Joe's Random Ramblings

As a long time Slackware user, the recent announcement of Slackware 12.1 was a very welcome event. So I went to the Torrent download page to get the Slackware 12.1 DVD.
However, upon launching ktorrent, the KDE torrent client, to start the torrent download, my DSL connection went haywire. I had to reset the DSL modem (a Siemens SpeedStream 4100) and also reset the network port.
After searching for clues on the Net, I found that disabling DHT and limiting the number of connections (to 20 connections per torrent) solved the problem.

This post is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

So, I got the Voter Information Guide for the June 3 elections in California.
Reading through the Propositions, it quickly became obvious that Prop. 98 is rather misleading and deceptive.
On the surface, it seems to be about Eminent Domain. But looking closely, it turns out that its main purpose is to get rid of rent control laws.
With this proposition, rent control laws would phase out, i.e., when somebody moves out of a rent-controlled apartment, the landlord could increase the rent for the new tenant at will. It is obvious that this would lead to people being "encouraged" to move out, e.g., by the landlord neglecting repairs, pest control, etc.

This post is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Some time ago, Comcast got sued by a spammer, because they were blocking his spam emails.
On April 10, a judge ruled in favor of Comcast. That's of course how it should be, but unfortunately, not all judges are sufficiently clued-in about things computer-related...
The best thing about the ruling are the first two sentences:

Plaintiff e360Insight, LLC is a marketer. It refers to itself as an Internet marketing company. Some, perhaps even a majority of people in this country, would call it a spammer.

Not surprisingly, the spammer didn't like being called a spammer, so they filed a motion to remove the second sentence. Of course, the motion was denied

This post is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Working with the Windows ShellExecute and ShellExecuteEx APIs and the CreateProcess API I have come across a major annoyance:
The directory and filename passed into these APIs can not be longer than MAX_PATH (i.e., 260) characters.
This is particularly idiotic given that Microsoft nowadays uses fairly long directory names, e.g., C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data.
Furthermore, the ShellExecute(Ex) documentation does not even state this limit.

Anyway, I did find a way around it:
Microsoft maintains both long and short names for files and directories, even on NTFS.
So, the long path C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data is equivalent to the short path C:\Docume~1\alluse~1\applic~1
This way, the path to the batch file I was trying to execute was cut down from 261 characters to 106 characters.

This post is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

For a while now, I have received unsolicited bulk email, aka Spam, from an organization calling itself the "National Federation of the Blind."
Like all spammers, when I talked to somebody in their main office on the phone, they claimed that I subscribed to their list. Of course, that is absolutely not true. They bought my email address. With that, they have put themselves in the same league as the usual barrage of pill spammers and the like.
They use a company called Convio for their email campaigns. So, either the NFB or Convio or both bought my email address. Shame on them to devalue their organization by becoming spammers.

In their latest spam, they ask to donate part of the economic stimulus package to charity, in particular to them... I guess they need money to buy more email addresses...
Idiotic lying spammers!

This post is licensed under a Creative Commons License.