Very unfortunately, we had to move the servers from one location to another, and it is taking much longer than we thought to get everything back up again. We hope to have this complete in the next day or two. Please do notify the community that we are working as hard as we can on this, and we thank everybody for their patience. We have a big set of exciting jobs we will be sending out as soon as everything is up and running.

So hold tight everybody, R@H hasn't disappeared - just hold tight and wait for the server migration to finish.

Examples of what I've received in the past twelve months:

• Criminal Records Checks for slightly dubious looking individuals
• Correspondence for University Campus groups
• Australian pre-pay mobile telephone account details (including personal details and telephone numbers)
• Canadian mobile telephone account details (including personal information and telephone numbers)
• Birthday greetings, sadly not on the correct day
• Microsoft XBox Live activation emails
• Microsoft Windows Live activation emails (immediately cancelled)
• Pictage emails for someone's wedding
• Science Center of Iowa mailshots
• Someone's Foursquare account emails
• Tuxedo hire information
• Various invoices for purchases, including some antique furniture
• Pharmaceutical company meeting detail emails

... Plus loads of things like home addresses, relatives' names, telephone numbers etc. I email back to the people where I can to advise them of incorrect details, but I can't believe so many people can make such a fundamental mistake as to get their own email address wrong!

Monday rant over...

Anyway, given that TDK have produced their own BD-R media for a while now, I decided to plump down a few units of my local currency and purchase a ten-cake of some TDK 4x 25 GB BD-Rs (part number t78088, I paid £16.15 on the 7th of September and they're currently at £16.84). I'll shortly be doing a test burn with some mixed media and will duly report back with qualitative burn analysis, some general read/write speed observations and any other findings as to the quality of the discs themselves.

UK blank media e/retailers: if you'd like to send me test media for review please get in touch, I'm considering making a miniseries of this due to the absence of decent like-for-like comparisons of currently available blank BD media.

Chris Cook's Lock Screen app works great - and still works with 10.5.8 on the MBP1,1 I use at work. Give it a try if you dislike leaving your Mac unlocked whilst you go do other srs bsns.

(I'm also aware that there's umpteen other ways to both lock a workstation and accomplish Fast User Switching without mousing to the option; look here (StackExchange), here (MacWorld) and here (MacWorld again) for starters.

A friend emailed me a link to a BBC article¹ discussing the 'landmark' judgment handed down by an (out of his depth?) judge regarding the enforced blocking by BT of Newzbin2 to stop its customers from accessing copyrighted materials in a piratey manner.

Everyone's dancing around the topic. (I do not advocate piracy as a means to solve the current problems the creative industries face, but I haven't paid for every single song I've ever listened to.) However the older I get, the more I understand about the importance of paying your dues - and understanding the value of a piece of music or film, and understanding why it's right to pay a fair price for it. I have, quite literally, spent thousands of pounds on my music collection, with a heavy investment into vinyl along with many CDs and even a few C90s Regrettably I believe this judgment could have serious ramifications for not only the future of entertainment industries but personal rights and freedoms. My email back to my friend turned into somewhat of a long one... And here it is reproduced for your enjoyment.

The Open Rights Group man has it right. It won't really make a dent in the numbers of people using the services - indeed, I suspect anonymous VPN proxy services (which cost from as little as £3-£5 a month) will get a lot more popular as people realise they can just use these to completely mask what they're doing with their Internet connections. I already VPN some of my web traffic, for privacy purposes, web development testing or perhaps if I'm just feeling particularly paranoid.

In an email interview before the verdict, Newzbin 2 threatened to break BT's filters.

"We would be appalled if any group were to try to sabotage this technology as it helps to protect the innocent from highly offensive and illegal content," said a spokesman for BT.

Emotive language like "highly offensive" doesn't help - who's  to say what people find offensive? Is Mary Whitehouse back in charge? I could argue that I find the mass worship of Jesus Christ as a representation of the one true God highly offensive - but they're never going to even consider a block on Il Papa (Hello Your Holiness, hope you're doing well!²). In the meantime all this does is place increased load on the ISPs - effectively policing what are CIVIL copyright claims from private sector companies - and the end result? Everyone's broadband becomes more expensive.

The issue of p2p and downloading things for free boils down to something far more fundamental - it's now a mindset firmly stuck in a subset of society. And who's to say, taking a broader look at general 'consumption' of music and video, that their outlook on the value of recorded music isn't legitimate? However you look at it, we've lost the fight with those people - so let's move on to the next generation and explain to them in a helpful, unpatronising way why things, people, works of creative and cultural value deserve to be supported and funded through paying a fair price for their creations.

My personal opinion is that if you download music and films which you quite like and enjoy listening to/watching, you should pay a few quid of your hard earned - out of respect for the artists if nothing else! Consider the price of a CD - still about £10, even though the cost of everything else (including the materials to make CDs) has risen steadily with inflation ever since the CD was first introduced. Then, think about how many times you'll play the CD (dozens of times in the car or the kitchen, probably hundreds of times once you've put it on the MP3 player and carry it round with you). Then, think about the dozens of people involved in its production, including production, mastering, engineers, the musicians themselves, studio facilities, label promotion, management, distribution...

Once you've thought about that, go take a look at the price of a gig ticket for that artist - probably £20-£40 for most mainstream groups, sometimes more. That £10 CD price suddenly looks like VERY good value for money! And there's literally thousands of people involved with making a film, how do they pay their rent and electricity bills? The machine of the "industry" obviously tries to maximise its own profits whenever possible but there has to be some kind of infrastructure in place for everyone else to be employed by it. You can't just have a wifty wafty cloud of disorganised people all just saying "yeah ok, whatever, I'll do a bit of work here and magically get paid sometime in the future". I don't particularly like how some aspects of the music industry work, but it's a vicious circle (less money's made, the industries have to try and make quicker and quicker profits with the manufactured bands which inevitably leads to a lack of *artist development* - you could never have someone like Bob Dylan around today, he'd be too expensive to fund whilst he was songwriting and 'developing' as an artist).

This could quickly turn into a 1,000 word essay on why I'm so pissed off about the music industry - I think that people who just download everything they ever watch or listen to without ever paying for a single thing are being very disrespectful towards artists and creative individuals who produce the entertainment they're enjoying. As my boss said to me a while ago, this is the essence of the divide: these people are consumers - they simply gobble up everything they can find without a thought to the sustainability of the approach... Then then bitch and whine when TV shows go under after one series or a band breaks up because they couldn't afford to live on a musician's wage. Fortunately there's still enough respectful CUSTOMERS who understand the value in paying a fair price for what is ultimately a very long-lasting, high quality piece of work. In some respects (and forgive the crude analogy) the creative industries are a little similar to a pension fund (the more people paying in, the less each person has to pay and the more everyone receives at the end).

Blocking newzbin2 will not change the mindset of a consumer, it'll only set the precedent for them to be taken to court and locked up for downloading a film. Is copyright infringement - a civil offence - akin to a criminal offence such as GBH or fraud? No. Does it therefore merit a similar level of punishment? Absolutely not. This whole issue regarding enforced blocking of sites and services is a very slippery slope; it further reinforces their opinion that Big Content (aka the "MAFIAA" - Music and Film Industry Associations of America, and their European counterparts) are simply trying to sue people into stopping downloading. Then they'll just go download even more stuff out of spite! This kind of prosecution is also a massive waste of taxpayers' money.

1. "BT ordered to block links to Newzbin 2 web site", BBC News, July 28 2011
2. he's a Friend of the Blog

Originally posted to the DV247 Magazine "Portable Digital Audio Recorder Comparison article"

I own a Zoom H2 – carry it everywhere irrespective of where I’m going – and it saved my bacon more than a few times when collecting foley or doing quick ‘n dirty ADR for my uni course! Its ability to do line recording from its input was also very useful.

However do bear in mind that (and this is from my own testing and other users’ feedback on unofficial - but excellent - Zoom Owners Forums) a couple of key characteristics of the
internals:

1. The gain adjustment (-10dB, 0dB, +10dB) is performed AFTER digitisation. There’s nothing you can do about this except stand further back and watch the gains… If you’re at a venue recording loud sound, no amount of gain reduction will help an already-clipped digital signal.
2. Even though the H2 can record to 24bit audio files, there’s absolutely no point. Again, the nature of its ADC and signal path design results in audio files that have an identical noisefloor and effective quality to 16/44.1 files… Except they’ll be twice as large in size. This has been deduced from user testing and A/B comparison of sample recordings. Just record in 16/44.1 and get more on your SDHC!
3. (Brucie Bonus) The supplied foam windsock from Zoom is AWFUL, I bought a small Rycote Softie custom-made for the H2 from Solid State Sound¹ and it makes a HUGE difference to the H2′s ability to record outdoors. Field recordings ruined by an errant gust of wind? A thing of the past! And make sure you get the silicon cover for it, it will protect both its plastic fascia AND curb the awful handling noise should you decide to do all your recordings handheld (it has a tripod mount on its base, great for a mini tripod, and comes with a mic-style handgrip… even though it’s side address).

Having just pointed out some of its flaws, please don’t dismiss the H2 as a device not worthy of consideration. Considering it’s still a very decently priced device – and produces excellent quality recordings given the right conditions – you should definitely consider it. It’s even been used to produce VERY respectable ambisonic
(read: surround) recordings in comparative tests by people who really know surround – see Radio UQAM's Ambisonic pages² for details (and audio clips).

I regularly use my H2 for all kinds of stuff and once you’ve learnt how to get a good sound out of it, it’s a brill piece of kit. I must admit though, I do fancy an H4n now though... And a quadrophonic turntable, just for kicks!

1. other online stores are available - I just like SSS
2. specifically, Daniel Courville's Comparative Surround Recording article

_____________________________________________________________________
This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and are intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. This communication represents the originator's personal views and opinions, which do not necessarily reflect those of Intelligent Environments Europe Ltd (IE).
If you are not the original recipient or the person responsible for delivering the email to the intended recipient, be advised that you have received this email in error, and that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, or copying of this email is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please immediately notify Support@ie.com.

IE is the trading name of Intelligent Environments Europe Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Parseq plc.

Intelligent Environments Europe Ltd is a company registered in England. The company's registered office is Riverview House, 20 Old Bridge Street, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey KT1 4BU. Its registered number is 1862322.

Intelligent Environments Europe Ltd is a VAT registered company - GB 602 8062 72

(Incidentally if you came here because you thought this might be about me considering moving to the Three mobile network... I've been there in the past. It's a dark place. I'm glad I escaped.)

However, I'm still healthily paranoid :> and I run Peerblock on every machine I touch, including work machines.

Now, dearth of available IPv4 addresses aside - and what seems to me like the increasingly futile idea of blocking ranges of IPv6 addresses! - it's incredibly difficult to accurately maintain a blocklist of IPs, let alone administer or implement dozens of them. There's too much "collateral damage" from innocent IPs. And as more lists are used and combined, the usefulness and accuracy of the blocks exponentially decreases.

Case in point (and this has made me reevaluate the usefulness of apps like Peerblock with lists from services such as iBlocklist): in the past couple of days, on machines running Peerblock with default lists and Kaspersky Internet Security have been unable to finish their daily definitions updates. How come? It turns out that all of the Kaspersky update servers are classified on half a dozen lists as "bad" IPs. To finish an update, you must disable Peerblock - hardly its intended purpose!

Currently, all Kaspersky IPs between 38.113.165.68 and .86 are in a fair few blocklists hosted on iBlocklist, for various reasons - you can view them by going to the iBlocklist query page and tapping in (for example) 38.113.165.86. Here's what I got on a query just now:

This is clearly incorrect, and as an added inconvenience Kaspersky cannot finish a definitions update until PeerBlock is temporarily disabled.

There still seems to be no easy way of flagging up specific IPs or ranges for review if they have been reassigned or are no longer under the control of the original company (as I suspect is the case with these Kaspersky IPs) - how best should we go about notifying iBlocklist as to the inaccuracy of the blocklist entries?

Anti-Infringement

BayTSP:38.0.0.0-38.255.255.255

level1

Performance Systems International-ed2k/ap2p:38.113.114.164-38.113.175.255

level2

Performance Systems International / Cogent Communications:38.108.107.69-38.114.63.255

level3

PSINet, Inc:38.0.0.0-38.114.63.255

rangetest

Performance Systems International Inc:38.0.0.0-38.114.63.255

Primary Threats

Performance Systems International-ed2k/ap2p:38.113.112.43-38.113.175.255

Business ISPs

Performance Systems International:38.0.0.0-38.255.255.255

ipfilterX

TMEOH PSI:38.0.0.0-38.255.255.255

United States

United States:38.0.0.0-38.255.255.255

Now, this is obviously far too much of a kneejerk reaction; some lists have the entire Class A range blocked and the rest have a good old dollop listed! Hammer to crack a nut anyone? Obviously one need not use every list, but the problem remains that popular programs such as Peerblock download and use several of these lists by default (including the "level1" list), and these are not being kept up to date by Bluetack, the supplier. (This has been an ongoing problem for some time).

The more you use these lists, the more you'll find legitimate IPs being blocked - I explicitly have to allow all the BBC IP addresses to use their web sites, which is intensely frustrating. My "permallow.p2b" exceptions list grows in size each day... So take everything with a pinch of salt! Disabling HTTP is a bodge workaround, but programs like Kaspersky will often use UDP on port 2001 (for example) to update, and those will always fall foul of the egress traffic block as long as people keep on using the massively popular, but stale, blacklists.

Keep watching the log windows...