Boss Radio

Over the last few days Ebay has started telling me I'm blocking cookies when I try to log on.

Now I've been with computers long enough to know that they sometimes do stuff all by themselves, so I checked. Nope. I've got cookie choices set to only accept cookies from the site I'm on. It's been like that since Opera first gave me the choice and I've had no complaints from any site I've visited, including Ebay.

So I checked their terms and sure enough it says that they allow other companies to place cookies, but that I can block them if I wish. No problems there then.

So I searched for some way to get in touch, and from the front page it seems that 'help' is the only way. Upon arrival at the help page I'm asked what my problem is, so I type in "cookies" and up comes another page asking me what I want to know about cookies, and it gives me a choice of one question to click upon. That question is "How do I clear cookies?". Not exactly what I'm looking for, so I click the nice big 'Contact us' button.

It doesn't work.

So I go back a page and there I spot a smaller and more inconspicuous 'contact us' button, sneaky, but I try it anyway.

It takes me to the log in page. I log in. It tells me there is a problem with cookies.

Hmmm. So how to get in touch with them? This is obviously a time for blue sky lateral thinking outside the box. I decide to leave a message in the community forum, where sure as eggs someone will reply giving me an email address, so I go to the community forum and it asks me to log in. I log in. It tells me there is a problem with cookies.

I won't go into all the weird and wonderful ways I have tried to get in touch with this organization. Suffice it to say that I even found an old Ebay underneath the new one. I guess they just jacked it up and installed the new one or something. No, hang on, that can't be right. Anyhoo, this old version had a fully working 'contact us' button. I clicked it. It took me to the log on screen. I log in. It tells me there is a problem with cookies.

To put it politely, I was back in the restaurant again.

I am well aware that all I actually need to do is to fire up Firefox and everything will work just fine, but I don't see why I should have to. I've been using Opera since before there was an Ebay. It's up to them to write a site (Love that. "Write a site". I must remember it) that fits W3C guidelines, then it will work with all browsers, or at least if it doesn't then it's the browsers that are at fault.

And if it still doesn't work with Opera I shall be on here complaining to Opera about it.

Unless I log in and it tells me there is a problem with cookies.

This new look Opera community gives me a blog page headed by a diagonal list of all the clickable options that normally go horizontally along the top. The result of this is that the actual blog is almost pushed off the bottom of the screen.

Teething problems, of course, and I'm sure the problem will be cleared up in no time, but, in the meantime, it's working perfectly with Chrome and Firefox.

Oops. [pingu]

Now.

Can I have all my smileys back, please?

EDIT: Wow. That's fast. Fixed already!

I was going to delete this post but I've decided to leave it up as a historical document.

I was going to say "I'm not here" but it wouldn't be true, I'm here, but Opera isn't. It looks like it's here, in fact I can see it in front of me, but alas it is but a mirage, a mere figbox of my fevered miragination, when I fired up the browser I promptly got a warning: "The server's certificate chain is incomplete, and the signer(s) are not registered."

Oh no . The server's certificate chain is incomplete. I'm screwed. I don't know what that means...

Help is at hand. I clicked on 'Details'. It started with "*.opera.com" and went on to list the whole chain. Halfway down it says "Not valid before", then it says "Not valid after". That must be it then... Um. I still don't know what that means. Let's see what it says under 'Security'.

Ah ha. It seems that Opera doesn't recognize it's Certificate Authority and therefore "It is not possible to verify that this is a valid certificate."

At last it all makes sense.

Well, no, not really it doesn't, but seeing as how it's not really here nothing makes sense, so in that context it makes about as much sense as anything else.

What doesn't make sense is that I've not told Opera to accept or reject the connection, but it's still letting me post this blog.

At least I think it is.

I guess we'll all find out when I press 'Save'.

~ click ~

Menus. Doncha just hate 'em? You go to a little click box and instead of it clicking you through to where you thought you wanted to go you find a list of other places that you just might want to go to instead. And try as you may you always hit the wrong one first time. They're the internet equivalent of those annoying telephone answering message that ask you to press another key to get through to the place or person that you've already telephoned.

"Your message is important to us."

Well answer the damn 'phone then you churls!

Fortunately I've found this site to assist me with the voicemail machines. I don't mind waiting half as much when I know that they're paying for the calls. I even quite enjoy the muzak... to a certain degree. It's a UK site only by the way, but I'm sure local versions for all you foreigners out there must exist. There may even be a .us version... (Yeah, right - The Man with the Hat)

But what to do about the interweb variety? I don't know. All I know is that the new menus up at the top of the screen there have doubled the time I take to navigate around my pages, so if anyone knows of a particularly cunning plan to get Opera to give me my simple 'click and get where you wanted to be' links back, I'd be ever so obliged.

Boris has finally popped his clogs, I'm afraid I thought he'd snuffed it years ago so the news of his demise came as something of a surprise to me. The fulsome praise from former PMs Thatcher and Major didn't surprise me one little bit though, he was their kind of person. Basically he hi-jacked Mikhail Gorbachev's slow march to democracy and turned it into a high speed gold rush, along the way handing over control of the cities to the mafia by not paying the police, flooding Europe with illegal firearms by not paying the armed forces, and making numberous citizens whose only crime was to have finished their contribution to Soviet life and entered retirement (for which they had been paying all their working lives) homeless beggars.

It'll be interesting to compare the obits in 'The Guardian', 'The Independant', and 'The Times'. One more reason why I must get the next copy of 'Private Eye'.
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And meanwhile, in other news today...

Another TV phone-in swindle. This time it's TV-AM's quizline, which has been selecting the winner before the 'phone lines closed. Not by just a few minutes either. They were doing it up to half way through the alloted time, which in the most extreme case meant that half the callers were wasting their money calling a competition which had already been won. Meanwhile onscreen the presenters were still urging the viewers to 'phone in.

The name of the company handling the quiz was Opera.

I hope it was a different Opera. In fact I think our Opera should issue a statement distancing themselves from this fiasco.

This whole voting furore has now hit every broadcaster in Britain. It boggles my mind a little (And not in a good way). I find myself wondering when dishonesty became sufficiently acceptable for programme makers to think this kind of behaviour was acceptable.