BenV's notes

So those assholes from BREIN finally managed to get a somewhat real block through the legal system in the Netherlands.
My home ISP XS4All simply has to block them because of a court order, and not just the DNS entries as usual, but actual IP addresses this time. A traceroute to thepiratebay.org simply dies at the second hop.
Obviously this is about as effective as putting up a roadblock on only half the road, you can simply drive your browser to a ton of alternatives to still get the piratebay content. (continue reading…)

This just made my day.

First I read on slashdot that their insurer sues them, and personally I hope they win because of Sony’s incompetence regarding their ‘security’. Not that I like insurance companies much, so they can burn as well… which makes this almost perfect. In a lawsuit only the lawyers win, so once those lawyers die in a fire this will be perfect. (continue reading…)

Another reason to avoid MySQL

Today MySQL has managed to piss me off enough to get rid of it for something I was working on.
The case:
I just created a brand new database. In that database I want to store items, and those items should be linked to users.
So as a first stab I had this CREATE TABLE statement:

Guess what MySQL said? Of course, it said “Sure thing dude!”. And to make sure you believe me, here’s the verbatim:

Well guess what….
IT LIED!
Those references to the user table? What references? (continue reading…)

I don’t like Sony much … in fact, I pretty much hate them and have to laugh every time I read a new post about them being hacked in whatever form.
No, you can’t feel sorry for corporations. Let alone corporations that fuck you over every chance they get.
That said, I do have a PS3 (running Dosbox and ScummVM among things), and I once had this PS3 connected to the PlayStation Network.

So they just sent me an email:

Sony: Playstation Store is back!

Dear Playstation Network-user,

We are very happy that we can tell you that the access to the PlayStation-Store through PlayStation-3, PSP (PlayStation Portable) and Media Go on your PC has been completely restored.

And then they go on about what you receive as compensation (free game, free month of PlayStation Plus), but because they allegedly improved the security you have to change your password.
Then there’s a gibberish link to eu.playstationmail.com that I followed, hoping to be able to change my password.
This is what my browser showed:

Sony PlayStation stuff still down

Funny bastards

Today is proclaimed World IPv6 Day, in order to motivate everyone to just fucking get it done already. And test if people have issues today of course
They’ve had years and years and still major ISPs haven’t even heard of IPv6 or simply can’t be arsed because there’s little demand for it. (Boohoo, “it costs money to upgrade our ancient equipment“)
So attention everyone: if you don’t have IPv6 right now, mail your ISP, bug their contact for(u)ms, and spam their phones. You want it!
If you’re hosting content and don’t have it: bug your provider about it as well. It’s saddening to see how few hosting providers today still don’t offer IPv6, even though it’s been out there for over a decade!

One of the reasons my home connection is with XS4All is that they deliver native IPv6 to the doorstep.
All machines at home automagically receive an IPv6 address from my modem and it just works ™. No hassles with tunnels or anything, simply turn it on and it works.

As for the “Why would I care?“. Because it’s fun to play with. Because it’s neat to have so many public addresses.
No more NAT and port forwarding to get your webserver reachable on the internet, but simply open up port 80 in your firewall and you’re done!
You’ll have so many addresses (assuming your ISP are not major dickheads that only hand out single IPs, but they won’t) that you can put an IPv6 address
on every device you have, for every program you have, for every pixel on your screen and still you’ll have tons to spare.

If you’re not sure if you have it, there’s this test to check, but I sure hope you know about the state of your connection without such tests

In case your stupid provider is being the usual dumbdumbhead and won’t be bothered (and obviously you can’t switch because they have the local monopoly) you can get IPv6 connectivity for free through a tunneling broker by at least two parties that I know of. One of them is Hurricane Electric, the other Sixxs (although they can be dicks, so I’ll be a dick by not linking them )
It will give you the ability to tinker with IPv6, so give it a shot if you’re new to it. Did I mention it’s free?

But how do I configure IPv6 on my Slackware machine?
Well, if you do it properly and get it through your ISP natively your modem will take care of it. It’ll announce your prefix to your network and if you have your kernel set to autoconfigure it (which is default, as long as you’ve loaded the ipv6 module) it’ll get an address based on your mac address.
Adding addresses manually is just as easy as with ipv4:

So go and check it out, it can be fun

Oh yeah, obviously my notes are available on IPv6. And it seems to be a lot faster than google at the moment

Needless to say Adobe had an update today.
Since we’re running a windows 2008 server with users that don’t have administrator rights, Adobe is very annoying to start with.

<Adobe>”Hey I have an update! Oh, I can’t install it because you need administrator rights, but I’ll keep bugging you with it anyway, MWHOAHAHHAHA”

So if that isn’t enough already (and they have an update about every week … if not more often), the piece of cancer can’t even update. Even when running the updater as administrator:

Mysterious fail

Of course it would be terrible to state what the problem is, so they only give you “Error: 1403″ to work with.
Thanks Adobe, really useful. It’s unfortunate that some morons here insist on needing it (Because some idiot customers send us PDF files with chinese fonts and other rubbish that isn’t handled well in better pdf readers).

Feh.

If you’re like me you probably already hate the scumm that’s called Sony.
For installing rootkits on your pc. For taking away the ability to run linux on your PS3.
For being a Sony Cancer.
They’ve been assholes for as long as I can remember. Just check out their latest Playstation network agreement if you want to see how they trample your rights.

Anyhow, the guy being sued by them today (geohot – the one giving back linux on the ps3) has now setup a donation place to get some good lawyers.
So if you have a bit of coin to spare for a good cause, this is it. Anti Cancer! Pro Linux! What else could you want to spend your money on?

They’ve managed to piss me off once more.
I had to do a windows reinstall (XP of course) for some idiots that fubar-ed their machine, so after the usual install, 5 million windows updates, service packs, reboots and firefox install I figured I should probably install flash for them.
How hard can it be to install Adobe Flash? (continue reading…)

How incredibly stupid can they possibly get… like a dumb user that keeps running virus infected “naked hot girls!!!” screensavers, they keep adding DRM.
And now we’ve reached the point where they expect you to stay connected constantly to play a single player game.
Aahahahaha. Bye bye Ubisoft, may the pirates laugh at you and dance on your grave.
Alas for Settlers 7.. could have been an interesting game.

However, I expect them to revert their plans when enough badmouthing hits the news and make them “only” half as bad as they currently are.
We’ll see.

I can’t for the life of me begin to imagine why anyone would use cmake as an autoconf alternative. (continue reading…)