i seem to have a few unread messages after being away fo a few days...lets hope its just the iphone messing me about and not really that many otherwise I'm going to have to get through a lot of Viagra emails.

Seems my blog got rapped by another bot yesterday, it ignored the robots.txt file much like ID-search.org so it looks like it was id harvesting.

The offending network was giganet from the 216.40.222.50 looks like another one for the htaccess file
seems like others are having the same problem http://www.a-daily-rant.com/2007/12/17/gigamega-gona/

Intel has released Linux source code, and set up a community site, to allow Fibre Channel frames to be embedded in Ethernet packets. This means companies using Fibre Channel can make more use of the protocol while maintaining their existing kit. Open-fcoe will provide a home for developments, as well as the various tools and guides that will be needed by anyone trying the technology.

From The Register
Ethernet dances the light fantastic
I seem to have lambasted the rest of the article when i made my comments on the The Register

Part of me thinks, where were the Assistants who do the crowd control and did the director even tell the authorities that they were filming in the area??...Of course not, probably another production on the cheap thinking they can get away with it,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7149216.stm
----- The director of an Angolan crime film says police have shot dead two of his actors after mistaking them for real armed robbers.

The duo were carrying unloaded firearms as they filmed a scene in a rough suburb of the capital Luanda, director Radical Ribeiro told AFP news agency.

He said police roared up to the set and began shooting at close range.

Angolan officials have not commented on the incident. Mr Ribeiro says he had permission to film in the area.

Mr Ribeiro told AFP that police arrived at the scene in a pick-up truck and "started shooting at everybody at close range".

He was "stunned" when he saw the two actors fall down, he added.

"They went on shooting until I shouted out: 'Please don't shoot, this is a movie.'"

The officers then stopped firing and left without attending to the wounded, who were taken to hospital, Mr Ribeiro said.

Google Maps with My Location (beta)

Their website says See your location on the map, with or without GPS. Save time and tedious keystrokes finding where you are, what's around you, and how to get there. Why the uncertainty? The My Location feature takes information broadcast from mobile towers near you to approximate your current location on the map - it's not GPS, but it comes pretty close (approximately 1000m close, on average). We're still in beta, but we're excited to launch this feature and are constantly working to improve our coverage and accuracy."

So as you can see from the picture the dot is not showing me where I am, (the dot is around St James somewhere when I'm currently located in Soho, London and the accuracy of the location data can be up to 5km off. So rather than telling me i'm in Soho it could be telling me I'm in Islington lets hope they improve the accuracy soon.

Well the academics at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis revealed their shock findings yesterday from their research "Beer makes people have sex with you!!!!"

Yes, they have already started on next years work Trying to find out if the Pope is Catholic and do Bears toilet in the woods.

Release http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0145-6008
Abstract http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1530-0277.2007.00537.x

No more listening to the guitarist tune up between songs, oh bliss! Guitar manufacturer Gibson has started to produce the self-tuning Robot Guitar.

The technical details of how the axe keeps the strings nicely in tune - via pitch-monitoring bridge, CPU, and servo-motored machine heads - is available here.

Also a great training vid HTTP://www.gibson.com/robotguitar/robotguitarvideovoting.aspx?playvideo=training

indexing is great and can allow people to find great stuff on the web but when someone comes along and programs their spiders to make 10000 request and indexes(rapes) the whole site, I think oh my god you've killed my bandwidth. Which has got me a bit pev'd. The last few times its be Id-search.org, you and read all about that on this link.
This time it looks like Identity sellers 192.com  .I don't mind them indexing but have some consideration of peoples bandwidth cost, 10000 pages in one go is just excessive. Here a example out of the log file.

212.227.102.48 "/blog/_archives/2007/9/5/3208735.html" "-" "192.comAgent" "GET /blog/_archives/2007/9/5/3208735.html HTTP/1.1 " - - "text/html"
[01/Dec/2007:14:26:14 -0500] 0 200 26523 GET blog.kking.co.uk

Whois for 212.227.102.48 from www.dnsstuff.com

inetnum:      212.227.68.0 - 212.227.108.255
netname:      SCHLUND-CUSTOMERS
descr:        Schlund + Partner AG
descr:        NCC#1999110113
country:      DE
admin-c:      UI-RIPE
tech-c:       UI-RIPE
rev-srv:      ns.schlund.de
rev-srv:      ns2.schlund.de
status:       ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by:       SCHLUND-MNT
changed:      ***@schlund.net 20040611
source:       RIPE

role:           Schlund NCC
address:        1&1 Internet AG
address:        Brauerstrasse 48
address:        D-76135 Karlsruhe
address:        Germany
remarks:        For abuse issues, please use only *****@oneandone.net
phone:          +49 721 91374 50
fax-no:         +49 721 91374 20
e-mail:         ***@oneandone.net
admin-c:        SPNC-RIPE
tech-c:         SPNC-RIPE
nic-hdl:        UI-RIPE
notify:         *********@oneandone.net
abuse-mailbox:  *****@oneandone.net
mnt-by:         SCHLUND-MNT
changed:        *****@schlund.com 20040512
changed:        *********@oneandone.net 20071116
changed:        *********@oneandone.net 20071119
source:         RIPE

% Information related to '212.227.0.0/16AS8560'

route:          212.227.0.0/16
descr:          SCHLUND-PA-2
origin:         AS8560
notify:         *********@oneandone.net
mnt-by:         SCHLUND-MNT
changed:        ***@schlund.net 20040611
changed:        *********@oneandone.net 20071030
source:         RIPE

So this IP range is now going into the firewall of the blog.

Stephen fry said exactly what i was going to say "The rest of the world can mock as much as it likes. If you’re going to have a phone/video player/slideshow/music centre/web browser/camera in your pocket, is it so wrong to want one that makes you grin from ear to ear? Not with smugness (though heaven knows the enemies of the device will read that into the smiles) but with delight."

May I present my Iphone, yes I have as my Gee at work put it. "Sucked on the Apple Crack Pipe." (C) 2007 www.podrush.net

I didn't have a good time with the Nokia N95 and found it to be a bit of a dog with a battery life of a dying bee. So lets hope the iphone is better.

Which way to the Kool-Aid.

Broadcast Engineering the local parish magazine in this neck of the woods printed a Phil Crawley esk article on running media over networks. One of the great statements it makes it that "the indeterminate nature of an IT network is fundamentally at odds with its use in media applications. It could be argued that Ethernet and IP are the worst possible network technologies for real-time media systems." and that "A modern broadcast technologist must think in terms of both the broadcast engineering and IT domains when designing a networked infrastructure that must support real-time transcoding." So the next time our designing a broadcast IT network, don't let the spotty Dilbert from IT that fixes the email server design it, call in a qualified broadcast engineer. The Article in question http://broadcastengineering.com/storage_networking/real-time-media-networks/index.html

Sex and violence may sell, but if you want better ratings you got to have some substance says a study, the boston globe covers it here "fuck you you fuckin fuck" Crudeness and the slipping standards of TV, despite big fines fruity language is up on TV, you can read the full article

This is so true it hurts.....

Did you get a chance to make a cup of tea, well put that cup down, its already booted. New Asus Mobo's will have Slashtop on them, The point of Splashtop is to get you surfing the web seconds after you press that power button. Virtualise the device and your up and running. check out the video below for more info or check out their website http://www.splashtop.com/index.php

I recently bouught the HD-DVD player for my XBOX360 along with a few HD DVD's Hot Fuzz, Warriors and V for Vendetta.

I hadn't really watched a movie on it just used it to play games through till this evening when I came to watch Hot Fuzz I bought in the US. I finished playing Bioshock and popped the HD-DVD in the drive. it opened up got the lovely universal HD DVD logo and then BANG the dashboard popped up with an error COULD NOT PLAY CONTENT Error C667000A. First I thought it must be the disc or region encoding so I googled the error with not much luck. Then I came across the answer on this page.

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/x/xbox360hddvdplayer/download.htm

Basically there was a dashboard update for the HD DVD player in May 07 and this fixes the problem. The reason I had not recieved the update is that you have to start the HD DVD with no other disks in the XBOX drive so it doesn't switch to a game in my case Bioshock first. Once I removed the game, made sure i was connected to Xbox Live I pressed play on the HD DVD and the dashboard update popped up and downloaded...and Eureka the disk restarts and plays fine.

If you don't connect you XBOX to Live then you can download the update from the page above.

Well this could be a intresting stand to see at IBC

On its joint stand with NuMedia Technology, the BBC is set to show the latest addition to the Dirac family of open source video compression codecs. The Pro 270 application of Dirac allows the transmission of HDTV signals using the cable and infrastructure already used for standard definition TV. Which is quite sexy if I say so myself....

This requires more compression of HDTV signals than Dirac Pro 1.5, but the new Dirac Pro has the flexibility to achieve this with very little loss of quality. Broadcasters that employ the Pro 270 will have the ability to transform their programme output to HD quickly.

Other reasons to use it include the fact that 1080P50 HD islands can be connected between sites over existing links. And because Dirac is Open Source, the wider industry can use the technology, add to it, and develop other applications. This will be helped by the fact that Dirac is license free too.

1.588

Oh dear another battery manufacture has problems this time its not Sony and only 46 Million batteries this time....

http://www.nokia.com/batteryreplacement/en/

Nokia has identified that in very rare cases the affected batteries could potentially experience over heating initiated by a short circuit while charging, causing the battery to dislodge. Nokia is working closely with relevant local authorities to investigate this situation.

Nokia has several suppliers for BL-5C batteries that have collectively produced more than 300 million BL-5C batteries. This advisory applies only to the 46 million batteries manufactured by Matsushita between December 2005 and November 2006. There have been approximately 100 incidents of over heating reported globally.

Sony the makers of the world famous exploding batteries have sent out another product recall. This time its the Cyber-shot DSC-T5, I posted back in Nov 06 about the LCD recall.

This time Sony has announced a recall of another 350,000 digital cameras. But there's no need to reach for your fire extinguisher, because this time the recall is focused on the metal casing of one model that has the potential to cut or scratch users.Someone used the wrong type of glue and they are falling apart at the seams.

The problems surround the Cyber-shot DSC-T5 camera with serial numbers between 3500001 and 3574100, which was released in 2005.

How to return you DSC-T5 to Sony is listed here:

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/ServiceArea/070802/

365main one the San Fransisco's biggest facilities, had their PR monkeys issued a press release celebrating the site's "two years of 100-percent uptime at 365 Main's San Francisco facility." Oops.

Not wanting to tempt fate this morning/last night their facility shut down due to a power outage losing Craglist, and Livejournal as well as other big names. The area has been seeing power problems all day but it seems the backup supply didn't kick in.

Reminds me of a story about a nameless facility that had generators on the roof to run the technical mains in case of power loss then on winters night when the snow was heavy on the ground. The facility lost power and the generators kicked in, after about 15 minutes the generator started to set off the alarms for low fuel. Its seemed that whoever wired the generator into the building wired the fuel pump into the house mains rather than the technical so the pump was not working. So some poor engineer had to spend all night hand filling the generators till the morning came and the power came back on.

I've recently updated my Linked In profile if anyone of you want to link up then add my profile on the link below

well if you can see this it means my blog is back up again...it's been off since Mon 02/07/07 it seems that somewhere between the company that supplies my blog and interweb is going wrong at a very regular interval. Its been dropping off line since March when i first reported the problem. Well lets see how long its up for?

Yesterday my blog was flodded by a bot called ID-Search bot with the useragent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; IDBot/1.0; +http:// www.id-search.org/bot.html). Within a few minutes it requested around 1,386 pages and came from the IP 66.90.101.75 raping about 50MB of band width in the process...you've got to love those Russian spy bots

Is this a spam-bot or a serious project? Three things which make we wonder

1.) The bot does not (yet) support robots.txt. A quote from their FAQ

Does IDBot accept the directives from robots.txt file?
IDBot can recognize the directives from robots.txt files only partially, which is the result of the scantiness of our resources. Full support of robots.txt will be launched soon.

2.) They are not willing to release their IP addresses. Quote:

Can I learn the IP addresses, which IDBot comes from?
Unfortunately, You can’t since it is against the rules of our company.

3.) They flood servers. According to their FAQ you can write an email to tech support if the bot is causing problems. IMHO this is not a workable solution.

In my time in tech support land and being a bit of a techie bloke you get some some of the strangest requests and some of the funniest from around the office because you know about technology they think you can fix anything, as I'm not there so often these days I do miss them. Today for instance someone in the office asked me if I could get their ActivSync working as their mobile phone would not sync with their email. Ok I'll have a look, I walked over to the mobile picked it up and noticed the black screen. I didn't want to say "Have you turned it on?" but it just slipped out.I pressed the power button and as if by magic it all started syncing! If only they were all that simple.

This was a classic blond moment if I've seen one.

looks like someone else is having one too http://www.gtvone.com/blogger/2007/06/is-it-turned-on.html

WEP is dead - and here's the proof.

as you may well know if you've been following my blog, that I upgrade the Miami Device to a Croquette and Tubbs phone that being the new Nokia N95.

Like I've said before I'd post a review of the phone up here when had a good look at it. Well before I starting writing my I say I've just phoned Orange to return the phone back to them. If that isn't a sign of how much we don't get on I don't know what is! Coming from a Window Mobile environment its was hard to use what seems like a backward OS in Symbian, I suspect if you've always used Nokia phones you find it a blast. I found that the phone took 3 clicks on the keypad to do any normal funcation. It seems Nokia have hidden away all the funations inside a lot of menus and you really have to dig down to get to some of the setting. Some of the feature of the phone I liked were the maps and gps navigation. I tried this out on Friday on a journey to meet a friend on the Southbank for drinks.

I turned the gps on and it started download the map via 3g. I typed the location of were I was trying to get to and the phone told me the location didn't exist, not a good start then i tried the postcode and it found the location and displayed with the address i typed in that it said didn't exist. Oh well not to worry lets check the route. The route seemed to be sending me down all the major roads and across all the main bridges. I check the settings and yes I'd set them to 'foot' rather than 'car'. The route that the phone would have sent me on was going around the houses down the main shopping streets when the quickest route was to use the back streets and across Hungerford bridge. Ok so the route planning looks off. Lets use the GPS to nativate there or find out were we are, I have a little Polstar GPS which I've used around the world to get about with Pocket Streets and it normally picks up the 3 satellites its needs to navigate in about a minute once your out of cover. The Nokia N95 didn't even connected once or give me any GPS data at any point during the whole journey to the Southbank. Yes the GPS was on as I could see 3 or 4 satellites on the information panel but it seems you need 5 for the phone to lock and start giving you data to navigate by. In London the chances of getting 5 satellites to lock if about 1 in 50 due to the height of the buildings and width of the streets which makes this possibly valuable feature useless. The feature set on the phone does seem to be tied together having two gps apps in different places on in applications and one in tools just seems daft. It looks like Nokia have just been trying to hard.

Also Orange have block access to Truphone the VOIP system that comes installed on all Nokia N95's from the factory, this feature has been disabled to Orange can protect their call revenue and not have you make cheap VOIP calls.

All in all if your not it a big city, not into VOIP and you like Nokia OS you might just think this phone is the bees knees but I'm sorry to say its not for me....looks like I'll be getting a SPV E650 after all.

Neil king knows that a man should be judged by the devices he owns, with this in mind the old Orange M5000 aka the brick as James Clarke called it. Has been upgraded and retired and I got a all singing and dancing Nokia N95 as a free replacement. Well see how it goes and i'll post a review in a few days. Love the intergrated GPS so far.

Sime doesn't like blackberries much, well i think he's made his point that he really wants it to work. But i don't think that the blackberry could stand the Extreme Tech Support that can be meated out by engineers these days. Other PDA's be warned.

* Comcast issues apology for programming glitch
Disney Channel viewers in New Jersey were stunned to see the inadvertent display of pornographic programming in place of the children's show "Handy Manny" on Tuesday. The error was chalked up to a technical issue at a Comcast facility. New Jersey's Board of Public Utilities will reportedly take up the matter with the cable provider. 
----
i just wonder how many heads have rolled. I know many stories like this from my short time working in Soho. I especially like the one that had a company dubbing tapes and someone used some recycled vhs tapes instead of new when dubbing a supermarket training video. The training video was played at a conference they let in run on after the end of the video and the guy didn't stop the deck, so after the training video finished there was about 30 seconds black and then the hardcore porn that had been on the recycled tape. Sadly the guy who dubbed the tape carried the can for that one and lost his job. always remember use new stock....

Well i thought it might only be a matter of time before my Xbox 360 broke again, at Christmas the unit failed with a error were Icould not load any disc into the CD drive the drive made some crunching and loud buzzing sounds on start up. That unit was replaced under warranty by Mircosoft. Today while in the middle of playing GRAW 2. The DVD drive made an awful sound for a second or two. I thought the worst but the game kept on playing and I completed my mission. I turned the console off and then went to do some work I came back tonight to play again and what do I find. the DVD drive will not accept any games or dvd movies it just comes up that every disk is unplayable in the tray icon. So it looks like I'll be returning a second console to Microsft with the same problem. below is a picture of the error from my cameraphone

We've all heard about employees being sacked for blogging. will staff soon be sacked for failing to blog? Last week, Sony BMG UK issued a new corporate marketing strategy.

According to an official release from the group, Ged Doherty, chairman and chief executive of SonyBMG in UK and Ireland, said the company "has made it obligatory for all senior staff at both Columbia Records and RCA Records to start blogging actively".

So what happens to staff who refuse to toe the corporate line, or perhaps fail to produce the required quantity of blog blather?

more at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/02/compulsory_blogging/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/21/net_neutrality_a_monkey_hangers_guide/

Yesterday, Westminster eForum staged the first debate in the UK on "Net Neutrality" - chaired by former DTI minister Alun Michaels and Shadow DTI Charles Hendry. El Reg gave a brief presentation. Here it is, with selected highlights, and a collection of external links for further reading.

more monkey hanging