March 25, 2004
November 28, 2003
'Master' and 'Slave' computer labels unacceptable...
LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Los Angeles officials have asked that manufacturers, suppliers and contractors stop using the terms "master" and "slave" on computer equipment, saying such terms are unacceptable and offensive.
OSLO, Norway (AP) -- A young Norwegian who became a global hacker hero by writing and distributing a program to crack DVD security codes appears to have struck again, this time against Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes online music service.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 — The Senate approved slight changes Tuesday to legislation aimed at reducing unwanted commercial e-mails, so the House will have to vote again next month before the bill can be sent to the White House.
Dude! You're getting the runaround... Submitted by markkaren.com - Here's a recent office memo that I think you'll all get a kick out of. Enjoy!
Good morning all:
The below e-mail was communicated to the floor yesterday. I have agents flooding me with questions on how they are supposed to handle these types of issues. We will probably want to get something out to the floor fairly quickly on what they should do with these types of calls. Are we not supposed to mention it at all? If we tell them to go to google or dogpile and search for spyware are we not then endorsing those browsers? I can't find any information on support.dell.com or delltech on this issue. Any feedback is appreciated.
Thanks,
Piett
Subject: Spyware: What we can say to the customer
Dell does not support or endorse the use of spyware removal programs.
NOTICE:
Use of spyware removal software may conflict with user license agreements of other applications installed on your system. Please consult your user license agreements for further information. Dell does not endorse the use of spyware removal software and cannot provide support on these products.
This means we do not take callers to download.com or doxdesk.com, nor do we recommend spyware removal programs, nor do we advise callers on the use of spyware removal programs. This includes using phrases "We don't support the removal of spyware, but I use... "
Please reply to this e-mail to indicate that you have read and understand this information.
Thanks,
Vader
Bobasaur
November 21, 2003
Spammers Beware!
Spam has become a plague on our online lives, an unnecessary evil that has come to the computer age and clogs our inboxes instead of the mailboxes that the paper "junk-mail" used to fill up in the years before the internet. Now spammers are spoofing our email addresses as their own to send out their advertisements for everything from viagra to aides that will increase the size of unmentionable body parts.
Not only has email been affected, but now robot spiders are finding susceptable blogs and leaving url's unrelated to the actual comments that are posted on any particular entry. There are many who are working on different solutions to the new attacks and here is an excellent link to several solutions to the blog spamming problem as penned by Yoz Grahame, several which I have had to implement on the Ethereal Trades© blog.
From the Kalsey Consulting Group and his companys' Spam Manifesto:
"Spammers are hereby put on notice. Your comments are not welcome. If the purpose behind your comment is to advertise yourself, your Web site, or a product that you are affiliated with, that comment is spam and will not be tolerated.
"Bloggers will track you down and notify your hosting providers about your activities. We will tell your ISPs what you are using their connections for. We will let the makers of the products you are advertising know of your despicable sales methods. We will hit you where it hurts by attacking your source of income.
"You can move to a new host, find a new ISP, or sign up for a different affiliate plan. The end result will be the same. Each time you rise out of the muck we will strike you down and send you back to the hole you crawled out of.
"Our sites belong to us and we intend to keep it that way. It will no longer be profitable to advertise through comment spam."
You can believe that steps are being taken here at ShreveNet (SpamTrapper is FREE to our subscribers) to curb the tide of spam and thwart new techniques being developed to get past our security. We offer FREE X-Stop (to keep our children from accidentally hitting a porn or other X-rated sites) to our Unlimited Dial-Up, DSL, and Wireless accounts, and soon we will have server level Anti-Virus protection as a first tier of protection for all our subscribers.
We are taking the fight seriously, (and I take it personally), as is the rest of the on-line-world, and those who would be spreading viruses or spamming would be wise to abandon their practices, otherwise they will be facing prosecution, digital castration, and even jail.
Digitally,
Bobasaur
August 23, 2003
Testing New GuestBook...
Trying out a new Guest Book so if you're visiting give it a shot. Maybe I'll get the "MTArchiveDate without context setup" error fixed in the process of posting this. Thanks to my friend Liz at Liz's World for the link to the program!
June 04, 2003
Win XP: Stop Auto Dial
stop the auto dial-up box from popping up. My eyes are just about strained out at this point; I've tried searches and had no luck so far. If somebody was able to find the issue this tweak was in I would be most grateful."
pat34lee found a great answer: "By default, Windows XP AutoDial connects your PC to the Internet automatically when a site is accessed on the PC. This is fine for most users, yet if you use the only phone line in the house, you may wish to have manual control over this feature:
1. Click on the Start button.
2. Select "Administrative Tools" and click on "Services." If Administrative Tools is not visible in your Start Menu, then try navigating to Start | Settings | Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Services.
3. In the window listing, click on "Remote Access Auto Connection Manager."
4. Click on "Stop" in the upper left of the window to shut down this service.
5. Right-click on "Remote Access Auto Connection Manager" listing.
6. Click on "Properties" in the pop-up menu.
7. Click on the arrow to the right of the drop-down box next to "Startup type:" and select "Disabled."
8. Click OK.
9. Exit the "Services" window.
----------
Technically,
Bobco
Promoted, not fired...
Submitted by Sarah Bryant...
This is a true story from the WordPerfect Helpline which was transcribed from a recording monitoring the customer care department.
Needless to say, the Help Desk employee was fired however, he is currently suing the WordPerfect organization for "Termination without Cause."
This is the actual dialogue of a former WordPerfect Customer Support employee (now I know why they record these conversations)
"Rich Hall computer assistance; may I help you?"
"Yes, well, I'm having trouble with WordPerfect."
"What sort of trouble?"
"Well, I was just typing along, and all of a sudden the words went away."
"Went away?"
"They disappeared."
"Hmmm. So what does your screen look like now?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"It's a blank; it won' t accept anything when I type."
"Are you still in WordPerfect, or did you get out?"
"How do I tell?
"Can you see the C: prompt on the screen?"
"What's a sea-prompt?"
"Never mind, can you move your cursor around the screen?"
"There isn't any cursor: I told you, it won't accept anything I type."
"Does your monitor have a power indicator?"
"What's a monitor?"
"It's the thing with the screen on it that looks like a TV. Does it have a little light that tells you when it's on?"
"I don't know."
"Well, then look on the back of the monitor and find where the power cord goes into it. Can you see that?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Great. Follow the cord to the plug, and tell me if it's plugged into the wall."
"Yes, it is."
"When you were behind the monitor, did you notice that there were two cables plugged into the back of it, not just one?"
"No."
"Well, there are. I need you to look back there again and find the other cable."
"Okay, here it is."
"Follow it for me, and tell me if it's plugged securely into the back of your computer."
"I can't reach."
"Uh huh. Well, can you see if it is?"
"No."
"Even if you maybe put your knee on something and lean way over?
"Oh, it's not because I don't have the right angle it's because it's dark."
"Dark?"
"Yes - the office light is off, and the only light I have is coming in from the window."
"Well, turn on the office light then."
"I can't."
"No? Why not?"
"Because there's a power failure."
"A power.......a power failure? ... Aha, Okay, we've got it licked now. Do you still have the boxes and manuals and packing stuff your computer came in?"
"Well, yes, I keep them in the closet."
"Good. Go get them, and unplug your system and pack it up just like it was
when you got it. Then take it back to the store you bought it from."
"Really? Is it that bad?"
"Yes, I'm afraid it is."
"Well, all right then, I suppose. What do I tell them?"
"Tell them you're too stupid to own a computer."
-------------------------
some days we do bite our tongues off in spite of ourselves!
...technically yours,
Bobco
May 04, 2003
Why "Bob"?
[Thanks to Andrew Bangs and Rob Mortimer for their historic assistance here]
All tech support personal are called "Bob". (Female support personnel have an option on "Bobette", as they feel appropriate). This has nothing to do with "Bob", the Divine Drilling Equipment Salesman and the Church of the SubGenius. Nor it is "Brother Of BOFH" (although that's smart sidewise thinking, which is good). The real story of Bob can finally be revealed...
The time: August 1995. The place: Demon Internet, Support Department. A large number of new victims recruits were due to arrive, and it was observed that there would be much duplication of names. To ease the confusion, it was decided that all support techs would henceforth be known as "Bob", and identity badges were created labelled "Bob 1" and "Bob 2". (No, we never got any further).
The reason for "Bob" rather than anything else is due to a luser calling and asking to speak to "Bob", despite the fact that no "Bob" was currently working for Tech Support. Since we all know "the customer is always right", there had to be at least one "Bob", just in case.
Just a little sillyness, but it snowballed. Shift leaders and managers began to refer to their groups of 'bobs'. Whole ranks of support machines were set up (and still exist in the DNS) as bob1 through bob[lots].
Then came a.t-s.r, and it was filled with Demon support personnel. They all referred to themselves, and to others, as 'bob', and after a while it caught on.
Just one of those strange things, I guess...
Mark Halsall (mhalsall@mail.io.com) notes that:
Bungie Software's Marathon [0] series has a bunch of civilians [1] running around. Fun to shoot, even better to just punch to death. And, they're all called Bob.
[0] A trilogy of shoot-em up games for the Mac.
[1] Read "moving targets"."
Being a Trainer-of-Bobs and Bob-to-Bobs, I can kind of sympathise with that. But surely something involving destruction (or preferably lots of pain and *then* destruction) of lusers is better. Or PH1s, for that matter...
And more, on the Marathon BOBs, from Acheron :
In Marathon Infinity (the last of the trilogy), the BOBs get their revenge. Gone are the wimpy civilians running around, replaced by teleporting, fusion-pistol packing BOB-teams with loads of firepower. If you so much as nick one of the BOBs with a stray bullet while in view of another BOB, you'll be greeted with cries of "HEY!!! HE SHOT BOB!!!" as they all turn their loving projectile attention to you and blow you away. This is starting to digress. Badly. Let's hear no more on pixelated bobs, unless you have a "Hell^HpDesk Total Conversion" for Quake of course ;)
-----------------------------------------------------------
Technically,
Bobco
Block Web Ads
By Neil J. Rubenking
In the futuristic world of the recent film Minority Report, targeted advertisements accost pedestrians on the street calling them by their first names and touting various wares. Mere science fiction? Not on the Internet. When you surf to a page that contains banner ads, advertisers can get the URL of the page, your IP address, the time, and your browser version. Advertisers can then plant cookies on your system that let them track which ads you've seen. They may not know your name, but they know your habits.
Privacy issues aside, ubiquitous online ads are plain annoying. Whether banners, pop-ups, or pop-unders, they all take up bandwidth and get in your way. You can download dozens of shareware and freeware programs to block them, but there's another way to stop many ads, which requires nothing more complicated than a text editor.
To understand this solution, you need to know a bit about names and addresses on the Internet. Every Web site has a unique IP address; for example, 63.111.13.100. Such a numeric ID is fine for computers, but people need a more memorable domain name, like www.pcmag.com. The job of translating domain names to IP addresses is handled by a Domain Name System (DNS) server. If you configured your Internet connection yourself, you may remember entering either one or two DNS server addresses in the TCP/IP Properties dialog.
# Copyright (c) 1998 Microsoft Corp.#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP stack for Windows98
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host
127.0.0.1 localhost :: Anormal hosts file would list the individual IP adresses of the domain so you can allow some through and block others. My own hosts file reflects my local host, so all ads are blocked.
I'll go over this in detail in another post but, to put it in a nutshell, this technique has been another more complete and automatic solution. A bit more complex, perhaps, but there has been very little to no maintenace at all.
Most popular operating systems provide a mechanism to short-circuit DNS lookup by hard-coding the IP addresses for specific domains. Windows uses a simple text file called Hosts (no extension). In Windows 9x platforms, this file is usually in the Windows folder. In Windows NT–family platforms, it resides in the folder Drivers\etc below the Windows System folder. You can open it in Notepad to take a look (see Figure 1).
Each functional line in the Hosts file consists of an IP address, one or more spaces, and a domain name. Anything after the comment character # is ignored. A typical line might look like this:
63.111.13.100 www.pcmag.com # PC Magazine
Your system doesn't request a DNS lookup when the domain name is found in Hosts.
To display a banner ad, your browser requests the ad's content from the advertiser's site. If that request fails, the ad won't appear. You can ensure that such requests fail by using Hosts to associate an advertiser's domain name with the wrong IP address! The special IP address 127.0.0.1 represents the local host—your own computer. If you associate an advertiser's domain name with 127.0.0.1 in the Hosts file, any requests for a URL in that domain will quickly return an error message. Because the URL is completely blocked, the advertiser has no contact with your computer. That advertiser doesn't get to see your IP address and can't access cookies on your system, and its Web bugs fail. Pop-up and pop-under windows may still appear, but without their advertising content.
The task of compiling a Hosts file to block all known advertiser domains would be daunting. Fortunately, you don't have to do it yourself. Just do a Web search on the words ad blocking hosts file windows and choose from the many sites that offer their own collections. Be sure to back up your original Hosts file before overwriting it with a downloaded one, and copy any noncomment lines from the original file to the new one. Clear your browser's cache, to keep it from serving up previously cached ads. As soon as you restart the browser, it will begin blocking ads.
On some systems, a large Hosts file can interact with other processes to slow Internet or network access dramatically. If this happens, restore the original Hosts file and try a freeware or shareware ad blocker instead. Naturally, the Hosts technique can't block ads that come from the site you're viewing; if you see the site, you'll see its ads. And if the advertiser uses a URL starting with the numeric IP address, the Hosts file has no effect.
If you get unexpected errors accessing a particular domain, you may need to edit the Hosts file and remove that domain name. For example, some downloadable Hosts files block www.netflix.com, the DVD rental service. If you use the service, you'll need to remove the URL from your Hosts file.
When you block a domain using the Hosts file, that domain is completely blocked, including all protocols and applications. You can't choose, for example, to allow images but block cookies. If you need finer control for just a few domains, use the Hosts file in conjunction with a utility such as PC Magazine's free CookieCop 2 (www.pcmag.com/utilities). Just remove any domain names from the Hosts file that you want CookieCop 2 to handle.
Ads that the Hosts file blocks are replaced either with a Hosts error message that reads This page cannot be displayed or with a red X, indicating a missing image. This can make the page look rather peculiar. Also, the blocked URLs may turn up in your browser's Back list, preventing the Back button from working. In that case, try selecting the earlier page you wanted from the drop-down list.
Despite these limitations, the Hosts technique enhances your privacy and blocks most ads. And it's free!
February 13, 2003
Tech Support...
A story from a Novell netWire SysOp:
Caller: Hello, is this Tech Support?"
Tech: Yes, it is. How may I help you?"
Caller: The cup holder on my PC is broken and I am within my warranty period. How do I go about getting that fixed?"
Tech: I'm sorry, but did you say a cup holder?
Caller: Yes, it's attached to the front of my computer.
Tech: Please excuse me if I seem a bit stumped. It's because I am. Did you receive this as part of a promotional at a trade show? How did you get this cup holder? Does it have any trademark on it?"
Caller: It came with my computer. I don't know anything about a promotional. It just has '4X' on it."
At this point, the Tech Rep had to mute the caller because he couldn't help it. He was laughing too hard. The caller had been using the load drawer of the CD-ROM drive as a cup holder and snapped it off the drive.
-------------------------------------
A woman called the Canon help desk with a problem with her printer. The tech asked her if she was "running it under windows." The woman responded, "No, my desk is next to the door, but that is a good point because the man sitting in the cubicle next to me is under a window and his printer is working fine."
-------------------------------------
Tech Support: Ok, Bob, let's press the control and escape keys at the same time. That brings up a task list in the middle of the screen. Now, click on the letter "P" to bring up the Program Manager."
Customer: "I don't have a 'P'."
Tech Support: "On your keyboard, Bob."
Customer: "What do you mean?"
Tech Support: "'P' on your keyboard, Bob."
Customer: "I'm not going to do that!"
-------------------------------------
I realize that stories liked this are not funny to those who've we've undeliberately offended by talking over their heads. That's a feeling we can all identify with at different times in our lives as we interact in a world where we only know about the things we touch on a day to day basis. We've all been there, and I can remember being as confused and frustrated, sick AND tired... and I try to remember that when I'm on the phone.
I remember one customer who experienced an issue that I couldn't help but to laugh out loud because I had experienced the same exact circumstance in my early dinking days. I felt so foolish when I finally understood my ignorance. He (the customer) thought I was laughing at him instead of myself, and honestly, I was. He was deeply offended, insulted. Nothing I could say would take away the sting. He cancelled his account a few hours later and I'll remember it to this day, with every call.
It's hard not come off as the Physician talking to a mere patient, or sound like a Lawyer, or any other profession that requires a different language further defining its' components. We forget that we all were there once too, either while on the phone, in a chat room, or simply trying to understand something we didn't know.
Technically,
Bobco
February 06, 2003
Computer Security Basics... a lifesaver!
Machine slowing down these days? Strange pop-ups plague your system? Modem connecting for no reason or lights flashing when you aren't supposed to be on line? Maybe you need to do a system-wide sweep of the programs that are working in the background without your knowledge.
It's no wonder that there are those that would deliberately use their software to install spyware on your system so they can know about your surfing habits, the sites you frequently (or accidentally) visit, music CD's that you listen to, or capture of private chat sessions with family or friends. Some actually can take over your machine in the background to take part in an attack on another site (called DDOS), using ports on your machine and running code that, with thousands of other machines, infest the targeted site with packets and pings rendering it unaccessible.
Some spyware even transmits password information, credit card numbers, software used, and other private tid bits about your life. Don't you think it's time you took control over the assets of your machine and is being controlled by someone besides yourself? Here are some basic suggestions as to how to get started cleaning house, and then installing the software locks to keep 'em out!
Let's start with some downloadable software tools that will detect the offending programs on your machine:
SpyWare Info This site keeps up to date information on the latest programs and threats on the Internet today as well as tutorials and techniques to keep your system safe and clean. Your host "Mike" is an expert and has online chat available to get immediate answers to your concerns:
Programs you'll want to have are:
Detection and Removal: These allow you to find offending programs and get rid of them.
Prevention - Firewalls & Antivirus: Once your system has been cleaned, you need to keep it that way:
Once you've been over your system, cleaned it, and installed needed security there are some basic rules that need to be followed.
Bobco...