After reading a DV247 Magazine article comparing a dozen or so different hand-held digital recorders, I wrote a longish post adding my own experiences of the device (I've been a Zoom H2 owner for several years and I think it's a great little device. However I doubt my comment will ever be approved on their blog, so I thought I'd republish here as it'll be helpful for anyone shopping around for devices. A lot of the criteria by which I judge the H2 will apply to many / every device in the price bracket, so caveat emptor as always, and always try before you buy if possible!
SED #9: Intelligent Environments Europe Limited
This is a real gem. Brucie Bonus: the company's domain is IE.com.
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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
To Three or Not to Three?
That is very much the question, as WordPress 3 finally gets its first point update to 3.1. Are there any significant benefits over the 2.9 branch? Interested to hear any and all viewpoints, along with any upgrade horror stories.
(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.)
The decreasing usefulnesss of blocklists?
My current job involves music and copyright to a fair extent. Ironically whilst I used to be a chronic downloader in my teens, these days not only do I enforce copyrights online, I also buy more music than ever.
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-InfringementBayTSP:38.0.0.0-38.255.255.255level1Performance Systems International-ed2k/ap2p:38.113.114.164-38.113.175.255level2Performance Systems International / Cogent Communications:38.108.107.69-38.114.63.255level3PSINet, Inc:38.0.0.0-38.114.63.255rangetestPerformance Systems International Inc:38.0.0.0-38.114.63.255Primary ThreatsPerformance Systems International-ed2k/ap2p:38.113.112.43-38.113.175.255Business ISPsPerformance Systems International:38.0.0.0-38.255.255.255ipfilterXTMEOH PSI:38.0.0.0-38.255.255.255United StatesUnited 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...
Why blocking Newzbin2 won't make the blindest bit of difference
[Update, 5th of April 2011: Oh look, the Business Secretary Vince Cable went on record saying that the Government would stop blocking web sites using the SI of the Digital Economy Act. Heh. (Newzbin2 was blocked via legal methods offered through the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act - making that entire equivalent section of the DEA redundant, and also upon further scrutiny, extremely poorly worded. You can also read Justice Arnold's ruling.)]
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.
Read my reply!
Posted in: Comment, Oddities, The Wild Web.