toast

I think I've gotten far enough that I can release this, if people want to take a look. Let me emphasize that this is still pretty early, and is likely to eat babies. I haven't yet tested it against my main mailbox, so you might not want to either.

here's the page

I think this has all the features needed to contemplate using on a daily basis, but it doesn't do folder management, so you would need to keep a config to connect directly for that.

I'm trying to see if there's a way to trick my blu ray player into playing stuff from my MythTV box... so checking out it's network transmissions:

Here are some thoughts:

*) I'm really confused by the http connection to www.lge.com which connects, but transfers no data (unless it's really secret, but it can't be that secret, since it's www.lge.com is hosted by CDNetworks, which I'm guessing is a CDN)

*) While it's kind of neat that it's using NTP to get the time (which it doesn't seem to show anywhere), it would be cooler if it didn't (apparently) hardcode 1.us.pool.ntp.org and 2.us.pool.ntp.org (but at least they didn't hardcode time.uwisc.edu or whatever). They should have a vendor zone.

*) It's kind of strange that there are two HTTP posts for the apparent firmware check to aswnus.lge.com, right after another, and the name gets looked up twice. Also, it's kind of strange that the player is using a User-Agent of Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1;), when it's clearly not IE 6 on Windows XP, and it's a custom server. Also, I'm too lazy to (attempt to) decode the content of the post and response. Ok I did it, First the player says:
"P001 BD370V Servo A BD.8.16.693.A 00E09199ECBB N "
and the server says:
"710Network update service is not available for Device"

Then, in the next request, the player says:
"P001 BD370V Main A BD.8.16.693.A 00E09199ECBB N "
and the server says:
"00000000000026133409900Current version is the latest00"

Blah blah, it does another request to the same server (nobody seems to want to do connection pipelining), with another dns lookup. I didn't bother decoding this one.

*) Looking at Cinema Now. It's pretty amusing that they mispelled (twice) the User-Agent: "LGE Thumnail downlaoder". Sadly, this looks like a lot of https for the interesting stuff, but box art, and trailers come via http, so might be (slightly) hackable. Also, the trailer I picked wasn't DRMed, but the formatting seems slightly wacky. Trailer seems to be mpeg2 video + aac audio in an mpeg program stream container.

*) YouTube

HTTP only, XML api. Very likely hackable! ;) Format for one video is h.264, with aac audio, in an mp4 container.

*) Netflix

HTTPS from the start; cert is signed by a chain of two Netflix CAs, but the root CA is not signed by a normal CA. Speed test is HTTP though, and consists of downloading a 12.5M file full of nulls. :) Content is downloaded via http, but the WMV movie seems to have some sort of encryption. The player is also simultaneously downloading a 'bif' file (through a different CDN) likely that contains information key to decryption, but maybe other stuff is coming through the https connection.

gah... i'm now at the point where I'm not sure how much I'm gaining by using an IMAP client library that almost does what I want, instead of writing my own from scratch. (I can't get back the COPYUID information, which the server library wants to pass back)

It's very difficult to legally require anything on the internet; you need to get it into international law, or adult sites will just go overseas like the gambling sites did. This is especially true with something with such a loose definition as "adult content". There isn't agreement over what is acceptable within the US much less around the world. You'd either get people putting up warnings for everything, or some country hosting all the swimsuit magazines so people don't have to figure out if that's adult content.

That said, I think a lot of commercial adult sites already including warnings about their content on their splash pages, and with various metadata ratings systems (see ICRA and predecessors). So this argument is kind of 10 to 15 years late.

What are people doing for backups? I'm recovering data for my neighbor's across the street whose hard drive crapped out (of course bad sectors in the NTFS Master File Table), which is a good reminder that I should probably be doing something to backup at least Keri's stuff.

Requirements:

* Client runs on Windows (XP now, maybe win7 later), a client for Linux would be nice, but I don't really have much I care about there.
* If there is a server component, it should run on Linux (preferably Debian, multi-arch, x86 only rpms wouldn't be the end of the world)
* Once setup, client should be automated, and unobtrusive.
* Stores to LAN (preferred) or directly attached storage, not the internets (well... it would be cool to send data over to the computer I run at my parents house, but I don't want an internet backup service that puts my data on someone else's server).
* Provisions for multiple copies of backups (so two hard drives independently failing doesn't totally ruin my day)
* a nice restoration UI would be good too
* money is an object, but that doesn't mean it needs to be free (I don't think I want to buy a backup appliance though)

Has anyone used NTBackup (comes with XP pro, is on the cd of XP home), as a serious backup tool? It's probably not really any good, but it's already there.

Fry's had the LG 370 Blu-Ray player (+ netflix streamer) on sale for $77 this morning... and I managed to get one, despite rolling up right around opening time (5 am).

I also got a 5 handset panasonic dect phone set for $80, because it's cheaper than getting additional handsets for the system i already have (which only has one).

Now if only i had been awake enough to pick up some blu-ray discs...

As I was entering the store, the plainclothes presumably security guy said "no trampling, no killing people." So it was pretty relaxed in the store. In and out in 30 minutes.

Thanks Jason for buying me Do the Right Thing and Grind. Two films (using the term loosely for Grind) whose dvds I had previously releaved myself of. Btw, sorry John for making you see Grind. He also got me a book about PHPUnit, which proves that people who write frameworks for PHP are retards: in addition to your standard assertTrue, this testing framework also provides assertEverOtherGodDamnBooleanOperator ... including the negations. I'm guessing this is provided because the author of PHPUnit is not aware that you can do stuff like assertTrue (foo == bar); or he assumes (probably rightly so) that most PHP programmers wouldn't be aware of it. In short, I'd like to thank Jason for helping me on the path to becoming Lewis Black.

David got me a FreeRunner to go along with my Neo1973. Sadly, it's a GTA02v5, which means it still can't start without a battery. On the plus side, it will continue to run with the battery removed. It seems to work about the same as the 1973, so I think that means I should play with alternate environments... maybe Debian just isn't cut out to be a phone.

Why does GNOME hate me? Webkit might be a better embedable browser, but it's not a better actual browser. I guess I'm going to have to start using iceweasel, even though the chrome doesn't match the OS (although it is honestly pretty close), and I hate the combined back/forward drop down.

fucking a, shoreline is a piece of crap. We left during the 1st encore, but it took us 40 minutes to get to the fucking freeway, because a) there were no signs to direct me, b) there's only one way out from the parking included with tickets ($6/each ticket). And there are fuck tons of pedestrians. Also, they made me wait so the band could leave; which they should have their own damn exit, or just sit tight in their nice limo.

Anybody know why this happens? This being the way cool red and blue vertical lines. (I'm seeing it on the TV too, not just from my capture card)



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