No Response on the Keyboard Driver
I still have need for the keyboard driver, but I’ve got absolutely nowhere about finding someone to write it.
On the other hand my hand is better and I make a lot less mistakes.
The FBI Wades In
I posted the question, Are We Winning the Spam Wars, a few days ago.
Today there is this fascinating article on how the FBI is targetting a Russian spammer, on a web site called The Smoking Gun. The web site was started independently, but is now part of media giant, Time Warner, and gets a lot of its information through the Freedom of Information Act.
The numbers in the article are huge. The Russian is alledged to have controlled 500,000 computers and sent billions of spam e-mails every day, selling fake Rolexes and all the other rubbish. For one six-month period, he was paid, $459,000 by his clients.
I hope Mr. Putin is taking note and sends a few men round with heavy boots and large machine guns!
Visits to This Blog
I would have thought that traffic would have been higher in the last couple of days or so, as people would be sitting at home with nothing to do, as they would have decided that going out wouldn’t be worth it. After all, with freezers, I suspect that there are a lot less people who need to go to the shops every day. And those who can, are working from home.
But since last Friday, when the weather started to get really cold, the traffic has been well down. I have also received very few e-mails, serious or spam, so perhaps everybody are just concentrating on keeping life together and are not at their computers.
It would be interesting to see if there is a correlation between the weather and the amount of Internet traffic.
After Payday Loans, We Now Have Payday Sales!
I buy my Sloggi knickers from Figleaves, as it is so much easier to buy them there than in a real store, as most never have my style or anything smaller than medium. And as they are just a few miles down the road in Haverhill, they usually arrive in the post the next morning!
Today, I received an e-mail from them with a new twist. The title was “20% off at figleaves.com – Payday treat!”
I like that and it is very much the acceptable face of the Internet, as opposed to some of the payday loan companies.
A Real Corker
I just had to put this spam e-mail up, as anybody who believes it, should be automatically certified.
UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN
THE PARLIAMENT COUNCIL
SUB-COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN DEBTS PAYMENT
ENGLAND- BRITAIN
OFFICIAL GAZETTE 23/11/10
NO. 33 GOVERNMENT NOTICE NO. 37 VOL. 2010
PARLIAMENT COMMENT!
ATTN: FUNDS BENEFICIARY (ON COMPENSATION/INTEREST CALCULATION) AMOUNT:
? 1,850,000.00 GBP
With reference to the petition filed by the Payment Review Commission (PRC) to the Parliament Sub-Committee on Foreign Debts Payment requesting the immediate payment of foreign/local beneficiaries within forty-eight hours (48hrs.) as interest/compensation of this last quarter payment schedule. We are sorry over the time you have been looking to receive your payment and the huge disappointment s most of you have encountered.
The British Counsel has therefore given instructions to the Director of Economist, Transfer & Relations, Debt Management Office (DMO); Tel: +44 208 8199432; Email: dmo@europe.com with immediate effect.
Congratulations!
??????????
DR. JONATHAN ELLIS MEMBERS
CHAIRMAN, (SBERR)
MR DAHOMEL CEBALOS
(Parliament Committee)
BRAIN LUCAS
(Member, Parliament House)
There are a lot of things I find funny in this but nothing more so, than the dyslexic Brian.
Kodama Chemical Industry
I haven’t seen one of these for some time and this new one uses a Japanese company as the bait.
But it’s still a fraud.
Kodama Chemical Industry Co., Ltd.
1-12,Ueno 1-chome,
Taito Ku,Tokyo,
Japan 110-8508
This mail is serving as an invitation to treat with the above named company.
Our company was established in March 8, 1946. Over the years we have accumulated invaluable experience in our business and we are proud to claim we are second to none.Due to the increase in demand of our products in America, United Kingdom and Canada. We have decided to move our products fully into the continent of America, United Kingdom and canada. By so doing,we are searching for reliable persons/companies who can act as a RECEIVING PAYMENTS AGENT who will act as medium of reach between our customers and us in their area of locality.
Note that, if finally aprroved as our Representative, you are entitled to Salary of $5000.00USD and 10% of whatever amount you receive from customers who aremaking payments for outstanding invoices on behalf of the company. Our account officer in Japan will convey to you the medium which you will use to remit any funds received on our behalf.If you are interested in being a REPRESENTATIVE AGENT in the above location and your locality, please send the following information via email to: E-mail:
contct_ssusumuakuwa1946@hotmail.com
Please also let us know the best time to reach you on phone especially as we have a different time. Thank you for your time.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
MR. SUSUMU UKAWA
PRESIDENT- Kodama Chemical Industry Co., Ltd.
So use the Delete key every time you see one of these.
It should be noted that there does appear to be a real and totally legimate company of the same name in Japan.
The Masons Arms
This pub in Devonshire Street played a major part in my life in the 1970s.
The Masons Arms
It was just round the corner from the offices of Time Sharing Ltd., the company we were all associated with in the early 1970s, so often if you needed anyone they were drinking in the Masons, as it was always called. One of our staff, who later joined Metier, even developed a long-term relationship with the landlord, which still flourishes today.
But it’s not just me, that has pleasant memories of the pub One of my friends, who sadly died a few years ago, had a part-time job in the pub, whilst he worked for AEI. He claimed that someone from AEI New Zealand, the landlord of the Mason’s and himself, enjoyed themselves immensely on a spree in London. Now this was after AEI had been taken over by GEC and all expenses had to be approved by Arnold Weinstock‘s office. It was queried by asking who they had taken out for the evening. The reply was that it was the New Zealand High Commissioner. And to prove it he gave the office, the personal telephone number of the Commissioner. The expenses were paid.
Business is very different these days, but I’ll always remember the Masons Arms with fondness.
WordPress’s New Method of Entering Links.
This how WordPress describes it.
With our sexy new internal linking feature, you can now enter any URL to create a link just like you used to, OR you can search your existing posts and pages right there in the link popup. A combination of pre-loading, autocomplete, and some ajaxy goodness make the new link creation tool a joy to use (and man, that popup is so much faster!). We hope this addition spurs you to make more connections between pieces of content on your site, which will make it easier for your visitors to find more related content from you. One more time, all together now: Yay! (Right?)
But I don’t like it, as to make it work, I seem to have to swap to HTML rather than Visual mode.
Something More Terminal
One of my computers suffered a terminal failure over the weekend, and I needed to take it to the menders yesterday. The symptoms were that it refused to even start, recycling round the login endlessly, but never getting near starting.
Before this a scan by Clamwin had shown that the computer was infected by the DroopTroop virus. There were several instances in a sub-directory where I had downloaded an old blog and Clamwin also flagged that winlogon.exe and Internet Explorer had been replaced by versions that had been modified by the trojan. The first explained why the computer wouldn’t start and the second, why Internet Explorer didn’t search properly and pointed me at a load of porn and shopping sites, I didn’t want.
The machine was completely unuseable.
So what caused it. Either the downloaded blog contained the data, so did someone find a way of commenting on the blog and adding the virus in that way?
But the machine had also been used by my late son to download all sorts of computer games from various sites. I would have thought that he would have been more sensible than to introduce a virus.
The computer has never been used for e-mail, so I doubt that route was possible.
On the other hand, the computer has been showing odd behaviour for months and I called the menders in to fix it. We thought that somehow McAffee was corrupted and this was causing the computer to stop. It looks like the virus was there then. I removed McAffee and replaced it with Clamwin. Another fault was that the computer wouldn’t run Windows Media Player. It just said it was an illegal win32 application.
This is a list of Drooptroop symptons from the PCThreat web site.
Modified browser homepage settings and search results
Hijacked Windows desktop wallpaper and strange desktop shortcuts and icons
Abnormal Trojan-Dropper.Win32.Drooptroop.cpt files in Windows task manager system processes, tower speaker error bleeping sound
Trojan-Dropper.Win32.Drooptroop.cpt reactivates itself after been deleted manually, extremely difficult to get rid of
Legal registry keys, dlls and system files missing, causing “Blue Screen Of Death” error
Abnormal bandwidth use, slow Internet browser and Windows system
Pop-up blocker unable to block annoying porn and gambling related bulk pop-upsWhat Trojan-Dropper.Win32.Drooptroop.cpt will do when embedded within a computer is as follows:
Records browsing habits, monitors Windows system activity to generates equivalent pop-ups
Bypasses security tools and forwards credit card, usernames, passwords and other private information to outside hackers
Trojan-Dropper.Win32.Drooptroop.cpt downloads and installs diverse malicious programs via Windows and browser security loopholesTrojan-Dropper.Win32.Drooptroop.cpt has also been seen to display the following behavior:
Adds a Registry Key (RUN) to auto start Programs on system start up
Registers a Dynamic Link Library File
Executes a Process
This Process Deletes Other Processes from Disk
So you can see it is an evil thing to get on your computer to say the least. Luckily, I only used this computer for developing Visual Basic programs and the odd bit of browsing of news and other respected web sites.
I suppose that I could have inadvertently installed something nasty in the last few months, becausev of my awful typing. But I hope not!
Moving Phones
Obviously, as I’m moving, I will have to change my phone. Here I’m on BT, but in London, I’ll be using cable for broadband and TV, so it would seem logical to use that for phones as well.
I hadn’t realised that I will be able to move my number, but I can. So I won’t have to tell a lot of my contacts, what my new number is! It will be a great time saver.
The Anonymous Widower 