A few days ago, I noticed a WiFi access point at Eroilor station. I took out my mobile phone and scanned for wireless networks, and much to my surprise I discovered 2 networks called Digi-Eroilor-1 and Digi-Eroilor-2 (or something like that). When I tried to connect, the first page announced me that the service was only available to RDS landline and Wireless Internet subscribers.

I haven’t got a chance to test the connection, but it’s still a nice touch. I’m guessing it’s kind of a replacement for 3G services, that Vodafone and Orange are providing in the metro, but I haven’t been able to find an official announcement or anything of the kind.

So, has someone else seen these networks, and if yes, where?

Long time no posts on this blog. Now I’m back with an idea on how to win a black ipod Nano. IXIA has trown one in as a prize for their by-annual challenge. This time you have to make a Linux kernel module that implements the PITIX filesystem. Good luck to all of you!

OK, let’s take it one by one:

1. Installation: It takes a little longer than XP, and it’a a lot less clear what the heck it’s doing to my computer. However, one must remember that Vista is almost 4 times larger than XP. So it goes pretty well.
2. First impression: I had Vista Enterprise Edition and my first impression was: Gee, I must have switched the DVD’s…That’s a black XP! Actually, there are some differences, like the start menu and the welcome panel, but the default settings were lacking AERO (even if my hardware allowed it) and the Sidebar. I had to look in the help center (which, btw, is pretty good) to see how I could activate them.
3. Security: There is clearly too damn much “security” in that OS. Every time I clicked on something in the Control Panel, the screen went dark and there was a popup asking: Are you sure you want to [...]? If you have clicked the button, press Yes. Ofcourse I clicked the god damn button! Stop asking me stupid questions! Installing the flash plug-in for IE became an adventure. It actually took 5 minutes, out of which the actual installation was about 5 seconds
4. Looks: Now that’s something that Vista’s good at. AERO has some pretty cool effects (even if I had to dig for them in the help files) and the Sidebar can be pretty useful once you get used to it. The new IE7-like looks for Windows Explorer is also interesting and easy to learn.
5. Hardware: Not so good Vista wasn’t capabable to see my embedded sound card and the XP driver did not work. So I’m stuck in silence , because my MB is too old to hope for a Vista driver. The other harware seemed to be OK, even if I haven’t tried all of the USB gadgets. Another bad point was the fact that Vista alone was eating up 75% of my 512MB memory. I can only dream of actually starting Visual Studio on Vista and still being able to do something on it.
6. Crashes: It’s a Windows, I know, but come on… 2 Explorer crashes in half an hour? XP SP2 had given me hope for more.

So, am I gonna keep it? No, because I can’t do anything useful with it (because of the lack of memory), I don’t like all the security warnings and my XP hasn’t crashed in a very, very, very long time Why change something that’s working?

• Entering the IT industry from Tudor Damian – some common sense pieces of advice for the future IT professionals
• Bash tricks: comparing floating point numbers by Petre – an somewhat old post about BASH. Interesting because that’s one of the problems in my homework for the Operating Systems course
• Yahoo! fights messenger spam by evolve – fact or just messenger trouble? We’ll see…
• Metro etiquette by Just me – an excellent idea! There is a good reason for the yellow footsteps on the Bucharest metro’s escalators. Ever wondered what’s that reason?

The good news: the new tab mini-tab looks better. And I’ve managed to set the toolbar buttons in an acceptable layout. The pop-up blocker and phishing blocker are quite useful.

Overall, I can say that the differences between IE and Firefox are now a matter of layout more than anything else. But for me, Firefox is still better: at least I can put the start pages that I like. So, Tudy, what do YOU think?

To have an indea of how big (or small) this thing will get, I made a simple program to follow the trafic.ro stats of the registered sites. Only about a third of all sites have the trafic.ro tracker, but it still gives a pretty good idea of how many users are we talking about.

The first one that caught my eye was fungift.ro. I aready knew that fungift had…funny stuff ( ), but some of the things I found were just crazy: a Santa pen or a wine bottle ornament. Too bad I’m broke…

I’ll be back with more shops tomorrow.

Sources: DragoÅŸ and Andrei.

În mod excepţional, există şi o variantă în română, sub formă de comentariu aici.

I downloaded the latest release candidate… Unfortunately, I could install it ONLY in Safe Mode. And as usual, Microsoft Support was lacking (only available by phone and only in the USA…). Fortunately, Google is always around
First impression:interesting design.
Second impression: I wand the menu meniu (done), and I want it ON TOP of the addressbar (I know, I’m old-fashioned ).
Third and last impression: I’m annoyed by the “Open new tab” mini-tab (although it’s pretty useful), I’m annoyed by the menus-displaying toolbar buttons (they take up too much space – they should dissapear instead of being grayed), I’m….too demanding? .
Conclusion: I’ll stick to Firefox…