Ron’s Blog

Right, bit of backstory here – we developed a whole website and database solution for this one big client of ours (name not revealed to protect the guilty). We are obligated to offer support for these guys, and I’m responsible for that (apart from the usual dev work that I do).

So, they decide to open a new branch – well, the guy who manages the new branch experiences an error on the website (error on our side, turns out that some of the code didn’t take new branches into account), so he calls me for help.

It turns out that this chap is not too bright…

Luser: “I’ve found an error on the website… (yadda yadda)”.
Me: “OK… can you know exactly what you did to cause the error?” [When fixing bugs, it helps if you can reproduce them, you see...]

Turns out, he doesn’t understand what I’m asking for, so I decide to take a simpler approach…

Me: “OK, this may help – next time you get the error, can you take a screenshot of your browser window showing the error, and mail it to me?”.
Luser: “What’s a screenshot?”
Me: *facepalm*

So, I search Google for a screenie-making tutorial, and mail him the first link that comes up, telling him that that’s how you take a screenshot, and that he should mail the screenshot to me when he’s taken it. The reply comes through two days later – the screenshot was of the guy’s Outlook window…

It took me several more days encountering similar stupidity to get the information I needed to find and fix the bug…

IOL has published this story:

The prankster who defaced ANC president Jacob Zuma’s poster and placed it on a pedestrian bridge near Virginia Airport, Durban, will be fined or face jail time if caught, the IEC said on Thursday

Clearly inspired by an e-mail that has been doing the rounds for the past month, someone added a mask to the poster and scrawled the word “Zumatello” alongside Zuma’s image.

The poster was then placed on the pedestrian bridge over the southbound carriageway of the M4.

The reference to Zumatello, for the uninitiated, comes from the cartoon series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles which featured four turtles whose names Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Donatello were borrowed from Renaissance era artists.

The Independent Electoral Commission says there is nothing funny about defacing any election posters.

Tension between rival parties was highlighted when a similar election poster of Jacob Zuma was defaced in Umlazi recently.

The ANC in KZN called on police to investigate, but no formal charges had been laid.

Just two months after that incident two men were arrested for plastering their business adverts on an ANC poster in Johannesburg’s city centre.

The men were taken to the Johannesburg Central Police Station and charged with contravening the Electoral Act, which makes it illegal to conceal or remove any voting or electoral material.

The charges included malicious damage to property and contravening the Electoral Act.

IEC spokesperson, Mawethu Mosery, who had not seen the poster in question said: “Misrepresentation of campaign posters is a matter that deeply concerns us.

“We will not tolerate such behaviour.”

Mosery went on to say that if it was concluded that another party was responsible for the defacing, the party would have to pay a fine of about R200 000.

However, if it was carried out by an individual with no political ties, there would be no option of a fine and the offender would face up to two year’s imprisonment.

Seriously – don’t people know what a sense of humour is any more?

OK, granted, it was never good to begin with, but if Microsoft gets their way, it’s about to become a whole lot worse. A link to this article has just been sent to me, courtesy of my Friendly Network Admin – and I’m shamelessly copying and pasting the article content here.

It’s such a tremendously bad idea that it’s almost bound to succeed. Microsoft has filed another patent, this one for an “advertising framework” that uses “context data” from your hard drive to show you advertisements and “apportion and credit advertising revenue” to ad suppliers in real time. Yes, Redmond wants to own the patent on the mother of all adware.The application, filed in 2006, describes a multi-faceted, robust ad-delivering system that lives on a “user computer, whether it’s part of the OS, an application or integrated within applications.”“Applications, tools, or utilities may use an application program interface to report context data tags such as key words or other information that may be used to target advertisements,” says the filing. “The advertising framework may host several components for receiving and processing the context data, refining the data, requesting advertisements from an advertising supplier, for receiving and forwarding advertisements to a display client for presentation, and for providing data back to the advertising supplier.”

The adware framework would leave almost no data untouched in its quest to sell you stuff. It would inspect “user document files, user e-mail files, user music files, downloaded podcasts, computer settings, computer status messages (e.g., a low memory status or low printer ink),” and more. How could we have been so blind as to not see the marketing value in computer status messages?

The software would also free advertising from its traditional browser yoke. “A word processor may display a banner ad along the top of a window, similar to a toolbar, while a graphical ad may be displayed in a frame associated with the application. A digital editor for photos or movies may support video-based advertisements,” the patent application says.

The patent application, first unearthed by InformationWeek, gives the impression that your software would have more control over the advertising than you would. “An e-mail client may specify that ads from competitors must be excluded, that its own display client must be used… (that) no more than 4 ads per hour are allowed, and that only text or graphical… advertisements are supported.” The patent makes no mention of any method by which an actual user might exert control, nor does it mention very real privacy or security concerns.

That’s okay. It’s still a good thing. It says so right in the application: “The ability to derive and process context data from local sources rather than monitor interactions with a remote entity, such as a server, benefits both consumers and advertisers by delivering more tightly targeted advertisements. The benefit to the user is the perception that the ads are more relevant, and therefore, less of an interruption. The benefit to the advertiser is better focus and a higher chance of conversion to a sale.”

The patent is a fascinating exercise in advertising delivery systems. But surely that’s all it is—an exercise. No way anyone would ever actually make a thing like this. Right?

Right? Wrong! If anyone is going to make something like this, it will be Microsoft doing it. It surely wouldn’t be difficult to modify the search indexer in Vista to send information on the content on our files back to base camp, and I’m sure you’d see this creep in sooner or later, disguised as a “security update”.

There are some rather worrying questions that need to be addressed here. Firstly, how can being spammed with ads be seen as a good thing for the consumer? If anything, too much advertising tends to put me off the product rather than make me rush out to buy it. Secondly, will we be able to turn all of this advertising off, or will it be forced upon us? I can imagine companies wanting to turn this off, as being bombarded with ads (even if it is only 4 ads per hour) can only hurt productivity – which could cost Microsoft if people move over to Linux because of it. Thirdly, privacy and ethics come into the picture here. It is just downright unethical to spy on users and spam them with unwanted advertising. Unfortunately, it seems that in today’s capitalist world, profit is more important than ethics. Just look at Telkom, for example.

And here’s an interesting one. Will security software classify this as adware, and if so, will they try to disable it? We could have an interesting situation if a piece of security software classifies the operating system that it runs under as a virus.

The day that this comes to fruition is the day that I uninstall Windows and permanently move over to Linux (instead of me just having it on my dev box) – even if it means the end of gaming for me.

This was published in the “letters to the editor” section of the Sunday Tribune this morning:

The Department of Water Affairs and Forestry is really misguiding us on how to solve the current water shortage crisis.

The best way for us to save water, which is essential to our future, is that we stop eating meat completely. Animals raised for food consume and waste huge amounts of water for our flesh-eating needs, and just advocating such acts is not morally justifiable.

According to a recent pamphlet brought out by Animal Rights Africa concerning the fight against global warming and how veganism is the best option to fight it, “Raising animals for food consumes more than half of all the water used in the world. It takes 11 365 litres of water to produce a kilogram of meat but only 272 litres to produce a kilogram of wheat.”

The department should have at the top of its list on “how to save water 101″, a “going vegan strategy for all”, and not a “don’t water your lawn too much” or “don’t take too long showers”, because that is absurd.

As Africans we’re being hit hardest by global warming. Why not be at the forefront of fighting it, by abstaining from consuming animal products completely?

Van Zijl Loots
Cape Town

In my humble opinion, Van Zijl Loots is a nutcase and an idiot. He’s probably the sort of person that would feed a newborn baby soya milk and apple juice.

The figures that are mentioned in this letter appear to be nothing more than sensationalist propaganda. Granted, it’s estimated that ~70% of the world’s water is used for agricultural purposes (source), but it’s probably mainly irrigation. We need that water to grow the kilogram of wheat. Cows just eat grass, which grows naturally. Wheat doesn’t grow naturally in a lot of places, it needs that irrigation. I haven’t researched the stated water consumption figures myself, but they do seem grossly exaggerated to me.

Another argument to consider is land usage and diet, and how they relate to each other. Take a drive through the Free State and you’ll see mielie fields as far as the eye can see. Now, consider the possibility of the entire population of South Africa going vegan. You’re going to need a whole lot more mielie fields to feed everyone, and considering that you get more energy out of meat than out of plants, you may not have enough room (especially if you live in a country like ours and bring land redistribution into the equation). It’s the same reason why more cars don’t run on renewable energy sources such as ethanol (as seen in The Amazing Race a few weeks back); greedy oil companies aside, there’s just not enough room to grow all that sugar cane and feed everyone on this planet at the same time.

And as far as this nutcase’s extreme beliefs go – if someone wants to eat meat, tough. Get over it.

Seems like the opposition parties are not the only ones in a tizz over this – so too is the good old Post Office. During my daily browsing of the South African news sites, I came across this article:

Letters of protests against Durban’s proposed street name changes have been delivered to the incorrect address following confusion over the street name, the Daily News reported on Tuesday.

The afternoon daily reported that a number of letters of objection which were supposed to have been delivered to 41 Margaret Mncadi Avenue were in fact delivered to a home in Margaret Maytom Avenue.

Margaret Mncadi Avenue was formerly known as Victoria Embankment. Residents wishing to object to the city’s latest name changes have been advised to write to eThekwini Municipal manager Mike Sutcliffe at 41 Margaret Mncadi Avenue.

Carol Hayward Fell told the Daily News that the first letter arrived in her letter box last Thursday.

“My first reaction was that Sutcliffe was writing to me and I opened the letter, only to discover it was an objection to the renaming,” Hayward Fell was quoted as saying.

A bemused Hayward Fell has promised to safeguard and pass on the mail.

Durban North councillor and Democratic Alliance (DA) caucus leader John Steenhuisen warned of the impending chaos in the postal system.

“This clearly shows there is a problem – just imagine the confusion when the more than 100 names are changed across the city. It has major implications for business alike,” Steenhuisen said.

Last week the Inkatha Freedom Party and the DA held a joint march that
drew 10 000 people to the city centre in protest against the name changes.

Now, why am I not bloody surprised?

A lot, actually.

Vista got installed on my work machine today. The first thing that I noticed about it, it NAGS and NAGS and NAGS whenever you want to change settings or install something. Just like my little sister. I thought that I was done with the nagging when she went off to UCT in Febuary, only to have a piece of software prove me wrong.

Yes, I know that User Accounts Control (Microsoft’s name for the nagging) is a security “feature”, but couldn’t Microsoft have made it less annoying? As it is, I’ve had to disable it before taking out my frustrations on the computer, the monitor and Carl (my office mate).

It also didn’t want to pick up the onboard sound. I’ve no idea how I eventually got that working.

I’m still learning about Vista. Expect more rants when I find something to rant about.

Oh, and the gaming rig at home will have XP on it for the forseeable future. I don’t want to be nagged at home either.

This is the sad story of trying to get ADSL…

My ADSL was ordered on the January 7th – the closest date to my return from Australia that I could get to a Telkom store. (Was told that actually physically going to a store was a better alternative to ordering over the phone or online). After giving them a few weeks, I phoned their call centre on the 29th (last week Monday) and was told that it would be installed on February 3rd and that a technician would call me later in the week to confirm a time to do the installation. So, I’m thinking “OK, great!” – but the week goes past and I hear nothing. I called them again last Friday (was planning to call them the day before, but that was the day that I was sick) and was now told “no installation date has been set”! So, I went from having an installation date to not having one. Typical bastards. On Monday this week (the day that my ADSL was originally scheduled to be installed), I phone their useless call centre again, just to see what was going on, and I got the same excuse.

Right, I thought. Flame time.

Off I went to Hellopeter and left a complaint. The Telkom staff that actually know what goes on (I’m surprised such people exist) read those comments and respond to them, and sure enough they phoned me up, promising to find out what the problem was. Not too long after that, I get their excuse – they apparently needed to upgrade the infrastructure in Kloof (and I have noticed some Telkom vehicles in the area around my place lately, so they were obviously doing something). After another call to their call centre this morning (and spending 15 minutes on hold listening to their rubbish canned music), I was told that the estimated time for installation is now the 18th.

Now, why couldn’t they have told me that they needed to upgrade their infrastructure in the first place? And why couldn’t their call centre tell me what I needed to know? Seems like it’s a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Telkom is so useless, it’s almost like they WANT to go out of business when Neotel starts up.

I’m hoping that they’ll keep their promises this time, but then again, this is Telkom that we’re dealing with. My friend Craig has also ordered ADSL at his place in Glenwood about three weeks after my order was placed; at this rate he’ll have his before I get mine.

I’ll keep you all posted as to further developments.

My e-mail this morning to Sybaritic pretty much explains it all.

I recently placed an order with you (order #10881) which
included a D-Link Gigabit switch (DGS-1016D); the order arrived yesterday. Upon
opening the package I noticed that the product was not shrink-wrapped. Initially
I thought nothing of it, until I opened the box and discovered that the switch
itself as well as the accompanying rack mount kit was missing.

What can be done about this?

(There were no problems with the other products in the
order)

–K

Let’s hope they do something about this…

UPDATE (14:41): They found my switch, and it’s on it’s way to me. Hopefully there’ll be a happy update tomorrow sometime.