Thursday, October 09, 2014

 

On Buying Postage by Correspondence


The Objective

A postal service ought to be able to leave a sheet or two of stamps in a mailbox, oughtn't it? Assuming the stamps are bought and paid for, of course. It turns out the United States Postal Service cannot, or will not, if the buyer is overseas, even if the delivery address is in the United States.

Consider the scenario of someone in another country who needs--or just wishes--to send a self-addressed stamped envelope to someone in the United States. How can they do this? They might be able to place an order, send payment to the U.S.P.S. and have the stamps sent to them. If for some reason the U.S.P.S. does not want to ship stamps abroad--but why would they not?--perhaps the stamps could be delivered directly to the intended beneficiary of the stamped envelope, and the envelope sent separately.

The Experiment

The U.S.P.S. does offer postage stamps for sale via an Internet ordering and payment system. The experimental protocol used entailed the following steps.
  1. Create a personal U.S.P.S. customer account.
  2. Place an order for a sheet of stamps. In this case, stamps of type "Global Forever" were selected as the most appropriate for mailing from the U.S. to anywhere in the world without concern for tariff changes.
  3. Pay.
  4. See whether the stamps arrive.

The Results

Customer Account Creation
The customer account creation was quite straightforward. In addition to name, one is required to provide an e-mail address, phone number, and physical postal address. Perhaps inappropriately, an address in the United States, that of the intended recipient, was entered. It was tested for authenticity, and a foreign address might (probably) have been rejected. Interestingly, the phone number entry field did allow the possibility of entering an "Int'l" number.
Actually, there was a curious glitch, but which was not insurmountable. The password for the account was to meet certain conditions: at least seven characters, a letter and a number, and allowed --but not required--to contain punctuation marks from a given list. A first password composed of five digits, two letters and an allowed punctuation mark was refused by the system with a message "Must contain one number" or words to that effect. A second password candidate containing only one digit (and one punctuation mark) among the many letters was accepted.
Placing the Order
Once the appropriate article had been identified and put in the shopping cart, order confirmation was attempted. The address as entered during customer account creation was rejected by the system for having an invalid telephone number. An alternate delivery address form was proposed by the system; the only country in the "Pick a Country" list is the "United States" so clearly it would not be possible to have the delivery abroad (other than to various armed forces and similar alternative 'states').
Interruption of Test
Since the order placement could not be completed for either delivery goal, the test was ended at that step.

Interpretation

There may be a rationale for this, but what? Why not ship abroad if the purchaser pays the shipping fees? Are the fees too complicated for the post office to calculate? Perhaps the range of other products available for purchase on their site includes some not easily shipped, but why not then just mark those as not available for overseas delivery? As for domestic deliveries, there was no indication that deliveries would be necessarily registered, which might justify needing to be able to contact the recipient; yet even if they were, one can just leave a delivery notice and expect the recipient to come claim their parcel.
It is not clear whether the problem lies with the order entry system or the lacking service offering. Would the post office mail the stamps to a foreign address if the order entry system allowed capturing a foreign address? Perhaps they would, and it is just the software that is faulty.

Conclusion and Prospects

This is disappointing. The solution appears to be to get a phone number from the intended recipient, if they are willing to divulge that information. But how to ask them and hope for a reply if one cannot send a stamped self-address envelope for their reply along with the request? (This is what is called a bootstrap problem.) It seems one cannot rely on postal methods alone for this use-case, one needs telephones. That's progress?
An alternative may be to purchase printable postage --to print directly on an envelope--rather than physical stamps; it remains to be seen what "delivery parameters" would be required or omitted in that case.
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# posted by Maurice Lanselle @ 10:20 PM 0 comments

Thursday, November 17, 2011

 

Upgrading to Thunderbird 3.1.15 and Kubuntu 10.10

I recently upgraded Kubuntu on my computer, from 9.10 to 10.04, then to 10.10. One consequence of those changes was that the version of Thunderbird (with Lightning) evolved from 2.x to 3.1.15.

The first issue was encountered in the "Migration Assistant" of all places. The Migration Assistant is a wizard that highlights a couple of former features that are now delegated to extensions (plugins, add-ons) and provides links to install them. However, the links only start a download of the xpi, they do not --nor does some other feature of the wizard -- allow one to complete the installation immediately. Meanwhile, the little "installing" icon continues to rotate as if something were still being done; one can should proceed to "Next" once the download has completed. To complete the installation, one simply follows Tools>Add Ons from the menubar, indicates the downloaded xpi, and confirms. This is where the second glitch showed up: the version download following the link in the wizard does not work with this version of Thunderbird! Not entirely surprising, since I've only updated to a version of Thunderbird that is over a year old, but the link was to the current version of the extension, no longer compatible with my older application. But I was not able to find a compatible version of the extension, so presumably I've lost a feature. I restarted Thunderbird and checked my inbox.

I was immediately annoyed by one evolution: the opening of messages in tabs instead of new windows and, with that, no longer being able to close a message by hitting Escape. Evidently, the user interface is evolving to suit tablet and phone users who do everything with just one finger rather than eight fingers roaming over a full keyboard. The way to change that to suit my preferences was:
  • Navigate to : Edit > Preferences>Advanced> Reading & Display
  • Choose the option: "Open messages in: a new message window" and, while I was at it, tick "Close message window on delete." Unlike some mail clients, deleting a message does not automatically open the next unread message but goes back to the list of messages, and I'm grateful for that.
The next annoyance was trickier to resolve; I won't say how long it took me, since I'm supposed to be a software engineer, but the advice I tried, found all over the Internet, did not work for me. The situation is probably aggravated by the particular context of my computer, arrived at by successive upgrades rather than a clean install. Also, advice accumulates and rarely disappears when it is obsolete; it isn't always easy to guess whether it still is useful or not. The problem was this: clicking on links in messages launched another browser even though Firefox was already running. There doesn't seem to be a setting for this in Thunderbird, so I guessed it was a "preferred browser" setting I'd lost in the Kubuntu upgrade process. What I did:
  1. Change default browser in KDE system settings. Configuration > Configuration of the system >Workspace Appearance and Configuration: Default applications. Change web browser to firefox. Just in case, close everything and reboot. Test: fail, the other browser launched.
  2. Edit user.js file, as seen a couple of places on the web, adding user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.http", "/usr/bin/firefox"); equivalent for https and ftp. I'll skip the details on this, because directly editing the files is not the best way to do it. It is especially not the best way on a system with an evolved (updated through version changes) machine like mine. There have been changes to directory names and organization so it is tricky to even find the right user.js to edit. By the way, on one forum I noticed a comment and query about Thunderbird installing two hidden directories, one called "~/.thunderbird" and one called "~/.mozilla-thunderbird". These are the directories where all the personal settings, connection settings, and mail archives are kept. The redundancy is only apparent, not quite true, and is done to ensure compatibility if one switches from a Debian-Ubuntu Thunderbird package to a (newer) Mozilla Messenger installation; one is just a symbolic link to the other (an alias path, if you see what I mean). The user.js (and prefs.js) have been moved from a sub-directory of .thunderbird (called something.default) to a sub-directory of .thunderbird/Profiles (called somethingelse.default), but the older files are not automatically deleted so one can -- following outdated advice -- edit the wrong user.js (as I first did). An example of this : a recommendation from 2007 which doesn't cite versions at all and adds a shell script to the chain.
  3. Do (2.) the right way (described in French following a link from a French Ubuntu forum). For this, one launches Edit > Preferences>Advanced>General (like for the preference change described above, except the General tab rather than Reading & Display). A click on the "Config editor..." button, and on the warning panel, brings up the list of all the settings ("about:config"). It is here, in this list, that one adds the key-value pairs "network.protocol-handler.app.ftp":"/usr/bin/firefox", "network.protocol-handler.app.http":"/usr/bin/firefox", "network.protocol-handler.app.https":"/usr/bin/firefox". Before doing so, one might check that that is the correct path to Firefox. One can either navigate there with Dolphin or open a terminal (Ctrl-alt-t) and command "which firefox". However, this was not sufficient either, and I found out why by playing around. Incidentally, insertions, resets, and so on are initiated via right-click to open a context menu. Conclusion: fail. Skip this, too.
  4. As in (3.), navigate to and launch the Config editor. Find the lines with "network.protocol-handler.warn-external.http" and toggle it to "true". (This is following advice [fr] for Windows, not Linux, just in case it should have been repeated but wasn't). What this does is set a trigger for a pop-up when one clicks on a link, the pop-up 'warns' what action is about to be executed and give one a choice of accepting, stopping, or choosing an alternative action. It was here that I discovered that the default action was "sensible-browser" even though I had set "firefox" as my preference. Well, the good news is that I (one) could at this point choose firefox as the alternative action and tick the box "always use this option" (or words to that effect) and that was that. I'll do the same for ftp and https when I come across links of those sorts. It does remember and doesn't pop up the warning again, but I don't know where it writes the 'firefox' preference, I don't find it in the user.js or prefs.js files.
I wasn't familiar with 'sensible-browser' and investigated what that does and how it works. I found out why it wasn't working correctly, too, but that will be another note.

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# posted by Maurice Lanselle @ 7:42 PM 0 comments

Sunday, March 27, 2011

 

Paper and Computer Screen Sizes

Once upon a time, television screens were all about the same shape, and there was a good reason for that: they were all intended to display standard shaped video images in a 4:3 ratio of width:height. That was the proportion standard in the motion picture industry at the time television began, so I suppose that made it an obvious standard to adopt for television as well. However, motion picture aspects evolved to a wider, flatter aspect ratio during the 1950s in particular, to 1.85:1 for the U.S. and 1.66:1 for some European countries. The now-popular for television and digital video 16:9 ratio is approximately 1.78:1, not quite as broad as the American motion pictures but nearly so.

The 4:3 ratio was also a standard for computer screens, at least since the IBM PC with VGA shipped in 1987; more and more computer screens are now 16:9, as are television screens (for HD).

The international standards for paper sizes, ISO 216, ISO 217 and ISO 269, prescribe a quite different aspect ratio, one with a unique mathematical property. Cutting this shape in half along a line connecting the midpoints midpoints of the long sides produces pieces having the same aspect ratio, square root of 2 to one (approximately 1.414:1, whereas American 8.5*11 has an aspect ratio of about 1.294:1).

How big does a computer screen have to be to display an A4 page at its true size? That will depend on the aspect ratio of the display, and the rotation of the page. A4 paper is 210 mm x 297 mm, which is very nearly 36.4cm (14.3") diagonal. If the page is to be displayed in portrait position (as opposed to landscape position), a 4:3 display will have to be 29.7cm high and "high" is typically the "3" part of the formula, implying a 39.6cm width and overall, a 49.5 cm diagonal! The 16:9 ratio will need to be even wider : 29.7*16/9=52.8 cm width and a 60.6 cm diagonal!

Clearly, this reckoning has been unreasonable. Let's reconsider the question in two ways: how big must the display be for the page to fit turned on its side (landscape), and how much of the page height shows when it fits in width.
  • Landscape fits:
    • If the 4:3 display is at least 29.7 cm wide, the page will fit, since 21 cm is less than 3/4 of 29.7; our display will have a diagonal of [29.72 + (29.7*3/4)2]1/2= 37.13 cm (=14.6").
    • The 16:9 display will have to be bigger, because 29.7*9/16= 16.7cm, less than 21cm; our display will be over 37cm wide and have a diagonal of 42.8 cm (=16.86"). In other words, even a 15.6" display isn't big enough in 16:9.
  • Height cropping: this measure is a bit different from those considered so far, inasmuch as we are "fixing" display size rather than having a paper dimension determine it. We'll fix the diagonal at that of a 4:3 display 21 cm wide, wide enough to fit the page: 26.25cm. (or about 10.33").
    • The 4:3 display will be 15.75 cm high, revealing just over half of the page; if we assume margins of 1" top and bottom, we'd see 15.75/24.6, nearly two thirds of the page body.
    • The 16:9 display will be more complicated to compute: we need to get the height (or width) from the diagonal and the aspect ratio. Using "x" to represent height/9, (h*16)2+(h*9)2=(26.25)2 yields (after some math) a height of 12.87 cm, so the display will be 22.9 cm wide and 12.87 cm high. 12.87 cm is a mere 43% of the page height, and just over half the page body height.


One last question, pertaining to netbook/notebook format computers. If the computer is to be no bigger than A4 for easy packing with papers and reports in a briefcase or other tote, how big a 16:9 screen can it have? Let's take a half-inch frame as an assumption, and have a 29.7-2.54=27.16cm width, consequently a 15.28 cm height, and a 31.16 cm diagonal (12.26").

For perspective: According to the Wikipedia article on the history of 35mm film, the Society of Motion Picture Engineers set a standard aperture ratio of 0.800 in by 0.600 in, in 1929, and Edison had also used an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 in the earliest days of cinema.

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# posted by Maurice Lanselle @ 6:54 PM 0 comments

Sunday, February 14, 2010

 

Disappointment with Progress : electronic kitchen timers

Affordable, battery powered electronic timers suitable for use in the kitchen have been around for about forty years, I reckon. Is their becoming stupider and less useful a leading indicater of anything? One should hope not.

Between thirty and forty years ago, we acquired a kitchen timer that was wonderful: digital, small, capable of tracking three timespans simultaneously (and they didn't have to have common start times or common finish times). It stopped functionning so long ago, though, that I can't remember how one knew which of the times had elapsed (a blinking triangle at the bottom of the display, IIRC); however, I recall it as helpful, not obnoxious, and I was sorry to see it "die" so young.

Subsequently, we tried other "similar" timers, but found them so inferior that we used the microwave oven's timer  instead. Our microwave oven --a low-priced model, not a top-of-the-line one-- acquired in the 1985-88 period, had a digital control timer which could also serve as a timer, without using its oven. I don't recall whether that was only when it wasn't cooking, or whether the timer was an auxiliary function available (one track, but better than none) at all times, but I think it was the latter.  It, like the timer it helped replace (as well as cooking and warming stuff) had been sensibly programmed to ring only five times when "time was up."  It lasted quite a while, and had provided very good value-for-money over its years of use. Unfortunately, the maker went out of business. When it went, we had to find another timer.

Over the past ten years, I've tried more than one, all in the "affordable" range, from Ikea or Target or similar retailers. And they all now track only one thing (maybe that's all the majority of purchasers ever used), unlike the Pyrex one from over thirty years ago, and they all, and this is the really questionable "progress",
  • beep not five times, but sixty (a full minute) when time is up;
  • start over timing the same duration if not properly stopped.
I suppose there might be a savings in building devices that are only programmable by minute (not sure, though), but that is a poor explanation because these timers can do things for other than a full minute (or multiple thereof) such as beep only a few times (2 or 3) at five-minute and ten-minute warning beeps: someone decided they should beep for a full minute, then restart timing, if not interrupted. Not progress, in my opinion.

"Time is money" and I'm willing to spend a fair price for a better timer, but I don't know how much I should discount for my time and effort to find it and beat a path to its builder's door. Let's not kid ourselves about how much a kitchen timer is worth : how much better do they get if one pays more? How much more time can they help one save? Haven't we already spent more time than it can be worth to find a better timer?  The potential builders probably have similar (if second-degree) reasoning, and don't see how they can profit from building a better timer people have given up trying to find. Better timers, per se, may not be likely as long as potential producers figure an iPhone app will beat them, and a Carrefour or Walmart or Metro will make market entry prohibitively costly.

Progress in kitchen timers, if people are to continue cooking at home and want them, might be one like the one I had thirty years ago (but longer-lasting); or three like the ones available today, but all capable of stopping beeping when yelled at, even from another room: considerate, voice-deactivated, or both.Identificateurs Technorati : , , , , , ,

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# posted by Maurice Lanselle @ 8:54 PM 0 comments

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