The Problem

In FreeBSD, when using vim in INSERT mode, using the arrow keys results in the characters A, B, C or D being inserted.

Alfresco is a Java-based enterprise content management system, and as such it should run on any reasonable platform which supports Java. So, my client wants it installed on a FreeBSD server - no problems, methinks. After all, the Alfresco specifications page lists "Unix" as a supported platform.

Useful options for dpkg and co, the package management system used by Debian and derivatives such as Ubuntu:

• List all installed packages: dpkg -l
• List files contained in a particular package: dpkg -L package-name

The Problem

My remote mail program of choice (or more precisely: habit) is pine, mainly because I've been using it since 1994 or so and it works for me (at least for occasional use on the server). However, Ubuntu doesn't include Pine in any of the normal repositories (for licensing reasons, it appears). There is a .deb package available ( http://www.washington.edu/pine/getpine/linux.html), but only for 32-bit systems, and the server in question is 64 bit. I tried, but it didn't work. Obvious solution: install from source. Unexpected problem: pine has its own build system - there's a build script instead of the usual ./configure && make && make test && make install, which fails with a somewhat cryptic

+---------------------------------------------+
| Problems building c-client                  |
|                                             |
| Please check the output above for a         |
| possible explanation for this failure       |
+---------------------------------------------+

Of course, the output above (not shown here) is lacking a possible explanation.

The Problem:

I administer a remote (in Thailand!) FreeBSD server. I need to make some tweaks to it, but I don't have a local FreeBSD installation to test them beforehand. (I did run FreeBSD - 4.5 I think - for a time on my main desktop machine, and have administered FreeBSD boxen before, but it's always best to have a non-critical system to play around with). I have no CDs on which to burn an installation image.

The Problem

These days doing one's filial duty often involves some TLC for the parental bevvy of computers. Now, mine - while not being technically unsavvy, so to speak - don't have the capacity for the heavy-duty administration Windows PCs need, and so it is on every visit I seem to be shown a new one they got "because the other one was getting a bit slow". Doesn't stop them keeping the old ones around for "light work" though.

Currently they have 4 (!) in operation, and the surprise question on this visit was "can you transfer some files from the old laptop?" The old laptop being a 233 Mhz relic from the late 90's which should be in a laptop hospice, if there were such a thing. The problem appears to be that the 'old laptop' has no way of communicating with the outside world - the external floppy it came with has long vanished, and the CD drive is read-only. It doesn't even have a built-in modem, let alone an Ethernet port. Though surprisingly it does boast a single USB connection, next to the standard RS-232 and printer ports.

I've heard about version number jumps for marketing purposes, but this latest move by browser producer Opera, springing 81 releases, verges on the ridiculous.

This stupid bot doesn't understand UTF-8 encoded URLS...

220.208.55.xxx - - [03/Aug/2006:07:45:03 +0200] "GET /ã??ã?«
ã??.html HTTP/1.1" 404 2422 "-" "Pockey-GetHTML/4.14.1 (Win32; GUI; ix86)
"
220.208.55.xxx - - [03/Aug/2006:07:45:04 +0200] "GET /ã??ã?£
ã?ªã??ã?³.html HTTP/1.1" 404 2422 "-" "Pockey-Get
HTML/4.14.1 (Win32; GUI; ix86)"
220.208.55.xxx - - [03/Aug/2006:07:45:06 +0200] "GET /è??å?¤
�治�.html HTTP/1.1" 404 2422 "-"
 "Pockey-GetHTML/4.14.1 (Win32; GUI; ix86)"

This morning I found one of my sites had been subjected to a deep crawl by a bot naming itself "Francis/2.0 (francis@neomo.de http://www.neomo.de/)". The site seems to be an experimental but legitimate German-language search engine. The first hits from the bot were to robots.txt, the although the site's crawler information page doesn't indicate what entries it interprets, if any. Requests look like this:

85.10.204.13 - - [16/May/2006:19:19:09 +0200] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.1" 206 390 "-" "Francis/2.0 (francis@neomo.de http://www.neomo.de/)"
85.10.204.13 - - [16/May/2006:19:19:09 +0200] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.1" 206 390 "-" "Francis/2.0 (francis@neomo.de http://www.neomo.de/)"
85.10.204.13 - - [16/May/2006:19:19:24 +0200] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 206 1949 "-" "Francis/2.0 (francis@neomo.de http://www.neomo.de/)"
85.10.204.13 - - [16/May/2006:19:19:25 +0200] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 206 1949 "-" "Francis/2.0 (francis@neomo.de http://www.neomo.de/)"

Interestingly all requests returned with HTTP status 206.

Some relatives, for whom I provide email aliases fromone of my domains, have been complaining about increasing amounts of spam. Well, don't we all. Unfortunately the relatives in question live in a sort of telecommunicational black hole which apparently has at least some telephone wires made from aluminium and which date from the immediate post-war period (Second World War, that is). DSL won't be available until the whole village is rewired, and even dialup can't max out a 56k modem. Understandably even a few spams make email access a torture.

The former technical news forum Slashdot, currently masquerading as a repository for duplicated posts, has adopted HTML 4.01 and CSS.

The move comes as flying porcine creatures were seen being ejected at speed accompanied by clouds of dry ice from a deep shaft signed "to Purgatory" near Andover, Massachussets, USA.

"Blog Search is Google search technology focused on blogs.": blogsearch.google.com

Another Google product celebrating the Decade of the Beta Web Service.