Printer woes

Due to a pressing need to print out many copies of high quality images (for my dissertation) I decided that it would be cheaper and easier to buy my own photo printer. To tell the truth I have wanted one for a while. I own a digital camera and though I don't mind looking at images on the web others keep requesting pictures I've taken as hard copy. Anyway I digress yesterday on finding a massive queue for the colour printer at uni I decided it was time to take the plunge and buy a printer.

On my way home I stopped at Micro Direct and purchased a brand new HP 5500 photo inkjet printer. Got home to find it wouldn't work, spent an hour on the phone to HP Technical support who gave me a reference and suggested I return it to the store. So I got my dad to give me a lift back to Micro Direct where I waited for nearly an hour in a queue. Only for some little tech-monkey to tell me it was a driver related problem. I thought this was a bit odd as the HP tech (who was really helpful) seemed to blame the printer mechanism. After much arguing a more senior bod tested the printer and confirm it was b0rked, half an hour later after filling in various return forms I had a replacement and was on my way home.

Once I unpacked the new printer I noticed that it had much more packaging, than the previous one. Firstly there were lots of bits of tape securing bits of the printer. The other one didn't have any of these taped pieces. It then dawned on me although the box was new the previous printer was not, I wonder how many other people it will be sold to or how many broken items are re-boxed in this manner? I don't know whether it was Micro Direct, or one of there importers but I was not happy to have wasted most of the day buying a printer. At least I managed to get everything printed off in the end, actually its quite a good printer if you get a working one!

Are Amateur Theatres Open Source?

First Published Slashdot Journal
Tonight I did something I have never done before, I volunteered to help back stage at a local theatre group YUTG (Youth Unlimited Theatre Group). While I was carrying bits of props back and forth I noticed a parallel between this group and open source. The Theatre group is run almost entirely by volunteers who give up their time and offer all sorts of skills (some professional in the case of the light and sound bod's). After seeing the level of dedication it makes me wonder why people find it so hard to understand the success and drive of the open source community.

Hacked :-(

First published on Slashdot Journal
Yesterday my server got hacked into, probably by some 14 year old armed with a hacking tool (as yet unknown). They managed to get onto my server and disable Quickshells. I feel terrible, I thought I was reasonably secure obviously not. At this stage I think a user account was compromised then a root kit installed. The hack wasnt bad (although I at this point I cannot be sure) so now I am going to have to rebuild the server pushig the quickshells launch back futher.
I was angry at first but now I am resigned that these things can happen and I must try harder to make everything secure

Browsers

First published on Slashdot Journal
I was pondering something today after reading a Slashdot artical about browsers. Microsoft licenced MSCA Mosiac and famously offered to pay royalties for every copy of interent explorer sold. They then opted to deliver Internet Explorer free and therefore never paid any royalties. Microsoft now argue IE is so embedded into Windows so deeply it cannot be removed. If this is true shouldnt they be paying royalites to Netscape for every copy of Windows with Internet Explorer sold?