Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Reinventing the wheel

Today I have participated in a useless meeting. The subject is a tool developed internally that has to synchronize two filesystems. It has also some other features but this is the main one.

It is useless to say that there are already WELL TESTED solutions for this issues (Rsync being the most known).

I have raised the point that it is no use to invest in this kind of developments as we won't invent a better wheel, but rather add some functionality over the wheel - like building a cart to serve our purpose.

You can bet that the enlightened manager was agains the too costly but safe solution.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

The Fon Network

I was strucked today by the idea of the Fon network.
Fon is a growing community that is based on the sharing of the available WiFi bandwidth. So basically you buy a WiFi router (called La Fonera) for 29.95EUR and you connect it to the broadband you have. Then you share for public use a part of the available bandwidth. In this way you create a public hotspot for the nearby people and as a consequence you will be able to acces to internet from other hotspots when you might need it.

Consequences of Fon:
1. The WiFi will grow omnipresent - so a bad news for telcos.
2. Many services will become mobile and the market for WiFi PDAs and maybe the new iPhone will grow.
3. Equipment producers will have to take into account that new markets appeared and somehow to make the adoption of WiMax faster and cheaper.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

A Tragical Mistake

I have lost some banking cards yesterday. Huge mistake!
I was quite scared at first and the I have tried to make the situation clear.
But this was the gate to hell.

First I have tried to block the cards by calling the bank's hotlines for this kind of stuations. Of course that the phone was almost all the time busy. Quite scared that I might be too slow I decided to go personally to the banks to solve the situation.
First I went to BRD - because I was mostly concerned by the card given by them. I entered the branch on Eugeniu de Savoya street and found a line in front of the sign where it was written "Operatiuni card". There were five persons in front of me and it was 11:45AM. The girl that was working at the desk was talking on the phone. Slowly after about fiveteen minutes the first customer leaves. The girl is called by somebody on her mobile. Five minutes of chit-chat and no progress on the line whatsoever.
Finally she hunged up and started to work again. The time passed by and I have been the next in line to be served when the girl put the sign "12:30 - 13:00 Lunch break" on her desk and asked me to go to another line as she was about to go on break.
I started to protest as it was only 12:23PM and only one person in front of me. On the other line there were at least four persons and the other girl didn't seem to work faster. So I have lost the cards and about 40 minutes. It was quite rude of her to do what she did as she saw me staying in line all the time there while she was busy talking on her private phone but this is the way the clerks are.
Quite angry I have left the branch heading to the Eminescu branch of the same bank.
There was a crowd on two lines as only two out of the four "Universal" desks were open on a weekday at a busiest time.

I said to myself that it is no use to get angry and I went to Bancpost to solve other two cards. Here was even worse. I waited in a line of eight to reach the cards consultant. Then he gave me some forms to fill up and I was pointed to another line to wait for another consultant to check if I had debts to the bank (that was for sure not the case as I have tried to explain them because I had some ammount of money in the accounts). I was checked, I haave filled up the forms and went back to the cards operations. Again a line of 10 persons. I gave the filled in forms and the result of the checking to the clerk and he informed me that the process of closing the cards would take for about two weeks and I have to come to take back the chash personally from the bank. I have said that closing an account is a simple accounting operation and I disn't see why it would take so long and why isn't it possible to make a transfer of the mone in an another account... Without any answer...

Back to BRD again. I took a taxi to the main branch of BRD in Timisoara. Here the things wend quite smooth and the clerk was quite amable and helped me with the forms.
I have been able to take money from the account and I was assured that my new card will arrive in two weeks in... Bucharest. What? It seems that they opened my account by mistake on the Bucharest branch therefore there will be some additional time to send the card back to Timisoara.

After these events I have to say that I drove some conclusions:
1. I will never do business again with Bancpost. Bad quality of service and very long lines. Dissorganization and beaurocracy.
2. I am dissatisfied with BRD also so I will try to find better solutions.
3. I do not understand why the clerks are not using the pronoun of politness in Timisoara? This is a characteristic of the region because everywhere in the country two persons that are not in close relations are using it. I'm sick of so much familiarity. and also of fucking "Ciao" that all the people here is using...

On opensource again

Really?

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Pinocchio software

Pinocchio software = software in that the development team has really no control on the product.
The product is managed by an exteriour entity (sales maybe) and no decision can be taken in the dev team.
Examples:
- projects started with great risks and against warnings just because they were promised to customers.
- projects in that all the risks were neglected.
- projects in that the projevt manages is in another site.