Medium

Whilst I am probably a "large" these days, that is not what I mean.

I am actually starting to get annoyed by people that are friends of relatives that are spouting crap (on FaceBook, where else?!) suggesting that somehow "medium shows" are somehow real. There are people that have been suckered by cold readings and think there is communication with the dead somehow!

Cold reading is very clever and there are well practiced people that can do it one to one, and those that are perhaps less capable that do it with a large audience (where they can start by picking the people they talk to from a group, which is one step easier). It really is clever stuff, and makes you think the reader has knowledge that they could not have.

Cold reading can be really entertaining done as part of a magic/illusion show. It is impressive. But as any professional magician will tell you, it is a trick, a good trick, but a trick. Read the wikipedia article. You can learn to do it yourself if you want. There are books on it.

What worries me is not only that some people have been suckered in to this themselves, which is sad enough, but there are others that know it is all fake and somehow think it entertaining to see people in the audience clearly fooled in to thinking they have a message from a dead relative. People moved to tears, even. And that this is somehow "entertainment"! This is nothing short of exploitation, and somewhat distressing to see. They don't even finish with "only kidding", and somehow it is quickly forgotten by those present that they start by explaining that it is only for entertainment purposes.

That final point - that they tell you it is for entertainment only - is forgotten to such an extent that one person posted that they have never heard any medium say that. It would be worrying if they did not as the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951 (which repealed the Witchcraft Act 1735) makes that a criminal offence which they only get around by saying it is not real and is only for entertainment. Yes, we have been trying to stop vulnerable people being ripped off by charlatans since 1735!

There are prizes sat waiting for anyone that was genuine and did talk to the dead - obviously never claimed, because it is all bullshit.

Whether you believe in fairies, unicorns, star trek or some sort of deity, in your spare time, I don't really care, but don't think this crap is real when they say themselves that it is not and when it is easily explained by cold reading techniques that are well documented.

Being entertained by seeing someone else fooled and emotional when they have lost a loved one, is somewhat sick if you ask me.

But I am sure there are shows that are entertaining, and not exploitative, maybe. If there are, and you enjoy the show, then great, but don't be fooled in to thinking any of it is real, like any magic show.

Have fun!

Update:

The debate has raged on, and one of the key points raised is the notion that this is at all like religion. That believing in a medium is like believing in a god, and a faith and everyone entitled to their own belief. I have to say strongly that this is not the case with a medium claiming to talk to the dead. Unlike most religions that are carefully designed to avoid questioning or testing of the religion, the idea of talking to the dead is very much something that can be tested. It is possible to test if someone comes up with information that only a dead person would know - even something simple like a locked safe that only the dead person knew the combination, but by any number of similar and properly testable means. This is a testable claim and there are many prizes for genuine mediums to claim if they can pass such tests. So this is not a vague matter of faith or belief - it is a matter of testable fact. Next time you talk to a medium claiming they are real - ask them, on stage, why they have not claimed the prizes offered? If they say they do not want/need the money, ask why they have not claimed it to donate to a charity - why deny a charity $1,000,000 if they are genuine?

Update: All rational discussion has clearly ended...

Quiet?

Well, I have several things brewing which will make some good blog posts - but they are better posted as the whole story when finished. One on spammers, one on TPS, and one on the council, at least :-)

As for Blizzard, they have stated that they do support IPv6, and even emailed me for a tcpdump. They then ignored me again and again! They have changed things which has removed the delay as they now send a firewall response to the IPv6, so still broken. Oddly the first reaction to my blog on the IPv6 mailing list was :-

The good old "lets make a uninformed news article to force them to do 
something that nobody cares about" post. I don't see any signal there.

Which is odd, as I did not consider myself "uninformed" on this at all. Also odd, as on the IPv6 mailing list where Blizzard announced the IPv6 support originally you would think it was not something "nobody cares about" either. Oh well.

Blizzard drop IPv6 support?

Whilst the rest of the world are adding IPv6 support, Blizzard seem to be dropping it.

That is the only conclusion I can draw as they have a number of realms not working on IPv6 at present, and still have the setting default to unticked.

IPv4 addresses have run out, and already ISPs are struggling with messy systems like Carrier Grade NAT. IPv6 is the current version of Internet Protocol and once again brings the Internet back to the way it was designed. For gamers this means less messing with the traffic, either by their own router, or systems within the ISP.

Looking at this in more detail, and looking at a similar forum post from someone else back in October, it seems that they are using SLAAC assigned (MAC based) IPv6 addresses for servers. This is just lazy, and means that any change of hardware can cause the address to change. I can only assume that has happened and they have failed to update server IP lists or DNS to use the new address. They should probably manually assign IPv6 addresses.

If it had been the IPv4 address not working, they would find a way to fix it.

The problem is that they are totally uninterested in fixing this, which, to me, means that they HAVE WITHDRAWN IPv6 SUPPORT for World of Warcraft. They closed the ticket I raised (EU47550106) as "resolved", even when it clearly is not. They have simply ignored at least two forum posts (they suggested I post to the forum when closing the ticket), 12365247226 and 12844094863.

It is a real shame. I was impressed when they launched IPv6 support a few years ago. They were ahead of a lot of people. Now we see FaceBook, Google, and lots of content via IPv6. Even large ISPs are finally planning IPv6 deployment (A&A did it 12 years ago). The Internet is finally growing up, except for Blizzard. Poor show.

Side effect of tracing IP addresses

We see the government wants to trace IP addresses to a person.

We know that is impossible, but tracing IP addresses to a subscriber is more possible. For a lot of ISPs though this means using some data from CGNAT gateways, which is a lot of data to log. It may be that some is logged for a short amount of time, for the ISPs own usage (diagnostics, abuse, etc), but it seems the government want to log everything for a year.

Even so, it is generally a tad pointless for the purpose of identifying a person responsible for something for lots of reasons.

However, we may well see side effects of this if the happens. Obviously the legislation has rules around this, and RIPA is relevant for access to the data, and so on, but once you have the mechanisms in place and the tools and investment necessary, data does not stay compartmentalised.

One of the ways it can cause problems is with the courts.

We have already seen a number of court orders on large ISPs to block access to web sites. This is something that never used to happen even though the law allowed for it. The reason it is happening is that there is almost no cost for an ISP blocking child abuse images to extend that to block some extra web sites. So we have a side effect of something that people think is sensible, such as blocking people encountering child abuse images by accident - in that the technology to do that is now extended to other things. It was a side effect some of us predicted but I am not sure we expected the issue to be with the courts.

So will we see the same side effect for tracing IP addresses. We may see many more Norwich Pharmacal Orders to ISP. If there ends up being an API for tracing IPs to subscribers for ISPs to work with RIPA, then how long before the courts demand that the API is provided to copyright trolls as well, as no extra cost.

Obviously breaching copyright is not right, but neither is the way that many of these company intimidate and embarrass innocent parties that are just the bill payer for a household in to coughing up money when they have not done anything wrong.

Update Unavailable with This Apple ID

Why tell me there is an update and then tell me you cannot update it?

Why Apple? Why?

Pages comes with the iMac, but on both of the new iMacs it tells me that there is an update to Pages. On both of them I cannot do the update. So I am forever stuck with a badge on my app store icon.

Anyone know how to fix this, as I cannot be arsed to book a genius, or take a 27" iMac in to the store to show them!



[update: see solution in the comments, thanks Jonny]

Razer Naga SHIFT key use on iMac OS X

I have an iMac and I have a Razer Naga game mouse.

The mouse has 12 keys on the side. This makes it excellent for games like World of Warcraft as you have a set of actions (weapons, spells, etc) that are usually tied to a number key 1-9,0,-,= on the keyboard.

The Naga has, by default, those keys as if it was an extra keyboard.

What makes it extra useful is that you can have a further 12 keys when used with the SHIFT key, and another 12 when used with the CTRL key. But these modifier keys are on the main keyboard, not on the mouse. Even so, left hand on SHIFT, right hand on the mouse button, works well. Been using it like this for years on Linux and the other iMac.

I installed the new iMac, and the Razer mouse driver package, and WoW, and tried to play - only to get killed rather quickly. The SHIFT and CTRL modifiers simply do not work !!!

I closed WoW and checked on the console, and sure enough the keys typed 1, 2, 3, etc on the console even when used with SHIFT.

First thing to check was the 123/NUM button on the bottom of the mouse, but that was set to 123 correctly, so the keys works as the normal number keys.

I googled, and there are loads of people with this problem from a few years ago, it clearly crops up a lot, and there are lots of solutions. I tried some, such as setting the keys do F1-F12 in the Razer driver, but still SHIFT/CTRL did not work. There are also some software packages which I was wary of, and even settings in WoW itself. However, as this affected a simple terminal window it was clearly not a WoW specific thing.

I have, however, found the answer, and it is very simple, and explains why it works on my other iMac. My mistake was installing the Razer drivers! Removing these (and rebooting) it just works. In a console, pressing SHIFT on main keyboard and "1" on mouse gets me "!". It works with WoW.

How annoying, but there you go - if you want to use a Razer Naga on an iMac under OS X with World of Warcraft then don't install the Razer drivers.

Sneaky change of BT terms that affects BT infinity

BT have terms and conditions which cover the Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC) services we buy. Until recently there was a very useful term that said that if the install did not reach the forecast speed, then BT would tell us and give us the option to cancel the install (re-instating ADSL if necessary, and refunding costs), or re-appoint to try and get a better speed, or to accept the lower speed.

In practice BT seem to have no means to ask us that question, and so complete the install at the lower speed and we have to complain and dispute the billing if it is cancelled, and so on.

However, it has come to light that a couple of months ago BT changed these terms!

Now, they only have to meet the 10th percentile of the forecast, which is, oddly, below the "Minimum" they state on their forecast, so is some new definition of "Minimum" of which I was previously unaware. They do have a spreadsheet to tell us what the 10th percentile is from that.

They have also changed it so that the only option is to cease the service if we don't accept the lower speed.

This is a nasty change - previously it was clear cut and also very easy to explain to customers. Now we have a much more complex scenario to explain to customers.

What is also annoying is that BT made this change with no specific notice to us that I can find, and I think against their own terms. The terms allow changes if they are to "improve the quality of the Service" or "do not have material adverse effect on performance or provision of the Service". Well, clearly this does not meet those criteria, so I am not sure the change of terms is even valid!

Changes are page 17, over version 9, 10, 11 and 12 of the BTW FTTC handbook. We've written to BT plc to say these changes are contrary of clause 3.8 of our contract.

Update: I have to question the 10th percentile as well, on the basis that it would mean 1 in 10 lines fail to meet this extra low (below minimum) speed, which seems somewhat unlikely.