Recently in Internet Category

I'm just after coming across the Stupid Filter project. Now I'm waiting for the Spamassassin and Support Desk plugins!

I created a quick Opensearch file to add the PHP Function search to my search bar. If anyone is interested it's available here.

Update: To make life even easier, use ctrl-k to select the search box, ctrl-up and ctrl-down to select the different search providers.

I ordered a nice new toy from Komplett over the weekend and got a email with a "Track And Trace" code for DHL Europlus. I went to www.dhl.ie, saw a nice DHL Fast Track search box on the top right and entered my code. I got a page entitled "Tracking Good Afternoon" (at 6 in the evening) and search boxes all over the place. Besides not looking well in Firefox, it didn't show the code I had just entered anywhere.

I put my code in the top search box (Air Express), pressed search, and up popped a box saying entitled "DHL Road Express Shipment" telling me:

You may have entered a DHL Road Express Licence Plate Number / Identcode Number.

Please use the European Road Express Parcel Tracknet below to track this shipment.

The main page also had a section entitled "DHL Road Express Parcel Tracking", so out of interest I tried the code there and got the same popup. I then clicked the European Road Express TrackNet as they wanted, and figured out how to add my code and submit as needed. The tracking as it turns out is pretty dire. According to them, my package is in Tilberg, NL since yesterday morning. It better be wrong!

The point of this rant? Their system was smart enough to realise that the code I entered was a European Road Express TrackNet code. Why didn't it simply redirect to the proper page from the main page rather than carrying me into a page with multiple search boxes? Instead of a popup explaining where I need to go, why doesn't it redirect to the right page? Or even a link to the right page in the popup? Was there any UI testing done at all on the site?

I was talking to someone who once worked in a company bought by DHL. I was told that their biggest problem is that as they are buying up smaller local companies to do local deliveries, they are aren't integrating the new IT systems properly. This does explain why the tracking mightn't as great as it should be. However it doesn't explain why they can't add a small bit of intelligence to their site.

I'm in Heuston Station for a while and I have had to use Eircom wireless to access to the internet. What was disappointing was that the login page for Eircom's wireless does not have a valid SSL cert.

I logged in anyway (naughty, I know) as the IP it was pointing at was an eircom ip, and I am stuck. I am surprised that Eircom can get away without using a valid SSL cert for pages that have to handle credit card details.

I would have thought that one of the requirements for Credit Card processing would be having a valid SSL cert!

After three years of service, my Nokia 6630 finally decided that enough was enough, so I upgraded to a Nokia E70. After a few hours of playing with it, it seems to have been a good purchase. Below is a quick list of the pros and cons that I've found so far.

Pros:

• Qwerty keyboard. Normal mobile text input methods aren't up to much when using applications like Putty. The qwerty keyboard is comfortable to use, and works out a lot faster than T9 for me.
• Wifi: Free internet access is always going to be better than paying Vodafone for 3G or GPRS.
• Active Standby: The standby screen on older Symbian S60 phones has always been sort of boring. With recent versions of Symbian S60, there are now a couple of shortcuts along with calender entries and recent text messages on the screen.
• Compatible with older car kits. One of the big problems for me is that a lot of the newer Nokia phones don't seem to have cradles compatible with the CK-7W car kit. With the MBC-13L, I can get into the car, throw the phone in the cradle and drive away safely, while having the phone charging and ready to use. If I forget to take the phone out of my pocket, it will still hook up to the car kit over bluetooth.

Cons:

• Small Screen: Compared to phones like the N95, the screen is very small. This becomes a slight problem when using applications like Putty. The default font on Putty is so small, that a microscope is required. Luckily there are more friendly fonts available here.
• Active Standby Plug-ins: According to the manual, there should be an Active Standby plug-ins option
   available in the phone settings, however this seems to have been disabled, presumably by Vodafone. These plug-ins should allow handy things like showing number of waiting voice mail messages and notes entries on the standby screen.
• Lack of automatic key lock. A fairly standard feature in Nokias has been the ability for the phone to automatically lock the keypad after a few minutes of inactivity. There is third party software available to do the job, namely Autolock, however it's still a strange omission.

After I've used the phone for a couple of weeks, I'll probably be able to add more items to both the pro and con sides.

Michele posted about the fun and games with Domainnews and copyright two months ago. Domainnews seem to have finally realised  and their "Chief Editor" has replied claiming innocence. Unfortunately he still does not seem to realise what he has done wrong, and he still hasn't as much as apologised yet. In fact Michele had to send a DMCA Takedown notice to Google before anything was done. For fun and giggles I had a look at the Domainnews site and spotted a post attributed to "press" which is a copy of the domains.asia press release here. According to Domainnews: "press is one of our editors and not someone we are trying to credit this to". What's even more fun is that the DotAsia press release is covered by a Creative Commons Attribution License (look at the icon at the bottom left of DotAsia's press release) which probably means that DotAsia would at least like a link back. Even if they didn't have the CC license, it is just a common courtesy to link back to the originating site, even for a press release. There is no point posting about DotAsia starting a new program, if the reader can't click on a link and have a look around to get more details. The whole whole point of the Internet was/is to share information.

I have come across a couple of handy little trick for DNS recently which I'm going to throw up here just to save me searching when I need them in the future :)

Getting The Version Of A DNS Server

To get the version of a DNS server, you can run the following command:

dig @dns_server_you_want_to_check +short version.bind chaos txt

It is very easy for the server administrator to change this to whatever they want, but it's still a handy command.

Getting The Whois Server For A Top Level Domain

I found the following command for finding the whois server for a TLD on the Nominet Blog.

dig +short _nicname._tcp.ie srv

This should return:

10 0 43 whois.domainregistry.ie.

This means that the whois server for .ie is listening to port 43 at whois.domainregistry.ie. Unfortunately, not all TLDs support this, most noticeably .com.

If Panorama were getting all worked up over a few wireless access points in schools, what are they going to think of this monster! Look at all the antennas on it! That can't be healthy! What the Slurp actually does is connect to as many wifi networks as it can, up to a maximum of six. It then presents all the wifi networks as one super fast connection to your PC. The legality of this is probably questionable in a lot of countries, but it's still a very cool piece of kit.

I posted before about a big hole in Unison.ie's old site. Instead of fixing the problem, Unison.ie seems to just released a new and improved site. Besides the lack of a subscription wall, they have also implemented RSS feeds on Independent.ie as well as on the regional papers. The only flaw I've found so far is that the edition of the Kerryman that's there seems to be a week out of date, and I'm sure that will be sorted soon enough.

After all the fun with the AACS last week, it turns out that anyone can get their own 128bit number which can then be defended using the DCMA :) This is done by generating a Haiku which is then copyrighted. The Haiku generated for me was as follows:

The haiku is copyright 2007 by Edward W. Felten:

We own integers, Says AACS LA. You can own one too.

Here is your very own 128-bit integer, which we hereby deed to you:

02 BA D1 6C B8 DD 0F B8 30 76 41 7A 08 53 0D D1

Not sure how well this would stand up in court, but it's interesting none the less.