Well, I had an AS computing thingy in London today. Oddly I only saw about two protesters, there must've been more. The presentations seemed to be mostly done by management, with the oh-so-reassuring "Yes, Big Brother is watching you, but it's for catching the bad guys" from an employee of the Met Police. XML was mentioned a few times, but I don't think they really had any clue what they were talking about - "Our XML interface allows establishments with existing records to submit these without having to change their methods"... or something along those lines.

Yes, this JE isn't very coherent, I know.

Hmm, just noticed `whois microsoft.com` turns up a load of odd results... if you don't have a whois available, here, use mine. (Note that page sends itself as application/xhtml+xml, so IE won't like it. Dunno if you can save it and open locally, as I don't have IE here.)

Right, I'm having a load of problems with CSS being annoying.

My new implementation of bloat's front page is being annoying. Mozilla renders it as I like it. AFAICT, everything else has odd positioning. Does anyone have any idea what's wrong here? Have I done something stupid? Or is it CSS's fault?

(Oh, and the topic? Well, I hope to be enlightened!)

It's interesting just how much crap there is on microsoft.com...

Use Google or AllTheWeb (they both give different results) to search site:microsoft.com and then add some terms...

Interestingly, by searching for Slashdot, I found a definition of the slashdot effect.

I've just had a post from trolltalk to metamoderate. And it wasn't even moderated "Troll". Huh?

That is all, thank you.

According to BBCi News, a "break-wind" dog has caused a [false] bomb alert.

There are so many good quotes in this story that it's hard to pick a favourite one, but I guess this one is pretty good:

Armed security staff were alerted when the toy's wind-breaking mechanism registered as a high explosive on sensitive monitoring equipment.

I don't think there are many slashdot readers who actually like michael; I'm not one of them. I've been annoyed with michael's stories for a while, but not too bothered. This slowly built up, until the final straw - Your Rights Online: RIAA Threatens More Music-Lovers". My first thought was of... I dunno, backslashdot.org [a fictional entity for the purposes of this JE] posting "Your Rights Online: FSF Threatens More Linux-Lovers" on the subject of Linksys et al.

I finally removed michael from my preferences; I see no more of his stories. There's a slight problem though; michael does so many of the stories, I miss a lot of them. So what should I do - keep blocking michael and miss out on the stories? Or unblock him and get trolled. I think I'll stick with the former for the time being.

For those of you who care...

Well, after a long (5 months, 6 days) period, Bloat 1.2 has been released! There is a lot in Bloat 1.2 which justifies the upgrade from 1.1, indeed there is too much to list here; check the release notes for Bloat 1.2 for a cut-down version of the changes. If you have been using a release candidate of Bloat 1.2, I'd also recommend you upgrade, as there you will be able to feel safe in the knowledge you aren't using an RC any more ;-).

RedHat (and other RPM-based distribution) users are also in for a treat - Bloat 1.2 has an RPM of it available from the sourceforge download page. Autopackage testers/onlookers can also play around with the Bloat 1.2 package, in addition to the ready-made packages on autopackage.org.

So, what are you waiting for? Upgrade to Bloat 1.2 now!

I want active directory support in Samba. AD support needs Kerberos. Everywhere I've seen with Kerberos for download seems very anal about making sure you are based in the US or Canada.

Basically, is there anywhere legal to get Kerberos from for a UKer like me? I really do want it, but I don't want to break any laws.

...in one easy step").

OK, as you probably guessed from the title, I'm a moron. I've also nuked my FS. How?

[dave@tc4 /home/dave/grub]# grub-install /dev/hda2

Reconstruction

Yup, I am a moron. Thank you.

Basically I need testers for bloat 1.2 rc3. As I'm generally a bit pissed off at everything right now, I'm going to just give the URL which hopefully says everything...

http://bloat.sf.net/

Note - I haven't done a news post for any of the RCs except 1 (I think) on bloat.sf.net, but they are on sf.net/projects/bloat...

Thanks.

OK, somebody odd from IRC [irc.uplinkcorp.net , #uplink] is selling a new folder on eBay... I'm going to see if he has any bids. Yay. etc.

the auction

Bloat is a Perl script which analyses an archive's filename/type and extracts it using a suitable extractor.

Well, Bloat 1.2 RC 1 has been released! 1.1 -> 1.2's CVS has been very very dodgy, so I wanted a base that people could test from, without it being too dodgy. I believe that 1.2 is fine, but I don't guarantee everything, but I use it myself and haven't seen any problems yet *deep breath*.

Bloat's website is here.
Release notes (changes from 1.1 to 1.2) are here
Finally, the download page is here

If you want to test it, thanks :). Make sure to report any bugs though ;).

Well, for those who care, here are my GCSE results:

English: A
English - Talking and Listening: A
English Lit: A

[English - all - for want of a better word - bullshitting]

ICT: A

[I'm a /.er - need I explain more?]

Maths: B

[I've missed almost half of school time over the GCSE years - I was surprised to get a B, especially since I lightly pencilled in "goatse" before the "CX" in a length question]

Geography: C

[How did I get this? My coursework was done at 1AM and was about 3 pages long...]

Science: 2Cs

[They advised me to go onto foundation after missing so much. AFAIK, C is the highest you can get on foundation.]

Music: C

[I'm crap at music... Dunno how I got a C :P]

French: D
German: E

[I'm crap at foreign languages, and I joined German after two terms, and I was put on HIGHER on German for several parts]

So, all in all, that's enough to get me into college. I highly doubted I'd get Maths B, but I did, so that's all good. Hopefully my asthma won't make me miss loads of college :/.

Right... Last thursday I went tubing down the Delaware [NJ/PA border]; I'm on holiday in the States, BTW. I felt myself getting slightly burned. Please note that A) I am a complete and utter idiot, and didn't put any sunblock on; B) It was very hot that day, and C) I'm English, so don't really get too much sun.

On Friday my legs were really painful. When I got round to getting ready for bed (which was after watching Graham Norton - it's censored over here :/ - so 1AM) I saw two huge great blisters on my legs. According to my dad, they were the size of tennis balls.

Saturday, I go to the doctors and they tell me it's 2nd degree burns. They also pop the blisters, give me a tetanus shot, and charge us $200 (oh what fun commercial health care is; thank fsck for insurance). The rest of the day is spent with my feet up (literally). The same thing happened yesterday and today. This is very boring.

Today the nurse said she'd never seen sunburns like it in her 18 years of work...

Tomorrow I'm going to a burn specialist, and I'll see what he says...

Oh well, at least we got 5 days (out of 2 weeks) of our holiday :/.

Oh, and the subject? Well, my legs feel a bit like cooked meat ;).