Why is it that, bah, never mind.

Uni is over, I passed, yay. It seems to me that everything that should be a climax just isn’t any more. I get the impression that I’m seriously missing out on something big thats going down that literally everyone out there knows about but I somehow have missed it.

I’ve been doing a fair bit of work lately, this has lead to me not actively looking for more / better work, which has me annoyed. On the up side work is money, and money can be used to purchase nurishment which prolongs life.

Other things that annoy me right now include iinet closing down the diverter number I dial, so I’m going isp shopping again, and I don’t want to do westnet based on some people I know that work there, and dealing with their domain admin over the phone. (Lets just say all users with domain accounts share one username and password to the dodgy ftp server.) And all other ISPs in my area (ie local ones, not telephone companies) have moronic limits on time and or downloads (honestly, who these days downloads less than 1 gig a month ? Especially with 56k connections and online games.) So in a grand thank you iinet I’m doing the download shit 24/7 thingo again, lets see how many iso’s I can get in a 21 day period…

Updates have been sparse lately, I guess I’m sorry about it, but I’ve been trying to do so much, but falling short of it all the time.

There was a big ass crackdown on DVD ripped movies worldwide recently and I was tipped off to this slashdot comment with “I think its one of the walan admins” tacked onto it:

I was busted. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11, @08:54PM (#2690884)

I got raided – 2:30am this morning. 6 Australian Federal Police agents came in, woke everyone up, and proceeded to flash around the warrant. It was regarding my collection of 300-400 DivX dvdrip movies.. They had FTP logs, asked me where most of it was.. They took 3 of my machines – my windows box, my linux fileserver, and my laptop, which I managed to get back at 6am as I needed it for work. They also took a collection of around 40 old HDDs, I keep around for occasional use, or ripping the earth magnets out of. Most were SCSI – SCA even, would be funny to see what they try and do with them.. They are imaging the drives and sending off copies to the US – where it will be sifted through for the next 6 months.. I was told it would be about that long until I will hear news about me being prosecuted. I had my interview – lasted around 2 hours, and then had a informal chat to them regarding what was going on, the scene etc, as they were just ordinary cops, not specialists in computers. I think they thought I was a lot bigger player than I am – I just download it, I dont sell it, distribute it, crack or release it – just burn it for my own archives. Hopefully that fact should keep me out of jail. My friend in Sydney also got done – he had an FBI agent though at his raid – they imported one especially for this.. Ahh well have to see how things go..

[ Reply to This | Parent ]

Re:I was busted. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11, @11:31PM (#2691680)

You should have given the movies to your friend the day b4, when he asked to borrow them…

[ Reply to This | Parent ]

It brings home the reality of what so many people say. The police are after the easy to catch criminals, not the ones with the worst affect on the public. An example I came across recently. Speed Cameras. In some european countries the road and traffic authority (or equivalent) place Speed cameras in areas where there are a high number of road accidents or a large proportion of vehicles travel at unsafe speed for the road. The difference with Australia is the cameras placed in some European countries are fixed, that is they are permanent. People learn where they are and obey the speed in those areas. I agree with that. What I don’t agree with is hiding cameras where people speed no matter what the road conditions are. No I haven’t recently got a speeding fine. If the cameras were placed where there is an above average number of accidents (where excessive speed was as issue) or the road condtions are dangerous, I have no objection to this use of cameras. Other notes: in New Zealand they have a sign before a speed camera telling motorists that there is a radar trap operating ahead. I have a pet hate with speeding cameras and fines, actually parking fines today.

Different issue completely, today, I was looking for parking at work (Centrepoint bunno) and there was no free parking spaces left, sure, I usually occupy one of these 2 hour parking places all day by simply pushing my vehicle from one bay to the next (so the other tyre gets chalked before I have to wear the chalk away by driving around the block). It’s the Christmas rush, but it gets me to a point: (a) I had to pay for lower quality parking (on the roof in the hot sun). (b) The parking ticket machine does not give change so if you’ve only got notes (no coins) you have to risk getting a parking ticket while you go somewhere to get change, and if you do have change, but only $2 coins you either pay $4 for all day ($2.50 normally, 9am till 5pm) or $2 for 4 hours (50 cents an hour) and come back later to get another ticket or risk a parking fine ($20 usually, I’m yet to get one for more). If I were running the parking lot, I’d make the free parking on the roof (to encourage people to pay for parking under cover) and be a nazi with people parking without tickets on the ground floor, unless it became a problem I wouldn’t bother checking peoples tyres on the roof … but I don’t run a parking lot so what would I know, I’m just a lowly CS graduate.

The dual celeron has another interested buyer. Problem is the buyer is 15 and unemployed and has no money. I guess I’m doomed after all.

I’m going to sell the miro card on ebay soon… I’ve made the ad up, but I’m looking at paypal now. I might wait until after new year before posting it though.

Those of you with a vague memory of the squaw on the hippopotamus being equal to the sons of the squaws on the other two hides will realise that this means the diagonal must be a genuine 15 inches. — Dan from Dansdata on the subject of monitor sizes.

Having now fineally completed uni I’m somewhat unsure what to do next. I decided not to do honours because I’d have to go to perth and I’ve had enough of living in poverty for the time being.

On the linux front, I think I’m just about to make a break through on the pcmcia network boot disk front. You may or may not remember the last break through several months ago when I succeeded making one of these disks using MS-DOS 7 and later Caldera DR-DOS for the purpose of running Ghost. Well I feel closer than ever to making a linux pcmcia network boot disk enabling long filename access to the disk from a single disk, added to this the ability to repartition and format filesystems (not just ext2 and fat32) without rebooting. A rather handy tool I feel, especially since the floppy disk drive in the machine is non-native (PCMCIA). However I have suceeded in modifying the Redhat install program to work with my network card without needing the second disk. In other issues, I think I’m just about at the point of load sharing n ethernet or any for that matter network devices, it’s more complex that it sounds involving lots of priority queues and such.

Imperial conflict and redlite distrikt are where it time is sinking right now, right down the gurgler.

On the lan front, the case mod I was going to do has been pushed back due to costs, I just want to do the one and only case mod to end all casemods. Needless to say it must be done right. SWGN number 7 was this weekend, it was ok. The next walan will be 750 people for 26 hours, ouch, help.

Others will look to you for stability, so hide when you bite your nails.