Sysrc’s tech blog

www.mcti.ro

Last year the National Agency for Communication Reglementation in Romania had a bidding to find a specialized company to rebuild it’s website…In the request notebook they wanted a lot of things pretty much every web module you could possible think of (many of them useless for their activity)…and also they wanted that the bidder would give up the source code and not use open source software…

It was obvious for some people in the business that the so called public bidding had a winner prior to it being announced … the winner implemented the awesome website using DOTNETNUKE…

Today is the third day since the Ministry for Communication and IT doesn’t have a website at all…a HUGE ministry with hundreds employees with IT background (I suppose that is why it’s called …for communication and IT) has NO IDEA or CAN’T repair it’s website!!! MY GOD…

Doesn’t NULL COUNTRY sounds about right? I think Yahoo has heard of us…

UPDATE: It seems the ministry changed it’s name and domain name also…the page was moved at http://www.mcsi.ro/ without any announcement … good job !

Windows Mobile Tip - storage card 2

If you have a Windows Mobile 6 device, you use it with a storage card for a period of time and for some reason (I don’t know - your HTC DUAL TOUCH screen stops working and you don’t want the service guys to copy the content of your card) you start it without a storage card then reinsert the initial card, all the programs installed on that card will stop working ( and NO the card is not broken) because Windows Mobile already has a Storage Card folder and has created a Storage Card 2 folder although it’s the same card…

So the solution is to enter the windows explorer and rename the Storage card folder into Storage card something then do a reboot of the device…

Wasn’t it smarter if they have created a checksum on the card, so when you would insert cards the link between installed programs and card would be maintained trough that checksum?

Why is debugging so important…

Debugging, next to application design is probabile the most important thing in the development process.

If you’re writing code, you shoud really know all the debugging tools available for the environment you’re working on and also best practices on how to aproach known bugs.

One of the things most programmers are really bad at is testing their code…The quantity of poorly tested code or untested code tends to increase where development teams are larger, if you tell a programmer that a testing team will be responsabile of testing the code, the initial debugging process drops to 0, and the code is often send almost untested to the testing team.

Why is that? Probably because programmers are like parents “their child is the best and the brightest”… Also because programmers like to write code not to browse through existing one…”New code is the only code”

When you are debugging try to think the code you’re testing will run the robot bellow.

NOTE TO SELF

BE QUIET IN THE DATACENTER - SERVER AT WORK!

Google translation…

http://translate.google.com/translate_t#ro%7cen%7cRomania%20este%20in%20Europa%0A

LATER EDIT: the above link was “corrected”..honest mistake Romania sounds like Australia…

MORE HONEST MISTAKES  (Romanians are stupid works..but when it comes to smartness…well not the case - Romanians is replaced with The Romans :D). It seems we have an angry connational working at Google translate :

NO COMMENT.

Upgrading HP server (the strong arm approach)

OK, how can you fit four drive cages if your server chasiss can only fit three and one small floppy?

We wanted to upgrade an old HP Proliant server with four new SATA harddisk … we originally thought that if we remove the floppy all four will fit.

That didn’t happen because the floppy was much smaller. The chasiss designer had made it very clear that he only allowed three drive bays because the server had three metal dividers that ensured that the user would only fit three drives.

We were determined not to give in and armed with a tool we tweaked the server… As we all know, in a conflict the one who is smarter always gives in… the three metal dividers gave in to brute force…

Before & after:

Google, accounting and adwords payments

I’m one of the millions of Google advertisers who make monthly payments to the search giant for our ads to appear under searches or the adsense system in partner Google sites…

 When I first discovered the adwords system, the simple interface, the easiness you could start to advertise, amazed me…

I was extremely happy that they gave me the possibility in paying in my currency of choice…After the first payment they generated an Invoice for me, it was written in my native language and it had all the elements legally required in a country 10.000 miles away from Google headquarters.

But, although the adword software was impeccable, human bureaucracy intervened…

As I was saying my adwords account was in my country’s currency - RON. So when I wanted to make a payment I would get into my account and ordered that my credit card be charged with let’s say 1000 RON (about 400 USD) … they were taking the money and the software would generate an Invoice for 1000 RON. But in the background google POS terminals were charging my credit card with 400 USD not 1000 RON…so my bank would transform the 400 USD in RON using the BUY exchange rate…that means the 400 USD would no longer be 1000 RON but 1020 or 1050 … depending on the bank’s exchange rate…

So with each payment I made I would  have less money on the invoice that I was actually paying…Because programmers don’t really know accounting they didn’t care what currency they were displaying in the invoice generating software as long as they had a parity between currencies it seemed ok to display RON but charge USD…WRONG! You should display only what you charge. If you don’t have an account in a specific currency you should NEVER EVER generate invoices in that currency because you’ll only confuse the hell out of the poor bastards in accounting…

I agree

Since I earn a living developing and selling software I had to attach license agreements to all of the applications…

Of course, when you’re conceiving a software license/user agreement you, as a software producer have to take every precaution that you are as protected by the law as “legally” possible. This is much more important when you deliver a free service, the user has pretty much one right: to use your software on your terms…this doesn’t sound really nice but if the user gets a free service you don’t want to risk anything.

So, in knowing what software companies think in general about license agreements I always try to read the whole 25 screens of legal terms in every software I install. If I don’t like something I don’t install the software.

I was installing Google Chrome and reading the user license and there were two things that caught my attention and if I wasn’t dying to see what the browser looks like I wouldn’t have gone through with the installation.

1.Automatic updates:

“The software which you use may automatically download and install updates from time to time from Google. These updates are designed to improve, enhance and further develop the services and may take the form of bug fixes, enhanced functions, new software modules and completely new versions. You agree to receive such updates (and permit Google to deliver these to you) as part of your use of the services.”

2. Some bizarre copyright release from me the user to Google Inc.

“By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services and may be revoked for certain services as defined in the additional terms of those services.”

I think that was a paragraph left from other online apps because if I use the browser to say connect to a private app and upload things it I hope Google doesn’t have the perpetual, worldwide blah blah right to do whatever it wants with my private files…

Yet another coding blog…

To quote a friend: “Look mom, NO HANDS! NO HANDS!”

I’m a blog reader for several years now … I read coding blogs, funny blogs along with the usual news RSSs - but I never (until now) developed the urge of actual writing one…

I don’t have time to write suff but I do save lots of interesting links about coding, design, management and general news…so I decided to organize everything in my own blog so that I can find them quickly…Therefore I’m not expecting readers but for those who actually get here I hope the info helps…

Why am I writing in English? Well, although it’s not my native tongue I’m lazy enough to avoid translating things…so because English is the universal programming language it will be easier for me. From time to time I’ll try to write in Romanian also in another category…