aubreyturner.org

I called up Charter Cable last week to cancel my service after Fios TV was installed.  They were fairly nice about it, although the rep on the phone was trying really hard to find ways to get me to keep their service.  They even offered to send out someone to pick up the cable box. 

However, a couple of days ago, a Charter contractor showed up and rang my doorbell.  The first words out of his mouth?  “¿Habla español?”

I took Spanish in high school, but that was a long time ago, and without using it I’ve forgotten almost everything.  I suppose I know enough Spanish to start a fight in a bar, but beyond that, I’m pretty much useless.  Fortunately, this guy understood some English (provided I remembered to speak slowly).  It turned out that he wanted to get into my back yard to access the pole and the cable distribution box that’s on it.

Is it really asking too much that I not have to know a second language in my own damn house in my own neighborhood?  Companies should make sure that anyone they’re sending out knows English. 

And I’m getting really tired of all the jumping-up-and-down and yelling “racist” whenever someone suggests that people speak English.  If a person wants to speak Klingon amongst themselves and any consenting parties, that’s fine with me.  But when you’re doing business, speak English, dammit!  Those who would demand that I learn Spanish to get along in my own country should step back and think for a minute.  Where does this stop?  How can a country survive having to accomodate all the potential languages that immigrants bring with them?

In a way, it’s kind of like telemarketing.  When viewed from their end it seems like a minor thing—because they are only thinking about themselves (i.e. their call or their language).  But for those of us on the receiving end of it, it can be overwhelming.  There’s nothing racist about that.  It’s simple logistics.

One of the problems with the constant referrer spam battle is that it takes manual examination of some of the links to determine if they are spam or legit.  If the referred link has a high reference count or it obviously contains a product name, it’s easy to deal with.  It’s the ones with lower reference counts on Blogspot or Tripod or other free hosting services that are more difficult.  I don’t want to forbid a legitimate referrer.

I made the mistake of examining a link that started with “anatolia19.”  It turned out to be some kind of teen sex link.  Unfortunately, I’ve seen a ton of these, but what I wasn’t expecting was what I saw at the bottom of the page.  There was a girl on there who couldn’t have been more than 8 or 9!  Bloody hell!  What kind of sick twitch looks at an 8 year old and sees something sexual?  I’d love to get hold of the sick bastard who sent me this referer and the scum who runs the site and kill them slowly and painfully. 

So consider yourself warned.  If you see this link in your referrers, DO NOT VISIT IT.  Blacklist it immediately.

As someone who has to spend time on a daily basis hunting down and removing spam attacks on my website, I have absolutely zero sympathy for this guy, should he be proved guilty.

A 20-year-old man accused of using thousands of hijacked computers, or “bot nets,” to damage systems and send massive amounts of spam across the Internet was arrested Thursday in what authorities called the first such prosecution of its kind.

Jeanson James Ancheta, who prosecutors say was a well-known member of the “Botmaster Underground”—or the secret network of computer hackers skilled at bot attacks—was taken into custody after being lured to FBI offices in Los Angeles, said U.S. Attorney’s spokesman Thom Mrozek.

I’ve heard it said by spam apologists that it’s nothing personal that they attack your website.  To them, it’s all business.  Your PC is simply a commodity, to be infected with a bot and traded amongst spammers.  Your website is another commodity to be used to gain hits for their clients.  And it would appear that despite our best efforts, there is still money to be made:

Mrozek said Ancheta, who lives in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey, was thought to have made nearly $60,000 from the planted adware, using the money to pay for servers to carry out additional attacks, computer equipment and a BMW.

However, the government takes a dim view of these actions, as I think they should.  Perhaps, if convicted, he could serve as an example to others:

Ancheta has been indicted on a 17-count federal indictment that charges him with conspiracy, attempted transmission of code to a protected computer, transmission of code to a government computer, accessing a protected computer to commit fraud and money laundering.

Ancheta, who was expected to make an initial court appearance late on Thursday or Friday, faces a maximum term of 50 years in prison if convicted on all counts, though federal sentencing guidelines typically call for lesser penalties.

I would not cry for him if he got the full sentence.  What these people are doing is THEFT, pure and simple.  They are stealing resources from people’s PCs as well as from their websites.  If I don’t stay on top of these bastards on a daily basis, I run the risk of overusing my shared hosting plan and being forced to upgrade to a dedicated server if I want to stay online, which would cost me about $100 per month.  When you look at the amount of resources that are being used up by spammers, it doesn’t take many of them to have a significant effect.

If I believed in all that religion stuff I’d say that he and the rest of his ilk should rot in hell.  Short of that, though, perhaps we can make his time on Earth very unpleasant.  I believe I mentioned the use of small caliber weapons on body extremities in the comments on someone’s weblog.  If that proves impractical, then perhaps staking them over a fireant bed would be sufficient.

I got an email this morning about a proposed settlement in a class action suit against Netflix. 

Here’s the brief summary of the suit:

A class action lawsuit entitled Chavez v. Netflix, Inc. was filed in San Francisco Superior Court (case number CGC-04-434884) on September 23, 2004.  The lawsuit alleges that Netflix failed to provide “unlimited” DVD rentals and “one day delivery” as promised in its marketing materials.  Netflix has denied any wrongdoing or liability.  The parties have reached a settlement that they believe is in the best interests of the company and its subscribers.

I don’t recall being offered “one day delivery” in any marketing materials, but then I joined in December of last year, so perhaps they had stopped advertisting this by then.  As for the issue of “unlimited” rentals, I have seen a lot of carping about supposed “capping” in the comments section of various articles posted at Hacking Netflix.  I’ve never experienced it, but then I’m not someone who watches three movies in one or two days and then sends them back.  Supposedly, if you watch all your movies quickly, they will put some sort of unofficial, super-seekrit™, cap on your account that causes weird delays in shipping and causes normally available movies at the top of your queue to suddenly move to “long wait” status.  The rationale given is that it supposedly causes them a lot of churn and they can’t make money if you constantly turn around your rentals.

What I find interesting is that the “remedy” for class members is a free month of upgraded service.  The smooth move on Netflix’s part is that you automatically continue on the upgraded service at the higher price if you don’t manually cancel it. 

Of course, it’s not like this really makes a difference to me.  I think I’m just going to ignore the whole thing and continue with my current 3-at-a-time subscription.  Given my schedule lately, I’m probably the kind of customer they love.  It sometimes takes me a month to work through three movies.  Perhaps that’s why I sometimes get next-day service…

Several years ago when I was still working out of the office I was working late and observed a member of the cleaning crew emptying the recycle bins.  I took note that she was simply emptying them into the big trash bin she had with her, along with the office trash.  Needless to say, this didn’t exactly improve my cynicism with regards to the whole recycling movement.

Still, I went ahead and paid the extra $2.00 per month to get recycling service here in Keller.  So it was with some interest that I just watched the guy pull up in a regular garbage truck and grab my recycle bin (as well as the neighbor’s across the street) and empty it into the truck.  Usually there is a dedicated recycling truck that’s quite different from the regular garbage trucks.  Now it’s possible that the recycling truck is out of service and they’re using a regular truck.  Still, given my cynicism, I can’t help but wonder if they’re doing a bit of shortcutting…

A long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away…) I once made the mistake of making a purchase from WorldNetDaily’s online store.  It took a while, but I was eventually able to recover from the onslaught of email they sent out, although from time to time they conveniently “forget” that I don’t want to get email.  However, their opt-out ability doesn’t excuse their either leaking or selling my email address to spammers and phishers. 

One of the benefits of having a dedicated email address for each entity I do business with is that it makes most phishing attempts simply silly.  Such as the “PayPal account validation” scheme.  For those who may not be familiar with this scam, some POS thief will create an email appearing to be from PayPal that says that if you don’t revalidate your account that it will be suspended.  They give a link in the email that appears to take you to the PayPal site, but it’s actually their own front-end that mimics PayPal.  If you enter your information on the confirmation page, you’re screwed, because they will have a lot of sensitive data on you (see extended entry for details).

Anyhow, I just got one of these scam emails at the WorldNetDaily email address.  But just for grins, I followed the link and took a look at the site.  First, it has a form for your Paypal ID/password on the first page.  Interestingly, though, it doesn’t care if you leave it blank.  It simply takes you to the “confirmation page.”  Examining the page source for the frame, I found this tidbit:


<form method=“post” action=“account.php” name=“uhoh”>


Note the name attribute.  If you were to submit the form with correct data, “uhoh” would be an understatement.  This POS may be a thief, but he appears to have a sense of humor.  I hope it makes him many friends in the gray-bar motel.

Update:Now they’re trying to get me to update my Wells Fargo account, which would be interesting, except that a) I don’t have one, and b) the email was sent to my “blog” email (which is one of the hazards of commenting on some blogs).

(click for humongous)

(the line is where I had to scroll the screen and glue two captures together with GIMP)

Verizon has now completed its quest for communications hegemony at my house.  I have phone, internet, and TV all provided through Fios. 

I’d had phone and internet through Fios for over a year and it had been pretty good, with only a couple of minor outages.  Upon seeing the prices and options for their TV service, I determined that I could get HD service with a dual-tuner DVR (and a second STB in the bedroom) for less than it would cost with Charter. 

The installation window was scheduled for 1:00-5:00pm on Wednesday and the techs showed up around 1:45pm.  I showed them where everything was, and while they were working out the coax runs, I disconnected the Charter cable box and the Tivo and hooked up some component video cables to my TV.  This was the first place where experience was different from theory.  I’d asked the Fios people on the phone what model of DVR they would be bringing.  I was told that it was a Motorola 6416.  I found that the 6416 wasn’t shown on the public part of the website yet, although it was supposed to be functionally the same as the 6412 (just with a bigger hard drive).  The diagram in the manual shows that it has composite, S-video, component, HDMI, 1394, and DVI-D outputs.  I already had a DVI-D cable I was using with the computer, so I was planning to just yank that and connect it to the DVR.  Unfortunately, the actual device does NOT have DVI-D, just HDMI.  It was fortunate that I had a set of component cables to use for now.  Later I will get the correct cable and give full digital a try.

The only other annoyance to the install was that it required changes to my home network.  Fios TV is a “hybrid” architecture.  It’s not IPTV, but instead uses an RF overlay on the fiber (and the ONT has a coax output) and uses an IP connection through my router to download program guide data and handle pay-per-view transactions.  Verizon INSISTS that you must use their router and cannot use one of your own.  Of course, they insisted this for Fios Internet as well, but I ignored it and plugged in my Linksys as soon as they left.  It turns out that this DOES NOT work for Fios TV.  So I had to dig out the old D-Link they’d left me and get it working again.  The installers then upgraded the firmware (using a proprietary version, unique to Verizon). 

Using the D-Link meant that I had to do some fiddling with my Linksys to use it more as an access point than as a router.  But I got it working with a little fiddling (and some reconfiguration as I discovered various failing devices).  The installer tested the internet access using his laptop and pronounced it good.  But after hooking up the DVR and the STB we discovered that the program guide data would not load.  The installers kept fiddling and testing and working with the support center, but to no avail.  Unfortunately, I had to be at a meeting at 7:00pm, so we gave up and I sent them on their way around 6:45. 

The next day I started fiddling and digging…  (always a dangerous thing )

I did some research and learned about the “hidden” technician menu and was able to access it to learn more about the configuration.  I also learned that the DVR and the STB both had integrated cable modems and were using Motorola’s Whole Home Media technology.  There is a separate device that attaches to the coax and then to my router that provides the IP path out of my house.  It was after looking at the WHM configuration in the DVR that I noticed something odd.  A long time ago I had defined my network as 192.168.2.0/8, instead of the Linksys default of 192.168.1.0/8.  The DVR and the STB were trying to use addresses of 192.168.0.50 and 192.168.0.52, which got my attention, since D-Link uses 192.168.0.0/8 as their default network.  I remembered this, since I’d encountered it while changing the D-Link to 192.168.2.0/8 the previous day.

I took a guess that the DVR and STB were brain-damaged devices that made the faulty assumption that the network would always be 192.168.0.0/8, since Verizon gives out D-Link equipment.  I reconfigured the network back to the default and suddenly the damn things were getting their guide data.  Interestingly, both devices appear to be trying to use DHCP, but in a bad way.  Instead of simply requesting a lease for a new address, they appear to be requesting specific addresses in the 192.168.0.0/8 network that will be “out of the way” of the addresses usually returned from the router (D-Link defaults to returning addresses between 192.168.0.100 and 192.168.0.199).  Of course, all this is speculation, but it’s based on observation and troubleshooting.  Examining the DHCP clients table on the router (as well as the WHM configuration in the DVR’s tech menu) after unplugging and plugging in the bedroom STB showed that one particular MAC address had moved from 192.168.0.50 to 192.168.0.51.

After going through all this, I then called their customer support and explained the problem to them and suggested they add an article to their Knowledgebase about this situation.  I also suggested that they should try to make the devices a bit more standards-compliant (or at least use the standard in a reasonable way), but I don’t know how much good that will do.  Often, the level 1’s just ignore this stuff and close the ticket.  I suspect most people won’t have fiddled with their network configuration like me.  Still, though, it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

Just for grins, I decided to map all this crap out into a diagram.  I didn’t realize until I was done just how much techno-crap I have in this house…

(click for monster)

Sometimes you just have to stop and stare slack-jawed at the bizarre crap that people do.

A Dallas cabdriver who showed little remorse for tainting a grocery store bakery display with fecal matter was sentenced to five years in prison Thursday.

District Judge Vickers Cunningham called the case against Behrouz Nahidmobarekeh one of the most disturbing of his legal career.

“It’s raunchy, repugnant, repulsive, vile and vulgar,” the judge said after the jury’s sentence was announced.

…

Mr. Nahidmobarekeh, a 49-year-old permanent legal resident who immigrated from Iran in 1978, testified Thursday that he hatched the plan after visiting an Old East Dallas Fiesta grocery store and felt employees had been rude to him.

Mr. Nahidmobarekeh said employees in the bakery had disregarded his complaints and refused to put out fresh bread. His revenge: He dried his own feces, shredded it with a cheese grater and returned a few days later to scatter the material over the breads, cookies and pastries in the case. (emphasis added)

Ewww…..  How the hell do you come up with the idea to do that?  (And how long until some dingleberry copies it?)

This post about the Philips Heartstart Home Defibrillator reminded me of something that came up in conversation the other day with some of the other members of our local CERT.  AED’s are starting to show up just about everywhere, and the price is just about to the point where some people can even afford to have one at home. 

As long as people understand what they can be used for, they’re great.  But I’m afraid that with a name like “Heartstart” some people might get the wrong idea.  An AED is completely automated and will only allow a shock if the person has a “shockable rhythm”.  This means that an AED will not shock someone whose heart has stopped completely (although most of them will advise you to perform CPR for a minute and then it will check for rhythm again).  I suspect it won’t be long before Philips gets sued by the survivors of someone who had no rhythm and died and for whom the AED could do nothing.

But perhaps I’m being overly cynical.  (Who?  Me?  Cynical?  Can’t be.  )

I’ve been pondering whether to change cell phone providers.  I’ve grown increasingly more dissatisfied with Cingular over the past year or so.  My main concern with Cingular is that despite their constant advertising about “more bars” after the acquisition of AT&T*, I am having more difficulty making and taking calls.  As I go about my daily routine I find that there are MANY dead spots around town.  Further, I have come to conclude that my phone lies to me about the actual signal strength.  Many times I have lost a call despite having three or four bars.

My primary concern is having a phone that actually works as a phone.  Cameras and games and ringtones are nice shiny little toys, but they add nothing to the actual business of making phone calls.  I wonder at times whether all the attention given to add-ons isn’t distracting the wireless companies from their core business of providing phone service.

Anyhow, I’m considering Sprint or Verizon.  Oddly enough, I’ve actually come across a couple of people with nice things to say about Verizon (which when you consider most people’s overall feeling about their cell provider, is something of a rarity).  I suppose if I choose Verizon they will have completed their quest for total domination of my communications services (Internet, landline, TV, and cell).  Talk about all your eggs in one basket…

I see that cell companies are now starting to offer more information about coverage area on their websites, as well as a 15-day grace period where you can take the phone back and cancel the contract.  This is one of the things I’d always wanted in the past, because you never knew when signing up with a company exactly what kind of signal and sound you’d get.  Now I can try them out before being permanently locked into any committment.  The other thing I’d like to find out, but which would be harder, is how well the provider handles 911 calls.  I tried calling 911 with my Cingular phone from the intersection of Bourland and Keller Parkway after a traffic wreck a couple of weeks ago and ended up getting the Fort Worth 911 center.  It took them about three minutes to transfer my call to the Keller 911 center, by which time the wreck had already been reported by several other people.

Here are the requirements I’m going to have in mind as I’m comparing companies and plans:

• Good signal coverage.
• Good call quality (signal strength isn’t the only indicator of quality; the level of compression used and the quality of the equipment matters, too)
• Must have a “trial” period where the agreement can be cancelled.
• Should get the correct 911 center.

I suspect Google is going to be my friend while I’m doing these comparisons.  I’m going to have to research not only the companies and their coverage, but the phones.  It’s kind of a daunting task, considering that searching for a cellular company on Google usually results in lots of references to very unhappy people.

* I ditched AT&T several years ago and switched to Cingular (except they weren’t Cingular yet) because of AT&T’s horrid customer service.  It only takes one instance of being treated as a nuisance in the store for me to give up on a company (in this case, the sales drone in the Denton store couldn’t be arsed to discontinue his phone conversation in order to sell me a phone upgrade, at which point I left and began looking for a new company).