Absolute BS

Either that or programmers are lazy. I’ve been working on an App at work that requires internationaliztion, and until you get used to doing it, its very easy to let strings just leak through. I just installed Google Chrome, and right there on the first prefs page is a whole slew of I18n bugs:

They missed a translation and another couple don’t fit in the space and just run off the page into oblivion. These bugs are annoying to fix, but at least they are easy to find: Just change the locale on your computer while you develop. Only one person on the team really needs to do this.

I have my computer’s language set to spanish, so I notice these problems right away while testing, which is certainly something you should do for at least a round of QA before you ship, but preferably while you develop. You can make it fun if you write a pirate locale or something, but you should absolutely be running your app in a language other than english before you can even come close to calling it finished.

I cancelled my AT&T/iPhone account last month on the 15th (1 day after my 2 year contract was up) and switched to T-mobile. During the phone number porting process, T-mobile told me I didn’t need to do anything to cancel my old AT&T account, which is true and worked great. I’ve spent the last 3 weeks in cell phone heaven, making calls in my house, receiving text messages, having service in restaurants, and generally enjoying life. Until today when I got a bill from AT&T.

By sheer coincidence I also had my credit card number stolen about a week prior to switching. This is important because I was on AutoPay with AT&T on that card, which I obviously cancelled as soon as I heard it was stolen. Today, I get an e-mail from AT&T that says I’m $67 (a full month) overdue on my account, plus a $1 late fee. When they tried to bill me for the full month of September, the credit card declined and they didn’t get paid. So I call them up this morning to get this resolved and without even asking for a bill reduction, the phone rep says he’ll go ahead and “manually pro-rate” the account down to $32, which sounds about right to me. AT&T was happy to auto-bill my account for $35 they knew didn’t belong to them, hoping I wouldn’t notice it.

So this is just a reminder that when you switch cell companies mid-month, they’ll happily bill you for the entire thing if you don’t call and remind them not to steal from you. Also, I’ve heard reports from friends that T-mobile did the exact same thing, so this is probably widespread across the cellular industry. Call your old wireless provider when you cancel. The number-porting auto-cancel is certainly convenient, but it could also cost you quite a bit of money, especially if you cancel early in your billing cycle.

I play fantasy football on yahoo. For the last few weeks they’ve been hassling me to enter “security questions” so I could reset my password if I forgot it. I already have an alternate e-mail address registered with them in case I forget the same password I’ve been using for 5 years, so I’ve been clicking “Later.” Until today, when I went to adjust my team and saw this:

This is infuriating to me, especially considering how badly yahoo got burned in the media after that UTenn student “hacked” Sarah Palin’s e-mail address. I really wish that people would stop doing this, or at least make it not mandatory. Even Time Magazine had an article about how stupid these questions are.

So please, internet, I’m begging you to stop doing this.