April 27, 2011

Things You Don’t Encounter Anywhere Else

While I was downloading some things for an iPad, I got this message.
I wonder who built this notification in? The Israelis, or the Lebanese? My guess it’s the Lebanese.

It’s not all together accurate that you do not encounter this anywhere else. I know from American friends over here that certain items cannot be bought from American sites, or cannot be paid for, if your address is in Lebanon. Fill in another home country, you may think, but apparently some of these sites know exactly where you are surfing from, and then certain menus will not be accessible.

Another friend wanted to buy online airline tickets while in Iran. That kite didn’t fly either (a Dutch expression, I believe)
I’d rather see notifications like this. Don’t know where that came from, got it in my inbox.

5 comments:

Life with Subtitles said...

That last notification looks like it could very well serve as a "trap" in some radical muslim countries. Click yes, and you earn yourself quick tour of the local jail :P

Anonymous said...

and anyway why buying stuff from stupid american sites ? we can find nearly everything here in Lebanon.

nicolien said...

Oh but I often get this here in Holland as well (without the wine-suggestion, unfortunately). It's usually music or (youtube)videos, and then it says 'this content is not available in your country/outside of the United States'. Grr.

htj said...

You’ve been living in Lebanon way too long. You're starting to believe in conspiracy theories. :)

This is just standard eCommerce software behavior. If it can’t find what you’re looking for in your default (local) store, it’ll automatically direct you to the “geographically” nearest store. It wasn’t the Lebanese or the Israelis that built this notification. It probably was some 21 year old programmer, right out of college, living somewhere near San Jose, California, who doesn’t give a damn about politics, let alone understand it, and cannot even fathom why doesn’t everybody live in a land filled with daisies, butterflies and rainbows.

Nick said...

if you must get whatever, route your internet through a proxy server in the us. There are about a million free ones and they give you a temporary us based IP address. Slows internet to a crawl sometimes though

As always, great entertaining blog!