Recently in Rant Category

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My definition of Mental Wanking reads like a medical affliction.

Main Entry:

men·tal mas·tur·ba·tion

mental stimulation, especially of one's own mind commonly resulting in time wasting. Can be achieved by missing the point or an acute lack of realism. More prevalent in certain fields, critics ( in particular literature ), software engineers, tv buffs etc. Can occasionally be accompanied by mental fantasies, arrogance, bad temper and or delusions.

For those looking for individual definitions of the word I took the following from Websters.

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I have no idea when or why this started happening for me but I started getting Unrouteable address appearing for any external address.

I'm a huge fan of Debian but there are some things that really piss me off. One is the way they have completely screwed the exim4 configuration. Exim4, if you are not an administrator or mail guru is not the simplest thing in the world to configure, it's config file is fairly involved and you can do anything in it. Add DEBCONF variables to this and you have a complete nightmare configuration.I spent two days tracking this error down to the following:

DCconfig_internet=1

That was all I had to add to /etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template

Why this changed I have no idea. The setting I am using in /etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf is

dc_eximconfig_configtype='internet'

I really cannot make head nor tail out of this at all. I sometimes wish I had started learning Postfix instead of Exim but part of me thinks that it's not Exim but rather the way it has been packaged up thats compicated.

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After my Gaming Hardware post I decided to have a look at what the gaming field is up to i.e. do ping times still dominate the conversation. Is everyone still as infatuated with performance as they were several years ago. I used to do some gaming and I would still like to but I get too sucked into it and lose weeks of my life so I made a conscious decision to stop. I backslide every once in a while when a killer game comes out or if I play something somewhere and get hooked.

Caveat: I am not addressing game enjoyment in this post its game performance i.e. do you want to be the last man standing. High performance hardware does lead to more "fun" etc but not necessarily better gaming performance. When I say mid-range hardware I am also not talking about moms word processor or 3 year old hardware. It needs to be reasonably decent hardware to run the game properly.


From a casual glance around the net it would appear that hardware performance and hardware issues seem to dominate the message boards. I always found the perpetual hardware performance chasing and worrying about hardware to be a distraction.

I remember playing games on mid range hardware, for the time, and dealing out my fair share of mayhem. In general the people who were trouncing everyone were also running mid range hardware. Don't get me wrong I'm not talking PC world hardware, that's what I would call bottom of the range. The machines were mostly hand built based on bang for buck at computer fairs on Tottenham Court Road. The biggest factor I found in action games was ping times not hardware. Above a certain level of performance it seemed to matter very little what hardware you were running.

I'm not sure if this still holds but I believe ping times and player performance still dominate overall gaming performance. Slight digression... It annoys me to see how much emphasis there is on the hardware performance but it's in the interests of the manufacturers to make sure that performance is seen as a big advantage in gaming or anything. The following is a question I have heard more than once.

My PC is slow on the internet, what sort of PC would you recommend to speed it up?

The PC is most likely not the problem in this case, its the connection. You can browse the quite happily on 5 year old hardware if the connection is good. Shop owners are also selling PC's that people don't need its a bit like going looking for a Mondeo and coming out with a Ferrari.

Anyway, back to the main point. Lets assume all ping times are equal. If this is the case then player performance really matters. To get good at something involves practice and lots of it so it pays to watch how sports teams or the military train, its drill, drill, drill. The military make you go through the motions so often you are sick of it but can do it blindfolded. There's not a huge amount of fun in this and it involves a lot of effort and mental stamina, it's also why not everyone is cut out for the military or sport. My brother played Super Mario Bros to the point where he would reset it if he lost a life and was able to easily complete the entire game with one life. It was when I seen him do this that I knew I would never be a great gamer. To be great at any sport involves this level of dedication and yes I consider gaming to be a sport.

So if you're serious about gaming stop focusing on hardware etc and start focusing on yourself. Are you fit, well rested? Do you respond faster to sound than light? Do you drink alcohol, take too much caffeine, how much caffeine is too much? What time of day are you at your best? What's your resting heart rate? How often do you practice, are your opponents as good or better than you? Drill Drill Drill....

My personal opinion is that most of us don't need to focus on hardware that much. Ping times possibly but I don't believe hardware would give me that much of an edge. It may make the game more fun or a better overall experience but this does not necessarily mean I would perform better.

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I need a fast desktop for development and was at the dell website when I came across the following link.
These guys do "high performance PC's". I clicked on the fastest looking offering they had and the total price for the basic package is £3008 (I kid you not). For that price I get an odd looking case (see pic on right). The case looks like it was designed as a bottle for mens aftershave (pimp my pc). You also get the following.

Alien Case (see pic on right)
Intel® Core™ i7-940 Performance 2.93GHz 8MB Cache
1GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 280
1000 Watt Alienware® Approved Multi-GPU Power Supply
3GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz - 3 x 1024MB
Alienware® Approved Intel® X-58 Chipset Motherboard- Socket 1366 Core i7 Ready, Triple Channel DDR3 Memory
Windows Vista® Home Premium 64-bit with Service Pack 1
1.0 TB SATA 3Gb/s 7200 RPM (2 x 500GB)
20X Dual Layer DVD±RW/CD-RW Writer
High-Definition 7.1 Performance Audio - Standard
Logitech® Classic Keyboard UK - Space Black
Standard Optical 3-Button Mouse with Scroll Wheel

To say I am woefully unimpressed with the above is a bit of an understatement. I have not looked overly hard at the rest of the details but those are the main parts.

I decided to put my old hat on and go shopping to see how much it would cost me if I was prepared to build it and this is what I was able to ruffle up in a few minutes.

Case	100
Intel® Core™ i7-940 Performance 2.93GHz 8MB Cache	440
1GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 280	300
1000 Watt Power Supply (multi GPU)	150
3GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz - 3 x 1024MB (Corsair)	91
Intel® X-58 Chipset Motherboard- Socket 1366 Core i7 Ready, Triple Channel DDR3 Memory	270
Windows Vista® Home Premium 64-bit with Service Pack 1	100
1.0 TB SATA 3Gb/s 7200 RPM (2 x 500GB)	100
20X Dual Layer DVD±RW/CD-RW Writer	50
High-Definition 7.1 Performance Audio	85
Classic Keyboard UK	12
Standard Optical 3-Button Mouse with Scroll Wheel	12
	1610

I'll add another £400 in case I have missed something or made an obvious mistake. So we can save £1000, I don''t know about you but thats a lot of money. I probably get some warranty with the Alien machine and it comes packaged etc but it's not worth £1000. Seasoned Gamers can knock a machine up in a morning so I'd be surprised if many seasoned gamers are using these machines. I bet I could build a significantly faster machine for £3000 than the one above. It might look like shit but it'd be fast as hell.

The following paragraph is most likely way off the mark on what would constitute a good gaming machine. There are various reasons for this, for instance, ensuring the graphics cards work with server hardware, could the game take advantage of 4 CPU's with a total of 16 Cores, does the vista license allow us to have 4 sockets.

I could fit a rack in the attic or if I was close enough to the garage I could run a monitor cable etc through the roof, floor or wall to the PC. Add a power switch and a mini itx server with shared peripherals and then you can start looking at 4/5U machines with multiple CPU's with multiple cores. You can pick up some serious hardware on ebay with SCSI and hardware raid built in. Have a look on ebay.com for v40z or Add some decent graphics cards and things would be looking quite fast.

If I was gaming in the states from the UK I would also look at tunneling my traffic to the states from the UK over a compressed line. You can get dedicated servers in the states very cheaply that would make excellent end points for the tunnel. The closer you can get to the server in the states that you are playing your games on the better.

I'm off to look at desktops now.

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Please see DJB's article on this topic.

Quite often while searching on Google I find something that looks interesting and I am led to the IEEE where I am presented with a short synopsis and a link to a pdf. To get access to the pdf I have to join IEEE or pay a fee.

There are numerous organizations that do this and they're making good money at it. What I'm worried about is that for the less fortunate that don't have group access or who can't afford membership then we will never be able to access this knowledge. If we want to increase our body of knowledge globally then closing access to papers stands in the way of this.

The IEEE are asking people to sign away their copyright. The only reason for doing this is so they can profiteer from it by denying access to the papers. Because they're big and have thousands of papers means they can get away with  it.

I took a look at their home page and their logo has the following sound bite.

The world's leading professional association for the advancement of technology


I think this needs to be changed to


The world's leading professional association for the advancement of technology among the wealthy


To be published somewhere like the IEEE can impact your career. Signing away copyright to the IEEE to get a paper published may mean a budding scientist gets noticed and this is the problem. Until either the IEEE carries less weight or there is another way for people to get their work noticed then people will continue to sign their copyright over to the IEEE. Of course the IEEE could also decided to accept public domain papers and publish them for free.

I believe in free access to knowledge for everyone and this is why I am opposed to these kind of tactics. Google has the right idea! (the first line)

Google's mission is to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

I just wish they'd hurry up ;)

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I have to thank Philip Wadler for spotting the Lockharts Lament article!


If you are worried about how mathematics is being taught today then read the following article Lockharts Lament. The first few pages describe the problem perfectly. Our education system is being designed by people who have little or no understanding of the task at hand.

Perhaps mathematicians are being arrogant and calling what they do an art. I personally think it's as much an art as painting, sculpture or poetry. Its quite sad that Wikipedia doesn't have mathematics listed as an art. Surely there is nothing more expressive than mathematics. Have a look at some of the images here. Anyone with a little mathematics and a lot of people with no mathematics will find these images beautiful.

If art has anything to do with expression then for some there can be nothing more expressive than an equation. Mathematics is fundamentally about describing the world around us and more besides. Physicists use mathematics to as a tool to understand the world around us. This practical applications does not mean that it's not an art. Ask a physicists if they consider mathematics to be an art and I would bet that most think it is. The most famous equation today is E=MC^2. The beauty in this is astonishing but its not the most beautiful equations to some, F=MA may be more beautiful depending on your point of view. The fact that these equations are of huge practical importance seems to make some think that mathematics is not an art but merely a tool. Mr Lockhart's article puts it well

"Music can lead armies into battle, but that’s not why people     write symphonies."

The sooner we start treating mathematics more like an art and making it interesting the better, until that day almost every student being churned through our education system will hate the watered down shadow of a system our educators deem to call mathematics.

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Having tried for several years to get into DMOZ and getting rejected every time I always wondered why. There are literally dozens of sites doing exactly the same thing as me, indeed.com, simplyhired.com etc and they are listed. These site have a lot of clout and a lot of money whereas I am a one man band with little cash.

Imagine my surprise when I came across Corrupt DMOZ Editor. I may just have been a bit naive when I assumed that DMOZ was the real deal but this blog has given me food for thought.

Google and various other large sites use DMOZ for seeding their search or for their own directories etc. So If there is any truth in this and DMOZ is rife with corruption then anyone using the data is perpetuating the problem. Putting on my cynical head I can see how DMOZ could be easily corrupted. What I would like to know is if there is any truth in it or not. If so I can forget about DMOZ.

I actually admire what DMOZ is trying to do. I am not sure if it as relevant as it was but I do believe that there is a place online for a human edited directory. DMOZ needs to change though. It is becoming less relevant as time goes by and it would be a shame to see it all go to waste.

The more I dig into this topic on Google the more I feel dismayed. It looks like a lot of the top editors are corrupt and are disabling account of the lower editors that are not. To paraphrase Charles Adams "Bad Editors drive out the Good",

Here are a few more interesting entries on the topic of DMOZ.

This guys site got banned after he refused to pay a bribe!

Removed from DMOZ for not paying Bribe

The following DMOZ editor's account was disabled when he tried to do something about the guys website above.

Editor Banned for doing the right thing

Time for ODP to Close (Danny Sullivan)

ODP Founder Coments (Danny Sullivan)

Lords of ODP

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The alternaitives system in Debian is a pain in the arse! It's one of those things that when you need to use it you spend twenty minutes trying to figure out why various paths etc have changed and then you need to figure out the syntax to change to the path that was working before you installed Tomcat or some other related system that downloads a bunch of stuff and sets itself up as default for the rest of the system. It's a tad irritating.

I am not saying I know a better way to do it but it still pisses me off. Anyway to use a sane version of java I had to run the following command to get eclipse working again.

$:~# update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /usr/local/sdk-5_05/jdk 1
$:~# update-alternatives --list java
/usr/lib/jvm/java-gcj/jre/bin/java
/usr/local/sdk-5_05/jdk
$:~# update-alternatives --remove java /usr/lib/jvm/java-gcj/jre/bin/java

I now have eclipse working again and tomcat installed. I was going to use jetty6 over tomcat but because Debian comes bundled with a binary tomcat distribution I have decided  to use it. This decision may cost me dearly later.

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It makes me sick!

I walk past the Unison building every morning and for the last few days there have been several beggars stood outside asking me for more money.

It galls me to think that the beggars posing as workers think they deserve more money. Damn few of the rest of us are getting anything. In fact we are all TAKING A PAY CUT. Thats what it means when times are tough. But Oh No, if you're in a union, in particular if you are in the public services you can bend us all over a barrel. Didn't anyone teach these people economics 101.

1. You force the government to give you a pay rise.
2. The government still needs to pay for hospitals, police, roads etc
3. They raise taxes and print a few billion notes to cover costs.

We're all feeling the pinch. Petrol is up, food is up, gas is going up and the private sector is suffering. What makes these unions think they deserve the money more than anyone else. They don't!

I sincerely hope I am not alone in thinking that Gordon Brown should tell them all to grow up. I'm sick of pampered public sector workers thinking they're having a harder time than anyone else in the country. Their two day strike has cost some families two days more childcare. Did they think about this, I would imagine that the ones organizing the strike have and the more pain they can inflict to get what they want the better.

My personal opinion is that anyone striking for more pay in the current climate should be positively encouraged to find alternative employment elsewhere (fired).

It's time society and government stood up to unions, that are nothing more than self interest groups and lobbyists, shafting the rest of society. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against an honest gripe and workers putting down tools, but this is taking the piss.



 

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I just received a credit card offer from Capital One in the post today. They offered me a credit card with a 34.94% APR. Yes, thats right, 34.94%. Lets put this in perspective.

Lets say on your 18th Birthday your parents give you £100. Being sensible you invest this in a pension scheme which of course saves you tax etc. Over the next 45 years the pension scheme earns 34.94% interest annually. Guess how much you would be worth when you reach 65 years of age.

£670 Million

Lets say mum and dad could afford to give you £5000 pounds and you did the same with this. How much would you be worth at retirement.

£33.5 Billion

For our American cousins thats

$65.3 Billion

You'd be the richest person on the planet by a long margin. Bill Gates would be asking you to dinner.

To say I was dumb struck is an understatement. I had a look on their website and they are offering credit cards for 9.9% APR. So if you take their mail offer up they charging you 3.5 times more than on line customers. What customers are unlikely to check on line? Yes, the elderly and low income.

I don't know about anyone else but charging 34.94% interest seems morally wrong to me. I recently read the book Super Crunchers and to be honest I am pretty sure that I am just one of a random selection of customers they have sent offers to.

Capital One have been pioneering the use of random statistical tests to see where customer pain points are. It works like this.

100,000 customers get offered credit cards (the numbers following are just examples). The customers are broke up into random segments where

25% get offered the credit cards at 34.94%
25% get offered the credit cards at 24.94%
25% get offered the credit cards at 14.94%
25% get offered the credit cards at 9.94%

They then count how many people in each segment take the offer up. Capital One can then work out where the maximum profit point is. This sort of thing is going on all the time so I shouldn't be that annoyed about it but I just cannot help feeling it's wrong.

Note: For these people who scoff at me not including inflation try the calculation where we assume our enterprising little investor saves the same amount each year plus another 10%.