I know I’m using an old (2003) version of Visio, but seriously… paper tape?

(I suppose these days “cards” could refer to some kind of portable storage, though I bet it really means punch cards.)

Wikipedia is now blacked-out for 24 hours.

Note that at the time of writing, clicking the “Learn more” link takes you to a page that momentarily has more information, but then itself gets blacked-out. D’oh. I’m guessing they’ll fix that soon.

I’m guessing the Google Cache will get a good workout in the next 24 hours. To use it, search Google as normal; look for the Wikipedia link, and click the right button [1] to make the cache preview appear, then click the “Cached” link [2] to look at it in full size.

More about the SOPA protest

The work email server spam filter does not simply reject everything suspicious – this would risk us losing legitimate emails, something made worse by some companies choosing to send invoices and remittances as PDF attachments with no accompanying text whatsoever, something the mail server considers dodgy.

So (until I work out a better, foolproof automated process, or take the time to properly tweak the spam settings on the server) I manually look through some of the doubtful messages to pluck out those that are not actually spam.

The most common types of spam messages caught seem to be…

5. Your credit card is blocked (enter all your details into our dodgy web site)…

4. Work from home and earn $$$…

3. Marry a gorgeous Russian girl…

2. Cheap replica watches (Rolex etc)…

1. Cheap medicine to help gentlemen with, err, size-related personal problems.

…though it appears cheap Canadian pharmacies are also gaining in popularity, despite this being for a .com.au address.

I can understand the principle of locking down web browsers on server machines, but there should at least be a straightforward way of overriding it.

The other week we were connected to a remote server trying to debug some ASPX code. That’s remote as in: on another continent, and not using the fastest connection. (It was designed to be fast for a remote population of users, not us.)

A good way to debug the code without switching on debug errors for everybody is to RDP onto the box and browse it from there.

This didn’t work because, despite Windows 2008 IE ESC (Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration) not being enabled, it was blocking cookies, and every option I could find to try and turn it back on was either disabled, or did nothing.

‘Cos you know, browsing localhost (which has your own code on it ferchrissake) is a terrible security risk. Sigh.

In a rush to resolve it, we eventually resorted to downloading and installing Firefox on the machine. (I love Chrome, but its automatic updates and things scare me slightly; probably not good for a server. Some day I’ll dig around and figure out if it can be turned off. Come to think of it I should make sure FF doesn’t do the same thing.)

Firefox brought its own problems. Straight after installation, it decided to load up some hideously slow (on this less than ideal link) page with video. No, actually, two pages — using two tabs — and despite it proclaiming how fast and responsive it is, wouldn’t respond. Blargh. Thanks a bundle, Mozilla.

It must have taken a minute or more to come back — a long frustrating time when you’re in a hurry.

This solution did, however, work — we could finally see the debug messages, thank goodness.

Is there an official way of getting IE to behave itself?

Surely not? Yet I’m getting this error in Chrome…

IE doesn’t appear to have this problem.

Update 21:43. Ah, it’s come good. Momentary blip? Wonder how many others got the scary message.

I really like Seesmic for Android, except for this: sometimes when there’s a short period of a poor mobile reception, it gets jammed, despite the signal subsequently improving.

In this case, after going through a poor signal area on my train commute home, I was back in the land of strong 3G and even wifi at home, but still it was stuck, trying to update.

The only way to deal with it appears to be a Forced close then a restart.

Surely it could be tweaked to handle bad connections better?

Google Buzz went west; the lesser-known Google Jaiku is shutting-down in January. No surprise to hear another aborted Google social media product will go belly-up: Google Wave to go read-only from 31/1/2012, and being switched-off on 30/4/2012.

They must really be hoping that Google Plus stays the distance.

Amazing the things you find during a clear out. Here, from 1996, is an Ozemail disk.

Australians would remember they used to turn up in magazines and so on, though they were never quite as ubiquitous as the America Online disks that seemed to show up everywhere in the North American magazines.

I haven’t tried to see if this one will still install on Windows 7… in fact for now it’s still sealed in its plastic.

The Ozemail web site www.ozemail.com.au forwards to iiNet, so I guess they got bought out by them somewhere along the line — in 2005 according to Wikipedia.

This seems to happen constantly; it’s out by one. It says UserX and Y others, and shows Y+2 avatars, rather than Y+1.

Tweet

Fascinating analysis of what goes on in the background on an iPhone or iPad as you listen to the radio or open a few (mostly Australian) apps — both in terms of bandwidth wastage, privacy and security: Secret iOS business; what you don’t know about your apps

Not that I’d expect Android to be much better; it’s all in the hands of the web/app authors, after all.

(via Kornelis)

Usually the GMail spam filter is very good. I wonder what happened this morning.

No, I don’t recognise the sender, nor do I recognise any of the other people on the To list. Odd.

(Okay, not an actual filter outage, but certainly the most obvious spam I’ve seen the filter miss recently.)

A fascinating rant about why Google Plus isn’t working (as well as some interesting stuff about Amazon), from a Google insider.

Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that’s not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone. Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars. Some spend all their time on Farmville. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there’s something there for everyone.

The full rant.

Analysis from Ed Bott:

And there’s the problem with Google+ in a nutshell. It’s a clone of Facebook, built by engineers for people who think like engineers. I now realize what it was I couldn’t put my finger on: this service started out as a list of features. But it didn’t start out with a vision. In fact, I’ve never heard anyone articulate, from a customer’s point of view, why Google+ came into existence in the first place.

I think they’re both probably right… and it’s why I suspect Google Plus won’t get the critical mass to become the replacement for Facebook or Twitter anytime soon.