The big kicker for me is the breaking of VLC and/or Gnome Screensaver, now VLC fails to suppress the screensaver in full screen which is kind of useless when you want to watching anything over 5 minutes long. To workaround this I use gnome-screensaver-command --inhibit to prevent the screensaver from activating, and set a command to kill that after 2 hours. The next problem I’ve observed is that even when the suppression and the film have both ended, the screensaver still doesn’t want to activate for ages; leaving my desktop burning the image into the screen until I lock the screen myself. Not a problem but I often hit the hay with a film on and usually fall asleep midway through, got up yesterday morning to find my desktop sat there still being projected from my display. LP #428884.

My second gripe is Flash player under a x86-64 installation using nspluginwrapper and the x86 Flash player provided in the repositories works, what’s so bad about that? Well you can’t actually click on any controls on the Flash object, which kind of rules out embedded YouTube, BBC iPlayer, etc. roll on <video> with Ogg Theora. I resolved this by purging the packaged Flash and nspluginwrapper, and then installing the native 64 bit alpha version from Adobe.

Finally Firebug 1.5 doesn’t support 64 bit builds of Firefox, which to be fair Mozilla don’t support so I don’t really have a problem with this. You need to get an older release from the 1.4 branch, I’ve heard that the 1.6 alphas work again.

Good grumbling done for the morning!

So, what have they done now?

This, they have tried to make their DVD’s copy-protected, and failed. Causing much annoyance to customers who have purchased legal copies of the DVD’s to find they make their DVD players power cycle etc. including Sony’s own players! There is quite a bit of discussion of this over at Amazon, from some apparently very annoyed customers. Superb work Sony, please continue to shoot yourself in the foot until you miss, shoot yourself in the head and actually die, it is for the best.

Apologies for this it has kind of turned into a rant.

joke, n. Something said or done to excite laughter or amusement; a witticism, a jest; jesting, raillery; also, something that causes amusement, a ridiculous circumstance.

Oxford English Dictionary

Morons, I have every sympathy for anyone suffering a brain injury at the hands of others or their own for that matter (in guilty circumstances or not) but I do not see the need to be critical of anyone who makes a recovery.

Then there are the digs at young people, not all young people speed, not all young people crash, and there is certainly a lot more speeding from the older generations. This is because they can pay the fines and are not used to the more safety conscious money making road traffic enforcement.

Why oh why do people have to take things so damn literally, if you don’t agree with it turn off. Its not illegal to advertise the adrenalin rush that can be experienced when driving at speed on a track, when this is done on the road it is illegal but then again anyone that follows such an example should get there head checked. Why do people not ring in and complain about Touch of Frost because it promotes murder as something to do? Why do we not complain about Eastenders because it is shit promotes anti social behavior?

While we are at it, Ban DRM as well!

</rant type=”mini”>

Went out to the cinema and get some grub dropping my friends home going along a dual carridge way with a 40MPH limit at the limit I signalled to move to the outside lane car in the distance performs the opposing motion and undertakes me. We stop about 10 seconds later at a red light (kinda surprised he stopped) him to my left looking like a moron with his crapped up Vauxhall Astra Mk 3. Traffic lights go amber, boom he is off, go green me trundles along (knowing the next set of lights are red) I get to the next set they go green as I draw closer. Muppet then cut me up, ie moved into my lane on the bend of the roundabout without a signal. I think its safe to say he then ‘floored it’ and went speeding towards another set of lights, which a car was travelling at a normal speed through with all the lights and pavements in the way he couldn’t overtake there. So, this is where the madness came in he went onto the wrong side of the road with no hope of moving back over and overtook all the traffic before cutting back in line rather abruptly. He then shot off into the night hopefully overturning and rolling into a brook somewhere or passing a copper no idea which sounds more appealing.

Personally its the “people” (I don’t wish to elevate this self centered plank to the level of civilised people) that drive like this that need prosecuting and having their license endorsed with smarties points. Even with the roads crammed with ‘Traffic enforcement cameras’ they can only catch speeding motorists, or at a push people that jump red lights (no wonder Royal Mail are in a bad financial situation.) I propose a device simply called Twat Cam but then again that sounds like it belongs in the adult entertainment industry, maybe Asshole Cam butthat has the same problem. Ohh heck Moronic Driver Cam, but that doesn’t have quite the same ring too it

The release notes make clear that certain things are unsupported or will not be happening, such as custom code modifications. Betas are about diagnosis and testing, not hacking away at this viciously bubbling cauldron of code, and then screaming for help when all hell breaks loose and you get PHP all over your best suit (what a sight that would be) can you get a stain devil for ASCII art?

Another popular topic is that of upgrade paths between betas and the preceeding RC1; it is beta code which is still volatile, there is still degree of fluidity in the code, features maybe reimplemented in a different way in the worse case scenario. The big killer is database changes, which there have been a few mainly relating to the backup system, which appears to make backups fine until you attept a restore and it pukes. If the database is not fixed, somebody wouldn’t find out until the worst time … ouch. With the no custom code mods rule, an upgrade should just be a case of replacing all the files and then performing database upgrades, but then life is never straight forward. I mentioned before that beta code is still not mature, upgrading between betas unless done properly may leave behind immature traces in some obscure way and come back to plague you at a later date.

People keep asking why they shouldn’t run the beta in a live environment, simple, it is beta. (I totally ignored that but then again I take these pills, they keep me sane.*) Want a better reason, well if a security vulnerability is found and assuming it is reported through the correct methods the details of the discover will stay shrouded in mystery (or so I assume) if this is the case the only way of knowing is by studying the changes to CVS and seeing what is being changed, which I do (sad life I know), most users asking the question I expect are unable to perform this and comprehend what’s happening to the source code. So, it seems asking the question generally qualifies you for the answer of no but stereo typing is wrong, there is always an anomaly no matter how small (it is also morally wrong).

So we end up at feature requests, why the hell would we want features added now? phpBB3 is feature complete adding more features means it will be un-feature complete for a period, considering one of the criteria for reaching the beta stage was feature completeness. Conclusions drawn, fairly obvious, this is negative progress, which is worse than lack of progress (which we have watched for too many months.)

My point behind this? Why can people not read the notes provided, some people even say they have in their posts but appear to require additional confirmation as to the state of mind of the poster at the time of posting. Thing is, this is a very particular example, I imagine we are all guilty. I for sure am, I get a new gadget, game what ever, its unwrapped and tested, the manual is read when the electricity board next decide to cull our electricity. How many people read EULA‘s that are packaged with software applications, the ones that state we install loads of spyware on your system in some covert legal mumbo jumbo bastardised obscure form of English? Not me, why, well I use Linux, and they bore me to death (I figure that is the intention or maybe just a side effect of them [software companies] covering their assets.) I guess this was just a hypocritical rant, maybe it was, so what.

It is worth noting that it is year on since the 7^th July tragedy, may the 52 victims rest in piece.

* I am pulling your leg, no no, not literally please don’t sue!

Well off I went in need to a beverage to tide me over the impenting maths test, which was cancelled but this is another story, so, off I wondered to thy trusty steed, in the form of a ’96 VW Polo 1.4L equiped with pwnage music and a single working speaker (not quite the chav.) I started the vehicle and strapped myself in, never know what is going to fly towards in school car park, off I went. Trundled out of the sixth form car park (I mean overflow car park, which sixth form should use), and into the main car park. Proceeded with caution around the blocks of cars parked at varying angles, rarely parallel to the parking space or the car next door. Out of the main body of the teacher parking and through to the middle where the entrance sits and the bus bays to the left, to the right we have the visitors parking (lazy sixth form and chav parking.) This is where the encounter began.

Watching out for cars merging into me after they entered the car park and head towards reception, I noticed a car come into a space about 3 spaces down from me with great hast, I anticipated idiocy. Saw continued momentum so braked rather quickly, eventually meeting the year 12 driver *ahem chav ahem* with a bunch of morons in the back, he stopped too (omg). He gave me the “wtf you doing? uh ur mum” look, I gave him the “awww special” look, realising he had no intention of going I hastily checked mirrors and sped off. Only to notice him emerge from the parking space and follow me towards the speed bumps. Yup you guessed it, he tailgated me over speed bumps, not the most clever thing to do, but heck this is moronicity at its absolute maximum here. So I proceeded over the speed bumps and an over cautious, unambitious, and damn right slow speed (cannot be too careful, but then we would never get anywhere *sigh*.) Used a bit of throttle and pulled away and headed onto the exit junction, bless he caught up and managed to follow.

Seeing nothing was there I pulled away in adventurous mode, got to 30MPH (the limit) and stuck there. Glaring into the rear view mirror, I saw him performing an attempt at pulling away, and then predicatably ending up sat on my ass again. Well I thought this is not good, increase the safety of the situation I slowed down a bit, down to 20MPH now. Let him follow suite and then dropped down to 2nd and got back to 30MPH, when he began to follow I slammed on the anchors, just a little hint I don’t mind using them when you are too close to stop (it is his fauly period) never know what bugs I might spot. I arrived at the Stop junction (blind looking right due to protruding house) I observed clear right, left and over the road so I pulled out. Chav followed again, without a glance right (wow he trusts me so bad.) Anyway I was back up to 30MPH quickly and soon he reappered on my tail, this time he didn’t like my tactics so. He overtook, in a 30MPH zone when I was doing the speed limit, there was a car coming towards him and a traffic island ahead. Yes this is the best example of irrational thought ever, broken logic supreme, or maybe everyone in the car was suicidal (or just the driver, the rest had brown trousers.) He managed to pull back over about 5 seconds before hitting the traffic island, if I had continued at ~30MPH I reckon he may have had it, but fearing for my own safety and predicting big cockup with slippery road surface I slowed down. I was expecting him to try and move over then brake to loose speed and lock his wheels up, what a cool site that would have been (not wishing death here.)

Thankfully nobody was hurt just my respect for him, ohh wait I had none, he had a sign above his head saying tosser. So, all is well in the world of me

I could populate this blog with dumbass things spotted on the road but, alas, I think my database would scream

So, a friend of mine mentioned her laptop was not playing fair, something along the lines of very restricted Internet access. She has Norton Internet Security 2005 installed to keep her shiney (hehe) laptop nice and badware free. After she described the problem to me I began to become extremely concerned, Internet Secuirty was unable to be uninstalled or reinstalled because it’s installer kept crashing. Installing a fresh copy over the top wouldn’t work because it tried to execute the existing installer. Upon starting up the laptop one of Internet Security’s dynamic link libraries couldn’t be loaded because it was not a valid Windows Image *concern level raising*. I offered to take a look at the poor soldier, after consulting some friends I decided I required the services of my only flash disc with a read only switch, expecting the worse … some peice of badware crap had gone and infiltrated the system and killed Norton.

How I could not have been more wrong, in essence it was nothing more elaborate than suicide. Turns out Norton has downloaded and installed updates the previous night, which I guess were corrupt replacing the installer with a corrupt version rendering useless. Now how to remove a bastard peice of software that has a bazillion serivces without breaking the entire laptop, I set about disabling the serives and killing processes to not much sucess. Eventually it struck me, like a ton of bricks, how could I have been so stupid single user mode safe mode. I booted the laptop up and into safe mode, magic, Norton was not running any of its services or nothing. I proceeded to rename all the directories it contained files in. Upon restarting back into an unsafe mode Norton tried to run but failed with much complaint, ahh well. In went the installer CD, bingo it fired up and started to initialise. Damn, it errored. Claiming a version of Norton was already installed, foo. I wondered if it was clever enough to have searched the HDD for a previous copy laying in a decapitated state, hopefully not. I proceeded to “Add and Remove Programs” and clicked to uninstall Norton, oohnoes, the installer doesn’t exist so, Windows removed the entry from the list after a quick question. I went to reexecute the installer, which again failed because a previous installation attempt was not complete citing me to reboot; so I did.

Back at the desktop again I relaunched the installer which did its shiz, slowly but in an unbroken manner. Another reboot later and we had a working Internet Secuirty Suite, perfect. I tried to rename the directories I had already renamed (didn’t want to delete incase I needed the contents), one directory would not play ball. It had processes using files contained within it … damnit! I fired up Process Explorer off my flash disc, and checked for open handles. There they were, one of the Norton applications was using the renamed folders data. Hum ho back to safe mode I go.

Once again in safe mode I moved the offending folder out of the way, and rebooted back to unsafe mode. Norton started floorlessly, but slowly, and another peek at open handles in Process Explorer told me it was using the correct files. Victory, well almost.

To ensure no corrupt crap had managed to stow itself away on the system I ran the uninstaller, it didn’t crash , and removed Norton. I still think I should have removed its registry keys and files it didn’t remove. I also removed the directories I had previously renamed, and once again set about a restarting and running the installer.

Norton was now reinstalled, a reboot later, and we ran the updater (because it was giving errors which said need updates to fix,) with no drama this time around (might have been my threats .) Another reboot for good luck and a further logon which took a while but not was bad as it was with broken Norton, I am still suspecting Norton is slightly broken but I am not to sure why or how it is best to fix it.

Is the moral of this story “don’t update it if it is not broken”? Or don’t use Norton, Symantec, software?