My Hotel In Bilbao
I stayed at the Silken Gran Dominie hotel in Bilbao.
The hotel was comfortable and although it was a five-star one, I got each night of my say at €102.30.
The food and service were good and I ate in the hotel for most of the two days, as they knew their gluten-free and I wasn’t too sure about other places in the city.
But various little things were not what you would expect from a good hotel.
The wi-fi was free, but the passwords were so complicated, I never managed to get connected. My username was all numbers and letters with a password of kKf6vaW6. Ty typing those in on the small screen of a Samsung S3 Mini. But at least they provided a free desktop machine in the Business Centre.
There was no bathrobes, tea or coffee equipment or free water in the room, which I expect in a five star hotel.
There were also a few small details that annoyed. One was that you could only empty the bath from inside it, as you couldn’t reach the control for the plug. Note the picture of the bath! It’s full of water, which I couldn’t release once I had got dressed.
On the other hand the house wine cost just two euros a glass in the hotel’s cafe. And it was good too!
I’d definitely stay again, but I would expect the same cost!
Giving A Bank A Cyber Kicking When Its Down
RBS and its subsidiary NatWorst are getting attacked by hackers according to this report in the Guardian. Here’s the bank’s description of the problems and their explanation of what happened.
The bank said its systems had been deliberately targeted: “Due to a surge in internet traffic deliberately directed at the NatWest website, customers experienced difficulties accessing some of our customer websites today.
But the outcome is the same as ever and customers couldn’t use the web sites.
I blame some hackers, who have a vested interest in RBS going bust.
Perhaps they’re another wunch of bankers, who have hedged the share price!
Will the last customer to leave RBS/Natworst please close their browser!
Not Taking Notice Of My Unsubscribes
One national charity, which I think does a lot of good work, but which I’ve never supported keeps sending me e-mails, so I might buy something from them on-line.
I unsubscribe each time, but still they keep coming. I think I’ve had thirteen since the start of November.
I do wonder, if a lot of people now wouldn’t support this charity, as they’ve had a similar treatment. Which I wouldn’t!
If I get a tin rattler in front of me, they’ll get the reasons.
Are BT Winding Me Up?
BT have said, I can’t have fibre-optic broadband, as I’m too close to the exchange. But this poster has appeared opposite my house, on a BT box.
That is just not on. So should I complain to OFCOM?
A Quick Analysis Of Bank Phishing E-Mails
I have been collecting bank phishing e-mails since July.
I’ve received a hundred and six of them, with most banks being mentioned a couple of times. The scores were as follows.
Halifax – 2
Nationwide – 2
HSBC – 9
Santander – 2
Lloyds – 2
But this is dwarfed by twenty six aimed at customers of RBS and Natwest. Let’s face it, if you’re a phishing expert, you might target a bank with well-publices problems, as an e-mail about security issues might be expected. Incidentally, I’ve never had an e-mail of any sort from Nationwide, except for a monthly one, to say that my statement is ready. But that has no links in it.
So that is another reason to leave the bank, as because you are obviously not that savvy in staying with them, you might be the sort of person, who falls victim to the scam.
But I wouldn’t think of moving to Barclays, as they score a massive 53 in the period.
It would seem to me, that the time you are most vulnerable to scams is just after you’ve changed banks, so as there are still Barclays phishing e-mails flying around, I’d avoid them.
Passwords
The BBC has an article on their web site today about passwords for Internet sites.
I go in to lots of sites and there are some I never use as their security doesn’t suit me.
If a site insists, I use a shift to enter a password, then that company doesn’t get my business. I think that Verified by Visa insists on this, so I never use my Visa card on-line. So if I see an on-line transaction, when I check my Visa account, I know it’s fraud.
Incidentally, I think it’s a good idea to only use one card for on-line transactions and keep that secure in a close place by your computer.
My passwords are generally based on phone numbers, that I remember from my childhood, which were like the classic Whitehall 1212, which was Scotland Yard. You can check your password here. They say, that it would take a PC a thousand years to crack one of my passwords. But even my immediate family wouldn’t probably have known the number.
And all it was was an old London phone number.
Even the last phone number I had in Suffolk, which was Thurlow 789, would take a computer 10 days. The previous phone number at Debach, which was on a small exchange called Charsfield and was just three digits, would take a thousand years. Unless of course you had my details from the 1970s.
Incidentally, if I translate my current phone number, back to the exchange name that would take 27 years. If you want to translate your London number, there’s a list here.
So it would appear you can be both lazy and secure!
Microsoft Outlook Is Full Of Bugs
I would be annoyed with myself, if I’d written software with as many bugs as Microsoft Outlook.
What is driving me hairless at the moment is trying to send the e-mail address, telephone numbers and physical address of a sick friend, to those in my address book who know him. I’m using a vcf format Business Card.
Unfortunately, since I first sent his address by this method a couple of years ago, the entry has changed, as my friend has moved.
But Outlook persists in sending the old details. Do I have to delete the entry and reenter everything?
That to me is a triple-X rated bug.
More ARM Processors Than People
A friend has told me that he was in a meeting and one of the founders of ARM pointed out, that there were probably more ARM processors in the room than people.
As I type this, I’m wondering how many ARM processors are in this room with me.
For a start, there’s my Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini, which has an ARM CPU and GPU. As the CPU is dual core, is that a total of three or two?
There’s also a modern Samsung television, two set-top boxes, four Nokia phones, including three 6310i, two digital cameras and a Samsung Tab, all of which might contain one or more ARM processors.
I think that I’m outnumbered! But take note that in 2012, they sold 8.7 billion units!
London’s Name Advantage
It has just been announced that London has now acquired the .london domain name extension.
If you go through the major cities of the world, it generally would seem to work for many like Paris, Berlin, Rome and New York, but it doesn’t work for cities with longer names like Edinburgh, San Francisco and Copenhagen.
So do the short-named cities like London have an advantage? try typing in the domain name for the mayor of Vladivostok!
Four Direct Debits
This morning on my summary bank statement, the last four entries just say Direct Debit. If I go to the full statement only one is fully annotated and understandable.
I can identify two of the other entries, but the third is almost a complete mystery to me.
As they are Direct Debits, my bank can do a lot better than this, as they must have had the payee to actually pay the direct debit.
So why are these payees not shown in the summary? It wouldn’t cost them any money to say “DD nPower” rather than “Direct Debit”. It even has less characters.
The first bank, that offers a fully annotated money transfer service gets my business!
The Anonymous Widower 