Your first sentence is exactly what came to my mind when I read the summary.
Like... WTF? A part of the shuttle falls off and they just go "shit, someone has to go there and stick it back with chewing gum" or something?
They spent all this time trying to "certify" the thing as flight-worthy, all the safety paranoia after the Columbia, and a window cover wasn't placed (or fixed) correctly? What's next, a flat tyre they'll just notice when they try to land?
Shorthand did have it's uses for the current teen generation... Back in the day (well... 5 or 6 years ago), when cell operators started charging for SMS (they used to be free here), people had to drop the habit of long conversations via SMS; Phones used to (and still do, but nowadays it's mostly useless) break down long SMS messages into smaller (160 characters) parts, send them as separate messages, and the receiving phone would reassemble the message; when each message started to be billed, shorthand boomed, and eventually grew into a plague (believe it or not, we once had a cell phone ad where a couple was standing in an elevator when a two teens walks in. One of them immediately sends off "Nice (.)(.)" to the other one. The ad was basically for "learn shorthand. It's cool!". Now... I'm portuguese, and the portuguese alphabet doesn't include the letters "k", "w", and "y". But many of our word include the pair "qu" (sounding like "kuh"), and suddenly everyone was typing "k" instead of "qu". The pair "ch" (sounds like "shhh") was being replaced by "x" (the letter's name in portuguese sounds like "she's", but in most words it _should_ sound like "kss"), and so on. And, of course, thanks to globalization, we get a lot of english shorthand as well. The end result is that we get the common english shorthand (thx, u, ur, and friends) intermingled with bastardized versions of portuguese words, often shorthanded as well, and I frequently have to read a sentence 2 or 3 times before guessing what the writer meant...
I work for an European telco, and we're also switching to Huawei equipment;
Yes, they've blatantly copied other vendors (mostly Cisco and Nortel, but you can find references or behaviour matching almost every other vendor), but when you look at the price and performance... well, who cares if it's a copy?
We completely disregarded their USB modems; they're crap. Their ethernet modems, however, are pretty decent, and cheap as rainwater. And the added bonus is: no drivers to mess with. Even if you want to add home routers/switches/modems to your portfolio, their offer is pretty good (ask them for a few Aolynk units to test).
I do have to agree with another poster when it comes to support: it's terrible. But what they lack in expertise, they compensate with manpower; if you come up with a problem and press them hard enough, a couple of days later you'll have a working solution.
Ahem... I meant "free as in beer", not "free as in speech". The app was written by the portuguese Finance Ministry (or, much more likely, by some specialized company at their request). It is NOT open-source.
My little corner of Europe (Portugal) actually has a good e-tax delivery system: since last year, they have a Java application (which works beautifully in Linux, FreeBSD, and OSX) freely available for download on their site. It's as easy as:
1) Download and run the app 2) Fill the nice, easy-to-understand forms 3) Hit the "Check" button, and if all goes well, "Calculate", and "Save". 4) Get the resulting file, submit it through their website 5) Profit!
Zero cost, and very low margin for error. And the cherry on top is: e-submissions have a larger deadline than dead-tree submissions. After they validate everything on their end, you get an official-looking confirmation note in regular mail, and you're done.
Disclaimer: This may sound trollish or like a flamethrower, but that's not the idea...
You, my friend, are one of the reasons why we Europeans think most North-Americans are a bunch of illiterate idiots, even after your wonderful display of linguistic "culture".
a) Brazilian people do indeed speak Portuguese, not Spanish (and, btw, there's no such language as "Spanish". The proper name is "Castellano") b) Brazil and Portugal are different countries. The former is in South America, the latter in Southern Europe. c) Lisbon is the Portuguese capital, where most IT companies are, and coincidentally, where I am. Oddly enough, I'm reading/., as do many of my friends, co-workers, and acquaintances. d) The Brazilians are famous for their love of the Internet. The amount of Brazilian sites is incredible, and their fierceness about establishing Brazilian comunities is well known (see the recent Orkut discussion, for example). Pay a little attention to/. comments, and check users' URLs. You'll see a LOT of.br users commenting. e) Europeans, South-Americans, and most of the Western world outside the US don't have "bad feelings" about "yankees"; we just have a slight prejudice when it comes to the average American's intelligence and culture.
Yes, well, some of us do deal with Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, and other Asian companies.
In case you haven't noticed, most of our high-tech toys have at least a few taiwanese or chinese components in there; Most "modded" PC cases nowadays come from China; Many American and European manufacturers sub-contract asian assembly-lines.
And, obviously, they use e-mail to communicate with us Westerners.
... and has been for the past 18 months or so. My last Ericsson was "upgraded" in 1997 to a Nokia. I then used Nokias until late 2002, a Treo for about a year, a Siemens S55 for a few months, and I'm now the proud owner of a SE T630.
I stopped using Ericssons because they were ugly as hell, and the software basically stopped in time. Nokias had a fast development pace and were feature-crammed for a few years, and took over most of the European market.
But since the latest mobile phone tech-overhaul early last year (color displays, PDA features, cameras, MMS, and so on), Nokia appearently got lost. Their phones didn't keep up, so small players (including SE) took over. Siemens and SE are eating Nokia's market-share fast
They weren't going to allow ANY pirated copies to use SP2 (and they don't in SP2-RC1). In the meanwhile, a few keygens have already popped up which created _valid_ keys (like those resulting in a "640 product-ID" from VLK WinXP)
So I guess they have given up and will just blacklist the "20 most common PIDs" instead of trying to validate de format. I really doubt they're doing it out of the goodness in their hearts: they're just unable to enforce a blanket ban, period.
Funny... I've tried SP2 (RC1) and really liked it. And I don't even use Windows (the installation was in my father-in-law's laptop).
The RC1 does NOT include an AV (contrary to popular belief), but does recognize a bunch of AV vendors and is capable of verifying if the DB is up-to-date.
They now have a bunch of visible security measures (not counting the hidden ones like bugfixes and NX). It has the firewall enabled by default, and a "Security shield" or something like that in the systray and control panel. The damn thing is a PITA unless you have 3 things:
- All critical updates in place AND auto-updates enabled
- An up-to-date AV
- The firewall enabled
If all 3 are OK, the shield stays out of sight and doesn't bother you. Oh, and Windows Update is MUCH more intuitive. The updates to IE6 are minimal, but very useful:
- No ActiveX unless you allow it on a case-by-case basis (including WinUpdate, but that may be a bug)
- Options like "Always accept content from this provider" are now _hidden_ by default instead of being visible checkboxes in the installation dialogs. Users who push every checkbox and "OK" button in sight will now have to go an extra-step in order to blindly accept these things.
Remember: this is coming from a guy who does not use Windows; not for "philosophical" reasons, but simply because I do a lot of Unix-related work and like developing on my workstations and laptops. I also get more kicks out of using Linux or OSX.:)
Oh, and about physical One-Time pads... At least one bank (mine, actually) tried that back in the 90s, but gave up on them in 2001, IIRC. Too expensive, and customers kept breaking/losing them.
A few months ago, most (AFAIK, all) portuguese banks updated their online banking auth systems.
There's no standard, and they seem to be having some dificulty balancing user-friendliness with security.
The current "hip" thing is to require a login/password pair, followed by things like:
- Enter the the sixth and second numbers of your ID card/passport (random positions) - Enter your numeric PIN using the randomly placed JavaScript keypad - Use the code-matrix card (provided by the bank) and enter the value in square 4C - Confirm every money-moving operation with digits in random positions from a fixed (long) code given to you by the bank. Said code is regenerated every month.... and so on. I don't thinks there's any bank here using plain login/password auth. There were attempts to use personal x509 certs, but most users had trouble installing them or using them.
Or, as spammers like to call it, "double opt-in": It's when you get a challenge to your subscription, and must issue a response _before_ any other mail starts flowing in; single-submission subscription counts as illegitimate spam in my book. If a given site/company doesn't bother to confirm someone actually wants to read their "news", I don't want to bother reading them. And yes, I know the confirmation rate (even for legitimate subscriptions) is low: tough luck.
Whenever I get some info "I requested" or end up in someone's list, I block them without giving it a second thought. The rejection message is explicit enough: show me a mail from me or any customer of mine confirming that subscription, and I'll let you in. Until then, all my customers (and we're talking a few million mailboxes) are off-limits to you.
Lucky you.
I installed 3 FC2s, 2 dual-booting (to XP) laptops and one triple booting destkop (to XP and 2k3): all went OK. That doesn't mean the problem isn't there. (Lucky me, I guess). The fact that I always set the hard-drives to LBA (and the Windozes were installed that way, one of them nearly 2 years ago) might have something to do with it.
Read what I wrote: they install their PoPs, consisting of variable amounts of their own machines, in middle-to-large ISPs. Their servers, third party bandwidth (the ISPs'). I should know, I have one of them two floors below the chair I'm sitting on:-)
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Your first sentence is exactly what came to my mind when I read the summary. Like... WTF? A part of the shuttle falls off and they just go "shit, someone has to go there and stick it back with chewing gum" or something? They spent all this time trying to "certify" the thing as flight-worthy, all the safety paranoia after the Columbia, and a window cover wasn't placed (or fixed) correctly? What's next, a flat tyre they'll just notice when they try to land?
Shorthand did have it's uses for the current teen generation... Back in the day (well... 5 or 6 years ago), when cell operators started charging for SMS (they used to be free here), people had to drop the habit of long conversations via SMS;
Phones used to (and still do, but nowadays it's mostly useless) break down long SMS messages into smaller (160 characters) parts, send them as separate messages, and the receiving phone would reassemble the message; when each message started to be billed, shorthand boomed, and eventually grew into a plague (believe it or not, we once had a cell phone ad where a couple was standing in an elevator when a two teens walks in. One of them immediately sends off "Nice (.)(.)" to the other one. The ad was basically for "learn shorthand. It's cool!".
Now... I'm portuguese, and the portuguese alphabet doesn't include the letters "k", "w", and "y". But many of our word include the pair "qu" (sounding like "kuh"), and suddenly everyone was typing "k" instead of "qu". The pair "ch" (sounds like "shhh") was being replaced by "x" (the letter's name in portuguese sounds like "she's", but in most words it _should_ sound like "kss"), and so on. And, of course, thanks to globalization, we get a lot of english shorthand as well.
The end result is that we get the common english shorthand (thx, u, ur, and friends) intermingled with bastardized versions of portuguese words, often shorthanded as well, and I frequently have to read a sentence 2 or 3 times before guessing what the writer meant...
Hardware? Where?
Maybe because "Über" _is_ a word. It's german for "over" (as in overlord :-D)
I work for an European telco, and we're also switching to Huawei equipment;
Yes, they've blatantly copied other vendors (mostly Cisco and Nortel, but you can find references or behaviour matching almost every other vendor), but when you look at the price and performance... well, who cares if it's a copy?
We completely disregarded their USB modems; they're crap. Their ethernet modems, however, are pretty decent, and cheap as rainwater. And the added bonus is: no drivers to mess with. Even if you want to add home routers/switches/modems to your portfolio, their offer is pretty good (ask them for a few Aolynk units to test).
I do have to agree with another poster when it comes to support: it's terrible. But what they lack in expertise, they compensate with manpower; if you come up with a problem and press them hard enough, a couple of days later you'll have a working solution.
I really meant "just this once"... The .pt govt is usually terrible when it comes to technology adoption.
Ahem... I meant "free as in beer", not "free as in speech". The app was written by the portuguese Finance Ministry (or, much more likely, by some specialized company at their request).
It is NOT open-source.
... I can say "yay, we've got something better!"
My little corner of Europe (Portugal) actually has a good e-tax delivery system: since last year, they have a Java application (which works beautifully in Linux, FreeBSD, and OSX) freely available for download on their site. It's as easy as:
1) Download and run the app
2) Fill the nice, easy-to-understand forms
3) Hit the "Check" button, and if all goes well, "Calculate", and "Save".
4) Get the resulting file, submit it through their website
5) Profit!
Zero cost, and very low margin for error. And the cherry on top is: e-submissions have a larger deadline than dead-tree submissions. After they validate everything on their end, you get an official-looking confirmation note in regular mail, and you're done.
Disclaimer: This may sound trollish or like a flamethrower, but that's not the idea...
/., as do many of my friends, co-workers, and acquaintances. /. comments, and check users' URLs. You'll see a LOT of .br users commenting.
You, my friend, are one of the reasons why we Europeans think most North-Americans are a bunch of illiterate idiots, even after your wonderful display of linguistic "culture".
a) Brazilian people do indeed speak Portuguese, not Spanish (and, btw, there's no such language as "Spanish". The proper name is "Castellano")
b) Brazil and Portugal are different countries. The former is in South America, the latter in Southern Europe.
c) Lisbon is the Portuguese capital, where most IT companies are, and coincidentally, where I am. Oddly enough, I'm reading
d) The Brazilians are famous for their love of the Internet. The amount of Brazilian sites is incredible, and their fierceness about establishing Brazilian comunities is well known (see the recent Orkut discussion, for example). Pay a little attention to
e) Europeans, South-Americans, and most of the Western world outside the US don't have "bad feelings" about "yankees"; we just have a slight prejudice when it comes to the average American's intelligence and culture.
Yes, well, some of us do deal with Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, and other Asian companies.
In case you haven't noticed, most of our high-tech toys have at least a few taiwanese or chinese components in there; Most "modded" PC cases nowadays come from China; Many American and European manufacturers sub-contract asian assembly-lines.
And, obviously, they use e-mail to communicate with us Westerners.
... and has been for the past 18 months or so. My last Ericsson was "upgraded" in 1997 to a Nokia. I then used Nokias until late 2002, a Treo for about a year, a Siemens S55 for a few months, and I'm now the proud owner of a SE T630.
I stopped using Ericssons because they were ugly as hell, and the software basically stopped in time. Nokias had a fast development pace and were feature-crammed for a few years, and took over most of the European market.
But since the latest mobile phone tech-overhaul early last year (color displays, PDA features, cameras, MMS, and so on), Nokia appearently got lost. Their phones didn't keep up, so small players (including SE) took over. Siemens and SE are eating Nokia's market-share fast
Nope, according to these posters, an iRaq is something a bit different.
Oh, so that thingy on the 8th row must be a delusion, then. And these articles don't exist.
Keep IE, then. Mozilla/Firefox are browsers, not VMs. They're not intended to run programs, only to download them.
------------- end bin.pl -----------
They weren't going to allow ANY pirated copies to use SP2 (and they don't in SP2-RC1). In the meanwhile, a few keygens have already popped up which created _valid_ keys (like those resulting in a "640 product-ID" from VLK WinXP)
So I guess they have given up and will just blacklist the "20 most common PIDs" instead of trying to validate de format. I really doubt they're doing it out of the goodness in their hearts: they're just unable to enforce a blanket ban, period.
Funny... I've tried SP2 (RC1) and really liked it. And I don't even use Windows (the installation was in my father-in-law's laptop).
:)
The RC1 does NOT include an AV (contrary to popular belief), but does recognize a bunch of AV vendors and is capable of verifying if the DB is up-to-date.
They now have a bunch of visible security measures (not counting the hidden ones like bugfixes and NX). It has the firewall enabled by default, and a "Security shield" or something like that in the systray and control panel. The damn thing is a PITA unless you have 3 things:
- All critical updates in place AND auto-updates enabled
- An up-to-date AV
- The firewall enabled
If all 3 are OK, the shield stays out of sight and doesn't bother you. Oh, and Windows Update is MUCH more intuitive. The updates to IE6 are minimal, but very useful:
- No ActiveX unless you allow it on a case-by-case basis (including WinUpdate, but that may be a bug)
- Options like "Always accept content from this provider" are now _hidden_ by default instead of being visible checkboxes in the installation dialogs. Users who push every checkbox and "OK" button in sight will now have to go an extra-step in order to blindly accept these things.
Remember: this is coming from a guy who does not use Windows; not for "philosophical" reasons, but simply because I do a lot of Unix-related work and like developing on my workstations and laptops. I also get more kicks out of using Linux or OSX.
Oh, and about physical One-Time pads... At least one bank (mine, actually) tried that back in the 90s, but gave up on them in 2001, IIRC. Too expensive, and customers kept breaking/losing them.
A few months ago, most (AFAIK, all) portuguese banks updated their online banking auth systems.
... and so on.
There's no standard, and they seem to be having some dificulty balancing user-friendliness with security.
The current "hip" thing is to require a login/password pair, followed by things like:
- Enter the the sixth and second numbers of your ID card/passport (random positions)
- Enter your numeric PIN using the randomly placed JavaScript keypad
- Use the code-matrix card (provided by the bank) and enter the value in square 4C
- Confirm every money-moving operation with digits in random positions from a fixed (long) code given to you by the bank. Said code is regenerated every month.
I don't thinks there's any bank here using plain login/password auth. There were attempts to use personal x509 certs, but most users had trouble installing them or using them.
Or, as spammers like to call it, "double opt-in": It's when you get a challenge to your subscription, and must issue a response _before_ any other mail starts flowing in; single-submission subscription counts as illegitimate spam in my book.
If a given site/company doesn't bother to confirm someone actually wants to read their "news", I don't want to bother reading them. And yes, I know the confirmation rate (even for legitimate subscriptions) is low: tough luck.
Whenever I get some info "I requested" or end up in someone's list, I block them without giving it a second thought. The rejection message is explicit enough: show me a mail from me or any customer of mine confirming that subscription, and I'll let you in. Until then, all my customers (and we're talking a few million mailboxes) are off-limits to you.
Unfortunately, due to the force of habit, all the answers will go to hip_granny@hotmail.com.
And frankly, can't we just call it something new and start from 1 again?
Sure! (bad link in previous post, spolied the fun)
And frankly, can't we just call it something new and start from 1 again?
Sure!
Lucky you. I installed 3 FC2s, 2 dual-booting (to XP) laptops and one triple booting destkop (to XP and 2k3): all went OK. That doesn't mean the problem isn't there. (Lucky me, I guess). The fact that I always set the hard-drives to LBA (and the Windozes were installed that way, one of them nearly 2 years ago) might have something to do with it.
Read what I wrote: they install their PoPs, consisting of variable amounts of their own machines, in middle-to-large ISPs. Their servers, third party bandwidth (the ISPs'). I should know, I have one of them two floors below the chair I'm sitting on :-)