Official Google Reader Blog: New in Reader: a fresh design, and Google+ sharing...

It sucks!

Official Google Reader Blog: New in Reader: a fresh design, and Google+ sharing...: Posted by Alan Green, Software Engineer Today we're rolling out the new Reader design, and the Google+ features that we mentioned just ove...

Happy New Year! 2010

Happy New Year!

I wish...

authinfo.gpg caused Emacs error "Args out of range: "", 0

You may encounter the followinf error if you follow the instructions in
Emacs *info* auth-source, and generate an .authinfo.gpg file in your
home directory.

Passphrase for symmetric encryption: error in process filter: Args out
of range: "", 0

This didn't happen until recently when I ran gnus in daemon mode, and it
only happened if I start it with a sh script like this:

#! /bin/sh

# run gnus in background

gnus_server()
{
emacs --daemon=gnus \
-eval "(gnus)"
}

Everthing would work well if I start the Emacs daemon first, and M-x
gnus then.

The solution is simple, yet cost me over hours to find it out:

mv .authinfo.gpg .authinfo

or, rm .authinfo.gpg

if you did a cp in the past.

I think this maybe a bug included in the recent updates, as it didn't
happened when I ran that same sh script before I updated to Ubuntu 9.10.

firefox problem with wireless connection

I had problem visiting some websites with firefox. The pages could not
render, refresh didn't work either. How ever, I could see that the source
was loaded.

The most weird thing was that google-chrome could still work at the same
time, which made me think it was not a networking problem but a bug with
the newly upgraded firefox. I tried re-installing the firefox and all
its dependence, where aptitude worked as well as google-chrome, yet this
didn't help solve the problem.

The real cause for this problem turn out to be with the wireless
connection, and if replaced the TP-LINK wirelss card (TL-WN510G) with a
wired connection problems went away. This is found out using wireshark,
after captured a lot of TCP Retransmission packets.

I still can not understand why would things like this happen: no other
applications but firefox would have problems with the wireless connection
(apt-get and google-chrome works), and, the problems are limited to a
few websites (51job would fail while google.com works).

It maybe related to the tcp connections limitation at a same time, but
this is just my guess.

henu-cernet client for GNU/Linux

Visist here: http://bku.net.ru/henu-cernet to download the henu-cernet client for GNU/Linux.

Tor is back - config tor bridge without vidalia

Tor used to be blocked by China's GFW, but now it is back! Here is how
to manually config tor to use bridge without the vidalia GUI, useful for
FreeBSD and GNU/Linux users, especially for those who live in China.

It has been so long a time, since August 2009, that I can not visit
blogger, youtube, twitter, vimeo, picasa, or anything else that is
contributed and enjoyed by other Internet users, even with Tor, which
greatly helped me before in using the Internet free and securely.

It's all because of GFW, on which I don't want to comment too much. What
I support is Chinese government to censor the Internet and to guide
masses, for I am a somewhat patriotic guy not interested in dog-eat-dog
politics, and CCP did change and improve the life standard of my family
in the last few decades.

However, would you PLEASE *distinct* those so-called anti-government
content from other normal information? Would you please give us some
restricted freedom under your great and wisdom control?

All I want and need is something interesting and new, like a funny cat
picture, a comedy video, or some latest news from my friends. Give me
access to these good things, and block/remove/delete/whatever the other
fucking damn FLG, CNN, or Tibeter. Who cares!?

Okay. Let's come to the config file for using tor with bridge.

FILES

/etc/tor/torrc

OPTIONS

Bridge IP:ORPort [fingerprint]

When set along with UseBridges, instructs Tor to use the relay at
"IP:ORPort" as a "bridge" relaying into the Tor network. If
"fingerprint" is provided (using the same format as for
DirServer), we will verify that the relay running at that
location has the right fingerprint. We also use fingerprint to
look up the bridge descriptor at the bridge authority, if it's
provided and if UpdateBridgesFromAuthority is set too.

UseBridges 0|1

When set, Tor will fetch descriptors for each bridge listed in
the "Bridge" config lines, and use these relays as both entry
guards and directory guards. (Default: 0)

UpdateBridgesFromAuthority 0|1

When set (along with UseBridges), Tor will try to fetch bridge
descriptors from the configured bridge authorities when
feasible. It will fall back to a direct request if the authority
responds with a 404. (Default: 0)

EXAMPLES

# This example is copied and pasted from a vidalia generated torrc.
# The IP and port of bridges have been modified. ^&^
# For real tor bridges, try Google.

Bridge 8.98.151.48:80
Bridge 81.59.250.53:43
Bridge 108.125.18.153:91
UpdateBridgesFromAuthority 1
UseBridges 1

You can also get these help from

$man tor

And, finally, once again, I'd like to say it is the government's right
and responsibility to censor and to guide masses. I support the
government's position and shall defeat the FLG, CNN, and Tibeter. I
support China!!

Google Wave and "Gmail is temporarily unable to access your Contacts"

At this time(Thu Sep 24 23:43:42 CST 2009), hundreds of thousands of
gmail users are experiencing the problem of "Gmail is temporarily unable
to access your Contacts. You may experience issues while this
persists". And, there are already many posts about this topic, saying
it's once again an outage, google's fault or mistake.

But to my view, it's obviously not an exception, but an necessary
procedure toward the extent of Google's recently most exciting and
powerful product: Google Wave! Goole Wave will be out of the sandbox,
and be extended to every now Gmail users within this week, that's the
real cause for this "temporarily unable" thing.

Why?

Did you notice that google contact has been working so well despite the
intentionally highlighted err notice on Gmail, which has been there for
over hours. Have you ever experienced such funny FAULT or OUTAGE that
google will allow to PERSIST for so long a time?

It's no exception, it's Google Wave's coming! Let's wait to see!!

----------------------------------------
All these words are just my personal assumption based on very few proof,
so it has nothing to do with Google Mail or Google Wave. All I want to
do is to make an prediction.