Note: On January 3rd, 2020 I moved the text about eBay to this blog due to reorganization I'm planning to do on my Home page. HERE is a new URL.
I wrote a page about my buying experiences on eBay. Because I intend to expand this page I thought it's better to place it on my homepage. Furthermore, because this is specific to Croatia I wrote it in Croatian and not in English. This blog entry is to announce this page, and also to create place for comments!
So, post your thoughts, questions, ... I think we can comment on Croatian since this is a local issue.
Friday, June 8, 2007
Sunday, January 28, 2007
OSS support for Croatian language
I was just looking at the Asterisk open source PBX and one of the features of that software is possibility of integration with Festival. Festival is a text to speech synthesis software, freely available on the Internet! And it's quite good piece of software. Using only Festival, or Festival in combination with some other application, like Asterisk, interesting services could emerge.
Now, we come to the point! I searched for possibility to use Croatian language in that application. And guess what, there is no application that supports it. There are quite few application for speech synthesis and none of them, you guessed, has support for Croatian! Actually, there is possibility of adding Croatian to those software using generic support but it's far from usefull.
So, this made me think a bit! What the hell is Croatian Ministry of Sciences and whatever else doing!? Shouldn't at least they care about this aspect of development? Shouldn't they try to invest some money in development of such software? Shouldn't they put out some tender searching for interested parties that would develop such software? Also, the license of that software should be such that afterwards this software could be used in both, open source and commercial applications, e.g. some BSD style license. And not only there is a problem with software for speech synthesis. There's no OCR capable software, syntax and grammar checking are also not well supported, if supported at all, and to talk about voice recognition is to much!
Speaking of syntax checking, thanks to enthusiasts there is some support in open source office applications, but much remains to be done and I believe that investment in that respect would help, but would help to Croatian language – and I believe that's important to the Government and also to the aforementioned Ministry.
Now, we come to the point! I searched for possibility to use Croatian language in that application. And guess what, there is no application that supports it. There are quite few application for speech synthesis and none of them, you guessed, has support for Croatian! Actually, there is possibility of adding Croatian to those software using generic support but it's far from usefull.
So, this made me think a bit! What the hell is Croatian Ministry of Sciences and whatever else doing!? Shouldn't at least they care about this aspect of development? Shouldn't they try to invest some money in development of such software? Shouldn't they put out some tender searching for interested parties that would develop such software? Also, the license of that software should be such that afterwards this software could be used in both, open source and commercial applications, e.g. some BSD style license. And not only there is a problem with software for speech synthesis. There's no OCR capable software, syntax and grammar checking are also not well supported, if supported at all, and to talk about voice recognition is to much!
Speaking of syntax checking, thanks to enthusiasts there is some support in open source office applications, but much remains to be done and I believe that investment in that respect would help, but would help to Croatian language – and I believe that's important to the Government and also to the aforementioned Ministry.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
VIP UMTS/EDGE/whatever...
Ok, I prepared this post while I was trying to connect to the Internet and I was very angry! For the problems I have I blame VIP and this post summarizes my experiences with them. I doubt that the others are different. And yes, for those that don't know, VIP is Internet provider in Croatia.
To buy the card and subscription was the least problem and it was quick. Although, I heard that now they require contract for two years instead of one. Probably because they were giving devices for 1 kuna and it turned out that it doesn't pay off. Namely, you could have PCMCIA card that costs about 1800 kuna (cca. 7.5kuna is 1EUR) for already mentioned 1 kuna. Lowest subscription per month is 50 kn, so it turns out that you could have a device for 600kn! Clearly, math was not on their side in that one.
But before I took subscription, the first problem was finding out if devices they offer work on Linux. And finding that information was impossible. Even though I contacted technical support through regular channels and via some friends. So, I took device not knowing if it works and hoping at best. It turned out that with a bit of luck and some hacking it worked! The device is Nozomi, and it can be recognized by NZ letters in serial number. More on that you can find on my homepage.
The second problem was with connecting to VIP. Namely, first it turned out I have to use PAP, and the second problem was that PAP always returns success code, no matter if it succeeded or not!?
After finally overcoming and that obstacle, the next one was random disconnections. Not only that, but I also had problems trying to connect or reconnect to VIP. And now, story leads us to the help desk service. When I called them I never expected to help me resolve problem. How could they when they probably never saw Linux!? I just wanted to find out if they know of some current problems in the network so that I know if the problem is with me, or with them. Well, I never found out if they have a problem. Also, sometimes they blamed CARNet. And the story usually starts with something like: “What you see in the application about signal strength...” and after telling them that I don't have that application, all the further conversation stops. And so much about help desk. Well, to be honest, those interruptions are now rare, but still, they can become very frustrating and actually, they are the reason I'm writing this.
And finally, something about the speed. It's not even close to the promised speed of UMTS! It seems to be good in some larger towns, but at the moment you are in suburbs it drops sharply! It never goes above 50 kbps (that's kilobits), and usually it's around 20 kbps!
All in all, I started to think about using DSL. But it's another story....
To buy the card and subscription was the least problem and it was quick. Although, I heard that now they require contract for two years instead of one. Probably because they were giving devices for 1 kuna and it turned out that it doesn't pay off. Namely, you could have PCMCIA card that costs about 1800 kuna (cca. 7.5kuna is 1EUR) for already mentioned 1 kuna. Lowest subscription per month is 50 kn, so it turns out that you could have a device for 600kn! Clearly, math was not on their side in that one.
But before I took subscription, the first problem was finding out if devices they offer work on Linux. And finding that information was impossible. Even though I contacted technical support through regular channels and via some friends. So, I took device not knowing if it works and hoping at best. It turned out that with a bit of luck and some hacking it worked! The device is Nozomi, and it can be recognized by NZ letters in serial number. More on that you can find on my homepage.
The second problem was with connecting to VIP. Namely, first it turned out I have to use PAP, and the second problem was that PAP always returns success code, no matter if it succeeded or not!?
After finally overcoming and that obstacle, the next one was random disconnections. Not only that, but I also had problems trying to connect or reconnect to VIP. And now, story leads us to the help desk service. When I called them I never expected to help me resolve problem. How could they when they probably never saw Linux!? I just wanted to find out if they know of some current problems in the network so that I know if the problem is with me, or with them. Well, I never found out if they have a problem. Also, sometimes they blamed CARNet. And the story usually starts with something like: “What you see in the application about signal strength...” and after telling them that I don't have that application, all the further conversation stops. And so much about help desk. Well, to be honest, those interruptions are now rare, but still, they can become very frustrating and actually, they are the reason I'm writing this.
And finally, something about the speed. It's not even close to the promised speed of UMTS! It seems to be good in some larger towns, but at the moment you are in suburbs it drops sharply! It never goes above 50 kbps (that's kilobits), and usually it's around 20 kbps!
All in all, I started to think about using DSL. But it's another story....
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