Luci Sandor’s blog

After 69 years of Romanian radio, BBC decides to withdraw from Romania. Official reasons are the loss in general radio audience and BBC market share (less than 3%). There is no mention of how the Bucharest office became the playground of the Romanian government, and how inconvenient journalists were dismissed at the request of Romanian authorities. (Citing US State Dept: In November [2003], the Romanian service of the BBC did not renew the contract of a long-serving reporter, Traian Ungureanu. Ungureanu was respected for his political analyses and known for frequent criticisms of PSD policies. Press colleagues believed Ungureanu’s removal was linked to these criticisms; the BBC responded by saying that Ungureanu, a 14-year veteran, had failed a routine voice test. Several reporters and an editor at the BBC resigned to protest the dismissal. This happened in the same era when Tony Blair pressured the Romanian PM to sell a huge state-owned steel mill to Mittal.)

All other 31 localized, foreign-language services, will be maintained until these pesky Iranians will learn what democracy is.

A recent article from Microsoft’s website writer sdfJuliaasdasd Francis shows how "Office XP is great for Home users". From the Knowledge Base article 556099, summarized "Office is so handy, I love it", one may learn that in fact "sadf asdf" and various other things that one can type with only four keys. This makes sense especially when read backwards, or upside down.

A stupid idea which essentially makes me to reject any call from unknown phone numbers: US mobile phone customers pay for mobile phone calls, no matter whether they called or were called. A worse idea is that one has to pay for a received text message (SMS), and there’s no straightforward way to reject these messages. Armed with a plan like mine (unlimited free texts), one could send you thousands of text messages, until you go bankrupt, and there’s nothing you can do about it. EU telecom comissioner, Viviane Reding, declared for the FT that she thinks this double-charging practice is fit for European customers too. After inflating hundreds of millions of cell bills, Ms. Reding must feel very satisfied.

I am on my way to write a series of blogs from the train. A horribly hot/humid day which beats hands down all horrible weather I have witnessed in NJ/NYC in the recent years triggered power shortages which affected computers and trains alike. According to the conductor of the train that I am riding just now, no train moves between Philly and NYC. I shall be stuck somewhere midway along with some other hundreds of late commuters. NJtransit.com confirms that, Amtrak.com does not publish such information about the lines they own and operate.
Later edit: Only 40 minutes delay! That’s almost normal business.
Even later: The other Newark - New York City train, the PATH, just announced 20 minutes delays, after cancelling its other line for the whole day. With the whole 4 dollars a gas gallon fuss keeping leisure drivers away from the wheel, it will soon be faster to drive into Manhattan.

According to Livescore.com, in a game featuring Romanian and French national teams in Zurich, “the home team have had 45% of possession compared to the away team’s 55%.” That probably meant that Swiss players were on the field too.

In a slightly uninspired article published in today’s The Guardian,
Lembit Opik gives his five reasons to support Romania at the Euro 2008. The less convincing of them is that a much inspired goalkeeper from his constituency, standing no chance to be capped in the Welsh team, might find his place in the Romanian team. Quoting: "Unfortunately a goalkeeper from Montgomery Town FC is never going to be signed in the UK, but Goodwin is certainly good enough for an audition with Romania. I think if we support Romania, the least they can do is give Steve Goodwin a chance to be one of the most impressive goalies in a former Soviet Union country."
I am afraid that he only confirms a general stereotype about the disconnection between Gabriela Irimia and her birthplace, since Romania was never part of USSR, yet the cheeky girl might not have noticed. Alternatively, may I suggest that an MP with such deficiencies on contemporary history should not be capped in a national diplomatic team - be it UK’s or the Estonian one.

As the train was making its way out of the Newark Airport station, I saw a man on leftmost rail track, just past the place where the airport-bound highway passes above the tracks. His gait look as if he was inebriated, he wasn’t wearing the bright colored work clothes of the rail workers, it was close to the peak hour. The chance of seeing him smashed by a train were so obvious, that I went straight to the first NJ Transit employee and told him. This was the guy who checked the tickets in the fourth and fifth cars in the Trenton train which reaches Newark around 7 PM. He looked at me as if he believed me, but kept checking passengers’ tickets. I repeated what I said, and he thanked me again. So all I am left to do is to blog it, live: West-bound trains out of Newark Penn Station will most likely suffer “30-60 minutes delay due to police activity”. Enjoy.

According to the FT, in a new show of disorientation, Yahoo outsourced one of its core products, the highly successful Yahoo IM, to the no-name three-coders-and-a-PR-rep company Jajah. The pretext: they will focus from now on on core products. Like what? Hotjobs? Yahoo Movies?

I learned today I wasted one full week by trying to work around some stupid bug of a ill-written, ill-documented software package that I use at work. I know that for a fact most visitors come to this blog to search workarounds for similar bugs in Microsoft Windows, Ahead Nero, Sun NetBeans, or Microsoft Visual Studio. I keep getting emails from crooks like SAS (emails without unsubscribe instructions, if we come to it) inviting me to join user groups and do the work that they are supposed to do - that is, explain the stupid programs that they wrote with its lack of documentation and its unjustifiable quirks to their frustrated, over-charged, and over-worked customers.
I know that people who make this software, both coders and (especially) managers, make far more money than, say, rice growers, although, arguably, they work less. They make so much because they can do so much; and surely they are productive when I, in my naivety, have worked for them, providing the world with the documentation they didn’t write.
What if I stop doing their work? I am thinking of calling it a day.

The Guardian, quoting unnamed sources, says that the Olympia was today host not only to the officials lighting the Olympic flame, but also to thousands of security personnel. According to The Guardian, the place was "crawling with Chinese undercover security". An undercover Chinese agent in Greece (or worse, a whole pack of them) reminds me of the old joke about the well-trained CIA agent caught in Moscow. After facing undeniable evidence, the agent admits he is not a Russian, and asks what gave him away. The answer: we figured something is fishy when we saw you are black.