Rogers, for what ever reason, uses Yahoo mail services. I certainly hope Yahoo gets a cut of Rogers income, because Rogers has a LOT of customers…. Anyways, it’s the combination of all three that led more to this rant/article 8-O  than anything else.

Her email has been working fine for a long, long LONG time, then all at once, it refuses to send any more emails, it recieves fine, but you can’t send anything out. I can log in and send, and I can send from other packages but Thunderbird wont send…. or to be more specific Yahoo wont let Thunderbird send anything…. all you get is this wonderfully cryptic email (with a link that doesn’t work!)

Transaction failed : Cannot send message due to possible abuse; please visit http://postmaster.yahoo.com/abuse_smtp.html for more information

(If you want to avoid my rant and go right to THE SOLUTION at the bottom.)

Now I KNOW BETTER, but for some reason, while I was testing the email through Rogers portal (which of course worked) there was a little box that said, Click Here for live technical support and I did…. yeah I know. And while I could argue that I had a headache, was tired, and in a hurry, there really is no good excuse… I did it.

So up popped “Valentino” to walk my through my problems, thankfully, or probably because I was already online trying to chat with him, he didn’t start off by asking if my computer/monitor/router/modem was turned on.

Upon seeing the error he responded that the problem seemed to be between Thunderbird and Yahoo… ummmm that is what is being used at both ends yes…. and then recommends that if I turn off all HTML formatting and just send all emails in plain text (ie no pictures, bold, formatting, charts, etc etc.) that all would be well…   Okay so if I roll the clock back say 20+ years in email formatting it will work…. ummm NO. That wasn’t an option.

He then argued that he tried Google mail and other mail services using HTML and it worked fine, but her Thunderbird didn’t… it kept coming up with an error (the same error that I had already told him about by the way – which comes from Yahoo). So “obviously” the problem is with Thunderbird, which as far as he is now concerned is an unsupported program.

Now what is interesting is that he also randomly throws in a couple of links at the end of this bit, which ‘sort of’ hold the key and he ‘sort of ‘ addresses it. But without actually mentioning what ‘IT’ is.

So while I am going on about how this is not an option, ‘Valentino’ continues on telling me how I will need to change all email output to plain text in future…. finally he catches up with my arguments and says he ‘understands’ and is only trying to give me work arounds (without actually saying what it is I’m trying to work around) and gives me another ‘work around’. Now he wants me to change the white background on her email to a different shade of white, not much just a little….   I KID YOU NOT! Arrgghhhhh. I lose it

I am also beginning to think I’m talking to a machine, more that a person. ‘Valentino’s’ argument is that Thunderbird is an unsupported program and he is giving me a ‘fix’ for it. My argument is that the problem is at their end, and they need to fix it! I ask to speak to  someone higher in authority, ‘Valentiono’ says sorry, no , there is no one available for an ,unsupported program’… I give up in disgust and go look on my own…. Here is the full transcript, with all it’s warts, for your enjoyment/mutual frustration….

5:05 PM You have granted full permission to Technician. To revoke, click the red X on the toolbar or press Pause/Break on the keyboard.
5:06 PM Connecting…
5:06 PM Connected. A support representative will be with you shortly.
5:06 PM Support session established with Valentino.
5:06 PM Valentino: Hello and thank you for choosing Rogers Hi-Speed Internet. How may I help you today?
5:06 PM Rick: We are getting an error when trying to send email from the server
5:06 PM Rick: sorry – we are using Thunderbird and Yahoo is creating the error
5:07 PM Rick: Transaction failed : Cannot send message due to possible abuse; please visit http://postmaster.yahoo.com/abuse_smtp.html for more information
5:08 PM Rick: By the way – that page doesn’t exist
5:08 PM Valentino: whast your email address and program that you are uisng
5:08 PM Rick: beetham@rogers.com and the email package is Thunderbird
5:09 PM Valentino: This issue appears to be something between ThunderBird’s HTML mail format and YAHOO’s servers. If you change your email format to plain text, it sends just fine. As a test of ThudderBird’s HTML format I sent HTML formatted mail via gmail, and hotmail with no issues.
With your forward-to or reply-to message open, go to
Options…Format and set to “Plain Text Only” (i.e., not HTML). If
you’re creating a new message, you have to set not-HTML by going to
Account Settings…Composition.
In summary: I was unable to send messages and got the “Cannot send
message due to possible abuse” message. When I made sure the message
was not composed using HTML, then the message sends fine. “””

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2441147

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120309234536AALeZkp

5:10 PM Rick: The email is addressed to two other rogers.com accounts and one bmtnet.com account all valid account holders
5:10 PM Rick: So you are trying to deliver the email? It’s got a Sending Messages window up now and is stuck at 79%
5:11 PM Valentino: you will need to that for all of them
5:11 PM Rick: Email seems to work fine with every email except that one – changing it to text only will destroy the formatting of the current message
5:12 PM Rick: Telling me I have to “dumb down” the email isn’t a solution – it’s a work around. HTML email should work fine… it has in the past
5:13 PM Valentino: i understand, its not a supported program but I am providing a workaround for you..you canalso try this one if you wish
5:13 PM Valentino: Changing the default background colour from #FFFFFF (white) to anything else absolutely works. I changed the value to #FFFFFE (only one value away from white) in Config Editor (Preferences/Advanced/General/Config Editor.)

msgcompose.background_color = #FFFFFE

This is a successful work-around that does not look noticibly different than a white background..
5:15 PM Rick: Again – no. There is a problem at YOUR end. Tweaking colors etc should not and is NOT a fix.
5:16 PM Rick: Sorry I’m stunned – i’ve worked in computers for over 25 years and managed some of the best in the business (support personnel) I would fire anyone that tried to tell any of my users that this was a ‘Fix’
5:16 PM Valentino: other programs works fine
5:17 PM Rick: And so does Thunderbird until this email – the error comes from YAHOO servers not Thunderbird – ergo….
5:18 PM Valentino: I apologize for whats happening, its not a supported program and i am giving you a solution that works, there is not much i can do regarding the issue
5:19 PM Rick: You really are quite useless then…. is there anyone else I should talk to or should I just wait until YOUR problem goes away?

5:21 PM Valentino: there is no one else for an unsupported program
5:21 PM Valentino: You can try removing and readding the account to Thunderbird. If it does not work, you would need to troubleshoot with Mozilla or try a differnt email client.
5:23 PM Rick: You really don’t know anything about computer support do you – of all the stupid answers. I can’t wait to write about this on my blog – it’ll go viral…. what a waste of time

5:24 PM Rick: Good bye 5:24 PM Valentino: You’re welcome and thank you for choosing Rogers Live Chat Support.

Well that was fun…. er not…. but you can see why it looks like it’s an attempt at an AI response. Also note that he tells me maybe I could deltee her account and re-add it, or maybe just go with another email client. Essentially just going down a list of things that would make the error code go away… ergo, in Rogers opinion, make things work… But here is the kicker, the problem isn’t and has NEVER been with Thunderbird but with Yahoo! See that lovely setting up above, where ‘Valentino’ recommended I change the background color a little – msgcompose.background_color = #FFFFFE

Well it appears that, for what ever reason, Yahoo servers randomly choke on the background color if it is set to all F’s in upper case when coming from Thunderbird…. silly, strange, but true. if  your settings in Thunderbird are msgcompose.background_color = #FFFFFF Yahoo will eventually declare all your mail as originating Spam…. if you change the settings to lower case f’s as in msgcompose.background_color = #ffffff everything will be fine!

By the way, for those less technically astute – it’s the SAME COLOR!!!!!!!

The answer was in the links that ‘Valentino” so randomly popped into the conversation. It’s a known problem with Yahoo servers which has been going on for a very VERY long time – go figure. You know a real person should have acknowledged that yes there is a problem at Yahoo and unfortunately this is what you need to do to fix it…. instead of telling a client that their software is unsupported and they need to send only in text format  – forever more! SAY WHAT!

By the way, the reason the change from HTML to plain text works…. no colors! What a simple easy STUPID workaround! May we one day be saved from stupid AI’s and help desk people who don’t know, nor care what your problem really is.

THE SOLUTION

You can go to the link  forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2441147 to get all the background on this if you want. But here is the work around for Yahoo’s screw up:

• Go to the Thunderbird menu bar
• Click on Tools > Options > Advanced
• In the General Tab press the “Config Editor” button
• Note the warning message and click that you will promise to be careful
• Scroll down, or search in the top window to get to the setting msgcompose.background_color
• Double click on that line
• Change the #FFFFFF to #ffffff ( the same color )
• Click on “OK”
• Close the Config Editor
• Problem Solved!

Oh, one other little tidbit, if you have any drafts pending, you will need to copy and paste them into a new email in order to get rid of the #FFFFFF that is embedded in the draft…

Strange but sadly true….

As you may, or may not know, Apple is launching some new products this week – tomorrow to be precise. And the rumour mill is running wild on what the new products will be. The fact is Apple NEVER tells until they are up on stage.

The odds are good that there may be a new iPad, a new iPhone and a new Apple TV. That is logical, based on the age of the previous products and technology advances since their release.

But what I want to rant about is the Apple TV, or to be more precise, I want to rant about what all the pundits out there are saying about it! It all comes from what Steve said, as quoted in his biography ( a great read by the way ) written by Isaacson:

“‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ he told me. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.’”

For starters I already have an Apple TV, and it works GREAT! I think, based on what Steve Jobs said, that the next version of it may very well be amazing! But I think that I can pretty well guarantee that the next version of the Apple TV WILL NOT have a TV Screen!

It boggles my mind how everyone is saying that Apple will be making TV’s! No!!  Why would Apple even want to get into that mess! LCD LED Plasma 3D etc etc etc… They don’t have to!

Let me explain…

This isn’t a scientific fact, but I would hazard a guess that over 90% of modern TVs out there are already being used with another box, be it a cable, satellite, or internet box.All the screen is is a display or monitor for “the box”.

When you change providers all you have to do is change the Box! Right now I have a Satellite, Apple TV, WDTV, DVD player, DVD player, DVD recorder all connected to a great little Sharp LCD display and thanks to my current Apple TV I’m thinking of cancelling my expensive Satellite feed!

Apple’s new TV will be a BOX, just like it’s predecessor. Now Apple “might” make an extra large monitor/screen available to use with it, but it’s box WILL work with 99% of the current TV’s out there now! That’s where the market is. All TV’s these days come with multiple inputs, the new Apple TV will just connect like all the other boxes, there is no reason to make a screen for it! Why should they, you already have a screen!

Why would they make a full TV (with screen) that might take you 10 years to decide to buy and what technology will be out by then that may take you away. Apple wants to see you buying their TV NOW and to do that it will be a box that you can connect to your current TV.

I’m excited, really excited, because once this new Apple TV arrives, I believe it will change the way TV watching works today.

Let me explain…  I don’t have a large commitment to my current Satellite service, I only buy the “essential” services, but it still costs me over $70 a month! I watch next to none of the hundreds of channels that they make available, before my Satellite I had cable, which was even more expensive with even more channels that I DID NOT WANT or WATCH!

The common complaint for most subscribers to these services is that they want to be able to pick JUST the channels they want to watch, they don’t want all the other stuff that’s out there! I think Apple TV, especially the new one coming out, is going to change all that…

On the current Apple TV you can subscribe not to channels but to SHOWS! Not only that, but you purchase them, once you have paid for them, you own them and can watch them again and again.

I’ve done the math, and if we just paid for the the shows we watch now, on the Apple TV we watch now, we could cut our current TV viewing costs down from over $70 a month to something like $35 a month! AND NOT MISS A THING! I won’t even need a PVR/Recorder/Whatever because when the show becomes available I’ll have it. If I hear about a new show I didn’t know about I can buy it and INSTANTLY have all the previous seasons episodes – I won’t miss another thing EVER!

If some, or even none, of the rumours out there come true about what the Apple TV will offer in it’s next release, there will be a revolution in TV viewing. The fact is, it’s already here and the big TV cable/satellite providers don’t even realize it! Oh and  it doesn’t come attached to a screen it’ll just be a little black box…

I guarantee it! 

Don’t get me wrong, iTunes does a great job of keeping track of music, pictures and any app’s that you may have installed from their store…. but it’s the little things that it ignores.

You know, like configuration files!

Here is the set up…

I have an iPad and an iPhone and my machine runs Ubuntu Linux.

It was just recently upgraded to Ubuntu Natty Narwhal.

To “sync” my iDevices with iTunes i run a Windows XP environment inside of Virtualbox ( an emulator program that lets you run a different computer inside your regular computer. )

Here is a long and very painful story made a lot shorter… and if it sounds confusing, it’s because it is…. I’m still scratching my head over much of it.

After quite a few “issues” with the upgrade to Natty ( many things no longer worked as they should have – and this is yet another rant/reason as to why Linux isn’t ready for “regular users”! ) I finally got, or so I thought, everything working together. Or so I thought.

My iPad was due for a backup after putting a lot of new apps and information on it and so I flashed up my iTunes within Windows within Virtualbox within Ubuntu and after a very Very long time. A backup – I use that word lightly now…. was created. Note that the iPad connects to the computer via a USB port, this is important for later….

After which I was notified that a minor update for my iPad was available. So I said “sure”…. such a short word to lead to such a long and painful process….

iTunes does an odd thing when it does an update, it appears to first wipe out what is on the iPad ( the Operating System )before installing the update ( instead of overwriting )…. at least that is what it looks like from my end. Anyways all went well until the time came to install the new and improved “minor” fix.

Virtualbox, although it saw that the iPad was connected, refused to mount it ( make it available ) so that it could be actually used by iTunes…. matter of fact it refused to mount anything via USB at all except for my USB connected printers!

This took hours to track down and fix. From what I was able to discern, Ubuntu in it’s “non-commerical”  wisdom decided to replace the usual Virtualbox with Virtualbox-OSE. I’m still not sure what the difference is, nor do I care, but I stumbled across several other articles about how the OSE version won’t let you use USB connections…..  umm… but….. sigh…

I finally gave up and purged everything Virtualbox from the system ( sudo apt-get remove –purge virtualb* ) after which I went directly to Oracle’s ( used to be Sun for those in the know ) Virtualbox website and downloaded their latest non-OSE version of Virtualbox.

It too complained about not being able to support USB devices unless I added myself to the virtualbox group ( which I had previously done, but it may have been deleted by either the upgrade or the purge… sorry not sure about that one ) AND that I install something called an Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack. Which is a completely new thing for me…. but I did and it worked!

Unfortunately…..

Remember that bit I mentioned about wiping the software before installing the minor upgrade? Well, once I got iTunes back up and running and looking at the iPad it said… and I paraphrase with sarcasm added …. “So sorry, but your iPad has to have it’s original software reinstalled in order to work with iTunes….. sigh.

So I did that, and then it automatically went into a Sync mode  and started reinstalling everything that was missing from my last backup and after several hours….. I had my iPad back….

Well….. sort of. As it would seem that all of the configuration files – like those for connecting to my WiFi. My email logins, all my news feeds that fed all my different programs etc etc etc. Were all MISSING! I have to redo all of that, and remember all my news sites from memory…..

Oh and before I forget, it took ALL of my apps and placed them one by one on the iPad…. All the folders that I had them organized in were gone as well….. It took me three hours just to recreate and shrink down stuff back into folders! All my news feeds….. well I may never get all of them back!

So, I don’t know why I was able to connect with my USB cables “for a while” using something that supposedly wouldn’t let me connect at all. And why Apple in it’s wisdom does updates the way it does boggles my mind.

But I can guaranty that there are a LOT of people out there who will be as “ticked” and as shocked as I am when they one day discover that the SYNC that iTunes does only Syncs what Apple thinks is important – the apps and doesn’t do a thing to protect your system from loss of configuration data! They really gotta fix that!

I’ve also done a fair bit of searching trying to find an app or any other utility that will let one backup EVERYTHING on the iPad/iPhone/etc. And so far, I haven’t found one that I would dare to try – kinda sad isn’t it

I’ll let you know if ever I do, and if you find or are using something that works for you – let me know – PLEASE!

I did a quick drop in to the store today, to check out a piece of technology that they “used” to be good at. Door/proximity alarm systems…. they used to have oodles of stuff like that. Of course they used to have oodles of things “technical” and geeky…. but not any more and it’s getting worse.

A bit of background, my wife’s office is moving, and they can’t see the front door  ( which is a little odd, but there you have it ) so she asked me to find a mat or some time of system that would ring and alert them as to when someone had entered the premises. To me this is a n0-brainer, there are TONS of things out there that will do that for her. Heck Radio Sha…. errr the Source used to have one in every store and tons of them in the back…. I told her I’d check them out and get back to her.

So I dropped into my local y0u-know-what-by-now, and went to the back where all the cool things used to be…. it’s a LOT and I mean LOT smaller than it used to be… every time I go in there it seems to shrink….

As an aside, every time I do go into that section of  “you-know-what” it seems all the sales clerks instantly go on break! It happened again today, there were 3 uniformed people in the store and as soon as I went into the “technical” area, they all went in the back and I could hear them arguing about how….. no no I’m on break right now…. I mean come on, I’m not in there THAT often for them to recognize me…. In reality though, it’s because NONE of them ( all in their early 20′s or earlier I think ) know nothing about that sort of  “stuff”. All they know is how to sell cell phones and maybe TV’s…. but I digress.

Eventually, one poor soul comes out of the back and walks right past me ( I’m the only one in the store by the way. )  I finally grab his attention after the third try and tell him I’m looking for their proximity or door alarm systems. He looks at me, curls his lip ( I kid you not… ) and says, “Nahhh don’ sell that”…. Suffice to say I voiced my incredulity and told them that they used to sell tons of them, and they were well stocked in that area…

I small glimmer ( but only in one eye ) comes on and he says “Oh… ma’be here…” and points to a discount bin ( 1 ft by 1 ft ) hidden under a larger discount bin, in it held the remains of their once mighty line of products.  Thankfully there was one proximity alarm left hidden amongst the dozen or so spare alarm parts.

I mentioned how unbelievable it was that this was all that was left of what they used to carry, he kinda shrugged his shoulders and said ” They don’ sell” and walked away!! I snapped back that the reason was that they were only interested in selling cell phones any more! Man I was ticked on several levels.

I suspect within a couple years “The Source” will be renamed “The Cell Phone Source” because they will certainly soon not be worth going into for anything else! What a pity …

On the other hand, it looks like “Radio Shack” in the states has learned it’s lesson ( hopefully ) and is asking its’ clientèle and people in general, what products they think they should be carrying to “re-become” the DIY ( Do It Yourself ) store….. one can only hope they will succeed AND once again come back to Canada.

Time will tell I guess…

I’m thinking that I should change my graphics card…. it’s an ATI Radeon X700 Pro ( or to be specific – an RV530 Graphics Card from ATI. ) Sure it’s a little dated, but still has 256MB graphics capability and is a highly rated card. Plus if it’s a bit dated it should be “known” – shouldn’t it???

So it all starts with a “simple, little, upgrade” – who knew? I decided it was time to upgrade my Ubuntu from 10.04 ( Maverick Meerkat ) to 11.04 ( Natty Narwhal ). Each upgrade of Ubuntu gets better with certain things, but unfortunately breaks other things in the process. Why they won’t stick with what they liked and decided on in the last version boggles the mind however and can lead to grief. In my case, a lot of grief….. once again .

The first tip off was when the upgrade abruptly announced that it couldn’t handle the new windows manager Unity and reverted to the original Gnome desktop. A bit alarming but okay, I wasn’t sure I wanted Unity anyways, especially since their next upgrade after this is already announced as the latest Gnome 3 version…. so why bother, I wasn’t “overly” concerned…. for the most part things “seemed” to be working…. that is until I tried something a little more graphics intensive…. sigh.

The first thing that tipped me off was my attempt at updating my beta version of Memoir44. A brilliant little board game that they are working on putting on the 3 main computer platforms: Windows, Apple and Linux. It started generating a bunch of graphics error messages and then aborted. So I started digging, and digging and digging and found that all my other graphics intensive programs also no longer ran…. yeah of course they don’t any more!

Running glxinfo (a great test utility to see what is going on behind the scenes showed me an error I hadn’t seen in TWO YEARS – see above )….

Xlib: extension “GLX” missing on display “:0.0″.

I was stunned and started searching to see if anyone else had this problem, and there were a few, and have always been a few out there who run into this for all sorts of reasons. So I started checking all my software, making sure all the right pieces were still in place. Now remember I have an ATI graphics card, that’s important for later…

I even tried installing that temperamental FGLRX software and removing it, and installing the open-source Radeon version and doing the same thing, and nothing, absolutely nothing worked! I was stumped, stymied and greatly frustrated. No matter how I tried to change things and rebuild my Xwindows environment…. nothing really “fixed” my problem! I always got the same stupid error… hundreds of them…

Xlib: extension “GLX” missing on display “:0.0″.

A funny thought eventually hit me,  it really came out of the blue. Is it possible that somehow I’ve gotten Nvidia ( a completely different and incompatible type of graphics card than what I have  – ATI remember ) software installed. I did a quick apropos command ( a quick way to check to see what you have manual pages for ) – i.e. “apropos nvidia” and found a bunch of manuals for all sorts of stuff….. and I thought – What the….??

So I removed them, and guess what? It actually fixed my problem….. but/and strangely the manuals are still there, so I’m not sure what is going on with that….

So here is what I did – in case you have/had the same problem.

• $ sudo apt-get remove –purge nvidia* ( this grabbed all sorts of nvidia “stuff” and deleted it all – save for the manuals…. )
• $ sudo apt-get remove –purge fglrx* ( making sure there wasn’t any of that around after intentionally installing it trying to fix things … )
• $ sudo apt-get install –reinstall libgl1-mesa-dri libgl1-mesa-glx libglu1-mesa mesa-utils ( reintsalled the GL tools just in case they got whacked in all this … )
• $ sudo apt-get install –reinstall xorg xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core ( reinstalled the Xserver portions – making sure all is well… )
• $ sudo apt-get install –reinstall xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-radeon ( reinstalled the open source drivers for my card… )
• $ sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg ( brought back the default xorg.config… )
• $  spat in my hand and spun around twice…. ( why take chances… )
• Restarted the computer… ( with fingers crossed… )

And Voila Unity popped right up and glxinfo and glxgears ran fine! For that matter so did all my other programs and my upgrade to Memoir44

So, it begs the obvious question. How did nvidia drivers get there in the first place? To be truthful, I really don’t know, but my gut tells me that it happened during the upgrade. So either the upgrade assumes you have nvidia ( I sure hope that’s not the case! ) or for whatever reason it reads my card and says – hey nvidia!! Which again is soooooo wrong! Any other ideas?

Alas, once again however it shows that Ubuntu, for the non computer type, can be a very VERY inhospitable place. Which shows that it still isn’t ready for the average user…. I don’t know, you think they’d focus more on making it work right the first time, instead of adding new bells and whistles and major changes every 6 months.

Wouldn’t you?!