Is 1&1 Down?

11/12/2014
DOAADI
Computers & Tech, News

1&1 has been the victim of a DDoS attack and between 9/12/14 and early on 11/12/14 there was restricted availability to some services and website hosted by 1&1 (this included the dashboard features).

Yesterday evening at 9pm GMT an unknown third party initiated a DDoS attack on 1&1’s DNS infrastructure. The Domain Name System (DNS) is used to attribute internet addresses such as “1and1.com” to IP numbers, similar to a telephone book. During the coordinated attack, many widely spread computers (also known as bot net) sent several hundred thousand requests per second to our DNS servers. The attack resulted in reduced availability on some of our hosting services (such as shared hosting, MyWebsite, servers, e-mail, control panel). Our engineers swiftly identified the target of the attack and have initiated respective countermeasures, making the majority of affected services now fully available. A small number of our customers may still encounter limited availability of their domain names. We are prioritizing work to fully resolve the issue as promptly as possible and apologize unreservedly for any inconvenience.  Please continue to check status-1and1.co.uk for additional information.

The issue is now resolved.

I noticed it Tuesday when my traffic approximately halved, when I had expected it to rise slightly from Monday.

Note that 1&1 servers are very rarely (if ever) all out, so it is wrong to say that 1&1 is “down”. It was experiencing technical issues, that’s all.

Roger Daltrey Gate-crashes Wedding

02/12/2014
DOAADI
Music, News

Here’s a brilliant story from Scotland. Susan and Carl Smith had just been married and a band was playing at their reception. At the same hotel, Roger Daltrey was staying prior to The Who’s gig in Glasgow. He heard the music, went in to congratulate the couple, then did a song with the band.Roger Daltrey gate-crashes wedding in Scotland

No one could believe it, and the married couple say it is something they will remember for the rest of their lives.

No More Manoeuvres On Driving Tests?

29/11/2014
DOAADI
ADI, DVSA, News

This is an old post – so old information

This BBC article  outlines proposed changes to the driving test. It is suggested that the turn in the road and corner reverse exercises could be dropped in favour of using a satnav to get to a destination and reversing out of a parking bay. The proposals are supposed to reflect “real life” driving.Satnav display

In my opinion, removing these manoeuvres would be a big, big mistake. It was bad enough when they dropped having to do two manoeuvres so they could fit independent driving in, but cutting these other two completely would be stupid. For a start, both of them DO reflect real life driving and not knowing how to do them will just encourage bad alternative methods of dealing with having gone the wrong way. It’s already bad enough with boy racers flinging their cars into U-turns without checking behind in places where they can’t get round without smacking the kerb. This would just force them into that corner even further.

What makes me laugh is that the DIA “welcomed” the plans. Well, I suppose it would do, since it was apparently involved in the discussions in the first place, and some of this crap is no doubt its idea. It’s a bit like asking David Cameron to give an objective comparison of his own party against the others.

On that subject, there is a General Election coming up (remember taking learners on motorways?), and these sorts of ideas traditionally appear round about this far ahead of the polls, only to disappear without trace once the new government is installed. And if we’re not careful we could end up with one which is so far to the right it would need Stephen Hawking to explain curved space using Imperial measurements in the rosy glow of all the bonfires made out of burning immigrants up and down the country. There won’t be any time for altering the driving test amidst all that.

I agree with the RAC, in that knowing how to use the satnav is important in its own right. But being able to turn around if you go the wrong way is still a vital skill. DVSA should be looking at making the test longer so they can test for more skills. They need to stop just trying to cram things into 40 minutes.

Note that parallel park and bay park would still be included under the proposals. Note also that these changes are not going to happen anytime soon.

You Have To Wonder At People Sometimes

28/11/2014
DOAADI
ADI

I was driving on an unlit country lane tonight at just before 4.30pm. It was getting dark, and it was drizzly and misty. I almost shit myself as I suddenly noticed a dog walker standing in the shadow of trees on my left, against a backdrop of trees. The dog walker was on the road on my left – not on the path that exists under the trees – and the dog was a bloody Black Labrador. It was sniffing in the long grass so I couldn’t see its eyes, and the owner was wearing black trousers and a deep red/wine coloured coat.

I can just imagine whose fault THAT would have been if I’d hit them!

Broadway Hotel Charged Customer £100 For Negative Review

19/11/2014
DOAADI
Funny, News

This one is so sad that it’s funny! The Broadway Hotel in Blackpool apparently charged a couple £100 via their credit card because they posted a negative review of their stay there on Trip Advisor. The hotel even had it written as a clause in their small print that they would make such a charge if anyone said bad things about them.

If you look them up on Trip Advisor, Broadway Hotel has a 2-star rating, placing them in 858th position out of 894 hotels in the area. Out of 256 reviews, over 200 customers rated them as “average” or worse (147 rated them “terrible”). Assuming they charged all of the “terrible” voters £100, the hotel will have netted a cool £15k – or over £25k if they didn’t like being rated as anything other than “fantastic”.

As it turns out, Broadway Hotel has now scrapped the “fine” clause after Trading Standards went sniffing around. There is no mention of any refunds, though. The wording in the article clearly states that they will stop doing it “in the future”. However, by implication this means they shouldn’t have been doing it in the first place, which implies in turn that any “fines” already levied were invalid.

The reason it’s so funny is that you really couldn’t have ended up with a worse review as a result of trying to engineer a good one. Even better is the fact that my neighbour’s cat could have sussed that such a ploy was wrong on just about every front imaginable, and that it was only a matter of time before it backfired on whoever thought of it. And you can’t help wonder why Broadway Hotel didn’t put as much energy into just fixing the problems as it did trying to hide them through what would be tantamount to extortion if you wrote it into a film script.

extortion

Law. the crime of obtaining money or some other thing of value by the abuse of one’s office or authority.

The obtaining of property from another induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under colo[u]r of official right.

It remains to be seen if this is the end of the matter now that it is clear Broadway Hotel was overstepping its mark.

Rush Still Undecided On 2015 Tour

14/11/2014
DOAADI
Music

According to this Classic Rock interview it doesn’t look like Rush will be touring in 2015 at the moment. It’s not definite that they won’t, but the fact that they’ve not decided yet is. Something is going to happen, that’s certain. It’s just a matter of when. Geddy also talks of “itching” to get back to the studio and record a new Rush album, and he says Alex feels the same way. Geddy Lee of Rush

Incidentally, my R40 Boxed Set arrived today, It’s a beautifully packaged product and I’m looking forward to some quiet time to go through the 10 DVDs it contains.

Test Pass: 13/11/2014

14/11/2014
DOAADI
Driving Tests

TickWell done Anna, who passed today with just 3 driver faults. She now joins her boyfriend, Clive, who passed a couple of weeks ago, with a shiny new driving licence. They’ve already got a car (bought as soon as Clive passed), and as they’re expecting their first child in the new year this was important to both of them. Anna even said that if she failed today it wasn’t the end of the world because Clive had already done it and so transport was no longer an issue for them.

It’s nice to be able to make a difference to peoples lives like this.

DVSA Warns Of Scam Test Booking Sites

13/11/2014
DOAADI
Driving Tests, DVSA

An email alert from DVSA warns learners how they can save money by avoiding scam test booking sites. DVSA doesn’t refer to them as scams, but that’s what they are – even if they do actually book your test for you. If you book your test thinking you’ve done it using the official route then you have been scammed.

The theory test costs £25.00 (down from £31.00 from October 2014). The practical test costs £62.00 (or £75.00 on weekends). If you get asked to pay more than these prices you are being scammed. If you don’t get a booking immediately, or if you cannot choose the date from a list, you are being scammed. You should only book through GOV.UK.

As DVSA says (in the link embedded in the email), it is difficult to know when you are on the official site and when you’re on a scam site. Many of the scammers deliberately make themselves out to be the official DVSA site, and ALL of them want to purposely mislead you to take your money, no matter what words they have put in the small print now that the hounds are on to their scent.

If you see a misleading advert on any web page, you can report it here. Don’t be afraid: do it. ANYONE who is trying to handle test bookings for you other than your instructor is a scammer one way or another (and if your instructor tries to charge you a fee for doing it then he’s a scammer, too). It’s best we all report them.

DVSA says it is “working with the search engines” to have misleading sites removed. This is funny, since most of the scammers will have paid to get themselves to the top of the searches in the first place, and I can think of one very large search engine that is particularly averse to removing anything that affects its revenue in any way. So good luck with that one, DVSA!

First Philae Picture From Comet Surface

13/11/2014
DOAADI
Astronomy, Computers & Tech

Here’s the first Philae image from the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (taken from the ESA website) by Philae – the small lander which touched down yesterday,First image taken by Philae from comet surface

It’s quite intriguing. After a lifetime of being told that comets are balls of “dirty snow” it looks pretty rocky. It also looks pretty solid, even though we’ve been repeatedly told it’s more like a big sponge since Rosetta arrived earlier this year.

It turns out that Philae’s fixing harpoons didn’t fire on landing, nor did its securing screws manage to bury themselves in the supposed icy surface. So it is just sitting there in a low gravity environment and – it would appear – on the edge of a steep drop. Fingers crossed that it stays put and does what it is programmed to do.

It also seems that when it first hit the ground (the one reported at around 4pm yesterday), it bounced hundreds of metres and took a further two hours to land again. Then, following a smaller bounce, it landed once more seven minutes later and finished in its current location.

Note that ESA images are larger than the one I’ve put here (I resize them to fit the page).

The latest news is that Philae eventually settled in the shadow of a cliff, and this may affect how well it can charge its batteries since the solar panels are not fully illuminated. One of its feet is apparently off the ground. The first bounce took it about 1km back into space before it landed again 2 hours later. After a smaller bounce, there is a suggestion that it is resting against a wall of some sort. It may even be lying on its side.

Although Philae weighs about 200kg here on earth, the very low gravity on 67P means that up there it only weighs about 1 gramme, so it could easily be thrown into space again, especially if comets vent anything like the one in the film Armageddon did. Having said that, one thing we HAVE discovered is that comets – this one certainly – are nothing like we have believed them to be for the last 100 years. There is also a worry that attempting to use Philae’s drill might move it, though this might be tried to positive effect when battery power begins to fail and all other data are obtained. Another possibility is that as 67P nears the sun then there may be more light and Philae will wake up.

You have to remember that there was only ever a 75% chance of success with the Philae part of the mission. Rosetta itself has achieved 100% of its goals, and if Philae never manages to drill, the images sent back by it mean that it has been successful beyond all realistic expectations. The entire mission has been the most spectacularly successful since Apollo 11 in 1969.