BankWest (was: Re: [plug] Standards)

[Bernd Felsche]

On Tuesday 23 March 2004 18:26, Harry wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Mar 2004 16:32:11 +0800 Craig Ringer 
<craig at postnewspapers.com.au> wrote:
> > Frankly, to me the main issue seems to be BROKEN CLIENT SOFTWARE and
> > web developers who code to that, rather than the standard.

> The other mindset to contend with is "You mean there is another browser
> besides Explorer?"

> I asked about a problem using BankWest Online with Mozilla 1.0 last
> night (gave all useful information about using Linux and version of
> debian. Mozilla etc) and got the following response today:

> <quote>
>
> Dear Mr McNally
>
> Thank you for your email re logging on to BOB.  We have noticed that you
> are using an unsupported browser, here are the most common browsers that
> are used on our website.
>
> _	Internet Explorer 5.5 SP2 can be downloaded from Microsoft on the
> below link
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0a50996b-deb9-4
> a46-81da-abef1ebbd08a&DisplayLang=en
>
> _	Internet Explorer 6 SP1 can be downloaded from Microsoft on the below
> link
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1E1550CB-5E5D-4
> 8F5-B02B-20B602228DE6&displaylang=en
>
> Once you use these supported browsers you should not experience these
> issues.  If you have any further problems, please call our Customer Help
> Centre on 13 17 18.

Ask them for a bank loan for $8000 so that you can buy a PC and pay
for the first year's support with M$-Windows.

>
> Yours sincerely

Oh you will experience further problems if there's a transparent
proxy between your browser and the Internet.

You see, some pages are coded to do an HTTP request to port 443,
( http://bobsomethingurl.wankbest.com.au:443/more/broken/html )
which is the HTTPS port. Apparently the browser is then expecting an
HTTPS response, which it won't get. My guess is that this is a bomb
put in place by M$-Affrontage to ensure that people buy M$-hit.

Please don't tell the Bank that that is the problem. Let them sweat
it out and flush a couple of million bucks down the drain trying to
figure it out. Of course, if they offer you money, then you're
obliged to feed the PLUG kitty!

Somebody complained to me about it at one site, accusing me of
sabotaging their online banking by providing an HTTP accelerator.
Said individual is a highly-paid "computer expert" who doesn't
understand that it's the web site that's broken by poor coding -
presumably in a deliberate effort to enforce IE usage. Said
individual blamed it on "Linux". Said individual also requested that
I email program source code in DOC format instead of gzipped tar
already provided. Source code destined for an HP-UX system.

Which I'll probably do exactly as requested; turn it into a JPEG,
then paste it into a document with OpenOffice, then save as Wierd
format. :-)

What do you mean you can't cut and paste the text? Must be M$-Word
that's broken.

-- 
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