This survey was used for my research paper, Understanding Cause of Status Data Distortions for Risk Management. The research was inspired by IEEE Software article, Lying in Software Engineering (Glass, Rost, & Matook, 2008). Although the data has already been collected for the research, any additional submissions will be much appreciated.

As easy .NET is to implement a complete solution, there is a lot of little quirks that could have been better developed. How can a Microsoft solution still depend so much on Javascript when regular HTML is a much simpler solution?

My gripe this time is with the DataView. The way MS implements the page indexing is by providing page links but only clickable by Javascript. There is no solution if Javascript is disabled.

Although not too difficult for me to solve, creating a program to automatically solve a crypto-quote proved to be more complex than originally though.

I start searching for low probability patterns like single to three letter words. Single letters make the puzzle much simpler to guess because it can only be either the letters 'i' or 'a'. Depending on the location of the two letter words, you can narrow the possibilities whether the word is a preposition or a verb. Three letter words, especially if repeated througout the quote, are typically conjunctions or else verbs. Conjuctions 'and' and 'but' are more likely when the same three letters appear at the beginning of a sentence phrase (beginning of the quote, right after a punctuation). If near the beginning, the word will most likely be a verb with high probability to be 'has', 'was', 'had'.

The next step would be check for double letters which limits the letters: 'd','f','l','m','n','o','p','r','s','t'. Depending if it is at the end of the word, the list can be shortened further. I left out 'c' primarily because it is very rare and would probably be for 'succinct' and 'success' words.

Using other clues like location of letters can also be used but is usually used in the mid to end game. This is my general solution to solving cryptoquotes. Hopefully, I will have a better word dictionary to create a more formal solution.

http://geocities.com/douglastclee/

Dlastlee has joined twitter. You can find us at, http://www.twitter.com/dlastlee.

I have just configured a blog on Google's blogger.com. http://dlastlee.blogspot.com
Very simple and also configured http://blog.dlastlee.com to the blog, then configured dlastlee.blogspot.com to redirect to blog.dlastlee.com.

As noted in the previous blog, I did receive the $10 bonus after a few days. I am not exactly sure when it happened, but no complaints here. The phone is still working. I still barely use the phone. No news is good news here.

I have been using several plans starting with Sprint for 2 years (which charged me an extra month - too lazy to contest), Cingular for 2 years (work phone), and now Verizon for 1.5 years. Although used for multiple years, I have not been a huge mobile-wireless-phone savvy user. The purpose of this purchase was primarily to evaluate the service and pricing plan.

My first experience with prepaid phones was with NET10. I was attracted by what seemed to be an excellent deal that included the phone, travel accessories, and excellent phone plan. Unfortunately, I did not have a good experience with the initial setup. I went through the instructions and chose to go online to register the phone. Everything seemed ok until the final step where you wait an entire then restart your phone. The site (which seemed extremely slow) stated that the phone was attempting to get a phone number and to wait 4 hours (which was not mentioned in the instruction guide). So I waited 4 hours and restarted the phone multiple times with the same "unregistered phone" message. I tried against 8 hours and 10 hours after. I called support and was able to speak with someone right away. She requested my zip code (10036), city (New York City), and address. She had me enter a few codes into the phone and wait another hour. An hour later still does not work. On, off multiple times... for the next couple hours. The next morning (20 hours after activation), I called into support. There is no hold when waiting for support with my issue. I have to keep going through the options until someone picked up (fortunately, I only had to do this about 3 times). When I finally spoke to someone, he had a heavy Indian accent but still somewhat understandable. He requested my zip code (10036), city (New York City); he told me he was checking to see if they have service there. I am not sure why they request this since it was the same information entered into the web profile and answered to the first support lady. Then he explains that the phone number process could take up to 24 hours. Still pleasant but slightly irritated, I waited another 4 hours to try again but still no luck. After work, I tried again and went through the support process a few times before getting someone to answer. She requested the zip code (10036). This time when she asked about the city, I explained to her that I have already provided this information already and if she could just expedite the debug process. She insisted that she has to check if I have service in my location which I replied that I have already verified this information multiple times with previous calls. Still insisting the city, I reluctantly told her NYC. She says to wait a moment while she checks. Impatiently but not yet rude, I explained to her that if NET10 did not have service in NYC there are some major problems with the company. Different from the previous rep, she did speak fluent American English... but after a few minutes of waiting, she asked which state NYC was in. (OK, this may have been a rather innocent question but the frustration I was already having just put me over the top). When she explained to me that the SIM card was bad and they had to ship me a new one, I apologized to her that I do not wish this service, thanked her for her time, and just hung up. After checking all the reviews online, there seemed to be many similar problems with NET10's service. I returned the package the next day.

First, NET10's website is a very, very simple site. There does not seem to be any sort of investment to the site which even a cheap out-of-school designed could create a better designed site. For a technology company that wants to compete with the likes of Verizon, ATT, and Sprint, this is not a good first impression. There is a bug when registering an account using IE7. NET10 only has one, maybe two pages for a member profile. If you navigate to another part of their site and return to the member profile, you must sign in again. The site is very slow even for a simple site, so NET10 does not appear to have any interest in investing in their infrastructure either.

Second, NET10's support structure doesn't seem to communicate well. If their own people or third-party/vendor support cannot access your account just to view basic data, how can I trust that they will charge and bill correctly? If I have to provide the same information multiple times to different people, there is something amiss. A smart person would also know that a rep is just buying time by asking for a street address after already providing zip and city to validate service. Although I have little experience with NET10's service, I would imagine that signing a new customer would be one of their top priorities or at least make it as simple as possible. Why should I have to wait over 24 hours to activate, call support 3 times, and still be unable to use the phone? I have already caused them at least $5 for support, $1 for the calls, and a returned product (~$55 + shipping) which they in turn received nothing but bad publicity.
Planet Feedback
Mobile Burn
View Points
Crutchfield Wireless

On the other hand, other users (assuming they are NET10 marketing trying to offset) claim that NET10 is a great service to have. There have been few blogs noting NET10 except its exception price. There does not appear to be anyone that had a good praise and dealt with NET10 customer support. From limited research and my personal experience, I have deemed NET10 not worth my time and risk. Although I do not recommend NET10, I will leave open that it may provide the service you need if you are fortunate enough not to deal with support.

I have gone with AT&T's GoPhone service. Charges an extra $1 per day I use the service which is acceptable since I will be using it for as a very low volume solution. Initial investment cost about the same but minus the phone accessories and simpler phone. There is a slight problem with register a new PIN with IE7 (workaround with FireFox), charged me 1 cent ($0.01) for GPRS (which I have not figured out why). It costs money to call your own voice mail (even just to setup), but this can be avoided by accessing your voice mail from another phone. I don't know if call forwarding can also bypass the charge. After 3 days, I have not received my $10 for purchasing $25 or more within 7 days of activation (I have researched that this may take a few days). Otherwise, the service has been acceptable.

For low volume user, the costs of prepaid phones are more affective that a contract plan. For high volume user, the costs are not much more expensive with an excellent bonus of not having a contract.

http://www.upcdatabase.com/downloads/
Includes UPC data for personal use.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3495/is_5_50/ai_n13721406/
An interesting article about a book by Leigh Branham.

The column header is now clickable to sort the data. The sort also handles multiple column sorts which improves data visibility.

Added books data schema.

First blog post