Julian C. Dunn

I always laugh whenever I visit Hewlett-Packard‘s website. I have no idea what kind of crazy spaghetti computer systems they have running the site, but URLs of the format h20000.www2.hp.com make me imagine that the site is being fronted with Apache running on OpenVMS/VAX, with the back-end running Nonstop on a Tandem minicomputer. (All products that HP owns.)

I received the following error message today:

Message from the ISAPI plugin:

No backend server available for connection: timed out after 10 seconds or idempotent set to OFF.
Build date/time: Jun 15 2006

Change Number: 779505

I dearly hope idempotent is not set to OFF. Unless HP/UX really is that bad and you need to keep trying so that at some point you’ll get the answer you were looking for. (“1+1=3 … nope. 1+1=4 … nope. 1+1=2 … ah-ha!”)

Incidentally, i was trying to determine the oldest server that we still have in operation. We still have a few PA-RISC-based HP 9000 A-class systems running HP/UX; they’ve probably been past their prime now for about 7 years. I’ll let you know if I find anything older!

If you follow Slashdot, Digg, etc. you might already have heard of this, but CBC is going to distribute the final episode of Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister via BitTorrent immediately following the prime time broadcast of the show this evening. That’s right, a complete, DRM-free XVID AVI file, along with an H.264 version you can download to your iPod.

As a favour to them, I’ll be helping a couple of the folks from TV A&E seed the torrent file this evening. Hopefully the bandwidth demand won’t be too onerous.

For more info, check out the CNGPM blog entry on this topic.

I have a serious problem with spam at work; I get perhaps 100 spams a day, 200 if it’s a bad day. Our IT department has repeatedly tried to implement anti-spam solutions in the GroupWise e-mail system, but to no avail — the promised reductions in spam haven’t materialized.

I decided to install ISBG, a/k/a IMAP Spam Begone. ISBG will log into an IMAP server, examine your Inbox, and run each of the messages against a local installation of SpamAssassin. You can then instruct ISBG to delete any spam message it finds.

I’ve installed ISBG and now invoke it from cron(8) every five minutes. So far, it’s living up to expectations! I highly recommend it for anyone with a sub-par email system that cannot properly handle spam filtering.

One quirk I’ve found with GroupWise is that I have no idea how to access subfolder names over IMAP. For example, if I want ISBG to move all my spams to a folder called “Spam” under my Cabinet, the folder doesn’t seem to have the name Cabinet.Spam. I haven’t yet figured out how to refer to that folder in the IMAP namespace. If you are a GroupWise under-the-hood hacker and know the answer, please let me know!

VIA Rail offers WiFi service aboard its trains. I’m on my way to Montreal for a business trip, so I thought I’d try it out. My conclusion: stay away!

It seems that VIA is partnered with a company called Parsons to provide the WiFi aboard the train. Judging by the latency, I can only assume that it is a satellite link. Check out what kind of latency you get for $8.95 per 24 hours of access:

C:>tracert aphrodite.aquezada.com

Tracing route to aphrodite.aquezada.com [216.235.8.211]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms     1 ms     2 ms  VIA_3454 [192.168.134.1]
  2     *        *     3071 ms  10.0.15.1
  3  4033 ms  3878 ms  3684 ms  link1.parsons.com [206.219.255.131]
  4   987 ms     *     1154 ms  66.147.156.114
  5   758 ms  1586 ms   798 ms  ge-5-0.a0.dlls.broadwing.net [216.140.4.173]
  6   899 ms  1457 ms   739 ms  216.140.4.158
  7   697 ms  1180 ms   339 ms  216.140.4.170
  8   633 ms   640 ms   859 ms  te-8-3-73.car4.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.68.63.9]
  9  2958 ms  2638 ms  1620 ms  ae-13-69.car3.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.68.19.5]
 10  1308 ms  1136 ms  1258 ms  4.68.63.162
 11  2126 ms  2132 ms  2962 ms  5.icore1.CT8-Chicago.teleglobe.net [206.82.141.2
9]
 12     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 13   944 ms  1572 ms  4343 ms  if-15-0-0-15.mcore3.TTT-Scarborough.teleglobe.ne
t [216.6.98.49]
 14   887 ms   937 ms  1901 ms  if-15-0.core1.TNK-Toronto.teleglobe.net [216.6.9
8.54]
 15  1235 ms   477 ms   320 ms  ix-1-151.core1.TNK-Toronto.teleglobe.net [216.6.
112.22]
 16  1120 ms  1936 ms  2679 ms  204.16.202.173
 17     *     3228 ms  1316 ms  216.235.0.236
 18  1519 ms  1882 ms  3716 ms  h216-235-8-211.host.egate.net [216.235.8.211]

Trace complete.

Unless you’re just doing SSH — save your money!

I’m cleaning out my $HOME/doc directory and I found this gem from ten years ago, when I was still a student searching for a new ISP. How things have changed – “what 56k modem standard are you favouring?”

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am currently in the process of searching for a new Internet service provider in the Toronto area. I thought it might be best if I simply listed my access and web page requirements, along with technical questions I wish to have answered, and you will follow up with a price range. I can be reached by e-mail at jdunn@[deleted]

Access Requirements: max. 30 hours per month, analog 28.8 kbps modem
Web Site Requirements:

• 5 megs server space
• CGI directory (very important)
• access and error logs available
• unrestricted transfer rate from outside clients

Technical and administrative questions:

1. Do you support, or are you planning to upgrade to, 56 kbps modem technology, and if so, which standard are you favouring/planning on favouring?
2. What is your users-to-modem ratio?
3. How long have you been in business?
4. How many subscribers do you have?
5. Whose backbone are you hooked into? (e.g. sprintlink, CANet, ONet, etc.)
6. What are your technical support hours?
7. How many tech support staff do you have?
8. What kind of servers do you run on? Do different servers serve up mail, ftp, http, or does one machine handle it all?
9. Are there any discounts for students?

If you could answer my questions and give me a price quote on the above requested services, with a breakdown if certain things are extra (e.g. unlimited transfer rate), I would really appreciate it.