aysometin:

I keep telling everyone, for now the best u can get btw Lagos and London is Arik, dunno about later o when their Nigerian characteristics start to show, but for now that's your best bet!!

I totally agree with you on this one. I have flown VA, Virgin Nigeria and BA on a number of occassion on the Lagos - London trip, it was just out of an extraordinary circumstance that I opted for Arik on my last trip and boy! did they beat Virgin Atlantic and BA all put together. The legroom is superb (not minding that I'm 6'5), the smoothness and ambience of the cabin is next to none, inflight entertainment nko? - na die (save for the Arumeni welcome message - do they really have to do that?). Arik claim their planes on this route is brand new and  I have no reason to doubt this. I thought I was the only one impressed until you know people make this last minute calls just before the safety demostration starts - I could hear at least about 5 passengers seated close to me telling someone at the other end of the phone how surprised they were at Arik and lady couldn't stop exclaiming how she'd been wasting time with Virgin Atlantic all th is while with 'all their oyibo shakara' (sic).

If they maintain this quality, only time will tell knowing the Naija factor but for now I can tell you for free - Arik is the way to go. Totally surprising.

Interesting stuff. Copycatting at best.

Further interesting info:

nairalist.com - registered dec 2008 - owned by Seun
[nairalist+s].com - registered feb 2009 - 'who is' this

All along while Seun has been putting in hard work and doing some planning, an unscrupulous smart Alec 'living in Boston' has been scheming. Where's the damn originality in this.

Anyway the ball is in Seun's court - could we potentially be looking at the first? pursued internet copyright case in Nigeria.

Also a good moral - if you have a good domain name and going live with it for commercial purposes, make sure you spend a few bucks more and reserve all similar sounding names otherwise you'll be up against plagiarists like Chukie.

I 'think' the key differentiator is that Linux hosting would traditionally support LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-pHp) based technologies while Windows hosting would support AST.NET / MS SQL based technologies.

If your website/web application runs on LAMP then you should go for Linux hosting while if it runs on ASP/MSSQL, then you should go for Windows hosting but then of course if yours is just straight up html pages with no backend DB or dynamic functionalities, then either platform should be suitable. Regards

Akolawole on December 04, 2008, 03:42 AM

@Paribus

Are you due for that thingy?

Please becareful of the interpretation of that £800 maintenance fund.

Thanks Akolawole. I got this since October. There were anxiety about some issues but they didn't matter in the end. God's favour I believe.
Hope you are doing OK yourself. Compliments of the season.

@Mixxed

As has been rightly pointed out by OmniPotens, you would need to provide more information to help the people that would need to help you.  I want to believe that the attached spreadsheet would not be the only briefing you got from  your client - while taken at face value it might seem to contain quite some information, I doubt if this on its own would suffice to design and subsequently build an effective database. 

Ideally you would want to provide more information on the business process(es) that generated the information contained in the spreadsheet - descriptions detailing business variables and rules would be important in deriving an entity-relationship diagram covering the business logic that your client might want to have implement within the DB-driven web application. This would eventually form the basis for designing and building a feasible (read normalized) backend DB to the proposed web application.

In the absence of such information, I think it would be too early to expect reasonable quotes for collaboration on this project or advising you on figures to charge the client - but then again you might have people willing to give some ball park figures regardless.

On the whole, having pointed out the high regards you command with the client, I would say tread carefully and take care to ensure you do your due diligence in fully understanding the client requirements before rushing to quote for the job - better to turn down a job and leave your integrity intact than taking on work in a haste and end up disappointing the client. With a detailed knowledge of what your client wants, I'm sure there are developers here that are capable of delivering your required solution (within budget, in time, meeting and exceeding your expectations).

I am neither a web developer nor a database designer, just chipping in my 2 kobos worth from my limited knowledge. Regards

@ Yawa-ti-de

Your enthusiasm (or patriotism) is commendable but I beg to disagree that the availability of the site having any bearing on national security (unfortunately a very broad and vague term used by different tiers of the government and politicians for reasons mostly borne out of convenience).  The Nigerian website has not been developed to transact any serious business (compared to say direct.gov.uk for example), it was most likely a by-product of someone high up there getting a dodgy proposal approved and laughing real hard to the bank for delivering what is at best a mediocre project.

The possibility of capable nairalanders (including yourself) being given this job? - zero I'll say (unless of course the ones with friends in high places), not while you still have those politicians-contractors-godfathers turned emergency overnight IT-consultants lurking around the corridors of Aso rock and other government ministries hijacking projects they have no real commitments to nor have any serious clues on how to deliver. Those hydra-headed govt agencies like Galaxy Backbone (operating right out of Aso rock), NITDA etc would most likely get the job awarded at some obviously ridiculously inflated prices or out of the blue some joint venture partnership between these agencies and some unscrupulous 'expatriate' consultants would more than likely seal the deal. I've seen that not too few times in the govt arena.

However should this discourage you guys - NO!. But until the govt are really committed to true development in the information technology sector - and where every projects are not seen as a tender-inflate prices-full mobilisation-part supply-hands greased-mouth shut-we move on - business, you'll be better off spreading your web development tentacles within the private sector.

gave all agencies in the ministry a deadline of March 2009 to establish their own websites

Would a ministerial fiat such as this help or encourage true IT development in the ministry? - I doubt. It would only benefit cowboy web developers out to make a quick buck (and of course their collaborators in the agencies) all in the name of giving a website to each agency. It would have been ideal to spend time on formulating a roadmap and drafting a framework with accompanying policies to guide and direct the conversion of brick and mortar agencies services to their online equivalent. I seriously hope things would be planned and executed properly rather than the haphazard approach we have been so dangerously accustomed to. Regards

facebook is your friend

The default behaviour of ISA server is to block all connections from anywhere to everywhere unless explicitly permitted - this even includes connection the localhost (the ISA server). Installing ISA server on your DNS/DHCP/DC is an uninformed decision and not usually a recommended practice.

Ideally you want to have a server on the edge of your network dedicated to running ISA Server. Your best bet at the moment is to uninstall to get back your network connections. You could modify some of the system policies or create access policies to allow inbound and outbound connection but that would not be addressing a bad implementation design which is the issue here.

I'm @work at the moment so can't offer much guidance right away but let's know what you need and hopefully I'll respond by COB. Regards

LogMeIn is your friend.

Was the satellite even there in the first place?

Anything can really happen in this Nigeria

While I don't doubt the law of Karma, I doubt if it has any part to play in this.

The lady could have been a victim of this same incident even if her father had never been in the military. Many Nigerians falls victim to such high handedness of members of the armed forces almost on a daily basis.
The Col Okere could have carried out the alleged acts at the National Assembly without necessarily having any lashback on any of his children.

I think both should not be connected in the manner suggested by the OP. While I agree with the argument that the Colonel might not be the saint he's painting himself to be due to his previous actions - this should by no means indicates any connection with what happened to Uzoma.  A title like 'Colonel Okere is not the Saint He's trying to be' or something similar might have been more appropriate.

My 2p. Regards

Internal to outside scammers are quite easy to prevent (or at least reduce to the very barest minimum) with the right security framework adopted.

With the right policies to lock down the desktop, properly configured application and network firewall rules, what you don't want to go out won't go out. Life can be made very hard and unattractive for the average internet cafe spammers (except maybe a very few hard-core die-hard ones who would even have to struggle to get anything through). It all depends on how secured the organisation is willing to make their internet centre to be.

Obviously looks like a firewall issue.  Is ICMP being blocked at an edge firewall?

Can you give more information on your network topology. What is the path between both LANs.

LAN PC1 --->> Switch 1 -<< Clark Gateway>> --- Switch 2 <<-- LAN PC2  ?

What is the output of a tracert from PC1 on LAN1 to PC2 on LAN 2?

I presume they would be deploying mostly thin client terminals for these internet stations. A positive step in the right direction.

Internet access is still more of a luxury than a necessary commodity in Nigeria and my people are still paying through the nose for access. It would be good to see significant improvement in the near future.

You'll need to consider the number of VLANs these 500 hosts are grouped into. 500 hosts might seems a large size but really depends on how many VLANs in question here and how geographically dispersed the 500 hosts with regards to your network topology.

Ideally for routing between VLANs, you want to consider three options:

1. Router on a stick (using router subinterfaces) where all the (core) LAN switches are located in the proximity of a router - possibly in the same rack.

2. Multilayer switching where your LAN switches are capable of layer 3 routing.

3. Dedicated router interfaces for each VLANs


In all cases - really depending on the number of VLANs, I think you would normally consider using static routes when routing between VLANs before using routing protocols even though you are able to use routing protocols such as OSPF (an overkill in my opinion for this) or RIPv2. Regards

You might also find http://www.archive.org useful. Could take you back in time on how a website looks like in a specific year.

@OP

You first need to understand the basics of TCP/IP if you don't already.

Learn about TCP and UDP ports and the common services that runs on these ports.

e.g

TCP 80         - HTTP
TCP 25         - SMTP
TCP 53         - DNS
UDP 53         - DNS


Servers that runs this services would normally be listening on these ports. A mail server for instance would be listening on TCP port 25. In normal network deployment, you would have a network edge device (firewall, gateway, router etc) located between a LAN (containing servers that run specific services such as a mail server mentioned earlier) and remote networks such as the internet. Request would normally come from devices on the remote networks for specific services running on servers located on the internal network.

The edge device while not running a specific service is able to listen for incoming requests for such services and forward same to the appropriate device (running the specific service) on the internal network. This is the basis of port forwarding.


A very simplified analogy.

An executive officer with an office in room 25 of a building.
A security officer standing at the gate of the building screening visitors into the building.
A visitor intenting to see the executive officer.

Ordinarily the visitor would want to go directly to the executive officer at room #25, however the company policy does not allow direct communication between visitors and the executive officers. As long as the visitor knows that the executive officer is in room 25, he compose a message and hands this over the security guard who looks up his confidential company directory and locates the executive officer in room #25 to deliver the message.  In a similar manner, the executive officer receives the message and hands it back to the security officer who remembers that the visitor for whom the message is for is located at the security gate. In this manner, communication between the visitor and officer is established indirectly through the security officer even though this could have been done directly.

The visitor in this scenario is the device on the remote network. The security officer is a router or gateway with port forwarding enabled. The executive officer is the destination server on the internal network running the specific services that is the target of communication from the remote device. Hope this helps

Hey D10, how you dey.  I have not directly experienced Bellview flight to London - almost did on my way over here but had to settle for Virgin Nigeria then but only due to flight availability reasons. I'll say your phone experience might not be a direct reflection of the quality of their flight services but I might be wrong.

For a lot of Nigerian companies, we still have some way to go in the aspect of on-the-phone-customer services, GTB is an exception though in my opinion. I take it that you've completed your thesis and heading back home? Best wishes. Regards

@BB

Your observations are noted. There's no vendetta with anyone. I have no more to say on this matter

quantum in me fuit

Regards

@Funky
Not sure if FIRS is verifiable online. I don't think it is yet.

Really I think Viviko has been latching on to your leading questions to provide some tenable explanations (waiting to gauge reactions and suggestions of respondents before commenting):

F: "Did you underdeclare the income at the tax office"   V: "I overdeclared her income at Alausa"


@Presjany
It was good you saw through this in the first place, you might have been singing a different tune as well now.

Viviko :

Re: Uk Visa - Visa Appeal Process
« #2205 on: September 13, 2008, 09:57 AM » 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
@Presjany

Let me help you with a sponsor.
contact me

Presjany :

Re: Uk Visa - Visa Appeal Process
« #2209 on: September 13, 2008, 11:37 AM »

@ Viviko!

Thanks for the offer, but am not interested  because no be me and U go serve the 10 years ban when the time comes   See no evil! Touch no evil

Only if every potential victims could see things this way. Now Viviko is resting easy wherever he is without any stress while Yettidear is bearing the full impact of the whole issue. As ty4real has pointed out, only if people know that the only thing these visa agents have in mind is the money coming to them. They don't care about your reputation, they don't care about your future at stake, to them it's just another buck rolling in - and if it works out for the customer, fine - more credence to them, and if it doesn't, they simply learn from your mistakes and moves on to the next customer - no risk to them at all.

@Yettidear

Why are you being overly apologetic? What should be of the utmost concern to you right now is to verify yourself the status of the TCC presented to BHC. Without ascertaining the true status, I'm a bit lost on how you would proceed with either preparing a defence both in the case of an appeal or a reapplication or on any subsequent applications with BHC.

Knowledge is power. What i think is utterly important is to ascertain if the presented TCC is a genuinely verifiable one with underdeclared income or that it simply does not exists with the Lagos State Government - unless of course you already know the answer.

In my own limited knowledge, I don't see how you could move forward without this important verification. Better find out the bitter or comforting truth now about the true status of the certificate and know the odds you are up against than hoping that this would go away with time and new opportunities presented to make amends. My 2p worth. Regards

@ Akolawole

You are always looked up to on nairaland. Much respect. eni a ba laba ni baba
It would be a pleasure.

@Funky - sorry to cut in midway on your questions.

vikiviko (m)   Re: General UK Visa Enquiries
« #1195 on: October 02, 2008, 02:44 PM » 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
@Yettidear

My candid advice is for you to  appeal based on the issue of tax clearance.

Re-applying is complex because the Eco might not be convinced even with  a  letter from FIRS.
Issues bordering on fake tax clearnce can only be settled from the tribunal, the eco's are insensitive when it comes to issues as this.
On the contrary if you have the reference number of the tax clearance then a letter from inland revenue board could be helpful.

Why was Viviko speaking in the 3rd person here - as a non-interest party and only came out and started speaking in the 1st person (someone with firsthand knowledge of the arrangement) after Presjany blew the cover. And what is the meaning of the statement made by Viviko above - why is he talking as if he doesn't know if Yettidear would have the reference number for the certificate he helped obtained ?


2. All references that had been made by the concerned party here points to a 'certificate' rather than a 'cover note' or 'awaiting certificate letter'. I presume this must mean that a full verifiable certificate was obtained by Viviko. If this is the case, just as Lagos state has made the tax process quite simplified, they have made verification a piece of cake as well (which is why the embassies are able to promptly verify the authenticity of any lagos state certificate within minutes). It is only without this foreknowledge that one would hope to get away with a false TCC from Lagos state.

So to cut the long story short, here is the verification links that could be used to verify the tax clearance certificate obtained by Viviko for Yettidear:

Use these links to verify the e-TCC card details
http://www.lasg-ebs-rcm.net/Services/searchetccnormal.asp
http://www.lasg-ebs-rcm.net/Services/CLogin.asp

Use the link to validate any payment receipts.
http://www.lasg-ebs-rcm.net/services/ValidReceiptquick.asp 
http://www.lasg-ebs-rcm.net/services/ValidReceipt.asp

I would have expected that anybody arranging or helping someone arrange a TC from lagos state would provide all the required documents for them to self-verify the details of the certificate obtained.

My gut feeling is still that the tax clearance obtained is not from the official lagos state channel.  I hate to be the one to point accusing fingers but Viviko, if you have obtained the tax clearance from an untrusted or unsure source, now would be the time to simply admit rather than sticking to your guns on the income tax clearance being genuine.  Regards

Due respect to all the gurus in the house.

On the issue of the tax clearance, i would think that there is no validation or authentication that Viviko would provide if he's being awaited to provide one. My opinion is based on the following:

1. Yettidear's education was being sponsored by parents. This could only mean that the tax clearance provided by Viviko was for Yettdear's mom or dad.

2. Yettidear's parent are not knowledgeable about the arrangement with Viviko. This could only mean that whatever document Viviko had come up with could have only been a fake purpoting to be Yettidear's parents tax clearance.  Even with an insider at Alausa or ABC, I doubt if it would be possible to just say get me a tax clearance with so and so name with income and tax amount of so and so.

3. Except of course Yettidear had provided a genuine tax income certificate of parents to Viviko which he might now use as a basis of producing the falsified one.  In all scenarios, I would think the tax clearance produced by Viviko under any of these circumstances would still be fake and his offer to validate the authenticity with FIRS is just an impulsive face-saving ruse.


I'll suggest you heed Akolawole's advise and put on hold any re-application until you are definitely sure of how you would (in a very convincing manner) address the issue of presenting a fake income tax certificate with your previous application.  I can't think of any way to present this case bearing in mind that appending your signature to the application form invariable states that you are affirming the authenticity of all documents provided and you believe them true to the best of your knowledge (or something similar). How you would now turn this around to state why you presented the falsified certificate and if claiming ignorance, how you came by the certificate. Maybe someone might be able to suggest a workaround to addressing this scenario.

Whichever way, you would definitely come out of this more knowledgeable. As had been stated earlier, it's not the end of the world so stay strong on this and be positive that there might be a way out. Regards

@ Inspired_m

Still awaiting your take on posting VIN with car adverts. I think your stance on this would be helpful in clarifying what a lot of folks have been saying indirectly here. What's the rationale behind a dealer not wanting to post the VIN of an advertised car together with the advert?

Regards

yahoo!:

iN THE EVENT THAT PHAMMYUS IS VINDICATED IN THIS CASE AND ROMEOBEST DOES NOT APPOLOGISE HERE ON NAIRALAND, A CAN OF WORM MAY BE OPENED.

NAIRALANDERS GET READY FOR A MAJOR SHAKE UP ON THIS FORUM

Please let the s*%t hit the fan. People sure would have hunches about who the OP might be but still keeping their ears to the ground. One thing I don't get is, if the accused posted a valid VIN for the car in line 5 and down in line 8 he says something that goes against the report that could be obtained from the VIN' - what's the holla about? Isn't the VIN enough for any potential buyer to carry out due diligence checks before buying? I don't see the reason behind all the 'stop thief' accusations.

It's like me posting a picture of a dog with four legs for sale and down the line in the description I say the dog only has 3 legs. I'll expect any potential buyer to notice the discrepancy and bring to my attention in a courteous manner rather than shouting 'you lied', 'you lied'. Cmon people.

And one more thing especially to the car dealers here on nairaland, while misrepresentation and fraud should be condemned in their entirety, recognize that competition is good for everyone. Don't think you can make more sales or increase or sustain your popularity by pulling your fellow car dealers down. Remember you are even advertising on this forum and uploading all those megabytes of pictures without anyone asking you for a dime - be content with this and seek ways to improve your sales than trying to go round and knocking your fellow car dealers down who you might perceive to be a strong contender for popularity on the forum. It's been said over and over here again - the market is big enough for everyone. Don't let it be that the only way you can rise is by pulling someone else down. And if you have to go this way - then please do so to their face under your known ID and not some covert alias.

And for the records - I haven't bought and do not intent to buy or sell any car on nairaland so I have no vested interest in car sales here.

Regards

I think it goes beyond just making a list of places you want to visit. It would help if you are able to communicate you knowledge of why those places are of interest for you to visit and that you have a good idea of what to expect there. And also the arrangments you have made to facilitate your visit to those places. You could make a list like below:


Proposed Date/Time                   Description                                             Remarks

30th August / 6.00pm                Flight arrived heathrow                         
30th August / 8.00pm                Heathrow Express to Paddington         Fare cost - x pounds evidence - attached train fares printout
30th August / 8.40pm                Check in at Paddington Hotel               Reservation attached

31st August / 10am                   Tour Bus trip to central London            Tour booking attached
1st September / 11am               Madame Tussauds                                Online tickets printout attached
1st September / 1.30pm            Shopping at Oxford Street
1st September / 4.30pm            Return to hotel
1st September / 5.30pm            Visit London Eye                                  Tickets printout attached.

7th September / 5.00pm           Checkout at Paddington Hotel
7th September / 6.30pm           Arrive Heathrow airport                       
7th September / 12.00am         Depart to Lagos                                   Tickets reservation attached.


The list above is not exclusive and I'll advise you to make the information provided as concise as possible. In this way, you are making account for why yours is really a tourist trip and that you know exactly how you'll account for each day spent in the UK as  a tourist before returning to Nigeria.

My 2p worth. Hope it's useful. Regards

akuya:

I accused the dealer, Inspired, of sloppiness because one of the cars he claimed to have for sale, had indeed been sold.  I now believe that Inspired was simply careless in that deal, and he did not set out to defraud any one.

This particular case however is strange. First of all, how can one mistake over 145,000 miles with the advertized  mileage of 122,012? Secondly, the seller highlighted AWD (All Wheel Drive) when he knows clearly that the car is not AWD. Finally the car is accidented but the seller somehow didn't think this fact was important enough to declare.

Instead of phammyus admitting his mistakes, to say the least, he is accusing people of trying to bring him down. This is quite a shame! How do you expect people to trust you if you are this defensive?

Nairaland is better off with forumites like Romeobest.  This affair should put dealers on notice that this particular website will not tolerate fraud or incompetence.  We have our trusted dealers here, I'D suggest that the newly arrived dealers should emulate them. 

For me - the sane approach is 'don't trust any dealer'. Each car listed here for sale should be taken only on its own merit, a 'trusted' dealer now could get greedy later down the line. Human beings by nature are greedy animals. Regards