Random thoughts
Monday, January 21, 2008
No wonder that this world blows itself up
While standing in line at the supermarket today, I overheard a lively discussion between the cashier and a customer who complained about not getting the discount price advertised on the rack.
This supermarket chain runs a fairly elaborate customer loyalty program, with some discounts applying only to members of the program. There used to be some problems in the past with keeping the signs and the computer systems in sync but not this time. There was no technical problem here, just an oversight on the customer's part.
The customer eventually agreed that the discount wasn't applicable, since she was not and did not want to join the customer loyalty program, and decided to return the tomatoes, mumbling something along the lines of "Everything is getting so much more complicated, no wonder that this world blows itself up."
Now I wouldn't consider the customer loyalty program a serious threat to the world, and actually enjoy the benefits offered, although it means knowingly giving up some privacy in exchange for discounts. (I will gladly post my grocery shopping list here too if someone is interested :-))
Scanner cash registers and storing membership information electronically on the ATM card are certainly vast improvements in usability and convenience over the old manual cash registers (I do remember checking my weekly grocery bill for errors back when I was a student, a rather slow process given the long list of just prices, but it was worth the effort more than once) and collecting discount coupons.
Those of us working in a technology industry should remember though that not everyone will want to or have the ability to adopt new technologies, and those who opt out must not be left behind.
Otherwise, this world will blow itself up ...
This supermarket chain runs a fairly elaborate customer loyalty program, with some discounts applying only to members of the program. There used to be some problems in the past with keeping the signs and the computer systems in sync but not this time. There was no technical problem here, just an oversight on the customer's part.
The customer eventually agreed that the discount wasn't applicable, since she was not and did not want to join the customer loyalty program, and decided to return the tomatoes, mumbling something along the lines of "Everything is getting so much more complicated, no wonder that this world blows itself up."
Now I wouldn't consider the customer loyalty program a serious threat to the world, and actually enjoy the benefits offered, although it means knowingly giving up some privacy in exchange for discounts. (I will gladly post my grocery shopping list here too if someone is interested :-))
Scanner cash registers and storing membership information electronically on the ATM card are certainly vast improvements in usability and convenience over the old manual cash registers (I do remember checking my weekly grocery bill for errors back when I was a student, a rather slow process given the long list of just prices, but it was worth the effort more than once) and collecting discount coupons.
Those of us working in a technology industry should remember though that not everyone will want to or have the ability to adopt new technologies, and those who opt out must not be left behind.
Otherwise, this world will blow itself up ...
Labels: technology, usability
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Learning Tai Chi
The well-being team at IBM offers a variety of courses to keep everyone fit and health.
Yesterday morning (at 8 a.m., I am not exactly a morning person so this was the hard part) I had my first Tai Chi lesson. Our teacher, Chung Hsien Jung, has won national and international Tai Chi championships, and more importantly creates a friendly and inviting atmosphere. Watching him perform a sequence of postures and moves is simply impressive and a good motivation to spend an hour or two every week to practice Tai Chi myself (not that I expect to get anywhere close to this level, but that's beside the point).
Tai Chi is based on the theory of the Taoism and the principle of the contrasts of Yin and Yang. The sequences of moves are used for supporting healthiness, relaxation and physical balance. We learn the Chen Style (陳氏), the oldest form of Tai Chi characterized by the combination of slow, supple and fast, powerful movements. To some extent the concepts and the moves reminded me of Jujitsu, which I had practiced many years ago.
The first lesson was fun, so I will be back again next week!
Yesterday morning (at 8 a.m., I am not exactly a morning person so this was the hard part) I had my first Tai Chi lesson. Our teacher, Chung Hsien Jung, has won national and international Tai Chi championships, and more importantly creates a friendly and inviting atmosphere. Watching him perform a sequence of postures and moves is simply impressive and a good motivation to spend an hour or two every week to practice Tai Chi myself (not that I expect to get anywhere close to this level, but that's beside the point).
Tai Chi is based on the theory of the Taoism and the principle of the contrasts of Yin and Yang. The sequences of moves are used for supporting healthiness, relaxation and physical balance. We learn the Chen Style (陳氏), the oldest form of Tai Chi characterized by the combination of slow, supple and fast, powerful movements. To some extent the concepts and the moves reminded me of Jujitsu, which I had practiced many years ago.
The first lesson was fun, so I will be back again next week!
Labels: personal
localhost considered harmful
Tavis Ormandy has posted a potential security exposure with DNS entries for "localhost" in zone files on Bugtraq. While the impact of this exposure seems minimal, I would rather err on the side of caution, and this should be fairly easy to fix.
"localhost" DNS records in a domain should not be confused with the ".localhost" TLD defined in RFC 2606 Reserved Top Level DNS Names, and should be configured on nameservers. I haven't been able to find a requirement in the RFCs to have a "localhost" entry in a domain, nor can I think of a compelling reason for keeping the entry as long as nameservers for a domain are properly configured to handle queries for "localhost.".
RFC 1912 Common DNS Errors explains how to configure the localhost and 0.0.127.in-addr.arpa zones:
and recommends to not define "localhost" with the domain name appended.
Thoughts on removing "localhost" from zones, anyone?
"localhost" DNS records in a domain should not be confused with the ".localhost" TLD defined in RFC 2606 Reserved Top Level DNS Names, and should be configured on nameservers. I haven't been able to find a requirement in the RFCs to have a "localhost" entry in a domain, nor can I think of a compelling reason for keeping the entry as long as nameservers for a domain are properly configured to handle queries for "localhost.".
RFC 1912 Common DNS Errors explains how to configure the localhost and 0.0.127.in-addr.arpa zones:
The "localhost" address is a "special" address which always refers to
the local host. It should contain the following line:
localhost. IN A 127.0.0.1
The "127.0" file should contain the line:
1 PTR localhost.
and recommends to not define "localhost" with the domain name appended.
Thoughts on removing "localhost" from zones, anyone?
Labels: security, technology
Monday, January 14, 2008
Blogger
Choosing a hosted service for blogging was a matter of a few minutes, and it didn't involve working through feature lists and comparison charts.
I started playing with Blogger and within minutes had a basic template and publishing to my Web server working. The template language looked sufficiently flexible, and the backing by search giant Google made this an attractive choice too.
WordPress would have been next on my review list. The hosted options are probably comparable, with WordPress offering some advanced features for a fee. Anita Campbell has published a great article about moving a blog from Blogger to WordPress, citing a number of good reasons why the latter is a much better option, although Blogger was “simple to set up and use”. Good enough for me.
One minor limitation I noticed is that Blogger only creates a single XML feed but no category feeds, which can be created easily using the rich Blogger data API.
The only complaint I have about Blogger is the incorrect rendering of ampersand and angle quotes:
They are represented correctly as entities in the XML feed, but rendered as plain characters in the HTML version. This looks like a bug that should be easy enough to fix.
I started playing with Blogger and within minutes had a basic template and publishing to my Web server working. The template language looked sufficiently flexible, and the backing by search giant Google made this an attractive choice too.
WordPress would have been next on my review list. The hosted options are probably comparable, with WordPress offering some advanced features for a fee. Anita Campbell has published a great article about moving a blog from Blogger to WordPress, citing a number of good reasons why the latter is a much better option, although Blogger was “simple to set up and use”. Good enough for me.
One minor limitation I noticed is that Blogger only creates a single XML feed but no category feeds, which can be created easily using the rich Blogger data API.
The only complaint I have about Blogger is the incorrect rendering of ampersand and angle quotes:
- Ampersand: &
- Angle bracket open: <
- Angle bracket close: >
They are represented correctly as entities in the XML feed, but rendered as plain characters in the HTML version. This looks like a bug that should be easy enough to fix.
Labels: google, technology
Sunday, January 13, 2008
IG-L
When we spent our summer vacation in Sicily in 2004, I often wondered why some road signs in Sicily listed detailed information about the relevant laws and even the specific section and paragraph of the act.
Since 2006, the immission control act Immissionsschutzgesetz-Luft (IG-L) has been enacted in Austria, which allows authorities to impose certain restrictions on production facilities, traffic, and outdoor combustion to reduce immissions when pollution thresholds are exceeded.
The act requires that immission control related speed limit must be signposted with reference to the act. On previous trips between Vienna and Salzburg I had complained about the unnecessary distraction by additional signs; after all I don't usually care why a speed limit has been put in place, although there is evidence that drivers are more likely to adhere to environmentally motivated speed limits (source: Luftreinhalteplan Stuttgart), and lower speeds generally mean lower emissions (source: Land Tirol: Tempo 100).
One set of road signs around Linz looks especially bizarre: a combination of lifting the 100 km/h speed limit and introducing a 100 km/h speed limit for immission control, and vice versa in the opposite direction.
Recently some of the roadsigns were replaced with large over-the-road displays which allow for dynamic speed limits depending on weather conditions, traffic flow and pollution levels, which is goodness. I wonder though how many drivers will have a clue what the big white letters IG-L next to the speed limit signs mean ...
Since 2006, the immission control act Immissionsschutzgesetz-Luft (IG-L) has been enacted in Austria, which allows authorities to impose certain restrictions on production facilities, traffic, and outdoor combustion to reduce immissions when pollution thresholds are exceeded.
The act requires that immission control related speed limit must be signposted with reference to the act. On previous trips between Vienna and Salzburg I had complained about the unnecessary distraction by additional signs; after all I don't usually care why a speed limit has been put in place, although there is evidence that drivers are more likely to adhere to environmentally motivated speed limits (source: Luftreinhalteplan Stuttgart), and lower speeds generally mean lower emissions (source: Land Tirol: Tempo 100).
One set of road signs around Linz looks especially bizarre: a combination of lifting the 100 km/h speed limit and introducing a 100 km/h speed limit for immission control, and vice versa in the opposite direction.
Recently some of the roadsigns were replaced with large over-the-road displays which allow for dynamic speed limits depending on weather conditions, traffic flow and pollution levels, which is goodness. I wonder though how many drivers will have a clue what the big white letters IG-L next to the speed limit signs mean ...
Labels: technology, travel
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Happy New Year 2008
We wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous new year 2008!
We spent new year's eve with Andrea's parents and friends in Salzburg. The weather was foggy so the fireworks weren't that impressive this year, and we did forgo the midnight waltz on the icy terrace as well.
Today was another lazy day, we listened to the New Year's Concert 2008 under Georges Prêtre while we had breakfast, and Elias became inspired to dance to the music after seeing ballet dancers on TV, which was very, very cute.
We did go for a walk around Aigen in the afternoon and Elias had a chance to see real cows in a stable nearby, he looked quite impressed. This was our last vacation day in Salzburg; tomorrow afternoon we will return to Vienna.
We spent new year's eve with Andrea's parents and friends in Salzburg. The weather was foggy so the fireworks weren't that impressive this year, and we did forgo the midnight waltz on the icy terrace as well.
Today was another lazy day, we listened to the New Year's Concert 2008 under Georges Prêtre while we had breakfast, and Elias became inspired to dance to the music after seeing ballet dancers on TV, which was very, very cute.
We did go for a walk around Aigen in the afternoon and Elias had a chance to see real cows in a stable nearby, he looked quite impressed. This was our last vacation day in Salzburg; tomorrow afternoon we will return to Vienna.
Labels: personal