WTF is Browser Highlighter?!

I just turned on my computer and a new icon in systray drew my attention. Browser Highlighter, whatever that is, also appeared next to my search input in Firefox. As there was some easy way how to tell them (probably eBay) what I think of them, I did it on the home page of this software:

I’m extremely UNsatisfied to see this unexpected piece of SW on my computer after restart (in systray). I’m no user who just clicks OK on everything and I’m pretty sure this thingy appeared on my computer without any question (maybe Skype? I don’t know). While I had quite neutral position towards eBay until now, it changed instantly. I don’t know who is the sinner application – but you had to want to use this way how to come to users. That makes you/eBay/whatever one of those ugly companies that smuggle annoying widgets on one’s computer. Good work to let me spend some time just to uninstall it and completely dislike you on the way.

Best regards

Richard Richter

Now I feel better. Some people report that Skype installed it silently – I don’t know. Maybe I actually hit OK on some dialog I confirm often – maybe it was in Firefox and their extension list after update. That would make Firefox another software I should stop trust. (Not that it’s good to trust any software – said a software developer. :-) ) But one thing is clear – I did nothing intentional to add it there – and that’s the only proper way how to get customers fairly.

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Stupid password policy on forums

It happens here and there that I want to register somewhere and I just give up after I find out their password policy. Thing is, I use generally 8 characters long password that are not easy to guess. I used much simpler passwords for web sites, but I reconsidered later. But on IBM’s dev-site (I don’t even want to search for URL :-) ) I had to include number and omit some punctuation mark or even include some other. When something forces me to use number… OK, but why the hell they then tell me not to use different character? So it’s demanding and limiting at the same time. And no, I don’t use characters beyond 7bit ASCII as it is not usable in many cases.

Whatever… said I and I simply didn’t register on that site. It was too… IBMish anyway. ;-) I could find most of the downloads I needed elsewhere or – on one occasion – a friend of mine with existing account downloaded it for me. Where I didn’t give up yet I was more than disappointed with their policy it was community site for JBoss Seam. When you register or reset password there you have to enter 10 characters which is NOT indicated anywhere. When you enter password like “AtIny,yg.” (without quotes) it will tell you that your password is easy! It doesn’t tell you that the password is short. I reported this on their forums more than a year ago. Also if you’re lucky, the CAPTCHA you get to solve is pretty uneasy. On any site CAPTCHA could be easier if it states if casing is important, if there may be numbers, etc. When you see 5 random characters often in many font shapes it is pretty unclear if something is lowercase “g” or 9 (because there is no baseline in many cases).

But to stay on passwords and keep this article short. I have now very primitive password on JBoss Seam, yet when I return there once in a year I mostly have to reset it. Today I hoped they reconsidered – but no. My complex password was easy. But “0123456789″ is cool. Congratulations. As a final rant towards the page: They use their own Seam based forums, but there is no clear way how to search for two words so that results always contain both of them. Searching for “gwt upload” was pretty much the same like searching for “gwt” only. But maybe… maybe I’ll get at least direct answer for my question, which would mean that dealing with stupid password policies may be worth from time to time.

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RadioLAN a “akcia” zriadenie zadarmo

Už sa blíži čas, kedy skoncujem s RadioLANom, ktorým som nahradil SWAN s tým, že “tučnejšia” anténa (1Mbit len pre náš byt namiesto 512kbit pre celý vchod) bude lepšia aj za trochu vyššiu cenu (800 Sk, ak nemáte optiku v dome, nezabijete sa). O tom, že tento Internet absolútne nesplnil moje očakávania, čo sa týka hrania, a ak som si chcel niečo stiahnúť torrentom, bolo to skôr utrpenie ako funkčné – o tom som už písal. Medzičasom ich ponuka klesla z 800Sk na 20€, čo je príjemné (ak teda nemáte inú možnosť :-) ) – to sa ale samozrejme mňa netýka, lebo som za 24-mesačnú viazanosť mal montáž zadarmo. Pri 24-krát 200Sk by som ale došiel približne k tomu istému výsledku. S jedinou výnimkou – okamžite po príchode Orange do baráku by som to zrušil. Samozrejme, Internet ide – to, že nespĺňa moje predstavy je jedna vec, to, že cez víkendy a niektoré večery zjavne nestíha asi samotný RadioLAN, je ťažko obhájiteľný dôvod na odstúpenie a 10 tisíc starých slovenských peňazí sa mi platiť naozaj neoplatilo.

Každopádne od 5.2.2008 sú dva roky za rohom, a keďže som čítal aj strašidelné príbehy o automatickom predĺžení zmluvy o dobu viazanosti od iných bratislavských poskytovateľov, bol čas zaujímať sa o výpoveď. Povedal som si… k 5.2. to nepôjde, ale tak k 28.2.2010 by sa to malo dať načasovať, prinajhoršom koniec marca, to prežijem. Na moju otázku, či to je OK, mi prišla dosť prekvapivá odpoveď. Ono vlastne 24 mesiacov je v skutočnosti vyše 26 mesiacov – lebo…

Počas doby akcie (áno, viazanosť za montáž je akcia, viď ponuka) nesmie klient podať výpoveď (áno, ani takú, ktorá by celý vzťah ukončila po práve 24 mesiacoch) – najskôr je možné podať výpoveď až v mesiaci po tom mesiaci, ktorým končí viazanosť. V mojom prípade je to samozrejme nie február (ani po 5.2.), ale až marec. Potom už je jedno, či výpoveď dostanú 1. marca alebo 31. marca, nakoľko bude plynúť do konca nasledujúceho kalendárneho mesiaca. Úžasné. Nechápem, prečo sú vo všeobecných podmienkach slušných firiem takéto body, ale jasne… už keď klienta máme, prečo ho neošklbať aj o ďalšie dva mesiace. V tomto prípade predsa dobre vieme, že už sa k nám nevráti. A tým, čo budú u nás dlhšie, tým to nevadí. Nemám ilúzie, že to je nejaká špecialita RadioLANu, asi to bude bežná prax všetkých poskytovateľov a operátorov. Ale prečo sa hovorí o 24 mesačnej viazanosti, keď sa to pod 26 mesiacov vlastne nedá stihnúť – to naozaj nechápem.

Každopádne – oplatí sa viackrát sa informovať, či sa do vašej lokality nechystá v blízkej dobe niečo rozumné (optika od ľubovoľného poskytovateľa), skôr ako sa pustíte do antény. Lebo anténa v Bratislave, nechcem generalizovať, cez to sa zatiaľ podľa mojich skúseností nedá poriadne hrať ani MMORPG (nemálokrát sme zomreli v dugeone len pre lag, pričom ostatní v skupine mali pripojenie v pohode), nieto ešte FPS, ktoré som zabalil krátko po prvých skúsenostiach. Úprimne ľutujem tých, čo potrebujú antény. Je to drahé, relatívne pomalé, kvalita je veľmi diskutabilná – a ak máte nejaké problémy, tak zväčša sa pravidelne opakujú. Pravda, v poslednom čase sa technici RadioLANu ozvali často rýchlejšie ako bola ich povinnosť, ale zase za 800Sk mesačne by som celý víkendový deň bez internetu ostať naozaj nechcel.

A nie, ani vyššia cena nehovorí o kvalite nič, pokiaľ sa pohybujeme v cenníkoch pre normálne domácnosti. Takže ešte osem mesiacov…

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Turn your newsletters into spam!

You have a company and you send newsletters to your customers, subsribers, whatever? I offer you easy way how to turn them into spam! Oh… you don’t want that!

It has been some time I’ve heard about Acclaim and their free-to-play MMORPG 9Dragons. I tried it, I didn’t like it so much so I quite playing the game. Long time before PWI – more than a year, maybe even two. I never received any emails from them – except maybe some registration that is deleted already – as I clean up my mails here and there.

I don’t mind, I was surprised (“what the hell is that?”) but then I recalled about the game and I consider it OK. I scrolled down… “unsubscribe, unsubs… there is no unsubscribe!” I don’t know what happens if you report the mail as a spam and you’re alone – it’s probably no big deal. I don’t know what happens when many people on Gmail do that. I guess that at least on Gmail future recipients wouldn’t see that mail in their Inboxes at all. Is that what you want?

I deleted it for now, next time forgotten service with their newsletter without unsubscribe option goes to Spam.

BTW: Please… don’t make me login (like some other service wanted me to) just to confirm that process. It means I have to request forgotten password first!

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How I did NOT buy Corel VideoStudio

While my Steam client is turned on most of the time, I have also Impulse client that is mostly turned off. Last time I need is to have billions of game/SW delivery clients running at the same time. I run Impulse only when I play Sins Of a Solar Empire. I check up on weekend deals on both stores – for instance http://store.steampowered.com/ offers 66% off of all Half-Life titles this weekend! Too bad I have them already. ;-) Back to Impulse. I’m still in search for video editing software. My needs are simple and I currently evaluate Sony Vegas 9.1, but the time is running out. What I don’t like is that Sony is somewhat slow on my computer – I don’t know why. Otherwise I can do what I want with it, so far so good. I’m just not sure yet.

Impulse came with Corel products on sale – one of them Ulead Video Studio 11.5 Plus for 42,24€. “Hm, I never heard of this one.” So I googled reviews, they were generally positive although users reported crashes – now what do you do? I downloaded the demo to find out by myself. What I don’t like is when I can’t try exactly what I want – demo was Corel VideoStudio Pro X2 (version 12). Now how do I know what I get in 11.5 PLUS? There is some comparison chart on Corel’s site – during this process I found out that Corel itself offers the sale until August 30th – and that the Pro X2 version is available for $60. That is still very good price, let’s just check out if I can order it – you never know if they are willing to deliver it (even online only) to your country. This screen changed my decision in seconds:

Instantly I recalled my experience with EA Store. It has been two years I’ve registered on Steam and bought Orange Box and I still can imagine I want to install some part of it – why to keep it on disk all the time? Or install it on another computer. I didn’t even check what’s the default time frame for download in case of Corel – EA offered half-a-year. That’s ridiculous. I’m going to delete the downloaded demo of this video software right away and I say it loud and clear:

You know what, Corel? Fuck off… I’m finished with you for years at least. Doesn’t matter that I haven’t even started.

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