"A stable, robust, scalable, dynamic and reliable information system is a cornerstone of any kind of Grid system."

Let me stop you right there: :dielaugh: Robust? The very same infosys which crashed over a slightly malformed configuration file? Reliable? The same infosys which crashed twice in two months? Stable? The same infosys which launches daemons and never actually kills them, so you end up with just more and more processes?

It's good to aim high. :D

After yesterday's intervention, my phone is still dead so I'm looking for the customer service number again when I find this, a chart showing average times of waiting for service. I decided to check it.

Yesterday, I did not time my waiting but it had to be at least 15 minutes. Today it was 11 minutes, so although I'm being moved up the queue (presumably at the expense of other customers), I still end up waiting way beyond the "average". Apparently the average time today is 2 minutes. :rolleyes:

So I get the tech on the line, explain the problem, he takes a look and tells me my phone adapter doesn't have an IP address assigned, so it's effectively offline. He set it up with a static ip remotely and all I have to do is restart the adapter. That simple, huh? And that was the entire problem? I see. So apparently what the other guy told me yesterday (ever notice that when you call for support you _never_ get the same person twice?) was utter bs.

So I restart the adapter and what do you know, my phone works again. How nice it is to deal with people who know what they're talking about.

Don't you hate these things? It's such a chore to me when I have to do it. Today I had the DSL company on the line cause my phone has been disconnected, a mere month after I ordered a new phone service based on broadband telephony. After I ordered it, the phone was working for about 2 weeks before it was blatantly disconnected and if you try it now, you'll get that familiar "this number is not in service" message.

So I call them up and I have to navigate the feckin phone system. Press one for sales, press two for service, press three to end the misery and get electrocuted. So I'm #21 in the queue. Now I'm convinced that these numbers they give you are a complete sham, just random generated everytime. How is it possible that the further back I am, the quicker I progress until I get to the very front, when they always keep me waiting for ages? Doesn't make much sense. What I hate most about this is holding the stupid phone at my ear, if I put it down I risk they unexpectedly put me on, I don't hear it and they hang up so I have to start over.

And they always play you the same annoying music, don't they? 3 years ago, 2 months ago and today, always the same one. Every few minutes they say "Thank you for waiting, you have been moved ahead in the queue." Da fuck? Why would they move me up? At the expense of whom? This system is seriously void of any logic. In fact the only logical consequence is that your number in the queue never increases. So finally I get to be number one. I hate being number one, that's when they make you wait the longest. One time I was number one, they took me off the queue and I was listening to a phone not being answered, I bet the bastard was at lunch. So I'm still number one and oddly enough, I get the same message. "Thank you for waiting, you've been moved up the queue." How very kind of you, apart from the fact that I'm still number one and I'm still waiting. I believe I got that message twice before I got the service department on the line.

So I explain the problem and the guy asks me did I do any changes to the router when I got it? Yes, I forwarded all the ports to my firewall. Well there's your problem. But how come it did work for the first 2 weeks? I can't answer that. Erm... fine, I'll see what I come up with. So I reset the router to the state it was when I first got it and you guessed it, phone line still doesn't work. So now I'm stuck with the sequel tomorrow morning.

...is brutal. I was woken up this morning at 7.13 and as I came through the door at work, it was 7.57. Three and a half hours into it, after coffee, I'm still suffering. And I miss music, I usually have it with me but today I don't so there's nothing to distract myself with from falling asleep. :(

Put your press pass and tape recorder away, it's old news, but it's definitely worth mentioning. What am I talking about? Project Gutenberg, an online repository of free ebooks. They pride themselves in having released 10,000 books online for anyone to read. That was by 2003, so the total number I don't know. But if you think it sounds a bit sketchy, here's a list of the Top 100 books (in fact several top100 lists), where you can verify that they have plenty of goodies on display.

Now, great as this initiative is here are two points of criticism:

1. The books are not accessible enough. If I want a specific book, I can search for it but there is no categorizing into genres. The only meta info they provide is when the book was released by Project Gutenberg. So if you have some other outlet of books which lets you context search, search by genre, "customers who purchased this also purchased the following" etc, then you can use that and come back and look for the book you want. But that kind of meta info is very helpful in finding new books you may enjoy.
2. The books are all in plain text format. Well, it's either plain text or html, but both look unformatted (no css) and very dull to read off the screen. Wouldn't it be great to also have .tex releases (or some other markup, I don't care which one) so that we could compile or own pdf's or other more user friendly formats?
   (To be fair, the html version has markup and I believe all books are marked up exactly the same way, so you could just write your own css but that has concrete limitations.)