Category: Computers

Yahoo! Answers – error 999

Yahoo! Inc.
Yahoo! Answers

I was messing about on Yahoo! Answers earlier and received an error 999 when I tried to post a response. The advice given infers that my IP address was being used for spam or that I had a virus. Yahoo! told me to run a virus scan or contact my ISP for help (yeah, right).

Kicking the router to give me a new IP address didn’t work, and as I’m running Ubuntu the chance of having a virus or anything is somewhat remote. After some digging, I found that Yahoo! also use error 999 as a cover for spam-protection of a sort. As well as checking IP address, they also prevent multiple posting of web addresses. I’ve seen this on Answers before, where some ****** posts the same URL to multiple non-related questions.

Thing is, my reply didn’t have any URLs in it. One page advised me to split my response into sections. Post one paragraph, then edit my answer to add the next and so on.

What do you know, it worked. And since doing it, I’ve not had the same issue on any further questions. It sounds like a fault in their spam parsing software, but at least there seems to be a simple way around it.

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6789

SIERRA MADRE, CA - MAY 29: Spam, the often-ma...
No spam here

As of just now, Akismet here on my blog has blocked the nice-looking number of 6789 spam posts. I still get the occasional one that creeps through, but they never end up actually posted. I’ve got a captcha program running so someone must be manually entering these things to get them as far as Akismet.

Why on earth do people bother? Really? Ah well. It’s their wasted time, not mine.

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Search question

Search TV Title
Maybe I should search for this

Just random, no reason for asking… what was the last search query you did on Google or wherever? Mine was:

ubuntu vpn server ports

Which pretty much sums me up. Good job I hadn’t just been on Google Image Search or I’d have had to confess about looking for cumshots.

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Out of space?

The device pictured is a 16GB SanDisk CruzerUS...
Not as big as it may look

Just a quickie. I’ve found an error message that may be a little confusing in Ubuntu. I may raise it as a bug, in fact.

I was trying to copy the Windows 7 DVD ISO file from my hard drive to a 4Gb USB stick. The stick was empty with roughly 3.7Gb of space free, and the ISO file is 2.4Gb in size. Normally, if you try to copy too large a file in Ubuntu, it tells you at the start to save you time. On this occasion, the copy began and trundled along until an error appeared telling me that the file was too big after around three minutes.

The problem is that the stick was formatted in FAT16 – which has a file size limit of 2Gb or thereabouts. A quick reformat to FAT32 and the copy worked fine.

A simple little thing, but one that did puzzle me for a few minutes until something clicked.

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XP faster than Linux?

Eyes of the Fastest

My laptop’s more responsive and web pages seem to render so much quicker now. YouTube videos don’t stutter. Scrolling is smooth. All great.

Have I installed Windows 7? Nope, I’m just messing in XP.

I can’t believe how badly upgrading to Jaunty Jackelope has crippled my Ubuntu install. With the exception of the time taken to get to a useable desktop, Ubuntu on the whole is now slower in use than Windows – predominantly as I spend a lot of my time within a web browser.

The only real issue I have with XP right now, aside from the above, is that for some reason it just won’t connect wirelessly to our new router. This, obviously, is a bit of a bummer. I’ve had issues getting it to connect to some wifi signals while I’ve been travelling, to be fair. Ubuntu works with some, Windows with some, both with some. Sod’s law we get a router my XP install won’t work with. Strange as my dad’s laptop connects fine. I guess it’s driver/hardware-related.

Still. I can’t get over how smooth XP feels compared to Ubuntu. That’s just wrong. Example: I’m typing in a box on my WordPress install to post this blog entry. Under Ubuntu if I hit “backspace“, it pauses. If I hold the key down, I can expect a pause of a few seconds before I gain control of my machine again with a random chunk of characters deleted. Under XP it’s realtime. I hold “backspace” and I watch the characters being gobbled up.

What on earth has happened to Ubuntu?

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