Thunderbird is crashing 1 - 2x a day now against http://1and1.com imap servers.
It never saves Sent items correctly with imap, and frequently mixes up saving Drafts into the Sent items folder. Either way, it’s pathetic that this crashes the whole program, and loses my in progress compositions. ie. Loses the user’s data!
Might have to test Outlook again, and see if it still crashes all day on imap servers.
I am in charge of 4 different installations of EMC Retrospect 7.5 in Windows Domains and Workgroups.
Not a single one of them works as advertised, even after days on days with tech support.
In case you don’t know, Retrospect is backup and disaster recovery software. Guess what it doesn’t do half the time? Backup data.
Really, it’s the Proactive feature that is completely bug ridden. But everything we wanted it for was based on that feature working as advertised.
Anyway, if you need that feature, use a different vendor. Please, please don’t use EMC Retrospect! Your data will NOT be backed up correctly and your clients will have your head on a stick when disaster strikes.
Any alternative recommendations are welcome.
Microsoft Outlook Signatures. How could they screw up something so simple?
By trying to force Microsoft ’standards’ on users. You can’t use valid HTML in the signatures. You can only use bastardized MS Word HTML. Plus, even simple things like fonts and line spacing are impossible to set/unset in many circumstances. To top it off, MS Word 2003 isn’t truly compatible with it either. The line spacing fiasco immediately comes to mind.
In contrast, Mozilla Thunderbird accepts standards based HTML, and it just plain works.
I understand Microsoft’s unrelenting decision to make Outlook break with all standard linux IMAP email servers because that would cut into their Exchange Server cash cow. But doing the same trick with email signatures? Grow up.
What moron put this together? Complete bitch to swap a hard drive out, and for no good reason.
So, Vanguard locks me out of my money the other night. I didn’t know this because they didn’t tell me through the website or email or phone call or text message. Instead, they generated a letter that would reach me within 14 days to tell me that my account was locked. Why was it locked? I mistyped my password 3 times.
Did they tell me there is a 3 try limit? No.
Did they tell me that I had exceeded the limit? No.
Why?
After waiting for business hours to begin, I called them. They told me that they don’t won’t a hacker to know that there is a 3 try limit on the account. That’s why they won’t contact me by any other means than a written snail mail letter when my account is locked out.
Awesome. Best security job I’ve ever seen. Bullet proof. Especially since everyone on the Internet can now read Vanguard’s security policy on this blog. There you go, Vanguard. Boom. I just blew up your clever, clever security model.
Hiding information as a means of security works so damn well. Vanguard must have hired Microsoft’s Security advisor.
Crackers dissuaded? No.
Customers pissed off that they lost control of their account? Yes.
Awesome.
So, I guess anyone could write a script that would start locking all of Vanguard’s customers out of their site. 3 tries and done. Move on to the next one. It would be a Denial of Service on all their customers. The great thing is, not one customer would know what had happened. They would go to their account, put in the correct password, and be blocked on the first attempt. Of course, the website would not tell them why the password was no good. Then, they would get angry, and with good reason. Now multiply that by 100,000 customers. hmmm, just a thought.
Now, I just need to generate some more traffic to this blog.
Awesome. It’s 12 noon Pacific. Cingular has locked me out of my account online for maintanence. (not incorrect password attempts.)
I don’t use the web account much. Almost every single time, either the entire account is unaccessible or some of the functionality is down.
The Microsoft SMB protocol is evil because it cannot operate over a WAN connection for shit. The design cripples itself in this under this condition. So, while ftp and http traffic are flying, smb forces many applications to essentially fail over highspeed WAN connections, like a T1 VPN between two offices.
SMB v2 is due out in Windows Vista. I hear the finally fixed the protocol to work over WAN’s….after 8+ years knowing about the bugs of the first version. Awesome. Maybe they’ll fix webdav in Vista too…right.
You can’t reorganize your directory structure once you get started. There’s no ‘MOVE’ concept in cvs. You have to copy it by hand to the new directory, Add it and commit it to cvs, then remove and commit from the previous directory.
OK, pain in the ass, but no so bad you say? Well, what happened to my 3 months of revision history on those files? Gone. wiped out. The moved files start over at vesion 1.0.
So, CVS deters developers from refactoring. (in this case, the directory structure.) That’s a cardinal sin in my book. I will learn how to setup subversion from now on.
Subversion, hell yes! But, I’ll have to take the entrenched CS world along with me kicking and screaming.
Some companies just cannot grasp the concepts behind good usability. Maybe they’re afraid to spend any money on it. It sucks worst when they have a product or service that I want to use, but I keep getting slammed by their lousy websites.
I’ll just keep adding to this list of most frustrating websites I deal with:
Lenovo.com -
Good: Thinkpads. Hands down the best consumer laptops made today.
Bad: Every time I tried to custom configure one of these, the website blocked most available options. I call in, wait on hold, get an operator, and they say, “Why does everbody say that they can’t find feature X? Here’s how to click through the navigation to get to the fully customizable part of the site….” OK, obviously, it’s a very common problem with the site. I explain to him that their site’s problem is because it copies Dell’s site partially, and then everybody who buys laptops has been to Dell’s site. We know how Dell’s site works, and we expect that functionality as a baseline. I then ask him how I can leave feedback about the site, and he says they don’t have a way to accept feedback. Simply Awesome! Way to go Chinese Management! (or it could be some IBMer with his head up his arse.) Customers love to feel that no one is listening to them!
Let’s keep busting on Lenovo. Ever see a site since 1998 that was missing the ‘Contact Us’ section? Well, now you can go to Lenovo.com and marvel at their ineptitude.
And lastly, I just clicked off their homepage add for the new T60 line with Duo Core Centrino’s. (Those things are brand new, and the darlings of hardware reviewers.) So, I’m taken to a page for ordering them. It says, ‘Call for availability’. Now, that pisses me off for any company to do that. It means they have a lousy warehouse management system in place, and probably a lot of other mismanagaged aspects to their system. I mean, a guy in a callcenter is going to have access to a notebook’s availablity, but the website’s backend can’t access that same information? Right, it means either incompetence or a marketing ploy. Well, in this case, it’s a marketing ploy. After 20 minutes on hold (not exagerating), I get a rep. I ask about the T60’s off the websites, and he responds, “I can’t belive they did that to us. That line won’t be available to purchase until April, 2006 at the earliest.” There you go. Marketing ploy. and a mighty weak one at that.
So, I declare Lenovo’s management change from IBM to be a failure from a small business customer point of view. Oh, and the usability still sucks.
Flickr.com -
Good: Unlimited full size photo uploads and downloads for $25/ year. Nobody else offers that.
Bad: Most difficult site ever conceived for SHARING those unlimited photos. No excuse, the basics have been refined for 5 years by Ofoto, webshots and snapfish. Just copy it morons!
Cingular is not a ‘nice’ company. I don’t like them anymore.
How to leave them?
How to have one phone number/contact ID forever?
skype. (in/out/forwarding/voicemail)
pocketpc w/ wifi and bluetooth and/or laptop w/ wifi and bluetooth
bluetooth headset.
prepaid cell phones.