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Richy's Random Ramblings

Tech: Apple iPhone 3Gs in the UK

June 8, 2009
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Well, the Apple iPhone 3GS (3G Speed) has been announced on at the Apple WWDC (Worldwide Developer Conference) and thanks to O2 on Twitter, here’s the key points for UK people wanting the iPhone:

  • The 3GS be available on the O2 Mobile Phone Network in the UK on the 19th of June
  • The 16Gb version will cost up to £184.98 and the 32Gb version up to £274.23 depending on the contract you chose: an 18month contract will be £29.38 for the 16Gb and £34.26 per month for the 32Gb (and these are the highest prices). In the US, the 16Gb version costs $199 and the 32Gb costs $299.
  • You will be able to upgrade to an iPhone 3GS from another O2 contract phone when you are eligible for an upgrade. You will be able to leave your current contract early if you want it the new iPhone asap: however, you’ll need to speak to O2 and they’ll explain to you how much “early termination” would cost.
  • O2 will be supporting MMS (out of your normal text message allowance: one Multimedia Message will cost four SMS from your allowance)
  • O2 will also be supporting tethering (allowing your computer to use the iPhone as a 3G modem). However, this will be an extra Internet Tethering Bolt One costing £14.68 per month for 3G and £29.36 per month for 10Gb. Both include access to The Cloud’s Wifi points.
  • More information will be available on o2’s website at o2.co.uk/iphone as soon as possible

cPanel: Error: Package system can not be repaired automatically

June 7, 2009
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If, like myself, you have recently upgraded the cPanel control panel system on your Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 server and received the error message “Error: Package system can not be repaired automatically” when upgrading Apache, then it’s probably caused by a problem with either the RedHat Package Manager (RPM) or YUM. To fix it, first ensure that no RPM or yum updates are running:
ps auxwww | grep yum
ps auxwww | grep rpm
If any are running, find out why and kill -9 them if they are zombie processes. Now you just need to rebuild the RPM database:
rm /var/lib/rpm/__db.* -rf
rpm --rebuilddb
This process may take some time (between 1 and 30 minutes depending on your server speed and the number of packages installed). Once it’s completed, you should be able to upgrade without problems.

Net: Ensuring the future of Food in Japan

June 6, 2009
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Here’s a video I’ve just found via “The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st century” detailing that Japan imports 60% of its food (one of the lowest amongst developed nations) and that the Japanese diet has gone from rice, fish and vegetables to “meat, fat and oil” (mmm, oil!). The video proposes that the help ensure healthy diets, reduce dependency on other countries, increase economical stability in the Japanese farming industry and help the worldwide food markets that the Japanese should go back to more traditional diets.

I’m now wondering how the British diet has changed and if we would better going back to our traditional jellied eels, black pudding and chip diets…

Moan: Royal Mail and the Post Office

May 20, 2009
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I’ve just tried to send an item by Royal Mail’s “Special Delivery 1pm” service only for the Post Office to say “We can’t accept that – that address doesn’t exist on that postcode and we can’t accept wrong addresses”. However, checking Royal Mail’s own “Postcode Finder” service on their website, checking PostcodeAnywhere’s service, checking 192.com and even checking Google’s StreetView service all show that that address exists at the postcode(!)

I have been wondering why so much post goes missing, but the fact that the Post Office denies addresses actually existing when their own website (amongst others) admit they exist may contribute to it…

Techy: Token Authentication instead of passwords

April 16, 2009
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I’ve been spending quite a bit of time recently creating a login system (coping with OpenID, Facebook Connect and Microsoft LiveID/Passport) and, of course, the “common and/or garden” email address and password system.

Whilst we do deal with credit card and payment details on the system, it doesn’t need to be “that secure” relating to user authentication (hence we haven’t need to consider proper two-factor logins: where you login with one password and then need to login again using something else). However, recently security snafus (such as the WebHostingTalk database exploit) is making me think that perhaps we should consider offering an alternative to the standard password system.

There are a hardware one-time password tokens out there such as MyPW (which is very similar in looks to the token used by HSBC Bank) and YubiKey (as used by Tom at Nominet) along with Verisign’s VIP Authentication system for iPhones: however, all these OTP (One Time Passwords) systems are designed to be used in conjunction with an existing username and password (i.e. two-factor logins): but has anyone actually implemented a login system which uses the OTP as the SOLE password?

Any pluses/minuses or thoughts about it? Even if you haven’t implemented it, but just think it’s a good or bad idea – please let me know!