Coofer Cat's Weblog

I stumbled across this article which I wanted to comment on, but needed to log in. That's all far too tedious, so I'm writing here instead.

Apparently, the US wants supreme GPS control of the world (what a suprise). They reserve the right to switch off GPS if their enemies are using it against them. That sounds fair enough, after all, they put it up there and they maintain it. However, they also reserve the right to shoot down European GPS satellites if US enemies use them against the US. Hmm... now I'm not so happy.

Today I have mostly...

• Go for a run
• Make a nice coffee
• Implement a proper backup regimem on coofercat.com
• Batch fetch Blogsnobs to avoid simpleleads.net congenstion slowness
• Make a curry for lunch
• Install purple PC with work software
• Get work bank details & do VAT stuff

What an interesting life I lead. Might have a go at that software install now though. I'm just procrastinating (as always). The curry turned into "emergency pizza", so will have to wait until tomorrow (like the bank/VAT stuff). I have found a good (dancy) Internet Radio station today though.

I've just got back from a week in Les Arcs (2000), France (which is why it's been quiet here for a week ;-). I've had a great time...

This week's been really busy for me. It's not been devoid of news either...

The UK Terror laws got a smack down by Lord Hoffman, who said they contraviened European Human Rights, and he went on to say, "The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these."

Before we get too excited about a Lord who has a clue, we have to remember that politicians in power universally seem to have less of a clue. Jack Straw says the Lords got it wrong. The pressure is mounting though. As usual, the BBC have a run down of people's comments on the subject. Personally, I can't imagine how it's possible to have detention without trial in a civilised country. If these people are really a threat to our safety, then let's understand how and why. A government simply telling us that's the case doesn't really convince anyone. As one of the comments says, if any other country was imprisoning people indefinitely without trial, we'd be over there bombing them.

Of course, this week the big story was Charles Clarke taking over from David Blunkett in the Home Office. I'm not sorry Blunkett had to resign, although the reasons look a bit flaky to me. Sadly though Charles Clarke has no ideas of his own, so he'll be pressing ahead with ID cards.

In more good news, the BBC remind us that the Freedom of Information act comes fully into force on January 1st. In good BBC tradition, they've done us an excellent public service and have written up how to use the Freedom of Information Act. I may well try to librate some information from the Home Office very soon.

(Incidentally, the BBC also link to the mail and telephone preference websites, if you fancy stopping direct marketing coming your way)

The other day, after about a week of hacking around with WebSphere (a crap product at best) I'd had enough. IBM's website is terrible, and their search engine never finds what you want (and they've locked out Google so you can't use that instead). I decided to complain/ask how I'm supposed to find stuff...

I'm known to have the occasional rant at companies and service providers. However, Blogdial's Richard North completely out-rants me with this genius composition. Oh man, I'm going to have to remember that one...

I'm waching a concerted comment spam attack on coofercat.com at the moment. So far I've had 13 comment posting attempts, all from different IP addresses (presumably a load of zombie Windows machines). I'm seeing them every 10 minutes or so, each to different articles. This looks to me like a GM specific attack, and controlled by a central point (because the posts are not randomly hitting articles). I've disabled comments until I can sort this out.

Incidentlly, all the comments have been for online casinos and gambling and contain a short paragraph, presumably taken randomly from an essay. I've tried scanning the remote machines, but as yet haven't identified anything useful.

Update: I've made some changes to the comments system. You have to preview comments to post now, which should prevent 'bots from posting.

It warms my little feline heart to know that coofercat.com does, in some small way contribute to society. Perhaps it entertains you, perhaps it makes you feel better to know there's someone more geeky than you, perhaps it makes you aspire to be as cool and sexy as me, or perhaps it's just a good place to have a good read and tell us your stories of woe.

In an "infinte number of monkeys" type way, this meandering drivvel occasionally creates a masterpiece. This one has it all. It's a story of two marauding factions, each feeling they have valour and honour on their side. Will the guy get the girl? Will the two sides kiss and make up? Will justice be done? Will the Gateshead 15 be released? Stay tuned to find out.

Hacking the iPod firmware (via /.) is really good. Time to put your shirt on backwards, prop up your easel, mix up those paints and get painting your iPod (okay, metaphorically).

If the Apple lawyers get busy, you can get the firmware editor here.

I've spent all day trying to get WebSphere 5's wsadmin to setup LDAP based server security (a job that should have taken an hour or two at most). What a bag of spanners - they've buggered up the WAS config, and didn't make wsadmin do lists properly, so the only way to make this work is to delete the whole LDAP config, and then put it back again. The amount of JACL hackery required is incredible. WebSphere is crap. IBM's websites don't let Google in, their own search engine is useless, and the only WebSphere information you can find anywhere is about training. Tell you anything?

Remember kids: WebSphere costs you more. Try WebLogic or JBoss - far superior (although don't have the glitzy TV ads to go with them).