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28 August 2007

Hello world

...or blog anyway.
Having acquired a camera/phone/txt/USB/blog/Email thing, I spend a happy weekend persuading it to do so, acquiring another pageful of passwords, secret codes and stuff along the way.

Facebook cleverly cross referenced my mobile number which it knew with the number of the phone that was calling it and linked up without needing confirmation. Clever but spooky as it didn't tell me it could do this.

Blogger wouldn't reply though. It seems Orange affix the international code when messaging abroad and then won't accept incoming messages using that code, which is dumb. I had to Email Blogger for help, which they quickly provided.

PC Interface OK, except that it wants to Synchronize with programs I don't use. Oh well, at least deleting messages is a lot easier on a PC monitor than on a phone screen.

23 August 2007

False positive

For the first time in Vista, AVG found a virus this week. Or... it was a trojan in the DLL and EXE for a popular install program, so I had several copies scattered in Temp folders going back six months to the modem driver install. That seemed unlikely.
There are several online virus checkers for suspicious files. I tried a couple and the files came up clean, so this was an AVG only alert.
I typed the name AVG came up with into Google, and several forums were discussing Generic6.UMS already. It looked to be a 'false positive', an error which we'd all downloaded with that day's AVG auto update, and sure enough the next day's update removed it.
So AVG working correctly then, and this is the first time I've had it do this. I expect there are lots of reformatted hard drives and new installs out there now!

21 August 2007

Medieval II - Total War (2)

The default shortcut provided goes to Launcher.exe, a small program that accesses the Internet to provide details of updates and mods. Unfortunately Launcher on Vista takes 50% of CPU doing absolutely nothing and the main program fails to unload it, even when exited. It has to be turned off using Task Manager.
The solution is to create a shortcut to medieval2.exe.

Creative's sound driver for Vista remains buggy after 9 months, they seem to be unable to fix it. They did come up with an EAX patch, so that kind of works with Windows and more importantly with the range of games that don't have a 'plain vanilla' Soundblaster setting such as Medieval II. And then, knowing they had hordes of pissed off customers of Mongolian proportions, they charged $10 for it.

The game? It's fine, lots of epic battles.

Another rabbit hole

A favorite website of the anti-Scientology crowd is Religious Freedom Watch (RFW), a 'Dead Agent' website which vilifies enemies of the Church of Scientology. It is so nasty and over the top that only crazy culties could imagine that anyone aside from themselves would believe it.

This month a blog appeared here called joelphillipsreligiousfreedomwatch. It purports to be written by Joel Philips, the owner of RFW, though the contents suggest it is a parody of Mr Phillips' rantings. I assume this is the material referred to on RFW's front page under the 'Harassment Notice' header, wherein Mr Philips denies being the author.
The first post on the blog, 'Why I Hate Russia', first appeared elsewhere, causing speculation as to whether it was genuine or just disinformation.

So is this another rabbit hole? We have a reference to Wiccans, Indonesians and Russians. The Wiccans, two people claiming to be British black witches who have posted to ARS for several years threatening to cast spells on cult leaders, would seem to predate RFW. Certainly Mr Phillips, happy to attack others, reacted immediately to their brief attack on him by offering a still valid reward of $5,000 for information about them.
The Indonesians and Russians look to be part of the blogger's alternate reality, not Mr Phillips'. But maybe the blogger is just throwing us clues...

How did I find out about this blog? I had an Email from Joel Phillips!
"Hartley you should update your FAQ about these people. Joel"

08 August 2007

More fun in space

My carebear trader character is leaving a totally safe space station in her cargo ship. But nowhere is safe in Eve...

Oriella undocks, a small ship warps in and blinks red at her

[ 2007.05.06 12:36:44 ] (notify) ACiD360: You have foolishly engaged in criminal activity within sight of sentry guns and must suffer the consequences.
[ 2007.05.06 12:36:46 ] (notify) ACiD360's Ishtar has started trying to warp scramble you.

WTF? I'm taking damage, but not a lot. Maybe I should repair shields or something? Oh nevermind, here they come...
A squad of police ships warp in.

[ 2007.05.06 12:37:06 ] (notify) CONCORD Police Captain has started trying to warp scramble ACiD360's Ishtar

BOOM

ACiD360 > lol
ACiD360 > damn
ACiD360 > this aint lowsec
ACiD360 > im so stupid
Oriella Trikassi > er.... yes
Oriella Trikassi > especially against a transport
ACiD360 > yep
ACiD360 > shit happens^^
Oriella Trikassi > nearly spilt my beer there