drinking at the mozilla water fountain
some discussion of this came up after a question about trusted computing/palladium following cory’s talk about the eff. he described having to lie to his dumb bank to convince them that his browser of choice (ostensibly mozilla, safari, or opera) was in fact internet explorer so it would let him through to do his business.
well my browser of choice is mozilla (currently using 1.6, the latest stable version), and when i tried to make a payment using checkfree for my wachovia-branded MBNA credit card, i got this insanely stupid message:
Browser Upgrade Required We have detected that your browser is an older version of Netscape. You must upgrade to Netscape Navigator 6.2 or later.
so i had to lie to my bank by downloading the very cool User Agent Switcher to pretend to be internet explorer to get through their DUMB browser detection script to pay my credit card bill. sheesh!
in other frustrated computer user news, my beloved laptop has developed a problem: when i plug it in, it appears to short itself out and shut off. so i’m sending it in to have the system board replaced (again)—at possibly the WORST time ever to be without my laptop. suffice it to say i’m backing up the hard drive and burning a cd of all master’s paper relevant documents. *sniff sniff* word up though: ibm thinkpad support rulez. box arrived at 10am today after calling last night after 6pm and they promise a max 5 day turn-around.
laptop came back today! how’s that for service? i haven’t even heard word from marchionini about my masters paper.
only problem is, it came back with 5 drivers unintalled. what the…?
three were easy: video, audio, ethernet.
but two were hard: pci device, pci device? eh?
thanks to google: one was an intel PCI bridge and the other was a modem. hrm. ibm should know better to send a laptop back in that kind of condition. oh well. at least it came back quickly. brand new system board. no more power shorts. yippeee!
agh!
so i get my laptop back with power problem fixed. i reinstalled 5 drivers, two which i had to research and the laptop won’t awake from standby mode. Err. i want a new laptop that works.
correction: it awakes from standby only after i force a complete power down (hold button for 5 secs or remove battery) and turn it back on.
that’s not really considered “waking up” though, is it?
no it’s more like life after death.
another problem. the blue thinkpad scroll button don’t work in mozilla no more. works in word, IE, etc. wtf?
reinstalled trackpoint driver fixed scrolling problem.
spent more than an hour on the phone this morning with tech support, installed or reinstalled half a dozen things. tried this that and other other to see if something, anything would cause the laptop to emerge from standby. no luck yet.
last ditch effort. reimaging my hard drive. sigh.