Technology
Archived Posts from this Category
Filed Under Technology
It’s my fourth day today with no SMART BRO connection. Sad for some, but I’m furious! I’m paying for this unreliable service for nothing but I can’t terminate it because I’m bound with the one year contract. Else, I’ll have to pay the termination fee. So what’s choice left with me? File a complaint with NTC and that’s just what I did. Now, I’m praying that the NTC and DTI will act on this. It’s a long shot but there’s no harm if I try.
If you happen to be a Smart Bro subscriber, here’s what the standard CSR response you’ll gonna get. There maybe some variations but basically, that’s it.
1. What’s your IP address? To check if valid.
2. Can you ping your antenna? (IP addr is 10.0.0.1)
3. Can you ping your gateway? (check your network connection)
4. Can you ping Smart Bro’s DNS Server? (Most likely, this is where you gonna fail)
5. Please Repair Connection. If first time with Step 5 (upon restart or boot-up), go back to Step 1 else, proceed to Step 6.
6. Restart your computer
7. Go back to Step1 if you are still not fed up. Else, go to Step 8.
8. No choice but get mad with the CSR who knows nothing but these steps (can’t even help me with linux!!!)
9. CSR will apologize for the inconvenience caused. Will tell you that you can file for a rebate but not for the lost business, unanswered client query and potential clients. There goes your money!!!!
What I can’t understand is that I’ve been telling the CSR that I can’t ping their DNS server numerous times. I’ve been talking on the same CSR for 1 hour, and then another 15 to another CSR and then another 30 minutes in yet another CSR but all they can offer is to do the steps I’ve taken since their technical people from the base station insists that there’s no problem with their setup! It took them 3 damn days in order to admit that there really is a problem!
The other day, Jun 21, I waited the whole day for that ‘higher technical support’ that the CSR told me the night before to call me for additional support and/or updates. Nobody called, of course! And when I called CSR again last night, it was then that I found out that the there’s a base station upgrade. Maybe, those ‘higher technical support’ realized that there really is something wrong with their damn system!
So, for those thinking of signing up with SMART BRO, I beg you… please DON’T!!!! It’s for your own good and our good, too. If you sign-up, you will be added to yet another client that will clog their already overloaded network. If only they use the money they spend for those multi-million peso tri-media ads into upgrading/stabilizing their service, then we’ll be happy. But they have other EVIL idea and that’s get more and more subscribers just as Satan tries to get more and more soul to Hell.
Do you still remember who I shall curse? I’m cursing him already… CURSE HIM!!!! CURSE HIM!!!!
CURSE HIM!!!!
Filed Under Technology
I happen to stumble on a really nice web hosting service that’s really fit people and businesses who seriously consider having a web presence. The name of the company is IXWebHosting as shown in the picture below.
I recommend their Business Plus plan for a price of $93 annually. With less than a hundred, you got 20GB of webspace to play with and a lot more features. They have a cheaper plan which is called Expert Plan but it doesn’t come with a database. I actually couldn’t undertand that properly because even this simple WordPress blogging software needs a database to run to. What more with other content management systems like Joomla and Drupal? It’s too web1.0 if you’ll not use CMS on your company website, right? Unless you’ll just use that 10GB for email purposes only and some HTML pages, the Expert Plan is not for you. I would say that their Business Plus plan is a winner!
You see, I’m paying $36 annually for the 100MB web hosting in ExtraServers and then later, I paid $100 for the 2GB webspace in HostingFest. Once my current active hosting accounts expires, I will surely consider ixwebhosting. That is if I don’t find a better one in the next coming months. ha-ha!
Competition really makes the prices to drop!
Filed Under Technology
I’m disappointed with my Smart Wireless Broadband connection. On the three weeks since they installed it last May 2, there were at least 4 unannounced ‘base station maintenance’ that left me with no connection. I’m pretty sure that there are more of these disconnections because I only use it at night (8pm-12mn) and on weekends.
The customer service I talked to said that I can apply for rebates for the days I lost connection. That’s something I can’t understand because it turns out that they know the schedule of the maintenance of base stations. If they have that info, then they should know who are the clients that will be affected by the maintenance and should automatically apply the rebates. However, I was advised to call their billing department. If you’ll think of it, I first have to call the technical support to check what’s the problem on my connection. If there’s a base station updates, I’ll have to call the billing department to apply for rebates. And what’s more? I have to do that everytime I encounter the problem. On this case, it already happened four times in three weeks! If you happen not to call the billing dept, you’ll see your rebates fly away.
I think that’s the reason why they need the clients to apply for rebates since if they do it automatically, I’ll end up be paying only half of my service fee. But hey, the disconnection also cost me a lot! It’s a win-win for Smart and lose-lose for clients! Though you can easily call their customer service number, they still won’t be able to solve your problem.
Not only that, the connection since May 15 is erratic. At one point, you’ll get 280kpbs and in less than in hour, you’ll get 80kpbs or lower! The lowest I had is 48kpbs downstream and 190kpbs upstream. Last night, my internet connection encounters time-out. I didn’t bother testing the speed as I can’t even go to dslreports.com. Last thrusday, I even had to reconfigure my connection because I’m redirected to smart portal.
Now I know how other Smart Bro clients feel and understand them why they are so mad and flooding the forums and comment boxes (i.e, blog of migz). I only use this on one PC Since Friday, the connection is very slow most of the time. Damn, I almost recommended it to my friends. I was even excited to tell them that based on what I heard, there will be a promo starting on May 15 wherein new clients will get an N70 cellphone. I’m thankful they didn’t bite it.
All I can do now is hope that the service of Smart Bro will become better. Unfortunately, I’m now one of the dissatisfied customers of Smart Bro. So if you are thinking of applying for it, think again. Remember, I only chose Smart Bro because I had no choice. Up to now, I’m still keeping my self from cursing them. I don’t know until when I can hold it but the first person I’ll curse is Mr. Napoleon Nazareno.
Filed Under Technology
The latest local news regarding phising concerned me a bit. Well, I do buy things and services in the internet and my credit card was once replaced by Citibank due to iminent attacks they fortunately detected. That incident actually made me more careful on my internet transactions. But what about other people?
By the way, what really is the definition of PHISING? It is defined by TheFreeDictionary.com as :
In computing, phishing (also known as carding and spoofing) is a form of social engineering, characterised by attempts to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy person or business in an apparently official electronic communication, such as an email or an instant message. The term phishing arises from the use of increasingly sophisticated lures to “fish” for users’ financial information and passwords.
A sample phising email directed to Paypal users is shown here. As you will notice, the email really looked authentic and any unsuspecting user can be easily fooled to click on the link which is directed to a non-PayPal domain. The link actually points to http://211.248.156.177/.paypoal/cgi-bin/webscrcmd_login.php instead of the regular http://paypal.com/…. Once the user tries to login to that unscrupulous website, they already have the user’s ID and password which they can use to access the real account of that person in paypal. That’s just the start, of course. Though these cyber-criminals has a very low rate of success, sending this kind of emails in millions means having a success rate of 5% will give them 50,000 accounts per million.
And because our country is just starting to catch up with the internet wave, we are more vulnerable than our more advanced neighbors simply because as a beginner, we tend to test things trial-and-error way. By doing that, we might unconsiously send sensitive information to criminals. I find it a good thing that news like the one featured here is beginning to show on the local news scene as I think it would help in educating our local netizens and make them more careful and vigilant in doing internet transactions.
I also don’t think phising will go away in the near future but this should not discourage us from harnessing the power of the internet. WEB2.0 has changed the way we do business and use internet. A lot of technologies is coming out that will make internet life easier and enjoyable. It is a far cry from the old WEB1.0 that crashed at the start of the millenium. New technologies are there to help make lives easier and though criminals are also becoming more and more sophisticated, the benifits internet provides is far greater than its downside. Actually, you may not know it but internet has been helping you in a lot of different ways. As I have said, we just need to be careful and vigilant and be kept informed on how to deal on these problems.
Filed Under Technology
Today, the Smart BRO contractors will come to my apartment to check whether it is possible to connect to a base station. Honestly, I’m very excited and if only don’t have important deliverables and meetings today in the office, I would have filed a leave. At the same time, I have a lot of apprehensions brought about by numerous complaints and advices from various internet forums.
I took the risk simply because Globe Broadband, a fixed wired DSL service of Globe, doesn’t have any open slots in my street and I was told that there’s no plan yet of adding new ones. I would have grabbed their promo as I don’t hear any complaints on their service. Bayantel DSL is neither available as they only cater for corporate accounts in Makati while Eastern Telecom’s EVO is just too expensive for a 256kpbs speed. PLDT’s myDSL is out of the question. With that huge number of internet cafes in my area(all with at least 25 computers and connected to myDSL), I wouldn’t try the risk. And besides, I don’t need the phone.
So today is the judgment day! We’ll see if I will have connection tomorrow and how good the service will be. Currently, they only have one plan which is 384kpbs @P999 per month. Any comments is highly appreciated.
Update on 06May2006 1134H Manila Time:
Here’s the latest result of speed test. Upstream is still faster than downstream but it is still acceptable. However at peak hours (1900h-2300h), download speed drops to as low as 84kbps.
Your download speed : 204 kbps or 25.6 KB/sec.
Your upload speed : 232 kbps or 29 KB/sec.
Filed Under Technology
Okay, this would really show how easily I get excited even with small and simple things. It is just too enjoyable to learn someting new.
I’ve finally able to make the “subscribe me” feature of one of the sites I’m maintaining, ihmanian94. With the help of the codes of SubscribeMe2 plugin for wordpress and WordPress itself, I was able to create my own simple code. So here’s what I just want to achieve…
User Requirement:
Allow user to subscribe to the kamangyanan eGroup in Yahoo by just entering their email address in the frontpage of the webpage.
Technical Details:
1. Webpage should have a form where visitors can enter their email address
2. Sending of email must be triggered when ENTER key is pressed
3. Email address must be valid
4. Email request must be sent to kamangyanan-subscribe at yahoogroups.com
5. Provide a confirmation page
6. Lastly and most importantly, the email address of the user must appear as the sending party (FROM_EMAIL).
To implement all of these, I used the surprisingly powerful and easy to use command of PHP — mail. Here’s the syntax :
// mail(EMAIL_TO_ADD, SUBJECT, BODY_TEXT, HEADER_TXT);
For the requirement #1, #2 and #3, I placed the following code somewhere in the main page.
Main Page:
For the purpose of showing you the codes, I replaced < with
Filed Under Technology
You might have heard or read about countless attacks on the supposed vulnerability of Internet Explorer. I’m not going to add to that but I would like to share my experience with the browser. First, I would say that IE is a good enough browser for a casual and average netizen like me. During the height of the browser war between IE and Navigator, I stuck with IE because I find it lighter and didn’t need me to install yet another program on my slow PC. So IE4, at that time, fits me because I’m not concerned with security. I’m afraid of buying anything over the internet that time ’cause I was paranoid with all the warnings posted everywhere. I don’t give personal information over the net. I only wanted to read news and occasionally download freewares and sharewares I used on my job. Oh, I’m a member of a online forum for VB programmers, too. So most of my time in the I spend in the internet is for reading posts and replies and of course, emails. Well, that was 5 years ago.
With the number of netizens growing by enormous numbers by the hour, the number of hackers grow too. Malicious programs started coming out everyday, maybe every hour or maybe every minute and they are all attacking your PC through one browser… that’s IE. People seems to be very fond of searching for vulnerability of IE because it is undoubtly the most popular browser after the demise of Netscape. And not only that, I think more than anything else, it is because it came from Microsoft… the company a lot of people call EVIL. I’m not sure about them but for sure, one time in their lives, they used Microsoft product and may have actually helped them in one way or another.
But that’s not the point here. We are talking about browsers. With so may vulnerabilities to exploit, IE has also been the most unsecured browser. Unprotected machines find themselves installed with spywares and adwares. With every download and install of freewares, you find your machines going slower and slower. And that’s just what has happened to me. I don’t download and install internet utilities and programs like napster and other surf accelerator programs but I found myself closing those pesky popups that comes out of the screen every 5 minutes. After surfing for about an hour, my computer starts to hang and then I need to restart again.
That was before I downloaded and installed FireFox. I’m probably one of the first million users of FireFox 1.0. There are a number of updates already since the first release came out. It is absolutely beautiful and functional and yet it leaves a small footprint. The download file is just about 4 MB and everything you’ll need in a browser is already there. This browser is very light, really fast and amazingly secure that I asked myself, “Why the hell Microsoft didn’t think about whatever FireFox developers did?” After several hours of searching, I found the answer. I learned that FireFox is actually a reincarnation of Netscape Navigator. This time, it was better.
At the left bottom screen, you’ll see a link to FireFox. You can download the browser from there. Firefox is highly recommended and guaranteed to give you a safer internet environment as well as faster browsing. I still use Internet Explorer here in the office, though. But our network is more secure with multiple firewall and with highest security settings in placed, I feel safer. But of course, there’s a lot of restrictions here. If that’s for security, that’s fine with me.
« Previous Page
