₦airaland Forum

I hate to contradict all you Windows haters out there but have you considered the possibility that it's a hardware fault that's causing the problem? I have experienced similar problems in the past which was eventually traced to faulty memory.

I think it's generally more productive to be somewhat more objective rather than just blindly blaming Windows for everything that goes wrong with a computer.

The "Godfather of Soul" has passed away at the age of 73 following complications after being admitted to hospital on Sunday suffering from pneumonia.

May his soul rest in peace,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6208615.stm
http://www.accessnorthga.com/news/ap_newfullstory.asp?ID=85040
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/politics/16315327.htm

@r_o_b_b_y, In my experience, a "Good mechanic who specialises in BMWs" would in fact refuse to raise the car precisely for the reasons that Jammin stated particularly his point about stress points on the car. It is a fact that perhaps BMWs are not suited to Nigerian roads but I can assure you that Coscharis for example would never agree to raise a car on a customer's demand as that is not approved by BMW.

The simple fact of the matter is if you want to drive a BMW in Nigeria, you have to expect very high maintenance costs.

BMWs are great cars and I for one have always found them to be very reliable however as is the case with any car in any country, they have to be properly maintained by experienced mechanics and you should only use genuine approved BMW spare parts. Too often in Nigeria the problem is owners don't get them serviced regularly and when they do they use cheaper "Tokunbo" parts following which they then complain about poor reliability.

The bottom line is BMWs are very reliable in my opinion but you should make sure you can afford to maintain it properly because as the saying goes, "You only get what you pay for"

Ever changing development tools are a fact of life that all programmers have to deal with due to the fast pace of evolving technologies and development methods. It's also the case that end users and customers demand more complex applications delivered in shorter time spans to I for one am happy that the vendors generally do the best they can to help me keep delivering to schedule.

I agree that it can sometimes be almost overwhelming but perhaps one thing that a lot of new programmers overlook is the fact that you always have to keep learning in order to that your skills remain marketable.

Hi, sorry for the delay in replying but I was having problems getting internet access.

I'm working for a company that provides software solutions to GSM service providers here in Nigeria and the reason for going J2EE in this instance is the provider in question already has a JBoss cluster deployed on several Sun boxes running a number of their VAS services.

The USSD equipment manufacturer refused to give me direct access to the USSD gateway I guess to protect their intellectual property so what we have agreed is we would exchange XML-RPC messages via sockets. So in essence, my process will be a socket server listening for incoming requests from the USSD Gateway and spawning threads to handle them.

The connection is bi-directional but only in the sense that my connector has to synchronously acknowledge receipt of the message from the USSD Gateway or send an error message where applicable and then insert the message in a JMS queue. The client application will then consume the message from the JMS queue via a simple API I will provide or the client application may choose to consume the messages directly from the queue.

Thanks for the feedback and I think using a Singleton class as you suggest might just do the trick. I'll try it and let you know.

I don't have a full UML architecture diagram yet but the following gives an overview of the solution in question. Where I will use multi-thread sockets is in the interface to the USSD Gateway.

I'm developing a JCA 1.0 connector which will be deployed in an instance of JBoss 3.2.x.  The connections to the EIS are via multi thread sockets and I've used a static initialisation block in my Connection Factory implementation class to connect the sockets to the EIS so it's automatically instantiated when JBoss is started. 

My question is I'm a little unsure as to how the socket threads will be handled when a connection is closed by a JCA connector client. More specifically, can I be sure that all the threads applicable to the connection being closed will be destroyed or is there a risk that the number of threads will just keep increasing until there are no more resources available? Does anyone have any experience of this and if so what were your findings?

Check out the following sites for tutorials:

http://www.softsteel.co.uk/tutorials/cSharp/cIndex.html
http://www.programmingtutorials.com/csharp.aspx
http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/Tutorials.asp
http://www.csharp-station.com/

Point taken however to the best of my knowledge both Firefox & Opera also have security leaks. Some may believe they are more secure than IE but that is not to say they are perfect!

I downloaded and installed IE7 about a week ago and have used it extensively and have had absolutely no problems with it whatsoever. One potential source of problems when you upgrade which most people overlook is that you also have to update any plugins that you may be using (e.g. Yahoo toolbar, Google toolbar, MSN Toolbar etc.). The release motes from Microsoft clearly stipulate that all plugins have to be updated however sadly most people don't bother to read the notes before installation and then complain when things don't work properly.

I should stress that the above may not necessarily apply in all situations however I think it's quite possible that updating plugins solves problems in the majority of cases.

@Cactus, @ajiboyet
It would be helpful if you would back your comments up with solid facts rather than just making a sweeping statement regarding the functionality of IE compared to Opera and/or Firefox.

I also think you should remember that feelgood stated that the problem is with IE and has not expressed a wish to use another browser so merely advising a switch instead of attempting to understand and resolve the specific problem with IE is is my my view not very helpful. The reason I say that is it could well be the case for example that the problem is not in fact browser related and is perhaps due to a LAN and/or firewall configuration problem in which case switching to Firefox, Opera or any other browser would of course not resolve the problem. Having said that, it could of course be the case that feelgood had Opera or Firefox installed and then installed IE but that is not clear right now.

In conclusion, I personally think that amieo's question in response to the original post or Ynot's suggestion to rollback to a previous system restore point are the right approach.

For now, only Glo supports Blackberry.

I believe MTN may be starting some trials soon (only a rumour) and I have no information about Vmobile.

Ans 1: The phone company will have a record of the both incoming and outgoing calls however I would imagine that for privacy reasons they are highly unlikely to give you the data. Such data is normally only released following a request from the police and/or national security services.

Ans 2: The ability to block some or all incoming calls is handset dependent so you have to consult your user manual to ascertain if it's possible.

I don't know much about BlackBerry but with the exception of push email facilities, how does it differ from a GPRS enabled PDA?

My point is I can already access my corporate email on the move with my PDA via GPRS so whilst the arrival of BlackBerry in Nigeria is certainly welcome, I don't quite see how it will revolutionize the way business is done here in Nigeria or am I missing something?

@engr17, Unfortunately, this problem has nothing to do with the authenticity of the operating system as there are numerous documented incidents with people that have absolutely 100% genuine software.

It's caused by a bug in the validation application and we can only hope that Microsoft will fix the defect in due course.

It's by no means an isolated incident as I've read a number of posts about the so called "False positive" behaviour of Windows Genuine Advantage which is meant to help users identify genuine copies of Windows.

The following articles from MSDN attempt to explain why it happens but sadly doesn't provide a full proof solution,
http://blogs.msdn.com/wga/archive/2006/07/16/667063.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/wga/archive/2006/07/19/670672.aspx

MTN have launched a new cool service that enables you to replace the "ring ring “sound heard when your friends call you with a tune of your choice.

To use the service:
1. Select the tune of your choice from the list of tunes
2. Type the code of the selected tune in an sms message and send  to 4100
3. A confirmation sms will be sent back to confirm your CallerTunez  request
4. The new tune would be set-up within 24 hours
5. Each request would cost N100 and would be valid for a 30 day period from the day the tune is set –up.

Go to http://www.mtnonline.com/fun/callertunez.asp for the list of available tunes

@vokal_guy, Maybe that's how you "Nigerian Americans" talk to each other over there but here in Nigeria it is customary to try and show a little more politeness. You are of course perfectly entitled to disagree with an opinion but there is no need to be rude.

Just my 2 cents worth,

@lukkie, I stand corrected and thanks for clarifying the CSD issue.

Re the number of APNs, the point I'm trying to make is that to the best of my knowledge, Vmobile has never had 2 APNs for WAP access concurrently available to prepaid subscribers for example.

With reference to your example about the UK operators, the fact is that a prepaid subscriber only has access to the prepaid APN so as far as that subscriber is concerned, there is only one APN for his/her access to the network and that is the point I was trying to make.

I take your point, but WAP access is not the same as GPRS access (the latter of which is very much faster) so the relevant APNs are not providing access to the same thing. All the operators provide both WAP & GPRS and that is certainly the case that all the operators did not initially charge for GPRS access during their respective trial periods but I believe only Vmobile is currently providing free access and I'm sure that it won't last very much longer.

In conclusion, I still don't believe that's it's correct to say that an operator has "blocked" particular APN as it's highly unlikely that any operator would have multiple concurrent APNs to the same service.

In my experience, I have never come across a GPRS deployment with multiple APNs so whilst for example until recently it was possible to browse with a deactivated SIM for free, that has nothing to do with an alternative APN.

Perhaps I stand to be corrected, but as far as I know, each operator only has one APN to access their GPRS network and I would be interested if anyone can conclusively prove that alternative ones which have subsequently been disabled ever existed.

@smartsoft, I have no idea what database JAMB or MTN use but sbucareer's observation is very valid and I guess that's how you know?

sirbuddy:
Nigerians should be informed about the plans of the federal Government in conjunction with the Federal Ministry of Communication to upgrade our telephony system most especially our GSM system, into the usage of the 3G(Third Generation Wireless system).

Funny, I didn't know that 3G applied to any other technology apart from GSM and more importantly surely it's up to the operators to decide whether or not to deploy a 3G network and not the government.

sirbuddy:
Key features of 3G systems are a high degree of commonality of design worldwide, compatibility of services, use of small pocket terminals with worldwide roaming capability, Internet and other multimedia applications,Videos and photos exchange and a wide range of services and terminals.

Hmmm, I could be wrong but aren't these things already available with GSM?

sirbuddy:
So people in the GSM sales business should please take note and make sure that they import phones with the 3G network system and the end users should check to see that the phones that they are buying, also has the 3G system.

This is not necessary because in the event that the operators decide to deploy a 3G network, the existing networks will still remain in service as in the case in all countries where 3G is currently deployed.

I'm sorry but I think your post is inaccurate and misleading and clearly demonstrates that you have a fundamental lack of understanding about telephony in general and 3G & GSM in particular.

I would suggest you do a little more research,

smartsoft, Just out of interest, how do you know what database MTN uses on their website? Are you an MTN employee by any chance?

Secondly, are you sure that anyone developing a medium sized commercial application would even consider using Access?

I personally prefer Oracle mainly due to the fact that it supports several operating systems and not just Windows as is the case with SQL Server and this may be the reason why it appears to be more popular with organizations with very large databases as it means they can run on unix servers.  Oracle however is more expensive and more complicated to install and configure.

The following site is just one of many which gives a good comparison between the 2 databases:
http://www.mssqlcity.com/Articles/Compare/sql_server_vs_oracle.htm

Excellent stuff clocky!!

I particularly like your definition of the "Person" base class which you then extend to "You" & "Me". Classic java programming

I thought I would share this with fellow C++ programmers out there. The following is the code I send to my colleagues to invite them for a drink when I get to the end of my contract.

#define VC_EXTRALEAN

#include <afxwin.h>

CNotThirsty Goodbye::Execute()
{
   CColleague oMe  = "FDeveloper",
              oYou = "Colleagues";

   CString sWhat = "Farewell drink",
           sWhy  = "End of my contract";

   CObject oWhatever; 

  CNotThirsty oNotThirsty = null;

   /* Define event Date/Time: 30/06/06 17:30:00 */
   CTime dtNow( 2006, 6, 30, 17, 30, 0 );

   if( ( dtNow >= CTime::GetCurrentTime() ) &&
       ( oYou.FeelLikeIt ) )
   {
      for( int oYou.Step = 1; ! oYou.InDrinksBar; oYou.Step ++ );
      {
         oYou.DistanceToDrinksBar --;
      }

      while( ( ! oYou.HadEnough ) && ( ! oMe.OutOfMoney ) )
      {
         oYou.Drink( (Drink) oWhatever( sWhat, sWhy ) );
      }
     
      oNotThirsty = (CNotThirsty) oYou;
   }

   return oNotThirsty;
}

I'd be really interested in similar code that anyone else may have in C++ or any other language,

I think sbucareer's comments were excellent and of particualr note to me is the manner in which the extracts from his CV highlights his expertise in various software technologies & methodologies rather than individual programming languages. 

All too often, I think propspective candidates place too much focus in their CVs on one or more particular programming languages instead of pointing out a familiarity with the principles of OOP or J2EE for example. To put it another way, it's all well and good being a java developer but a significant number of employers are looking for specific experience of J2EE technologies and that is why I believe a CV like sbucareer's is more likely to grab their attention and Nigeria is no exception in this regard.

In conclusion, I'm not saying that you should not mention knowledge of programming languages (because it is important) but that as is the case in sbucareer's CV, it should not be the only focus of your CV.

I agree with you and for me things have certainly got better however I guess it's also true to say that perhaps Microsoft have more work to do to ensure that everyone can enjoy as painless upgrade as I have had.

@c0dec, I take your point.

Well, my general rule of thumb is I never have more than 5 projects in a solution. Some may find this cumbersome but I guess that is the reason why I don't see any intellisense update delays and/or general performance degradation issues.  I generally always tend to be conservative in my outlook and strongly subscribe to the view that sometimes just because you can do something doesn't mean it's the best thing to do. For example, yes I can have a solution with 50 projects but it's patently obvious you don't get the best out of the IDE by doing so.

I should add that I have never seen any real advantage in having a large number of projects in the same solution as far as editing in the IDE is concerned. In the event that I have to combine several projects together, then I use a master build script which I initiate from the command line thus eliminating any intellisense update issues.

Having said that I fully appreciate that this is not a solution acceptable to all.