Lost in translation

Spotted this slightly depressing IRC snippet tucked away on the GNOME marketing-list yesterday:

(03:42:26 PM) danilo: qgil: as a matter of fact, other approaches bring
results we had with documentation for the past 4 years: no documentation
has been translated to any language except for Sun contributed
translations, and they were too hard to update because we only had
docbook source on them

(03:42:48 PM) danilo: so, basically, we had to dump almost all of sun contributed translations

Could Sun have done more to avoid this? Were we made aware of the problem at the time? We still do sucky things occasionally, especially in the corners of the company (including L10N) who don’t yet live and breathe open source in the way most of us do now, but I certainly hope we can learn from any mistakes we made here.

Phishing ingenuity

Have seen it all now… got this phishing email today that actually includes a snail mail address to send your money to, just in case you’re too “clever” to click on the link.

 

Account On-hold: Please pay
your eBay fees today

Dear member:

You are late in paying your eBay fees of $718.28 and
your account for user kahlocjd is past due. These
fees result from listing items on eBay or using
related services (ID verify, Stores, etc).

This account has been
restricted and you will not be able to bid or list on eBay. To avoid further collections please pay your fees today by
following these steps:

1. Log on to [dodgy phishing link deleted]
2. Click ‘Site Map’ at the
top of the page
3. In the ‘My Selling Account’ section, click ‘Make a Single
Payment’. Sign in if requested
4. Select a
method to pay your eBay fees and follow the online instructions on page

If you do not have
access to your account or prefer not to pay online, please mail your payment
with your payment coupon and clearly state your account ID E286455801001 on the
check with a copy of this notice to:

eBay, Inc.
P.O. Box 2179
Carol Stream, IL 60132-2179
United
States

If we do not receive your payment, your account may be suspended and
additional collections remedies may be used to bring this account to current.
All current listings will be ended and you will no longer be part of the eBay
community.

If this past due balance is the only reason for restricting your account, it
will be reopened for bidding and listing when your full payment is received.
Your account will continue to be charged a late payment finance charge of up to
1.5% of your past due amount.

Thank you,
eBay Global Collections



All set… ish

So, here starteth my last week’s work as a single bloke. The next time I sit at my desk on a Monday (the first one in October), it’ll be with a resized-but-still-doesn’t-really-quite-fit ring on my wedding finger, if I haven’t managed to lose it on a South African beach by then.

The arrangements have been far from smooth, and I’m secretly regretting not having a stag night1, but otherwise (largely thanks to Julie) things are about as organised as they’re going to be before Saturday week. Speaking as someone who generally hates weddings2, churches and being the centre of attention, I’d be lying if I said I was completely psyched up for the occasion just yet, but I’m sure the end will justify the means!

Now, back to all that work stuff I need to finish before I disappear for a month…

1A choice I made partly because most of the people I’d want to invite are scattered too thinly and widely around the planet to have any chance of attracting a critical mass, partly because stag nights in Dublin aren’t quite so appealing when you live here and have to wade through scores of them any night you go into town, and partly because the majority of frat house stag night antics have never held much allure for me anyway. As many pints as I could squeeze in at GUADEC was the closest I managed instead, but I’d have been having those anyway, and there wasn’t exactly much chance of a final fling there now, was there? :o)

2Don’t ask me why, I’ve just always had a strange aversion to them– I won’t even watch them in films or on the telly, if I can avoid it!

NDAS on Linux

Anyone know how to use Ximeta’s ndasadmin tool to access existing, non-FAT32 partitions on an NDAS disk from a Linux box? I have my NDAS drive partitioned into three (one ext3, one HFS+ and one FAT32). I can access all three partitions over the net from OSX, and from Ubuntu via a direct USB connection.

The instructions on Ximeta’s website, and this post on the Gentoo forums, suggest it’s perfectly possible to see non-FAT32 partitions if you partition and format the drive from the Linux box. I’d rather not reformat my drive, but right now all I can see over the net is the FAT32 partition. Any clues?

The indisputable leader

Cool, there’s a Top Cat cartoon on TV just now without the canned laughter. God Bless the BBC1! I wonder if they’ll get the same backlash when they revert that they did when they accidentally showed a chortle-augmented episode of M*A*S*H?

1 When I was a lad, they wouldn’t even call it “Top Cat” in the listings, because there was a cat food on the market at the time with the same name…