Cool, I only need two planets if I want to keep living the same way. How hard can it be to find a spare?

Take the quiz here

Here’s the current situation - just in case it isn’t entirely clear from the item below. Windows Live Local currently has an issue for some people who are using Firefox on Linux. Steve Lombardi and Stephen Stchur of Microsoft confirm that this combination is absolutely supposed to work (it’s something they’ve put considerable effort into) and believe that there may be a problem with their browser sniffing code. They’re aiming to get a fix in the next release of Live Local - in around a week.

In the meantime you can work around the problem by

1. Downloading User Agent Switcher for Firefox
2. Importing User Agent Switcher options from this file
3. Instructing Firefox to fake Firefox 1.5 (Windows XP)

Thanks to Steve and Stephen for getting on the case so promptly and to everyone who reported results.

The Register is running a largely unsurprising story that reveals that UK punters are still falling for phishers. I imagine susceptibility to phishing isn’t limited to the UK. If you have active items on eBay (for example) just how are you supposed to know that an email purporting to be about an item you have for sale is a fake? They tend to look pretty convincing these days.

The obvious solution would seem to be to give users the option of subscribing to an RSS feed instead of email notifications. Email is pushed; in spite of any appearance to the contrary RSS is a pulled - nobody can send you an RSS feed you haven’t subscribed to. It turns out that this isn’t an original thought: Will Pate beat me to it. So, what about it?

Where’s Windows Live Local gone? It used to be at local.live.com but now all I get is a search interface that seems to lead to maps but no aerial photos. Strangely I can still see the aerial photos (which for my area are much better than Google’s) via flashearth.com but all the links to Windows Live Local now redirect to intl.local.live.com - “Live Local Search”.

Update: It’s back. Maybe somebody pulled the wrong plug :)

Update 22/09/2006: It’s still not working on Linux (tested with Firefox 1.5.0.5). Working fine on Mac Firefox. Can we have a show of hands from people who’ve previously been able to get it working on Linux?

Update: This item (dated Sept 12) on http://virtualearth.spaces.live.com states that it does work on Firefox Linux (my emphasis):

You have control over line thickness, fill color, line color and line pattern. You can draw multi-segment lines or complex closed shapes. While its not exactly Adobe Illustrator, it is quite an impressive set of basic drawing and editing tools all implemented in Dynamic HTML; No plugins required, and it works very well in Firefox 1.5 (Windows, Mac, Linux), IE6, and IE7. Here’s a Collection I am working on of the major neighborhood boundaries in Manhattan.

Update 24/09/2006: Steve Lombardi from the Windows Live / Virtual Earth team (that’s his blog linked above) tells me that this is definitely not intended behaviour and is now investigating - thanks Steve.

I’ll post more information as soon as I have it.

Stephen Stchur writes (hoisted from the comments):

This is definitely a browser sniffing problem. VE is absolutely designed to work with Firefox (on all of Windows, Mac, and Linux).

Download the Firefox extension (User Agent Switcher). Then switch the User Agent to be IE 6 for Windows. Then try browing to local.live.com. It will work.

A crappy solution, but at least it’s something until this gets fixed.

I’ve just tried that and it seems to work fine.

Update 25/09/2006: Spoke too soon - faking IE 6 prevents the redirect - but the map doesn’t actually load. I was having connectivity problems when I tried it and assumed that’s why the map hadn’t loaded - but Stephen confirms the same problem.

What does seem to work is faking Firefox on XP. That’s not one of the default User Agent Switcher options - but if you download uas-ffxp.xml and import it to User Agent Switcher you should get a Firefox/Windows XP option that will work with local.live.com.

Steve and Stephen hope to have a proper fix in the next release and asked me to pass on thanks to everyone who submitted reports.

The London Review of Books recently published a lovely, loving piece on the BBC Micro. I enjoyed it immensely - but being an unreconstructed Beeb nerd I had to highlight one small error:

Thomas Jones writes that ‘the limitations of a 32K memory revealed themselves most bluntly in the fact that our computer couldn’t count any higher than 32,767’ (LRB, 22 June). The BBC micro used 32 bit integer variables, so it had no problems with numbers far larger than 32,767 and, in any event, that limitation would have had nothing to do with the amount of memory.

They printed the letter in LRB 28/15. In LRB 28/17 they printed this response from Roddy Graham:

It’s not quite right to say, as Andy Armstrong does, that the BBC Micro used 32-bit integer variables (Letters, 3 August). Like nearly all modern computers, the 6502 central processing unit (CPU) that the Beeb was based on uses binary digits (bits). The 6502 has instructions built into its hardware to move bits around in groups of eight and to add and subtract 8-bit numbers: it is an 8-bit micro. For any other arithmetic operations (addition involving numbers bigger than 255, multiplication, division etc) someone would have to write software.

More modern CPUs move bits around in groups of 32 or 64, and have built-in instructions for a wide range of arithmetic operations. BBC BASIC has several built-in data types, including 32-bit integers. Different software running on the BBC Micro can manipulate much larger integers. BBC BASIC first ran on BBC microcomputers, but has since been made available on many other, newer computer systems. Armstrong seems to have confused the hardware (BBC Micro) and its inherent capabilities with the software (BBC BASIC), which could be run on a different computer, or be replaced by different software with better or different capabilities.

Thomas Jones got a ‘syntax error’ when he typed 32768 at the BBC BASIC command line because BBC BASIC assumes that any input which begins with a number is a line of a program. But its internal data structure allocated only 15 bits for storing line numbers, so the highest possible line number was 32767. My favourite BBC BASIC error message is line number related, too. Typing ‘RENUMBER 10, 0’ at the command line provokes the reply: ‘Silly’.

OK, so Roddy just wants to parade his geek credentials; nothing wrong with that - that’s why I wrote my letter in the first place. His facts are pretty much straight too. The only problem is that they don’t actually disagree with what I said - so he’s obliged to spin his letter as a correction of mine so that it’s worth printing. Unfortunately that necessarily involves implying that I don’t know what I’m talking about - in other words it involves flipping the big red switch in my head that has a sign hanging from it saying “Don’t touch this switch. Ever” and then in small print “Yes I know that the mere fact of this sign’s existence makes every fibre of your being yearn to find out what happens if you flip the switch - but trust me - you really, really don’t want to. Cubed.”

My first plan relied on LRB not actually having the ability to run a BBC BASIC program. I’d find an excuse to get them to print a short obfuscated program - innocent to the untrained eye but with a vicious payload. Perhaps when run it’d print “Roddy is a poop head” - or maybe something even stronger. I’m sure a certain small scale notoriety might ensue but I couldn’t run the risk of them not printing anything so instead I’ve just sent them this:

With reference to Roddy Graham’s letter published in LRB, 7th Sept 2006:

I’m amused to read that “Armstrong seems to have to have confused the hardware (BBC Micro) and its inherent capabilities with the software (BBC BASIC)…”. The BBC Micro did indeed use the 6502 processor - an eight-bit processor which only directly deals with numbers in the range 0 to 255. Having written at least three emulators and a number of floating point and integer maths packages for the 6502 I’m fairly intimate with its inner workings and the means by which greater arithmetic range and precision is synthesised from those eight-bit chunks.

Graham’s explanation of the reason why line numbers larger than 32,767 constitute a “Syntax Error” is completely accurate. I’m sure that between us we could provide your readers with many other similarly scintillating snippets over the coming weeks.

Presumably in order to secure an audience for this bravura display of BBC Micro trivia knowledge Graham presents his elaboration as a correction: “It’s not quite right to say, as Andy Armstrong does, that the BBC Micro used 32 bit integer variables”. I’m afraid it is precisely right to say just that. Every BBC Micro (apart perhaps from a few custom built systems) was supplied with BBC BASIC as the default programming language. BBC BASIC was an integral component of the BBC Micro and BBC BASIC - rather daringly - used 32 bit integers. Jones’ original article quite reasonably conflates the ideas of the BBC Micro and BBC BASIC as would all but the most desperate pedant.

One imagines that faced with the assertion that he was using his computer to send an email Graham would respond “Oh, no - you are quite mistaken! I am, in fact, using an email program that is running on my computer to send an email; the computer itself has no inherent email-sending capability”.

Wouldn’t it be terrible if the enduring legacy of the BBC Micro was an entire generation of nerds who confuse terminological precision for effective communication?

To that I’d just like to add that it’s a damn good job that somebody still cares about this stuff otherwise, well, who knows where we’d be? Apropos of which if anyone would like to have a debate about the relative merits of the 6502 and the Z80 I’m there - but I’d just like to start by saying that if you believe the Z80 was superior to the 6502 (hah! snort!) then you’re going down baby - down where the fishes don’t sing.

Who ever thought they’d tire of the kitten with its paws up eh? Is there a collective noun for the tens of thousands of people who have chosen it as their avatar? Are they all part of a new religion I didn’t hear about? Are they the same people who pair up a Loony Toons tie with an otherwise sober business outfit to show the world that they have a sense of humour?

Xeni posted this over on Boing Boing a little while ago:

The culprit was discovered to be mosquitoes native to that region carrying a new strain of Malaria which thus far has a 100 percent mortality rate and kills victims in fewer than 2 days. After death, this parasite is able to restart the heart of its victim for up to two hours after the initial demise of the person where the individual behaves in extremely violent ways from what is believed to be a combination of brain damage and a chemical released into blood during “resurrection.”

How cool is that? Or rather how cool would that be if it weren’t a fake. Here’s the link that accompanied the story:

http://65.127.124.62/south_asia/4483241.stm.htm

It points to a faked BBC News page:

The fake page is based on this story that was originally posted on 2005/04/25 - and indeed it turns out the hoax is quite old: check out this Google search. In fact it dates from, er, April Fools day 2005.

So who’s pranking whom? Xeni thanks Bonnie for the link. What do you know Bonnie?

Oh, one more clue. The faked page has a link to baserape.com. Turn your speakers down if you check it out.

I’m looking for someone to take over maintenance of pam_abl. It doesn’t look as if I’m going to have any time to work on it over the next few months. The urgent task is to get it working on 64 bit systems. I don’t think that will necessarily be hard - but I don’t have a 64 bit machine here to test on and although I’ve had a kind offer of a box to use I don’t really feel inclined to try debugging code that can easily lock out your ssh connection over an ssh connection.

If you’re interested in taking it over let me know. Grab the code and have a look at it before you commit to anything.

I’ve just learnt (thanks Klaus) that the industrious folks at Wintec have released another firmware upgrade for the WBT 100 and WBT 200. It seems that they’ve taken the opportunity to change the data format - so I’m going to have to update gpsbabel again. I’m guessing that eventually they’ll run out of things to add :)

As I write gpsbabel does not support the new format - so don’t upgrade your firmware just yet. I’m working on a fix and will post as soon as I have one.

Update: Or maybe not… The data format doesn’t seem to have changed - but gpsbabel does now sometimes timeout while the device is erasing its flash memory. I’ve changed the timeout and that change should make it into gpsbabel sometime soon.