Globeinvestor Problems & Questions

[nisser]

is anyone else having major trouble with this crappy website in the past week or so. Changing a stock ticker is like pulling out teeth; it simply won't do it unless you refresh the page and start over.

[Taggart]

is anyone else having major trouble with this crappy website in the past week or so. Changing a stock ticker is like pulling out teeth; it simply won't do it unless you refresh the page and start over.

Nisser:

Just tried three different stock symbols (one at a time). No problem.

[scomac]

I've noticed that lately the when browsing that site that MSIE has a tendency to freeze. It happened once today already. Maybe it's time I went back to FF.

[investor99]

is anyone else having major trouble with this crappy website in the past week or so. Changing a stock ticker is like pulling out teeth; it simply won't do it unless you refresh the page and start over.

Major problems for me over the past 2 weeks on the site.

1. Page won't load
2. Stock page won't load after typing symbol in
3. Prior to the recent change in the area you enter symbols. 'Stock' could not be selected and if you typed a symbol in your were forced to load 'News'

[nisser]

Exactly! It's so frustrating. It also has the most annoying set-up. If you mouse over any of those titles while you are trying to just move the cursor to type in a stock ticker, a pulldown comes down to frustrate you!!

[investor99]

It seems like it is under constant upgrades to me and that is likely the reason for the problems. That being said, so is Google Finance, but it always runs great.

[mpav]

Exactly! It's so frustrating. It also has the most annoying set-up. If you mouse over any of those titles while you are trying to just move the cursor to type in a stock ticker, a pulldown comes down to frustrate you!!

You should call them and ask for your money back.

[like_to_retire]

I've noticed that lately the when browsing that site that MSIE has a tendency to freeze

Yeah, I blame it on IE7 and not Globe. I have several sites that simply freeze up on me for no reason in the last few weeks. I think they did some update to IE that isn't working too well.

On another note, I also can't get the WebBroker Select Real Time Tracker feature to work since the last Sun Java Update 10 was automatically updated.

I wish they would stop these improvements.

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[active]

Warning: The latest Java update is a problem for the use of the real time tracker functions. The tracker window pops up but will not be populated with data.

You will have to go back from _10 to the previous update _7.

[squash500]

Warning: The latest Java update is a problem for the use of the real time tracker functions. The tracker window pops up but will not be populated with data.

You will have to go back from _10 to the previous update _7

Went through all that aggravation with waterhouse a week ago .

Tdw also suggested I lower my adobe reader to the 7.0 version

[like_to_retire]

Yeah, I switched back to Update 7 from Update 10 of Java and TDW Selects Real Time Tracker works fine.

You have to remember to turn off Java auto update or it will move back to the latest..

I'm sure they'll eventually work it out.

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[Bylo Selhi]

Tdw also suggested I lower my adobe reader to the 7.0 version

I switched back to Update 7 from Update 10 of Java... I'm sure they'll eventually work it out.

Yabbut maybe not in our lifetimes. The current version of Adobe Acrobat Reader is 9.x. The 7.x version is now at least 2 or 3 years old. Even 8.x is now almost 2 years old.

Worse, what are you going to do if someone else tells you that to run their software or view their website you need JRE V5 U10 and/or Acrobat 8.x or higher?

Don't accept this sort of bullshit from TDW. Complain, complain, complain! Otherwise this amateur hour by Dr. Ed's IT people will get even worse.

[Peculiar_Investor]

Tdw also suggested I lower my adobe reader to the 7.0 version

I switched back to Update 7 from Update 10 of Java... I'm sure they'll eventually work it out.

Yabbut maybe not in our lifetimes. The current version of Adobe Acrobat Reader is 9.x. The 7.x version is now at least 2 or 3 years old. Even 8.x is now almost 2 years old.

Worse, what are you going to do if someone else tells you that to run their software or view their website you need JRE V5 U10 and/or Acrobat 8.x or higher?

Don't accept this sort of bullshit from TDW. Complain, complain, complain! Otherwise this amateur hour by Dr. Ed's IT people will get even worse.

I'm going to be joined the queue of complainers to TDW/GlobeInvestor Gold. The secondary part of the complaint will be why can't I use FF (without IETab) to view the Tracker? Particularly when it is the Sun Java engine that is being used. IMHO it is just lazy programming/testing at TDW/GlobeInvestor Gold that is the root cause.

I wonder what happens if/when a security breach happens when you are using out of date software. Will they still honor their security pledge?

[Bylo Selhi]

I wonder what happens if/when a security breach happens when you are using out of date software. Will they still honor their security pledge?

Excellent and very important point. Most financial institutions expect their online users to be on the latest (non-beta, PI ) releases of underlying software and to have the latest updates, especially security-related ones, applied on top of that. For all I know Adobe may not even have issued security-related updates to Acrobat 7.x because it is so old.

In effect TDW's ineptitude places TD's customers in a catch-22 situation with respect to their online security. That is simply unacceptable. Perhaps this is something that federal banking regulators, provincial privacy commissioners (re the potential for identity theft), et al need to hear about as well.

[Peculiar_Investor]

From the source, Sun Java Updates for Multiple Vulnerabilities

Overview

Sun has released alerts to address multiple vulnerabilities affecting the Sun Java Runtime Environment. The most severe of these vulnerabilities could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code.

I. Description

The Sun Java Runtime Environment (JRE) allows users to run Java applications in a browser or as standalone programs. Sun has released updates to the Java Runtime Environment software to address multiple vulnerabilities.

Sun released the following alerts to address these issues:

* 244986 : The Java Runtime Environment Creates Temporary Files That Have "Guessable" File Names
* 244987 : Java Runtime Environment (JRE) Buffer Overflow Vulnerabilities in Processing Image Files and Fonts May Allow Applets or Java Web Start Applications to Elevate Their Privileges
* 244988 : Multiple Security Vulnerabilities in Java Web Start and Java Plug-in May Allow Privilege Escalation
* 244989 : The Java Runtime Environment (JRE) "Java Update" Mechanism Does Not Check the Digital Signature of the JRE that it Downloads
* 244990 : A Buffer Overflow Vulnerability in the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) May Allow Privileges to be Escalated
* 244991 : A Security Vulnerability in the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) Related to Deserializing Calendar Objects May Allow Privileges to be Escalated
* 245246 : The Java Runtime Environment UTF-8 Decoder May Allow Multiple Representations of UTF-8 Input
* 246266 : Security Vulnerability in Java Runtime Environment May Allow Applets to List the Contents of the Current User's Home Directory
* 246286 : Security Vulnerability in the Java Runtime Environment With Processing RSA Public Keys
* 246346 : A Security Vulnerability in Java Runtime Environment (JRE) With Authenticating Users Through Kerberos May Lead to a Denial of Service (DoS)
* 246366 : Security Vulnerabilities in the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) JAX-WS and JAXB Packages may Allow Privileges to be Escalated
* 246386 : A Security Vulnerability in Java Runtime Environment (JRE) With Parsing of Zip Files May Allow Reading of Arbitrary Memory Locations
* 246387 : A Security Vulnerability in the Java Runtime Environment may Allow Code Loaded From the Local Filesystem to Access LocalHost


II. Impact

The impacts of these vulnerabilities vary. The most severe of these vulnerabilities allows a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code.

I take this stuff seriously and would hope that TDW/GlobeInvestor Gold would as well. Much the same can be said for suggesting moving back to Adobe 7.x.

I do feel some sympathy for TDW/GlobeInvestor Gold as they likely did not have a warning about an upcoming Java security update. Therefore they would not have been able to test the update and fix/update their own code to address whatever is the underlying issue that has surfaced. As a software developer, that is one of the most frustrating things, dealing with the ever changing software environment of your users. I'm willing to wager that no two people of FWF are running the same versions of OS, hardware, browser, anti-virus software, firewall, add-ons, ...

However, support people must be trained to provide a more responsible answer than revert back to the previous version. The blame the user era needs to end. Accept that a problem is being reported and needs to be addressed. Put something on the website that indicates that customers are reporting problems once they've updated to software xxx and that the problem is being investigated and provide as realistic estimate of when a solution can be expected.

[active]

The secondary part of the complaint will be why can't I use FF

I use Firefox and the tracker works fine.

Actually the tracker is for me the only reason I am using Firefox as nobody could get it to work on IE. I changed from a PC to a Mac because I like the hardware better and use Windows on the Mac. The tracker just would not work and neither local talents or the technical support could get it going.

Now if you call TD technical support and you are on Firefox you have a challenge. They just keep going down the checklist of IE and refuse to understand that Firefox has different tabs under Tools. They talk to you like you are a 10 year old.

[Peculiar_Investor]

The secondary part of the complaint will be why can't I use FF

I use Firefox and the tracker works fine.

That is very interesting. When I turn off IETab in FF, this is what I get when I launch tracker with Firefox,

Now if you call TD technical support and you are on Firefox you have a challenge. They just keep going down the checklist of IE and refuse to understand that Firefox has different tabs under Tools. They talk to you like you are a 10 year old.

I've had the experience -- but it usually changes when I tell them that I've done software development and customer support. Tell them you you don't want the scripted answers, and would like to deal with someone who is interested in working on resolving the customer's problem. Sometimes you need to talk to them like they are the 10 year old.

[Bylo Selhi]

I've had the experience -- but it usually changes when I tell them that I've done software development and customer support. Tell them you you don't want the scripted answers, and would like to deal with someone who is interested in working on resolving the customer's problem.

I've had generally poor results with that at TDW. There seems to be a culture there that customers are only supposed to talk to front line staff while everyone else at TDW is supposed to be insulated from us. It's as if we're not worthy to talk to a compliance officer, bond trader, programmer, etc. regardless of our need and/or ability to discuss our issue with them directly. This gets even more frustrating when the middle-persons subtract value from the communications process because they simply don't understand what's being discussed. (IBM used to have that attitude until they suffered their near-death experience in the mid-90s. I hope it doesn't take something like that to wake up TDW's management.)

That said, I've had just the opposite experience with TD/CT Bank so at least this attitude doesn't permeate the entire enterprise.

Sometimes you need to talk to them like they are the 10 year old.

Perhaps because some of them really are at a 10-year old's maturity level?

[Peculiar_Investor]

<Engineer mode back on>

I needed to find a fix to this problem and wasn't going to stop until I got it working again. I've tried calling TDW tech support, e-mailing them etc and the only solution they could offer was revert back. Not acceptable to me. Google and Sun's website didn't yield much in the way of a solution. So I figured since the problem occurred as a result of the Java update, I'd fiddle with the Java settings.

I've found a solution that works for me.

On Windows XP, Control Panel, select Java. When the Java Control Panel loads, select the Advanced Tab. Then select the item Java Plug-in and uncheck "Enable the next-generation Java Plug-in (requires browser restart)".



Once the browser is restarted, the WebBroker Select Tracker loads and works properly.

</Engineer mode off>

I've e-mailed the solution to TDW as well.

<Rant on>
Sun - what were you thinking Why is a feature change/introduction part of a Security Update? According to http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/techn ... s/jqs.html the Quick Start "feature" was introduced in JavaSE 6u10.
</Rant off>

[like_to_retire]

Yeah, that fix appears to work. My Web Select Tracker now operates properly with the latest Java Update 11.

They explain here that it was partly meant to help Windows Vista support, and indeed the Update 11 works fine on my Vitsa machine with the defaulted plug-in checkbox enabled. Trouble is that it screws up XP machines (as we've already seen).

Anyway, with the box unchecked the Tracker works fine now. (I can't live without my tracker)...

Good work Peculiar_Investor.....

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[active]

(Stupid?) question:

What is the difference (for XP) between not downloading the update in the first place and downloading it, but disabling it?

[Bylo Selhi]

(Stupid?) question:

There are no stupid questions but sometimes there are stupid answers. I hope this isn't one of those times

What is the difference (for XP) between not downloading the update in the first place and downloading it, but disabling it?

If you download and install the update, then disable the next-gen Java plug-in you should still get whatever else they included in the Security Update, e.g. fixes to security and other bugs as described here. Don't worry if you don't understand everything therein. I don't either.

[Peculiar_Investor]

Good work Peculiar_Investor.....

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Always happy to help others, particularly TDW solve their problems.

[active]

There is a new Java update _11 offered now. Does anyone know if this works with the Tracker?

[like_to_retire]

No, it works the same as update 10. But, it works fine with the fix that P_I discovered... I want the extra security the latest version offers, so I certainly have update 11 on both my computers...

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