Development Models

Ken Coar made an interesting post about an alternative development model; Bug Limitation through Optimised Audience Targeting (BLOAT). To paraphrase, it basically uses the magpie approach to control users; that is distracting them with new shiny things, so that they forget whatever the current and past problems are.

Sounds a bit like a lot of Sage software to me. Possibly rather unfair, but given my experiences with it, totally justified. Which is a real shame as it appears to work... for a while.

What's up doc?

Like most open source software, lftp doesn't really come with much documentation; aside from a short tutorial and the man pages. Now if you apply your brain correctly, this usually isn't a problem. However today my brain appears to be on strike.

By default (on etch) lftp tries to use the FEAT command to assertain what the target FTP server can and cannot do, and then provide authentication details once it's worked it all out. Now usually this isn't a problem, however when the target FTP server requires SSL / TLS for all communication it will never reply. Ok, no problem; a quick "set ftp:use-feat no" solves this. Until you exit and try again. Over the course of the next hour this really started to piss me off, as I found the -f switch excutes a script and then quits (which is logical I guess), and the setting wasn't persistent. Finally I had enough. I checked over the ~/.lftp directory; with no luck. After a swift locate I discovered the wonderful /etc/lftp.conf, appended my various preferences and restarted lftp.

And lo, did the sleep deprived man rejoice.

Tired

Well, its gone 2am and I still can't sleep properly. Again. Thats about 25 nights in a row now. I'm not stressed, my mind isn't that active; it's been worse in the past. I just don't get to sleep, or wake up every few hours. Quite frankly I'm fucking knackered.

An interesting point is that I'm coming up with some interesting and barmy ideas; traditionally better ones than I come up with in the shower, or on the bog.

Expect some of the stuff to get released - at some point. Maybe I should try polyphasic sleep, since I'm awake half of the time... I'm not sure how work would like me sleep quasi-randomly during the day though.

This is what options are for

Why on earth is it that when you tell Skype that you don't want it to "adjust your sound device settings", you discover that it continues to do so?

This personally causes me an immense number of problems when it decides to do this, as I use Skype to communicate with my colleagues across the internet. Today was the last straw, but all was not lost as 30 seconds of searching has thrown up the answer (google still cuts it for me).

  1. Close Skype if its open.
  2. Open C:\Documents and Settings\\%USERNAME%\Application Data\Skype\YOURSKYPEACCOUNT\Config.xml, with your favourite text editor
  3. Find and edit the existing AGC element and change the 1 to a 0. For Example:
    <AGC>0</AGC>
  4. Add a new AGC element as a child to the Call element; again it should have a value of 0.
  5. Save and close Config.xml.
  6. Open C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\Application Data\Skype\Shared.xml, and add another AGC element as a child to VoiceEng element; again ensure that it has a value of 0.
  7. Restart Skype, and test using the echo123 service.

You should find your recording volume no longer randomly jumps about. Sorry it's only for Windows, but the linux version doesn't seem to give me any problems.... I wonder if its one unified code base?

500 times a day

It's suggested out there on the world wide web (so it must be true), that in Britain you are caught on camera anywhere upto 500 times a day. I worry about this. For a guy who works from home a lot, I worry for an inordinate amount of time about this. What if I'm suddenly deemed to be "unusual traffic" and get flagged? Do "they" have the right to monitor what we do every day? I see little proof that it significantly helps to combat crime.

So what's brought all this to the forefront of my mind? Getting caught, face on (whilst sitting in a static queue of traffic), as some leather-clad-biker in the other lane was speeding in a 30mph zone. Granted, this isn't a big issue, but can we trust those who monitor us?

Fear ECHELON. I have little doubt that it exists, in some form. I know for a fact that the constant video speed cameras send their data to a central repository. But does it get intercepted and are our current levels of encryption sufficient for the near future, or even now?

Paranoid yet? Or are you still annoyed about the speed cameras?