The More Spam Changes, The Less Spam Changes
A lot of people seem to be trying to give me millions of dollars. Meanwhile the IRS wants me to visit their website and read about my "underreported income". One change I've noticed in the past few months is that more of the "take my money, please" messages purport to have been written by a woman. Most of the time the pitches are so clearly fraudulent that one need not read more than the first dozen words or so. Sometimes not even that.
Some messages are so laughably composed that I must read every mangled phrase and wonder who, if anyone, would be foolish enough to fall for such a message.
Take this one, for example. It tells me that I have won the 2009 Euro-Afro Asian Sweepstakes Lottery International Program. I wonder why there's hyphen between Euro and Afro but not between Afro and Asian. Then I wonder if this is a sweepstakes or a lottery. Because I never entered the lottery, I next have to wonder how I came to win it.
This program is sponsored, I am told, by the Sultan of Brunei and Bill Gates.
The message is full of references to barristers and doctors. The headquarters of the "2009 Euro-Afro Asian Sweepstakes Lottery International Program" is not in Europe, Africa, or Asia, but in California. Specifically "Sacrament" California. But the phone number is in England.
And then there's the matter of the big text, bright red and blue lettering, and the photos of people with checks. One of the pictures is large enough that the words "Michigan Lottery" are visible.
The clues are simply unmistakable.
A Message from the IRS
Disregarding for a moment that the Internal Revenue Service doesn't send e-mail notifications, consider this message:
Taxpayer ID: william.blinn-00000174073547US
Tax Type: INCOME TAX
Issue: Unreported/Underreported Income (Fraud Application)
Please review your tax statement on Internal Revenue Service (IRS) website (click on the link below):
review tax statement for taxpayer id: william.blinn-00000174073547US
Internal Revenue Service
The message was sent from a server in Brazil, which seems highly unlikely for an agency of the United States government. But the link the message suggests that I click is for "http://www.irs.gov.nyusa2b.eu/fraud_application/directory/
statement.php ?email=william.blinn@blinn.com&tid=william.blinn-00000174073547US"
The top-level domain (EU) means European Union. As far as I know, the IRS has not been outsourced to Europe. A bit of research revealed that the domain "nyusa2b.eu" is registered to "Osuka Noboru", who claims to live in Paris but on a street that sounds more like it belongs in Prague.
As for the domain, it no longer exists. The EU registrar shows the domain name as quarantined, which means that the name is currently unavailable because it has been deleted. Deleted domain names are put into a 40-day quarantine as a safety measure before they are released again for registration.
Yet Another Lottery Winner
The message was as different from the previous lottery message as possible. Short. Telegraphic. Fraudulent.
EAST WEST AUSTRALIA LOTTERIES.
You have won ($1,000,000.00) (United state Dollars) in East-West Australia Lotteries
For further development for Clarification and
procedure please Contact Mrs.Linda Van Loes.
Direkt Bank Amsterdam
AMSTERDAM THE-NETHERLANDS
E:mail:direkktbank@aim.com
Tel: 31 617-802-058
Fax 31-84-752-0508.
send the followings:
(your name)...(email address)..(tel phone).
REF No: 9590 ES 9414;;; BATCH No: 573881545-NL/2007 ;; TICKET NoP
3502 /8707-01;;; SERIAL No: 05908 LUCKY No: 9-43-97
Does anyone seriously believe that any bank in the world would use an "aim.com" account for financial transactions? There's also the small matter of odd spacing and strange capitalization, but this crook got one thing right: The country code for Netherlands (no "The" as any resident of Netherlands would know) actually is 31.
The Fake Survey Ploy
This is an offer to be what's essentially a secret shopper. These kinds of positions do exist, but they don't pay $100 for half an hour's work and they don't require you to have an account with any particular bank as this one does.
In fact, the "offer" suggests that you open a special account just for this "job".
To obtain more information about the offer, I'm invited to contact "kiffiyif8177@hotmail.com" and the address contains 2 clues about the fraudulent nature of the message: Businesses don't use Hotmail accounts and legitimate addresses don't consist of randomly typed characters.
"Help Me Get My Dead Father's Fortune out of the Country"
The people who write these are getting better. One that I recently received included a long and sincere sounding explanation of the "facts". "Monica George" and her younger brother, "Dwane", want me to help them get their dead father's money out of the country. All $8.1 million of it.
One significant slip-up in the letter: "I saw your profile email address at(site) and i became interested to know you." Clearly "(site)" was supposed to have been replaced with something like "Facebook".
Messages to my Special Address
I have a special address that I use for domain registrations. The address is public and, as a result, it attracts a lot of spam. The address is "any.non.registrar.mail.is.spam@blinn.com", so any message to that address that's not from my domain registrar is clearly spam. It's helpful of spammers to use this address because it makes identifying the spam just that much easier.
A Bank I Don't Use Has Changed its Security System
GMAC Bank is now Ally Bank, the message said.
And "these days we introduce a new version of banking software." The message directs me to a link that will take me to the Ally Bank website. Or not. Probably not.
Despite what displays on the screen, the link would actually take me to "ltdrvid.com", which is certainly not a bank website.
Take 20% And Give the Rest to Charity
This last one is essentially a standard "I'm dying and I want you to have my money" message.
The only extraordinary aspect of the message is that people still fall for the ploy. Because the person is dying, time is clearly short, so the pressure is on to conclude the process quickly. You can easily imagine the complications, can't you?
You'll have to establish an account at a bank so that the funds can be transferred and there will be a minimum deposit required. The deposit will disappear and your promised fortune will never arrive.
Or the dying person will "die" and someone else will step in. They will finish the process, but they will want some sort of payment in advance.
The techniques change from time to time, but the underlying pitches remain the same. Protecting yourself from the fraudsters of this type is easy: Be a skeptic.
Windows 7 Hits and Misses
Windows 7 has a lot more hits than misses. It has impressed me because it almost always does what I hope it would do. I've encountered a few rough edges that Microsoft will need to grind away, but I've found more things that just simply work. As it did with Windows Me (Millennium Edition), Microsoft has generally admitted that Vista was seriously flawed. Nobody will have to make that admission with Windows 7.
One thing that I should probably clarify right away is that when I say "Windows 7" I really mean "Windows 7 Ultimate", which is the only version Microsoft should have shipped. It's the version I have installed and, although I know that some of the other versions omit some of Ultimate's features, it's the one that I'm comfortable talking about. Most of the situations I will describe in talking about Windows 7 will function the same with Windows Professional and many will function similarly with Windows Home Premium.
Minor Annoyance Eliminated
Previous versions of Windows allow pop-up dialogs to grab focus regardless of what else is occurring. Windows 7 has eliminated this problem.
When I install an application or allow an update to run, I continue working. The installation or update is supposed to happen in the background, but sometimes the application needs an answer to a question. Before Windows 7, the installer or updater would pop-up a dialog box that would have focus. I can't tell you how many times I answered a question without intending to or cancelled an installation because of this. Nothing should ever take focus away from an application that is in the foreground.
Windows 7 takes a Mac-like approach when an application wants your attention: It simply highlights the task-bar icon. This is better than Apple's choice, which is to have the icon bounce. The bouncing is annoying. Simply highlighting the icon is sufficient.
Finding Updated Hardware
My notebook computer has a Pinnacle USB 801e HDTV adapter. When I installed Windows 7, I tried to install the Pinnacle software. No dice.
But less than a week later, the Microsoft Windows Update tool said that it had a Pinnacle update for me. Once that was installed the Windows Media Player could see the device.
On the desktop system, I want to synchronize my HP Ipaq handheld device with Outlook. The application I had used under Windows XP doesn't function under Vista or Windows 7, so I downloaded the Windows Mobile Device Center software and installed it. It told me the device wasn't plugged in.
When I plugged in the Ipaq, Windows and the application immediately noticed it and installed the required device drivers.
Then the Microsoft application suggested that it would be a good idea to set up the device. That seemed reasonable, so I continued.
Users may synchronize a mobile device with no more than 2 computers. I had previously set up synchronization with the desktop system at the office and with the desktop system at home. The home system now has Windows 7 installed, so I needed to eliminate the previous relationship and establish a new one.
The next step was for Windows Mobile to determine what kinds of data I would like to synchronize among the 3 devices. I selected all of the options.
I needed to give the device a name and then Windows Mobile told me that the device was connected and that it would start the synchronization process.
Everything should be this easy.
Sync. Syank Syunk. The verb doesn't conjugate that way, but the process was certainly easy enough. Easier than I've seen with any previous version of Windows.
You're going to like this.
Why Microsoft creates "windows.old"
When you update a computer to Windows 7, Microsoft will create a "windows.old" directory. You might think that it's safe to delete this right away and you might be right. But you could be wrong.
The update process, if you follow Microsoft's guidance, will install settings for many of your applications. Many. Not "all". I discovered that some of my Adobe Audition settings were missing on September 12. Although I thought that I had recorded the settings somewhere, I couldn't find them. Where does Audition store its settings? They could be in the Registry, but more likely they're in an ini file or an xml file. Where would the file or files be? These are probably user settings, so I assumed that they would be in my user settings.
Although Windows has its own built-in search function, I used UltraEdit to search in windows.old. It's not that I don't trust the Windows search function, but that I understand exactly how the UltraEdit search function works. I searched for "TBWW" because I've used that to name several of the settings. Bingo!
So I copied the files that contained "TBWW" from windows.old to the corresponding directory in Windows 7. First, though, I renamed the original files with "OLD_" prefixing the name just in case I needed to undo what I was doing.
One of the more critical settings that was missing was the output format for the TechByter MP3 file. I've mentioned the settings in the show, so I could have found them. But reinstalling the old settings file was much easier.
Even though I now know where the settings are and how I can easily restore them, that's not enough. I really do need a record of what I've done. So I opened Microsoft One Note (more about this application in a future program) and created a page for Audition settings. Besides being on my primary computer at home, the One Note files are stored on an FTP server and they're replicated on my office computer. If I need the settings again someday, I'll know where to find them.
Oh, and I still haven't deleted windows.old. The file consumes a few hundred megabytes, but it's worth every bit when I need to recover information that might otherwise be lost.
A Few Problems
Some of the most significant problems I've encountered involve the Windows Explorer.
In attempting to grab the scroll bar, several times I have instead grabbed a directory and moved it to a new location. This really is inexcusable and shouldn't have made it past alpha testing, much less beta testing and the release candidates. I like to think that I know what I'm doing, but I've actually moved directories several times. After encountering the problem more than once, I started paying more attention to scroll bar actions and, when I accidentally grab a directory instead, I know enough to press Esc to cancel the action.
But this simply shouldn't happen. I see it in Outlook, too. My preferred e-mail program (The Bat) allows me to move directories, but only if I hold down the Alt key while dragging a directory. A small software company in Moldova has figured out how to eliminate this problem, so I would think that mighty Microsoft would be able to figure it out, or to copy what RIT Labs has done.
Another problem I see with the Windows Explorer is that the left panel (which typically is a list of favorites, drives, and directories) tends to reposition itself without reason or notice.
When I click a directory, the list of files and subdirectories appears as expected in the right panel, but the selected directory is often repositioned in the directory list in the left panel so that it's at the bottom of the screen.
There is no logical reason for this and I hope that it's on Microsoft's list of known bugs.
Current Incompatibilities and Errors
Windows 7 isn't perfect. So far I've found 2 applications that should work, but don't and a few oddities that I didn't see under XP or Vista.
- Corel Graphics Suite X4 cannot be installed. The installer seems to work properly, but then fails near the end of the process. Applications are installed but will not run. They cannot be uninstalled. I have reported this to Corel and they're working on it.
- Nero 9 cannot be installed. In a manner similar to what I saw with the Corel suite, Nero's installer appears to progress normally, but fails near the end. The installed bits must be removed with a Nero "General Clean" tool. I have reported this problem to Nero and the company has not responded.
- Some applications that allow the selection of a directory from a drop-down list return the wrong directory name. For example, if I select D:\level1\level2\level3\, Windows will return D:\level1\level2\ to the program.
- There is a lot of disk activity, apparently from Carbonite. Unlike under Vista, this doesn't render the computer unusable, but it does slow operations. Carbonite is looking into the issue.
Overall: Go For It
Despite the minor problems, and most of the problems I've encountered so far can only be characterized as "minor", Windows 7 looks like the best operating system Microsoft has ever released. The big question that must be haunting the halls of Redmond these days is whether corporate buyers will continue to stick with machines that are running XP or migrate to Windows 7.
Given the way that OEM versions of Windows are sold, it's almost a sure bet that corporate users will move to Windows 7 as they replacing aging XP machines. In most cases, the OEM licenses can't be carried forward to new computers and Microsoft stopped selling XP as of August 31, 2009.
So the question really isn't "whether", but "when". Those old XP systems won't last forever. But now there's an operating system that's worth upgrading to.
Short Circuits
TechByter Worldwide 2010
If you've visited the TechByter Worldwide website over the past few years, or in the dozen or so years that it was Technology Corner, you probably know that the new year often brings a site design update. Sometimes the changes are fairly dramatic and sometimes they're barely visible. If there's something about the site that annoys you, now would be a very good time to let me know about it.
The width of the site has changed over the years as the "average" monitor size and resolution changed. The cascading style sheet (CSS) that maintains a consistent appearance from week to week has become more sophisticated year by year. I've added Javascript to control the way the interface works.
I'm thinking about creating a weekly table of contents for the site. I'd also like to fix the system that pops up larger images when you click on a thumbnail so that it works consistently across all browsers. To that end, I've been experimenting with a technology called JQuery. It's been around long enough and is mature enough that I'm fairly certain it will be part of TechByter Worldwide 2010. So let me know if there's something you'd particularly like to see.
Giving Voice to Google
I've started experimenting a bit with Google Voice, the service that gives you a new phone number and then allows you to control what happens with calls to that number. You can have the calls ring one phone or multiple phones. It provides voice mail that you can listen to by phone or on-line. It transcribes messages and can send the resulting text to you. Callers can be sent individually to one phone, all phones, or voice mail. And you can use it to make inexpensive international calls, too.
Google Voice is still available only by invitation.
My first impression is that most people will love the idea, but that privacy experts will be very concerned. The concern is reasonable because your every telephone call could be routed through Google. The service has the ability to record your calls (in fact, that's one of the things I like about it) and voice-to-text transcription is available (something else to like). But all this routing, recording, and transcribing of telephone calls gives Google the kind of capability the East German Stasi could only have dreamed about.
It all comes down to how much of your privacy you're willing to give up for the conveniences Google services provide. I'll tell you more about the service after I've used it for a while.
Here Comes USB 3.0
If somebody tells you about their old USB 1.0 device, the speaker is either lying or has a bad memory. The commercial USB standard began at 1.1 because 1.0 devices never got out of the lab. USB 2.0 has been the standard for the better part of a decade (although the occasional USB device is still released with a "Full Speed" USB 1.1 interface). In this case "Full Speed" was a canard by the USB industry's trade association to make USB 1.1 devices, which run at 1/40th the speed of "High Speed" USB 2.0 devices, seem fast. USB 3.0 will be called "Super Speed" and will have a sustained throughput of about 4 gigabits per second, which compares to about 0.480 gigabits per second for USB 2.0.
In 2007, USB 3.0 was previewed at an Intel Developer Forum and version 1.0 of the USB 3.0 specification was released in 2008.
Freecom, a Dutch storage company, has announced an external hard drive that uses the new standard. A 1 terabyte drive will cost about $160, but you'll need a new controller card for your PC if you want it to run at its full speed, so figure another $50 or $60. The company is preparing drivers for Vista and Windows XP. Windows 7 is expected to have native drivers available before the end of the year. Linux was the first operating system to support the new standard, but USB 3.0 isn't yet supported by Apple.
Here's why you might want one of these drives: Freecom says you could transfer a 5GB movie from one hard drive to another via USB 3.0 in less than 40 seconds.
The author's image: It's that photo over at the right. This explains why TechByter Worldwide was never on television, doesn't it?
