WinAntivirus - Mac users falling for it?

I received two calls today from clients who "fell for" a "winantivirus" popup, AKA smitfraud. For those who don't know, that's a scam popup that often results in a "drive-by download" - a virus that installs itself on your machine without you clicking anything.

It varies all the time but may look something like this:



It alerts you to several viruses that it says are currently on your machine, then directs you to download their antivirus software that will fix everything. Of course, it doesn't fix anything, and in many cases it is the thing that is infecting your computer. It is sometimes very hard to remove.

I get calls about such scams almost every day, but what makes today interesting is that these aren't Windows users. It's two clients who switched to Mac over two years ago.

Thankfully, these types of scam software doesn't even work on Macs. But the website that the popup directs you to asks for credit card and other personal information as they process your "order" for this crap. That, of course means they're stealing your money and likely worse.

Windows 7

I just put Windows 7 Ultimate RTM on a pretty modest test machine (P4HT, 512MB RAM, Intel Graphics).

Despite the fact that it's a low-end machine, I'm very impressed.

Many of the things that were quirky about the UI (user interface) on Vista are much better. Overall, the interface seems smarter, and more user-friendly. A frequent complaint about Vista is the UAC (User Account Control) pop-ups. With Vista, even when a user is simply changing their desktop background, they're asked to authenticate/approve the change. Many UAC pop-ups require two separate approval clicks. Windows 7 gets a big plus in the user-friendliness department - UAC pop-ups are very infrequent. In fact, I haven't seen any since installing it.

One thing I hate about Vista is the Sidebar. Without exception, I turn it off immediately when setting up a client machine. When clients have it already enabled, I often simply ask them if they care about the "clock, calendar, and sample photos" that the default "sidebar" includes. 98 times out of 100 they don't, and I kill the whole thing. One less thing running can't hurt performance. I like the idea of Gadgets, but hate the fact that Vista sticks them in a window that interferes with other things. In Windows 7, the gadgets are independent - little "windows" on their own, without actual windows of course.

There are some things I'm "on the fence" about, however. A feature of Vista that I think is great is the Windows Photo Gallery. I think it gave Windows users a near equivalent to the Mac iPhoto application. Unfortunately, it's gone by default in Windows 7, but Microsoft offers "Windows Live Photo Gallery" as a replacement. It requires you to have a Windows Live (or MSN/Hotmail) account, and also requires that you login to the service to use it. I don't see the customer benefit of this change, since the program seems to work very similarly to the Vista program. If Microsoft wants to integrate Windows Live features into it, I wish they had made it an optional setting so that the user could simply use it on their local machine.

Despite my minor misgivings, seeing how well it's running on this old-ish POS, I'm likely going to put the retail Windows 7 upgrade package on at least one of my own machines.

Wonder if Pelosi will acknowledge this?

You know how the liberals in Congress have been dismissing the protests at recent Healthcare "Town Hall" meetings, calling them "astroturf"? She (and others) figured that by de-legitimizing them as "professionally organized" she'd be able to get people to ignore them.

The reality is that ACORN and other organizations that have the President in their pocket are doing this themselves. Watch this:

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations Sells Off Most of its Healthcare Holdings

I wonder why? Would it be because of what ObamaCare will bring?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125029373754433433.html

Idiot Sighting

This dummy knew she pulled up with the gas door on the wrong side. She got out, opened the filler door, then entered her card, and only then figured out that the hose wouldn't reach.


-- Post From My iPhone

Ford's SYNC website doesn't support IE8??

Although the Ford SYNC system is made by Microsoft, apparently the syncmyride.com website doesn't like IE8...

Despite the warning, the site appeared to work fine.

Clown Shoes

I've always wanted a chance to use the term "Clown Shoes" properly. I finally got it.

A friend/client of mine called about three weeks ago, apparently he got a new phone system.

The guy who installed it said that I needed to make some changes to their router to allow them to service the phone system remotely.

I told the client to have the phone guy email me what he needs. I heard nothing. Or so I thought. For three weeks or so, I told the client I heard nothing. Because I truly believed that I hadn't.

Anyway, the client finally forwards the phone guy's email to me.

Turns out, the phone guy sent me an email with no subject line, and when he entered his name in his email settings, he used some goofy capitalization - "Shmuly GOldsmith". Between the goofy spelling, lack of subject line, and the fact that I don't know anyone with that name, I figured it was spam and marked it as such. Mystery solved. Of course, this would also block him from sending me mail in the future as well.

Here's what I wrote to the client once I figured it out:

"I think I figured out why it got marked as spam.

His name is shown with goofy capitalization, and he put NO subject line.

Fucking clown shoes."

Anyway, "Shmuly GOldsmith" -- thanks for the outstanding opportunity to use "Clown Shoes". Next time take less than a friggin' minute to type your own name correctly and enter a subject line.

Obama's Credit Card Bill for USA

Click this to see it larger:


Obama's Credit Card Bill for USA
Originally uploaded by syedbalkhi

Just something to think about...

How's this for "hope" and "change"???

Just saw this and nearly threw up:



-- Post From My iPhone

Double standard?

If, as David Letterman insists, this is
the "slutty stewardess look"...
























Then what, pray tell, is this?
























First Lady Obama exiting Westminster Abbey.

MobileMe & Outlook - Birthdays

When I setup MobileMe, it took all of my birthdays and moved them to a separate calendar called "Birthdays". I didn't sweat it too much at the time, but knew that because they were not included on my primary Outlook calendar, I wouldn't get alerts before they occurred.

Later, I also discovered that the birthdays in the "Birthday calendar" were not actually sychronizing with Outlook anymore. In fact, although there were birthdays showing up on me.com/calendar, they did not appear in Outlook anymore.

Rather than going crazy worrying about the sync of Birthdays, I simply re-created them manually in Outlook, and rather than using the word "Birthday", which I worried would cause them to go to the "Birthday calendar", I used "BDay". I also made them recurring for 9 years only.

So far so good.

Finally! The White House Press Corps lets Gibbs have it

This is beautiful. I wish it would happen every day.

Gattaca is here

One of my favorite movies is 1997's Gattaca. It's a fictional story set in the not-too-distant future, where virtually all babies are "genetically engineered" to be free of genetic flaws or diseases. Job applications are submitted with blood and urine tests. Although this is done today, it's typically for drug testing purposes. In the movie, it's done to determine health, likely aptitudes, genetic predispositions to mental illness or addiction, etc. The story centers around a protagonist whose parents wanted a "God baby" - a birth left up to nature. The viewer follows this "natural" protagonist through his efforts to fit into this genetically "perfect" society.

Apparently, "not-too-distant" is here. See the following:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/5702674/Genetic-MoT-for-disease-free-babies.html

Holy crap - Hackintosh FTW

I've been playing with the "Hackintosh" for a few days now, and I'm pretty impressed. It actually seems nearly as fast as my "real" MacBook.

Now to do something about the 16GB SSD... ;)


-- Post From My iPhone

Three tech things today

1. Sorry, Linux... We won't be friends after all.
After extensive "playing around" with the new netbook, I've decided that Ubuntu (both 8.04 and 9.04) are not for me. Too many things didn't quite work, and too many things needed command line work (sudo judo) to function. It may be good for some, but not me.

2. Hello Hackintosh.
So once I decided that I didn't want Linux on the netbook, the question remained - what to install?
Rather than putting XP on the netbook, I decided to follow the 20 or so steps clearly documented on the web to install OSX 10.5.7 on the netbook. And yes, I stuck a small Apple sticker on it. I've gotten it working quite well, and faster than I'd ever imagined. I even got bluetooth working properly (took a little extra work), which leads me to...

3. BLUETOOTH INTERNET TETHERING

Now this is pretty damn cool. Basically, on either the "real" mac or the "hackintosh", I have gotten the iPhone 3GS's new "Internet Tethering" to work. This will allow me to "borrow" the phone's 3G connection via bluetooth and use it on either computer. And no, that's not a stock shot - that's my phone's home screen.

UPDATE - Apparently it also works on Windows machines connected via USB.

Just got my new iPhone 3GS!

It came in a day earlier than I expected. I had been tracking it via FedEx, and apparently it was shipped direct from China.

Just started syncing it.

Holy crap I'm excited.

Just got my netbook

I saw Dell advertising a netbook for $250, and bought it.

It just arrived. My intent is to bring it with me to appointments, so that I can use it to test clients' networks. Tyically I'd been lugging around a ThinkPad T60, but figured carrying the 8.9" Dell Vostro A90 would be a lot easier.

It's got 1GB RAM, and a 16GB SSD. I'll probably be upgrading both soon. It also has a built-in webcam and bluetooth.

It'll take some getting used to for a few reasons:
- It's got Ubuntu Linux 8.04 preinstalled, and I've never used ANY Linux distro before.
- It's VERY tiny. I thought I'd only have issues with the tiny keys, but the little screen is going to need adjusting to also...

I just spent about 20 minutes playing with it, before grabbing the MacBook to post this. Switching from the 8.9" screen to the MacBook's 13.3" screen suddenly made the "little" mac feel GIGANTIC. ;)

That being said, I'm really excited about it, and the size/price just can't be beat.

More about Obama firing IG Gerald Walpin

When asked for the reason for firing Gerald Walpin, the White House rep said that Walpin had appeared "...confused, disoriented, unable to answer questions and exhibited other behavior that led the Board to question his capacity to serve." Essentially, they called him SENILE.

See http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/06/white-house-plays-hardball-says-fired-ig-walpin-was-confused-disoriented-engaged-in-inappropriate-co.html

Really? Well, it seems Glenn Beck thought this was pretty unreal as well, so he proved that Mr. Walpin is anything but senile.

See http://hotair.com/archives/2009/06/17/sweet-glenn-beck-gives-gerald-walpin-a-senility-test/

WHOO HOO!!! iPhone 3GS!!!

I wanted to buy the new iPhone 3GS, but initially AT&T wanted me to either pay $700 now, or wait until November to pay $300. Obviously, this cooled my enthusiasm.

A lot of people were bothered by AT&T's upgrade pricing. There were around 2,000 people who joined a complaint group on Twitter, and many news outlets covered the public outcry.

Long story short, AT&T caved.

I was able to order the iPhone 3GS online, and pay only $300. Even better, I won't have to go to the store and wait in any lines. It'll be delivered to my door within a week.

Barbara Boxer is petty and small

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) unleashed her wrath on a Brigadier General for calling her "ma'am" yesterday.



If that video goes down, try this.

She was absolutely out of line. I don't know what caused her to snap on this particular officer, but I'm certain others have called her "ma'am" before.

I'm also certain that the Brigadier General worked a lot harder (and longer) to earn his title.

Barbara Boxer showed herself to be petty and self-absorbed. She should be ashamed.

She's up for re-election in 2010. Hopefully she'll be answering to "ma'am" again soon.