Be Excellent To Each Other

Hopefully it will die down a bit I've been able to get a seat for months, but the last couple of days have been crazy.

Luckily I'm an 80 second walk from a mainline train station, so I'll switch to that route instead and see how it goes.

OI! Nothing wrong with tweed.

On my commute, the traffic seems to have been a lot heavier the past two mornings, but the journey seems to take the same amount of tim. Which is odd.

Are we talking Henman or Wonnacott?

I did wonder about that, but they were flying in both directions, over Wiltshire.

Were they just lost?

Fuck knows, where's Wiltshire?

I've been placed on Garden Leave in hilariously over the top fashion. I couldn't even say goodbye to anyone!

These people are a joke.

Sorry to hear that.

My friend was hoping for that when moving corporate law firms. They made him work every day of his three month notice period.

Hah! Yeah, I'm quite happy about paid leave too.

I had offered to finish a statement that needed serving by 4 September but they won't allow me access to computers in case of, I dunno, MASSIVE CYBER ATTACK.

They want me to write it out by hand. I have cordially refused and told them I'll type it up or they can get knotted.

I don't let any IT guys that have been asked to leave touch anything electrical on their way out of the door.

While I understand that you're not in IT, they don't know if you have M4D SK1LLZ or not.

Copying the client list or downloading the email address book is the biggest worry for firms like what Sats does, if memory serves.

Yeah, you're effectively leaving to set up in competition, gardening leave is no real surprise. Though quite why they think you wouldn't have already stolen the client list before resigning if you were of a mind to do so I have no idea.

Turns out they're giving me access now. TIME TO DO DAMAGE.

I'm not going to do that, really.

Yeah, I've kept the whole sole practitioner thing quiet funnily enough...

Can someone help out - I need to prove that someone else is at fault in not being able to set up an online two player game of minecraft on the xbox. Is anyone around this evening for me to ping an invite to? You don't actually have to play, just accept the invite and prove that you turn up in the game

That won't prove anything, because you're most probably both at fault. If you've both got restrictive NAT then you won't be able to join each other's games. If one of you has and the other has open NAT, you should be ok. Same if you've both got open NAT.

So someone else joining your game successfully doesn't necessarily mean it's not your fault.

It's probably his fault.

Run the network test thing from the dashboard, that'll tell you what the NAT situation is on yours at least.

WTF is a restrictive NAT? And what could I do about it if I have one?

Google it for your particular router and then alter some settings on it.

What's a router?

I would suggest putting your 360 in the DMZ in your router settings. You can search for your router model and a guide on how to do this.

HTH HAND

I can't tell if you're winding me up now. What is the "DMZ"? This isn't a reference to demilitarised zone between north and south korea, I take it.

Stands for the same thing, but exists outside of your router's firewall. Basically it means that any traffic going to and from your 360 would be unprotected, but seeing as I've never seen a 360 with a virus I wouldn't worry about it. It would also unrestrict your NAT settings.

Here's an example:

http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detai ... ar-routers

Basically you put in the IP address that your 360 uses into this section here.

Thanks, myp, much appreciated.

So, if I've got an open NAT, then, what on earth else could the problem be? Other than the other person being a belmer.

If you've not put your 360 into the DMZ or set up port forwarding, you're pretty much guaranteed not to have open NAT.

Would be very unlikely to be anything else, if everything else on both your networks appears to be functioning correctly.

Ah - ok. In that case, how come anyone can play on Live with anyone else? Most people must be completely unware of NATs.

Normally you don't notice it, because matchmaking never connects two people together who have restrictive NAT. It's only when you're trying to play with your friends and both of you have it.

Which can hardly be rare, though?

The venn diagram of that setup usually encompasses at least one party who has a scooby, though.

I bet it doesn't. You're assuming way too much of the average person. Especially given that I'm way above average.

Tell you what, change your settings and see if it works, then tell us how common it must be.

Most people can search for 'xbox live cannot connect to friend' and follow simple instructions, I find.

I'm not sure how that's related to the issue.

Craster said that if you've not put your 360 into the DMZ or set up port forwarding, you're pretty much guaranteed not to have open NAT. If I, a semi-technology literate person, wasn't aware of this as a problem, I'm not sure how many other people (in which we're including a sizeable number of 12 year olds) would have taken this positive step to get themselves an open NAT. So there must be loads of people floating around on live with restrictive nats unable to play minecraft with their mates. I can't be the only person on the internet who doesn't know about this.

You're all cunts.

We gave you the answer! It's not our fault if you don't like it

Actually, I believe you will find it's Crasters fault.

She didn't seem to hate it, but claimed it was paper instead. Luckily, Stinkpants had bought her an anniversary journal to write what we did each year in, presumably to stave off dementia.

So, my NAT was already as wide open as Cras's mum's legs, and we got Minecraft MP working this evening. So it was naff all to do with that, and a lot more to do with someone else being useless other than me. So I sorted it out no thanks to you lot, so ner ner ner ner ner.

mumble mumble mumble Mrs Me says she was actually going to text Cras at work today to ask him how to sort it out as she thought he'd be more likely to know than me but didn't see that as a valid problem ticket to raise with the Senior VP of Playing with iPhones*. mumble mumble mumble

*I may be editorialising here rather than directly quoting.

What if they have plugged their iphone in to charge? Or they are in the Midfle of microwaving a Marks & Spencer's spaghetti carbonara, and accidentally put it on for 44 minutes instead of four minutes? What if they are the only person trained in using a defibrillator nearby and someone's heart had stopped?!?! Grim... I don't think you have thought this ad-hoc rule through thoroughly!

I used to live near the jubbly line, too