Today when my girlfriend tried to log in to one of her favourite sites to download some music she paid for, her login credentials didn’t work. When she wrote an email to the support team (after automatic retrieval of the login credentials and checking them for correctness of course), she received the following answer:

Hey Silvia, many systems cannot recognize symbols in passwords.  We have updated your profile and removed the symbol from your password  so you should be able to successfully login to your account now. Your new password is [snipped]
[insert company name] Support

What do we learn from this?

1. They want to make us believe “+” is a symbol many systems can’t recognize. Sure. Besides thanks for assuming we’re too stupid to try out special characters (aka “symbols”) in the user name field after several failed log in attempts.
2. They store their customer’s passwords in cleartext.
3. They change user profiles without permission to avoid looking for the real problem.
4. They even try to make it look like a good solution (“you should be able to succesfully login to your account now”).
5. They suck like most tech supports do.

When I read replies like that, I really wonder how people would treat a mechanic who says “I don’t know what the problem with your engine is, but many streets don’t recognize your tires so I’ve changed them. Besides that I changed your ignition lock and made a backup key for myself. All cool, eh?”.

My only hope: those guys obviously are dull boys, and dull boys don’t get chicks. If we’re just a little lucky, the gene pool will sort itself out.

P.S. Yeah, I might be a little p*ssed after spending 13 hours in the office.

Boomtime, Discord 49, 3172 YOLD

Not too long ago, Edward Kenworthy inquired about ’Ruby’s lisp features’ on ruby-talk. Matz’ answer was as follows:

Ruby is a language designed in the following steps:

• take a simple lisp language (like one prior to CL).
• remove macros, s-expression.
• add simple object system (much simpler than CLOS).
• add blocks, inspired by higher order functions.
• add methods found in Smalltalk.
• add functionality found in Perl (in OO way).
  So, Ruby was a Lisp originally, in theory.
  Let’s call it MatzLisp from now on. ;-)
  Is it just me, or does that really sound like “I took a Lisp dialect, removed most of the cool stuff and added some things from other languages”? Don’t get me wrong, I still think Matz has done a really amazing job when he created Ruby, and it still is one of my favourite programming languages. I just find it amazing how Lisp doesn’t have more exposure, when apparently some of the “cool” languages of today are trying hard to incorporate some of its (less powerful) features.
  
  

Further references:
Why Ruby is an acceptable Lisp
‘Ruby aka MatzLisp’ on comp.lang.lisp

Sweetmorn, Discord 48, 3172 YOLD

I’m really interested to get some opinions on this particular topic: is there a conncection between how people perceive their own knowledge of computers and what kind of hardware they buy?

I’m wondering because I’ve just been reading a discussion about the new Intel based notebooks, especially the new Mac Books which will be released in June. With 13,3" it will be the smallest of Apple’s new offerings, and a lot of people have cried loud for a MacBook Pro – ok, the name really sounds stupid – with the same form factor. But will they really feel a difference? Or do they just want them because the “Pro” makes them feel better (no insult intended)? My own hardware almost always has been pretty old, and I have never much felt the need to own something better just because I’m a “power user” (periods of “decadence kills depression” excluded of course ;) ). And what’s a power user anyway?

When my last notebook broke, I ressurected my old desktop machine (an Athlon 650 with 320MB RAM). Although not blazingly fast, I was able to do everything I wanted. My computing needs may be really simple, but given that I was able to read my mails, surf the web and working/coding in several terminal windows while listening to my MP3s or web radio, why should I bother buying new hardware? The same goes for the Mac Mini which will hopefully get delivered next week: why pay a lot more money for a Core Duo, when the Core Solo is already way better than the machine I had before that and which did everything I wanted? With all the money I have already saved by not buying computers I won’t really use to their full potential anyway, I can easily buy complete new systems when I don’t want to upgrade the current ones anymore…

How about you guys out there? Do you buy fancy new hardware because it makes you feel “1337”? Or are you still using your 486 because as a real hacker you know how to squeeze out every percent of performance possible?

Boomtime, Discord 44, 3172 YOLD

I’m burned out. For good. I’m totally done. I’m dragging myself to work, trying to kill time and getting home before I manage to screw something up (again). I’m more cynical and bad-tempered than ever, which I guess is pretty hard for the people around me.

How about the other IT workers out there? Do you feel the same? And do you have any tips on how to get out of this?

Prickle-Prickle, Discord 36, 3172 YOLD

Ok, I often dream really strange dreams. But last night’s was an exceptionally funky one, which was also of the vivid kind which always leaves you pretty confused after waking up… It was set in an end of the world scenario which made the setting of Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” seem like a Disney theme park. There only was a small group of people – including me – left, who knew perfectly well that they were the last human beings on a dying planet. It was interesting how people coped with this knowledge, with emotions like anger, resignation and panic switching as often and rapidly as the sheets in a cheap bordello. But when finally everybody realized that there definitely was no food left on Earth (hey, who said dreams have to be realistic), nobody panicked anymore, but instead showed a strange kind of relief… And the morale of the story? If you’re interested in the movie rights, contact me before I completely forget everything.

Prickle-Prickle, Discord 31, 3172 YOLD

Jennifer Government for real?

Pungenday, Discord 30, 3172 YOLD

I’ve done it. I decided to finally get my first Mac and ordered one of those nifty new Intel Mac Minis. Since it will mainly be used for mailing, surfing the web and other things which don’t need lots of CPU cycles, I’ve decided to go for the Core Solo, which should be more than enough for my needs.

I’m really looking forward to have a new machine to play around with, and I think I’ll have lots of fun installing Gentoo on the Mac Mini (dual boot) and giving Gentoo for MacOS X a try.

Prickle-Prickle, Discord 26, 3172 YOLD

After a pretty long period of not doing any work related to Gentoo (blame my boss) I’ve finally come around to put together the upgrade of the Gentoo/FreeBSD documentation I promised Diego quite some time ago. I’m sure that our nice documentation developers will commit this soon!

Next week will again be rather busy because my girlfriend and me are moving to a new apartment, but after that I hope I’ll be able to regularly contribute to Gentoo again.

Pungenday, Discord 10, 3172 YOLD

Disclaimer: This is a rant. It will be unfair and biased. Live with or go away.

Ok, here we go: I hate the Lucky Couple™! Don’t get me wrong, I’m no frustrated sicko who hates all happy people in his vicinity, at least not most of the time. It’s just that I really can’t stand that particular kind of couple who are so offensively in love that the average Hollywood love story seems like a Homerian tragedy when comared to the uberhappy Lucky Couple™. Really, if you’re in a restaurant and all you are doing is petting on the verge to hard-core pornography, either go home or at least have the decency to go all the way and give the people around you something to see. Actually being happy, kissing and everything else the average couple does is perfectly ok, but I absolutely hate the way the Lucky Couple™ involves the whole room in their private life without realizing that WE DON’T CARE. Really. We don’t.

Prickle-Prickle, Chaos 64, 3172 YOLD.

Saturday, February 18:
teemow and Steffi came from Cologne to Vienna. Spent the night at B72, Chelsea and Elektro Gönner. Nice.

Sunday, February 19:
Had a decent brunch with my girlfriend at Restaurant Leopold. Then had some coffee at the Bluebox with teemow, Steffi and Laki. The “Coheed and Cambrea” concert in the evening got postponed again, so I went to the “Einhorn” with my former flatmate Doris to have some beers…

Tuesday, February 21:
Attended the IT Suppliers Day of one of our customers. Went to Laki’s place with my girlfriend in the evening to have some Caipiroskas with him, teemow and Steffi.

Wednesday, February 22:
Met my co-conspirators (details to follow) berq and colo (who now has a blog too) at the Käuzchen. Got drunk again, but it was definitely worth it… ;)

Friday, February 24:
Had some great lunch – Seafood Soup and Walleye In White Wine Sauce – at Alberto’s with my boss and the WCM guys. I’ll do a nice article series for them starting in June. More info will follow.

Saturday, February 25:
Went to the office for a workshop (around 2,5 hours), which was actually pretty informative and nice. Started reading The Cocka Hola Company and love it.

Sunday, February 26:
Had brunch with Karin and Andi at the Lux, which IMHO offers one of the best breakfast deals in town (all you can eat buffet with great antipasti and lots of other good stuff for Euro 8,40!). Highly recommended!

Boomtime, Chaos 57, 3172 YOLD