A nice post from MacRumors points out that Samsung continues to poke fun at Apple users, who stand in line to get the a newly launched product.

Now, as a dutch person, I am blissfully oblivious to the Super Bowl, but one thing I do know is:

Super Bowl ads do not come cheap

So, Samsung thinks people are wrong for being dedicated to a certain brand other then theirs (Apple, no surprises so far). And wants to use advertising to ‘convert’ such people to purchasing the ‘right’ choice. (their product). Nothing shocking so far.

So, they have spent millions ( from what I’ve learned, Super Bowl Ads really do not come cheap) on an ad, in which they alienate their prospective customers, by – basically – calling them idiots. Now, I am not one to complain when a big corporation pisses away it’s money. But seriously. Did you even pay attention in marketing school? Never, ever, ever, piss of people you want as your customer.

For people who buy Apple stuff, your products are probably just not interesting enough. From my own personal experience with Samsung: apple hardware is a hell of a lot better quality. If I spend money, I don’t mind spending more money, if I get a better product. Apple delivers. Every damn time.

Not that I would personally stand in line for it.

Apple, general

I, like many others, like the iPad. I don’t own one, and never have, because as much as I love my iPhone, I don’t like one simple thing:

- it’s got no separation for users

Separation for users, while a common thing on computers, including OS X, is very uncommon on phones and tablets. On phones like the iPhone this is entirely justifiable because phones in general have only one intended user. It’s a PIM, or personal information device. Computers are very much the opposite, where more then one users frequently accesses the same computer both in a work or a home setting.

Enter the tablet. The tablet seems to fit right between those two groups, but one thing is for sure: a tablet is often shared amongst people in a household.

Now comes the issue of user separation: my girlfriend and I both have email accounts, Facebook and twitter accounts, etc, that we would like to access on a tablet we would share. We also both have iPhone’s and Mac’s. But neither of us has any interest or business in the other’s email or Facebook, and the mentioned apps are not build to support more then one user for the most part, anyway.

Now, one might argue that we could just choose not to use email, Facebook, twitter, and what not, on the tablet, and this is possible. However, how much sense does it make to purchase a device for about € 499, and then be utterly limited in it’s use? And no, buying two would simply be wasteful.

So, one seemingly innocent feature, would probably open up a whole new piece of the market. I know it would for us. I imagine tablet manufacturers would much rather sell everyone in the household his or her own tablet. But in cases like this it’s not about making the most money, but just doing what’s right. You’re probably not going to loose sales over it. Some households will still buy more then one tablet, simply because the demand is high enough to justify such a purchase.

Apple, general Apple, iOS, iPad

This website is now IPv6 compatible!

I encourage everyone to join in.

general, networking, projects IPv6

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int getRandomNumber()
{
    return 4; // chosen by fair dice roll. guaranteed to be random.
}

for people who don’t understand what this means: this is how Sony’s PS3 got hacked.

general sony, stupidity

I can finally, after being long overdue, add the UK, and more specifically: Scotland to my list of countries visited.

Last month, Kirsteen and I travelled to Glasgow on a family and friends visiting trip.

I absolutely loved it. Though we did find the hotel lacking. Not worth what they charge. Though the breakfast at the Park Inn ( previously: Langs ) was very nice indeed.

I look forward to going back to Glasgow soon.

family, general glasgow, scotland, travel

When you see the backup of a (non localhost) client failing with the message:

Fatal error: Failed to authenticate Storage daemon

Keep in mind that bacula uses tcpwrappers, though probably not in the way you expect it.

instead of doing:

bacula-sd : 111.222.333.444

do:

$name-sd : 111.222.333.444

where $name is the name you specified in the bacula-sd.conf

Most services that use tcpwrappers (tcpd) use the name of the service (bacula-sd in this case), but bacula has a cute approach to it that listens only to the name you defined for the service. As far as I can tell this applies only to bacula-sd, and not bacula-dir or bacula-fd.

So, say you would have the following config in bacula-sd.conf:

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Storage {                             # definition of myself
  Name = foo.bar-sd
  SDPort = 9103                  # Director's port
  WorkingDirectory = "/var/lib/bacula"
  Pid Directory = "/var/run/bacula"
  Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 20
}

then your /etc/hosts.allow would read:

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foo.bar-sd : 111.222.333.444

Please note that you will still need to take care of your passwords on both ends, any mismatches there will results in no backups being made. Be sure to test your backups regularly.

general bacula, open source

Normally I don’t answer ‘blocked’ phone numbers on my cellphone, but since I’m expecting a call from a company I got tempted today. It was (off course) some call center, who immediately asked:

“I’m sorry to bother you, but do you by any chance have children under the age of 12?”

my (logical) answer was:

“I fail to see how that is any of your business”

Now, comes the interesting part about the whole affair: my cellphone number is not listed anywhere. That’s right, nowhere. Sure, I’ve given it to some companies who I do business with, and off course all my friends and relatives.  So, how exactly did some random call center get it’s hands on my number? Obviously, the only way they could have gotten it is because one of the mentioned companies has sold out on it’s customers, and there you have it. Could be the telco, could be another company. I doubt we’ll ever find out exactly who.

On the plus side,  here in The Netherlands we have something called (translated) “don’t call me“. It’s an online database, and numbers registered in it can not be called by marketers. ( That is law, by the way ).  It has worked fabulously for my home phone number , which has been listed there since day one. I just forgot to list my cell in there too,  since I’ve never been called by marketers on that one. It’s listed now.

I do feel there should be a law prohibiting companies selling any of their customer information to a third party. Privacy and such. Specially when it comes to e-mail addresses and phone numbers.

general life, personal, privacy, spam

Someone on IRC pointed me to this wonderful bug in Spamassassin, it’s easy to quickfix, but the fix itself will become a bug in 10 years, in any case, until they push an update that correctly fixes this:

##{ FH_DATE_PAST_20XX
header   FH_DATE_PAST_20XX      Date =~ /20[1-9][0-9]/ [if-unset: 2006]
describe FH_DATE_PAST_20XX      The date is grossly in the future.

( meaning emails sent in 2010  will also trigger the scoring )

should be changed into:

##{ FH_DATE_PAST_20XX
header   FH_DATE_PAST_20XX      Date =~ /20[2-9][0-9]/ [if-unset: 2006]
describe FH_DATE_PAST_20XX      The date is grossly in the future.

Making it not a problem until we reach 2020

On my ubuntu box the rule is found in:

/usr/share/spamassassin/72_active.cf

Special thanks to Habbie for making me aware of the problem on IRC!

oh and by the way:

Happy New Year!

general, work open source, spam

I had a wonderful Christmas this year

On the 24th, my girlfriend Kirsteen flew in from Vienna, where she lives, and she stayed until the 27th. We did the whole exchange of gifts on Christmas-eve, a first for me – it’s more a British tradition I think, and since she’s Scottish … I think I’m converted She liked what I got her, and I loved what she got me.

Otherwise, we did nothing exceptional for x-mas, the usual: stuff yourself with food and watch a ton of movies (I has Blu-Ray).  She brought the latest Star Trek movie on DVD (great!), which she got from her friend Amber for x-mas.

Unfortunately, my daughter could not join the party, but that’s life for you. I still have some gifts for her, so she’ll get them later.

New years will involve working for me, one of the tragedies of life as a computer geek.  But in January I will see both my girls again, and I ‘m looking forward to that a lot.  A trip to Kirsteen in Vienna (and a trip to Bratislava together from there) is in the works. And I’m sure we’ll enjoy that little break very much.

January will also (hopefully) finally bring the delivery of my new bike (picture on the right). I’ve been biking to work since I started my new job at Mirabeau Hoorn in November, it’s a mere 15 minute trip and the first time I’ve worked so close to home that I can bike there. I love it every day (and hey, it’s healthy too!).

family, general life, personal

Venezuela president Chavez used the climate summit for his own political agenda, in a speech where he claims Venezuelan rights to the Dutch Antilles, an island group 40 miles north of Venezuela.

These islands have been under Dutch control since the 17th century. Long before attempts of Venezuela to become itself independent.

It seems Chavez is quite fearful of an American invasion, since he also claims that US secret agents, spy planes and warships are staging at the Antilles. Paranoia is rarely a good trait in a head of state.

One would hope Chavez thinks twice about actually claiming those Islands, specially since his tone suggests military action to claim them and secure the islands from US presence. The Dutch military might be small, but it is not weak, and this county is a NATO member. Any attack on Dutch territory is grounds for full NATO response. Venezuela is by no means a weak country, nor poor, but anyone will doubt it’s ability to withstand such a reaction.

However, I think Chavez knows this, the man is not stupid, and that makes this just another feeble attempt to get attention. He is nervous about his neighbor Colombia allowing more US troops in, though he fails to see the why behind it.

So, he thinks everything within 200 nautical miles of the Venezuela northern coast is Venezuela territory? That’s nice, I think international law decrees otherwise.

general chavez, politics, venezuela