Will resolve (*ba* *dum*) to implement DNSSEC on all my domains, even though .co.nz, etc aren’t yet signing.

Its a disease that thinks, talks, and walk, but now it's contagious

Its a bit late, but if you haven’t  brought Contagious, the new Sci-Fi-Horror-Thriller novel from Scott Sigler (AKA the SDO), you should do so immediately. It promises to be even better than Infected, Scotts prequel to this book. I have the poster on the right hanging on my wall at the moment. Though I admit I like it because of my Fire Police duties.

I’m a loyal Scott Sigler fan and have listened to every podcast since Earthcore, and I own every dead-tree version, except Earthcore (damnit!). Oh, and the Contagious novel is not yet in my hands, but will be soon.

This current project required me to use a framework in order to meet the deadlines, and that I’ve done. I’m impressed with Catalyst for providing all the needed supporting infrastrucutre, without requiring you to use it in a certain way. Peversely, my biggest complaint about Catalyst is they don’t tell you how to use it the “right” way.

The tutorial exists, and I’ve gone over it in detail, and of course every module, being Perl, has perldoc sitting right there with it, but I still found myself a bit lost with certain aspects. Should I put the extensive database logic right there in Controller? Or should I put it in its own module. How do I access the DBIx model from code in its own module. Is it the “right” thing to pass $c to external code?

Obviously with Perl the answer to the above questions is do what-ever the hell you like, it’s Perl, it’ll sort it out. But there are reasons for development methodologies to exist, and maybe thats my problem. I’ve spent so much time out in the cold, doing my own development my own way, I don’t know how its commonly done.

So now the coder is coming in from the cold.

I am looking forward to reading them, and will start with Billibub first, as I haven’t finished listening to Philippa’s first novel, Chasing the Bard.

Double Trouble

8-8-08, yes its the opening of the games, but thats not whats important! Its double-trouble, the dual release of Tee Morris’s The Case of the Pitcher’s Pendant (a Billibub Baddings novel) and Philippa Ballantine’s Digital Magic.

Though with the wackyness of timezones, the official purchase time is 8am Pacific, which is 3am Saturday (9-8-08) New Zealand. So if you do happen to read this in time and decide to buy, any time after 3am Saturday New Zealand time is good. (Yes you can apparently do it on Saturday morning, but I think those people are slackers. Its 3am or bust for me)

Of significant note is that Philippa Ballantine is New Zealands only podcast novelist. So support local talent, and buy her book.

Last night Mr Peters admitted that his party had in fact received a huge donation from billionare Owen Glenn. Mr Peters  had repeatidly denied these all allegations, to the point where he called for a public appology and resignation of the editor and political editor of the NZ Herald.

Now its time for Mr Peters to “put up“.  He certainly can’t seem to shut up.

I’d take a screenshot and show you all, but, well….. (For the slow ones out there, think about it for a minute, you’ll get it).

Whilst this is news, why is it news here?

Because everyones blaming Microsoft! I’ve witnessed some crazy discussions where people are putting forward what seems like “rational” arguments, that we should wait and see before blaming the routers, as it may be a bug with Windows.

Thats not the point! A Router, as a network device (in fact any device at all!) should NEVER crash because of a packet it receives on the network. This is what Ping Of Death was with Windows 95. A fault in Windows’ networking code that caused it to crash. Noone thought the fault was with the “ping.exe” command, because it could be made to send a deadly packet (ok, some people did, but they don’t count, they’re in Congress).

A router should never crash, full stop, and it should never ever crash because of a packet, or a series of packets received via the network. The only way I should be able to crash any router (and in fact, any PC, but lets not get ahead of ourselves) is to replace the firmware with my own buggy version.

Now if it turns out that Service Pack 3 has a buggy implementation of the UPnP protocol, then yes, Microsoft should fix it, because a properly functioning router will disregard the buggy packets, and the UPnP part won’t work. The properly functioning router will keep working and clients with other operating systems will still happily use the UPnP functionality.

Either way, I’m sick of people blaming the symptom rather than the disease. Oh, and I hate it how I can still crash a large number of ethernet printers and print servers by sending specially crafted requests. They shouldn’t crash either, and I shouldn’t be left alone with an ethernet connection and a room full of colour A3 printers.