Paul O'Flaherty

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Weekly Round Up – Incompetent Edition!

• Selling Seagate a national security risk? Grow up!

  The xenophobes are at it again. This time they’re freaking out because a Chinese technology company has expressed an interest in purchasing hard drive maker Seagate.“Seagate would be extremely sensitive,” said an industry executive who participates in classified government advisory groups.…

• I’m loving Netvibes

  I’ve been playing with Netvibes since yesterday and I really do think it’s going to become my personal start page.Like most other “personal start pages”, Netvibes allows you to drag and organize a plethora of available modules to display information from almost any source you want. It’s…

• Weird Pownce problem.

  For the past few days I’ve been having the weirdest problem using the Pownce desktop application in Vista.I minimized the application and when I clicked on the taskbar to restore the screen it disappeared. It was still running and available in the taskbar but it was not displaying on either of my…

• Institutional incompetence?

  I’m constantly amazed by how often the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing especially with respect to educational institutions.This fact was never highlighted so clearly as it was in a letter we received this morning.On Monday frigid bitch will begin a  2 year education to become a…

• Apples black mark

  There are some things in life that can be passed off as a simple error, but using the term “nigger” (“neger” in Danish) when referring to the color of a computer product on your company web site is not one of them.I’m referring to a story in “Nyhedsavisen” (a free…

• Xeeber – helping you to stalk Yahoo users

  Being invisible on instant messaging networks has always been a handy thing and something I’ve enjoyed in that it allowed me to see who was online while being able to work without being constantly disturbed by a constant barrage of messages.Now for as long as I can remember there have always been…

Selling Seagate a national security risk? Grow up!

The xenophobes are at it again. This time they’re freaking out because a Chinese technology company has expressed an interest in purchasing hard drive maker Seagate.

“Seagate would be extremely sensitive,” said an industry executive who participates in classified government advisory groups. “I do not think anyone in the U.S. wants the Chinese to have access to the controller chips for a disk drive. One never knows what the Chinese could do to instrument the drive.”

Yep, because the Japanese (Hitachi, Toshiba) and South Koreans (Samsung Group) are that much less of a potential security threat so it’s okay to use their drives.

Not to mention the fact that since 2000 you’ve been using Chinese hard drives manufactured by ExcelStor in your laptops.

ExcelStor is a small hard disk drive manufacturer established in 2000. It has a manufacturing plant in Shenzhen, China, and an R&D center in Longmont, Colorado, USA. The company is partly owned by Shenzhen Kaifa Technology, of which the major share holder is China Great Wall Computer Group Co.

In 2002 ExcelStor signed a deal with IBM to manufacture and sell the 40GB version of IBM’s Deskstar 120GXP series under the ExcelStor brand name. IBM was also to market these drives under its own brand name. In 2003, after Hitachi took over IBM’s storage division, the deal was extended to include 40GB and 80GB drives from Hitachi’s Deskstar 7K250 series.

I mean really….

I’m loving Netvibes

I’ve been playing with Netvibes since yesterday and I really do think it’s going to become my personal start page.

Like most other “personal start pages”, Netvibes allows you to drag and organize a plethora of available modules to display information from almost any source you want. It’s got all the usual gadgets and modules and of course, the ability to, create multiple tabs within your “online desktop”.

What I’ve really been loving this morning is the podcast module. You can subscribe to an already listed podcast or add a feed of your own. You can then click on a little play icon within the widget to play the podcast.

What’s really cool about it is that as you navigate away from the tab you’re on the podcast isn’t interrupted. 

That means that I can browse around various tabs, check out Facebook, Twitter or Digg, all within Netvibes without having to have a separate mp3 player running in order to avoid the podcasts being interrupted.

Weird Pownce problem.

For the past few days I’ve been having the weirdest problem using the Pownce desktop application in Vista.

I minimized the application and when I clicked on the taskbar to restore the screen it disappeared.

It was still running and available in the taskbar but it was not displaying on either of my monitors.

If I uses the maximize command the app would show full screen, but attempting to restore it would simply make it disappear.

Also, when maximized I was unable to resize or move the app.

The issue is now fixed, as I simply reinstalled the Pownce app over itself. After reinstall it started full screen but I was able to resize it to the size it should be.

Strange, no?

Institutional incompetence?

I’m constantly amazed by how often the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing especially with respect to educational institutions.

This fact was never highlighted so clearly as it was in a letter we received this morning.

On Monday frigid bitch will begin a  2 year education to become a multimedia designer. Like many students money is an issue when it comes to buying the needed books and equipment for the course.

As you may already know, frigid bitch suffers from hypermobility to such a degree that she is considered disabled.

This means that her major source of income comes from the government and unlike other students she is unable to go out and get another job to bring in some extra money to cover the costs.

Thankfully for her, a large portion of the expenses for her re-education are also being picked up by the government so that she may, in the future have the opportunity to return to some sort of a working life.

Here is where things get interesting.

Considering the nature of the course she will be attending I thought that she would require a laptop.

In the list of course equipment and books which she received from the school there was no mention of a laptop.

Mentioned or not, frigid bitch asked the course leader at the school would she require a laptop and was told that she didn’t.

she was told that they would be using school computers in the class room but it might be a good idea if she had a computer at home to practice.

Well, frigid bitch has a serious power house of a machine at home so we thought all was okay, until we received a letter this morning.

This letter essentially apologized for not informing students earlier but they would now be required to have they’re own laptop for the course.

The laptop would have to a minimum spec of 1GB Ram (2GB preferred), 40GB HD (min) and a graphic card with a minimum of 128mb dedicated ram.

They would also be required to have Office 2007, Office Sharepoint designer and Adobe CS.

Other software will be required at a later date and from the book list I can surmise that it will include titles such as Dreamweaver.

That combined price for the above equipment and software is more than a pretty penny for the average student.

What really pisses me off here is that the letter was sent out on Thursday the 23rd, just 4 days before the course will begin (Monday the 27th).

In those 4 days nobody would have received the letter until the 24th and some, like us, not until the 25th. Some won’t see the letter until tonight when all the shops are closed.  (There are very few, if any, major shops open in Denmark on Sundays due to trade laws).

Some won’t see it at all if they are away.

Those who were fortunate enough to receive the letter yesterday had exactly 2 shopping days to find the cash for and shell out for everything above.

frigid bitch has just this afternoon to purchase what she needs.

This is simply unacceptable. Especially considering her hypermobility. Some days she literally is unable to walk.

It’s not just unacceptable with regards to frigid bitch’s situation but I’m certain they’re are many students who will be attending the course who were given the same information and are now desperately trying to borrow the cash from their parents in order to have everything they require for Monday.

This is not the first year they’ve run a multimedia design education. They know and have know what the required equipment is for years.

This kind of incompetence (and that’s what it is) is simply unbelievable and unacceptable. And this is no second rate school either…

Apples black mark

There are some things in life that can be passed off as a simple error, but using the term "nigger" ("neger" in Danish) when referring to the color of a computer product on your company web site is not one of them.

I’m referring to a story in "Nyhedsavisen" (a free newspaper in Denmark) from the 22 August, which states that last Tuesday, users of Apples web site in Denmark were able to choose between the colors "white" or "nigger" for a "batterieopladingsprogram" (battery recharging program) for a 13 inch MacBook. You can see a scanned version of the story on the right hand side of this blog post, but the blog linked blog post is more detailed.

These options were not available to other users of Apples web site, just those from Denmark. Everybody else just had the options "white" or "black". The issue was fixed on Thursday afternoon, but what really gets me is Apples explanation of how this occurred.

According to Apples communication chief (kommunkationschef) Frederik Hallstan it was a mistake ("fejl").

How can this be an mistake?

I just don’t understand it.

Gitte Petersen from ScanText raised the possibility that it could have been an error caused by a translator only having access to parts of the whole text he should translate and then would not know if the translation for "black" referred to a person or a color.

Men oversætterfirmaet Scantext har et bud på, hvad der kan være gået galt. For det behøver nemlig ikke at dreje sig om en fejl ved en maskinel oversættelse, forklarer projektkoordinator Gitte Petersen.

- Det kan være, at oversætteren bare har fået brudstykker af teksten, og dermed har han ikke været klar over, om det drejede sig om et menneske eller en farve, gætter Gitte Petersen.

While this is an interesting possibility I seriously doubt that there is anybody stupid enough to, without context, translate the word black to "nigger". I further doubt that if a translator were working on only portions of text, that there would not be somebody involved who would not only assemble the entire text but proof read it before it got placed on the company web site.

As far as I know, Apple have stated they will investigate how this occurred. But forto me, I would expect a little more from Apple executives than that, because as far as I know they have not apologized for it.

In many ways Apple are very fortunate that this "mistake" occurred on the Danish version of their site, which has relatively low traffic, in comparison to, say, the U.S. version..

Original image (MacBook) from Avisen.dk

Xeeber – helping you to stalk Yahoo users

Being invisible on instant messaging networks has always been a handy thing and something I’ve enjoyed in that it allowed me to see who was online while being able to work without being constantly disturbed by a constant barrage of messages.

Now for as long as I can remember there have always been tools available for all the instant messaging networks which allow you to see who is blocking you and reveal the status of users.

However, I’ve yet to encounter one as easy you use as Xeeber.

Xeeber allows you to stalk users on  the Yahoo Messenger network only. You simply visit the page, type in a username and their status is magically revealed. Even if the user has chosen to be to be invisible!

Using Xeeber you can now see and annoy Yahoo users who just want to be left alone online to do their own thing.

I’ve often wondered if tools such as this are in violation of the Terms of Service of the various IM providers. After all, the ability to be invisible allows you to wait for a friend to come online who you wish to talk with without telling the rest of the world that you’re online.

Tools like Xeeber remove that ability and add a tool to the arsenal of wannabe stalkers everywhere.

Not to mention that this could be used as an IM account discovery tool for spammers.

Skype may be down but Gizmo rocks..

Skype may be down but Gizmo rocks.

Gizmo just had a great opportunity to prove itself as I spent the last 1 hour and 58 minutes talking to Scot Duke in Texas. We had an awesome conversation and it was all recorded for posterity, for free, with Gizmos built in functionality.

I would have had to pay for that as an add on to Skype…

Privacy, Porn and giving web developers a bad name!

A friend of mine contacted me during the week and asked me to install Google Analytics and fix some minor annoyances on his site because he couldn’t get hold of the guy who originally developed his site for him (I know he should have hired me to develop it but we didn’t know each other then).

The site is called Tiesite.dk and it’s a e-commerce site from which Kasper sells fine Italian ties and the developer (who shall go unnamed) built the site on open source source solution osCommerce.

You wouldn’t think that there was much you could get wrong with that now would you?

Well you’d be wrong!

After I set up FTP and logged in, I downloaded a complete backup of Tiesite to give to Kasper.

As I looked through the file structure of the site I found two separate image folders which between them contain approximately 4mb of pornographic images.

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. I was certain that Kasper wasn’t involved in the distribution of porn, online or otherwise, so I phoned him to ask him if he knew anything about. He didn’t, he was just as shocked as I was.

Unfortunately the porn wasn’t the worst of it.

As I continued to look through the file structure I noticed a backups folder under the admin folder and had a peak at it’s contents. Inside were backups of 3 different SQL databases from 3 OTHER COMPANIES.

I was shocked. Two of the companies appeared to be run of the mill e-commerce sites (the name of each web site is in the start of each SQL backup file) but one of them was an online Adult store which sells porn DVD’s, sex toys and all that sort of stuff.

That particular database was almost 13mb in size and a quick view of it, by simply opening it in Notepad to see what site/company it belonged to also revealed that it contained users names, address and other private data.

I wasn’t quite sure what to do. I talked with Kasper and explained what I had found and we promptly agreed that the first step was for Kasper to get some legal advice.

We did, and have been following the course suggested by his lawyer which has involved deleting all of the porn and databases from the server.

Contacting the developer for his side of the story will likely prove pointless as Kasper has been unable to reach him for more than a month now.

I’m shocked that a developer can be so careless and I can’t even fathom why these things would have been uploaded to Kasper’s web hotel in the first place.

The porn is a clear violation of Kasper’s web hotels terms of service and if it was discovered before we deleted it would have resulted in his account being terminated, resulting in a loss of revenue from his site and the need to find a new web host. 

It makes me wonder how many other sites this guy has developed where the owners are unaware that they  have inappropriate and potentially damaging material sitting on their web hotels?

Have any of you guys ever run in to such a display of carelessness and irresponsibility?

What would you do if you were in Kasper’s shoes?

(Image by idiotboy)

Amazon Gift Voucher winner

Okay, I’m sorry. I must admit that I’ve been so busy lately that I’ve forgot to announce the winner of the $10 Amazon Gift Voucher last Friday.

So, finally, 5 days late, the winner by random selection, is ….

Sir Jorge of SirJorge.com

The voucher will be winging its way to Sir Jorge via email as soon as I post this.

Now, it would be cool if Sir Jorge lets us know what he buys with the voucher…