The Intruder™

<grifferz> I want some sort of silicone stopper thing to put on top of my pint glasses when I put them in the freezer, so it forces the water up the sides and freezes them in a goblet shape, thus increasing the surface area of the ice

<grifferz> the top could be elasticated to fit varying diameters of glass

<grifferz> basically imagine a dildo with an elasticated base

<grifferz> an ice-intruding dildo

<MurkyGoth> …yes, it’s another Friday night on #bitfolk

<Robert> grifferz: do all of your glasses have the same girth?

<grifferz> yes (I only have three)

<Robert> grifferz: do you put your glasses vertical or horizontal in the freezer?

* MurkyGoth doesn’t like the way this is heading…

<grifferz> you’re asking me how I orient a half full glass of water in the freezer?

<Robert> yes grifferz

<grifferz> get tae fuck

<Robert> presumably vertically…

<Robert> but you might do it diagonally

<MurkyGoth> Robert “The Mad Inventor” Leverington and Andy “One man, two cans” Smith

<Robert> anyway, my point is i reckon this might be something you could do on a 3d printer

<MurkyGoth> #whatcouldpossiblygowrong

<Robert> do it as an insert that you put the glass upside down on top of

<MurkyGoth> DO IT

<MurkyGoth> Go to the London Hackspace and print yourself out a dildo

<MurkyGoth> THE INTERNET DEMANDS IT

<plett> “Hi. Can I print an ice-dildo on your 3D printer?”

<Robert> this will seal the water in and should be safe to push it out if it expands too much

<grifferz> I think The Intruder™ would have to be made of a material that “gives” (steady, Dave2) otherwise you wouldn’t be able to withdraw it (matron) from the ice

<Dave2> :O

<plett> I was expecting Dave2 to join in after: 21:02 <Robert> but you might do it diagonally

<Robert> grifferz: perhaps if you didn’t mind your Intruder being triangular you could design it such that it should be easy to pull out

<Robert> *pyramidical not triangular

<grifferz> hmm yes give it a notable camber..

<grifferz> I reckon ice would still grip it fairly strong

<MurkyGoth> Use a plastic cup of ice?

<grifferz> nice one, lateral thinking

<grifferz> little plastic cup with some ice cubes in..

<grifferz> let’s see if I can find one right now!

<grifferz> #BitFolk is doing science

<MurkyGoth> With beer

<MurkyGoth> The best kind of science

* MurkyGoth goes to solve the problems in the Middle East

<plett> It sounds like grifferz might actually want http://www.paramountzone.com/ice-tankard.htm

<find> plett: http://a.vu/9dix – Ice Tankard – Only £3.99 – Fast UK Delivery

<MurkyGoth> You must be new here

<MurkyGoth> On #bitfolk, one does not simply purchase the solution (for a reasonable sum of money)

<MurkyGoth> Channel rules demand time, effort and money are spent coming up with a plan which, at best, may only incidentally solve the original problem, and not very efficiently either

<MurkyGoth> (and for some reason, I just thought “Hmm, haven’t heard from so_solid_moo for a while…”)

<plett> In that case, the 3D printed ice dildo is clearly the best possible solution to the problem at hand

<MurkyGoth> I’ll ice dildo YOUR ha…never mind…

<grifferz> plett, nah, I want the ice in the drink as well (eventually)

<grifferz> anyway

<grifferz> I didn’t have any small plastic cups

<grifferz> so I cut the top off a small empty drink bottle and filled it with chick peas to weigh it down

<grifferz> my concern is that it will still be too hard to remove

<grifferz> I’ve taken a photo, hang on

<MurkyGoth> With the chickpeas removed, the soft plastic bottle should flex and be removable

<MurkyGoth> Failing that, fill plastic bottle with warm water, to melt the ice right next to the bottle, allowing the bottle to be removed

<grifferz> MurkyGoth, yeah that’s what I figured. might still try the small cup method though as it will be much faster to.. deploy

* MurkyGoth registers onemantwocups.com

SCIENCE!

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Update 2011-11-26:

The first attempt worked fairly well. It was not possible to remove the bottle from the ice without filling it with some warm water for a few seconds. I think this was probably because the bottle had a very slight bulge at the bottom.

It would be hard to find a perfectly cylindrical or even tapering plastic bottle, so I will next try the original plastic cup suggestion.


rsync: “Inflate (token) returned -5”

Today one of my rsync backups began failing with:

inflate (token) returned -5
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at token.c(604) [receiver=3.0.3]
rsync: writefd_unbuffered failed to write 373 bytes [generator]: Broken pipe (32)
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(1544) [generator=3.0.3]

It was repeatable when trying to transfer the same file (a large gzipped SQL dump file).

It turned out to be a bug in that version of rsync.

rsync 3.0.3 comes with Debian lenny. In order to get a newer version I have had to use lenny-backports for this. That gets me rsync v3.0.7, which does not exhibit this bug.

(Yes, I am aware that squeeze has been released and this host should be upgraded to that. There is security support for lenny until at least February 2012.)

Did anyone else get this spam to an address they gave to Red Hat?

On November 2nd I received this spam:

(some headers removed; xxxxxxxxxxx@strugglers.net is my censored email address)

Received: from mail15.soatube.com ([184.105.143.66])
        by mail.bitfolk.com with esmtp (Exim 4.72)
        (envelope-from <bounce@soatube.com%gt;)
        id 1RLikr-00070I-6U
        for xxxxxxxxxxx@strugglers.net; Wed, 02 Nov 2011 21:53:57 +0000
Received: from [64.62.145.53] (mail3.soatube.com [64.62.145.53])
        by mail15.soatube.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6B324181CFF
        for <xxxxxxxxxxx@strugglers.net>;
        Wed,  2 Nov 2011 14:46:01 -0700 (PDT)
To: xxxxxxxxxxx@strugglers.net
From: events@idevnews.com
Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2011 14:00:40 -0700
Subject: BPM Panel Discussion: IBM, Oracle and Progress Software

-------------
BPM-CON: BPM Panel Discussion - IBM, Oracle and Progress Software
-------------
Online Conference

Expert Speakers:
IBM, Oracle, Progress Software
etc..

The email address it arrived at was an email address I created in November 2004 in order to take a web-based test on Red Hat’s web site prior to going on an RHCE course. It has only ever been provided to Red Hat, and has not received any email since 2007 (and all of that was from Red Hat). Until November 2nd.

The spam email contains no reference to Red Hat and is not related to any Red Hat product.

From my point of view, I can only think that one of the following things has happened:

  1. Spammers guessed this email address out of the blue, first time, without trying any of the other possible variations of it all of which would still reach me.
  2. One of my computers has been cracked into and the only apparent repercussion is that someone spammed an email address that appears only in an email archive from 2004/2005.
  3. Red Hat knowingly gave/sold my email address to some spammers.
  4. Red Hat or one of its agents have accidentally lost a database containing email addresses.

Possibility #4 seems far and away the most likely.

I contacted Red Hat to ask them if they knew what had happened, but they ignored all of my questions and simply sent me the following statement:

“Hello.

Thank you for contacting Red Hat.

we apologies for the inconvenience caused however we would like to inform you that we have not provided your email address to anyone.

Thank You.

Red Hat Training coordinator.”

That wasn’t really what I was asking. Let’s try again.

“Hi Red Hat Training coordinator,

Thanks for your reply, but I’m afraid I am not very reassured by your response. Do you have any suggestions as to how an email address created in 2004 and used only by yourselves for my RHCE exam managed to be used for unrelated marketing by a third party in 2011, unless Red Hat either provided my email address or leaked my email address?

For clarity we are talking about the email address “xxxxxxxxxxx@strugglers.net” which has never ever received any email except from Red Hat, until yesterday, when it got some unwanted
marketing email from a third party.”

“Hi Andy,

Please be assured that Red Hat does not circulate student’s e-mail address to any third party.

Thanks,
Red Hat Training Coordinator”

I’m not getting anywhere am I? I was only after some reassurance that they would actually look into it. Maybe they are looking into it, and for some reason decided that the best way to assure me of this was to show complete disinterest.

Oh well, I can send that email address to the bitbucket, but I can’t help thinking it’s not just my email address that has been leaked.

Anyone else received similar email? If so, was it to an address you gave to Red Hat?

Update 2011-11-10: Someone suggested I politely ask the marketer where they obtained my email address. It’s worth a try.

“Hi Integration Developer News,

May I ask where you obtained my email address
“xxxxxxxxxxx@strugglers.net”? I’m concerned that it may have been
given to you without my authority.

Thanks,
Andy”

Also I have now been contacted by someone from Red Hat’s Information Security team, who is looking into it. Thanks!