When I went to check on the images, however, not a single one would open. Thinking that the server must have returned text instead of an image, I opened one in UltraEdit to look at the raw data. I saw the PNG header, but it was prepended with several bytes of what us programmers refer to scientifically as “crap.”

After making sure I wasn’t prepending anything weird in the script, I opened Ethereal to get an idea of what was going both up and down the wire when the script fired, and found the same crap in the HTTP response, in a header chunk. This led me to believe Python could not handle chunked content. It’s a requirement for HTTP/1.1, so is a bit surprising that the latest-and-greatest from the Python group can’t handle it.

After a bit of Google-fu, I found this issue, which led me to this now-closed issue containing a couple patches and commits. Going with Antoine’s recommendation, and because I’m lazy and also don’t want to wait for the next release, I decided to just downgrade Python to use HTTP/1.0.

Change the line:
_http_vsn_str = 'HTTP/1.1'
to
_http_vsn_str = 'HTTP/1.0'

Mine was found at line 603, but yours may vary depending on when you downloaded Python 3.0. After downgrading to HTTP/1.0, everything works great, and I get valid images.

Yes, Comcast is seriously telling its customers that using a saturated cable modem connection is somehow more bandwidth than a full (non-fractional) T1 running at full capacity. Well, hell, here we’ve been wasting all this money on a DS3 connection at work, when we could have just bought a few cable modems and been done with it! (For the record: cable modems are theoretically capable of exceeding T1 downstream bandwidth, but not upstream. This is all moot, however, since Comcast states in the same document that your connection will be slowed down “managed” if you use this kind of bandwidth.)

Also, how does “Examples of prohibited equipment and servers include, but are not limited to, e-mail, Web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers” fit in line with your answer to the question “Does Comcast discriminate against particular types of online content?“

Your answer is a flat “no,” followed by, “Comcast provides its customers with full access to all the content, services, and applications that the Internet has to offer.” Then why, oh why, am I not permitted to run a web server from my home? Ok, a web server might get high amounts of traffic; I can understand that. What about an FTP connection, so I can transfer files from work to home? Well, FTP can be abused too. Maybe SSH, so I can access my home information from a remote location? Well, I’m not really sure why that’s blocked. How about MySQL, so I can store information to my home server? Nope!

Your prices are also fairly high for the service you provide.

What will it take for you stop treating your customers like we’re your personal money dispenser? I’m sure that the standard response to all of this is, “get a business account if you want to run a home server.” Well, guess what? I’m not a business. I don’t have the same needs as a business, so I don’t need business class.

It’s 2008. Microsoft provides a home server solution. We’re in the “Information Age.” Why is a society supposedly as enlightened as ours paying a single company to rape us for the tether that connects our homes to “the cloud,” and then not even provide us with the services promised? Where are we going to go? We have no other option.

That’s a monopoly. Whether broadband internet and cable television are luxuries or not, it’s a monopoly. Regardless of my “choice” of satellite television (but never a competitor for broadband service), it’s a monopoly. Ask AT&T (who you’re planning to merge with!) about monopoly divestitures and what happens to the companies afterward.

The article then goes on to describe how there has been a 10-year period with no sunspots before, yet somehow now it is alarming. The Galaxy paraphrases Sanu Tsuneka as “noting that it is at least a little bit worrisome for scientists” when he actually says, “That’s a small concern, a very small concern.”

The article then talks about how the sun may or may not have caused an ice age in the 1600s, and how the sun may or may not affect climate. In one of the article’s sources (presumably where the ice age information came from, in the Australian), it is stated that, “scientists from the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research published a report in 2006 that showed the sun had a negligible effect on climate change.”

We have enough crap to worry about, Daily Galaxy, with other sources of climate change, superpowers using cyberwarfare, and the Crypt Keeper running for office. Please stop with the alarmist linkbait (I saw the 1500+ diggs, and got the link from Hacker News).

Move along, nothing to see here.

Since I don’t have an iPhone, will not buy an iPhone, and do not intend to upgrade my non-existent iPhone to the iPhone 3G, guess what? I don’t care about the iPhone!

For the entire month of July:
Lifehacker – 51 posts, including peripherally-related fluff posts about video encoders and headphone cords.
Hacker News – 66 posts, and this is only for articles with the term in the title, since HN does not post article summaries or contents.
Hack a Day – 14 posts, which, for Hack a Day, is impressive considering their update schedule is fairly modest.

I didn’t care when it came out, didn’t care that it was jailbroken, then fixed, then jailbroken again, then had an App Store, then people whined about how Apple stifles open source (with bonus stupidity about how covering up logo on your phone makes you a rebel somehow), then the 3G came out, then it too was jailbroken, then super-duper-jailbroken with prejudice.

I don’t know. Some of that might have been duplicate. It’s pretty hard to keep track of shit I don’t care about, but there it is, every day.

I don’t hate the iPhone; that’s not what this post is about. I might still get one someday, and at that point, I’d like to be able to remove my filter, and expose myself to the wonders of constant-near-orgasm over a piece of technology.