Location less screaming

Yeah, I noticed that last week...that I am still under my last avatar on one of the other sites.

Hi go_manly, let me clarify this problem. Our original avatar system gives each user one avatar for all Praxis Language website. We've recently updated the system where users can have different avatar for each Praxis Language website. An error in coding caused the new users box to stop updating. We have just fixed this problem.

Another thing that is just taking up space is the 'Newest Users'.

I've always thought this served no useful purpose.

But it seems to have changed for the worse in the last month or two.

It used to show only new users with avatars, and actually seemed to work - it constantly changed.

Now, users are shown with or without an avatar (thats not a problem), which should mean that it is continually changing as new users sign up.

But it hardly ever changes - its been the same now for about a week.

So either its broken, or CPod aren't getting many new users any more.

Of course it doesn't affect me at all, except to constantly remind me how broken-down this site has got in recent times.

Hmm - no I can't get anything from hulu.com. I have my favourite sites - in China we have access to more TV and films than you could watch in a lifetime. Including up to date Western shows. I am currently in Australia; just reported to my wife (in China) that I saw the finale of a favourite American show last night. She just answered .. 'seen it'. :)

so far, the IP location is for me scarily accurate. However, for advertisers even a success rate of 80% may be attractive. Often a rough country approximation might be sufficient to give you the right Ad.

If your Internet provider is not able to register "his" ip addresses under "his" name, I, in your position, would be more than thankful. :-)

you should give the following a try: once CPOD claims that you are in the states, try to access those nice goodies like hulu.com and tell us, if they let you in. (If not it means that their "map of the internet" is better than the one cpod is using.)

Thanks guys - that helps. In China my address was Beijing, a few thousand km from where I live. So China Telecom has its IPs registered in Beijing, at least. That could be static, but in the wrong place. In Aust the address has been constantly changing (dynamic?). It has changed again since I last posted - my fourth location in a week.

But ...

'since it is rather attractive for advertisers, digital rights managers ... to know where the user is, this mapping gets done.'

... this bit fails to convince me - the mapping can't reasonably be commercially useful if it just plain wrong (thousands of kilometres away from my real location.) It is not even very commercially useful for 'static' IP addresses if you are actually several thousand km from where the address is registered.

Go_manly summarized the answers quite well. your third question:

It might be a combination of:

- let's see what we can do with this function http://ipinfodb.com/ip_location_api.php

- let's see how accurate the function is: the more people complain, the less it is correct

- let's be transparent: Hey user, this is what we know about you

- let us not look to greedy by putting the expiration date as the only information there.

;-)

Your first 2 questions I think were answered by matthiask. I have a static IP, so my location never wanders from Sydney. You must have a dynamically allocated IP address - it changes each time you log in.

Regarding the 3rd question - who knows? At present I think it rates way down the list of pressing issues. And with CPod's record, I think there will always be something higher on the list.

I just wrote a long message that was spontaneously lost to the ether - I am not going to repeat it. In short:

- why does it keep moving around?

- why is it not remotely accurate?

- why is it taking up space on the Dashboard? (It serves no purpose for anyone, right or wrong.)

It's analogy time!!

What is an IP? It's the address of your computer. Data on the internet is transported in Packets, very similar to UPS (except, that you need a hell lot of packets) and the address tells the system where to ship the packets to.

If you press enter after you typed "chinesepod.com", a telephone book (the DNS, checks out what the IP of chinesepod.com is and sends out an packet order.

IP's were not designed to be directly mapped to the location of the user. However, since it is rather attractive for advertisers, digital rights managers (those bastards who deny me access to hulu.com) to know where the user is, this mapping gets done.

google for "xkcd map of the internet"

How? The Internet provider (like AOL) has a business, he registers under his address a bunch of IP addresses he wants to use for his users. The registration itself has a chunk that is located to a continent or even a country.

Normally, addresses were given out to the providers in chunks. But since we are running out of addresses, I can imagine, that Chinese Internet providers are now harvesting the leftover addresses. For example, a Dublin IP provider has an address left. So he gives it to the Chinese Internet provider. When Bodawei logs in, he gets an dynamically allocated IP adress (another way to save IP adresses - if you don't have enough, give IP's only to the people who are in need). The map says: Oh, this address is roughly Dublin (since the registrar of the IP adress was from Dublin) , and tadaaaa, the location of Bodawei is wrong.

And yes, chanelle was right with the VPN - that would also work. Basically any trick that you can use in the real world for faking your adress can be found back in the Internet. :-)

Ah thx I see, I thought it might be the VPN :-) I probably do not understand the "feature" then....

Chanelle, Bodawei doesn't use a VPN. I don't either but supposedly I was in Dublin about four weeks ago, then from there had a sojourn in Shanghai, now back in Japan.

Bodawei I think I've said this before, it serves no purpose ...

If you use a vpn, you will have bizarre locations as it directs your data to exotic places :-). I'm everywhere except Nanjing...