May 2007

Michael Tabolsky

Andrey always asks me to blog about what I do for Milan IN, so this time I will but rather to help googlers to find answers rahter than to satisfy Andrey :)

Two hours ago Andrey has mailed me about a problem with sending mail to someone at inwind.it. Our postfix said "mail for inwind.it loops back to myself" and refused to deliver.

I know this message from  misconfigured Postfix installations, but this one was done by me and should work as a swiss clock (yeah, self-esteem, I know). So the first thing I've checked was if "accidently" inwind.it hostmaster has indicated 127.0.0.1 as it's MX server. No, he did not.

;; ANSWER SECTION:
inwind.it.              300     IN      MX      10 mx5.libero.it.
inwind.it.              300     IN      MX      10 mx6.libero.it.
inwind.it.              300     IN      MX      10 mx1.libero.it.
inwind.it.              300     IN      MX      10 mx2.libero.it.
inwind.it.              300     IN      MX      10 mx3.libero.it.
inwind.it.              300     IN      MX      10 mx4.libero.it.

Debug log of postfix said clearly, mx4.libero.it resolves to OUR IP address and according to postfix logic, if one of the MX hosts resolves to our IP addresses the mail "loops back to me". How come?

A bit of tcpdumping showed the strange thing:
mx4.libero.it.milanin.com: type A, class IN, addr 80.247.78.230
So what I have learned right away, is that postfix has a "hidden" option:
"append_dot_mydomain" - which was "on" by default and caused postfix to lookup mx4.libero.it.milanin.com if mx4.libero.it was not found. Our DNS answered that it should be resolved into our IP address because we have defined the wildcards (* and @).milanin.com so basically anything.milanin.com will be resolved into our IP address.

After 1.5 hours of debug everything works as it should. But IMHO there is some logical bug in the MX list compilation by Postfix, mx4.libero.it.milanin.com and mx4.libero.it. are not the same thing.

Keywords: dns, mail, mail loop, milanin.com, mta, postfix, web platform, debug

Michael Tabolsky

While browsing through various articles, I could not find the information about what kind of copies where sold. Were these "normal" copies, when a customer buys CDs, or these were OEM copies sold to manufacturers which FORCED their customers to buy it. It's a big difference, since I know a plenty of people (even non technical) who bought a new computer and after a few days or weeks have installed XP for the sake of stability and performance.
So if someone has a link to the REAL information, I'd be glad to read it.

Keywords: microsoft, vista

Michael Tabolsky

As it was already announced, we are working on improvements of our web profiles systems and today (after the previous leaked preview) I am glad to present some new functionality we brought to the Club members.

A picture as always worth a thousand words so take a look at the screenshot with these gigantic numbers and below it is the corresponding explanation.

 

1. This bar and percentage indicate the completeness of your profile (higher is better! you can trust us on it), and it's even clever enough to change the color red -> 30% -> yellow -> 70% -> green -> 100% (still green on 100% too).
The percentage is measured relatevily to the "fullest" member profile, so if today Andrey has filled all the possible profile fields, then he is the best, and everyone should fill as much as he did to get 100% but it takes just one additional field and you get to the top leaving Andrey still in green but behind.
2. Who from the members was visting your profile page? Can be useful indeed (to get the most useful of it I have included the icon, so you can understand right away if it is a boy or a girl looking at you). The history is kept for 2 weeks for now and every record older than that is automatically deleted.
3. The Internet. Who gets to you from there? May be someone has blogged about you? If he did, and another someone has clicked on the link to your profile then you'll see it here, with the last click date and total count. Again 2 weeks of history for now.

And the last, and maybe the most important addition for today:

Starting for today, all our members are separated and discriminated by color of profile. There are lowest red ones, yellow ones, and the highest ones (greens actually). How does the discrimination work? Easy. On every page you'll get an annoying message that you are not in the greens and you should go and add some info to your profile. That's all the discrimination and it seems fair to me (if someone does not agree - you know where to find me, it's in my profile).

So these are the features and don't get TOO excited, we are still working on it and there is always new stuff to come. Stay tuned.

P.S. If someone is concerned about privacy issues and does not want to fill put personal information on the public profile then I should mention that even fields with "Private" level of access are counted and the ones for "Logged in" for sure. Not that it helps much for visibility but however...

Yours, Michael 

Keywords: features, milanin.com, socialgroupware, web platform, development

Michael Tabolsky

Another good article on how google shows it's gioodness 

 

Dell and Google have an incentive to make it [pre-installed software] very hard for users to turn this off.
Because users can’t get rid of it [pre-installed software], Dell and Google can get away with putting more ads on the page and pushing user-relevant content off the page.
They’re now doing both of these things.

 Moreover, this article is about Dell that recently has excited some of us with their Linux pre-installations on desktops and laptops.

Keywords: dell, fair, internet, monopoly, google

Michael Tabolsky

Keywords: italia, strade, guida, petition, petizione

Michael Tabolsky

~300km. 20Mbps. Old 386 pcs running Linux. No budget.

The previous record was about 200km.

Impressive.

Project 

 

Keywords: politecnico di torino, record, wireless, wifi

Michael Tabolsky

epigrafe: Nokia, you are full of surprises...

 

This story is a bit technical, a bit global market related and a lot of personal feelings expressed.

In a galaxy far...  no, actually in Finland (or in China?), well somewhere there was my Nokia E60 born. A year or maybe two years ago it was. Great device loaded with great OS. At that time it was versioned 1.x.
First of all, I've bought it from an Italian site bow.it that sold it €100 less than the same one but marked "Italian". I have carefully checked the possible (published) disadvantages of this  saving, did not find any and bought it.
I was using it for a few months collecting good and bad expressions, pros and cons, bugs and features, installing software and changing settings when firmware updates started to pop out from Nokia. First the E61 (basically E60 and E61 are the same devices with keyboard/screen only difference) as it seems now to be more successful(popular?) product gained his v2 update and then also E60. I did not find any changes for the things that really bothered me. Later last year Nokia has released v3 update for E61 and that was something I wanted badly because of some annoyances getting fixed there.

And here the story begins.

First surprise, I have found out that I can't update the firmware OTA (over the air) and I need to buy an USB cable, ok, searching, found a great C-70 cable (data/usb charge) for just €2,90 plus delivery from Germany, also added an "original" Nokia stereo headset HS-23 for €3,90 to the cart, paid the total of €16,70 through the bank transfer and started waiting.
The package was sent with regular German mail so it took 3 weeks to arrive to Italy and it has happened yesterday. Happy-happy, joy-joy, me is running home, connecting the cables, running vmware, downloading nokia software updater... to find out that it offers me to upgrade to v2 only. That is the surprise number two. But OK, there is a logical explanation, maybe I should upgrade in a sequence, v1->v2->v3? OK, downloading some bloody 50M of update (so much? yeah, so much!) and the great NSU (nokia software updater) starts loading it into the phone. All went good and after a cup of coffee and two cigarettes (the progress bar made me nervous) I have rebooted the phone into shiny new v2 Symbian OS. Loosing all the setting and contacts. But I have followed the guide and did a backup first, so I am restoring it. Another 10 minutes, another progress bar cigarette (they should really make a version for smokers without a progress bar if they care about our health) and all the setting came back including my favorite theme. But wait, no contacts? And no applications? Bum, surprise number three.
OK, anyway I was smarter than their Joe and did also a sync just before this upgrade so I did have the contacts all over the internet SyncML servers and also my Kontact can be synced with e60 over bluetooth, so no problem and I have synced them back, certainly loosing all the smart stuff like pictures groups and speed dials. But enough, did I tell you that I wanted v3?
Starting NSU again, nextnextnext, bum, surprise number four! I can't have v3, only v2 is available! But Nokia, how come? it's been a few months you have released this update and people all over the world have installed it!!! I felt doomed at that point, so disappointed that I had to smoke another cigarette.
Anyway, it is clear that some junk software will not stop me even if it runs under junk OS.
Going to Nokia forums and looking for a clue. Bum! Fifth surprise! Apart the IMEI, Serial Number, HW release, SW version, UI ID and other dozen of magic numbers, Nokia also has some "product code" they use to identify for which (or in which) region the phone was sold. And when Nokia releases software updates they mark them with this "code" and when NSU check available software it looks only for the ones marked with this "code". Great, what is the difference between them? Default locale settings and language packs embedded. That is all the difference!
Being all-time-English phoner,  I don't care about other langs, may be Cyrillic input would do some good, but it is not a must. Looking at my phone's sticker I see that I have some "Turkish" product code. Obviously NSU can't read from sticker, and obviously this code cannot be hard-coded in the device, so I am bravely googling around for a  flashing software that can read/write this code and find one called NSS. Running it. Bum! Surprise number six! The code inside the phone differs from the code on the sticker!
And that is quite correct, Turkish Nokia clients are selling their phones to EU because Nokia has lower prices in their homeland, but who wants to buy a phone with Turkish but without Italian (me does not count) in Italy? So what do they do? Right, the write an Italian code into it and run NSU ;)
OK, so far so good, started to brute-force the code, one... another... nothing worked until I wrote there the one from the sticker and NSU shows v3 available for me! It could be much easier if the Turkish would flash the correct Italian product code.
So I am starting another update, another progress bar for another 50M bundle. And, oh my god, it fails! The phone? Are you alive? Thank god you are OK! Rerunning it.. Bum, surprise seven! NSU thinks my Nokia E60 (RM-49 in lower level names) is E61 (RM-89)!! and offers me to flash it with v3 for E61! Nokia, will it also stretch the screen and add keys on the keyboard? nah...
OK, again code brute forcing here and there, read and write... no hope, always this fat E61 on the screen.
Last hope, *#7370#, Locking code (12345 seems to work always for me, isn't it idiotic to ask for the lock code when it is set to default and was never changed?), hardware reset helped. Burning my Turkish code into it, running NSU and TA-DA! recognized and v3 is offered. nextnextnext update has started, another cigarette and I have v3 firmware with Turkish lang on it! Coooool!

So at the end I am a happy Nokia fan, but Nokia could make my life much easier if they would have supported n'Average Joes too.

 

Keywords: firmware, nokia, s60, software, symbian, update, fun