Thursday, August 20, 2009
Friday, May 08, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
More GMail Problems
In my last blog entry I wrote about my impression that GMail is becoming unreliable. Earlier this week I had to disable GMail offline browsing since otherwise I could not log into my GMail account any more. Just now a JavaScript bug seems to have been introduced in GMail: GMail appears as a very small window inside by main browser window. I'm using Firefox 3.0.7.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Is GMail becoming unreliable?
I've been a GMail user since it was on limited trial, and I have always been happy with its speed, reliability and with the sleek user interface. In addition, the GMail spam filter is much more effective than any other hosted e-mail service I've used before (Hotmail, GMX, ...). Almost as effective as my hand-tuned bogofilter I'm running on our Linux boxes :-)
But lately I had the feeling that GMail is becoming unreliable, giving me frequent service errors when logging in or when sending mail. Not due to connectivity problems it appears.
Monday, February 02, 2009
Surfing the web may harm your computer
Last Saturday I was googling for some developer related information when all of a sudden Google started reporting all search results as malware infested web sites:
This morning I heard that apparently some overworked admin at Google had by mistake put a single line holding a dash "/" into a file containing URLs of reported malware sites, thus turning on malware warnings for all search results. This problem lasted for more than an hour.
Centralized systems are more vulnerable to silly mistakes!
This morning I heard that apparently some overworked admin at Google had by mistake put a single line holding a dash "/" into a file containing URLs of reported malware sites, thus turning on malware warnings for all search results. This problem lasted for more than an hour.Centralized systems are more vulnerable to silly mistakes!
Friday, January 16, 2009
Self-Checkin The Way It Should Be
I take flights regularly, mainly between Zurich and UAE countries. As a frequent flyer I'm more than happy about any system which streamlines the check-in process, but I got disappointed several times by the "Self-Checkin" stations offered by Unique Airport in Zurich, Doha Airport (Qatar), as well as in Terminal 2 of Dubai International Airport.
Problem 1: Those "first generation" self-checkin systems do not offer any provisions for self-checkin of your luggage. So at first I was happy to hear that I can simply take my suitcase to the "quick baggage drop". But geez, 4 out of 5 times I end up spending more time there than in the waiting queue at the regular checkin. This again happened to me in Doha last night. I did an online checkin at the hotel, printed my boarding pass, proceeded to the Qatar Airways "Quick Baggage Drop" - happy to see a very short waiting queue. But then I got stuck there for more than 20 minutes, even though there were just two more passengers in front of me in the queue. First of all there are always far too few "Quick Baggage Drop" counters. Typically just ONE. So if there is any complication with a passenger (and that seems to happen way more often at the quick baggage drop than at the regular checkin counters), you are stuck! Dear Qatar Airways and dear SWISS airways: please rename your counters to "Slow Baggage Drop". So at least we know what to expect.
Problem 2: Technical issues ranging from "Your e-ticket number is not recognized", scanners not working, to "sorry, your boarding pass could not be printed". Probably due to immature systems pushed on us travelers without adequate testing.
In summary, self-checkin is usually just a waste of time. Better do the regular checkin. And if ground staff tries to convince you to move from the regular checkin queue to the "self checkin" machines (happened to me in Zurich recently), you should refuse and ask them to fix their problems and to stop wasting your time.
The Way It Should Be:
However, there is a happy end (or almost) to this story. Welcome to the brand new Emirates Terminal in Dubai. What an architectural master piece! The self-checkin stations there allow you to checkin your baggage all by yourself. This fully solves Problem#1.
I tried that immediately after the terminal opened and I completed my checkin after a few minutes. As you can see there is a luggage belt in front of you. The belt will move the luggage away from you to prevent cheating, measure its weight, and then move it back to you so you can attach the baggage sticker. The screen in front of you guides you through the checkin procedure and provides adequate help (for me at least).
Unfortunately, the second time I was using this "second generation" self-checkin (as I call it), all of the luggage belts were out of order, which brings us back to problem#2 ...
Also, I wonder how less tech savvy passengers cope with those fancy self-checking systems, elderly people in particular. I heard that some airlines in the US only offer self-checkin, and to save cost they are not providing any personnell which can assist you in the self-checkin if you require a human "interpreter" for interacting with the machines.
Problem 1: Those "first generation" self-checkin systems do not offer any provisions for self-checkin of your luggage. So at first I was happy to hear that I can simply take my suitcase to the "quick baggage drop". But geez, 4 out of 5 times I end up spending more time there than in the waiting queue at the regular checkin. This again happened to me in Doha last night. I did an online checkin at the hotel, printed my boarding pass, proceeded to the Qatar Airways "Quick Baggage Drop" - happy to see a very short waiting queue. But then I got stuck there for more than 20 minutes, even though there were just two more passengers in front of me in the queue. First of all there are always far too few "Quick Baggage Drop" counters. Typically just ONE. So if there is any complication with a passenger (and that seems to happen way more often at the quick baggage drop than at the regular checkin counters), you are stuck! Dear Qatar Airways and dear SWISS airways: please rename your counters to "Slow Baggage Drop". So at least we know what to expect.
Problem 2: Technical issues ranging from "Your e-ticket number is not recognized", scanners not working, to "sorry, your boarding pass could not be printed". Probably due to immature systems pushed on us travelers without adequate testing.
In summary, self-checkin is usually just a waste of time. Better do the regular checkin. And if ground staff tries to convince you to move from the regular checkin queue to the "self checkin" machines (happened to me in Zurich recently), you should refuse and ask them to fix their problems and to stop wasting your time.
The Way It Should Be:
However, there is a happy end (or almost) to this story. Welcome to the brand new Emirates Terminal in Dubai. What an architectural master piece! The self-checkin stations there allow you to checkin your baggage all by yourself. This fully solves Problem#1.
I tried that immediately after the terminal opened and I completed my checkin after a few minutes. As you can see there is a luggage belt in front of you. The belt will move the luggage away from you to prevent cheating, measure its weight, and then move it back to you so you can attach the baggage sticker. The screen in front of you guides you through the checkin procedure and provides adequate help (for me at least).Unfortunately, the second time I was using this "second generation" self-checkin (as I call it), all of the luggage belts were out of order, which brings us back to problem#2 ...
Also, I wonder how less tech savvy passengers cope with those fancy self-checking systems, elderly people in particular. I heard that some airlines in the US only offer self-checkin, and to save cost they are not providing any personnell which can assist you in the self-checkin if you require a human "interpreter" for interacting with the machines.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Windows-7 Beta 1 Is Here
Windows-7 beta 1 became available today. I was able to download it rather swiftly by help of the Akamai download manager. I installed it under Virtual PC and I had a look at the new features such as the desktop Gadgets. (Which Mac OS has had for a long time, I know :-)
Installation and setup was swift and painless, overall I'm getting a good impression but I only scratched the surface.
In case you wonder, I'm not a Microsoft fan but I'm not religious about operating systems either. I started as a Unix hacker in the early nineties, but during the past years I have been using Windows (NT, 2000, then XP) on my desktop, with Cygwin tools on top. On my servers I have Linux installed. It has not been worth for me to put Linux on my laptop (yet?), mainly due to mobile application development tools I require, and which are available only on Windows.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Windows-7 Beta
Since Vista is such an ill-engineered product and a resource hog, I decided to stick to XP when I bought a new laptop recently. Even though I'm a fan of Jerry Seinfeld I will certainly never switch to Vista. In the future I might rather switch to a Linux distro (Ubuntu maybe) or to Mac OS X, who knows. I'm curious about Windows-7 and so I tried a pre-beta build which I got as an ISO image from somewhere.
The first impression is quite encouraging, especially the memory consumption which is only around 300MB! Looks nice and sleek, probably built upon the XP code base and not upon Vista.
Yesterday I heard that an official beta will become available soon here
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/
When I visited the page yesterday, it said that the download link would be enabled "during the afternoon" of Jan 9. But today the page all of a sudden says:
"Thanks for your interest in the Windows 7 Beta. The volume has been phenomenal—we're in the process of adding more servers to handle the demand. We're sorry for the delay and we'll re-post the Beta as soon as we can ensure a quality download experience."
Well, for the ultimate download experience one can always try a bittorrent search ;-)
The first impression is quite encouraging, especially the memory consumption which is only around 300MB! Looks nice and sleek, probably built upon the XP code base and not upon Vista.
Yesterday I heard that an official beta will become available soon here
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/
When I visited the page yesterday, it said that the download link would be enabled "during the afternoon" of Jan 9. But today the page all of a sudden says:
"Thanks for your interest in the Windows 7 Beta. The volume has been phenomenal—we're in the process of adding more servers to handle the demand. We're sorry for the delay and we'll re-post the Beta as soon as we can ensure a quality download experience."
Well, for the ultimate download experience one can always try a bittorrent search ;-)
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