Himself was giving me a hand reinstall a couple of my servers today. As you can see on the monitor behind I’m starting him off relatively lightly with Windows Server 2003. Early next week we will be moving on to the Sun Solaris boxes underneath the Dell Poweredges.

I got a call the other day from my friend’s wife who was having problems receiving mail from her eircom.net account when using POP to retreive it. Sometimes she would get some mail and other times none. Using the webmail interface to her account she could see her mail there. All this started she claimed around two weeks ago.

Strange thought I, but then she mentioned that she had gotten a few spam reports in her mail.

Even stranger thought I, so I asked her to forward one of them on to me and here’s what I saw:

This mail was generated automatically from Endian Firewall, which runs on
efw1-oceantelecom.localdomain.(none) for scanning all mails for spam and viruses.

In a mail sent to you a virus has been found.

Virus name: Suspect.Bredozip-zippwd-2
Sender of the email:  “DHL Manager Felipe Dove” <shipping@dhl.com>
Subject: DHL delivery problem number 25130.
Connection date: POP3 from 149.5.34.3:11778 to 159.134.198.135:110
Message File: Per instruction, the message has been deleted.

Instead of the infected email this message has been sent to you.

Regardless of the fact that it was a virus, it was the very fact that it had been intercepted before it got to her PC was annoying her. Her POP session to eircom’s mail server was intercepted by her ISP. Her ISP acted as a POP proxy without her permisison. Therefore her ISP is effectively snooping on her mail. You can see clear as day in the report above that their firewall intercepted her connection to eircom’s POP3 server.

As you can imagine this really, really annoyed her so she rang ComReg (Ireland’s Communications Regulator) to find out if OceanTelecom were allowed to do this. ComReg said it was a grey area and advised her to contact the office of the Data Protection Commissioner which she duly did. The advice she received from the DPC was that they should not be snooping on her mail as her mail is not being hosted by her ISP.

With this information in hand, she rang OceanTelecom to compain and promptly received torrents of abuse from the owner! Ranting and raving about how he is protecting his network, etc, etc and if she didn’t like it she could cancel her account! How about that for customer service?

But when she informed him that she had already contacted ComReg and the DPC he terminated the call! He hung up a call from a loyal customer of over two years!

She rang me yesterday to tell me what had happened and that that she was naturally going to change her ISP which is only right IMHO.

So, for anyone looking to choose an ISP keep this information in mind. An ISP is an internet service provider. Their only obligation should at it’s most basic level to provide you with access to the internet and nothing else. Everything else should be optional. How you use your internet connection should be of no interest to your ISP once you keep within the terms of your contract, the laws of the land and adhere to their fair use policy. You can view eircom’s policy here.  Some choice quotes from their policy are:

eircom net will use its reasonable endeavours to prevent unauthorised access to the Service by third parties, but shall have no liability to the Customer for any unauthorised access to the Customer’s computer system. The Customer is responsible for selecting and properly using any security procedures made available by eircom net as well as other procedures and measures necessary to safeguard and back-up the Customer’s files, data and programs or any other form of information

and

You acknowledge that eircom net has no control over the information which can be accessed by using eircom net services and that we do not examine the use to which you or other users put the Services or the nature of the information you or they are sending or uploading. We therefore exclude all liability of any kind for the transmission or reception or such information of whatever nature.

Pretty much common sense. The onus is on the customer to remain secure, eircom as an ISP only provide a service which is more than can be said for OceanTelecom.

However I understand that OceanTelecom is a privately owned business and ultimately it is their network and they can pretty much do what they want but I would not have expected that to include interfering with clients  e-mail that is hosted elsewhere. I certainly wouldn’t like my ISP reading my mail before me. Some serious privacy implications there.

If you are an OceanTelecom customer or are considering becoming one, based on the above I would suggest you avoid them or terminate your subscription. If anything the shocking and abusive customer service alone should be good enough reason.

Many many years ago the communist journalist Claud Cockburn described Youghal as “standing at a slight angle to the universe.” I’m beginning to understand what he means now.

I’m an equal opportunity offender though so courtesy of blasphemy.ie here is as much blasphemy as I can copypasta.

List of 25 Blasphemous Quotes Published by Atheist Ireland

1. Jesus Christ, when asked if he was the son of God, in Matthew 26:64: “Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.” According to the Christian Bible, the Jewish chief priests and elders and council deemed this statement by Jesus to be blasphemous, and they sentenced Jesus to death for saying it.

2. Jesus Christ, talking to Jews about their God, in John 8:44: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.” This is one of several chapters in the Christian Bible that can give a scriptural foundation to Christian anti-Semitism. The first part of John 8, the story of “whoever is without sin cast the first stone”, was not in the original version, but was added centuries later. The original John 8 is a debate between Jesus and some Jews. In brief, Jesus calls the Jews who disbelieve him sons of the Devil, the Jews try to stone him, and Jesus runs away and hides.

3. Muhammad, quoted in Hadith of Bukhari, Vol 1 Book 8 Hadith 427: “May Allah curse the Jews and Christians for they built the places of worship at the graves of their prophets.” This quote is attributed to Muhammad on his death-bed as a warning to Muslims not to copy this practice of the Jews and Christians. It is one of several passages in the Koran and in Hadith that can give a scriptural foundation to Islamic anti-Semitism, including the assertion in Sura 5:60 that Allah cursed Jews and turned some of them into apes and swine.

4. Mark Twain, describing the Christian Bible in Letters from the Earth, 1909: “Also it has another name – The Word of God. For the Christian thinks every word of it was dictated by God. It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies… But you notice that when the Lord God of Heaven and Earth, adored Father of Man, goes to war, there is no limit. He is totally without mercy – he, who is called the Fountain of Mercy. He slays, slays, slays! All the men, all the beasts, all the boys, all the babies; also all the women and all the girls, except those that have not been deflowered. He makes no distinction between innocent and guilty… What the insane Father required was blood and misery; he was indifferent as to who furnished it.” Twain’s book was published posthumously in 1939. His daughter, Clara Clemens, at first objected to it being published, but later changed her mind in 1960 when she believed that public opinion had grown more tolerant of the expression of such ideas. That was half a century before Fianna Fail and the Green Party imposed a new blasphemy law on the people of Ireland.

5. Tom Lehrer, The Vatican Rag, 1963: “Get in line in that processional, step into that small confessional. There, the guy who’s got religion’ll tell you if your sin’s original. If it is, try playing it safer, drink the wine and chew the wafer. Two, four, six, eight, time to transubstantiate!”

6. Randy Newman, God’s Song, 1972: “And the Lord said: I burn down your cities – how blind you must be. I take from you your children, and you say how blessed are we. You all must be crazy to put your faith in me. That’s why I love mankind.”

7. James Kirkup, The Love That Dares to Speak its Name, 1976: “While they prepared the tomb I kept guard over him. His mother and the Magdalen had gone to fetch clean linen to shroud his nakedness. I was alone with him… I laid my lips around the tip of that great cock, the instrument of our salvation, our eternal joy. The shaft, still throbbed, anointed with death’s final ejaculation.” This extract is from a poem that led to the last successful blasphemy prosecution in Britain, when Denis Lemon was given a suspended prison sentence after he published it in the now-defunct magazine Gay News. In 2002, a public reading of the poem, on the steps of St. Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square, failed to lead to any prosecution. In 2008, the British Parliament abolished the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel.

8. Matthias, son of Deuteronomy of Gath, in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, 1979: “Look, I had a lovely supper, and all I said to my wife was that piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah.”

9. Rev Ian Paisley MEP to the Pope in the European Parliament, 1988: “I denounce you as the Antichrist.” Paisley’s website describes the Antichrist as being “a liar, the true son of the father of lies, the original liar from the beginning… he will imitate Christ, a diabolical imitation, Satan transformed into an angel of light, which will deceive the world.”

10. Conor Cruise O’Brien, 1989: “In the last century the Arab thinker Jamal al-Afghani wrote: ‘Every Muslim is sick and his only remedy is in the Koran.’ Unfortunately the sickness gets worse the more the remedy is taken.”

11. Frank Zappa, 1989: “If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine – but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you’ve been bad or good – and cares about any of it – to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working.”

12. Salman Rushdie, 1990: “The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas – uncertainty, progress, change – into crimes.” In 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie because of blasphemous passages in Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses.

13. Bjork, 1995: “I do not believe in religion, but if I had to choose one it would be Buddhism. It seems more livable, closer to men… I’ve been reading about reincarnation, and the Buddhists say we come back as animals and they refer to them as lesser beings. Well, animals aren’t lesser beings, they’re just like us. So I say fuck the Buddhists.”

14. Amanda Donohoe on her role in the Ken Russell movie Lair of the White Worm, 1995: “Spitting on Christ was a great deal of fun. I can’t embrace a male god who has persecuted female sexuality throughout the ages, and that persecution still goes on today all over the world.”

15. George Carlin, 1999: “Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!”

16. Paul Woodfull as Ding Dong Denny O’Reilly, The Ballad of Jaysus Christ, 2000: “He said me ma’s a virgin and sure no one disagreed, Cause they knew a lad who walks on water’s handy with his feet… Jaysus oh Jaysus, as cool as bleedin’ ice, With all the scrubbers in Israel he could not be enticed, Jaysus oh Jaysus, it’s funny you never rode, Cause it’s you I do be shoutin’ for each time I shoot me load.”

17. Jesus Christ, in Jerry Springer The Opera, 2003: “Actually, I’m a bit gay.” In 2005, the Christian Institute tried to bring a prosecution against the BBC for screening Jerry Springer the Opera, but the UK courts refused to issue a summons.

18. Tim Minchin, Ten-foot Cock and a Few Hundred Virgins, 2005: “So you’re gonna live in paradise, With a ten-foot cock and a few hundred virgins, So you’re gonna sacrifice your life, For a shot at the greener grass, And when the Lord comes down with his shiny rod of judgment, He’s gonna kick my heathen ass.”

19. Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, 2006: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” In 2007 Turkish publisher Erol Karaaslan was charged with the crime of insulting believers for publishing a Turkish translation of The God Delusion. He was acquitted in 2008, but another charge was brought in 2009. Karaaslan told the court that “it is a right to criticise religions and beliefs as part of the freedom of thought and expression.”

20. Pope Benedict XVI quoting a 14th century Byzantine emperor, 2006: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” This statement has already led to both outrage and condemnation of the outrage. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the world’s largest Muslim body, said it was a “character assassination of the prophet Muhammad”. The Malaysian Prime Minister said that “the Pope must not take lightly the spread of outrage that has been created.” Pakistan’s foreign Ministry spokesperson said that “anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence”. The European Commission said that “reactions which are disproportionate and which are tantamount to rejecting freedom of speech are unacceptable.”

21. Christopher Hitchens in God is not Great, 2007: “There is some question as to whether Islam is a separate religion at all… Islam when examined is not much more than a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of plagiarisms, helping itself from earlier books and traditions as occasion appeared to require… It makes immense claims for itself, invokes prostrate submission or ‘surrender’ as a maxim to its adherents, and demands deference and respect from nonbelievers into the bargain. There is nothing-absolutely nothing-in its teachings that can even begin to justify such arrogance and presumption.”

22. PZ Myers, on the Roman Catholic communion host, 2008: “You would not believe how many people are writing to me, insisting that these horrible little crackers (they look like flattened bits of styrofoam) are literally pieces of their god, and that this omnipotent being who created the universe can actually be seriously harmed by some third-rate liberal intellectual at a third-rate university… However, inspired by an old woodcut of Jews stabbing the host, I thought of a simple, quick thing to do: I pierced it with a rusty nail (I hope Jesus’s tetanus shots are up to date). And then I simply threw it in the trash, followed by the classic, decorative items of trash cans everywhere, old coffeegrounds and a banana peel.”

23. Ian O’Doherty, 2009: “(If defamation of religion was illegal) it would be a crime for me to say that the notion of transubstantiation is so ridiculous that even a small child should be able to see the insanity and utter physical impossibility of a piece of bread and some wine somehow taking on corporeal form. It would be a crime for me to say that Islam is a backward desert superstition that has no place in modern, enlightened Europe and it would be a crime to point out that Jewish settlers in Israel who believe they have a God given right to take the land are, frankly, mad. All the above assertions will, no doubt, offend someone or other.”

24. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, 2009: “Whether a person is atheist or any other, there is in fact in my view something not totally human if they leave out the transcendent… we call it God… I think that if you leave that out you are not fully human.” Because atheism is not a religion, the Irish blasphemy law does not protect atheists from abusive and insulting statements about their fundamental beliefs. While atheists are not seeking such protection, we include the statement here to point out that it is discriminatory that this law does not hold all citizens equal.

25. Dermot Ahern, Irish Minister for Justice, introducing his blasphemy law at an Oireachtas Justice Committee meeting, 2009, and referring to comments made about him personally: “They are blasphemous.” Deputy Pat Rabbitte replied: “Given the Minister’s self-image, it could very well be that we are blaspheming,” and Minister Ahern replied: “Deputy Rabbitte says that I am close to the baby Jesus, I am so pure.” So here we have an Irish Justice Minister joking about himself being blasphemed, at a parliamentary Justice Committee discussing his own blasphemy law, that could make his own jokes illegal.

Finally, as a bonus, Micheal Martin, Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, opposing attempts by Islamic States to make defamation of religion a crime at UN level, 2009: “We believe that the concept of defamation of religion is not consistent with the promotion and protection of human rights. It can be used to justify arbitrary limitations on, or the denial of, freedom of expression. Indeed, Ireland considers that freedom of expression is a key and inherent element in the manifestation of freedom of thought and conscience and as such is complementary to freedom of religion or belief.” Just months after Minister Martin made this comment, his colleague Dermot Ahern introduced Ireland’s new blasphemy law.

Anyone with any experience in a workplace will know it as a management buzzword that smacks of horseshit. When asked to define what synergy is you would invariably get the reply “1 + 1 = 3″

Not very helpful is it?

Synergy always annoyed me probably because like most people I didn’t understand or want to know the concept but it hit me like a ton of bricks over in the pub last night. Let me explain:

As it’s near christmas time, drink flows freely and occassionally a sing song might start up. Well last night one of three brothers started a song. When he was finished the second brother sang a song. This put the third brother under a bit of pressure to sing a song so he felt he has no choice so he eventually sang a song too.

There you go, Synergy!

1 brother singing + 1 brother singing = 3 brothers singing. 1 + 1 =3!

Now how to apply that to the business world without resorting to blackmail is anyones guess.

1. A model Tie Fighter.
2. A model Millenium Falcon or indeed anything related to Star Wars.
3. Anything to do with Star Trek.
4. Anything to do with Stargate.
5. A new MacBook.
6. Anything to do with guns, weapons and the military in general.
7. Anything that is alive.
8. Anything that was once alive.
9. A domain name (not until he is 10 at least so I’m told but it’s too late already!)
10. A Playstation 3.
11. Grand Theft Auto IV for PC or Playstation 3.
12. A ride on toy tractor. (Apparently he’s too small)
13. Dinkys and other toy cars. (He has enough already)
14. Anything that makes loud noises and requires batteries.
15. A 1TB external hard disk. (For his baby photos honestly!!)

I guess all that is left is Play-Doh but that’s what I got him for his birthday a few weeks ago. And here was me thinking buying christmas presents for kids was going to be easy.

Can’t wait until he’s older.

Originally came via an email but I Photoshopped™®  it slightly.

This letter is not intended to cause any embarrassment in whatever form, rather
is compelled to contact your esteemed self, following the knowledge of your high
repute and trustworthiness.

I am David Garfield, Chief Campaign Officer of the PRINCIPAL CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE
OF DEMOCRATS: OBAMA 2014 INC ID: C00411934.

The flowery language at the start is *the* hallmark of a 419 but this time around the grammar is rather good and punctuation is aslo good with no rampant capital either until you get to the bit that mentions Obama and the official looking code numbers.

So why are the Democrats in the U.S. sending me advance fee fraud mails? Aha! Here we go:

I write to seek your sincere assistance in transferring the sum of £10M GBP 10
million Pounds sterling.

Stirling? From the Democrat party in the United States? Surely that should be dollars? And where did they get the 10 million from in the first place?

I discovered my office has some excess funds amounting too 10 million Pounds
recovered from donations and grants from democrats around the world during our
election campaign and pleas for support for our incumbent president Barack
Hussein Obama, According to plans, The excess funds was to used in clearing
debts owed by Mrs Hillary Clinton during her campaign programs,I taught there is
a better way of expending this funds.I want this money to be used to alleviate
the poverty and sufferings of children in Iraq and Africa and donate to Charity
organizations around the world.

Yeah right! Unfortunately what started out gramatically quite decent has started to break down slightly with all this philanthropic talk. Anyway why not just give it to charity? Why should I launder the money?

My plea to you is that you assist me get this funds out of the United Kingdom
where it is presently lodged safe and for your assistance ,you will have a fair
percentage of the total money and all investments shall be under your
supervision.

This simple transfer process could be arranged in less than 3 working
days.Ensure your response is sent to my personal e-mail address xxxxxxx@gmail.com

I sent a mail to gmail alright. Straight to Google’s abuse department to get that mailbox shutdown along with another gmail account used in the signature. BTW the signature itself is pretty funny. I wonder if the 419er did this intentionally? Probably not. Anyway note the UK telephone number:

419 Rating – 5 out of 10

It did arrive claiming to be from a democrats.com mail address and started out quite excellent but left itself down badly in the plausability stakes with references to Obama and Hillary Clinton. And of course claiming to be from the Democrats while using gmail accounts, references to Stirling currency and a U.K. mobile telephone number mean that I can only give it 5 out of 10.

Out if interest, the mail itself arrived from a mail server in Indonesia and was sent using IMP webmail which is part of the Horde Application Framework.

I haven’t left the house in that length of time either. I wonder if much has changed?

Anyway back to the flu. I have no idea if it was swine flu or not as I didn’t bother with any doctors or health professionals because I simply cannot afford them. A visit to the G.P. and a prescription would cost me in and around €100 which is half what I have to spend per week. Ironically of course I haven’t spent anything in the past week anyway other than getting someone to buy me the odd packet of cigarettes so I might have as well got myself checked out.

I’ve already mentioned alternating between being roasting hot and freezing cold, so what else can you expect? Absolutely aching bones and joints for a start. My hips were so sore I could barely walk at times. This started to fade after about the fourth day. Another thing is the dizziness. At times while sitting it was like the whole room was spinning around. Close your eyes and it felt like being in a washing machine. A week later and I’m still having dizzy spells and pounding headaches although not as frequently thankfully. I’ve discovered that lying down on my right hand side seems to stop the dizziness for some reason. It doesn’t work if you lie on your left

Oddly one thing that hasn’t been affected is my appetite. On the contrary I have been constantly hungry and no amount of food is satisfying. There must be some truth in that “feed a cold, starve a fever” adage.

The worst thing (apart from the suffering of course) is the boredom. Any of you following me on twitter may have read recently about the television falling off the wall, well the second T.V. is constantly tied up by my mother recording bloody soap operas so that ruled that out. Staring too long at a computer screen resulted in a few dizzy spells so that ruled that out as too it ruled out reading for the same reason. Still I’m on the mend at last so time to get through some of the bills and other letters that have been piling up while I’ve been laid up.

I see from a cursory glance that college are looking for €1,500 that I don’t have for a registration fee so I guess I will be finishing up there next week and my NCT is due as well.  I guess I should have stayed in bed.