Software Solutions Blog: Development and Business

The currency fight – update

Tue, 9 Nov 2010 01:35 +1200

In my last blog posted I talked about how we should stay out of the currency war. Since that blog posted the Fed has started to implement QE2 (printing money part 2) and surprise, surprise our currency went rocking upwards compared to the US.

Phil Goff made a statement this morning that the government needed to act. My question to Mr Goff is – do what exactly, print money like the US? Or should we get our reserve bank to buy US dollars in the hope that it will bring the price of our dollar down.
Australia’s RBA tried that now they are 4 billion in the red.

We have to remind ourselves that the NZ dollar is not going up; the US dollar is going down.

Maybe New Zealand should buy gold and increase our gold reserves?

New Zealand and the currency war

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 21:08 +1200

There has been a lot of talk lately about what New Zealand can do to tackle a rising exchange rate to help our export market, and experts on all sides have come out and lobbied the government to do more.

Here is a quote from John Walley from NZMEA – New Zealand Herald.

"There's a sense of abandonment in that we have a Prime Minister saying, 'There's nothing we can do' - like a true currency trader."

Walley said the New Zealand Government needed to respond to the "competitive devaluations" other countries around the world were unleashing on their currencies.

That response could include quantitative easing - often described as printing money - or a lowering of the Official Cash Rate, he said.

Unfortunately people are missing what is really going on and not seeing the forest for the trees. For starters our currency isn’t going up – the USA and others are going down and fast – they are printing money and about to print more.

The biggest criminal in this game is the US they are abusing their status as the reserve currency and the world is paying for it.

Well if the USA is printing money, shouldn’t we also, so our exports are more competitive?

We have to face the reality that American’s are getting poorer, their dollar is worth less. Printing money really is a zero sum game – it leads to widespread inflation, Prices increase, savings get wiped out, living standards go down and most of all purchasing power gets smashed.

It’s going to take strong leadership but we need to stay out of this currency war – let the big boys destroy their economies and for NZ to look to our own backyard for export opportunities because the West really is broke.

Allan Bollard and John Key seem to have a good grasp on what is really going on here, let’s just hope they do what’s right and not what seems popular.

Stupid song lyrics

Mon, 7 Dec 2009 01:40 +1200

Most of today’s modern music either fits into 2 categories original or not very original now I don’t have a problem with a band taking some failed 80s hit and turning it into a catchy rap mix.

But I do have a problem with stupid crappy lyrics that basically ride an awful melody to nothingness. Let’s take today’s number 2 hit ‘Fireflies’ from Owl City.

If you read through some of the lyrics you will start to see what I mean.

(my comments are in bold)

You would not believe your eyes - If 10 million fireflies - Lit up the world as I fell asleep
Brilliant

Cause they'd fill the open air and leave teardrops everywhere.you'd think me rude
but I would just stand and stare.
Are you at a nudist beach?

I like to make myself believe that planet earth turns slowly.
It does Einstein - 1 revolution every 24 hours

it's hard to say that I'd rather stay awake when I'm asleep cause everything is never as it seems.
That’s some nice ryming

Cause I'd get a thousand hugs from ten-thousand lightening bugs as they tried to teach me how to dance.
I want what he's having.

But I'll know where several are if my dreams get real bizarre. Cause I saved a few and I keep them in a jar.
That line is worse than the lyric from Des’ree ‘It’s a sight that I fear most. I’d rather have a piece of toast’

Please no more Fireflies on the radio - please!

Climate Change

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:24 +1200

Recently walking down Newmarket I came across some people asking me to sign a petition to support massive cuts in the CO2 produced by New Zealand of around 40%.

The Sign on petition is fronted by actors and not scientists or people’s opinions that we should actually take seriously.

How ironic, that actors are used to spread the “truth” about climate change. However someone might want to let these actors know about the inconvenient truth that the world has been very naughty lately and is not heating up, but has actually been cooling down since 1998.

I guess that’s why they are now calling it ‘climate change’ and not global warming – have you noticed that they have changed the terminology? Now any crappy weather can be attributed to it – are these guys smart or what?

WHY when people like me raise points for discussion are we immediately labeled ‘climate change deniers’ – burn me at the stake how dear you say the world is round?

There is a massive political agenda to push climate change down our thoughts, and so far the mass have bought it hook line and sinker. But slowly people are starting to wake up to what is really going on – 4c a litre TAX on gas to save the world, what a deal!

They have finally found a way to tax the air we breathe and unlimited amount of taxes can be applied to food, industry and travel in the name of global warming err um sorry climate change.

Please consider the environment before you print this blog.

IBM computer crash - top 5 largest crashes

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:05 +1200

Air New Zealand got a wakeup call on Sunday when a computer crash grounded their fleet and stranded passengers.

If Rob Fythe email is anything to go by IBM will surely be licking her wounds this week, however to make the boys over at IBM feel better I have put together a list of what I think are some of the biggest "oops" in recent IT history.

Number 5
U.K biggest computer crash in government history – a routine software upgrade caused major problems – a little over 80,000 civil servants were disrupted! - Like the routine software upgrade on the Pukekohe telephone exchange I guess!

Number 4
When software bugs and space rockets combine you can have some very expensive problems! A small software bug destroyed an Ariane 5 rocket in 1996. - Woops

Number 3
In keeping with power problems, in 2003 a massive black out was caused in North America by a race condition in some monitoring software. – Quickly reboot the system I am getting cold!

Number 2
A medical application that was not built within the specifications of the “Three laws of robotics” – and tragically killed 6 people when the radiation machine zapped patients with 100 times the intended dose!

Number 1
The Y2K bug – this sums it up best of what did not happen.

Need a Strip Club right now – Call 018

Mon, 3 Aug 2009 05:53 +1200

Remember roughly where a business was, but not the exact location? Can’t quite recall a number you heard on the radio?
Sounds like a job for 018! - quote www.call018.co.nz

What if you know the exact name of the company? – Even the address and how to spell the company name and they still put you through to the wrong number – worse they put you through to a Strip Club in a totally different location!

Well that was the experience of a longtime customer of Stirrups Equestrian – for those of you who are not up to play with Equestrianism’s a ‘Stirrup Iron’ is the bit of metal on the saddle where you put your foot for balance while you are horse riding – ‘Stirrups’ is just the plural version of a Stirrup.

Now Stirrups has been trading for over 10 years – here is the listing in the whitepages and they are listed in the yellowpages here.

A female customer rang up the 018 directory needing the number of Stirrups Equestrian and was lucky enough to be put through to the Philippines call centre.

This is where a fake American accented girl answered the phone. The call centre operator asked her to repeat the name a couple of times before the customer even spelt the name S-T-I-R-R-U-P-S and said the location of Newmarket.

Instead of being transferred to a horse shop – the Philippines operator put her through to a Strip Club in the more shady part of town.

Luckily the customer saw the funny side of the situation and managed to hunt down the correct number – but not using the 018 service.

Note:
Stirrups Equestrian is a hosting customer of ours and relayed the story to us – I said it was great story and asked if I could share it on my blog

How to increase web traffic to your website

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 03:04 +1200

Where the bloody hell are you? Website traffic is not something you can take for granted no matter how good or how much money you have spent building your website.

I had an email last week from one of my hosting clients. He has set himself up with a simple website.

He has built the website, but found he has very little traffic. Increasing website traffic is a topic I get asked about a lot. This blog will cover the basics and some terminologies to help you get started.

We all use search engines to find stuff, and those websites lucky enough to be in the top of our searches get all the traffic, whilst those on page 2, 3 or greater get very little. So getting your website higher in the organic ranking (organic is the non-paid searches) is where the hard work actually begins.

There are so many companies now that specialise, in this black art, called search engine optimisation (SEO) – unfortunately most of them don’t really have a clue about search engine optimisation!

If you are ever contacted by a company or web developer moonlighting as an SEO expert, that offers you improved search performance on search engines, then there is a simple trick you can do. To put them to the test – run a simple search in Google for their site using relevant keywords (not their actual company name). If you can’t easily find them then how are they going to help you?

Here are some tips that I give to clients keen on improving website performance.

Tip 1 Measure Everything!
I mean everything. Where is your traffic coming from? What keywords are being used to find you? What’s your bounce rate? What’s your average time on site? What’s the most viewed page?

Where is your Traffic coming from?
If you are a local company and only trade within New Zealand then why do you only have a .com address? Having a .co.nz will help you search in the local pages from New Zealand – some sites are excluded from the local search because they purely have a .com.

Is your traffic bouncing?
A bounce is where someone has clicked onto your site then clicked off very quickly, it usually means they have had a quick look and decided your site was not for them. Depending on your site, a high bounce rate is a cause for concern.

What is the average time on your site?
Sites like Geekzone will have a high average time on site – because they are informative and have a large volume of information for visitors. If you have an information website like the website mentioned earlier you should be look at an average time on site over 2 minutes. This means visitors are taking the time to read your articles.

Tip 2 is anyone out there talking about you?

There are a number of free directories you can add yourself to that will promote your site for example finda.co.nz. This helps with your exposure because more sites have information links back to your site.

Please remember it’s quality not quantity. Let’s say that the New Zealand Herald wrote an article about this blog , then the NZ herald being a reputable source of information would boost the page ranking of this blog, because it’s a quality link. Once upon a time it was possible to “link whore” yourself to the top, but now the Googlebot is much smarter than that. And those types of practices can get your website blacklisted

Tip 3 – Your website name is important

I wanted to call this blog article – “where the bloody hell are you” but as much as I would like to I know the indexing on Google would have been rubbish and you wouldn’t be reading it right now. The line “where the bloody hell are you” has nothing to do with search engine optimization!

Tip 4 – Make your website GoogleBot Friendly

They say a picture says a thousand words, but to a Googlebot a picture is meaningless. If your website doesn’t have any searchable content then you are as good as dead on a search engine. Talk to your web developer about making your content as search friendly as possible!

Tip 5 – Use these free tools from Google

Google Analytics
Measure your website traffic

Google adwords
To advertise your website on Google

Google adsense
To get revenue from your website (may not be applicable)

Google webmasters
Very helpful tool for more advanced users.

Google KeywordTool
This is very helpful for measuring your keywords

Good luck- Please feel free to comment. You can contact me at richard at 3bit dot co dot nz if you would like some more information.

Please don’t comment with links to your website as I will remove them – sorry no free ride on my blog ;-)

Coffee Dehydrates you - part 3

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 02:36 +1200

It is true for a large number of us working in the IT industry that we often neglect the most important machine that we control which is our own body.

Long hours, poor diet and lack of exercise doesn’t make for a very productive worker. So I have asked Kate from Lifespark Nutrition to write me 3 articles that you will hopefully find helpful. This is part 3 you can read part one here and part two here

   Lastly for great concentration levels and a boost of energy make sure you drink at least 8 glasses of water. Not coffee, energy drinks or softdrinks. Many people mistake the fact that coffee dehydrates you, which means drinking too much will only make your tiredness worse not better.

Next time you are feeling tired, try having 2 glasses of water as chances are you are just dehydrated. Save your money too.

      If you don’t like plain water, try adding a touch of lime or lemon cordial to it. Or drinking sparkling water.

      So if you are suffering from some of the symptoms mentioned, take the test for two weeks and follow these simple steps.

         1. Eat 2 serves of fruit and 3 serves of vegetables
         2. Eat 5-6 servings of good wholegrain carbohydrates
         3. Limit your intake of sugary foods
         4. Limit coffee, softdrink or energy drink intake (give them up for two weeks would be better)
         5. Drink at least 8 glasses of water per day. Have two in the morning when you wake up. If you exercise you may need to drink more.
         6. Get at least 7-8 hours of sleep, VERY IMPORTANT
         7. Have breakfast

      Even if you don’t suffer from symptoms of fatigue, eating well should be part of a healthy lifestyle to prevent health complications. Your body degrades every day; you can either reduce or increase the process-it’s up to you.

Are you getting quality carbohydrates? - part 2

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 16:30 +1200

It is true for a large number of us working in the IT industry that we often neglect the most important machine that we control which is our own body.

Long hours, poor diet and lack of exercise doesn’t make for a very productive worker. So I have asked Kate from Lifespark Nutrition to write me 3 articles that you will hopefully find helpful. This is part 2 you can read part one here

Are you getting quality carbohydrates?

Do you eat white bread or wholegrain bread? Do you have chocolate muffin or bran muffin at morning tea? Do you snack on white crackers or wholegrain crackers? Do you just eat potato at dinner or include pumpkin/ kumara or brown rice?

Simple changes like this can help improve energy and concentration levels 10 fold. Carbohydrates are essential for proper functioning of the brain and the body. However, there are some carbohydrates that are like blood suckers, such as biscuits, donuts, muffins, slices etc.

One of their nasty attributes is to give you a sugar spike then make you crash a few hours later (which makes you go for the next sugar fix or energy drink). They have very limited nutrients in them which means your body wastes nutrients on digesting these things but doesn’t receive anything back- this can lead into downward spiral of nutrient deficiency causing tiredness , bowel problems (lack of fibre) and depression.

Quality or complex (meaning nutrient dense)carbohydrates on the other hand such as wholegrain bread and crackers, oats, bran, low sugar cereals, brown rice, bran muffins, kumara, pumpkin, baked beans, etc. are high in a range of nutrients especially B vitamins and fibre. B vitamins are essential for the central nervous system and help release energy from your food. Let me repeat…are needed in the body to help release energy from your food.

This means that even if you are eating regularly but you are eating foods low in B vitamins, you will not feel the energy from the food as there are no nutrients to help assist with this breakdown. Complex carbohydrates also contain high amounts of fibre. This is so important to flush your system out. Without good bowel movement toxins build up also causing fatigue.

PFD, Reverse Leveraging or Sports arbitrage. Big money, no risk - Guaranteed

Wed, 8 Jul 2009 04:21 +1200

In these hard times its good to know that there are still investment opportunities where you can guarantee returns? Guaranteed like Blue Chip properties I guess!!!

How does sport arbitrage betting/ trading work? Well I could write a novel about how it works however this demo explains it really easily for you.

Here is my story about a company called TradeSmart Technologies Limited. (Go have a look at their website). It doesn’t work anymore so I feel somewhat relieved that I didn’t invest with them- however many people did. :-(

It all started back in early Feb 2008 when I got a call from an Australian using a blocked number. He told me they were based in Melbourne – and asked me if I could make guaranteed returns of 3% on every trade would I be interested? “Sure” was my reply – so they sent me the details via post.

A week or so later a slick document arrived via post telling me of all the benefits of PFD (profit from difference) Trading. I had a quick read and it really told me nothing – but I would find out over the course of the next month how the system works. A system that will make you part with a large amount of money!

And so it begins.

A nice Scottish girl rings me, asking me about the product and if I would like a demo – “Sure” I said ‘that sounds fine’, demo away. I installed a crappy dot net application. This application was poor – a first year programmer could have built a better looking application.

Great! I had a 30 second demo to prove it works, did it work? The demo looked like it worked but the demo was assisted over the phone, I didn’t really get to try it out and ‘sorry’ only one demo for me. Would you buy an 8,000 dollar car after a 30 second drive down the road?

So we move onto the hard sell.

“Ok Richard we only have a limited number of packages, 150 allocated to New Zealand” – Why is that I asked? “Because we don’t want to oversubscribe the product”. (Is that possible – this isn’t the stock market?)

Luckily I have a habit of always writing notes about my conversations. In my notes I noted down all facts and figures. She told me they only had 85 products left from the initial 150 that had been allocated and they were selling like hotcakes, with15 products sold that morning, so I better be quick! She said I could choose between 2 different packages the basic, or the more advanced package. The basic was around $8,000 AUD dollars, don’t ask how much the more advanced package was!

I asked her for a 30 day trial of the product so that I could see for myself if it worked.
She got angry and suggested to me that if she did this I could profit from the product and use that profit to pay for the product after 30 days! (To this day I can’t work out her logic in that argument, but that was it) I said to her that was a great idea, and I might just do that ;-).

So she changed tack telling me that after 30 days there would be no way of turning the product off once it was turned on. Yeah right! The product connects to their servers to get the live feeds. If this was true, that they couldn’t disable it; then this product really was written by a first year programming student.

In my conversation with her she informed me that this was an introductory product that would build up trust with their company so when the bigger opportunities came along I could invest in them. This was a plot straight out of Boiler Room!!!!

Our conversation ended shortly afterwards as I had managed to stump her on every argument and she basically hung up.

But it did not end there.

I was bumped up to a better high pressure sales person. Boy this guy was good. This guy could sell ice to an Eskimo! He rang me the following week and he apologized about the other sales rep- playing good cop I guess.

I began by asking how many products they had left in New Zealand? He informed me they had plenty of packages left. I asked him for an exact number and he said 452 products!

“So are you going to invest Richard?” – No I answered; please take me off your call list – Good bye.

Back then Tradesmart had no bad press that I could find about them on Google. The only sites I could find were sites that actually supported their product; however I was to find out later, those supportive sites were owned by them! I was part of the first wave of potential victims for this crew. Search them now and the first few searches are scamwatch results!

So why write this blog? Because I am now getting hammered by a new company selling the same stuff. The guy had the cheek to ask me if I had 10K of cash sitting in my bank account because he didn’t want to waste his time - dear god!

Hopefully they will stumble across my blog before they bother to ring me again ;-)

Is sports arbitrage a scam? No its not a scam, but the guys selling it usually are. It is in theory possible to bet on both side of a sports team, with different bookies (different odds) and make money – but the returns are small, the volumes have to be high and the trades have to be many before you can make any money. Also it’s highly likely that if one Bookie gets the odds wrong they will cancel the bet leaving you with one live bet and one cancelled bet!

With Tradesmart you have to spend real money with these guys to have the opportunity to make a little bit of money, and in most cases the profits are overstated and the risks understated. Also once you pay your money you are at the mercy of these guys. When they close up and leave, you are on your own.

My advice is if you have 10k sitting in the bank and want to invest it, then buy gold ;-)

On a side note:
I was at a party last year and got chatting to someone who was telling me he had invested in a product that guaranteed returns but wouldn’t tell me what it was (his little secret investment opportunity, I guess). I said “I hope it’s not Tradesmart!” ‘I managed to screw those bastards down to 6k before I told them I wasn’t interested.’
The blood drained from his face.

Sites compaining about TradeSmart

http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/tradesmart-technologies-c66225.html

http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/332/RipOff0332289.htm

http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/342/RipOff0342847.htm

http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/tradesmart-technologies-c59553.html

Eat your mind into focus- part 1

Mon, 6 Jul 2009 09:48 +1200

It is true for a large number of us working in the IT industry that we often neglect the most important machine that we control which is our own body.

Long hours, poor diet and lack of exercise doesn’t make for a very productive worker. So I have asked Kate from Lifespark Nutrition to write me 3 articles over the next 3 weeks that you will hopefully find helpful.

Eat your mind into focus- part 1
Whether you are researching a project, developing websites/ software or just playing a game, we need our minds to be clear and focused. This is where good nutrition comes into play. Many people in the IT industry overlook this crucial factor. Many believe that food is food as long as it fills the hunger gap. Very wrong. Ever wonder why your energy levels are lacking? Feeling cranky or depressed? Feeling unmotivated? Tired? What you put in your mouth has a lot to do with all of these. Ask yourself a few questions simple, commonsense questions :

1.    Do you get your 5 plus per day? This means eating minimum 2 pieces of fruit and 3 servings of vegetables PER DAY, not per week. Fruit and vegetables contain huge amounts antioxidants which fight toxins that we breathe in (from car fumes, smoke etc) and ingest (high fat/sugar, low nutrient foods). Fruit and vegetables also contain fibre, phytonutrients and a range of vitamins and minerals which can’t always be reconstructed to the same effect in a multivitamin pill.

How to get 5 Plus per day?

·    Have a piece of fruit with your breakfast,
·    Have fruit as a morning or afternoon snack or after lunch
·    Swap you ham and cheese toastie at lunch for a sandwich, wrap, kebab, pita bread filled with lettuce, tomato, carrot, cucumber and a bit of protein (egg, tuna, chicken, ham, beans etc)
·    Have a Bowl of vegetable soup (potato doesn’t count as vegetable)
·    At dinner make sure you have two servings of vegetables. 1 serving is 1 cup of mixed vegetables or salad so you need to have two of these. Half your plate should be filled with salad, stirfry veges or steamed vegetables .

If I could recommend one change that you made in your life for the next 2 weeks is get your 5 Plus per day. Your energy levels will increase, you will help sooth any digestion problems, build your immune system and reduce levels of stress or depression. For more tips on how to get your mind ticking faster watch this space for part 2 of the 3 part series.

Software Solutions

Thu, 2 Jul 2009 04:41 +1200

Have decided to change my blog name from AAA+ to Software Solutions Blog - even though most of my blogs have nothing to do with software ;-) However I am planning on writing some software related blogs soon.

Has not been a good month for Airbus

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:48 +1200

Airbus Industries must have had their nerves rattled again today, with the announcement of another aircraft lost to the sea.

The A310 has a long history, being the second ever aircraft built by Airbus and a very sound safety record.

Have the recent incidents put you off flying on Airbus Aircraft?

Michael Jackson has died

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:59 +1200

RIP MICHAEL JACKSON

1958 - 2009

Millions wasted by not having referendum earlier.

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 06:26 +1200

The referendum that we are about to have is estimated to cost around 9 million dollars, I don’t disagree with our right to hold a referendum but I am annoyed that a lot of this money could have been saved if just held it during the last election.

The referendum had the numbers and was accepted end of August 2008 almost 4 months before the date of the general election. Helen Clark stated that, there would not be enough time to organise a referendum in time for the November 22 election.

However in 1984 a snap election was held, in which only four weeks was given to prepare for an election, if an election can be prepared in four weeks then why couldn’t the referendum been held during the November 22nd election 2008? This could have saved the tax payer millions!

Am I right? Or would have it not been feasible last year?

Tipping is for the birds.

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 03:09 +1200

There is a great scene in Reservoir Dogs where Steve Buscemi character is talking about why he doesn’t tip. In America you just don’t do that, the American people are so ‘conditioned’ to tipping that any service must be accompanied by a tip.

I believe the argument for tipping is flawed, Americans honesty believe if they don’t tip they will not receive good service? (that’s because most of them haven’t travelled outside of America) If you receive bad service whose fault is it, the customers?

My girlfriend was travelling around the states and went into a coffee shop; she and her friends received appalling service and thus no tip right? – wrong the waitress went off her head – yelling at her, telling them she was going to get the manager (not giving a tip is not illegal, but the guilt of not giving a tip when everyone else does might get to you).

This is why tipping in America has got out of hand – its expected; it’s no longer for good service, it’s just a customer tax to help pay for underpaid over worked staff.

I am personally anti-tipping, because I believe it’s almost a corrupt practice, its corrupt because you are bribing the staff to work harder for you or give you special attention. The staff should do the job they are paid, if they don’t, it’s the fault of the owner, manager and staff. If other countries like New Zealand and Australia and the UK can afford to pay their staff a decent wage why can’t the US?

The other problem with tipping is it’s mostly based on percentage. For example order a nice bottle of wine; the waiter is then expected 10% of your $100 bottle – did he do anything more than what he would have done for say a $10 bottle?

My last point is tipping is just a pain; you have to carry unwanted cash to tip everyone from the cabdriver to the guy that opens your door at the hotel. Steve and I agree tipping is for the birds.

Thank God I live in a country where I am not expected to tip!

MYOB programmers have a sense of humour

Fri, 29 May 2009 04:19 +1200

I had a problem today with my Payroll application and rather than ring the help desk I decieded to try and fix it myself. So I was looking through the compiled code in notepad, to look for some clues to help me fix the issue and I came across this in the ‘pr_confg.FPT’ file. This is an un-compiled comment.

This was the joke in the code.

One day, while a blonde was out driving her car, she ran into a truck.

The truck's driver made her pull over into a parking lot and get out of the car. He took a piece of chalk and drew a circle on the pavement. He told her to stand in the middle and not leave the circle.

Furious, he went over to her car and slashed the tires. The blonde started laughing. This made the man angrier so he smashed her windshield. This time the blonde laughed even harder. Livid, the man broke all her windows and keyed her car. The blonde is now laughing hysterically, so the truck driver asks her what's so funny.

The blonde giggles and replies, "When you weren't looking, I stepped out of the circle three times!"

Can anyone from MYOB shed any light as to why this is here?

If you are sending money to Nigera there is a 98.5% chance you are being scammed.

Mon, 25 May 2009 08:45 +1200

There was a great show on 60 minutes tonight about Kiwi woman being scammed by Nigerian scam artists.

Long story short these scammers use online dating sites – pretend to be from London and say to their victims they are coming to live in NZ and try to build a relationship up with the victim over the net.

They scam the victim by telling them, they are going to Nigeria for business. Once they 'arrive' in Nigeria they get into trouble and need money. This emotional blackmail in some cases tricks the victim into send thousands of dollars.

The Nigerian scammers are getting smarter and cleverer – according to 60 minutes the Nigerian scam business now accounts for 20% of Nigerians foreign income.

A couple of thoughts come to mind

1 – West Union or Banks should have some system in place to vet people sending money to Nigeria or at risk locations. Maybe a simple 'are you being scammed' questionare could be filled in, by the end of it maybe the victim might realize that they are indeed being scammed.

2 – Why don’t the dating sites show a little flag like Geekzone does with my blogs as to where in the world the IP address originates.

3 – Don’t send money to Nigeria – just don’t do it.

SQL server 2008 Backup compression

Thu, 21 May 2009 16:00 +1200

A nice feature of SQL server 2008 that has been long overdue was the ability to compress backups natively from the database engine. This feature is currently available in the enterprise edition of SQL server (not included in the express edition).

You can enable backup compression by default if you wish on all database backups or select a single backup.
If you want to turn on backup compression on all backups use the following code.

USE master
GO
EXEC sp_configure ‘backup compression default’, ‘1’;
RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE;

If you want to run compression for a specific backup then use the ‘with compression’ option to the backup database statement.

For more information refer to
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb964719.aspx

Being charged extra for using your credit card.

Mon, 18 May 2009 00:43 +1200

Recently my partner’s mother was wishing to buy tickets from a travel agent. She expressed she wished to use her credit card to pay for the tickets to which the agent said they would charge an extra fee as that was the cash price.

Now I have a couple of problems with this.

First the travel agency has a merchant agreement with Visa, in the terms and conditions I believe it states to the effect that the ‘credit card holder should not be disadvantaged for using their card to purchase product.’

Which basically means that if the merchant is charging a ‘penalty fee’ for using the credit card, then they are in breach of the terms and conditions of Visa.

However this happens all the time especially in industries that work on low margins. If you believe you are being unfairly penalized for using your credit card you can lay a complaint with the Credit card Company in this case it was a Visa card, however your best choice is to shop around or argue the point, because when times are tough, you just give the merchant the option take my card or lose the sale!

SQL server datatypes really do matter.

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:43 +1200

It happens a lot in the software industry that because you are developer, you are instantly expected to be able to take someone else’s mess and fix it. “Here, you, Jimmy, here is 3 million lines of code, just change this billing system and we need it done by tonight for our invoices.”

I received an email one day from a client a few years back: “We are having some trouble with the logistics software” the email read.

We had never touched the logistics software before – it was built by a jack of all trades software developer. Long story short, it was an uncommented unmanageable behemoth.

Anyway funnily enough the software wasn’t the issue it was the database, the database being an SQL Express database (don’t ask why it was Express and not Enterprise Edition) was using over 1GB of RAM, which means the built-in limitations were kicking in. So we pulled up the main table, which had around two hundred thousand rows, which SQL Server should handle without problems.

I ran the table size query for SQL server and was shocked to find that this table was a runaway freight train.

Row No ResSize dataSize indexSize unusedSize
209718 2560400 KB 1947216 KB 296312 KB 316872 KB

Then we looked at the database data type structure (below).

For those of you who are not familiar with data types the ‘developer’ was using data types that were in most cases the wrong for the data being stored.

This has 2 major effects.

First - It makes queries on the table much slower because you have the database has to do more work casting (convering) the data to the correct format. Eg select * from table where cast(costprice as decimal) > 69.50

Second - It balloons the size of the database because you are using double the storage size to hold the same data, just by selecting the wrong datatype.

So we modified the software (which was painful) and went about, where we could, changing the datatypes to the most efficient types, we could get away with. For example if you are holding very small numbers 0 to 255 chars don’t use int use the tinyint data type.

So after our optimization the difference was night and day, some queries which would take 18 seconds or longer to run - ran within 1 second – it was a brilliant success.

This is a screenshot of the structure as it is now.

Row No ResSize dataSize indexSize unusedSize
209718 56432 KB 33864 KB 22168 KB 400

We estimated we made at least a 70% saving of the table size just by changing the datatypes. And that meant less RAM being used on the server making the software all around more efficient.

You can view this blog at blog.3bit.com

How TradeMe could take a proactive approach to reducing stolen goods.

Thu, 9 Apr 2009 03:07 +1200

A good friend of mine was looking for a top quality radar detector. He was able to get the contact number for the seller and rang him.

We will call the seller George, this is how the conversation went.

George: Hello

My friend: Hello I am ringing about the radar…. Do you have box and manual?

George: Nah Bro- No box ay and No manual

George: Oh and I am also missing the power cord and window clip

My friend: Good bye.

I came up with this idea a few years ago for reducing stolen goods on TradeMe this is how it would work.

When the seller lists a second hand item he has to also enter into the TradeMe system the serial number of the product.

This serial number will be added to a database of goods listed with TradeMe that the police can search.

When the person who wins the auction, he or she would be emailed along with the sellers info the serial number of the product.

At time of pickup or delivery the buyer can check the serial number is the same as what the seller listed.

If the seller listed the serial number wrong, then the buyer could outright reject the product.

Otherwise they could advise Trade Me of the doggy seller. TradeMe could then do some of the following. Charge a penalty fee for supplying an incorrect serial number, place bad feedback, give a warning or ban the person completely.

What are your thoughts?

You can also view this blog at blog.3bit.com

Windows XP lives to fight another day.

Wed, 8 Apr 2009 09:18 +1200

It seems the business community has sent a loud and clear message to Microsoft regarding Windows XP – keep selling it.

We used to struggle to find HP machines that didn’t have Vista for our customers who demanded XP, however that seems to have a role reversal lately with HP now selling more business machines with XP than Vista – I know we weren’t the only ones buying them!

http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/the-os-wouldn-t-die-windows-xp-gets-2010-reprieve-100120

You can also read this blog at blog.3bit.com

Twitter is just for people who don't have any friends.

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 01:17 +1200

Warning this may upset some people (some more than others).

The Job interview part 2

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:49 +1200

Please read part 1 first here

Ok so the knockout question got asked at this point around 90% of the other applicants tapped out, with the ‘I don’t know’, ‘can I look it up on Google responses.’

Lance Wiggs gives us the answer here.

This is a classic consulting sizing question - the answer itself is irrelevant, it is the way you get to the answer, and there could be several legitimate ways to get to an answer.

I'd be looking for the interviewee to create reasonable assumptions for things like how often people get their hair cut, what percentage of locals ever use a hairdresser, what percentage use local ones, and how many people come in from out of town to get their hair cut (maybe it is a hair dressing centre, maybe there is a big shopping centre there that attracts lots of people from outside the area).

I'd usually also ask "how would you find out" before the question - and expect them to say they would do a quick google, count yellow pages listings, check electoral rolls, check hairdressing associations and so forth.

It's about structure, logic, asking questions to gather information and drilling/being persistent until you have an answer. If you find them fun then consulting is probably a good option.

Thanks Lance for a very good post.

Thankfully my friend was on to it enough to give a very logical answer based on how many haircuts, he has per month then worked backwards from there.

This isn't really a job interview horror story but I would be interested in hearing any good/funny/bad job interviews - FEEL FREE TO POST THEM!

You can also read this blog at blog.3bit.com