Stand by to crash

It's been a bad computer day! This morning, when I tried to open the Spiritia web site, I got an error. Not particularly unusual: recently they've had problems with a service called DNS, which works like a telephone directory, to convert 'spiritia.or.id' into an address a computer can understand. The frustrating thing is that is only affects people logging in form the Radnet domain (Radnet host our site), but does not affect people logging in from other domains, which have their own directories.

Normally this problem is sorted out in minutes, but this time it was taking longer. Finally I was informed that the hard disk on the Radnet server had crashed, and they were restoring from a back-up. This always means we lose some data, because the back up is always made some time (normally at most, a week) previously. However, when the site came back up, it looked like they had used a backup from last August! They are now trying to do better, but I fear I may have to re-upload a lot of data tomorrow! Oh well!

Then, our office assistant brought me her notebook computer, which 'was not working right'. A virus, or multiple viruses. Tried to recover it, but in the end, had to repair Windows. After that, everything was OK, except that the WiFi wouldn't work. Gave up on that at 5 p.m. I think Acer may have to sort that out.

This morning, because of the rain , the papers weren't delivered when I left for the office. Just been scanning the Jakarta Post. Monday's computer day, and Jeremy Wagstaff's column is always interesting. Today, he is Getting lost the forest of insecurity, having discovered a hole in Indonesia's banking system. It seems that anyone using internet banking here can find out details of anyone else's phone bill, including their name and amount. I guess I should have guessed this, since I use internet banking to pay my phone bill, and all I have to do is enter the number, and the details appear, even though the telephone is still in the name of my long diseased partner - and his name comes up! Haven't tried entering other numbers, but I'm sure Jeremy is right!

So much for confidentiality in Indonesia. I regularly get questions from people who are worried whether they can trust the hospitals to keep their details secret. I wish I was more confident about the answers I give. Usually I say that the policy is to maintain confidentiality, but the biggest risk is human errors. But I'm sure an increasing number of hospitals are maintaining records on computers. Could they be hacked? Need you ask?

Babé