This article references this article which asserts that:

• When you copy a directory into a place which already has a directory of this name, Windows 95+ asks you if you want to "replace" the directory. If you say yes, it replaces the individual files, i.e. merges the new directory into the old
• On Mac OS X it also asks you if you want to replace the directory, but this actually deletes the old directory first
• That the Windows behaviour is better as it's less destructive, and other reasons

I have a number of comments about this:

• Independent of if the Windows behaviour is better, the word "replace" implies the Mac behaviour. I have been confused by this before (assuming that if I click "yes" to the "replace" question that it will delete the contents of the destination first, i.e. replace them)
• There are times when you want merge (merging photos from a digital camera) and times when you want replace (replacing one source tree with another)
• Nextstep would ask you if you want to replace the destination, or merge (or cancel)

Surely Nextstep's solution is the best. Maybe asking is annoying, but both Windows and Mac evidently ask a question as well, so Nextstep is not worse in that respect.

Just one more example of how technology gets worse with time. Or at least not better anyway, on average.

This guy living in Somalia, a country without government and thus by definition in anarchy, does his job but has to give half of what he produces to gunman, who "protect" him. He isn't really very up for this situation, but what is one to do.

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4040889.stm#mahamut:

I get about 20 rods a day but I have to give half of them to the gunman who controls the area I work.
…
This hammer is very heavy and if I had a choice, I would do something else.
But if I could not go to school and had to carry on doing this, at least if there were a government, I would not have to give half the rods to the gunman.

Right. This guy has not tried living in a country with a government recently.

On all of my without-VAT income I pay 47% tax (average) to the government. Then there's the 20% VAT charged on top of the without-VAT income.

And now I have just got a bill because I paid some tax late. I've no idea which tax I paid late or why. I pay the tax bills immediately I get them. I am not a fool. (= I am scared of the government.)

This late penalty is €104.47. Which is quite a lot, I think, for paying tax late (which I don't remember paying late anyway). I mean what's this money for? I wish I earned enough, that the interest on my monthly tax, that the government lost because I paid something a few days late, was over a hundred Euros. But alas, unless interest rates went up dramatically and I didn't notice, that's not the case.

Or maybe it was the money they had to pay to process my lateness. In which case I wish I was a computer. Processing some database row, collect €104.47. That's a well-paid computer.

So it doesn't matter where you are, or what the style of leadership is in the country you happen to do your work. There's stuff to be paid and there's little you can do about it. And if they decide you've done something wrong and have to pay even more stuff, there's nothing you can do about that either.

We all know that advertisements on websites are annoying; for example those banner ads with bright flashing colours. It makes us want to use the website in question less. We all know that the way Google does its advertisements—”non-intrusively—”is much better for all concerned: the website (users are less annoyed), the users (they are less annoyed) and the advertising customers themselves.

Just now my computer was incredibly slow. I looked at the task manager and saw Firefox was at 70%. I had no idea why, but I looked at all the windows and one tab of one window was a consumer website with a big moving banner advertisement. I wasn't using the tab, but I like to have that website open (as I do many others).

Suspecting that was the reason for Firefox using so much CPU I closed the tax with the task manager open and indeed thereafter the CPU usage of Firefox reduced to 0%.

So that means that website is effectively preventing me from having its window open, as having its window open prevents me from working. So now I have gmail, Facebook, BBC News and a few other websites open, but not that one. I wonder if that's what the people running the website really want?

P.S. Safari reduces the speed of Flash animations on windows which do not have the focus, to save CPU consumption.

P.P.S. In addition to just making my computer slower, it would deplete my laptop battery faster.

This is a good term for a commonplace management error.

http://www.answers.com/topic/concorde-fallacy

Sony rang on Friday. They wanted to know the guarantee number (the number that I don't have, which should have been on the invoice; the invoice which originated from them, and I've sent them back twice already).

I took the opportunity to ask how the repair was going (as their website where you can track the repairs doesn't work). They told me the battery was broken and they had to send off for a new one, which hadn't arrived yet. There are two things wrong with that:

1. They are a Sony repair shop. They are Europe's Sony repair shop (as far as I know). Why don't they have any batteries available in stock? Maybe this is the first time ever that a notebook has needed a new battery, but I doubt it.
2. The laptop didn't work without the battery (i.e. with just the power cable connected). So I doubt it's the battery which is broken.

I am writing this on Wednesday (day 17) and still no news.

After being picked up on Wednesday, I see the computer arrived at the repair place in Germany at about 10am today. (The UPS tracking website works, in contrast to Sony's).

That's 2 days to transport a laptop from the capital of Austria to Germany! That's hardly quick, or the overnight delivery they always advertise on TV!

So presumably Sony chose to save some money when selecting which UPS delivery speed to use.

OK It's all gone well. It's 14:43 and the UPS guy has come and collected my notebook.

He didn't seem to have any packaging materials with him (in contrast to what the woman said on the phone). So he took my unscratched laptop and just carried it off without packing it. Presumably he has some packing stuff in his van? Or maybe he'll just not pack it so it gets really scratched? Well, I'll see when I get it back.

OK Tuesday was much better.

The girl from Monday said she'd (try to) ring me, even if nothing happened. She did ring me, at about 5pm (which made me a little worried that she wasn't going to call), and said that the laptop could be collected the next day. They hadn't resolved the warranty issue, but they were prepared to accept that I had one (on the grounds of the invoice that I faxed to them, which they sent to me originally confirming my purchase), so were prepared to pick up and repair the laptop for free.

Concerning the pick-up,

• Obviously they couldn't give me an exact time, only 9am-5pm.
• So I chose my office address. It's not easy to find me in this office, so I told her to tell them to go to the address and give me a call. She said they have a limit on how many calls they can make, so they might not be able to call me.
• So I gave an incredibly detailed and complex description of how to find me. Then she said she only had a small text field to type the instructions in, so she'll abbreviate them, and hope the guy understands.

Someone really has decided to make this as challenging as possible!

So here I am, Wednesday, Day 3, in the office, at 9am, waiting for the laptop to be picked up. How do people do this every day?

So my laptop is broken. No problem, when I bought it, about a year and a half ago, I paid about €150 extra to get the warranty extended from 1 year to 3 years, and them pick it up if something goes wrong. I'm glad I did that; now it's time to use it.

Hmm, not as simple to use the warranty as it was to order it, it turns out. (Although, to be honest, ordering it wasn't very easy either.)

Here's what happened:

1. At 11am, I call Sony for the first time. I could only find their sales number on the web and on the invoice, so I called that. Helpful sales person informed me "I'm only a sales person" and gave me a support number.
2. I called the number. Automated system wanted the serial number of the Laptop. No problem. Then it informed me I had to "register" the laptop either over their website or via a 0900 premium number. I tried the website.
3. Nowhere could I find how to register.
4. Trying the "site map" on the website, I found some register page. I enter my data.
5. Then it wants an (optional) "warranty number". I typed in all the numbers I found on the invoice, none of them were accepted. I was worried there might have been some extra document which I'd lost. I searched everywhere. Couldn't find it. So left the field blank.
6. Rang the number again, it said the same as it said last time: I wasn't registered, I should either go to the website or use the premium number.
7. Tried to register again.
8. This time I saw some link "open a support issue online". I tried that. It informed me I was not registered. It had a big friendly "register" button. Clicking it went to the same registration page I'd been on before, with all my data filled out. So the registration page knew I was registered, but the "open a support issue" page could not continue as I was not.
9. So I called the 0900 number. Got through to a human. Very helpful. He also noted I was not "registered" and tried to register me on his computer system. It didn't really work, he noted. But no matter.
10. He wanted the guarantee number. He told me where it should be on the invoice (thankfully there was no lost extra document!). But it wasn't there. I jokingly said I could scan the invoice and email it to him. He said no he believed me; we chatted some more.
11. He said he needed the guarantee number. He suggested I scan it and send it to him. Once that had been done, courier people would ring me in the afternoon to arrange a pick-up. That call was 17 minutes long.
12. I emailed it to him. It was a central email address, but he assured me if I put the case number in the subject line, it would get to him.
13. No reply. And no telephone call in the afternoon. And no way to contact him.
14. I go online and find some "information on your support case" page. I enter my name, the laptop's serial number and the case number. Click submit. Results page is an advertisement for Windows Vista and nothing else.
15. Thinking I must have done something wrong, I go back and do it again, same result.
16. I ring the telephone number (the non-premium one). Automated voice asks me for my case number. I enter it. Automated voice informs me that I'm outside the warranty period (presumably the free one) and hangs up on me.
17. What to do now? Only option is the 0900 number. I ring it. Wait listening to music. Then it hangs up on me. That was 5 minutes.
18. What to do now? Only option is the 0900 number. I ring it. This time get through to someone after about 10 minutes of waiting. (I put it on speakerphone so that my colleagues know I am wasting my time listening to canned music while paying nearly €1/minute, to access the support I paid €150 for).
19. Finally I get through to someone. They say that the email with the invoice wouldn't have worked (so I'm glad I rang and didn't just wait for them to ring me). I should fax the invoice to them. She gives me a fax number. I ask her to ring me in about an hour to tell me if she got it or not (as I have no way to contact her). That call was 20 minutes.
20. I fax her the document, and write her name on it, to try and maximize the chance she gets it.
21. Note that this document, which I am trying to communicate to them, is the invoice. This document comes from them, not me. I am trying to fax them back their own document.
22. She calls me back (I was pleased about that). Tells me she got the fax, and that she has to speak to a colleague. I ask her when that will be. Well, she says, she posted a post-it note on her monitor.
23. I ask her to call me back tomorrow in any case, even if there is no progress. I have no way to contact them, and if they just don't contact me, I'm stuck.
24. She freely admitted that, until the warranty issue was resolved, I had no option than to use the 0900 phone number. The other cheaper number was only for laptops "in warranty". The fact that the laptop is in warranty, the only way in which it's not is that their system seems to have forgotten it, and that is something which is neither my fault nor over which I have any control, seemed not to alter the situation much in her opinion.
25. She said she'd try to call me tomorrow. I said "what do you mean try?". She said she can try to contact me if I'm available. I said I'm available. OK, she said, then she'll try.

So that's it. So what has happened?

1. I have spent 42 minutes on a premium phone line, costing €0,71/minute, that's €29.82.
2. I spent €150 on a warranty (that was a while ago)
3. I spent over €2000 on the laptop in the first place (that was a while ago)
4. The laptop is still in my possession, broken.
5. One day has passed, so the duration of me not being able to use my laptop has, thanks to Sony, been increased by (at least) one day.

I've really never heard of using an 0900 number as the only way of contacting support, after one has paid for a warranty. I mean it's so outrageous. And the website doesn't work (registration didn't work, viewing ones support case didn't work). One is so powerless.

Sony is not doing well especially in the laptop market. They must be wondering why. I bet the top management don't know that this sort of thing is going on. It's just because their company, apart from producing great products, is just completely broken.

Let's see what happens tomorrow…

Where are the "…" on the "Advanced" button of "Display Properties"? This has annoyed me for ages. In fact I'm sure this was the case on Windows 2000, XP, and Windows 98 (but I might be wrong).

And of course on Windows you have to use this button each time you plug your laptop into a new monitor, as it will randomly (not even consistently) choose a resolution for you. And once you've changed that to a higher resolution, it chooses the lowest possible frequency for you, like 60Hz, even though it knows (demonstrable via the "hide modes that this monitor cannot display") that the monitor can support a higher frequency: so you have to change that via the "Advanced" button.

Ah and in researching this post, it seems to be that Windows Vista has got it right! Amazing. A good reason to upgrade!

In many ways, apart from the "…", that panel doesn't seem to have changed that much in the years since Windows XP (or Windows 2000) came out.