one mikro2nd
web2, net3, programming, design, business, and the fundamental nature of spacetime

Nedbank Service Fail    [ random/ ]

Rant ahead. Feel free to leave now.

No, really! This is just whining in public about the unbelievably crapulatious service Nedbank dishes out to its customers.

A service I recurringly buy, and have repeatedly bought for... oh, probably more than 5 years, now... using the self-same Nedbank credit-card... came up for renewal yesterday. Mysteriously the transaction failed, so the vendor sent me an email to let me know. Very odd! As I say, it has worked fine for years. The card has not expired - the only reason transactions have failed before now.

Oh well, off to pay the invoice manually. Using the same card, naturally. (It's the Business card, you see, so simpler for tax and accounting than using a personal card.)

Next thing, I find my browser redirected to some foreign website "bankserv.co.za" for "verification". Oh yeah?! There's a crappy, pixelated copy of a Nedbank logo at the top. That sure looks convincing! And they're asking me for all sorts of account details, including my CVV number, ID number, and some arbitrary and mysterious field labeled only "Personal".

What sort of phishing operation is this?

Actually it turns out to be an alleged "Fraud Prevention" thing called 3-D Secure. I've only heard of it because I know people who have had the pain of implementing payment solutions that use it.

• Question: Why did Nedbank not bother to communicate to their customers that they would be requiring this much-changed payment process?
• Question: Why do Nedbank not do it on their own website, instead sending me to some website who's identity is a complete unknown to me?
• Question: Is this not the most incredibly stupid thing to do in a web where phishing and identity theft is rife?

Later, a call to Nedbank's unbelievably crappy customer "service" centre illuminated a whole lot of these details. The bottom line is that:

1. Nedbank absolutely require us to use this 3-D Secure thingie.
2. The shitty 3-D "secure" thingie absolutely requires that I enter my cellphone number to complete their process. Unfortunately, where I live, cellphone reception simply does not exist, so not an option.
   
3. So: I have no way to complete their crappy process, and
4. Nedbank has no other process.

Fail!

The 3-D Secure form did not even have a field labeled "Cellphone number". How is anyone supposed to guess at this?

Then, too, there is no way to opt out. They claim that the 3-D Secure process is to "verify my identity". This despite the fact that they have all my FICA docs on record. They have my other business account details on record (because that's how they get paid every month) and they manage to successfully send me statements every month, and a new card every couple of years.

And the process absolutely requires that I be reachable by cellphone. What if I don't have or want one? What if I have one but can't get reception? Has anybody pointed out to the shit-heads at Nedbank that SMS is not a secure nor reliable channel of communication?

• Question: Why would I jump through all these hoops, put up with really shitty service and all this pain from Nedbank when Standard Bank (my other, other bank) have been trying to give me a business credit-card for years, only to be turned down (because why would I want another credit card?)
• Question: How quickly can I close this Nedbank account?
• Question: Did anybody at Nedbank bother to turn their brains on when thinking about this process, or were they - as usual - operating with their heads stuck so far up their own arse that they could see out their own throat?

Oh! I paid the invoice using my personal credit-card (Standard Bank.) Payment went through flawlessly, painlessly and instantly with no hoops to jump through.

21.Jun.10  8:44 AM, SAST | Words (611) | 3 Comments | 0 Trackbacks

About Email    [ random/ ]

A short note on How I Handle Email communication.

Lately I've had a few people express their unease over my handling of emails, so I thought I'd write - once and for all - about how I deal with email. One of these was phoning me, worried, because I had not responded to her email within 15 minutes of her sending it. Another was complaining because emails I have sent him have never appeared in his inbox. It turned out that his ESP (email service provider) was having a Bad-Config Day.

Please remember that it is eMail. Not eInstantAnswer. Not eGuaranteedDelivery. Not eRegisteredMail. And humble though it is, I find it (still!) indispensable.

Share and Enjoy!

08.Jun.10  3:35 PM, SAST | Words (113) | 0 Comments | 0 Trackbacks

Those Damn JavaStations Just Won't Go Away.    [ random/ ]

Actually, this thing - going by the dubious name of 'zero client' - looks to be something more like a SunRay than a JavaStation NC.

I have what is probably one of the only production JavaStations left in the world sitting downstairs - by the front door - waiting to get dumped for recycling. It is not one of those original concept JavaStations - youknow, the one that looked like the Heart Of Gold starship with Infinite Improbability Drive. Rather it was one that actually worked, looking more like a conventional PC, but with an odd (smart-card) slot in the front. It was part of a special production-run that Sun did for a client about 10 years ago which deal fell into disarray when the Left Hand of Marketing failed to talk to the Right Hand of Management at Sun, and they canned the entire JavaStation concept. As a result a couple of thousand of these JavaStations got dumped and the customer got the contract fulfilled by other means.

Actually, it would make a nice X terminal when running Linux. You'd just have to reflash the BIOS.

It occurs to me that there must be some JavaStation nostalgia buff out there that might want it. Any offers?

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Technorati Tags: network-computer, javastation, fx100, sunray, nostalgia, retro

04.Mar.10  7:12 AM, SAST | Words (211) | 2 Comments | 0 Trackbacks

Death    [ random/ ]

So Jason and I were discussing death, as we sometimes do. In particular, what to have engraved¹ on our tombstones (assuming we get so lucky!)

"I told you I was ill" -- Spike Milligan

This quickly degenerated to the OO software-designer specific:

"I've been finalized..."

"I've been Garbage Collected."

"Finally, I've been taken up to the PermGen space!"

...all depends on your spiritual views, I suppose...

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[1] I it just a coincidence that tombstones get engraved? Probably not.

02.Feb.10  7:01 PM, SAST | Words (71) | 0 Comments | 0 Trackbacks

Well done, Jason!    [ random/ ]

Congratulations to Jason on becoming the first family-member to get published: Implement Automatic Discovery in Your Java Code with Annotations — Developer.com

. Hopefully only the first in a series!

17.Dec.09  9:01 AM, SAST | Words (30) | 0 Comments | 0 Trackbacks

Backups    [ random/ ]

Nice story on /. this morning about a faulty backup strategy gone wrong and its consequences. I'll bet a lot of smalltime operators are checking their backups this morning.

I know I am ;-)

15.May.09  7:52 AM, SAST | Words (33) | 1 Comments | 0 Trackbacks

RandomBits Font Change    [ random/ ]

Changed the font-size on RandomBits to 9pt. A bit small for me, but I'm finding 10pt a bit too large. I'll try living with it for a while and see if it sticks. Also fixed a CSS bug: insufficient space between paragraphs.

13.Apr.09  9:04 AM, SAST | Words (42) | 0 Comments | 0 Trackbacks

Infrastructure Fix    [ random/ ]

Finally!  Took a day off from preparing for the (Advanced Architecture and Design) course I'm hosting next week, and spent the time getting my local infrastructure back on its feet after a breakdown some weeks ago.  Basically the LAN server died... motherboard or CPU. Suddenly we realised just how much we've come to depend on that little machine!  DNS caching, plus names for all the machine on our farm-LAN¹, HTTP proxy, local Subversion server, file-share, music streaming, and not to mention supplying the base-infrastructure for some Jini services that come and go as we play around with Jini and JavaSpaces.

So now that we've beefed-up the CPU and disk a bit, it was "just" a case of getting all the bits of server software installed and cleanly configured. Nothing difficult, but it all takes time! Especially when you're a bit.... fastidious?... about getting the config "right", as opposed to "just poking things until they work". I truly despise "voodoo config" where people don't really make the effort to understand the impact and effects of what they're doing, and fuck it up royally as a result.  "Oh, well, I'll install mod_disk_cache and mod_mem_cache... after all, two caches must be better than one, mustn't they?"  Ding!  You Do Not Win The Lounge Suite!

Well, its been fun! And finally I can forget all about it again until the next hardware failure. The only thing I really would like to achieve is to get the server quiet², and get its power-consumption way, way down!  And maybe have a few more tiny-little servers...

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[1] The term "server farm" takes on a whole new significance ;-)

[2] Yeah, I'm a complete arsehole about noise. I really, really, really hate noise...

10.Sep.08  3:11 PM, SAST | Words (282) | 0 Comments | 0 Trackbacks