Cookie control has long been a subject of great interest to those of us who value privacy on the internet and/or derive a little playful satisfaction by thwarting the efforts of marketers who wish to track us.

To manage standard browser cookies I use a whitelist of allowed sites that are permitted to set them and, in any case, always set a Firefox option that clears them out on exit. All other sites are automatically denied by default. This seems to work well even though sometimes, for new sites I want to use, it can be a little inconvenient having to update the whitelist.

Having listened to a discussion of Flash Cookies on the Security Now podcast recently it seems that there is another set of privacy threatening cookies that need to be dealt with. (There is a good discussion of the subject with lots of specific detail here).

Flash cookies are identifiable by having a .sol extension and I was surprised to find no fewer than 97 of them in the .macromedia directory structure in my home folder on my Linux computer. Each Flash based content provider creates it’s own .sol file or files within it’s own set of directories under the .macromedia hierarchy.

In addition to being used for tracking purposes these flash cookies are also used to hold user settings. For example caption and sound volume adjustments may be recorded within them and, presumably, can be used to restore settings on subsequent visits. Whether you regard this as essentially useful or not is a matter for you to decide of course. For myself it is not useful, at least not useful enough to offset the concerns I have for the tracking that may come along with it.

So how to deal with them? After trying out several options on my Linux system including the Better Privacy Firefox add-on, some Python code that uses PyINotify to detect and delete them I finally decided on the minimalist nuclear option. I simply delete all of them, on a regular timed basis, using the Linux find command with the -delete option and automating it’s execution with cron.

find /home/user/.macromedia -name *.sol -delete

which will find all occurrences of .sol files within all sub-directories under the path shown and remove them.

*/2 * * * * find /home/stephen/.macromedia -name *.sol -delete

which will run the command every 2 minutes.

Windows users can do the same thing using a scheduled 2 line batch file coded as follows:

dir %APPDATA%\*.sol /s/b > %TEMP%\solfiles
for /f "tokens=*" %%i in (%TEMP%\solfiles) do del "%%i"

Are there any negative aspects to using this admittedly brutal but effective and economical approach? Not many. Any overhead to running this command every 2 minutes is scarcely detectable and all my Flash content appears to run largely without being affected. I have noticed that the BBC IPlayer loses its ability to resume from an interrupted point and various other sites lose remembered caption and audio settings but, for me at least, this is an acceptable price to pay for the privacy advantages gained. This is especially true if most clips you watch are of longer duration. If, on the other hand, your viewing preferences are for 2 to 3 minute clips and you are having to constantly adjust audio settings then perhaps this method is not for you.

I recently posted here on a problem I was having using the Channel4 4OD service. The fix to that problem was to remove or comment out an entry in the hosts file the effect of which was to disable access. Well now I find that a similar problem exists with the 4OD YouTube channel. Same general sympton which is a hang and no video as shown in this screenshot.

The solution to this 4OD via YouTube problem is to remove or comment out this entry…

                127.0.0.1  s0.2mdn.net

….from the hosts file on your computer.

I’m not exactly sure what this url is required for but it’s likely to be something to do with advertising and, clearly, a valid response from it is required by YouTube before it will deliver the desired video stream. The downside, for us, is that advertising is delivered too. It might be an interesting excercise to “spoof” the site just enough to be able to receive the content but minus the adverts.

This site regularly publishes a replacement hosts file containing and redirecting thousands of not just known malicious sites but also many ad related sites. It is a useful tool for reducing the overall threat and the lower “noise” level from all those suddenly blocked doubleclick.com ads is very welcome. However it appears that, at least in the case of 4OD, a side effect of ad blocking is to block the primary content as well.

If you are unable to access 4OD via YouTube try checking your hosts file for the above entry.

Today I took a stroll into town, partly to maintain the punishing physical exercise regime to which I am wedded, but mostly to visit the library. The library has just fully reopened after a short period of refurbishment and I was keen to see what changes had been made.

If I went expecting something dramatic then I was to be disappointed. Same sparsely stocked book shelves. Same reference section which is, again, somewhat thinly stocked it seemed to me. Notwithstanding this apparent paucity of actual books, I always enjoy and appreciate our library. It has a relaxed and comfortable feel and so was content not to see huge changes. Something new I did encounter though was a brand spanking new computer system which, astonishingly to me, appears to automate the collection and return of library books. That’s great. Now I can borrow and return books at my library without incurring the tiresome obligation to communicate with a human being. I expect there will also be a consequential reduction in the numbers of staff employed at the library.

Sitting down at a table covered with newspapers I discovered that I could spend a convivial few minutes bringing myself up to date with what goes on in the world today. Sadly, for me, the only national daily on offer was the Guardian and, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in my stomach, I settled down to leaf through it anyway. It’s worth remembering that the Guardian is, for the most part, a broadsheet which can be awkward to handle sometimes. For me it can be particularly difficult as I always need two hands to read it. One hand to turn the pages and the other to hold my nose.

Perhaps on another day I would have found the Times and the Telegraph on the table as well and if I could have found a human to verify this I would have done so. But after being exposed to the discharge from the Toynbee-Monbiot mains outflow I was forced to beat a hasty, and somewhat queasy, retreat home.

I do hope that in our library the direction is not Grauniad or nothing.

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.

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.

So it is true then. In today’s gaga Britain where absurdities morph seamlessly into the commonplace it is hard to be surprised any more. It is hard to be astonished by any single twist emanating from the body of the political elite snake. It seems the bewildered people of the UK are, apparently, to be recipients of a bright, shiny, new president of the EU.

That such a vacuous, unelected position should be created and foisted upon the people of Europe is bad enough. That Tony Blair could soon be sitting in the, no doubt richly upholstered, chair of said president is unconscionable. (It,s apt that in the Merriam-Webster dictionary the example given for the word “unconscionable” is “a politician with an unconscionable disregard for the truth“).

For many people even a passing glimpse of Blair is likely to bring on an acute attack of nausea. Sadly for me, memory impairment associated with the ageing process appears not to extend to the central figure of the Blair years and he still lurks, like a Vanish resistant stain. So the prospect of this discredited man, presumably as “Head Of The EU Super State”, grinning out from newspapers, TV interviews and embedded in web pages is not a happy one.

How far will this go? Will Blair smirk down from public buildings on a sickened populace? Will he appear on postage stamps, leaving a really bad taste in the mouth? Imagine if the contagion was to spread to notes and coins. The prospect of that face staring back at me whenever I open my wallet is more than enough motivation, if such were needed, to spend less. Will he have a presidential residence? More to the point will there be an expenses system that will allow him, for old times sake, to “flip” palaces?

I do not recall voting to be represented by a president of the EU (although I do vaguely recall stumbling over the debris of a broken promise on an EU membership referendum) and doubtless I will not be asked to vote on who the president will be.

The EU is already top heavy enough, weighed down with members of the political class and their worker bee bureaucrats. Furthermore, what deep desire do we have that will be satisfied by the addition of this office? The injury of our undemocratic EU membership must not be compounded by the insult of El Presidente Blair.

It’s hard to know exactly where to stand on the vexed issue of “climate change” nee “global warming“. If one accepts the evidence put out by most of the mainstream media then there is very little room for doubt. The planet is heating up and the heating is due to human activity. The polar ice is melting and the planet is faced with catastrophe. Further more, the mainstream media assures us, there is a worldwide scientific consensus to this effect.

Fairly typical of this consensus is a report that “Global warming worse than predicted, top scientist says” on the ABC News Australia website. Our own Met Office is very clear on the subject. It’s website states – “It is now clear that man-made greenhouse gases are causing climate change“. The debate, it might seem, is over.

However if one raises the level of scepticism, just a tad, and releases the information dissemination headlock, only a little, and seeks an alternative point of view what do we find? We find that there are apparently large numbers of scientists who dissent from the standard view put forward by both the IPCC and, more famously, by Al Gore. A U.S. senate minority report states that “More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims. Scientists continue to debunk “consensus” in 2008 and 2009“.

The website “Global Climate Change Facts” is informative and presents the case for each side. There are links to articles that range from the scary “NOAA: Climate Change Irreversible” to the rather more reassuring “Antarctic ice 2% above average“.

If you have a spare hour and a half to invest, (not really a lot in geological time), there is an entertaining and thought provoking YouTube video of a presentation by Lord Christopher Monckton in October 2009 at a climate skeptic event.

Unfortunately none of these differing views give us a definitive answer to the question – is unsustainable man made global warming real? Without training in climatology and earth sciences one cannot know who has the science right. Neither can one be sure where the hidden agendas lie and nor which vested interest is really behind any given piece of data or rhetoric. However what is clear is that, contrary to the mainstream media standard line, a consensus on this important issue there is not.

Thank goodness for the BBC. Once again the Corporation, free of the burden of being elected and therefore representative of common opinion, has shown itself to be totally indispensable in it’s ability to disseminate ideas and thoughts, to us, it’s adoring public. I like to think of Auntie as a kind of moral and intellectual guardrail, ensuring we don’t fall overboard from the ship of acceptability into a sea of inappropriateness.

I have no idea what I would do without her. No doubt I would have to reconcile myself to a life spent stumbling around in a fog of uncertainty not knowing quite how to formulate an acceptable point of view. How lost I would be on issues such as climate change, membership of the European Union, immigration and the preservation of the English landscape. If I am ever at a loss as to how to think about a given topic, and I need access to a slightly left of centre, fully paid up member of the liberal elite, even after the shops have closed, then I know that Auntie will provide me with it.

There are those, of course, who criticise BBC programme makers for “dumbing down” it’s content in recent years. I don’t see it myself. I think that Horizon for example is much more exciting in it’s new format now that no single image in the programme lasts for more than 3 seconds and we are no longer forced to take in as much information as before. Now thats what I call that progress.

But it gets better. Not content with providing me with a pre-packaged, socially acceptable political framework Auntie has now turned her matronly attention to the often thorny question of comedy. I admit to having been confused for some time now about what is and what is not funny. For example I know that Christians are funny but that other religions are not. I also know that the French can be made fun of, even to the point of vilification, but that other nationalities cannot. But there are grey areas don’t you think? So it is great to discover that Auntie will now provide us with another framework, this time to help us formulate correct attitudes to humour. Very liberating.

So no more hesitancy trying to decide whether to laugh or not. No more awkward silences trying to guess how a studio audience will be signalled to react. We will benefit from this. After all who amongst us has not disguised an inappropriate chuckle as a cough even when not in polite company?

All of this guidance on which we now depend and for which we are so very grateful is, apparently, included at no additional charge! Hoorah BBC. In this respect alone the licence fee is worth every penny.

I’m hearing a lot about “Dave” recently. Firstly, if I am not mistaken, there is the “Dave” taken to mean “that bloke down the pub”. A sort of modern day “man on the Clapham omnibus” whose opinions would tend to correspond with the views of a reasonable person – a benchmark for the common man of the day. Sadly I have never been fortunate enough to encounter this particular Dave. I am sure there would be much to learn and share. There is however, in any case, a tragedy tinted irony to the fact that in todays society Dave’s reasonable views, if sought as such, would be largely unbroadcastable, at least in the mainstream media.

Then there is a digital TV channel also known as Dave and it’s time-shifted younger brother Dave ja vu. I,m guessing here but maybe the use of the name is also a reference to reasonableness. Reasonable programmes that the bloke on the bus could watch on his mobile media player.

Then of course there is the “Dave” as in David Cameron. I must say that I found his recent conference performance annoyingly impressive. This is because I have become so cynical that, in my eyes, for a politician to lie it is sufficient merely that their lips move. Sadly we have seen it all before. I recall similar feelings arising back in 1997 when the calamitous Blair tsunami first broke over an unsuspecting but ever hopeful nation. At the time it seemed to be a long overdue breath of fresh air. Today, when the word Blair has morphed into a synonym for mendacity, we know better.

So, in spite of my canny gut feelings, in spite of the near certain knowledge that nothing of substance will actually change, in spite of all this, curiously, hope stirs anew. And hope, a bit like Peter Kay’s dunk drunk Hob Nobs, seems always to come back and say “Go on – hit me again!”.

So “Dave” Cameron. A reasonable bloke? Perhaps. But I fear that in the end, like a time-shifted TV repeat, he will be less “reasonable bloke on the Clapham omnibus” and more “Dave ja vu”.

Reading the output of some columnists found in the weekend “heavies” is always a bit of of teeth grinding experience for a sensitive person like me. These journalistic barricades are almost invariably manned by the sons and daughters of the liberal elite who like to educate the rest of us in the finer points of progressive thinking. If you feel the need for lectures on “Hand Wringing 101″ or introductions to “Self Loathing For Beginners” then the weekend qualities are generally good places to find them. For myself, in an effort to keep my dentistry costs to a minimum, I try to avoid reading much beyond the headlines.

I was, however, drawn to this article about Baroness Scotland and her surprisingly illegal immigrant cleaner. The article whilst not condoning the use of illegal, though gratifyingly cheap, labour points out that, well, we all do it don’t we?

The author, one Jemima Lewis, (I feel an “Ok yah” coming on…), writes.. “Can you, with hand on heart, swear that you have never hired a cleaner of foreign extraction without first running her documents past the Home Office?“. Well now thats a tough one to answer isn’t it? Have I, as an able bodied person, felt the need to pay a stranger to enter my home in order to clean up after me? Hmm… can I get back to you on that, Jemima?

Some older bodies, like me, may remember the famous Lady Chatterley obscenity court case back in the sixties. Beyond any scandal relating to the content of the book itself was the furore caused by the chief prosecutor asking the court if the book was one “you would wish your servants to read“. The point being that the poor old dust encrusted and heavily bewigged legal worthy was so out of touch with the lives of ordinary people that he assumed that servants were the norm in society.

This brings us back to jolly old Jemima and her indispensably foreign cleaners. Most ordinary, able bodied, people do not suffer agonies over the legal status of their cleaners as they simply don’t use them. For some of us, the prospect of having to welcome a cleaner into the house would, albeit paradoxically, require that the house be clean first.

Sorry Jemima. You wouldn’t understand. It’s a lower middle class, clean-up after yourself, kind of thing.