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If you want to tell me why I'm getting an email (newsletter) that's fine. It's actually quite helpful, as I could easily forget how I ended up subscribing myself to a list or if I ordered from somewhere...

However putting this kind of text in your email footer is one sure fire way of getting me to list you as a spammer:

DISCLAIMER: This message is not "SPAM" because it contains our identification and unsubscribe instructions. This message was offered to you for one of the following reasons: your email address has been selected from a database that you have subscribed, your email address was made public by you; you have requested to receive the offer; you are a partner of our company; your email address is in our database as a result of previous correspondence.

There are so many things wrong with that disclaimer that it's almost impossible to know where to begin.

The ones I "love" are:

"it contains our identification and unsubscribe instructions"

Um .. ok... so? That doesn't mean anything at all...

The one though that really gets me is the "your email address was made public by you"

That is both hilarious and scary

(And just in case you're wondering - I got two copies of the same spam to two addresses that aren't published anywhere .. )

The frontpage of The Pirate Bay currently has this graphic:



and is happily promoting a service to help Eircom users anonymise their internet usage.

In case you're wondering why...

Eircom, one of Ireland's largest ISPs, has announced that they will start cutting off filesharers using a "3 strikes" system in conjunction with IRMA.

Due process? Forget it.

The ISP will get to act as judge, jury and executioner:

Infringing customers will be initially telephoned by Eircom to see if they are aware of the activity on their broadband network. If the customer is identified a third time, they will have their service withdrawn for seven days. If they are caught a fourth time their broadband connection will be cut off for a year

How long before this has an impact on business?

So while Eamon Ryan likes to wax lyrically about our "smart economy", IRMA, a private organisation, is getting Eircom, another private organisation, to replace due process.

It's a slippery slope...

UPDATE May 26th : Eircom now have an FAQ explaining how it will all work. I've also posted in greater length and detail on the company blog

Related articles by Zemanta

• High Court Gives Go Ahead To 3 Strikes in Ireland (torrentfreak.com)
• Irish ISP begins three-strikes program to cut file-sharers' broadband connections (downloadsquad.com)
• Irish ISP Eircom Begins File Sharing Crackdown (techie-buzz.com)
• Ireland's largest ISP begins disconnecting users who are accused of piracy (boingboing.net)
• Irish ISP and Major Music Labels Ready To Disconnect Pirates (torrentfreak.com)
• Internet disconnections come to Ireland, starting today (arstechnica.com)
• Large Irish ISP To Enact "Three Strikes" Rule For Copyright Violation (yro.slashdot.org)
• 3 Count: First in Three (plagiarismtoday.com)
• IRMA, Eircom and the Death of Freedom (blacknight.com)
• Ireland targets illegal file sharers for internet termination (computing.co.uk)
• Eircom Pirate Bay Blockade Takes Effect (torrentfreak.com)

Facebook connect is now builtin to Vbulletin.
Sure, you could have used one of several plugins to get Facebook Connect working, but the problem with 3rd party plugins is that they are not guaranteed to be supported. (ie. if Vbulletin releases a version that "breaks" the plugin you're snookered)

Enabling the new features is pretty easy and they've provided pretty clear documentation on the Vbulletin site

At the moment their implementation is fine for allowing existing forum users to login, but using it for signups is a small bit limited in functionality.

I'll probably add it to most of the vbulletin powered sites I currently manage over the next few days

Related articles by Zemanta

• Upgrading Vbulletin 3.* to Vbulletin 4.* (mneylon.com)
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Since I first posted about iPhone tethering with Vodafone Ireland..

Vodafone launche the iPhone in Ireland
There's now a thread over on boards.ie about tethering
There's also a couple of oldish posts about setting up tethering on unlocked phones ..

And I still haven't had a proper reply from Vodafone on the subject.

If Vodafone's reply is that there is something "special" about packets of data when they go via an iPhone ... .. .

Vbulletin 4 was released a couple of months ago and comes with a number of new features. It also comes in two flavours:

• Forum only
• Forum + CMS

A number of the forums I run / manage / catherd are still running Vbulletin 3.* and I wasn't in too much of a hurry to upgrade until I was sure that Vbulletin 4 was stable (ie. they'd found the big nasty bugs). The other thing that I had to factor in was third party software, such as VBSeo.

Since both VBSeo and Vbulletin seemed to be "ok" I decided to try the upgrade today. In this instance I wasn't adding the CMS, so the upgrade was simply vbulletin 3.* to vbulletin 4.*
(If you want to see a site with the full CMS suite installed try this one)

Unfortunately the documentation provided by Vbulletin isn't exactly stellar, but you will find better details and tips if you look on their forums.

Key points:

• make a backup. If it goes terribly wrong you can always revert back to what you had previously ie. something that actually worked
• Disable ALL plugins.
  
• DO NOT run "install.php" - you're doing an upgrade not an install. You simply need to run "upgrade.php"
• Vbulletin 3.* templates are not compatible with Vbulletin 4.* - the code has changed a LOT, so you will need to do a vbulletin 4 version of your site's theme if you have one
  

If, like me, you forgot to disable the plugins before running the upgrade you can end up with what looks like a totally unusable and completely useless Vbulletin install.
There is, however, a way to save yourself.
Edit config.php and add the following line just below the opening php tag add the following line:

define('DISABLE_HOOKS', true);

That basically disables all the plugins and mods, so you can then go in to your Vbulletin control panel and disable them all.

Some of the more popular mods for Vbulletin 3 have been ported to Vbulletin 4, though I suspect it will take a few more months before the coders get round to providing versions of all the more popular mods.. In many ways it's a good thing, as this forced me to disable a lot of the modifications and addons that had made their way into the site over the last couple of years. Hopefully the functionality won't be too adversely affected!

Ubuntu, which is one of the more popular Linux distributions these days, has unveiled a completely new look.

It's got a new logo:
And a whole new range of styles for just about every other visual asset associated with the brand, both online and on the users' desktops.

The new look is very slick compared to the "old" image of Linux distributions as being ugly, yet functional

Full details here

Thanks to Laura for mentioning it earlier this evening

This is more for my own use than anyone else...

If you remove a package in Debian / Ubuntu you often end up with legacy configuration files lying around.

Running the following command removes all the crud left lying around your system and may fix silly issues that you run into. As it's Linux, there's probably about 10 other ways to do this!

Here's the command:

sudo aptitude purge `dpkg --get-selections | grep deinstall | awk '{print $1}'`

Enjoy!

For the last few months we've had a SIP / VOIP setup in our offices.

My experiments with accessing the system using a SIP client on my iPhone were disastrous.

However I hadn't had any reason to do any proper experiments with using a SIP client on my desktop until today.

I'm currently using "Telephone", which is functional, but not exactly amazing.

So what SIP client software would people recommend for use on Mac OSX?

The PIrate Bay. Love it. Hate it. Unless you spend little or no time online, you've probably heard about it.

The site has been controversial for years and has been forced to move home several times in the last few months. Most recently it's ended up in the Netherlands.

But the site's operators still have a sense of humour:




If you don't get the reference I'd gently point you in the direction of a copy of the Dirty Dancing DVD .. Seriously ..

You might also remember the nastygram we got about filesharing ... *sigh*

Now I am not privy to all the inner workings and details of JC Decaux's contract / agreement with Dublin City Council...

However ...

Fusio, a web development company based in Dublin, released an iPhone application for the Dublin bike scheme. From all reviews I've heard of the app it was professional and very slick ie. it reflected well on the bike scheme and anyone involved with it. So I was more than a little taken aback when someone linked to this page on the Fusio site.

There's more coverage in The Irish Times

The question you'd have to ask is, are JC Decaux for real? (to use the vernacular)

Update: Included link to Irish Times piece - I forgot earlier!

Update 2 - Another article in The Irish Times. This time they're quoting TJ McIntyre. Seems that legally JC Decaux wouldn't have grounds for a case...

Update 3 - Now it seems that JC Decaux are going to offer their own app, but it's not clear if the functionality will be any different to the Fusio app or if it will be free or paid. Based on their "wonderful" handling of the situation with Fusion I wouldn't hold my breath