Keep Cricket Free

If you’re a cricket fan, or a sports fan, or English, or hell, someone please please please check out this site – Keep Cricket Free. As of 2006, all English Test Cricket will only be available on Sky – a pay-TV service. The question is not an “I hate Sky” argument, because I don’t, but it’s more of a cultural argument – national teams involved in sport should be on national television. Simple as that.

There’s an online petition you can sign (which I’m sure will do bugger all, but do it anyway) and there’s lots of interesting information you can read. The important thing is that with cricket really beginning to take off in England again, it’s important that it’s not lost to Rupert Murdoch’s pocket.

Clicky: Keep Cricket Free

And again please

Yes, that’s right, it did it again. Twice in one day XP has eaten my profile, so I have had to reconfigure this machine twice today. Bloody ridiculous.

…. and then?

Annnnnnnnd thhhhhhhennnnnnnnnnnnn, I get into work this morning, and XP has eaten my network profile. Somehow, overnight, whilst the computer was switched off… boom. “It got moofed“.

Sometimes I really hate Windows

I have spent all evening trying to configure part of my network. I’m not going to lie because it is pretty complicated, but it all revolves around trying to get an additional wireless client attached to the network. The details are fairly irrelevant, but here’s a small example of why networking in Windows frankly sucks.

All of the access points on the network (of which there are basically three) issues IP addresses via DHCP. Fairly simple. In XP, you tell the connection that it should obtain an IP address automatically (i.e., request one from the DHCP server on the router). But on the computer I was trying to connect, for whatever reason, the DHCP service had been disabled.

So when Windows was telling me that it was getting an IP address automatically, it simply wouldn’t. Because it hadn’t started the DHCP service. The wisdom of XP told ME that it was a problem with the NETWORK and not with the computer. When I started the service, hey presto, it works.

F*cking Windows. I love my Mac. Moof.

Surprising

I was really surprised to see that the Google search “how to get rid of a big arse” didn’t return any results! Surely a lot of people want to know how to do this.

It did make me remember a joke though:

Fresh from her shower, a woman stands in front of the mirror, complaining to her husband that her breasts are too small.

Instead of characteristically telling her it’s not so, her husband uncharacteristically comes up with a suggestion.

“If you want your breasts to grow, then every day take a piece of toilet paper and rub it between your breasts for a few seconds.”

Willing to try anything, the wife fetches a piece of toilet paper and stands in front of the mirror, rubbing it between her breasts.

“How long will this take?” she asks..

“They will grow larger over a period of years,” he replies.

The wife stops. “Do you really think rubbing a piece of toilet paper between my breasts every day will make my breasts larger over the years?” Without missing a beat the husband says, “Worked for your butt, didn’t it?”

Classic.

Moof

Made me giggle:

Moof /moof/ [Macintosh users]

1. /n./ The call of a semi-legendary creature, properly called the dogcow. (Some previous versions of this entry claimed, incorrectly, that Moof was the name of the *creature*.)

2. /adj./ Used to flag software that’s a hack, something untested and on the edge. On one Apple CD-ROM, certain folders such as “Tools & Apps (Moof!)” and “Development Platforms (Moof!)”, are so marked to indicate that they contain software not fully tested or sanctioned by the powers that be. When you open these folders you cross the boundary into hackerland.

3. /v./ On the Microsoft Network, the term `moof’ has gained popularity as a verb meaning `to be suddenly disconnected by the system’. One might say “I got moofed”.

from: Jargon.net. More here.

Does SPAM work?

Hell no. (Well actually, yes it does because there are an awful lot of idiots out there. But I’m not one of them.)

For the millionth time, I received this email:

Hello

As a designer, you know how competitive the web design market is right now.

It is essential that your websites not only look great, but that they are technically perfect and search engine friendly as well.

This is where Ocean Bear comes in, to act as your strategic partner providing the technical excellence behind the scenes.

You can now offer more !

We offer you the technical support to expand your range of services and your company as a whole, leaving you free to do what you do best – to design great websites.

Anything that your client can imagine involving data acquisition or data processing, can be engineered to fit in with your design. We do not provide scripts, We build impeccable, robust internet applications, and we aim to develop ongoing business relationships with graphic design companies like yours.

The principle is simple. Well-engineered software is reusable. This means that we can deliver to you quickly and predictably. We work on a fixed-price bid (our bids are quite accurate) and our prices are quite low due to the nature of software reusability.

Feel free to give us a call at any time at (+44) 2070 602 327 to discuss your needs, or click on the link below to request an immediate call back through our website.

Click here to request an immediate callback

We look forward to being of service to you.

Regards,

Christopher David Bear
Ocean Bear Ltd.
(+44) 2070 602 327
39 Gibson Square
London, UK N1 0RB
2A68

What’s more, is that, from the outset, they look like a fairly reputable company. London offices, nice looking website, reasonable portfolio. Yet they ruin that by resorting to SPAM tactics. There’s no question it’s SPAM, even in spite of their “I’m not SPAM honest” message:

Removal

This email is not SPAM (see below).

Please know that I personally discovered your company in good faith by visiting your website

But most importantly I want to respect your wishes and not to inconvenience you in any way so I will not contact you again if you are not interested in my services.

I also wish to act in accordance with The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 Section 22 – specifically Item (3) where
a) I have obtained your contact details in the course of my efforts to provide you with my personal service,
b) my services are in respect to your your similar products and services only and
c) I am providing a simple means of your refusal for me to use your contact information in the future.

if you are not interested in my services

please click on the link below and I will delete your contact information from my notes immediately. Thank you for your understanding.

I’ve already told them on more than occasion to remove my details, and equally, the email address they used to send me the mail is not publically available on my website. Sitting behind one of these flimsy messages is not good enough. Why should I be forced to remove myself from his list? I did not ask to be added to this list, I did not ask to hear about his services and therefore his message was entirely unsolicited. Aka SPAM. “Thank you for your understanding?” – that’s a bit bloody presumptuous. I understand why they do it, but it does not mean I accept it, which is the implication of this statement.

It won’t do any good whatsoever, but I did reply to their SPAM (I did not use their “click here and we’ll definitely remove you, really, and of course won’t send your valid email to all sorts of other people” active email confirmation link):

1) Stop f*cking SPAMMING me with this crap.
2) Your website is NOT Valid HTML 4.01 as you so proudly suggest.

Maybe you should use one of your so-called partners to sort your f*cking website
out. At the same time, sort out your f*cking email list and stop sending me this
sh*t.

In the actual email, I didn’t include the *’s. And admittedly sending them the email does confirm that I have an active email address so I guess could have used their link. But this is more fun. It was definitely very petty (especially the bit about their website not validating) but it “makes me mad”. Or something. Time for coffee.