Luci Sandor’s blog

Microsoft’s Gates is trying to introduce micro-payments for emails, in order to cut down the spam avalanche. He had talks with Sendmail (the company), to introduce a Caller ID tag, and he is going to beta-test it on Hotmail this summer.

Everything is cool, except I don’t have a credit card. I earn under 300 euros a month, I have no properties whatsoever, except an old PC, an old mobile phone and some books. My internet connection is masquerading the IPs, so I can’t put my own SMTP/POP3 server in place, because I can’t get my domain. I have already a filter on Hotmail - AFAIK, one cannot send more than 20 mails per day.

Anyway, I have the money to pay for my emails, I send about 5 a day, and I suppose a mail would cost under a tenth of a cent. But how the heck will I do it without a credit card? Will Gates open a email boureau in Bucharest? How about highschool students all over the country? How about the people of Moldova, or Mongolia? This issue will start some controversial implementations, some FreeSMTP movement as Alternic was trying to do, and you know the latter’s ending.

As Gartner or other futurologists were searching for alternatives to classic email, I started to look for a free alternative of communication.

My GSM provider, Connex, is continuing its quest into technology that could bring revenue.

Previously they offered free dial-up accounts for their customers, 2 (and now 3) millions of the 22 millions romanians. Large masses discovered the Interenet using it on their behalf or borrowing a logon. When the service got bloated, they limited to 10 hours a month, still they make the biggest ISP here.

I had activated Cell Info on my Nokia 7110 years ago. This technology, as Network Info service on GSM and teletext on TV, became obsolete, not because it has no value, but because the carriers couldn’t prove their utility. Providing such a service for customers did not increased the earning, because clients didn’t care much and the carriers (or TV stations, on teletext) had to work too much to provide content.

This morning, I saw on my phone “COTROCENI”. There’s this neighbourhood, Cotroceni, half a kilometer away from campus, mostly known for the ex-Royal Palace, now the residence of the president. I thought that there is a software error (Nokia 7110 official emulator has a button for “remove battery”, so buggy was the firmware on this model). I “scrolled” my memory for an entry in the phonebook that would include the word.

I’ve called on Support and the robot told me that they started a new service. They also intend to provide ads through this channel - that would be a case for turning it off, anyway.

A strange thing is that I live on a 8 floor building with their antenna on top. When I get its signal, the display switches to my neighbourhood name, Grozavesti. But its name shows up very rare and instead I got even “Opera” and “Gara de Nord”, that are more than 1 km away. The carrier marketed this service as “Connex Busola”, (meaning Compass), but this can’t be replacement for GPS - I can solely learn what’s the country I am in.

NTBUGTRAQ had published the first error found in the Windows 2000 leaked code. Internet Explorer 5, that comes by default (and is mandatory) for any installation of Windows 2000, even with custom updated CD, has a flaw on displaying bitmaps that allows arbitrary code to be run on the target machine. Bitmaps are not so frequent on the Internet, but Internet Explorer displays a preview of BMP files while the mouse is over their entries in Windows Explorer.

I just hope that my local network neighbours will patch on time and my internet connection will not be distorted by their laziness. It is clear that some viruses will be created for this backdoor.

PS. I’ve been corrected, this won’t be a virus, but an exploit.

This means that documentation should come by Google Groups.

I have many samples like this:

Net access - Specifies the type of network access granted to a Java application or applet. There are three types of network access: unrestricted, restricted to the user’s computer, or none.

Not that I care so much, I don’t think there are macro viruses for OOo, or applets with a value for OOo, but I just can’t understand: the applet can access zero computers, all the computers on the world or just the local computer through a network. I can’t find the usefulness for the last option - the loopback, but who knows? Maybe if I had a better explanation/example for applets’ use at all, I would try to set it to a level. Now, I have to let it on default, as a so-called Windows user.

On a previous episode, I posted a rant on JRockit. Google puts my blog as a second information source for “installing JRockit”after the official docs.

I’ve persuaded my quest for a fast JRE. I had unarchieved the installation SFX file, then the ZIPs inside it, putting all the archives in a folder. Again, starting JEdit with JRockit was a failure.

I had tried a CLI “java -version” and I got a “ERROR: JRockit needs at least a Pentium Pro to run. Could not create the Java virtual machine.” The lame installer couldn’t output this, the lame administrator (me) didn’t read the hardware requirements.

Today I forgot the root password. I mean I forgot it weeks ago, but I haven’t needed it.

Steps to recover (mostly note for self):

1. When booting from LILO, choose usual Linux and pass it this argument: “init=/bin/bash”
2. You are auto-logged on as root, remount read-write the root folder with “mount -o rw, remount /”
3. Change your password as usual, with “passwd”
4. Try to memorize the darn password, reboot, breath

In a mail received today, WinNetMag is bashing Gartner for stating things like “in 2005, Windows will reach industry standards average for server software”.

Gartner feels that Windows 2000 is left behind, a thing that is clear from my point of view: I heard that Windows 2003 includes some super-secure settings that allow its usage as a usual computer (you know, browsing in Internet Exploder, reading mail with Outlook Express etc.). This code has been wrote at least about 6 months ago. Its inclusion in Windows 2003 and the statements that these settings are a step ahead reads “these settings were necessary - before them, Windows was insecure”. The fact that those weren’t included in Service Pack 4 for Windows 2000 and in any other security update means that Windows 2000 is left behind. As long as these updates are not available for Windows 2000 means I’m left behind, Mr. Thurrott, means that I’m running an insecure computer, that catches Blaster from the internal network during installation, though I use an Windows CD with SP4 integrated.

Don’t give me crap about MS plans to do something in the future: this delay spells to me a forced upgrade.

I received a neuronal simulator written for DOS and I have to run it in a DOS emulator from Sourceforge. Should I upgrade to see more software rended useless?

Mr. Paul Thurrott, another incompetent in the so-called IT journalism, running his laptop on Windows XP, he thinks he understands any OS from presentations and brochures, stating once in a week that MS should drop Windows NT, perhaps because its skins weren’t as nice as XP’s. Get real, install Windows 2000 and live a week with it, then write.

I wasn’t aware of his existence until today. Today I’ve learned there’s a clarinet player who’s pretending his records are genuine hebrew, yet they are bassarabian (east moldavian) popular themes, which means they belong to the romanian cultural area.

I’m taking advantage of my Google rankings to warn any curious about it and to remind you that there is a country Moldova that is about to become another russian oblasti. They cannot defend their cultural heritage (a rare combination of oriental and western influences) from the awful russification under the new so-called democratic communism.

Thanks to Mr. Paul Goma for keeping the spirit alive.

I was trying to install the fast JRockit, of course on Windows.

This were a very-very intriguing experience since, after unarchiving, my …”JVM failed to start”.

Waitaminite, I’m running a Windows 2000 SP4, I couldn’t have Java, Microsoft removed it and I was willing to install the standard-compliant-fast-amazing-JRockit. Of course, I won’t waste JavaLobby webspace if I hadn’t any Java: in fact, I had lost the number of JRE’s: 1 from Microsoft, 2 from IBM (an stand-alone and one from a SDK), about 4 from Sun (1.4 JRE, then one with the JDK, then another from Macromedia trialware, then the beta of 1.5, one with Opera, I suppose one with Netscape and some others that I’ve missed). So I have 2 Control Panel applets: one from IBM (pathetic one, JSE 1.3) and one from Sun with a 1.5 face. Changing the default JRE in one doesn’t affect the another, I always look in the tray to see what JRE is running. Anyway, either is skinnable on its default JRE.

Yesterday, I’ve seen the same stupid thing. A friend has an 68k Mac and he was trying to upgrade the OS. The update came in StuffIt archives, so we needed a StuffIt. we had one of our worst life experiences to see that StuffIt is shipped as a… StuffIt archive.

Therefore, you need a good JRE if you want to install JRockit JRE and you need StuffIt if you want to install StuffIt. Did you missed something?