I have had several emails saying that people are getting the message that they have been banned from comments.
Count yourselves lucky! Right now I myself can’t see any comments at all. Obviously there is some hiccup with the system. I’m seeking technical advice.
If you get the banned message, please email me with your IP address so we can investigate the problem. You can get your IP address here or here. If I get hundreds of emails I’ll cancel this request.
Update by Andrew: ‘Invisible’ comments problem fixed – a minor templating glitch that affected Internet Explorer. Sorry. For those still using IE, you may wish to consider downloading Firefox – it’s widely considered to be a better browser, what with tabbed browsing, all those useful add-ons and so on. It’s easy to setup – just download it and run the installer, and you can still use IE if you want to.
Update at 9pm: For those experiencing commenting problems earlier, please try again. If you still have trouble, email your IP address to me at biasedbbc AT gmail.com. For those who manage comments with Haloscan, you may be interested to know that you can use ‘regular expressions‘ (but without the ‘\’ escape character) to define banned ranges – a big improvement over Haloscan’s documented features.
Update at 3am: Have worked on ‘unbreaking’ whatever it was that broke the ‘new comments’ thing. I think it’s fixed – let me know if you spot anything unusual. Everything will be unread when you first view this page. Comment totals are taking a few minutes to update after comments are posted – I think this is a Haloscan issue as this lag isn’t new.
Test 10.43 am
FYI It affected Safari on my Mac too.
For a while all I could see on this comment page was Natalie Solent: and on the other comment pages only the name of the first commentator
Thank you BioD. Firefox is good on Macs too! Especially for those of us who us PCs and Macs interchangeably.
Firefox, pah! Opera by a mile.
I may try Firefox, I try to keep my Mac “lean and clean” and Safari does the job 99.9% of the time.
Another glitch I’ve notced recently is that when loading the main B-BBC page here I see the new comments per post, but as soon as the page is fully loaded the “(n New)” in brackets disappears and I only see the total number of comments per post. I’ve tried deleting cookies but the problem persists even after a few visits with new cookies… just saying.
You might consider removing that Windows Virus too and installing Linux which gives a nice smooth performance at zero cost
Opera’s pretty good too – now that they’ve dropped the paid for/advertising model in favour of giving it away for subsidies from Google!
But, at the risk of going off topic, I just can’t stand the fact that when you close a tab Opera displays the last tab used rather than the next tab to the right – but perhaps that’s just down to how I like to read websites, but it’s too annoying. I still keep it on my machine though! And did I mention all those Firefox extensions? Adblock, Adblock Filterset.G, etc. – gets rid of those annoying Flash ads that slow things down and eventually crash the browser (after 3-4 days with 35+ windows open, with even more in tabs!). Unsurprisingly though, while these crashes happen on WinXP, Mac OSX under similar circumstances keeps on going.
I’ve noticed the same glitch BioD – it’s not down to any change we’ve made – i.e. probably been broken by Haloscan – and I haven’t quite psyched myself up to deciphering the Javascript that does/did that. Watch this space.
And, have we all noticed the handy new commenter name at top amendment, as suggested by someone last week to avoid having to start reading the rants of El Pajero etc.
But, at the risk of going off topic…
I thought this was the technical topic. Let’s have a PC versus Mac flame war by all means! 😉
They’re both good though, in different ways. It depends what you want to do and how much you want to spend. Now that Intel based Macs can run Windows, life will get more interesting if Apple ever has the cojones to release OSX officially for non-Apple hardware.
On another tangent, those twee “Designed by Apple in Cupertino. Made in China.” lines are irritating – obviously meant to appeal to the virtual left-coast mentality – which is probably why the BBC Views Online people are apparently so keen to big-up anything that Apple does… which brings us neatly back on to topic! 🙂
My troubles ended 3 years ago when I switched to Opera. Nothing comes even close to it in terms of speed and usefullness, it’s the bestest. Tutti all’opera!
On topic:
Firefox rocks. It is thoroughly recommended. Apart from being more secure that IE once you’ve experienced tabbed browsing you will never wnat to go back.
For those of you who want a good office suite of programs (word processing, spreadheets etc) and don’t want to swell Bill gates’ coffers try getting OpenOffice. It is open source and best of all FREE. It works fine and reads and writes in Word, Excel etc format so compatibility is not a problem. the link is here:
http://www.openoffice.org/
For a free FTP try:
http://www.smartftp.com/
For a free anti virus try:
http://www.avast.com/
In the sprit of recommending internet type things for those of you who want good, free unbiased news you could do worse than http://www.bbc.co.uk/ 😉
Re: “good, free unbiased news”.
Good one, very funny 🙂
A Lurker,
Lumping those recommendations together with one for the BBC must make them all suspect
Evidently I’m able to post.
Off topic, did anyone else notice the BBC had two topics on HYS that were put up just yesterday that have disappeared today? One was on Britain’s need to replace their nuclear deterrent, and the other was on a timetable for withdrawal of US troops in Iraq. Guess they got the “wrong” results.
Also, this story http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5108258.stm yesterday was titled “Iraq splits US Congress”, and now has been mildly edited to “Iraq splits US Congress as poll looms”. “Split”? The actual vote on the “timetable” proposals, 256-153 in the House and 93-6 in the Senate. I can’t find a BBC story coving the vote results.
My recommendation for BBC news were of course a gentle prod at you all, hence the smiley.
But don’t be like Bryan and let that put you off explroing the other recommendations I’ve made. My suggestnios are in good faith – even right wingers deserve to experience decent software, even if is FREE and contrary and anti capitalist 😉 Try OpenOffice especially – it’s very, very good.
Yaay! I’m back in! OK what’s been happening whilst I’ve been persona non grata with the banned IP group?
Is Blair still PM?
Is Blair still PM?
Nope. They replaced him with this guy called Mahmoud something.
And you have to take your shoes off now before you enter parliament.
O/T
Beeb profligacy with telly tax payers’ money…
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/06/23/060623161852.gijj0cml.html
OT,
The BBC will blame Israel for everything including not being admitted to the International Red Cross.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5104680.stm
The Magen David Adom (Red Star of David) has sought membership since the 1930s, but it objected to using the traditional cross or crescent symbols.
Then it claims that “A vote was held after Muslim states opposed Israel’s membership over the status of land it occupied in 1967.“ when in fact the opposition to Israel’s inclusion is as old as the organization’s existance.
Later it repeats this assertion: “But until now, members have baulked at introducing a third symbol – a situation exacerbated by international opposition to Israel and its post-1967 occupation of Arab lands.“
The words “opposition to Israel” and “occupation of Arab lands” are stated as fact (not an attribution) but that’s another matter, one that readers of this site are already familliar with.
It goes on to state that “The new symbol, a red square at an angle on a white background, can be used by any relief teams in areas where there is sensitivity about Christian or Muslim symbols.”
Sensitivity about Jewish symbols is not a problem likely to be adressed by the BBC anytime soon. Also, the refusal of Muslims to use the traditional cross is not considered an objection somehow.
My bet is that the latest BBC governors review is starting to make an impact and the clear pro Israel bias is being addressed. I say this because a previous article about this issue doesn’t mention Israel’s objection to tradition nor the post 1967 crap.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4479130.stm
There it states that “Israel has previously been denied entry as it does not use an approved symbol.” and under the sub headline “Century-old dispute” Switerland’s FM is quoted as saying “The agreement will bring to a conclusion a 100-year-old controversy regarding the emblem,”
In another BBC article I found this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4508858.stm
“The Red Shield of David – or Magen David Adom – was not recognised by the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and Arab states had blocked attempts to find an alternative symbol.“ No mention of 1967 or Israel’s objections here either.
More on the political reasons for not admitting MDA at Normblog here:
http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2005/04/another_antiisr.html
Max & Anonymous, please post off-topic comments on the most recent open thread, even if it’s not the top thread. Thank you.
Wow! The names are on top. It probably has nothing to do with my comment of a few days ago, but I have enough megalomania in me to feel flattered none the less.
Thanks for that feature.
Andrew, sorry for that.