Category: Rant

Opinionated ranting

Do people still fall for WinPopUP?

Posted on by Andy

Tonight I happened to be looking through one of my server’s logs for something and found my ability to do so was being seriously hampered by the amount of crap being logged by iptables logging dropped packets (even though that is rate-limited). I was mildly surprised to note that most of it was like this:

Mar 23 16:26:58 kwak kernel: world>somedom DENY: IN=eth0 OUT=v-somedom SRC=24.64.119.208 DST=192.168.194.1 LEN=512 PROTO=UDP SPT=24642 DPT=1027 LEN=492
Mar 23 16:26:58 kwak kernel: world>somedom DENY: IN=eth0 OUT=v-somedom SRC=24.64.119.208 DST=192.168.194.1 LEN=512 PROTO=UDP SPT=24642 DPT=1026 LEN=492
Mar 23 16:26:58 kwak kernel: world>somedom DENY: IN=eth0 OUT=v-somedom SRC=24.64.119.208 DST=192.168.194.1 LEN=512 PROTO=UDP SPT=24642 DPT=1028 LEN=492
Mar 23 16:26:58 kwak kernel: world>anotherdom DENY: IN=eth0 OUT=v-anotherdom SRC=24.64.124.244 DST=192.168.194.2 LEN=512 PROTO=UDP SPT=31002 DPT=1026 LEN=492
Mar 23 16:26:58 kwak kernel: world>anotherdom DENY: IN=eth0 OUT=v-anotherdom SRC=24.64.124.244 DST=192.168.194.2 LEN=512 PROTO=UDP SPT=31002 DPT=1027 LEN=492
Mar 23 16:26:58 kwak kernel: world>anotherdom DENY: IN=eth0 OUT=v-anotherdom SRC=24.64.124.244 DST=192.168.194.2 LEN=512 PROTO=UDP SPT=31002 DPT=1028 LEN=492

It’s been so long that I had even forgotten what UDP 1026-1028 was all about. It’s WinPopUP — the mechanism by which spammers (used to?) put up dialog boxes on the screens of unfirewalled Windows machines.

At first I thought “stupid spammers,” but if they’re doing it then it must still be working to some degree. This should have been dead and buried since 2002. Sad state of affairs!

Tips for those giving technical talks

Posted on by Andy

I’m currently thoroughly enjoying FOSDEM, as I have all the other times I’ve been. It’s great that these people have made the time to come and give talks for free, so I hope I don’t sound ungrateful when I make these observations.

When giving a technical talk:

  • make sure you have actually read your material! It’s surprising the number of presenters who will not know the order of their slides or what some part of what they have written means!
  • try to practice delivering it. It will give you some idea of what pace it needs to be presented at.
  • test all the facilities you need in your talk! If you need to plug a projector into your laptop, try this ahead of time and make sure it works! If you need Internet connectivity, try this ahead of time and make sure it works! If you have a demo, try it and make sure it works! The message here is, try it ahead of time and make sure it works!
  • resist the urge to show a shell in a terminal emulator. They’re really hard to read on a large screen and don’t get across the essential information in the brief way needed for a presentation. Try to avoid showing anything running in a shell unless absolutely necessary. Watching pages of output fly by only to have you say “see, it has worked” doesn’t work particularly well in this setting, as there is far too much distracting information.
  • if you must use a terminal then set it to black text on a white background, turn off coloured output (e.g. in ls and other applications) and hike the font size up. Go through things slowly and try to remove all irrelevant output. Be prepared for people to still be unable to tell what is going on.
  • try to deliver your material in an animated way. The smartest person in the world talking about the most Earth-shattering subject will still make their audience fall asleep if they deliver it in a monotone. Especially if it’s just after lunch or near the end of the day! It’s not the audience’s fault, it happens to most people if they sit passively all day.
  • invite questions, either during the talk, at the end or both. When people ask a question, repeat the question for everyone to hear! Most of the room will not have heard the question that was just asked so your response would otherwise be meaningless to them. Doing this also helps to ensure that you understand the question they have asked, so it’s probably worth it even if the person who asked the question had a mic also.

Death of email?

Posted on by Andy

<curmudgeon>

Chad Lorenz presents a lot of evidence that email is in decline thanks to Facebook and the like:

“Those of us older than 25 can’t imagine a life without e-mail. For the Facebook generation, it’s hard to imagine a life of only e-mail, much less a life before it.”

That’s fine for the kids, they’re attracted to new shiny technologies, the need to be hip and cool daddyo. But have we learnt nothing from Advogato and Orkut? I don’t have time to be maintaining my presence on the current 5 popular social networks and well as continually porting over all of my information every time a new one springs up. Not to mention the fact that these services exist purely to give you advertising and sell your personal information. The kids are welcome to it.

Others have said it better — wake me up when there is the option to own my own data. Until then, well, I’m not hard to find on email, IRC or MSN should anyone really want to.

</curmudgeon>

FirstDirect stupidity

Posted on by Andy

Email from First Direct:

Thank you for your recent request to join first direct.

Full details about a first direct e-ISA, along with an application form containing the information you have provided, are now on their way to you.

[…]

—————————————–
SAVE PAPER – THINK BEFORE YOU PRINT!

This is after filling in some 4 page online form. Really need to take their own advice.

By contrast IceSave manage to do the whole application process online, for a savings account. I am pretty sure if I complain to First Direct about this they will say something about security and money laundering laws. IceSave took driving licence and passport numbers for that.

Update: Despite me calling them three times, First Direct never managed to send me the correct forms to transfer my existing ISA, so around the end of May 2007 I stopped bothering to contact them and opened an ISA account with Yorkshire Building Society instead.

The seedy side of the NHS

Posted on by Andy

As you may be aware, I was quite ill the other week and ended up spending a night in hospital. Anyway, I’m fine now, but had a follow-up doctor’s appointment today.

One of the things I wanted from the doctor was a sick note for the two days I had off work last week due to my illness. Legally I know I don’t need a doctor’s note because you can self-certify for up to seven days. However, I’d already had some time off for man-flu type things and really wanted to make clear that I wasn’t taking the piss and had been seriously ill.

I explained all this to the doctor and he said, “well I didn’t see you at the time so it would have to be backdated. I can’t give you a backdated sick note on the NHS, but I’m happy to give you a private one. That will cost £10 though.” At this point I’d like to point out that I went to the doctor’s office directly from being discharged from hospital last week partly in order to get this sick note, but the receptionist wouldn’t let me see the doctor then as “sick notes are not emergencies,” instead booking me this appointment 8 days later.

So I go to pay the doctor and only have a £20 note. He rummages in his own wallet to hand me two well worn £5 notes. I don’t get a receipt. Then, “what would you like the note to say?” This experience is making me feel like scum to be honest, but it had to be done, so I went through my whole story again. He actually interrupts my story and says, “..okay that is enough, I will just put vomiting blood, severe pain, hospital attendance, not fit for work, okay?”

Nice doing business with you, doctor. :(

I’m sure there are people all over the country doing this sort of thing to be signed off work for weeks while they do cash in hand work.

He hates macs

Posted on by Andy

If the ads were really honest, Webb would be standing there with one arm, struggling to open a packet of peanuts while Mitchell effortlessly tore his apart with both hands. But then, if the ads were really honest, Webb would be dressed in unbelievably po-faced avant-garde clothing with a gigantic glowing apple on his back. And instead of conducting a proper conversation, he would be repeatedly congratulating himself for looking so cool, and banging on about how he was going to use his new laptop to write a novel, without ever getting round to doing it, like a mediocre idiot.

Brilliant.

Yes, we know

Posted on by Andy

Thanks for that, noodles! I’ve been wanting to say it myself for some time but for some reason decided against it for fear of being castigated as a grumpy old man. I shall not hold back from the ranting in future.

On the one hand maybe there are some people out there who read blogs yet somehow haven’t discovered xkcd. On the other hand, the more places I see it the more mainstream it feels, and we can’t have that!