Went to the UKUUG's Linux 2000
Linux Developers' Conference at the weekend. Was fun,
although the promised fight between sct and Hans Reiser
didn't happen - but there was a concerted effort at one
point to take the roving microphones off the pair of them
during the Q&A session after Luke's talk.
Luke showed me the ETRAX board which Axis have Linux running
on - it's cute. Embedded Linux is definitely where the
cutest toys are - none of this having to move house to fit
them all in, like sct and _A_.
Also I learned how the Bonobo component architecture got its
name.
Haven't had to deal with a telco this week yet, thankfully.
Although I should perhaps chase up Vodafone, who haven't
managed to respond yet to the email I sent them about two
months ago.
Although the GSM standards lay out a simple way for them to
turn on and off a dedicated voicemail icon on customers'
handsets just by sending a specially-formatted SMS message,
and although they already have three or four configurable
options for customers to select how they're notified of new
voice mail, they claim that they can't add the
standard method to their list of possibilities.
The best they can do is send you a normal text message
saying "Recall has $n new messages". Which you promptly read
and delete, then dial up to listen to it, get interrupted
and forget all about it. Proper GSM providers will keep the
voicemail icon on your screen until you've actually listened
to the message. This is one of the few things that Orange
actually got right, but it seems that Vodafone can't.
Fucking Useless Telco.