Shipping madness
Admittedly, two posts within 24 hours is kind of a lot for me. As you may have noticed I have no schedule regarding posts on this site whatsoever, and I just post something whenever I feel like doing so and have a subject to post about. It turns out that that just happened twice in a relatively short time.
Anyway, here’s the deal. Recently, I ordered a load of small parts. As my order was large enough (>€20) shipping is free, which I think is a great policy; now if I forget to order something at one point, I’ll just place a second order, maybe add some extra stuff so it’s at least €20 (spend €10 on stuff and pay a final of €20 with shipping, or just spend €20 on stuff and get shipping free is an easy choice) and be done with it; instead of making sure I added all the correct items. Just because making sure everything is 100% OK is kind of a big deal with >400 small items.
It turns out that they only had 1 piece in stock of an item, however I ordered two. Out of >400, it was the only item that they didn’t have right away, so they shipped out everything else and the last item would be delivered later when they have it. Note that we’re talking about a very very small item here, priced at about € 0,70, and the ‘you might loose it between the coins in your wallet’-kind of small. You’d expect the second one to arrive by regular mail in a bubble-wrap envelope or something. As the first parcel came in, I found the first piece and discovered that I accidently ordered the wrong part number, so that first part goes on the shelf and I don’t really care about whether or not I still get the second one.
I placed a second order with the correct part number, and a couple of other things where I accidently ordered too few, and that follow-up order came in last Tuesday.
Just after I came back upstairs I noticed I have an e-mail. Apparantly they still shipped that one, € 0,70 part to me.
In a ~€ 8 parcel.
Since the shipping cost’s on them, I do sometimes wonder how companies like these ever make profit. I might even make a picture of it when it comes in.
This kind of reminds me of this TDWTF article (however while searching that one again I also came across this forum thread which is infinitely more brilliant, especially the post from a guy named ‘Cyrz’).
Bandwith
As this article (Dutch) says, the American internet provider Cox Communications is planning to loose a lot of customers. If the network is busy, they want to give a lower priority to p2p-traffic. The FCC will probably deal with it quickly, so this company is acting stupid in at least four different ways:
- First, they are giving themselves a bad name and a bad reputation. Existing customers who are faced with this policy will leave, and new customers are scared off at the idea that they pay for an x amount of bandwith but won’t actually get it if they use too much of it.
- They know, from the example of Comcast, that the FCC will deal with it quickly enough and that this new policy of theirs won’t last long. That makes the previous point, and the next one, even worse.
- Therefore, all they are really saying is ‘Hey look guys, our network sucks. It can’t handle it if everyone actually uses what we are promising they can use.’ Of course, that will be equally bad for their customer base as #1.
- Cox Communications? Seriously guys, what the fuck is that name supposed to mean? That name even implies that they support p2p use, for downloading pr0nz0rs.
Americans, sometimes… 
Worse than sucks
Okay, I’ve just tried out the Windows 7 beta, and here’s my conclusion.
If you think Windows Vista sucks, and you do think so because it’s the truth, please, do not bother to try Windows 7. You’ll be able to count the number of improvements over Vista on one hand, and you’re probably not going to need any fingers.
Seriously, Microsoft. When are you finally going to learn? All you did was rushing Windows 7 because nobody wants Vista. You rushed it so bad that it isn’t really anything new.
Please, Microsoft. Please. Take a few steps back. Take XP as a base and use that for the next edition of Windows. Don’t rush it, don’t add all the graphical bullshit that is really everything Vista/Win7 is, just stick to XP and add the few good things from the newer versions to it (such as DX10 support).
Everybody likes XP because it’s pretty stable, and it just works. I, and many others with me, seriously prefer the classic Windows UI over all the shit that was added since Vista because it’s easy to use, not too much bullshit, it doesn’t look all that bad, and it’s very resource-friendly. The ‘classic’ theme in Vista/Win7 don’t even look anything like it.
So much features in Vista/Win7 are unneeded for most of the people, and the few who do want them always prefer a better 3rd-party tool for the job. If I wanted to encrypt my data, I’d trust an external tool that has proven to be reliable, offers me enough options, is known not to have any serious flaws or backdoors, and has a good reputation. Instead of that BitLocker thing, because it’s either turned on or off and you don’t really have any idea what’s going on. BitLocker is only as good as the security of the rest of the OS (and considering Microsoft’s reputation, OS security in Windows is something that should never be trusted).
I already know that I’m just going to stick to XP, and if Microsoft continues on this tour, I might swap to openSUSE or some other Linux distro in the long run. Because in the end I want an OS with a GUI that I’m comfortable with to use, that doesn’t eat all of my system’s resources (and trust me that it goes fast with 3 screens) - and therefore offers the features I need and not the features nobody ever uses, and just works. Vista and Windnows 7 offer none of that.
Windows 7
What is there to say? Today’s xkcd comic says it all.
Okay, I havn’t actually seen Windows 7 yet, but the beta is streaming to my hard drives as we speak. I’ll install it in a VM (can’t be bothered to waste hardware on it after the joke they called Vista) and post my findings later 