Unas semanas hace mientras manejaba mi auto me di cuenta que nosotros somos un manojo de maleducados y egoistas. Por qué? Esta vez la razon es como usamos nuestras autopistas. Aqui algunas autopistas tienen tres carriles. Bueno, vengan aqui a ver como las usan, parece de manejar en Inglaterra, los carriles de la izquierda estan super ocupados, el carril de derecha, esta tan libre que se puede tener una velicidad de 110km/h y adelantar los autos que estan en tu izquierda. Obviamente no se puede hacer, asi' tienes que desacelerar, moverte en el carril central (si te hacen pasar), avisar con luces o tocar bocina quien te precede, esperar que se mueven (siempre que no te mandan a el carr...)....ah..que maleducados :(
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Strane coincidenze... [Strange coincidences...]
...stasera mentre sceglievo il mio iPod al centro commerciale (Trony di Melfi), chiamo un'amica per chiedere di verificarne il prezzo su internet; giusto esser sicuro di non mi stavano turlupinando.
Dopo qualche minuto ricevo un SMS dalla TIM con il seguente testo:
[since the post could ring some bell, I'm translating it into a wider audience language
...tonight, while browsing for my new iPod in the mall, I called a friend to ask for a quick check for prices on the internet; just to be sure they wouldn't have ripped me off.
Some minutes after the call I recieved a short message from my phone company saying:
Dopo qualche minuto ricevo un SMS dalla TIM con il seguente testo:
Cerca quello che vuoi con Google dal telefonino!Clicca qui(0,28E):http://wap.i.tim.it/cda2/goToWap.do?fm=100039Di qui i miei interrogativi: coincidenza? "marketing mirato"? mmmah...vabbe', mi godo il mio iPod ed evito di pormi ulteriori domande.
[since the post could ring some bell, I'm translating it into a wider audience language
...tonight, while browsing for my new iPod in the mall, I called a friend to ask for a quick check for prices on the internet; just to be sure they wouldn't have ripped me off.
Some minutes after the call I recieved a short message from my phone company saying:
Search everything with Google from your cell phone!Click here(0,28E):http://wap.i.tim.it/cda2/goToWap.do?fm=100039Hence my questions: coincidence? "targeted marketing"? uhmmm...well, I'd better enjoy my iPod and forget my paranoia.]
new iPod bulletin
say hi to my new 4GB silver iPod nano whose name is Black Mamba despite of its colour :-) the name takes his roots back to my old 4GB 1st gen iPod nano, that I destroyed during its first days of life. It was a rainy day, with slipping floor and sleek soled shoes...the rest of the story is me on the floor in horizontal position and my Black Mamba under me :-)
yuppyyyyyyy new iPod :-)
yuppyyyyyyy new iPod :-)
Monday, August 06, 2007
L'ADSL a Filiano
Vista la misinformazione e la disinformazione che c'e' sull'argomento ADSL nel nostro comune, penso sia il caso di fare un po' di chiarezza.
La disponibilita'
Fin dal mese di Giugno 2007 e' finalmente arrivata l'ADSL, grazie all'installazione dei cosiddetti miniDSLAM in centrale. Sono quindi tre mesi che e' possibile acquistare ed attivare l'ADSL praticamente di tutti gli operatori presenti sul mercato. Purtroppo questa disponibilita' e' limitata solo ai numeri connessi alla centrale di Filiano, ovvero ai numeri che iniziano per 83. Non si sa ancora se e quando verranno coperte le altre zone del nostro comune, notoriamente i numeri che iniziano per 88 (Iscalugna/Dragonetti/Inforchia) o per 80 (Scalera)...per inciso, e' sicuro che cio' non accadra' entro fine 2007.
La velocita'
Vista la presenza del miniDSLAM, sulla carta, la velocita' di connessione dovrebbe essere di 640Kbps; ho verificato personalmente su tre linee diverse (Alice, Alice Pro, e NGI F5) che la velocita' di connessione del modem e' di 800kbps in downstream, e di 320kbps in upstream. Per i non tecnici, cio' vuol dire che quando la linea va al massimo della sua velocita' si riesce ad avere un download di 80-85KB/sec; quando invece va piano, ho notato che con Alice, si scende a 12-13KB/sec...mentre con NGI il minimo che ho visto e' di 50KB/sec...ma su queste questioni non sottilizziamo: e' finalmente arrivata l'ADSL e funziona...ed anche meglio delle aspettative.
640K? Ma come? Alice Flat la pago a 2M!
A Filiano, come dicevo prima, l'ADSL viene fornita grazie a degli apparati che si chiamano miniDSLAM; questi miniDSLAM (quelli che Telecom ha comprato) sono certificati per una portante di 640kbps, ed infatti dicevo che va meglio delle aspettative proprio perche' da noi va a 800kbps.
Purtroppo la mossa del miniDSLAM era inattesa, e tutte le offerte commerciali, anche quelle all'ingrosso di Telecom, per i fornitori sono passate tutte a 2megabit. Per tale ragione, in teoria quando un operatore ci vende l'ADSL, dovrebbe avere la decenza e l'onesta' di dirci che non potra' fornire il servizio a 2megabit, ma solo a 640kbps e chiederci se siamo disposti a pagargliela lo stesso a prezzo pieno (NGI fa cosi', Telecom invece ti attiva Alice e se "te ne accorgi" e ti lamenti, ti rispondono che ci sono dei problemi ma che non ti sanno dire quando li risolveranno...).
E noi senza ADSL che facciamo? Con chi ci lamentiamo?
In effetti potremmo tentare di raccogliere firme, portarle al Sindaco che provvederebbe ad inoltrarle alle sedi piu' indicate, o alternativamente potremmo raccogliere un certo numero di pre-contratti da inoltrare a Telecom, sempre con l'aiuto del comune... sperando che installino almeno qualche miniDSLAM anche a Dragonetti e Scalera.
Se volete, potete lasciare un "messaggio" sul sito Voglio l'ADSL che ho messo in rete qualche tempo fa, e dare un'occhiata sulla situazione della copertura ADSL in Italia...per renderci conto che non siamo gli unici discriminati.
Mal comune, mezzo gaudio? Direi proprio di no.
La disponibilita'
Fin dal mese di Giugno 2007 e' finalmente arrivata l'ADSL, grazie all'installazione dei cosiddetti miniDSLAM in centrale. Sono quindi tre mesi che e' possibile acquistare ed attivare l'ADSL praticamente di tutti gli operatori presenti sul mercato. Purtroppo questa disponibilita' e' limitata solo ai numeri connessi alla centrale di Filiano, ovvero ai numeri che iniziano per 83. Non si sa ancora se e quando verranno coperte le altre zone del nostro comune, notoriamente i numeri che iniziano per 88 (Iscalugna/Dragonetti/Inforchia) o per 80 (Scalera)...per inciso, e' sicuro che cio' non accadra' entro fine 2007.
La velocita'
Vista la presenza del miniDSLAM, sulla carta, la velocita' di connessione dovrebbe essere di 640Kbps; ho verificato personalmente su tre linee diverse (Alice, Alice Pro, e NGI F5) che la velocita' di connessione del modem e' di 800kbps in downstream, e di 320kbps in upstream. Per i non tecnici, cio' vuol dire che quando la linea va al massimo della sua velocita' si riesce ad avere un download di 80-85KB/sec; quando invece va piano, ho notato che con Alice, si scende a 12-13KB/sec...mentre con NGI il minimo che ho visto e' di 50KB/sec...ma su queste questioni non sottilizziamo: e' finalmente arrivata l'ADSL e funziona...ed anche meglio delle aspettative.
640K? Ma come? Alice Flat la pago a 2M!
A Filiano, come dicevo prima, l'ADSL viene fornita grazie a degli apparati che si chiamano miniDSLAM; questi miniDSLAM (quelli che Telecom ha comprato) sono certificati per una portante di 640kbps, ed infatti dicevo che va meglio delle aspettative proprio perche' da noi va a 800kbps.
Purtroppo la mossa del miniDSLAM era inattesa, e tutte le offerte commerciali, anche quelle all'ingrosso di Telecom, per i fornitori sono passate tutte a 2megabit. Per tale ragione, in teoria quando un operatore ci vende l'ADSL, dovrebbe avere la decenza e l'onesta' di dirci che non potra' fornire il servizio a 2megabit, ma solo a 640kbps e chiederci se siamo disposti a pagargliela lo stesso a prezzo pieno (NGI fa cosi', Telecom invece ti attiva Alice e se "te ne accorgi" e ti lamenti, ti rispondono che ci sono dei problemi ma che non ti sanno dire quando li risolveranno...).
E noi senza ADSL che facciamo? Con chi ci lamentiamo?
In effetti potremmo tentare di raccogliere firme, portarle al Sindaco che provvederebbe ad inoltrarle alle sedi piu' indicate, o alternativamente potremmo raccogliere un certo numero di pre-contratti da inoltrare a Telecom, sempre con l'aiuto del comune... sperando che installino almeno qualche miniDSLAM anche a Dragonetti e Scalera.
Se volete, potete lasciare un "messaggio" sul sito Voglio l'ADSL che ho messo in rete qualche tempo fa, e dare un'occhiata sulla situazione della copertura ADSL in Italia...per renderci conto che non siamo gli unici discriminati.
Mal comune, mezzo gaudio? Direi proprio di no.
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Back to the old (real world) days...
Some years ago, in Italy, we were forced to dial the local area code to make local calls. I'm living in a small village, and we have 5 digit phone numbers, and after this "modern" decision I had to dial a 9 digit number to call my cousin that lives 50 meters away.
Why did they do that? What they said is that it was due to the liberalization of landline phone system, to help new operators, blah blah blah... I just believe they did that because they didn't want to upgrade all peripheric analog switches to digital ones...and thought it was more convenient to gather every call to long distance exchange switches and then manage there the calls...but my opinion on this matter ain't the point of this post.
Since I had some time to revamp my asterisk calling box, I thought it was a good thing (tm) to downgrade home phones back to horse sense standards, suggesting that every phone should work more or less like this: direct dial for local numbers, dial 0 for long distance, and dial 00 for international calls.
I'm not going to argue about the trivial asterisk configuration, but I'm witnessing the feel I am having when calling my close parties. Since when we switched to the 0+prefix+local to call neighbors I personally lost the appeal to call local parties at home, and was involuntarily led calling them with/to cell phone. While I still wonder why that happened I think it was maybe because that 0+prefix inconsciously made me think that I was calling long distance, so a cell call was worth to be done instead. hmm...did smart telco marketeers thought to that too? Smart guys eh? Who knows, could be.
However it is, however it was...now I somehow feel more inclined to call locals with my landline telephone...and I do! So, welcome back old days, thank you asterisk and welcome back public switched telephone network, we missed you :-)
Why did they do that? What they said is that it was due to the liberalization of landline phone system, to help new operators, blah blah blah... I just believe they did that because they didn't want to upgrade all peripheric analog switches to digital ones...and thought it was more convenient to gather every call to long distance exchange switches and then manage there the calls...but my opinion on this matter ain't the point of this post.
Since I had some time to revamp my asterisk calling box, I thought it was a good thing (tm) to downgrade home phones back to horse sense standards, suggesting that every phone should work more or less like this: direct dial for local numbers, dial 0 for long distance, and dial 00 for international calls.
I'm not going to argue about the trivial asterisk configuration, but I'm witnessing the feel I am having when calling my close parties. Since when we switched to the 0+prefix+local to call neighbors I personally lost the appeal to call local parties at home, and was involuntarily led calling them with/to cell phone. While I still wonder why that happened I think it was maybe because that 0+prefix inconsciously made me think that I was calling long distance, so a cell call was worth to be done instead. hmm...did smart telco marketeers thought to that too? Smart guys eh? Who knows, could be.
However it is, however it was...now I somehow feel more inclined to call locals with my landline telephone...and I do! So, welcome back old days, thank you asterisk and welcome back public switched telephone network, we missed you :-)
Friday, July 27, 2007
Mettetevelo nella zucca
Nell'aprile 2003 apro un conto e deposito 1000 euro. In tutti questi anni, non effettuo alcuna operazione con il conto...niente depositi, niente prelievi, niente trasferimenti, niente di niente di niente. Oggi mi è arrivato il prospetto semestrale al 30 giugno 2007. I miei soldi hanno raggiunto la ragguardevole somma di 1077,98 euro...
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Disappointed
after 10 days I swapped the hard disk of my late 2006 iMac, this morning I got into another problem :/ What's up this time? BAD RAM!Yeah...this morning I got up late, woke from sleep my mac, and after a few minutes it got a panic. I thought to myself: "wow, first panic!!!" since I never got one on this machine (I bought it in March). Rebooted the machine, and it kept chiming at 15 seconds interval...just a fews secs after it read the first boot blocks :/ Hmmm...immediately, I booted off the diagnostic software (thank god it booted)...and after a few secs: tadaaah...diags told me 4MEM/1/40000000 (0xbc8f8310, for the records)!!!!
Removing the module solved the problem. I tried to remove the "good" module, but in that case the machine didn't even get to the boot chime. I swapped the modules, same effect. I tried to put it back in place and...nada! So I only had to remove it forever and...wait until tomorrow, calling Apple Care and see if they'll take their badram back without requiring me to send over the machine.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Enough of confidentiality notice clutter
We are all "disturbed" by the most naive and fancy or just annoying "Confidentiality Notice", DISCLAIMERS, or whatever people/companies add to their email signatures. That's just pollution, since they won't add any good into email messaging but cluttering our everyday mailing life.
I think most of you already know well the problem so I won't go much in deep explaining this problem.
Well I have a proposal to solv..hmm...circumvent this problem: introduce an X-Disclaimer or X-ConfidentialityNotice header whose value would be an URL pointing to website into the message's From: domain.
For example, the new header would appear like this:
or more simply
Now for the feature request: it would be a good thing if mail clients recongnized this header and had some GUI binding, so that somewhere in the message view appeared some sort of button or whatever pointing to (guess what) "Confidentiality Notice", that would retrieve the xml, parse and show it, or simply follow the hyperlink showing the clutter :-)
What would we need to implement this magic?
I think most of you already know well the problem so I won't go much in deep explaining this problem.
Well I have a proposal to solv..hmm...circumvent this problem: introduce an X-Disclaimer or X-ConfidentialityNotice header whose value would be an URL pointing to website into the message's From: domain.
For example, the new header would appear like this:
X-ConfidentialityNotice: http://www.iscanet.com/notices/email.xml
or more simply
X-ConfidentialityNotice: http://www.iscanet.com/notices/email.html
Now for the feature request: it would be a good thing if mail clients recongnized this header and had some GUI binding, so that somewhere in the message view appeared some sort of button or whatever pointing to (guess what) "Confidentiality Notice", that would retrieve the xml, parse and show it, or simply follow the hyperlink showing the clutter :-)
What would we need to implement this magic?
- In the account settings, add a text box to add the notice's URL
- Define and share a DTD in the case we would go for XML
- some "app logic" to parse XML, and check correspondence between From: domain and X-ConfidentialityNotice domain of the URL.
- In the message view window add a GUI element (text, smallicon, whatever) on the window border, or statusbar or near the subject, or werever you like. This element would fire up the hyperlink or open a dialog with properly parsed xml.
Having this or some sort of this thing implemented would give us some peace of mind and less clutter into our email.
Since I like this idea, I will be mailing Microsoft, Apple and Mozilla guys to hear what they think.
That's my 5cents.
Since I like this idea, I will be mailing Microsoft, Apple and Mozilla guys to hear what they think.
That's my 5cents.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Vista, report to mothership when it works!!!
...well..I gave it a chance, 20 minutes ago I heard the Windows Vista welcome chime, activated and updated everything, so now I'm starting to learn.
Lesson number one - If everything goes okay, that's a problem: you should report it.
Yes, if Vista says there's a problem, don't be so sure the problem is really there...but, well yeah, maybe it knows it's a problem but it's not...or there's no problem, and that's the problem! ;-)
Lesson number one - If everything goes okay, that's a problem: you should report it.
Yes, if Vista says there's a problem, don't be so sure the problem is really there...but, well yeah, maybe it knows it's a problem but it's not...or there's no problem, and that's the problem! ;-)
Thursday, July 05, 2007
iMac 24" dissected
Two months after I bought my new baby (a Sep2006 24" 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo iMac), its hard disk temporarily died (the mac refused to boot). I recovered everything with some nifty tools and once again it died...well..after a surface scan it revealed bad blocks, and during usage I could hear the "classic" clicks (no S.M.A.R.T. warnings though). The drive is a 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 .
Yeah, Apple offered me a free repair, but I should drive 200km to the closest authorized repair center, wait for diagnosis and repair and drive it back home. Add that to the fact this is summertime...
I didn't want risk to loose my mac for two months and spend 100 EUR for gasoline or express courier so I bought a Western Digital WD5000AAKS hard drive and replaced it myself.
Just in case somebody want to repeat it there are some pictures of the operation that lasted more or less 20minutes. Tools needed are basic: a T9 torx and a Philips screwdriver and some "glue" for temperature sensor.
iMac 24" dissected
Yeah, Apple offered me a free repair, but I should drive 200km to the closest authorized repair center, wait for diagnosis and repair and drive it back home. Add that to the fact this is summertime...
I didn't want risk to loose my mac for two months and spend 100 EUR for gasoline or express courier so I bought a Western Digital WD5000AAKS hard drive and replaced it myself.
Just in case somebody want to repeat it there are some pictures of the operation that lasted more or less 20minutes. Tools needed are basic: a T9 torx and a Philips screwdriver and some "glue" for temperature sensor.
iMac 24" dissected
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