To be honest, it’s nice. Nice to use WordPress again and nice to be blogging again. Over the last few months, much has happened.

• September whizzed by and South Africa won the Rugby World Cup (as I predicted to my All Blacks’ fanboy colleagues, weeks before the tournament).
• Sri Lanka fought hard and got into the Cricket World Cup finals, only to lose out to Australia (and don’t even think of discussing the whole squash ball incident).
• I watched the finals of the aforesaid cricket match, whilst running intermittently to the balcony to watch tracer bullets fire at the possible locations of LTTE light aircraft.
• I never got around to buying the new computer, although the people from ABC Computers thanked me for pointing out that their website was a bit out of date.
• I married an amazing young lady. Life has taken a distinct turn for the better!
• I got promoted.
• After much deliberation, I bought a car.
• I got over my suspicions of social networking and finally joined Facebook.
• The guys at Vesess totally amazed me with their new look and have now gone totally Free.
• A number of blogs that I enjoyed reading have vanished – notably Mahangu’s which is now used by someone else (unless that is, Mahangu.org is written by MW in an intentionally different style).
• The local website for HSBC was revamped and now allows access from a variety of browsers. Haven’t checked whether it works with linux, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t.
• I realised that 34 posts over a period of almost three years (since Nisadas went live) is pretty lame for a blog.
• I also realised that apart from fetish-crazed spambots, no one (well, except for one special person) really vists Nisadas anymore.

So that’s it. Things have happened – not limited to the list above – over the last few months. If you will join me again, you may find out more…

So why should they (the local branch) have a problem with me switching to a more secure and less crash-prone operating system/web browser?

When I took up my first intern/trainee job, one of the things I did was get an HSBC card. Not only did it look good, but it also meant that come payday, I would be one of the lucky people to get my hands on the cash first. The others would have to wait a day or two longer before their allowance was in their accounts. So I’m happy.

But I stopped using Internet Explorer and switched to Opera. Bad move. The Internet Banking facility doesn’t work for me. But thankfully Firefox came along and things were ok.

Fast forward to 2005: I’ve switched completely to Linux when it comes to surfing the net. This is because I’m paranoid about spyware/adware/zombie networks and frankly I haven’t the faintest of confidence in Internet Explorer’s security.

And then I try to access MY account via Internet Banking. No dice. Opera (even with “Identify as Internet Explorer” enabled) doesn’t work. Neither does Firefox.
I’m told that

To access internet banking, please use

• Internet Explorer version 5.0 or above; or
• Netscape Communicator version 4.72 or above (version 6.x currently not supported)

What gives?

So I inform the bank of the issue. This I do on September 12, 2005.
I get the following reply on September 15, 2005:

We refer to your mail of 12 September 2005.

Please be informed that we have taken your request to consideration and are looking at the possibilty of enabling Linux Users to login to our Internet Banking Service.

However we wish to inform you that we are not preventing any users of Linux from accessing the Internet Banking Facility.

Right.

It’s become common knowledge that Microsoft’s Windows OS and Internet Explorer browser aren’t exactly the most secure software in the world. Even if the developers manage to patch the security holes, the very fact that Windows/IE are so popular the world over make them ideal targets for hackers. This was common knowledge ages ago – that’s why alternate browsers have been able to make such an impact in the global internet community.

While I agree that there is no silver bullet for surfing on the web, I feel that institutions shouldn’t place restrictions on how people access the information they put on the web.

A little searching led me to this email at the Lanka Linux User Group(LKLUG) that seems to discuss the problems in the JavaScript code at the site that seems to restrict users. Note the date: July 19, 2005.

I’m not a coder, but according to the email, it seems that the web site doesn’t consider Linux as an operating system that the potential visitor might be using.

It’s been more than three months since the LKLUG have figured out what’s wrong with the web site’s code. So how come the problem hasn’t been fixed yet?

Ah well.

For anyone interested, there’s a workaround (thanks to Chamindra) . The simplest method (which I’m using now) is to download the User Agent Switcher and install it on Firefox.

UPDATE: As of late 2007, the HSBC site got revamped and now supports internet banking with many different browsers. I have so far had success with Firefox, Opera and Safari (on Windows).