Category Archives: Rant

08/8/06

Help me help you.

So here’s the deal: I don’t charge a single cent for tcpreplay regardless if you’re using it for educational or commercial use. You can even embed tcpreplay in your product and sell it, I don’t care.

I don’t charge for the docs, man pages, or FAQ even though I spend quite a bit of time trying to keep the docs up to date, accurate and useful. I’m also more then happy to provide free technical support to anyone who emails the tcpreplay-users mailing list. Having people use the list means that the questions and answers are archived for future use and it gives other people a chance to help you out. If you only email me, then only I can help you and nobody else can benifit from the answer.

I suppose there are two ways you can look at this, “something for nothing” or “you get what you pay for”; either way, it seems like a pretty good deal to me. On the other side of the coin, in the last 5 years I’ve been working on tcpreplay, I’ve gotten little fame, a few “thank you” and a DVD. Obviously, I’m not doing this for the money.

So here’s the rub, don’t get offended when I balk at giving you free, 1-on-1 support directly over email. Contrary to popular belief in the open source community, developers are not your slaves. We don’t have to give you support. We help out users because we like to and because it helps make our project better. While I’m sure some developers are more then happy to go to great lengths to help you with your problems (even when they are clearly between the chair and keyboard), you’ll have to excuse me if I’m too busy to do so. And you’ll have to excuse me if I do a poor job of explaining it for the hundredth time to someone who was too lazy to read the support page without sounding like an a**hole.

So please, please use the tcpreplay-users mailing list.

07/6/06

Headhunters!

Got a phone call from a headhunter yesterday. I’m not sure if this is really a rant or just funny watching the headhunter squirm, I’ll let you decide. Conversation went sorta like this:

Me: Hello?
HH: Hi, is this Aaron?
Me: Yes, who is this?
HH: Hi Aaron, this is ****** and I'm with Atlantis Partners.  I got your name from
someone who told me you're in charge of hiring for the engineering department. 
Is that true?
Me: Who exactly gave you my name?
HH: Who?
Me: Yes, who gave you my name as the hiring manager?
HH: Oh, I called the main number and the receptionist gave me your name.
Me: We don't have a receptionist.
HH: <silience>
Me: So where did you really get my name?
HH: Oh, I got it on the internet, I saw that your company had just recieved $10M 
in funding and I figured that ment you're probably hiring, is that true?
Me: Yes, we are hiring, but I don't work with people who lie to me.
HH: Excuse me?
Me: I said I don't work with people who lie to me.
HH: I didn't lie to you.
Me: You said you got my name from our receptionist, which we don't have. 
If that's not lying, please tell me what it is.
HH: Hello?
Me: Yes?
HH: I think we got off on the wrong start, how about we start over?
Me: No.
HH: Did I call at a bad time?
Me: No, your timing was perfect, I just don't work with people who lie to me.
HH: How about I call you tomorrow?
Me: I'd rather you didn't.
HH: I'll call you tomorrow.
Me: Ok

What I find amusing of course is that she lied for no reason whatsoever. Did she really think I was going to punish her for using Google? Anyways, still haven’t heard back from her, but the day is still young. The sad thing of course is that if she doesn’t call me back she that would be another lie… not the best way to start a business relationship!

[Update: Nope, she never called back.]

05/1/06

Chinese ticket spam

So lately it seems that a certain Chinese company has started going around and spamming Trac sites by creating tickets promoting who knows what (honestly, I have no idea, it’s all in Chinese). Once was annoying, twice pissed me off, so I added this to my httpd.conf:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://www\.google\.cn/search?.*q=NEW\+TICKET.*
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.consumptionjunction.com/downloadsnew/cj_52447.jpg [R]

I wouldn’t recommend visiting that URL if you’re easily offended. Seriously, don’t go there.

04/22/06

Confidentiality in email redux

So maybe it’s just me, but it seems that these “confidentiality notices” in emails are on the rise.

Anyways, I’ve decided to do a little experiment. Many of these notices contain verbage to “notify the sender” if you receive the email… what will happen when I start replying? Hillarity? Confusion? Bogus legal threats? A bore? Only one way to find out…

04/13/06

Comedy Central censors pictures of Mohammed

So I’ll be honest, when I watched part two of “Cartoon Wars” and saw that Mohammed had been “censored” I figured it was just Matt & Trey (the creators of South Park) pulling a gag to make a point. After all, South Park had shown Mohammed multiple times in past episodes (“Super Best Friends” for example) and there was no censoring then.

But, it was actually Comedy Central which censored the episode. Apparently, CC thought that in the current climate it was “unsafe” to air pictures of Mohammed.

Anyways, even if you hate South Park, I would strongly encourage you to see Cartoon Wars episodes I & II. Matt and Trey do what they do best- making viewers re-examine current events from a viewpoint which encourages people to stand up for what’s right, even when it’s not the easy thing to do.

03/19/06

Patently Mad

Michael Crichton wrote a great opt-ed piece for the New York Times called, This Essay Breaks the Law. It’s a great two pager on how the patent system in the US has gone to hell and how it will effect not just large corporations, but you and your family.

Btw, don’t read this next sentance, because just merely thinking it is illegal:

Elevated homocysteine is linked to B-12 deficiency, so doctors should test homocysteine levels to see whether the patient needs vitamins.

03/18/06

Dad! Tom Cruise won’t come out of the closet!

So let me get this straight… it’s ok for South Park (one of my favorite shows on TV) to make fun of Christians, Jews, Muslims and Mormons, but when they make fun of Scientology (which is more cult then religion) all of a sudden Comedy Central pulls re-airing the episode because of religious insensitivity and the voice of Chef, Issac Hayes, (who is a Scientologist) quits (oddly though, not in protest of the original airing months ago, but in the re-airing).

I thought Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s response was well thought out and to the point:

“So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!! [Signed,] Trey Parker and Matt Stone, servants of the dark lord Xenu.”

To find out more about Scientology you should read this interview and check out Operation Clambake.

Or grab the torrent and download the South Park episode and watch it anyways.

02/12/06

Where does one begin?

Your random quiz for the day:
Basically, a 12yr old boy has been charged with a felony for:

a) Bringing a gun to school

b) Selling drugs to his classmates

c) Joking that the powered sugar for his science experiment was cocaine

Meanwhile… Vice President Dick Cheney made a far more serious judgement error and shot someone in the head but apparently that’s ok.  (Yes, they’re calling it an “accident,” but any experianced hunter knows that they need to keep tabs on all members of their hunting party at all times and be aware of what they are shooting at, both of which Cheney failed to do in this case.)

01/6/06

Don’t hit F5

Because apparently this prosecutor in Canton, OH thinks hitting F5 on your keyboard to reload a web page repeatedly is a *felony*. You know, the same sorta thing like rape and murder.

Ok, so maybe conspiring with your friends on the internet to “crash the webserver” of your high school by overloading it with requests is something we shouldn’t encourage in our youth. But come on, you can’t tell me we all haven’t done worse things in high school. You’d think that in a world where kids are bringing guns to schools, gangs are rampant and children are experimenting with alcolhol, drugs and sex at younger and younger ages school administrators and law enforcement would have better things to do then making an example of an 18yr old with a bad sense of humor. But I guess Canton, OH is such a utopia that even the slightest mistake requires a heavy hand.

*Sigh*

12/30/05

… and things you read on the Internet.

If Mark Twain was still alive, I’m sure he would of said, “There are lies, damned lies and things you read on the Internet.” This is of course quite obvious to anyone who has been using the Internet for more then a few weeks so you would of thought that by the end of 2005 people would of learned by now.

But no, people still forward chain letters around which have factual errors which are obvious if you spend 60 seconds to do a quick search on Snopes, Truth or Fiction? or Break the Chain. Is it so hard to bookmark these sites and use them to see if the email you got from some friend or family member but written by some unknown individual is true?

Are we as a society, so desperate for our side to win an argument that we’re willing to forgo common sense and basic research so that we can claim that we didn’t know that Oliver North never mentioned Osama Bin Laden in 1987 or that there are two people in the world with the name “Mohammed Atta” just so that we can argue Bush is doing the right thing? What does that say about your argument when you rely on lies to support it?

One thing I’ve noticed that over time, my responses have become more “colorful” (some might say even acidic) over time. In the past, I’d politely point to the original sender (never to the entire list) out that it wasn’t true and include a link to Snopes and ask that they check there first in the future. Of course that didn’t work, so I’d start to just delete them, hoping that everyone else who got the email was smart enough to do the same. But over time, I’ve found myself perversely drawn to pointing out to everyone (in my patented sarcastic way) just how stupid these chain letters are, not because I think the sender will learn, but because it’s the only way for me to vent my fustration.

So I say to everyone reading this (all 3 of you that is), don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.