Nuisance Calls
My last post took a long time to get posted as I was interrupted by an American lady on the phone, saying C had won a cruise. I dropped the phone and this hit some dodgy keystroke, which meant that the post I was editing got deleted.
If I have time, I usually greet these callers with suitable arrangement of Foxtrot Oscar, especially when they ask for C. These low-life are a very good place to vent my anger and frustration with life.
My phones are all listed on the Telephone Preference Service, so they should not be cold calls. But then American companies do not feel that they should abide by UK and EU law. It’s America first and the rest don’t count.
Until they do, I will not buy any products from US companies, unless they adhere to the ethics that all sensible people adhere to!
European Computer Driving Licence
I had never heard of this until Wednesday, when an unemployed man said that he’d been offered a course to get him back to work. I am not sure, if it helped him get a job, but it strikes me that it is simple proof, that the holder has the minimum computer skills needed in the most basic of jobs. Speaking to two friends at dinner that night, it turned out that both their sons had done this qualification at school and had thought it worthwhile.
I have read about the syllabus on the British Computer Society’s web site. As I have actually written a book on how to use the Internet and have many years of computing experience, this qualification is something I could teach or at least point people in the right direction.
There is almost a barter here, in that I might teach say an unemployed person, a bit of computing and they do a few of the jobs that I can’t manage in my state. I suspect too, that I’m not the only person with good computer skills, who needs a bit of other support.
A Classic Analysis for Daisy
Daisy is my software for analysing databases. Some of the most successful analyses has always been to take a series of date/time based events and draw a Date and Time Daisy Chart of them. Patterns in the data are often immediately visible.
Some years ago, one of our clients, a UK county, analysed low birth weight babies, by month, day of the week and post code, to see if there were any patterns. We didn’t find anything immediately, but we did in the end find a peak of twins, nine months after Christmas and the New Year. As the type of twin, identical or fraternal was not known, we could not explain the pattern. I have since told this to an honest man, who used to run fertility clinics in the United States. He felt that there were some times of the year when it was better to have IVF. He left the fertility business, as he felt this was not the sort of service, you should give couples desperate for a child.
But to return to the reason, I have written this post. It is being reported that babies born outside of office hours are more likely to die.
I don’t think the researchers are using Daisy, but it is the classic type of analysis for which the software was designed. All you need to do, is get all the events in an Excel spreadsheet as a table and then run Daisy.
Microsoft Sells Drugs
I actually think not, but this spam e-mail, which looks as if it had come from Microsoft, is actually selling the drugs, that are the main source of income for many crooks and fraudsters around the world. What gave the e-mail away was its title of “Your rod will stay”, so I suppose it was about turning software into hardware!
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The links in the mail actually point to a web site called tastymighty.com, which is registered in China and the e-mail may actually have come from a spammer in Uruguay. The web site is yet another incarnation of the well known fake drug provider, the Canadian Pharmacy.
I have seen spammers using the fake Microsoft e-mail, but not for some time. So beware anything like this, as trying to unsubscribe just takes you to the drug site.
Bonkers Windows
Because of my gammy left hand Windows is a nightmare.
Take just now. I was writing a post using WordPress and typing things into a large text box. For some reason, it just locked up and refused to accept any characters. I must have hit some control or Windows combination. It did allow U and then started talking to me through a dialog saying it would make my computer easier to you. What a load of crap!
Now if I try to restart the computer, it says my password is wrong. So I have to login to another account and then switch to the one I want.
It’s bad enough having a stroke, without having to fight all the way to work on the computer.
I’m actually on another laptop now, as the other is completely unworkable. For instance if I type a search into this blog, each key seems to bring up a new dialog. It’s almost as if the computer, thinks that the Windows Key is locked down.
Does anybody out there have any idea what is wrong?
w
Viagraski
I am getting a lot of spam trying to sell me the various erection dysfunctional drugs on Russian web sites.
In a way you can understand this, especially if like me you have read Fred Pearce‘s excellent book, Peoplequake. In the chapter on Russia, he says that the birthrate is dropping fast, as Russian men are spending most of their time with cheap vodka. So perhaps they need all the help they can get!
The e-mails are easily spotted as they just contain an inane comment and a single png file. Delete immediately!
T
Keyboard Frustration
It is usually after using the computer for about an hour or so, that I hit control and some key to mean that the only way out of my mess is to reboot.
It is so frustrating! Especially, as I know the solution is to be able to cut out the control key, just like I’ve cut out caps lock.
Pfizer Strikes Back
Vast amounts of spam are advertising one of Pfizer’s products; Viagra. On a spam list, I’ belong to, there has been a lot of discussion, about how the company has gone for a guy in the UK, who has been faking Viagra and selling it on the web. Here is a report from the Sydney Morning Herald.
I applaud Pfizer for what they are doing here, although others think that the company is acting outside of the law. But in the UK, if you do go outside the law, you’ll receive the proverbial ton of bricks.
Russian Spam Comments
This blog doesn’t get many spam comments, except for a load of Russian ones to A Better Keyboard. Usually, it’s about ten a day, all in Cyrillic and complete rubbish to me.
They obviously have a way of putting them in automatically.
Hopefully, by marking them as spam, WordPress will treat the with the contempt they deserve.
Alliance and Leicester Building Society
This building society has now been rebranded as part of the Santander Group.
But the spammers seem to be unaware of this change and they still keep sending me masses of e-mails trying to get me to give away my login details. It’s pointless anyway as I’ve never had an account at the bank or its parent.
On the subject of phishing spam, I’ve been watching it for about ten years now and it’s hardly changed in the wording and layout. So of the billions the crooks send out any day, how many actually reach a sucker, who is prepared to open their web site. On one today, I tried to open the link and the crooks web site had been taken down.
Hopefully, there must come a day, when the crooks give up and go away? But we don’t seem to be trhere yet! I don’t seem to have read of any prosecutions of phishers either. Surely, the banks are hoping for more than that the crooks give up?
On the other hand, today the Americans have swapped the Russian spies, when they should have prosecuted them! So is it now the policy of governments to only arrest those that have committed minor crimes?
The Anonymous Widower 