me to save enough dosh to buy a MacBook Pro, or … more likely a nice shiny Dell. 

The trackpad button is now really stiff and the temperature sensor is reading the ambient temperature of the interior of the case (around 25-40 C depending on use). This is good. However, I feel an eBay auction coming on as soon as I have the difference in dosh between the sale of the G4 and the next one. I can’t stand lemons.

Now, to get my life back in order. If you’ve been waiting for an e-mail response from me, I can now do it. It will take most of Easter to get through them all. I beg for your patience.

 

For the last few months, I’ve been battling a debilitating issue with my Apple G4 laptop. It has narcolepsy. The trackpad in many G4 laptops contains a faulty temperature sensor. It normally reads -16 to 4 C (which is wrong), but the operating system monitors it. From time to time (and for me all the time), the sensor will register -150 C to +260 C.

When this happens, the OS puts the computer into emergency sleep. There is no way to turn this behavior off.

This has not been the only battle with faulty hardware. My laptop lost half its memory shortly after I acquired it, and this required a new logic board to remedy. But not before Apple tried replacing all the RAM several times. In the end, it took Apple four or so weeks to get a new logic board. Luckily, I could struggle through with half my memory. Imagine if it was dead.

Well, that’s where we are today. My laptop puts itself asleep almost continuously now. I can barely get 10-20 seconds out of the laptop. For all intents and purposes, it’s a $3600 silver hunk of crap.

Apple in their infinite wisdom, must *see* the laptop fail. There are no Apple dealerships near me. I cannot easily take time off work. The Apple dealers which are open late do not have any service staff on after hours. You get the picture. I have the logs dating from January. I have the Apple support article. I know the part number. I can show the temperate sensor readings and the obvious places it goes crazy. Apple will not believe me because they haven’t seen it fail. Well, I finally managed to find some time to go take it to Apple in late March when it was totally driving me nuts. It’s now nearly 12 days later, and I still have a faulty computer.

Compare this to the last Dell I had (I’ve had three). One morning, my hard drive crapped out. I rang them at 9 am to report the issue. The tech was there at 11 am, and I was using the recovery CD at 11.15 am. Or the HP workstation I bought in the mid-90’s after my last Mac, a Quadra 650. About two years into its three year warranty, the monitor developed a fault and I rang in to get it looked at thinking I might need to drop it off somewhere. No – HP sent out a courier the same day with a brand spanking new monitor and the courier waited for me to unpack the monitor and repack the faulty monitor. Now that’s service.

Apple wants me to pay $530 for AppleCare to continue my warranty for another two years as my warranty runs out on Tuesday. It’s obvious that I need it with this pile of steaming feces – it’s a lemon. But why should I pay for such crappy service? As far as I’m concerned as a customer, if I tell you something is not right, you just tell me when I can bring the damn thing in and you will fix it right there and then.

But no – Apple can’t currently tell me when the required part (a new “top” unit, which includes the temperature sensor for the trackpad) will arrive, so I’m forced to wait. They don’t provide me an alternative laptop in the meantime.

Apple – I was considering a nice new MacBook Pro. Your truly awful customer service has turned me off your products. If you can’t be bothered to stand behind your $3600 products, when Dell stands behind their $1500 products so much better, I can’t honestly justify the additional $1100 to buy your crap.

I’m not going to buy the $530 AppleCare. I’m going to save up for a nice new shiny Dell and end my switching experience permanently. This sucks.

Don’t let your government be the only one to come up with insane and stupid reasons why they want to curtail your freedoms.

Bruce Schneier has just the idea:
Movie Plot Idea Submission Thread

Feel free to submit a story idea – you never know, you may be the next Swordfish or Firewall!

I am pissed.

My server has been blacklisted by various spam blacklist sites… because my nameserver (something I do not control) and my netblock is owned by someone the RBLs don’t like.

I found out today that our hoster, Quantum Tech, is owned by a convicted spammer. But unless you rub shoulders in the dark and dingy vigilante world, it’s actually pretty hard to find out that Quantum Tech and the spammer are related. Global Web have been convicted and so they must have been forced to pay up, or else QT wouldn’t still be here. My view is that once justice has been handed out, life goes on. So like IBM and Microsoft, anti-trust convicts and other nefarious firms, once the punishment is handed out, people continue to buy from them even though their reputation has been sullied. Except that I had no idea that QT were dodgy. Saying that though, QT have provided us pretty good service for the price, and the performance of the server and network has been fine, unlike our previous hosters.

The RBLs cannot act like some cowboy sheriff from the wild west and continue their jihad against their mortal enemies. The law has had its say. If further crimes are committed, then it’s still the law’s turn, not theirs.

But that’s all an irrelevant red herring – my problem is not with Quantum Tech. It’s with the RBL vigilantes.

The terrorists at Spamhaus and SPEWS are blocking my nameserver and my dedicated host’s netblock. This basically means that for ISPs – who like stupid sheep are using these services – password reset e-mails from our site do not work reliably due to the black listing. Despite the fact WE DO NOT and NEVER WILL SPAM. If the RBLs had proof that our IP or host spammed, then sure, I can understand that, but to be tarred with the feathers of someone we don’t control and don’t care to know anything about is just stupid. It’s like all the people in a state of a country being convicted of a crime because one or two people in that state actually did do that crime. Convicted by people who appointed themselves as judge, jury and executioner, with no appeals.

I’ve had two communications so far, both dismissive of my complaint. It’s harder to get off an RBL than it is to get off a spammers mail list using the “Remove me” link. As these RBL folks act illegally, there’s no natural justice, ie no recourse to arbitration, and no mediation or dispute resolution services. Why would they? They impose their view upon the world, damn the rest. It’s creating a nuclear wasteland. More to the point, their actions are illegal.

I did some research to see what laws they are breaking in Australia. The one that got my fancy is the CyberCrime Act 2001, which amends a bunch of criminal laws to make DoS and attacks illegal. It’s pretty comprehensive and balanced for the most part. I had a hand in getting a few changes in there whilst I was president of SAGE AU – we responded to the Senate enquiry to get system admins protected whilst they were doing their job as we remember what happened to Randal Schwartz and I personally wanted to make sure that the clauses previously protecting only Commonwealth computers was extended to all computers in Australia.

The section which I draw your attention to is 476.2:

476.2 Meaning of unauthorised access, modification or impairment
(1) In this Part:

(a) access to data held in a computer; or
(b) modification of data held in a computer; or
(c) the impairment of electronic communication to or from a
computer; or
(d) the impairment of the reliability, security or operation of any
data held on a computer disk, credit card or other device used
to store data by electronic means;

by a person is unauthorised if the person is not entitled to cause
that access, modification or impairment.
(2) Any such access, modification or impairment caused by the person
is not unauthorised merely because he or she has an ulterior
purpose for causing it.
(3) For the purposes of an offence under this Part, a person causes any
such unauthorised access, modification or impairment if the
person’s conduct substantially contributes to it.

Therefore, any unauthorized impairment, even for supposedly good purposes like spam prevention is illegal unless authorized. And for my system, you require my authorization, and I’m not going to give it. So effectively, SPEWS and Spamhaus are acting criminally if they block any Australian IP address or system controlled by Australians.

But far, far worse than this is the sheer arrogance demonstrated by their faceless peons who are too cowardly to sign their own names to their e-mails.

I asked reasonably firmly but politely that they remove their blocks:

Hi there,

You have placed my sites into an overreaching netblock, affecting aussieveedubbers.com, a site containing 4500 VW car nuts. None of the sites hosted on my dedicated server under my direct control are spam boxes. I detest spam, but you’re not helping … at all.

Please carve out two IP addresses from this listing:

69.31.39.108 – aussieveedubbers.com
69.31.39.109 – greebo.net vanderstock.com codesqa.com

Our nameservers will also need unblocking.

ns1.wickedtechnology.net 69.31.33.67
ns2.wickedtechnology.net 69.31.33.68

If your aim is to reduce spam, you are not doing it by blocking my site as we don’t spam. All you are doing is making me very angry. For the last few months, I have been hand processing 10 or 15 password resets per day that would have otherwise been handled automatically. That’s right – your useless service is blocking 10 or 15 legitimate e-mails a day. Good work, fellas. That’ll really knock the spam problem on the head.

If you do not fix this up within 24 hours, further action will be taken.

Here’s their response:

“We have placed?” How long have you been hosted on these IP addresses?

This range was listed on Feb 05, 2004 – almost exactly TWO YEARS AGO.

We’d suggest your talk to Mike Van Essen and his “Quantum Tech Pty Ltd”, the owner of these IP addresses, why he does not tell people, 1) that they are listed by us and others, and 2) why they are listed.

One must have due diligence as to where one hosts.

–
Regards,

The Spamhaus Project

Despite their arrogant imputation we are clueless noobs (“due diligence as to where one hosts”), we in fact checked out Webhostingtalk (there’s one link to “Quantum Tech” back in 2002), and read over the AUP and conditions carefully. The price was right for a dedicated host for our non-profit car forum.

But it is completely unreasonable to think that we should perform a criminal background check against the ISP. Could you imagine every customer doing this to AOL, OptusNet, BlackBerry, or Verizon? Don’t make me laugh!

But it still misses the point – I DO NOT SPAM. Therefore, Spamhaus and friends should get their hands out of their backsides and remove their black list. Spamhaus and friends are causing us financial loss as users can’t register on our site and they can’t recover their passwords if they forget them. Spamhaus and friends are performing criminal and illegal denial of service / impairment of our legitimate service to our Australian users provided by a legitimate site run by Australians.

If this is not resolved soon, I will be reporting them to the police. I do not take such action lightly, but I have no choice. If you’re an admin, there’s no better time to ditch the awful RBLs and go with something that works. I will also do the ring around to my mates are various large ISPs and make sure they are not using these services. Nothing would make me happier than making Spews and Spamhaus powerless.

If I were Spamhaus or Spews, I’d be looking seriously why their efforts have failed. I get a bucket load of spam every day, and so their approach has obviously failed miserably. As a someone who respects the scientific method, you need to evaluate your own methods and results so you can improve them over time. I personally believe that RBLs are ineffective and need to be scrapped. But most of all, they need to respect the rule of law and work with their country’s anti-spam and cybercrime laws. They are effective. RBLs are not – their days are over.

On bigotry

As (more than) well documented elsewhere, Blizzard have some explaining to do. They selectively stamp out gay, bi, lesbian and transgender friendly activities and options (such as advertising GBLT friendly guilds or in game same gender marriage), but do not stamp out the hetero version of the same activity. Either ban both, or allow both. There is no half-pregnant.

I think this story (found via Technorati) explains it best:
In News Weekly

Boing Boing is also running with it:
Boing Boing

WoW is littered with idiots using “gay” and “fag” as an offensive term, like “that’s so gay” or “you fag”. Yet these people are not warned or banned, as described in this post.

Blizzard need to get their act together before someone uses their country’s anti-vilification laws to slap them upside the head and close down what seems to be a fairly popular game if some of my friends are any guide.

We are now running in WP 2, and due to increasing levels of comment spam, I’ve removed the ability for guests to post comments.

Cute kitten

Those of you who blogged at Many Tubbies already have accounts and do not need to create a new account if you feel like leaving a comment. E-mail me if you’ve forgotten your password.

I don’t know what it is about Sluggardly Utility Vehicles and parking like you own the road, but within five minutes of each other, I spotted a white Territory covered in an advertising hoarding take up two spots next to the disabled spots at McDonald’s crowded carpark, and a Nissan Patrol taking two spots at the local shopping center. I took photos of both with my mobile. Maybe I’ll start a site for this: crapdrivers.com or something.

Everyone has to park the car legally to get their license. I don’t know how or why these cranially challenged drivers thought they had the right to park in two spots, but it’s disgusting. I wrote to the company who had the hoarding on the car to complain. If I get a reply, I’ll post it here.