For people living in Germany, dealing with bad service is something we must do on a daily basis. Whether we’re shopping, dealing with the German bureaucracy or paying our electricity bill. There are exceptions, though. And until recently, I considered Amazon.de to be one of those exceptions.

When I started looking around for an affordable netbook, Amazon.de wasn’t the cheapest place to start from. But since I had to deal with their customer service before on a number of occasions and usually found their personnel friendly, competent and helpful, I decided to buy a Samsung N130 @anynet from them instead of other retailers. After bad experiences with German electronics chain stores, I made a conscious decision to give up a few points on the price scale for better service.

Here is what happened: While searching through all available netbooks, I found the lack of systems that don’t ship with Windows preinstalled quite annoying. I didn’t intend to use a Microsoft OS this time. Even if I wanted to, I have accumulated a respectable number of various Windows XP versions over the last years, and since I started studying at university, I was able to get most Microsoft software for free through the MSDN Academic Alliance anyway. So I didn’t see the point of paying for yet another Windows system that I wasn’t going to use. Fortunately, I don’t have to!

When you run a new Windows PC for the first time, you will be shown an “End-user License Agreement”, or EULA. As an end-user, you’re free to choose whether you want to use Windows or not. You’re not obliged to agree to the license terms. In fact, if you reject the EULA, you’re entitled to receive a refund equal to the price of the Windows XP license which was included in the product price. Not many people know this, but getting a refund on the Windows-tax has been a hot issue in the Open Source community for a few years now. Amazon UK, Amazon US and various European Amazon branches have refunded Windows licenses in the past. In France, courts usually ruled in favour of consumers in similar cases in the past.

Naturally, I also contacted Amazon’s customer service and asked about a refund for my Microsoft Windows license. One day later, I received a rather snippy E-mail saying that they couldn’t find any information regarding my question and told me to contact Samsung directly instead. Dissatisfying to say the least. As an end-user you’re not obliged to sort out the matter with the manufacturer yourself. You can do so, if you want, but according to German law, the retailer has to handle matters of this nature. And, quite frankly, referring you to other places is just a common tactic of customer services to get people to back off. I therefore gave a bad feedback and asked them to call me personally to sort out the matter. Five minutes later, I was on the phone with a very friendly person who had a much better idea of what I was talking about and promised to look into the issue for me. An hour later, I received an E-mail from the same person saying that it would take about two more days, as she had to refer the issue to her superiors. I agreed and waited, but didn’t receive an answer.

The days after that were very busy and it wasn’t until a few weeks later that I remembered the issue and contacted the customer service again. I first sent another E-mail, which was simply completely ignored this time. So I called the hotline directly and was told by a rather bad-tempered employee that they’re still processing my request and it would take a few more days. I was bascially completely ignored again. But I also admit that my motivation wasn’t too strong to pursue the issue any further, for I felt that the money wasn’t worth all the time and effort. Even though people occasionally report receiving very high refunds, around 40 Euros per license, other sources give lower numbers of around 8-10 Euros.

From a rational perspective, it doesn’t make sense for manufacturers to ship low-priced netbooks with Windows. It only makes their products more expensive. In some cases it adds up to 20% to the original price, which is a lot in that market. Also, Windows uses netbook hardware less efficiently than Linux and hence reduces performance and battery time. My guess is that Microsoft, fearing they would get left behind in the netbook market, offers Windows licenses to manufacturers at below-market prices. But that is just a guess. It’s not my job to figure this out

The issue has been dragging on for about two months now, and before finishing this post, I called Amazon again and asked what happened to my request. This time, an employee took more time to look into the issue, and finally told me that Amazon Germany doesn’t honour refund requests of this type. Their rationale is that they only offer netbooks ‘as-is’, and if the manufacturer decides to ship a netbook with Windows then there is nothing Amazon or the consumers can do about it. They offered to refund the netbook, though, but I declined. As a measure of last resort I contacted Samsung Germany and received the same answer — they won’t refund Windows licenses, but offered that I could return the netbook. Remember that all of this is illegal under German and EU law, but it is unlikely that anybody will go to court to argue over a Windows license worth 10 Euros.

Altogether a pretty disappointing experience. Especially considering that Amazon honoured similar requests of their customers in the United Kingdom or the United States. But it seems like they consider their German customers second-class.

• The OpenSourcer: Getting your Microsoft Tax refunded
• Slashdot: Amazon US refunds Windows License fee
• The Inquirer: French court orders Windows refund

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I recently received an old Japanese NEC LaVie NX LB26C/62A laptop from a friend and was asked to reformat it. Given the age and the exotic nature of the system, finding drivers was nearly impossible. However, with a little help from Everest, a system information tool which identifies your computer’s hardware components, I was able to track down drivers for most of the LaVie’s hardware. Incidentially, the LaVie NX LB26C/62A seems to be identical to a Packard Bell Easylite 301, which made the whole job of getting the system back up and running a lot easier.

I originally intended to put a lightweight Linux distro on the system, but it seems that except for Damn Small Linux and TinyME 2008, most modern Linux distros were too much to handle for the LaVie’s little CPU So you either look for older Linux systems that were used back in the 1990s, or you simply settle for Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 98 SE. Since my friend doesn’t use the computer to go online or download stuff, I chose Windows 98 SE, a system he is already familiar with. But even just ‘upgrading’ Windows 98 enough for it to be usable for most of today’s everyday tasks was quite difficult already. First of all, here are the respecitve hardware drivers for the LaVie NX LB26C/62A.

LaVie NX LB26C/62A Windows 98SE Hardware Drivers

1. Video: Trident 9388 Video Driver (Win95&98)
2. Sound: ESS Maestro-2E (ES1978s) Audio Driver (Win 98SE)
3. Modem: Psion Dacom Gold Card Global V.90 56K+Fax Utility (Easyswitch) (Win95&98)

• Easylite 301 Driver Page on support.packardbell.com

You can use a USB stick to port the drivers over to the system, but since Windows 98’s USB support is rudimentary at best, you will first have to install drivers for your USB stick. Many sticks will work with generic USB drivers, but not all of them. Technical-assistance.co.uk has generic USB drivers for Windows 98 SE available:

• Generic Windows 98 SE USB driver: Technical-assistance.co.uk

Modernizing Windows 98

Although Windows 9x systems don’t support Unicode, there are a few things you can do to make your system more ‘international’. Get the two files below to add limited Unicode support to your system and to be able to input Chinese, Japanese & Korean text in Microsoft Office:

• Microsoft Layer for Unicode on Windows 9x
• Microsoft Global IME for Microsoft Office (Windows 9x)

There area two tools that will make your life with Windows 98 a lot easier. TweakUI will let you change various design options of Windows systems without having to modify the registy. KernelEx is an open-source compatibility layer which aims to make Windows XP-only programmes run on Windows 98. Through KernelEx, you will be able to use the newest version of Firefox or Adobe Flash, which you wouldn’t be able to run otherwise.

• TweakUI for Windows 98: Annoyances.org
• KernelEx on SourceForge.net

Getting WPA encrypted W-LAN to work on Windows 98

There is also a way to get WPA-encrypted Wireless Internet working on Windows 98. Normally, commercial software would be required here. But thanks to the Netzwerkportal.de, I found a free alternative. I used a Digitus PCMCIA 802.11g Wireless Internet card for my tests and found their solution worked for me.

1. Get the McAfee Wireless Security Installer 4.1, for example from Netzwerkportal.de.
2. Run the installation and keep clicking ‘next’ until you get to the screen with the License Agreement. Read the License Agreement and continue if you accept it. When you get to the point where the installation dialogue asks you to specify an installation folder, make sure you activate the checkbox in the lower right corner, so you will only install the free components.
3. Reboot your system.

You should now have a little icon for the WSC Wireless Network manager in your system tray.

• WPA encyrption on Windows 9x systems: German tutorial on Netzwerktotal.de

Everyday software

Most modern software doesn’t support Windows 9x anymore, but KernelEx should at least help you a little to circumvent the intentional vendor lockouts and make modern browsers, such as Firefox 3.5, work on your Windows 98 system. If you need to make sure that your software will work on flawlessly on Windows 98, though, always try to use the officially supported versions.

• Java JDK/JRE 5.0 (Windows 9x supported)
• Outpost Firewall 1.0 Free: OldVersion.com (get the ‘old’ free version from oldversion.com, not the current free version from agnitum.com, to save RAM)
• OpenOffice 1.1.5
• VideoLAN VLC 0.8.6 (last version to support Windows 9x)

Afterthoughts

Working with Windows 98 is not easy anymore these days, since more and more software projects drop support for the Win9x series. Many people will say that now, more than 10 years after the initial release of Windows 98, it’s about time the system disappears from computer screens. While I understand this opinion and people’s frustration with Win98 endless bugs and security flaws, I also understand people who can’t afford a modern computer system, or are for one way or another stuck with Windows 98. This post merely tries to show them how to work more effectively on an old system

Don’t forget to make sure that you still need proper antivirus protection (even though Windows 98 compatible antivirus may be a little hard to come by) and a firewall if you intend to browse the web. Try to keep your online times to a minimum, though. And please remember that you’re using all tools provided here at your own risk! Good luck!

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A friend of mine recently set up his own WordPress blog, so I gave him a few hints on how to secure his blog and I thought I might as well share it with all prospective WordPress users out there Although WordPress is an excellent system for getting your thoughts out to the world, the WordPress developers could do more to make the system really secure. In the meantime, here are a few steps you can take yourself:

1. Change the SQL table prefix: You can either do that via the configuration files before you run the WordPress installation, or via a plugin later. My advice is to do it before you set up your blog, just to be on the safe side. Otherwise your blog will use the same table names as 99% of all self-hosted WordPress blogs, making it vulnerable to SQL injections.
2. Secure the administration interface: Your administration interface is located in the subfolder ~/wp-admin/. Again, since all WordPress blogs use the same subfolder, this is another common point of attack. There are various ways to add another layer of security here. Unfortunately, you cannot just rename the wp-admin folder. But you can use a .htaccess file to restrict who will be able to access the folder. One possibility, for example, would be to only allow access from a certain IP. But then you would have to tie yourself to a certain location to access your blog, and if your ISP uses dynamic IPs, this won’t be an option anyway. Another option is to add another htaccess user/password combination. Of course, this requires that you type in two different login credentials each time you log in, which is a bit of a hassle. But there are other options as well. Simply try your luck at Google.com
3. Get the Secure WordPress plugin and use it to further secure your administration interface. Simply install it and play around with the settings a bit. Not all settings are important, but you should definitively apply the option to remove error messages on your login page. Again, this is something where the WordPress developers could have done more. In case somebody makes it to your login page after the measures we have taken above, WordPress will by default tell them if they entered a correct user name. Why is this a bad thing, you may think? Well, normally people neither know the user name nor the password you’re using to access your blog. So they would have to guess millions of possible user-password combinations to log in. But if WordPress gives them a notice as soon as they hit a correct user name, they would only have to continue looking for your password. That makes it a lot easier for them, and they could step by step brute force their way into your system. See more below.
4. Change the name of your administrator account: You will need direct access to your SQL database to do this. Most web space providers will give you a link to a tool to handle administration of your SQL databases. Normally, they run some flavour of phpMyAdmin, but you could also install the script yourself. Again, all WordPress blogs use the same name for their administrator accounts. And again, this is something where I think the WordPress guys could have done more. As I said above, things will get a lot easier if attackers already know which user name you use to sign in to your system. And since they will also know where to look for blog’s login page, they are already half the way. I can’t go into detail here too much, since WordPress changes over time and I don’t want to give the wrong advice. Google is your friend.
5. Adding to this, I also suggest your set up a new user with lower privilidges that you use to do your every day blogging. In case somebody catches you typing in your password, he won’t be able to cause too much trouble at least. Note that WordPress alows you to specify a display name for your new user account that is different from the actual name you use to sign in. Make use of this feature!
6. Get a spam filter. You’ll be surprised how many comments a new WordPress blog receives during its first days.

Hope this helps

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Many Westerners who would like to use QQ, China’s largest instant messenger & social network, feel deterred by the standard QQ software. The programme feels very heavy, looks bloated and is full of advertising. And since the QQ network is usually not THAT important to us, we either look for alternatives or we rather not use it.

I have posted about LumaQQ, a Java-based alternative to the original software, about three years ago. I didn’t use LumaQQ for too long back then and from what I can gather from their homepage, the project seems to be dead by now. The Pidgin QQ plugin, which comes with the main programme by default (download here), was much more convienent and has bascially worked flawlessly for the last two years. Until last summer, when Tencent decided to close the channel for third party clients. At first, users were still able to ‘circumvent’ their blocks by changing a setting in Pidgin that told the server you were using a much newer version of QQ. However, Tencent was quick to fix that hole and now you will usually receive a message like this one when trying to sign in: “您的号码可能存在异常情况，已受到限制登录保护，需激活后才能正常登录。激活网址：http://jihuo.qq.com” — literally: Don’t come back until you got the propper software. Adium, Pidgin’s sister-client for Mac OS X, suffers from the same problem, but won’t get fixed either until the Pidgin devs update the libraries.

Unfortunately, QQ isn’t the highest priority on the list for Pidgin’s developers. Moreover, I’ve heard that the Pidgin QQ plugin is based on LumaQQ code, so I’m not too optimistic about receiving a fix soon. So what options are left? There are a couple of Linux apps that still boast QQ support, Kopete for example. But as I don’t use Linux for everyday work that doesn’t really help. And I wasn’t able to get Kopete to sign on using it on Windows via the experimental ‘KDE on Windows‘. Seems all the third party clients are having this problem. So until someone comes up with a solution to circument Tencent’s new block, the only option left would be to use WebQQ. WebQQ works similar to Microsoft’s Web Messenger for MSN. It’s an online interface for their chat network that runs in your browser and enables you to log in from any computer with internet access. Unfortunately, the website is Chinese-only, so it may be a little difficult to navigate if you don’t speak Chinese. Give it a try, though — you might have to stick with it for a while.

• WebQQ: http://web.qq.com/

annoyances, asia, china, internet, software Hide

Many of my posts cover topics relevant to students of Asian languages. Today is no exception If you’re studying an Asian language (or any other language that appears ‘exotic’ from a Western point of view), you will be familiar with the concept of ‘flashcards‘. And you will also know that, at some point during your studies, you just reach a point where it’s not feasible anymore to write flashcards by hand. There will be a moment when you realize that you need to make more progress in much shorter time if you want to succeed. And flashcards have certain drawbacks: once you start using the Leitner system (see Wikipedia for a short rundown) it’s difficult finding cards when you suddenly realize that you need to change or correct something. Also, flashcards have only a frontside and a backside, which is not enough if you need to memorize: a) a foreign character, b) the stroke order of that certain character, c) its various pronunciations and finally d) its translation. Things may get even more complicated depending on the language you’re studying. So having multiple card sides available (preferably adjustable by yourself) is a big plus, which is an advantage software-based systems can offer.

But software has disadvantages as well. You won’t be writing a character down physically when you create a card, you will only type it into a virtual computer programme — and as your daily quota of words increases, it might take a while until you finally get to practise those words. I often found myself merely ‘processing information’ rather than learning a language. Software is also rather inflexible. You could take your flashcards anywhere and practice. Heck, you could practice while waiting for the water to boil or at the bus stop. But who wants to boot up a computer every time he wants to run a little piece of software to learn Chinese? Which is why interoperability with mobile devices is important. Unfortunately, except of a few commercial web applications (which require internet access — not good), there are very few options for your cellphone. In fact, there is only one that I know of, called MobVoc — a very young vocabulary trainer that can be installed on Java-enabled mobile phones. Apple also offers a vocabulary trainer for the iPhone which can open files created with iFlash, an excellent Mac OS X vocabulary trainer. I will try to give a short overview over the most popular programmes below.

jMemorize (Windows, Linux, Mac, others/Open Source)

Version tested: 1.3.0
Homepage: http://jmemorize.org/
Opens .jml (jMemorize’s own format), .csv, .tsv
Saves: .jml, .pdf, .rtf, .csv

I will start with jMemorize as it’s the vocabulary trainer I’ve been using since starting university. It’s neither the best application, nor the most versatile. In fact, the longer I used it, its shortages have become more and more apparent to me, but first things first jMemorize is an open source project that has been running for a couple of years already. It’s a Java-based vocabulary trainer, so it will work on a whole lot of different systems, including Windows 9x systems. It is a relatively lightweight application, yet when loading a larger file, the programme seems to slow down a little. The presentation is simple, and the whole application just ‘feels right’. The interface is very intuitive and the graphis showing you your ’stacks’ of flashcards are a nice idea.

The downsides: flashcards only have two card sides, just like the paper ones you use in real life. So its not very suited for studying Asian languages. Unfortunately, this was something I only realized later after spending hours typing my vocabulary into the programme So I admit I’m a little reluctant to switch now. The file format, although XML, looks confusing and a little unstructured. That makes it im- and exporting vocabulary from or to other programmes difficult. Last but not least: depite a very active online community and many feature requests, the programme hasn’t received an update for over a year now. But however you put it, it’s still the application I started studying Chinese with and it has proved very stable for the last three years, longer than most programmes survive on my hard disk, so it deserves its place here

Anki (Windows, Linux, Mac/Open Source)

Version tested: 0.9.9.8.5
Homepage: http://ichi2.net/anki/
Opens: .anki, .mem, .wcu, .xml
Saves: .anki, .txt

This is an application I’ve heard of before from students of Japanese. But my attention was drawn to Anki again through a friend who now uses it to study Chinese. Seems the developers widened the focus of the application a bit The most intriguing feature of Anki is certainly its online capabilities. On the Anki website there is a feature called Anki Online, which is nothing else than a browser-based version of Anki, which allows you to practise wherever you have internet access. Technically, this should also work on more advanced mobile devices, but I didn’t check up on that. You can even synchronize your card decks with the Anki webserver automatically. Certainly a nice gimmick.

The programme interface is very lean and intuitively designed. It’s easy to use, right from that start. Precreated card decks are available on startup through an integrated download manager. It’s clear that Anki is one of the older projects around, which have received a lot of work already. Everything, including keyboard shortcuts, is very well thought through. But even Anki can’t deny where it’s coming from. You will definitely notice that it was originally designed to study Japanese, but that shouldn’t keep you from using it for other purposes. One last issue I have with Anki is that, despite the fact that you can create three-sided cards (character – pronunciation – translation), it looks like it’s not possible to check for the pronunciation separately (or at least I wasn’t able to find the corresponding function), which is a little disappointing. If Anki had that feature, it would be nearly perfect.

Update (2009-10-17): I was told that you can indeel tell Anki to check for pronunciation separately. You just need to create a deck of cards with three sides and then configure Anki the right way. Must have slipped past me when I checked the programme, but it’s good to know it’s there Great feature.

Mnemosyne (Windows, Linux, Mac/Open Source)

Version tested: 1.2.1
Homepage: http://mnemosyne-proj.org/
Opens: .mem, .wcu, various .txt and .xml formats
Saves: .mem, .wcu, .txt, .xml

One application I’ve found on Wikipedia before writing up this post is Mnemosyne. Mnemosyne was the fastest programme I tested. It’s graphical user interface is extremely clean and the whole application feels very very light. The simplicity comes at a price, though. Mnemosyne is not as customizable as the other programmes covered. As much as I liked the coding, though, I have to admit that, similarly to Anki, I don’t quite understand why the author goes through the hassle of creating a system that allows the user to enter three-sided cards, but not to check for the pronunciation separately when memorizing new words. Also, I found the system of storing cards a little confusing. As soon as you enter a new vocabulary, the programme seems to create two cards — e.g. if you study German, Mnemosyne would for each vocabulary create one card English->German and another card German->English, instead of just flipping the card around when needed. I could imagine that this causes a lot of redundancy. Still, I think that this programme would be best suited for casual users, who don’t need a lot of options, but something that just works. Precreated card decks are available on the Mnemosyne homepage.

Parley (Linux/Open Source)

Version tested: 0.9.1
Homepage: http://edu.kde.org/parley/
Opens: .kvtml, .wql, .xml.qz, .pau.gz, .voc, .xdxf, .csv
Saves: .kvtml, .csv

The next programme on the list is ‘Parley’, an application included in Linux KDE’s Education package. Parley is one of the most mature vocabulary trainers I’ve seen by far. Not only does it open a whole bunch of different formats, it also has a very thoughtful designed interface and plenty of settings. You can add as many sides or languages to a card deck as you want. And the programme even handels verb conjugations, in case that exists in the language of your choice I admit I haven’t used the programme much, which is due to the fact that it’s only available for Linux so far — which is also the programme’s biggest disadvantage. HOWEVER, the KDE developers are working on a port of their desktop environent to Windows, called ‘KDE on Windows’, which can be found and downloaded at http://windows.kde.org/. They have made tremendous progress already, but it’s still a work -in-progress and not recommended for everyday use. If you really want to  give it a try, head over to their website, download the installer and choose to install the KDE education package. After the installation, you will find Parley in Start Menu -> KDE – > Education. The Windows version of Parley still shows a few error messages every now and then and it is a little slow. I’ve especially had trouble when running the app in a normal user account instead of my administrator account.

The main reason why you will want to keep an eye on this project, though, is MobVoc. MobVoc, which is available on http://mobvoc.sourceforge.net/, is a small vocabulary trainer for Java-enabled mobile phones. It’s extremely light, fast and responsive and runs on even the most basic Java -equipped phones. The project was only started in 2008 and so far MobVoc basically just flips through the words, but doesn’t save which words you actually learned. So as a vocabulary trainer, MobVoc doesn’t live up to its purpose, but it’s an ongoing project. And it’s free Precreated card decks for Parley and MobVoc are available on the Parley homepage.

Update (2009-11-15): After using Parley for a few days on Ubuntu Karmic Koala, I found that it doesn’t fully live up to what it promises. In spite of all its useful features, the programme in general feels a little buggy and many features just don’t work right. I’m not sure if this is related to my system, but I for my part will stick with jMemorize for now. Having a basic but stable vocabulary trainer counts more than dozens of fancy features.

iFlash (Mac/Freeware)

Homepage: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/home_learning/iflash.html
Opens: .cards, .csv
Saves: .cards, iPhone and iPod projectors

I didn’t really get to test this programme as I’ve never owned a Mac myself., but many of my friends use or used it, and I’ve seen it in action for the whole first semester at Jiaotong University thanks to Kai So I figured I should include it for the sake of completeness. Similarly to Parley, the application looks very mature already. Other than the applications above, the interface looks much leaner, but it doesn’t lack any of the essential features. Very Apple Especially the controls seem very intuitive. You flip through all the card sides with your cursor keys, then use the space key to mark a card as learned. iFlash vocabulary files can also be run on iPhones and other mobile devices, however the corresponding software doesn’t allow the user to mark things as learned, just like MobVoc above, which is particularly disappointing since the rest of the programme looks very well designed. I am sure there will be a fix for this some time, though. So if you’re a Mac user, I wouldn’t know why you would need to change

Other programmes

• Pauker (Windows, Linux, Mac, others/Open Source): http://pauker.sourceforge.net/
  A programme that doesn’t look very up to date anymore, but seems to have influenced later vocabulary trainers a lot. Many programmes presented here allowed for Pauker files to be imported.
• FlashBack (Windows, Linux/Open Source): http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Education/FlashBack-3490.shtml
• BeLearn (Windows/Payware): http://www.beblock.de/produkte/vokabeltrainer/
  First app I used when studying European languages at school. Very nice and intuitive interface. Checks user input. Drawback: bad customer service, see this post.

Conclusions

Choosing the winner is tough. If I had to generalize, I would give the award to Parley and iFlash. Both for their flexibility and their useful features. But the perfect programme for you really depends on your personal requirements and what you’re trying to do. Many people have been happy with Anki or jMemorize just as much The biggest problem is the lack of intercompatibility between different applications. There is no central file format that all applications implement. Even the formatting standards for plaintext .txt or .csv files differ from one programme to another. So choosing an application which can open and save different formats is crucial before you start typing hundreds of thousands of words into your computer.

It’s also a great pity that there are not more mobile Java applications around. MobVoc looks very promising, but hasn’t been updated for quite a while already. And again, interoperability is a problem here. Another feature I would like to see in more programmes is support for multiple card sides. If you want to learn an Asian language or if you just want to compare languages (e.g. memorize English and French words at the same time), multiple card sides just come in handy. This is an advantage that physical flashcards can’t provide and where computers can be a real help.

Last but not least: Remember this post is a work-in-progress. If you come across software that looks interesting or addresses one of the shortcomings mentioned here, please feel free to add a comment and share your findings with other readers. Although I’ve been mainly covering free/open source software, comments presenting commercial software are also very welcome.

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