Channel4 4OD Solved November 24, 2009
Posted by granthamtech in Desktop, Online Security.Tags: 40d, black, black screen, channel4, channel4 4od, hangs, hosts, Linux, Loading content, no video, not working, problem, screen, windows
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For some time I have been getting my TV online, principally with the BBC IPlayer. I also receive ITV content, albeit problematically, using the ITV Player. But for some reason I was never able to get the Channel4 4OD service to work.
After selecting a programme to watch I would be presented with an empty video window, a “Loading content” message and nothing else. It didn’t matter whether I used Vista or Linux Mint, Firefox or Internet Explorer, the result was always the same – a sort of black screen of death as shown in this screenshot.
Of course I Googled the problem but found no fix. I could see from the general web chatter that others were having the problem but, clearly, it was a minority issue and there was no obvious solution.
Eventually I saw a reference to a test link that pointed to the url “realmedia.channel4.com” and clicked on it. I expected some kind of test page response or, at worst, perhaps an invalid request or maybe a 404 not found error. Instead nothing happened at all. The click went nowhere. This provided the clue to the problem solution.
After checking my hosts file I found that “realmedia.channel4.com” was being redirected to my localhost at 127.0.0.1 – i.e. nowhere. And this was the reason that 4OD wasn’t working. After commenting out that entry in the hosts file 4OD worked perfectly.
How did this redirection get into the hosts file? I posted a previous blog called “Using The Hosts File To Ward Off Web Attacks” which described how you can download a hosts file from this site to redirect hundreds of well known bad site urls to localhost at 127.0.0.1. This redirection makes these bad sites inaccessible and is a great enhancement to security on the PC generally. However it seems that, for some reason, “realmedia.channel4.com” is included in the hosts file as a bad site url thereby preventing 4OD from working. I’m not sure why the entry for 4OD is considered a bad site that needs to be redirected but it is, as of the date of this post, still being included in the download.
So if you have a problem using the Channel4 4OD service as described above do check your hosts file to see if “realmedia.channel4.com” has been redirected. If you find that this is the case then either removing it or commenting it out will hopefully fix the problem.
Of course now I have to find something on 4OD that I consider worth watching. Sadly, from what I can see, it appears to be some kind of landfill site for the dross that is celebrity culture. But that’s another rant altogether.
Not Much November 4, 2009
Posted by granthamtech in Governing Elite.Tags: deceit, immigration, labour, newspeak, words
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I am pleased to hear a minister finally admit that mistakes in immigration policy have been made. I am pleased. But not much.
The text of the admission was no doubt finely crafted by some publicly financed wordsmith to admit guilt but without actually saying so. An example of the technique of sfumato but expressed through words rather than paint. It was language that conveyed the general meaning but nuanced with just enough linguistic sedative so as not to unduly alarm the reader or listener. In this way it is possible to describe even a fraudulent pretext for war as no more than a “fib”. Another bootprint along the malign dirt road to our Newspeak future.
Keeping my delight just a little in check though, I couldn’t help but be struck by the use of the word “maladroit”. Apparently the profundity of the minister’s mea colpa was limited to the reach of this anemic and more French than English word. One can imagine hours spent by the ministers team desperately searching through dictionaries, perhaps even drawing suggestions from a hat, trying to find a sanitised alternative to the words that really describe the situation. Eventually they came up with this perfumed “mot juste”, which only hinted that maybe things might possibly have been done differently.
Instead of “maladroit” I’d like to suggest other words that would more accurately describe what has been going on. How about “bungling”. Too kind perhaps? Ok then what about “incompetent”? And given what we now know about the intentionality of what was done perhaps I will be forgiven for needing two words to fully describe these policies. The two words I have in mind are “knowingly culpable” but there are many others of course.
So, albeit with the caveats mentioned above, I am pleased to hear that mistakes in immigration policy have been admitted to. But not much.
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