Insights and Rants

Scam Alert: The Griffen Holdings posing as Griffin Holdings

2012-02-03T12:38:00.015+02:00

The Griffen Holdings is a low profile call centre that sells "stock market training" courses. These guys rely on their relative anonymity and the similarity in name with a legitimate investment company called Griffin Holdings.
The Griffen guys regularly break the law by making unsolicited marketing calls to people like me, and then can't tell me who they got my number from. That's a violation of the ECT Act, not to mention annoying. They are so "upfront" that they hide their call centre number, and don't give it out even when asked. Extensive searches on Google have revealed only one contact number, and this is for faxes. I found several jobs ads for them:

Field Sales Consultants needed. our callcentre makes appointments for you. Own car and cellphone needed. Must be available immidiatly [sic]. Fax CV to 086 554 5978 or e-mail.

They exploit the unemployed by working on a commission-only basis, unless you regard R10/month as a legitimate salary. I joined the web site to "apply" for the job and found their contact number to be (012) 644 2476, and a related web site, which doesn't mention "The Griffen Holdings" anywhere on the site.
I contacted the legitimate Griffin Holdings and they assured me they don't have a call centre or sell stock market "training". They wrote:

There are a number of Griffin companies (some spellings Gryphon, Griffen etc). We do not offer the service you refer to.

So it seems that the secretive Griffen Holdings is a lot more dodgy than they'd like you to believe.
Update: In response to my email enquiries, they said

We hold seminars every Monday for our existing clients and receive names and numbers of people who they think might benefit from our services or be interested.

What a load of BS, because anyone who knows me would know that I'm not interested in being contacted by anyone from a call centre! If they took the trouble to become members of the DMA they would also know that I'm on their "Do Not Call" list.
Section 45 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, no 25 of 2002. states the following:

45. (1) Any person who sends unsolicited commercial communications to consumers, must provide the consumer—
(a) with the option to cancel his or her subscription to the mailing list of that person; and
(b) with the identifying particulars of the source from which that person obtained the consumer's personal information, on request of the consumer.

So although they provided the "opt-out" option, if they cannot identify the particulars of the source, then they are breaking the law.

Another Day, Another Armed Robbery (Again)

2012-01-13T15:17:00.012+02:00

They say Africa isn't for sissies: today I was visiting the home of Dennis and Sally Polack, to work on their Fishwise Pro web site, We had just finished lunch when Sally started screaming: an armed robbery was in progress at their house.
They had already tied up two of the farm workers and robbed them of cash and cell phones, and were now intent on taking whatever they could from the main house. One of the bastards pointed a firearm at me, although somewhat briefly. Then he ran away when he heard me calling to Dennis to get his firearm.
I called 10111 and the cops were here in minutes. They were amazing. They might even have got the guys once they ran away. It turns out there were 8 of them. The problem is to know when or whether they will be back.
Crime affects us all: I have been mugged twice, and my car broken into twice. My wife has been mugged, and been in 2 armed robberies when she worked at the bank. She saw a security guard shot and killed in front of her. Dennis was shot on his smallholding 4 years ago. My brother has been hijacked, and his house has been robbed. My in-laws have had their house burgled twice. My main client has had several laptops stolen during armed robberies, and had a few after-hours breakins as well. Cars have been stolen from the flats where we live, and three flats have been burgled.
And so the list goes on, while our glorious leaders try to deny the problem and make lame excuses. They are lazy, corrupt, greedy and inept. They deliberately under-fund the police, and siphon off government money in "arms deals" and dodgy tenders that lead to a lack of service delivery. One of these days we'll wake up and vote the criminals out of office. But by then the economy will be in tatters and all the good people will be dead or living in other countries.
Update: The male worker who was attacked first was threatened by being told the name of his 6-year-old son, who is currently visiting his granny. When I saw him he was in tears, shattered and scared for his safety and that of his family. The cold-blooded bastards who did this care nothing about the impact of their actions. They are usually high on drugs when they try this kind of stunt anyway. A pox on the lot of them!
Update 9pm: Dennis retuned from hospital with 22 stitches. He fell down the stairs during the robbery. He's fine but has a sore back.
Update 30 Jan 2012: The bastards came back, dressed in provincial police uniforms, and gained access to the house under the guise of wanting to take further statements. They made off with money and a pistol, and trashed Dennis' office. They also made off with two bunches of keys, so Dennis and Sally have to replace all the locks on all the buildings and outbuildings. Even their safe keys were taken. Hopefully these guys won't be back, but no-one is holding their breath.

Orwell Warned Us, But Will We Listen?

2012-01-02T17:41:00.005+02:00

I just finished watching this documentary and I must say it is an eye opener, not only in the light of the political scandals in the UK over Murdoch and the phone hacking scandal, but also in the light of Wikileaks and the treatment of Bradley Manning. Even though it was made in 2003, Orwell Rolls in his Grave is even more relevant today than it was then. Unfortunately the news is less relevant, and getting even less relevant by the day. That's why they don't even understand what "Occupy Wall Street" is all about.

LM Radio now in Joburg

2011-12-29T10:56:00.006+02:00

In the dark days of the SABC broadcast monopoly and censorship, one bright light on the dial was LM Radio, broadcast from Lourenço Marques, now called Maputo, in Mozambique. In fact, it was one of the earliest independent stations on the continent. LM Radio was on the air from 1936 until 1975 and played a very important role in shaping the style and content of broadcasting in South Africa.
Now it's back in Joburg, and this time on 97.2 FM (Cofifi Community Radio Westbury). Broadcasting started about a week before Christmas. Instead of having to fiddle with short wave tuners (my dad had a Supersonic tuner with little stickers on the dial) you can just use an FM radio, or listen to the streaming signal from the internet. It streams at around 17megabytes per hour, which is manageable even on a capped account.
You can hear an audio history and some of the old jingles on the LMRadio.org site.
Update: I also discovered the station on the "Internet Radio" app on my Nokia phone. Just do a country search and it's listed under "Mozambique". The 32kb stream sounds pretty good on my phone.

Why is the USA scared of a single soldier?

2011-12-27T18:57:00.006+02:00

Only in the USA would media corporations studiously ignore the plight of a single soldier while feeding greedily on the information he allegedly gave them. Only in the USA would they label him a traitor at the same time. Even President Obama believes he is guilty, and gives him the Gitmo treatment. I guess that's what happens when you watch Fox "news".
I think Manning is a hero, as does much of the free world. This segment is from the AJE show called "Listening Post", which tries to monitor and analyse the way the media works.

DStv Mobile "Cannot Play Channel" Ripoff - Fixed

2011-12-02T13:48:00.010+02:00

DStv is a perfectly good example of a large company that sucks. My latest frustration is the following message: "Cannot play channel. E16-4 Service is currently scrambled". I got this while testing their latest DStv Mobile device: the "Walka", a handheld device that can display up to 16 channels, for only R36 per month.

The Walka Handheld TV is a slim, lightweight device with a 3.5” viewing screen providing digital visual and audio quality. Its introduction gives DStv Mobile subscribers even more ways to access mobile TV on the go, anywhere, anytime.

Considering that their "Premium" package costs an eye-watering R559 (US$70) per month, the R36 per device seems a much better deal, especially since there are 5 sports channels, and you would have to get the Premium package to get all of them.
Sounds too good to be true. It is. On the DStv Mobile web site they list the channels that are available. The last one on the list is "M-Net Mobile".
Even though there is a little asterisk to explain that the channel is not the same as M-Net, it omits a very important piece of information: available to Premium subscribers only. You have to infer this from their "About Mobile TV" page, which lists the "bouquets" available.
I called the "Customer Service" number and spoke to an officious little man who kept interrupting me and telling me that it's all in the "Terms and Conditions" on their web site. It isn't. It's hidden away in the Drifta FAQ, not the "Walka" FAQ. Why hide it from the customer? Why not tell the customer when he buys the product? I have been to their head office 3 times with Drifta enquiries, plus phoned their sales line, and no one has ever mentioned the M-Net restriction, or discussed "bouquets".
Speaking of "bouquets", the only way to watch cricket on DStv is with the "Premium" subscription, or with DStv Mobile on a 3.5" screen. So we have downgraded from the R600 per month package to "EasyView" which only costs R20/month. Granted, it only shows the channels we pay for with a TV license, plus Aljazeera English and CCTV, the Chinese english news channel. Since AJE is infinitely better than CNN, I'm happy with the arrangement, and we can watch sport on the Walka. It pays for itself within 2 months.
Update: DStv have updated their web site to make it clearer in the list the channels that M-Net is only available on the Premium subscription.
Update Monday 9 Jan: 5 weeks after purchasing the Walka its screen went weird. I took it to their Customer Service Centre and they replaced it without any fuss. Good service.

Great Ideas Are Not Always Obvious

2011-12-01T16:18:00.006+02:00

I saw this video clip on TV this morning and thought that the rest of the world could learn from it. Particularly here in Joburg, where our politicians are too interested in lavish parties and stealing money than actually doing anything useful. Also at COP17, where the 1% gather to spend the 99%'s money and discuss how to make 0% difference.

Marketing Lies told by Banks

2011-11-26T15:15:00.004+02:00

"Congratulations, you could qualify for a limit increase ..." Does the bank really think I'm that stupid? They want to lend me money, to increase my debt, and to increase their profit, and I should be congratulated? This is one of the many lies told every day by banks and other financial institutions. And then you wonder why the world economy is in such a mess.

Apple Fanboys Being Mocked

2011-11-24T19:40:00.002+02:00

I guess the Apple reality distortion field won't last forever. I don't know if I'll get a smartphone, but if I do, it won't be an Apple product. Not after they way they treated me in the past.

A Clever History of the English Language

2011-11-24T15:40:00.001+02:00

6,418 Days of Freedom. Now it's gone in a puff of smoke

2011-11-22T15:17:00.006+02:00

On 27th April 1994, South Africa elected the first democratic government in our history. 6418 days later, that same government, despite the outspoken opposition of newspapers, trade union groups, civil society organisations and prominent individuals, a bunch of criminals (also known as MPs) passed legislation that effectively wipes out the ability of journalists to tell the truth about politicians and public figures.
We wouldn't have learnt about the corrupt dealings of people like Mac Maharaj and his boss' "financial advisor", Shabir Shaik, and his boss, Jacob Zuma. The dubious lifestyle of Julius "fork and knife" Malema would not have been so easy to expose, and the Travelgate affair, where these criminals (also known as MPs) defrauded the taxpayer out of airline tickets and other travel perks.
Why did they pass the bill? For reasons of "State Security" (puleez!). The same reason put Nelson Mandela behind bars for decades, and had thousands of ANC members tortured and killed under Apartheid. But now that members of the ANC are busy plundering the country of its wealth for their own pockets, their lip service to press freedom has been exposed, as they try to hide their nepotism, cronyism and corruption.
What the idiots in government forget is that there is not such thing as a secret on the internet. So it will be interesting to see how they plan to prosecute WikiLeaks or other international whistleblower sites when information does get out. And the suppression of it in the local media won't last long when they can point to other sources out of the reach of our tinpot dictatorship.
What worries me is that under this "cloak of secrecy" the civil servants and low-level party officials will believe they can get away with more corruption than before. Only the "bigger fish" will be exposed while all of the "smaller fish" will gobble up the resources of the country, and the poor will continue to suffer.

Mac Maharaj ducking and diving

2011-11-21T17:29:00.011+02:00

This is the calibre of our presidential spokesman, who "stands accused of receiving millions in bribes from French weapons maker Thales" according to the front page of the Sunday Times, and who wants to prevent newspapers from publishing the "lies" he is supposed to have made in an official enquiry, presumably under oath. This interview comes ahead of the imminent passage through parliament of a bill designed to curb press freedom. Welcome to Azania, the banana republic, and Mac looks like the chief banana at this point.
Update: Tuesday 22, from EWN:

Presidential spokesperson Mac Maharaj on Tuesday said he firmly believes that a society without a free media will not be able to have rational debates.
He addressed the National Press Club in Pretoria amid claims that he received bribes during the arms deal.
Maharaj had said it would be illegal for the Mail&Guardian newspaper to publish documents relating to a Section 28 inquiry held in 2001.
He said his position was very clear.
“I have maintained the view that I have been not involved in any bribery, corruption and in the awarding of those two tenders and that’s my consistent position,” he said.

Stop paying lip service to media freedom when your party is ~~about to~~ reintroduced Apartheid's media restrictions, Mac! And don't think we haven't noticed the diversionary tactics, either.

Update Monday 28th: According to this article in the Daily Maverick:

In its original 2007 article, City Press reported that Maharaj and his wife had told the Scorpions, among other details, that they had no offshore bank accounts in Switzerland; and had received no money from Schabir Shaik, or his companies. However, this flies in the face of investigative work by City Press, as well as the Sunday Times and the M&G, showing that money was paid from French weapons manufacturer Thompson (now Thales) into Zarina Maharaj's Swiss bank account, via none other than Shaik.
Maharaj, meanwhile, speaking to the National Press Club on Tuesday, said: “I have maintained the view that I have not been involved in any bribery, corruption, and in the awarding of those two tenders. That's my consistent position. It doesn't change.” The tenders refer to the R2.5 billion N3 toll road tender; and the R265 million credit-card driver's licence tender, both of which were awarded when Maharaj was the minister of transport. A company owned by Shaik was part of the consortium that won the former tender, while Thales benefited from the latter.
Throughout the last ten days, Maharaj has consistently refused to answer the question of whether he lied to the Scorpions. It's probably advisable that he doesn't comment on this unless or until he is forced to – lying to a Section 28 inquiry is a criminal offence, and he could face 15 years in prison.

It all becomes a lot clearer: he's blustering to cover his arse, and he should be fired for bringing the Presidency into disrepute, along with his boss.

FishWisePro gets a search facility

2011-11-13T00:05:00.005+02:00

I have been working on the development of the FishWisePro web site for some time. I only get to work on it one day a week, with plenty of breaks when the owner goes on underwater photographic expeditions. He has published several GB of his fish pictures.
The web site is mostly data, with around 800MB of fish data, and a lot of pictures. The problem until now has been locating the data of interest to a visitor. It has been relatively easy to browse the data, although quite inefficient. In the past fortnight I have been able to add a "Quick Search" facility that makes it simple to run a search on the data. I'm quite proud of it.
Hopefully this will make the site a lot more usable, and will encourage visitors to return again for more information. Until now we have been relying on Google search results, but it seems to get bogged down in the data and its results are not good.
FishWisePro is a comprehensive, fully relational fish database of more than 99,200 scientific species name combinations and just over 34,000 fish pictures. It has been specifically developed for Academics, Students, Marine Biologists, Authors, Ichthyologists and all other serious users interested in Fish Taxonomy. I would be interested in hearing your feedback, impressions, and design suggestions. Please bear in mind we are trying to keep the site design simple and functional.

Audiobook Publishing Lunacy - Averted

2011-11-08T16:28:00.006+02:00

Every now and then the monumental stupidity of the publishing industry (and its lawyers) gets under my skin. Take the latest example: Christopher Paolini's book "Inheritance", the final part of the Inheritance cycle (originally a trilogy).
The final book has taken some time to come out, and my wife and I were eagerly awaiting the audio book release today. It may be released in the USA, and I can buy it on the Kindle, but not in audiobook form. Idiots!
So now the race is on: do I find it on the file file sharing networks before the sluggards in the audiobook publishing industry decide to change their minds and take my money? Watch this space. If I get an "illegal" copy before I can buy it legitimately, why should I bother when the "legal" copy becomes available? After all, the publishing industry is booming, just like the rest of the economy.
Update 6.30pm: I found the epub version of the book on both BitTorrent and eMule. So much for that. The audio books shouldn't be much longer.

Update Wed: The publishers won! I have to pay double, but at least I can listen to the books. I'm glad I was wrong ;-)

Time to End the Wikleaks Banking Blockade

2011-10-25T00:33:00.007+02:00

This tweet just in from Wikileaks:

Support WikiLeaks - you can now donate with an SMS | http://shop.wikileaks.org/donate#dmobile (check it works where you live using dropdown menu)

It works fine in South Africa, and I donated R20 for now. Will donate more soon. Watch the video and fight back at Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and the entire wunch of bankers trying to blockade Wikileaks.

What Does it Cost to Change the World? from WikiLeaks

See: Broke Wikileaks Halts Publication to Raise Money at Gizmodo.

No News is Bad News for AlJazeera English

2011-10-24T19:09:00.004+02:00

AlJazeera English is my primary source of TV news. Sometimes I can even watch it online, depending on the availability of bandwidth. This morning I noticed that something was going wrong: there was no news coming out of their Doha studio. Was AJE under attack? Was the staff on strike or being censored? All kinds of scenarios went through my mind.
After all, the station is owned by the state of Qatar, and they recently changed senior management, so anything was possible. What strikes me as most odd is that they, as a news outlet, did not see fit to tell their audience what was going on. This is bad news, especially for a company that has numerous twitter accounts and Facebook pages. It's bad for credibility.
On the one hand the fact that their primary studio isn't working may not count as "news", but there wasn't even an explanation on their web site, and tweets to their twitter news account went unanswered. A tweet to their @AJStream account, supposedly their flagship social media program, wasn't addressed directly. Weird.
I eventually got a reply from Alan Fisher, one of their best journalists: "significant tech issues I believe". Why couldn't the station itself say that? Why is it afraid of admitting it is having a technical hitch? It's not like you aren't going to notice if you switch on the TV looking for a 30 minute news program and you get a documentary instead. Instead of getting my "morning news fix" at 9am (News Live Doha), I eventually got it at 3pm (Newshour from London) instead. That's when I got the clue that the Doha centre was having difficulties.
Note to AJE: Just put a note on your program schedule when you cancel programs. Viewers will appreciate your honesty and trust you more. Hiding stuff doesn't build trust or credibility.

ESET's Not-So-Smart Security Failure - Fixed

2011-10-14T17:24:00.017+02:00

Resolved: I remain a NOD32 fan, particularly after the amazing response from Shaun Norris and his team. They have fixed the problem locally, and making sure the ESET engineers improve their download process in future releases.

Original Post 10/14/11: I have been a NOD32 fan for a long time, but recently I have been questioning my loyalty, particularly in the light of their very dodgy virus definition update policies. It seems they are perfectly happy to allow a PC to run with definition files that are 448 days old. Or 105 days. Or whatever. What kind of security is that!?
Take a look at the screen shot at the top of the page (click on the image) to see how the software is lying to me. I installed the software two weeks ago on this Windows 7 32 bit PC, and at the time the virus definitions were updated backwards from version 6364 (20110809) to 5307 (20100723) and then later to 6516 (20111004). OK, so it had a glitch. It came right. Wrong!
This morning I returned to the machine, after leaving it running by itself for 10 days. The virus definitions are back to 5307. No amount of cajoling can persuade the machine to download the correct version and not mislead me:

Other versions of the software have experienced similar problems. This PC was using version 4.2.71.2 and it had an issue with the definitions, so I removed the software and installed version 50.93,0. The same thing happened on a brand new Windows 7 machine I was setting up from scratch. Other PCs running Windows 98 and version 2.7 are reverting back to July 2011.
So my question is this: how can the software allow the definitions to roll backwards? How can the servers still have definition files that are 448 days old? Are they insane? They are supposed to be a security company. Yet they issue software with bugs in it, and have a policy that doesn't remove old virus definitions, giving careless users a false sense of security. That's worse than no security at all.

ESET CEO Richard Marko is still blissfully unaware of this problem

Update Mon 17th Oct: I have been assigned a bug report number #TICKET 57298
Update Tues 18th Oct: ESET requested the configuration file and SysInspector log that I sent on Friday 14th. I am starting to get annoyed as well as alarmed. In the meantime the definition files are now over 450 days old! And they want me to run WireShark to capture all the packets. WTF?!
Update Wed 19 Oct: Posted an update to the Wilders Security Forum.

Update Thu 20 Oct: Definitions are now 454 days old, i.e. 64 weeks. After making enquiries this morning I discover the ESET engineers are waiting for a log that I have already sent them. I sent the following reply:

Yes, I am on M-Web but the problem also occurs when using ISDSL which is what most of the [customer] connections use.

Yes, I sent you the event log. TWICE. Here it is: [I have removed duplicates]

14/10/2011 03:24:54 PM ESET Kernel The program modules have been updated.

14/10/2011 03:24:52 PM Update module Updater: retval = 0x0000, failures: 0 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM

14/10/2011 02:59:19 PM Update module Updater: Switch DEVEL modules retval = 0x00005007 [NOT NEED] NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM

14/10/2011 01:43:30 PM ESET Kernel The program modules have been updated.

14/10/2011 01:43:28 PM Update module Updater: retval = 0x0000, failures: 0 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM

14/10/2011 01:43:23 PM Update module Updater: Switch DEVEL modules retval = 0x00005007 [NOT NEED] NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM

14/10/2011 01:42:56 PM ESET Kernel The program modules have been updated.

14/10/2011 10:56:12 AM ESET Kernel The program modules have been updated.

11/10/2011 06:53:02 PM Update module An error occurred while downloading update files. NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM

11/10/2011 04:53:00 PM Update module An error occurred while downloading update files. NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM

05/10/2011 08:51:06 PM Update module An error occurred while downloading update files. NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM

05/10/2011 03:46:12 PM ESET Kernel Virus signature database successfully updated to version 6519 (20111005).

05/10/2011 11:46:10 AM ESET Kernel Virus signature database successfully updated to version 6518 (20111005).

04/10/2011 09:46:01 PM ESET Kernel Virus signature database successfully updated to version 6517 (20111004).

04/10/2011 06:06:00 PM ESET Kernel Virus signature database successfully updated to version 6516 (20111004).

04/10/2011 06:05:57 PM Update module Updater: retval = 0x0000, failures: 1 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM

04/10/2011 04:46:44 PM ESET Kernel The program modules have been updated.

04/10/2011 12:49:52 PM ESET Kernel The program modules have been updated.

This is clearly an ESET issue because it is ESET software doing the download, and ESET software that is lying to me about the result, and ESET software that is allowing is virus definition files to go backwards.

I understand that transparent proxies may be involved, but then please explain why two adjacent computers on the same connection can have different results? One works fine and the other doesn’t update.

I really think that ESET is not taking this matter seriously. If your engineers have any further requests or questions, please ask them to contact me directly.

Update 2: Thu 20 Oct 2011: I got a call from Shaun Norris at ESET South Africa, who assured me that they are not ignoring the problem, and have requested further info from me. This is most reassuring. In the meantime I think I have figured out how things are going wrong: their update mechanism is broken. It is vulnerable to faulty proxy servers (such as those used by M-Web) and doesn't use https. It also has no check to see if the version it is updating is older than the existing version. WTF!?

Update: Fri 21 Oct 2011: Shaun Norris set up an alternate proxy for me to try, and also contacted M-Web to get them not to cache the ESET virus definitions. Last night I tried a new installation, which worked flawlessly. I'm waiting to be able to connect to the "afflicted" PC (the office opens on Monday) to see whether these changes will help.

Update: Monday 24 Oct: The virus definitions have updated to the correct version, and appear to be stable. I have sent the logs through to Shaun Norris. All is well for now, and hopefully the ESET Enginners will fix this bug before it endangers other customers.

Beware the "Windows Service Centre" phone call scam

2011-09-15T14:01:00.013+02:00

Why is it that crooks are so ingenious? This is a social engineering scam, where a person calls you and tells you that there is something wrong with your computer, and offers to fix it. They then convince you with a whole load of misleading technical information, and even get you to run remote control software like support.me or ammyy.com so they can connect to your computer to "fix" the problem.
Do not allow anyone to control your computer unless you know exactly who they are and what they are about to do. Do not type in commands into your PC unless you fully know and trust the person issuing the commands. Not only will you save yourself a lot of hassle, and probably preserve your data, but you will not be conned into parting with your money. (You think they are doing it for free?)
Fact: Microsoft is not "monitoring" your computer, and certainly does not randomly call users if they are experiencing problems. If you agree to send error logs to Microsoft, these are collected for statistical reasons, and cannot be used to identify an individual user or machine. They would be in violation of a ton of privacy laws if they did otherwise.
Question: why don't the remote control companies like support.me and ammyy.com have big warning signs on their web pages:

Warning: do not install this software if requested by unknown call centre operators. Only allow remote control from people you know and trust.

This would protect many innocent and gullible users and protect the brand of the software. (Update: ammyy.com has done so.)

Update: Ammyy.com has posted a warning on their site. Well done to them!

Who says Hollywood never has an original movie trailer?

2011-09-05T22:18:00.007+02:00

Thanks to the Listening Post for this one, and Jerm for finding it.
Also, coming soon to this blog: the true story of a building contractor and the customer who finally had enough. I have all the relevant court documents and will post them in WikiLeaks style, but with ~~names redacted~~ to protect the guilty from themselves.

I just screwed up my blog!

2011-09-01T21:17:00.004+02:00

I was fiddling around with some new blog settings and I totally wiped out all my carefully constructed blog settings.
Sorry folks! It's going to take a while to get it all back. Some of the items will take some time to figure out too. Please bear with me.
Update Friday 2 Sept: Not everything is fixed, but at least the site is usable again. I guess it was ready for a redesign, but not like that! I really must stop fiddling and get back to work.

CNN's WikiWars is shoddy journalism

2011-08-31T21:24:00.019+02:00

I used to think CNN was pretty good at news coverage. Unfortunately now it is just a broadcaster, rather than a news organisation. It hasn't stooped quite as low as Fox News, but it's definitely heading in that direction.
CNN Presents is supposed to be one of their premier documentary shows, where they show "serious" documentaries. This piece falls far short, with inaccuracies and misleading information galore. What's worse is that it is obviously pro-Military and pro-America and borders on being a hatchet job on Julian Assange. The entire show playlist is available here, and the full transcript is available on the CNN web site.

The sad thing about this "documentary" is that the parts it leaves out are quite serious. And the whole "Collateral Murder" segment tries to justify the gunning down of civilians in a civilian neighbourhood by claiming that it was a "combat situation".
The video shows yet another US Military f*** up: they do it all the time. Of course the "general" and the "marine" won't admit that on TV: I think they have lost the plot. Here is another report, this time by AlJazeera English:

Compare the poor quality of the CNN program with this one, which is about the same length but contains far more detail and useful insights:

If you want to know more about Wikileaks, Iraq and Afghanistan, read "Obama's Wars" by Bob Woodward; "WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy" by David Leigh et al; "The Longest War: America and Al-Qaeda Since 9/11" by Peter Bergen; and "Bradley Manning - Truth and Consequences" by Greg Mitchell. Only the last book is not available in audiobook format.

Update: Unfortunately WikiLeaks used a previously disclosed password when they released their "insurance" file. So now anyone can read all those cables in unredacted form. That is monumentally stupid, and was obviously a serious security error. Assange cannot blame it on the Guardian because the data file was released to the public by WikiLeaks, not the Guardian. Relying on journalists to understand computer security or keep a secret is never a clever move.
Update 2 Sept: WikiLeaks has now posted all the unredacted cables. This is an act of monumental stupidity, endangering the lives of activists around the world, not to mention making the case against Bradley Manning much worse. I think its a desperate act, but it is totally irresponsible.

SARS is making me sick

2011-08-31T03:27:00.006+02:00

I woke up suddenly at 2.10am feeling sick, and I've spent the last 2 hours or so on the toilet, sharing my dinner with the plumbing system. Yes, it could be a bad pie, but I doubt it. It's just nerves, brought on by the glorious ~~monstrosity~~ bureaucracy called the South African Revenue Service.
I'm told with great earnestness by friends that one should never criticise SARS in public, or complain to the media about them. They could get really nasty and make my life a misery with tax audits and stuff. But no one can explain to me what to do about the trifling amount of R246,231.46 that they claim I owe them.
To put that into perspective, it's 118% of my taxable income for 2011, or 55% of my gross annual turnover. R113,344.31 of this amount is interest, and it is growing by R1,168.39 per month. At one stage the interest rate of 15% meant the amount grew at R2,316.87 per month. Any way you look at it, it's a daunting amount of money. My body reacts to this stress by making me sick. It's kept me awake for the last 2 hours.
The sad thing about this whole deal is that it should have been sorted out in 2008 when I was granted amnesty by the "Small Business Tax Amnesty" legislation. This was supposed to write off all the taxes payable for the 2003-2005 tax years. However they failed to inform me of the decision, and then on top of that decided that these tax years were not covered by the amnesty because the tax forms had not been filled in, or some such nonsense. Ever since then I have been getting "Final Demands" (I've had several) from the tax collection section of SARS. Each time I get one it makes me sick for a few days.
Yesterday I went to see them because (surprise, surprise) they had lost an objection I filed in May 2010 and now that they were looking at the copy I resubmitted they decided that I should have signed it and not the accountants that did it on my behalf. This little delay has cost me R16,000 in interest, not to mention time wasted with the accountants, plus the accountants' fees. In order to pay this amount I have to earn R22,900 so that I can pay 30% tax on that to be left with R16,030 in order to pay this tax. And I'm still no closer to paying off the capital that generated the interest in the first place. I feel like a hamster in a wheel.

Zero Day novel is scary and an exciting read

2011-08-12T14:41:00.006+02:00

Mark Russinovich probably knows more about rootkits than most people on the planet, since he found some and wrote the first major tool to detect them. Now he has written a novel about viruses, computer security and government incompetence. And it is scary.
I thought my laptop was secure, but it isn't. The BIOS can be reprogrammed, the hard drive can we wiped out and any software running on it can be attacked and disabled, all by some cleverly written code. I called my antivirus company and asked them if they'd read the book. One of the guys had "heard about it".
So, my question is one that computer users hate to hear: when was the last time you checked your computer for security updates of ALL installed programs? When was the last time you made a backup? How about an off-line backup? Or an off-site backup? Will it be enough? Probably not.

Nissan buyers warned by angry Nissan customer

2011-08-11T20:44:00.005+02:00

You have to be a seriously annoyed Nissan customer to go to the lengths this guy went to. Firstly, he had to pay around R2000 to place this ad in Noseweek, and he had to arrange the wording and so on. He is clearly fed up with the way that CMH Nissan in Midrand treated him. I had my Daewoo serviced by them, before and (only once) after the cylinder head gasket blew.
It boggles the mind why Nissan South Africa hasn't just intervened and paid for the damages. I guess their "cavalier attitude" has something to do with it. The advert further mentions an article in Noseweek:

Ivan Visée was very happy with his Nissan Pathfinder until the day came when he wanted to drive it to Cape Town. In preparation for the trip, he went to CMH Nissan in Midrand and asked them to give the vehicle its 120,000km service.
In the course of the service they phoned him to say there was water in the gearbox oil. Had he driven through any rivers lately?
No. Consequently, they merely changed the oil - at quite a considerable price: far higher than the oil available elsewhere - so CMH Nissan was putting a high premium on it.
Visée took delivery of his vehicle and headed for Cape Town, only to have the motor blow up on him 60km short of the Mother City - just as he was about to enter the Du Toit's Kloof tunnel.
The SUV was then towed to Droomers Nissan in Paarl, which offered Visée the unappealing choice of either waiting three months-or-so to have his engine and gearbox reconditioned, or to have a new engine put in at a staggering cost. Visee realised that the differential cost between a new and a reconditioned engine was not that much, so he opted for the new engine. At this stage he was unaware of what had caused the disaster.
Only after Droomers had taken the engine out to replace it with a new one did he realise that the damage to the gearbox and engine had resulted from a leak in the gearbox oil cooler.
Surely, once CMH Nissan realised that he had not gone through a puddle, a pond or a river, they should have looked a little further and done a pressure test on the only other possible source of water in the oil, namely the cooler, which runs into the radiator and circulates the oil through the cooled water of the radiator. Their failure to do the check and pick up the leak was cardinal in causing the subsequent blow-up.
Visée employed forensic scientist and negotiator Dr David Klatzow to engage with Nissan SA on the matter. Klatzow met Nissan's representative and their attorney in Durban. He described their attitude as "cavalier" and "couldn't care a damn". The best they were prepared to offer Visée was a derisory R20,000 refund on a bill which came closer to R200,000. They blamed Visee for not having picked up the fault earlier - while, of course, excusing their own supposedly professional dealership for not having detected it.

The mind boggles. I showed the ad to the guys who do my car servicing and they scratched their heads in amazement. You would think that the motor industry would have learnt its lesson by now, but no, they think they can ignore their customers indefinitely. Nissan just needs to lose a few sales as a result of this saga to kiss that R235000 tax-deductible "loss" goodbye. Not very bright. Their ratings on HelloPeter are not very good when it comes to servicing either.

British Intelligence and Morality on Display

2011-08-11T11:10:00.006+02:00

Don't you just love this public displays of British "civilisation" and "culture"? I doubt if parliament will fix this problem either. They are too busy sucking up to the bankers and media owners. Pictures from the BBC web site: UK riots: Before-and-after images of the devastation. Of course when the bankers gouge the economy of millions there isn't the same kind of outrage by the politicians. These riots are political, but the politicians don't want to face up to their responsibility: they created the conditions of hopelessness and defeat in the first place.

Richard Dawkins: Prophet of God

2011-08-04T11:01:00.014+02:00

I have been having an interesting discussion about Richard Dawkins with the cartoonist Jerm Nell. Personally I find Dawkins a little too simplistic and insulting to be taken seriously. But then it occurred to me that perhaps he is actually a prophet, sent by God to wake up His church to the fact that it is intellectually fast asleep. How's that for irony?
He seems to enjoy the limelight and controversy he creates through the media.

In The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. He is sympathetic to Robert Pirsig's statement in "Lila" that "when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion."

If this is true, then I suffer from a massive delusion. So does Desmond Tutu, the man who stood up to PW Botha in the dark days of Apartheid. He was also the man who led me to become a Christian. This would mean that my refusal to serve in the SADF was delusional, and therefore I must have been acting purely out of self-interest and cowardice. More irony: Desmond and I were wrong, and PW and Magnus Malan were right. Or deluded as well. Or something. But I digress.
In Dallas Willard's book, "Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge" he states

.. is it possible to know the things you believe as a Chritian? To what extent? And does it really matter whether you do or not? Doesn't Christian faith automatically relegate you to an intellectual slum? Many - religious or not - deeply feel that it does. Some even think you should be proud if the slum. That is the status history has managed to hang upon faith.

I think that Dawkins has become the public face of that attitude, and that challenge. Hence, he is a prophet of God, sent to challenge the church to wake up from its complacency and compromise, and speak of its knowledge of the truth.
Update: I think that bus slogan should be changed to read "Now stop worrying and enjoy your miserable existence on social welfare"
Update 7-Sep-2011: I have begun listening to Dawkins' audio book "The God Delusion" and I must say I am disappointed after the first chapter, which talks about Einstein, and tries to get his beliefs to promote Dawkins' atheism. But anyone who has read "Einstein: His Life and Universe" by Walter Isaacson will know that Einstein was not an atheist at all. Dawkins sidesteps this omission by stating (correctly) that Einstein did not believe in a personal God, and then (incorrectly) conflates this with Dawkins' own avowedly atheist viewpoint. It's a cheap trick and quite sad, especially after he accuses others of doing exactly the same thing. I guess I couldn't expect him to provide the full quote:

"Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics and comes from the same source. They are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who -- in their grudge against the traditional "opium of the people" -- cannot bear the music of the spheres. The Wonder of nature does not become smaller because one cannot measure it by the standards of human moral and human aims."

My 330 Hour Hard Drive

2011-07-27T12:10:00.007+02:00

I'm in the process of adding a 2TB hard drive to my home server, mainly for backups and archives. So before I format the drive I decided to run SpinRite in maintenance mode to check that the drive is OK.
You know you've bought a huge hard drive when you realise that SpinRite is going to take nearly two weeks (13.75 days) to test it thoroughly. I think I'm going to have to do the testing in stages, because I don't want to have the server offline for two weeks during testing. That's a bit extreme ;-)
Update: I ran SpinRite in "Emergency Recovery Mode" and it completed the job in around 5 hours. ~~Now I'm formatting the drive, and I'm curious to see how long that takes.~~ It also took around 5 hours to do a proper format of the drive. I have copied around 1TB of backup files onto the drive, and it took most of the weekend to do. 2TB is a lot of data!

Groupon's Missing "Do Not Contact" List

2011-07-26T19:46:00.006+02:00

Remember when Six Degrees, Facebook and Plaxo started, and for the next few months you got your inbox bombarded with a gazillion requests from various "friends" who were sure you wanted to subscribe, or join, or whatever?
Well, times have changed, and there are laws against emails like that. Usually I just hand it over to Unsubscribe.com, which is brilliant. But last week it couldn't handle an email from a friend who thought I'd like to join the South African version of Groupon, called MyCityDeal.co.za. The site sending the email had no "opt out" or "unsubscribe" link!
Already that's a violation of the ECT Act and the new Consumer Protection Act, because companies engaged in electronic marketing have to provide the facility for a user to tell them that they don't wish to receive marketing messages, i.e. a "Do Not Contact" list. So I went to their web site and told them that I wished to be placed on their Do Not Contact List. They wrote back and said they had tried to "unsubscribe" me but I wasn't subscribed. DUH.
Spot the difference: If I was already a subscriber then I could unsubscribe, but I'm not a subscriber, so I can't, and I can't stop them from sending me invitations to join. Does that mean I have to join and then unsubscribe so they don't break the law? Weird.

Centrade/Sentrade 419 Scam Alert

2011-07-26T12:49:00.005+02:00

I just got a call from an anonymous call centre for "Centrade" or maybe "Sentrade" that claims to teach people how to invest on the stock market. I was, naturally, the "winner" of a "lucky draw" in which my name and phone number just magically materialised out of thin air.
When I asked the caller where he got my number from, he vaguely said that I am "on the JSE" by virtue of the fact that I have a bank account. What a load of BS! If that's the quality of their course, then the entire thing is a scam. When will these guys learn?
Update Thursday 28th July: Today another company phoned. It sounded like the "Flash Business Network" but the line quality was really bad. When I asked where they had got my number from, he said that they had it on "their system" because I had recently "registered for RICA". What a load of BS! The number was registered last year with MTN when I renewed my contract. Eventually he hung up. I must really try to keep these guys on the phone for much longer.
Update Thursday 29 Sept: Judging by Centrade's evasiveness and secrecy, this looks like the classic 419 scam, where they get you to disclose your ID and banking details so they can empty your bank account.

Time for an industry "Do Not Subscribe or Contact" List

2011-07-22T08:54:00.014+02:00

It's time the mobile phone industry woke up to the fact that their networks are wide open to abuse. I experienced it recently when random sums of money were deducted from my phone bill, after being "subscribed" without my knowledge to some "premium content" services. In this case they were run by Opera Interactive, who initially refused a refund and referred me to "Go Go Mobile", a UK/Hong Kong based company. Later they refunded me several times, presumably because they really have no idea what they are doing.
"Go Go Mobile" decided that I was a disreputable liar, and accused me of trying to make money out of my complaint to WASPA. They also brought up the matter of my legal dispute with a timeshare company, without the foggiest notion of what it was about, or how it was resolved. Clearly they seem to think that attack is the best form of defence, even when they are in the wrong.
My complaint with WASPA was lodged on 10th June 2011, i.e. 42 days ago. It was only "received" by WASPA on 22nd June (12 days later) and "resolved" on 30th June, i.e. 3 weeks after the initial complaint. I informed WASPA that I was not satisfied with the response from "Go Go Mobile" and pointed out the security holes in their system. This was sent to them on Saturday 2nd July, i.e. 20 days ago.
I would have expected this to be passed on to "Go Go Mobile", but a week later they had still heard nothing, so I sent it to Steve Hunt and Trevor Louw and asked what was being done about it. They declined to say, so a few days later I posted a note on the MyBroadband forum to add a bit more pressure. Now, finally, the mobilewap1.oit.co.za server is offline. Hopefully they have fixed the problem, although I doubt it.
WASPA seems to think that their members don't need a "Do Not Subscribe or Contact" list, but clearly the public has no protection against spammers and lax security. Had I been able to add my number and my wife's number to such a list, I would not have been hassled by having random amounts of money deducted from my account, and I would not have had to visit MTN or waste money on the phone to the Opera Interactive call centre. WASPA even have an unsubscribe system (unsubscribes@waspa.org.za) but you don't remain unsubscribed. They just don't get it.
Now the whole industry look like morons because of bad security, poor customer relations and lax or arrogant management. I guess they get what they deserve. In the meantime WASPA has yet to make up their minds about my complaint(s), or punish the offenders. What's taking so long?
Update 11th August: After 9 weeks my complaint is "pending" adjudication. Meanwhile, the MyBroadband web site has published a stinging rebuke of the entire industry called "Is your airtime quietly being stolen?" pointing out that this problem has been going on for the last 3 years and nothing has been done. They just announced in a press release that they plan to do nothing in spite of rumours that they might be doing something useful. Needless to say, consumers are fed up. Even East Coast Radio's Consumer Watch has an article about it.
Update 23rd August: After 74 days my complaint is still "pending" adjudication. It's been under consideration for 3 weeks already. Perhaps its just languishing at the bottom of a very large pile of papers while more money gets sucked out of the accounts of unsuspecting phone subscribers. There is one complaint "pending" since October last year. I wonder whether anyone takes these complaints seriously?

Check Your Browser!

2011-07-20T11:39:00.001+02:00

Many tech geeks know about how insecure Internet Explorer 6 is, and how even Microsoft has a web site dedicated to convincing users to upgrade. But is your browser up to date or vulnerable? One service that allows you to find out is the Browser Check from Qualys at http://browsercheck.qualys.com/ which can check most browsers, including IE (requires an add-in), Firefox and Chrome. Here is the result of running it in Firefox 5:
It's interesting that it reports the availability of version 5.0.1 even before the browser itself offers the upgrade. It also shows that (once again) Java is vulnerable, but no fix available yet.
When you run this check on Google Chrome you may need to load the "about:plugins" page to be able to disable plugins like the RealPlayer plugin, which you may not be using. I also found its false warning about a "potential threat" in Adobe Flash a bit annoying: it doesn't check the version number correctly. Hopefully this will be fixed before another flash vulnerability comes along. The bug doesn't happen if the plugin is installed.

MTN8 Competition Greed

2011-07-14T16:23:00.009+02:00

There are clearly no limits to how low MTN will stoop in order to recoup its advertising budget. Even if it means violating the WASPA code of conduct, not to mention the ECT Act and the Consumer Protection Act. When it comes to soccer, there are no rules; only greed.
In spite of the fact that my phone account is clearly marked as a "Do Not Contact" (for marketing messages) client, and in spite of the fact that I have contacted all WASPA members and asked them to put my on their DNC list, these knuckleheads decided to sent me the SMS shown above. Did I mention I'm also on the Direct Marketing Association's DNC list as well? MTN is a "Founding Member" of the DMA.
In spite of the fact that the message doesn't contain the mandatory "STOP" instructions, I dutifully wasted R1 and sent a STOP message to the 40570 number. I got the following reply:
So the way it works is this: MTN sends this message to a gazillion football fans, who each spend R1 (or more) to enter. Thus MTN earns R-gazillion in SMS charges, which it can offset against the cost of sponsoring the teams. The cost of the prize: 9 tickets it has already paid for. How cheap can you get?
Did I mention that they violated sections 5.1.3, 5.1.8, and 5.2.1 of the WASPA Code of Conduct? I have filed Complaint #13894 with WASPA.

Pray for Our President Zuma, Julius Malema, and Robert Mugabe

2011-07-05T15:52:00.005+02:00

Noseweek is a wonderful source of news and information about our politicans. So I giggled when I read the following letter in the latest issue:

In slow-moving traffic, I noticed a rear windscreen sticker on the car in front of us, which read: Pray for Our President Zuma, Julius Malema, and Robert Mugabe. Psalm 109:8.
My husband's Bible was on the dashboard. He opened it to Psalm 109 and burst out laughing. It reads: Let his days be few; and let another take his office.
Let us all bow our heads and pray.
Beatrice

There is also a heart-warming story about a guy in the Eastern Cape doing his best to thwart corruption in the Health service.

Is Genesis Capital using illegal databases?

2011-06-30T13:11:00.006+02:00

I had never heard of Genesis Capital before today at 11h49 when someone from their 011-731-5000 call centre phoned me to sell me financial products. I told him I'd never heard of Genesis Capital and where did they get my number from? "From an FNB database" he replied. "Who at FNB?" He didn't know. When I told him he was breaking the law he rang off.
I called Genesis Capital on the same number and they didn't appear to be too interested in helping me. The Marketing Manager wasn't available, and someone else cut me off while trying to put me through to someone else. I have logged a query with FNB about the breach of privacy, but personally I doubt if my bank had anything to do with this database. I have also logged a query with Genesis Capital, but I doubt if these scumbags will respond.
People like this buy databases on the assumption that it is OK to use the information to run a credit check on me and then contact me if the credit check looks promising. What they don't realise is that I have told the credit check companies like TransUnionITC to put my name on their Do Not Call database. So when they call they are already breaking the law. Not that this kind of company has any business ethics to speak of, so that wouldn't bother them much.

WTF? Ducking and Diving from Oxygen8

2011-06-24T13:39:00.014+02:00

Is there no end to the web of deception and deceit practised by Morvec, Opera Telecoms, Go Go Mobile and Oxygen8? Morvec are the guys with a domain and email address in the UK, and a box number in Hong Kong. Go Go Mobile have an 0800 number in South Africa but refuse to divulge their address. Trevor Louw, the "MD" of Opera Interactive is also the "Internal Account and Customer Services Manager" of Oxygen8 Communications with telephone number 011-218-5600. Between the three of them is an unhappy mix-up that has resulted in R70 being deducted from my phone account at MTN without my permission or prior knowledge.
On Wednesday Paul Barrat (Morvec) tried to get me to agree to a "full and final settlement" in exchange for a R100 refund. Today I complained to both Morvec and Trevor Louw that the promised refund had not been provided. They gave some feeble excuse about the refund only being sent on Monday. Clearly they are not taking this matter seriously, since it was promised on Thursday. When I pointed out all the ducking and diving going on, I got a heated and indignant reply from Trevor Louw:

With all due respect – we do not go around looking to pinch an odd R28 here and there – the matter of the fact is there are many south Africans out there who are not affected by this simply because they did not engage in any services. The mere fact that we know what model of handset you use proves that there was interaction between your handsets [sic] and the wap sites that Morvec run that is no co-incidence. We have no time changing dates and times – dates and times are recorded by machines that handle the interaction between your handset and the sites that are being visited. I would really like to think that you are a man of reasonable intellect, you have gone to many lengths to get this sorted – WASPA is the ultimate organization that can see us getting fined a lot of money if compliancy was at stake here, and in this light we take this very seriously especially as opera telecom. In the interim we have afforded you a refund; Morvec has a deadline that they were given by WASPA to respond to your complaint I believe they still are within that time period. In due course you will get your response and WASPA can make an informed decision looking at the evidence that is provided to them.

Of course this rant is only partially true, so I have taken the trouble to point out some of the discrepancies:

Had your company had taken my initial complaint seriously and given me the refund I demanded when I called on Friday 10 June, I would not have complained to WASPA. But your company refused the refund, and fobbed me off with a telephone number that doesn’t work. So much for customer service.
Instead, your company continued to bill me, in spite of my email to be added to your Do Not Contact list, and an Unsubscribe request from WASPA. All of these were “processed” by yourselves *before* the deductions of 18, 19 and 21 June.
Your technical information has changed several times:
From Ant Brooks:
According to our system, Morvec removed you from their systems on 2011-06-16 and also indicated that they have blocked your number from any further billing. They also provided us with proof of your subscription, with the following log entry

MSISDN: 27789389XX7 [not my number]
NETWORK: MTN
HANDSET: Samsung SGH-J700
DATE: 2011/05/23 00:01
IP ADDRESS: 41.208.50.193
Do these logs seem to have any validity to you? If not then we'll escalate this matter, since that indicates that you may have been subscribed without your consent.

From Morvec to your customer services:

Please see below opt in information and answers below

MSISDN

27833104XXX

DATE

23/05/2011 00:01

HANDSET

Nokia 5130

IP ADDRESS

41.208.50.193

From Morvec to me:

the below date and time must have got corrupted before they were sent, the actual date and time are as follows
21/05/2011 15:01:06

From you to Doris at MTN:

See response from the SP – I have asked for some screen shots as well, is there any way that you could collate this data with what you may have on your side to see if all makes sense?

Date

Url:

Handset Details

Ip Address

Shortcode

21/05/2011 at 22:01:01

http://mobilewap1.oit.co.za/?c=160

Nokia 5130

41.208.50.193

31979

18/06/2011 at 18:43:35

http://mobilewap1.oit.co.za/?c=206

Nokia 5130

41.208.50.193

42977

19/06/2011 at 14:09:24

http://mobilewap1.oit.co.za/?c=200

Nokia 5130

41.208.50.193

31801

19/06/2011 at 18:27:38

http://mobilewap1.oit.co.za/?c=206

Nokia 5130

41.208.50.193

42977

21/06/2011 at 21:20:42

http://mobilewap1.oit.co.za/?c=206

Nokia 5130

41.208.50.193

42977

This user has entered into 4 campaigns in the last 3 days by clicking on WAP Banners or Text Adverts. We currently use 31801 and have also recently tested on 42977 for a new agency with seperate advertising campaigns so that we have one agency per code which is easier for me to keep track of results from each agency.

So please don’t tell me that you aren’t changing your minds. And where are all the confirmation SMS messages you are required to send? And where all my replies? There aren’t any.

I can confirm that On 18 and 19 June I displayed ads for “The Mob Club” on Cricinfo, but those URLs are c.admob.com, not mobilewap.oit.co.za, and I received an email from The Mob Club assuring me their ad campaign had nothing to do with the short codes mentioned above. Their short codes are 31927 and 31848. The full URL I recorded on my phone is: http://c.admob.com/c1/4/EkwmvDjF8bEkKw-kMaMDS074DFCA384006D60447277526020d4fd670629663d74205e?uurid=1F70C50F7F91EA49EC0CDB2CB703C45&uut=t&e=%28NEE1RkMzNjBENTY2MCw0NjAwNzA2NSww

This is all clearly documented in my blog post

In the interim you have refunded only the first two deductions, and tried to get me to send a “full and final settlement” for the remaining deduction. Presumably that is to avoid another R100,000 fine like you got for WASPA complaint #6868.

In the meantime I have had a meeting with MTN to try and prevent companies like yours from stealing money from my phone. They are being most helpful.

One other point I only noticed while writing this blog post: The last date of 21 June is clearly wrong, because the MTN call centre was able to tell me about the deduction before my lunchtime meeting with the MTN executives, a full 8 hours before I allegedly subscribed.
The initial “subscription” date has changed 4 times
23/05/2011 00:01 on a Samsung phone
23/05/2011 00:01 on a Nokia phone
21/05/2011 15:01:06 on a Nokia phone
21/05/2011 at 22:01:01 on a Nokia Phone
Update 3pm: Amazing how a "refund" payment that could only happen "on Monday" is suddenly sped up when I pointed out they were lying and not treating the matter seriously. I guess they hope this will make me shut up and go away. After all, it has only been two weeks since they ignored my first complaint.
Monday 27th, 4pm: I left a message for Andre Kruger (CEO, Oxygen8 South Africa) at 011-218-5600 to call me. Funny, he hasn't called. The call could have saved him a lot of trouble.
Update Thursday 30th June: Steven Hunt, Director of EMEA, Morvec Limited, writing from his WorkPC at 86.179.131.67 (Bournemouth, UK) sent a long rambling response to my WASPA complaint. I'll have to pick my way through it and respond to WASPA. It contains many inaccuracies and misrepresentations, but I expected nothing less.

MasterLists: another source of spam

2011-06-23T13:59:00.008+02:00

Mathew at MasterLists just sent me spam of the worst type: selling lists of email addresses. And then he has the arrogance to say: "This email is not spam, it was manually sent by me, and the sole purpose being to introduce this offer to you with no obligation on your part. I handpicked your company as being one in the industry that would possibly find this offer useful. Your email address was therefore publicly available and it has not been added to any list." Actually Mathew, it is spam, because any form of unsolicited marketing message is spam. I tried calling his number, 071 273 6004, but its on voice mail. Why am I not surprised? The message reads:

Good Day,
Due to a change in direction we have elected to sell all our multi-use business directories.
Our portfolio consists of 22 directories as listed below.
To encourage quick sales, we have priced each one of the 22 directories on our portfolio at only R50, but there is a minimum order requirement of 4. Alternatively, you can purchase the lot for Only R499!!!
Our lists are 95% up to date and accurate, consist of no personal information and are populated from the public domain.
All info is presented in Excel spreadsheets, this means it’s like having the Yellow Pages in digital format!
This makes it an absolute pleasure for Salespersons needing to pull up specific records in specific areas!
Numbers are limited, so act fast to avoid disappointment!

1 Gauteng Business List (1)1219 records with 1123 emails Only R50!
COMPANY NAME/CONTACT PERSON/TELE/FAX/EMAIL/ADDRESS

2 Gauteng Business List (2) 2086 records with 1637 emails Only R50!
COMPANY NAME/TELE/FAX/EMAIL/ADDRESS/WEBSITE

3 SA Business List 30 078 record with 8766 emails Only R50!
COMPANY NAME/EMAIL/WEBSITE/TELE/FAX/LOCATION/INDUSTRY TYPE/CONTACT PERSON

4 Cape Town Business List 2786 records with 1401 emails Only R50!
COMPANY NAME/ADDRESS/TELE/EMAIL

5 Brewers & Wine Cellars CT 294 Records with 208 emails Only R50!
COMPANY NAME/EMAIL/WEBSITE/TELE/FAX/ADDRESS/ VARIOUS CONTACT PEOPLE IN DIFFERENT POSTIONS

6 Cape Town Directory 13000 Records with 5385 emails Only R50!
INDUSTRY/COMPANY NAME/EMAIL/WEBSITE/TELE/FAX/ADDRESS/CONTACT PERSON + POSTION

7 Clearing & Forwarding Agents CT 198 Records with 98 emails Only R50!
COMPANY NAME/EMAIL/WEBSITE/TELE/FAX/ADDRESS

8 CT Business List 3768 Records with no emails Only R50!
COMPANY NAME/DESCRIPTION/CONTACT PERSON/IMPORTER OR EXPORTER/CONTACT PERSON/TELE/FAX/ADDRESS

9 National Directory 1076 Records with 867 emails Only R50!
COMPANY NAME/REGION/EMAIL/WEBSITE/TELE/FAX/CELL/CONTACT PERSON

10 SA Estate Agents National 285 Records with 244 emails Only R50!
COMPANY NAME/REGION/EMAIL/WEBSITE/TELE/CELL/CONTACT PERSON

11 Western Cape Corporate Business List (Our best list!) Only R50!
579 Companies with on average 3 contact people in different positions /company.
1887 unique email addresses
COMPANY NAME/INDUSTRY/AREA/STAFF SIZE/FLEET SIZE/TURN OVER/CONTACT PERSON/POSITION/EMAIL/TELE/FAX

12 Travel Agents list 214 records all with emails Only R50!
COMPANY NAME/EMAIL/TELE/FAX/ADDRESS

13 Liquor Stores 5950 records Only R500!
COMPANY NAME/CONTACT PERSON/TELE/FAX

14 Hospitality List (1) 8624 records (5000 with email) Only R50!
SA Resorts, Guesthouses, hotels, Caravan/camp Parks, Backpackers and self-catering establishments
NAME/EMAIL/WEBSITE/TELE/FAX/ADDRESS/PROVINCE

15 Hospitality List (2) 7412 records with 7299 emails Only R50!
SA Resorts, Guesthouses, hotels, Caravan/camp Parks, Backpackers and self-catering establishments
COMPANY NAME/EMAIL/TELE/CELL/ADDRESS/CONTACT PERSON

16 Guest Houses 1009 Records with 945 emails Only R50!
COMPANY NAME/REGION/EMAIL/WEBSITE/TELE/FAX/CELL/CONTACT PERSON

17 Schools List 27151 records Only R50!
SCHOOL NAME/ADDRESS/TELE

18 SA Doctors database (1) 2338 records with 2107 email addresses Only R50!
DR NAME/TELE/ADDRESS/EMAIL

19 SA Doctors database (2) 12978 records Only R50!
NAME/ADDRESS/PROVINCE/TELE/FAX

20 Fax Numbers (landline) 20599 records Only R50!

21 Golf Enthusiasts 25474 email addresses only Only R50!

22 Gauteng Corporate Business List 9975 records with 8010 email addresses Only R50!
COMPANY NAME/REGION/ADDRESS/STAFF SIZE/CONTACT PERSON/POSITION/EMAIL/TELE/WEBSITE

Payment after delivery, so no risk! -BARGAIN OF THE CENTURY!

PLEASE NOTE:
This email is not spam, it was manually sent by me, and the sole purpose being to introduce this offer to you with no obligation on your part. I handpicked your company as being one in the industry that would possibly find this offer useful. Your email address was therefore publicly available and it has not been added to any list. We will not contact you again, but if you wish to unsubscribe anyway, just reply with the word “unsubscribe”, and I’ll keep a note in case we land up on your website again.

Mathew
Cell: 071 273 6004
Sales@masterlists.tv

I hate to burst your greedy little bubble, Mathew, but my email address is not "publicly available" and if you had actually read anything on my web site you would have known that. So you get the "Lousy Spammer of the Month" award, you greedy little lowlife marketer. Try getting some ethics before you look for an honest job. You have just trashed your reputation.
Update: He obviously doesn't know much about email, because this information is included in the email header:
Received: from dsl-243-98-32.telkomadsl.co.za ([41.243.98.32]:59157 helo=GlenPC)

So now I know who to complain to about the spam.

Friday 24th June: "Mathew" called me (from an unlisted number), and assured me my name isn't on their database. He then tried to tell me that I had given some other party "permission" to use my email address. I guess the "spamcop" part of the address didn't ring any bells. He then assured me that if anyone wanted their names removed from the list he would oblige, and let his customers know. But then in 3 weeks time the business will be closing, so what kind of promise is that? Can I believe anything he said? Not really. Scum like this lie like a cheap watch without even realising they are doing so. Get a grip on reality, Mathew or Glen or whatever your real name is!

How to Steal from MTN Cell Phone Subscribers

2011-06-18T16:48:00.032+02:00

How Admob, MTN, Nokia, Opera Telecom, Go Go Mobile and Morvec are stealing money from my phone account.
These telecoms guys have an interesting new definition of the word "permission"; and it violates all ethical norms and codes of conduct. But that never stopped these companies from making a quick buck before.
I have finally figured out how it works, and how they "caught" me before. I remember on the day of the IPL Cricket final going to m.espncricinfo.com, the mobile site for CricInfo, to see what time the match would start. The site was overloaded, and very slow. I vaguely remember clicking on a display ad by mistake. It's an easy enough mistake to make, given how slow the graphics were loading. It was right at the top of the page, and I had scrolled down further already, but the cursor obviously hadn't moved yet. When this advert page appeared, I selected "back" and continued.
It turns out that purely by viewing this page, R14 was deducted from my phone account every 3 days until I noticed. I did not have to click any buttons, or agree to any pricing, or even be aware of what they were selling, if anything. Think of it as the virus of Internet display ads.
Last night I decided to retrace my steps, and see what happened. Using the built-in browser on my Nokia phone, I loaded up m.cricinfo.com and selected the "Live" cricket match. In this case it was England vs Sri Lanka. At the top and bottom of the page is a banner ad (from admob.com) that says: "Fun Mobile Videos Click Here". There is no indication of any cost involved before you click, and once you have clicked on the link the web site gets the MSISDN (subscriber) number from the phone. I have no idea whether the privacy geniuses at Nokia or MTN decided to give away my identity online in this fashion, but there you have it: it gets used for fraud without the phone owner's knowledge or explicit permission.
Later on, you might get a message from the robbing party informing you how to cancel your subscription, but by then the first amount has already been deducted. If the MTN network doesn't deliver the SMS, then that's just too bad. On 21st May I got no such message, so Morvec just kept deducting money until 7th June, by which time all my airtime was exhausted.
Last night I got a message after I clicked on the ad, and sent the "STOP" message immediately, but not soon enough for the MTN call centre to tell me today that another R14 had been deducted from my phone. So much for telling Opera not to subscribe me ever again. I guess they just aren't prepared to listen. According to the Morvec email I got:

Your cell number clicked on one of our banners via the mobile Internet and then accepted the terms and conditions [of] our wap page. Your number is automatically passed to us when you click on our Join button by the Mobile Networks.

Never mind that there is no "Join button" on the ad to click on. The text of the ad reads:
Scroll down & CLICK THE BUTTON RIGHT NOW & join the FUN!!
ENTER HERE
Bringing u great Games, Videos and more & great value, wallpapers and Screensavers cost jusr R10, Videos R25, Mobile Games R28! This is a subscription service charged at a minimum of ONLY R14 every 3 days which you can use to buy EXTRA content EVERY TIME - CLICK NOW ....
If billing is unsuccessful, retries for this billing cycle will be retried at discounted amounts and potentially on different days, by joining the service you are providing your explicit permission for this to happen. Cellmates has requested that your mobile number be made available.
By clicking Enter Here you confirm that you are joining the CellMates Club
For HELP please call 0800982175 or email themobclub@ymail.com - sms STOP to 31927 or 31848 at any time to end
Terms [sic]
What is interesting is that even when you don't click on the graphic and link Opera still steal your money. I suspect this is because the "subscription server" also displays the graphic, and therefore gets the cell number without explicit permission.
Surely the legitimate, legal and ethical way is to actually have a "Join" button that you would have to click on, that would initiate an SMS message to my phone, which would then require me to send the word "JOIN" to their servers? Of course it would! But these guys aren't ethical or honest enough to do that. They deduct first, dodge questions later, knowing that they can rip off a large section of the public without their knowledge. It would also be great if MTN would allow me to block these deductions, but since they get a cut, why should they bother about minor details such as breaking the law?

Update Monday 20th June: This is getting weird. Even though I displayed the above ad 3 times on my phone, and within the hour thereafter had R14 deducted from my phone account, "The Mob Club" (how ironic) sent me the following message:

We understand your frustration, however, the Go Go Mobile service that you have been charged for is in no way associated with our company and service. We suggest that you contact the provider of the service directly on the 0800 number they have provided.
We do buy advertising through Admob so on some occasions you will see adverts for our service and on other occasions adverts for services unrelated to our company, which is clearly what has happened in this instance. Our service is fully compliant with all regulations - before you join the service it clearly states the price, it displays information on how to unsubscribe and it has our full contact details. If you DO NOT click on the 'Enter Here' button to confirm your subscription you will NEVER be charged by our service.
Please remove any reference to our service from this web page since we are not associated with the service you are complaining about. Please confirm when this will be done.

I checked the 31927 short code mentioned by The Mob Club and it is run by: Opera Telecoms. So perhaps Opera should fix up their clearly broken system.

Update Tues 21st June: After The Mob Club (what an unfortunate name) protested their innocence, I displayed their Admob ad again, and checked the balance on my phone. No deduction. Interesting. I am waiting for answers from them and Morvec and of course Opera, but I'm not holding my breath. Perhaps MTN can help. I'm due to meet with them at lunchtime. So far R70 has been deducted from my phone account this month, which is over 70% of my monthly airtime.

I also called "Go Go Mobile" on 0800992230 and the loser on the other end refused to tell me their address over the phone. They claim to be members of WASPA, but aren't listed as such on the WASPA web site. They weren't particularly helpful or forthcoming, although they did promise to investigate. What are they trying to hide?

Update 4pm: I had a 45 minute meeting with 5 helpful executives at the MTN Innovation Centre today. It seems that MTN is planning some tools in future to help customers deal with these annoyances. Many thanks to Bridget Bhengu for arranging things. MTN are investigating my "subscription woes" and will be in touch shortly.

Update 22nd June: Paul Barrat from Morvec phoned me to offer a R100 airtime voucher, but then tried to slip in a "full and final settlement" clause. I'm not that stupid. Just because you put the stolen cookies back in the cookie jar doesn't mean they weren't stolen in the first place.
Update Friday 24th June: That "refund" Paul offered me has still not arrived. And Opera is getting a lot of complaints on HelloPeter too: 233 unhappy customers in the last year. Opera didn't learn from WASPA complaint #6868 where they were fined heavily. I hope they are fined heavily again, because they could go to jail if charged with fraud and theft. Maybe that's why they tried the "full and final settlement" con.

Saturday 25th June: The Mob Club is getting jumpy about their name being associated with this post. Yet they continue to do business with the company that stole my money, and they refuse to proovide me with any details about who they (the Mob Club) are. Why? What are they hiding? Seems like they aren't much different from the rest after all.

We think it would be far better to remove all references to 'The Mob Club' from your blog, not just strike them out, all you have done is visit our service terms and conditions landing page, you have never been subscribed or billed by our service. Frankly we don't like our service named under a headline of 'stealing money'.
Content services use URLs whitelisted by the networks so you may well see many very similar URLs for different services despite the providers behind them having absolutely nothing to do with each other.
We generally have no problem sharing company details at all, but we've never billed you nor have you ever been a member of our services so have no reason to give out this information especially as your original complaint seems to be evolving, again we have absolutely no involvement in it all other than you navigated to one of our services terms and conditions landing pages via banner ads on the mobile Internet and we would rather be left alone and associations no longer made as there is nothing at all contentious relating to us.
So what would be really fair is for you to remove references to us as there is no reason for us to appear on your blog and then we can all move forward.
We hope you manage to resolve your complaint successfully.
Thanks,
Helpdesk.

Well, [un]Helpdesk, I think the best way you can disassociate yourself from the bad apples of the industry is to stop doing business with the likes of scum like Opera Interactive. Then maybe you won't be so embarassed about who you are. But with a name like "The Mob Club" you clearly have no idea.

WASPA: What's a "Do Not Contact" list?

2011-06-17T14:58:00.005+02:00

The "Wireless Application Service Providers' Association" (WASPA) are a strange bunch. On the one hand they deal with complaints about their members, but on the other hand they don't have a central "Do Not Contact" database.
Many of their members don't seem to know what a "Do Not Contact" database is. Never mind the ECT Act or the newer Consumer Protection Act, which allows customers to specify whether they want to receive marketing communications from a given company. See Chapter 2.B.11.1 of the Consumer Protection Act. In particular, I have the right "... to pre-emptively block ..." approaches from a marketer.
So after my incident with the Morvec scam, I decided to write to all members of WASPA asking them to make sure that my number is added to their "Do Not Contact" list. Four of the email addresses supplied in the Full Member database don't work. About half of the respondents added my number to their list. The rest are just confused. Many denied that they were invoicing me anything, without adding me to their DNC list. Some are confused as to what a DNC list is. I have had to send 8 requests to the list of 89 email addresses repeating my request to be added to their DNC list. Why don't they just use the DMA's list, flawed as it is?

MTN's Parental Control might block subscription fraud too

2011-06-13T10:54:00.018+02:00

Cellphone operators think nothing of playing fast and loose with the accounts of their customers. They allow random businesses to deduct money from these accounts without ever informing the customer or obtaining permission from the customer. It's called fraud; if not downright theft.
Recently Noseweek reported on MTN's efforts to stop a particularly large scale version of this problem, but only because their call centre was overloaded with complaints.

"... MTN call centres and stores had been flooded by thousands of subscribers complaining that they had never requested any content from T Mobile, so the company had decided to undertake an internal audit - which had revealed that the content provider had, in the space of 10 days, sent out debit requests worth more than R500,000."

What puzzles me is why MTN would hand over the money in the first place. Did they guarantee payment up front with no questions asked? Are they that stupid?
Last week my airtime suddenly vanished, and when I called MTN to find out why, I was told of two deductions from my account on 5th and 7th June. I had not authorised anyone to deduct anything. The call centre told me the money had been deducted by "Opera Telecom" and when I called them on 083-916-3089 they said they were unable to provide me with a refund. This is a violation of the WASPA code of conduct.
Today I tried a different approach, which seems to be working. I called Opera's other number, 084-194-2222 and asked for the name of the MD. It turns out his name is Trevor Louw but the company got somewhat alarmed when I asked for his ID number. Why did I need that? I explained that I needed it for the case of fraud I planned to file at the police station. I explained that since they had deducted the money from my account, and had refused to provide a refund, I was now taking the matter further.
They told me that they had done the deduction on behalf of Morvec Ltd, a company whose South African landline number 011-461-3294 is out of service, their postal address is in Hong Kong and their email contact address is in the UK. I told Opera that I wasn't prepared to wait for them to get the refund from Morvec (good luck with that) before they pass it on to me. They could refund me today, since they had made the deduction, and then obtain the refund from Morvec later.

Parental Control

After chatting to the MTN call centre again, I was told there is a "parental control" service that you can access by dialling *101# from an MTN phone. This allows you to block "Adult" content, "Gambling" and "Instant Messaging" services. It only blocks web access to these services. I also find it kind of insulting that they would call it "Parental" control when all I'm trying to do is protect my phone account from MTN's arrogance. Their billing system is the child out of control, not me. It doesn't even add correctly.
Nonetheless it's a start, albeit a pretty feeble one. Vodacom has something similar.

MMS Messages

What really burns me about these services is that they send unsolicited MMS messages to my phone. Since my phone isn't configured for MMS, how do they suppose I signed up for this service? When a MMS message comes to my phone, I get a notification to go to a particular URL to read the message. I just delete the notification. Now MTN's billing system says I "subscribed" via GPRS. That would require me to enter my cell phone number, which I did not do. In fact, I didn't even use GPRS on that day. MTN assumes that their customers are dumb enough to subscribe to these services. Maybe some are, but I'm not one of them. Now I am awaiting a call from Monwabisi Mabude, the account manager who just may be able to sort this out at MTN.
Update 4.30pm: I got to speak to Trevor Louw at Opera Interactive, who vacillated between being smug, officious and helpful. His company does the billing on behalf of scum like Morvec, and Opera's business ethics are such that they do NOT have a Do Not Contact list. Nonetheless he assures me that they are taking my complaint seriously and they are waiting for "proof" from Morvec that I signed up. How do I prove that I didn't sign up, or that I didn't receive anything from them to confirm my subscription?
I have a growing suspicion that they will say that they sent me a message telling me that I should OPT OUT if I don't want to subscribe, which is illegal.

Update Fri 17th: Opera Interactive have sent me a R30 "goodwill" airtime refund, in spite of Morvec's "proof" that I "visited a WAP website" on 23/5/2011 at midnight. Funny, I was asleep at the time. I checked the "Sent Items" on my phone and have send nothing between 16h26 on 21/05 and 9am on 23/05. So the confirmation SMS that Morvec should have sent wasn't sent. And I certainly didn't reply to one. And Opera have confirmed that they have added me to their "Do Not Contact" list. The one they said they don't have.

Update 5.30pm: Morvec has changed the date on which the subscription supposedly happened (how convenient), but still need to explain the following item in the WASPA Code of Conduct:

11.3.1. If a subscription service is initiated by entering a customer's mobile number on a web page or WAP site, then a separate confirmation message must be sent to the customer's mobile handset in order to prove that the number entered matches the customer's mobile handset number.

Cash for Bugs

2011-06-05T19:46:00.002+02:00

I love my job. Part of what makes it interesting is finding and fixing bugs. What alarms me is how long it sometimes takes to find a bug. So recently I took a different approach with my biggest customer: for each new bug found and reported, the person who found the bug gets a R100 cash reward.
On Thursday I paid out R300 for bugs in a new module that I could swear I tested thoroughly. I guess not. But I was glad to be able to pay out the money, because they haven't found any problems since. And there are a few happy call centre operators who reported the problems.
I have now got a backlog of bugs to fix, many of them minor but annoying. I doubt if half of them would have come to my attention so soon without the reward. And certainly it gives me more confidence that next time I make changes to the program that I'll be hearing sooner rather than later about anything I overlooked or missed during testing.

Does the ANC "own" Nelson Mandela?

2011-05-25T16:27:00.010+02:00

Our independent news channel, eNews, asked Helen Zille, the leader of the Democratic Alliance party, about the future of the DA in the 2014 elections. She responded in fairly typical fashion: articulate, straight talking and to the point, unlike her counterpart Gwede Mantashe, who rambled on in his usual bumbling fashion. But then it's hardly surprising, given that Gwede Mantashe is the Secretary General of the ANC and the chairperson of the South African Communist Party. It's tough wearing two different political hats, and trying to sound reasonable, all at the same time.
So when Helen Zille said that the DA is "... the Party that has moved into the vacuum left by the ANC when they abandoned the values of Nelson Mandela", Mantashe overdid himself in manufactured outrage. He even forgot that Helen Suzman died in 2009. The sad truth is that the ANC has abandoned the values of Nelson Mandela, in favour of self-interest, nepotism, corruption, populism and lying to the public. They don't care about the poor or the oppressed. They just want their vote, but can't get their ducks in a row to deliver basic services. They'd rather build soccer stadiums than hospitals.
They have been accused of arrogance by putting up re-election posters along potholed streets littered with uncollected garbage. I say they are arrogant to presume to say they "own" Nelson Mandela, a man who "belongs" to the planet, not to mention the nation. From the day he became president he rose above party politics, something Mantashe and his colleagues are incapable of doing.
Update 29 May: The Sunday Times has published an article on this topic too: "Mandela Belongs to all" by Mamphela Ramphele.
Technical note: I used Media Cope to edit this video to a suitable length. My wife recorded it using a LG DVR, and then I used Clone DVD mobile to turn the DVD recording to a media file that could be edited by Media Cope before uploading. I use the Slysoft AnyDVD and Clone DVD Mobile programs to convert all the DVDs I purchase into .avi files, which I store on a hard drive for backups. Then I can watch the movies on my laptop without scratching the DVDs.

If you rejoice in revenge, torture and war …you’re not a Christian

2011-05-16T13:19:00.004+02:00

If you rejoiced at the death of Osama Bin Laden, then get a reality check. I found Bill Maher's comments surprisingly on the mark. If he can get it, why don't most Christians? Because we're Jesus fans, not Jesus followers. Read or listen to "Jesus Wants to Save Christians" by Rob Bell and Don Golden for more information about this topic.

Darwin Award goes to all NRA "life" members

2011-05-12T17:29:00.001+02:00

This has to be the stupidest badge in the history of mankind. I think it is probably the closest thing you can find in modern society to the "mark of the beast".

Med-Xpress: Discovery's latest disaster

2011-05-12T15:56:00.002+02:00

I love my medical "aid", that's why I pay them over R5000 every month. But I keep forgetting that they don't care about my health at all, even though they are called "Discovery Health". All they care about is "their" money. They seem to forget that it's my money that I paid them for a specific purpose.
This became obvious to me again this week. I take 3 different chronic medications, and because I started taking them at different times, their glorious computer system can't issue them all at once, but insists that I go to the pharmacy 3 times a month. What a waste of time, not to mention the cost of processing each box of tablets separately.
So when I got my new script I decided to try out their newly-announced "Med-Xpress" service where they promise to deliver the medication to my door at no extra cost. What a fiasco. They can't issue all the medication at one time, nor can they issue a partial amount. If I want this to happen then I can obtain it from a pharmacy but I will have to pay cash because the partial claim will be rejected. Even though it is "covered" as chronic medication.
If that's what they call "delivering the best of care" then I hate to imagine what the "worst of care" is going to be like. Clearly some copywriter just made up a slogan irrespective of how true it might be. Lying to the public is not good business, Discovery Health!
Update Mon 16: Some officious little bureaucrat phoned to tell me that the reason they make it so difficult is "because of legislation" and not because of their computer system. He also tried to tell me how to manipulate the computer system so I could get more tablets earlier, which is exactly the opposite of what I asked for on my HelloPeter complaint.
What I eventually figured out from a very long and rambling "explanation" during which time he interrupted my questions and talked over my explanations, is this:

When med A runs out, take the new script to the Pharmacy and just ask for med A. That is shown on the diagram as visit "A".
When med B runs out, visit the Pharmacy again and ask for 25 tablets only, and request a 25 day repeat cycle, not the usual 30. Visit "B".
When med C runs out, request only 10 tablets, and ask for a 10 day repeat cycle. Visit "C".

Theoretically when all 3 meds run out on the same day, their computer system will allow you to now claim 30 tablets of each, on a standard 30 day repeat cycle. However, I suspect that the system will just fall over and refuse to issue anything other than med A.
Thank God I'm not on the Pill, in which case I'd have to ask for everything to be put on a 28 day cycle. Actually that may be more convenient, since I could then always go on the same day of the week. That's why all tablets come in multiples of 28, not 30: because they think about the needs of women. Boxes of tablets in multiples of 7 would be really helpful, but the tablet sellers don't care about their patients.
Update 26 May: Discovery phoned to find out how I would rate my interaction with the caller who phones about my HelloPeter complaint. I gave him a 1/10, the lowest score they allow.

MTN: It doesn't add up

2011-05-05T12:50:00.012+02:00

(Click on the image above for more detail)

I just love getting statements from my cellphone company, MTN. They are just full of laughs. I have noticed that for some time my debit order was R89 but the balance shown is double this amount. Looking back to figure out why, I am still completely confused. In November last year it just increased by R89 with no explanation given.
The call centre operators just repeat the mantra "it's because we invoice monthly in arrears" and cannot explain any further. I guess it's not in the script and they are just underpaid droids. At least the phone works, even if they can't add. Such is life in Africa.

Update 22nd June 2011: After meeting with several MTN executives they helpfully sent me a reconciliation spreadsheet going back several years. I then discovered the following:
I am therefore left with the conclusion that all statements between Feb 2009 and Nov 2010 were incorrect, and the bug has now been fixed. Weird.

Mainstream Media is Really Bad

2011-05-02T13:41:00.003+02:00

This from the Russia Today TV channel. Here is another spin on the same interview, this time focusing on the Facebook angle.

National Productivity Week

2011-05-01T21:40:00.004+02:00

Every year we have a string of holidays evenly spaced to create the maximum permissible disturbance to productivity. And the idiots in government don't even realise the cost to the country. This year the Easter weekend just added to the general holiday mood, plus of course the Royal Wedding.
In the past two weeks we have had the following holidays:
Good Friday: 22nd April
Easter Monday: 25th April
Freedom Day: Wed 27th April
May Day: Mon 2nd May.
That's 3 weekday working days in 11 days. Not too bad if you earn a salary, not great if you are trying to pay the salaries. Fortunately there won't be any more holidays until 18th May, when we are expected to vote in Municipal elections. Another complete waste of time since they're all corrupt and/or incompetent anyway.

Eyes Over Africa

2011-04-22T21:07:00.003+02:00

This is a great video about a fascinating book by Michael Poliza, called "Eyes over Africa". It's a large coffee-table style book with hundreds of double-page photos of incredible beauty in various parts of the continent I was born and live in.

Beware of PDF Suite 2011 ripoff

2011-04-21T20:34:00.009+02:00

My friend Dennis liked the free trial of PDF Suite 2011 Standard, and when he got an email from them offering the $59.95 product for "only" $19.95 he decided to buy it. They deducted $52.80 from his credit card instead. So much for the $40 savings.
So now he is reversing the transaction and they get nothing, except a bad reputation. Their "get-pdfsuite.com" web site adds in other stuff to the $19.95 order, and unless you read all the greyed-out text carefully you find yourself buying a whole load of junk you didn't want.
I have suggested using Nitro PDF instead. At least they don't try to steal money from their customers. Their full product costs $99.99 which is still a lot cheaper than the $345 Acrobat X Standard product from Adobe.
Update: There is also SodaPDF and several others listed by Wikipedia

The Problem with HelloPeter

2011-04-14T10:47:00.008+02:00

HelloPeter.com is a web site dedicated to consumer complaints, but it is by no means perfect. I have had successes and failures with the "Companies who Respond", and have noticed some major weaknesses in the system. I think that part of the problem is that Peter needs to "think out of the box" and realise that some of his customers are gaming the system and frustrating his users.
There is also the question of forcing companies to pay for the right to respond. Many critics have said this is tantamount to blackmail, and in some respects I agree. Firsly, there is a R375 fee to register. Then you pay for each complaint received, on some kind of scale that is not published, although the first 4 complaints/compliments per year are free. Thereafter you have to pay for the right to respond.
The problem is that in many cases the response is unhelpful or downright misleading. "We are investigating and will get back to you" is insulting to the person who lodged the complaint, especially when they never get back to you. HelloPeter provides no facility to report this kind of activity. And don't try to complain on HelloPeter about HelloPeter: it's a farce and if you do it too often or in public they block your account.
Another way for a supplier to game the system is to answer the wrong question. Many times I have complained about unsolicited calls or SMS messages, and demanded to know: "Where did you get my number?" In most cases the reply is "We have removed your name from our database". I'm sorry, but that isn't an answer to the question! It says to me: "We refuse to divulge this information because by doing so we would be admitting to breaking the law." Alternatively, "We are too stupid or arrogant to answer the question so we'll say what we think you want to hear instead." Again, you can't report this, although you can try lodging the complaint again. This can become an endless loop.
Peter needs to allow the customer to engage in a public dialogue with the supplier, perhaps allowing several replies from both sides, and allowing each party to rate (in public) the relevance and helpfulness of the other's reply. Also, Peter needs to allow the party being complained about the right of reply. Delay the registration fee until after the first 4 responses, to give your potential customers a chance to see how well (or badly) the system works. Peter, are you listening to your customers? Hello? Peter?

Time to get rid of Flash and Java

2011-04-07T16:50:00.006+02:00

I have always regarded Flash, Acrobat, QuickTime and Java as "necessary evils" on my laptop, since I do a lot of browsing. But they are a pain to keep up to date, especially since they are full of security flaws.
But recently I realised that I only ever use Flash from within Google Chrome, and I'm not using Sun Java for anything now that LogMeIn doesn't require it any more. So I decided to remove both Flash and Java from my "Installed Programs" list, and rely entirely on the version of Flash that comes with Chrome. So far so good, since Chrome updates it automatically.
I wish I could do the same with Quicktime, but I still use iTunes from time to time. I have, however, disabled the RealPlayer add-ins on Chrome, Firefox and IE. That's more legacy software out of the way.
Another thing I noticed was that Google Chrome loads quickly but takes a long time to show all the thumbnails in its "New Tab" screen. So I changed it to show the "about:version" screen on startup instead. It's even quicker than before. And I have installed the NotScript extension to protect me from unwanted scripts, and AdBlock Plus to hide the ads. This had made my browser even better.
Hopefully Google will abandon their "flat" logo they are currently playing with in Chrome 12, because it looks terrible at small sizes, but we'll see. Both logos are shown here.

India Celebrates Cricket World Cup Final Victory

2011-04-03T11:53:00.004+02:00

Clearly there are forward-thinking Cricket administrators in the Indian subcontinent: they organised the Cricket World Cup to be hosted in three countries: India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. That's pretty amazing, and not easy to pull off.
India were rewarded by a team that came together at the right moment and won the matches that counted, unlike the Proteas who seemed to fall apart. My friend Vishal sent me this clip on how the fans celebrated the semifinal win against Pakistan. No doubt the celebrations at winning the final will be just as spirited and enthusiastic. Now they are calling the country "Windia". Major newspapers and websites changed their backgrounds and logos to blue, the colour of the team's jersey, to celebrate the team's success.

An historic moment in the Arab world

2011-03-03T18:11:00.004+02:00

As a democratic revolution led by tech-empowered young people sweeps the Arab world, Wadah Khanfar, Al Jazeera's director-general, shares a profoundly optimistic view of what's happening in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and beyond. In the first talk posted online from the TED 2011 conference in California, Khanfar describes the powerful moment when people realised they could step out of their homes and ask for change. This article first appeared in The Washington Post. You can watch Al Jazeera English online in the USA, and on satellite in Europe and Africa. In South Africa even the cheapest DStv bouquet at R20 per month includes Aljazeera. Having compared it with Sky, CNN, CNBC, CCTV and BBC World, I prefer Al Jazeera for their non-hysterical tone and in-depth coverage. And despite what Fox ~~Lies~~ News and George Bush tried to tell everyone, they aren't run by Al Qaeda or Hamas. http://english.aljazeera.net/

Highway Robbery by SANRAL

2011-02-10T17:16:00.009+02:00

Meet Nazir Alli, the CEO of our national roads agency, SANRAL. He is the person responsible for the highway robbery that is being imposed on Gauteng highways: additional toll gates on existing roads. He also lied to the public at a press conference by saying that the highways would save motorists 20% on their travelling time, and a 10% reduction in travelling distance.
What a load of rubbish. The highways have been around for decades, so how does the imposition of tolls reduce the travelling distance by 10%? Is he an incompetent moron or just a liar? And before the construction began the speed limit was 120km/h: now it's been reduced to 100km/h. It defies the laws of physics to explain how this reduces travelling time by 20%.
There is even a petition web site against the tolls roads. There are more lies on the SANRAL web site, which is hosted in the USA. It denies that the toll system is double taxation. This is technically true because it is actually multiple taxation: we pay a tax on fuel (roughly R2,47 per litre of petrol) which is supposed to cover road construction and maintenance. Then we pay a vehicle registration fee every year to be permitted to drive on the roads, and of course there is plain old income tax and VAT.
But all of this money is not enough for the ever-greedy gravy train, which wastes money on corrupt tenders, fancy perks for bureaucrats, and salaries for CEOs like Nazir Alli. His job is to tell the lies that would otherwise be told by the Minister of Transport. Very cosy. And this from the guy who in November 2009 presented a paper to CESA:

Ethics not part of a process; it is the framework within which business must be conducted - Nazir Alli
Nazir Alli, CEO of SANRAL presented a paper on the ethical issues in Engineering Practice in which he asked if CESA has the courage of its conviction as well as the relevance of the organisation around ethics and fraud. Alli states that SANRAL has a duty to the public and that SANRAL’s view is that good governance is the solution with all the liabilities and accountabilities that go with it and that this is the framework in which business must be conducted. He also requested CESA to look at performance indicators in the fight against corruption. He also stated that Oil, Arms and Construction are the most corrupt industries in the world and encouraged members to make use of the SANRAL tip offs hotline.

He also told a reporter:

He said, “There was a study done by the South African Chamber of Commerce which says that we were losing R15 million an hour due to congestion,” he said. “Either we do nothing or else we do something about it.”

His "solution" is to redistribute the congestion (at a profit of course). Public transport is either too unreliable or too unsafe to use instead of a car. I can't see myself taking my laptop through to Midrand and back every Friday. Instead I'll have to pay an extra R75 for the privilege.
Another thought: The Luddite part of my character wants to just screw up the whole system by driving at 60-80km/h in the middle lane of the 100km/h road just to screw up everyone else's journey, including all those blue light convoys. I can't wait for the Madam and Eve cartoons about this.

Why We Get Fat

2011-02-09T10:04:00.006+02:00

This book could not have come at a better time for me. Because of my cholesterol levels, I was told in November to cut down my fat intake and eat a more healthy diet. What I wasn't told was that most "low fat" foods replace the fat with sugar or other processed carbohydrates, which are more fattening that the fat itself.
Gary Taubes explains this in his latest book, "Why We Get Fat", which draws from research over the last 100 years, and debunks many popular myths about healthy eating. It's available from Audible. I wish the narrator would not replace the word "causal" with "casual" or "causality" with "casualty" (they mean different things and aren't wrong in the original text) but apart from that the audio book is very readable and accessible, and I have ordered the hardcover book which should arrive next week sometime. I may even lend it to my doctor. Once I have lost or gained weight as a result of changing my eating habits, I'll report back. I have decided not to have any sugar in tea or coffee, and not to eat any bread until my weight goes down to a healthy level.

If you need any motivation to cut down on junk food, sugar, carbohydrates and so on, you could always watch the movie "Supersize Me". Scary.

The phone is in the washing machine. Not good

2011-02-07T16:43:00.002+02:00

Mobile phone design has still got a long way to go: why are they damaged by water so easily? I left my phone in my trouser pockets and then put the trousers in the washing machine. After about 20 minutes my wife rescued it and we left it to dry out for a few days. In the meantime I needed a phone.
I found one from a most unlikely source: the Game store in Cresta. Their shop "assistants" are usually noted for their surely disinterest, but this time I managed to find someone who could help, and R760 later I had a smart new Nokia 5130 XpressMusic phone. Unfortunately it has some built-in Vodacom features, but still works fine on the MTN network. Of course MTN were unable to help, being either "out of stock" or the queues were too long. It took a few tries to get the MMS and WAP settings, but I persevered and I'm back on the phone network.
As a laptop owner I really don't see all the fuss over smartphones, as this phone plays podcasts and audio books well, has 2GB of MicroSD storage, and can make calls, and send text messages. It even has an Opera browser although the screen is tiny. It's still good enough for getting the cricket scores though. And it's about 15% of the cost of a smartphone.
Update Wednesday: Now that the phone has dried out it seems to be working, although the screen flickers a bit. I retrieved all my data from the phone, including some cotacts I had lost. I guess the "old" one (8 months of use) is going to get relegated to being a "standby" phone because the 5130 does a better job of playing music files, even though it is half the price. Weird.

IBM turns 100

2011-01-27T22:15:00.002+02:00

This centennial film features one hundred people, who each present the IBM achievement recorded in the year they were born. The film chronology flows from the oldest person to the youngest, offering a whirlwind history of the company and culminating with its prospects for the future. More at www.ibm100.com

Standard Bank's surprise Cheque Deposit Fee annoys customers

2011-01-26T16:13:00.008+02:00

I hate it when companies introduce unpopular charges and then weasel their way out of explaining it to their customers. Did they think that no one would notice? Or that they'd be happy about it? Or that their business customers would shrug it off?
I searched their web site press release page, and found nothing. How surprising. It's in their 2011 Bank Fees document, but that's about as far as it goes. It has a section on deposit fees, but deliberately avoids mentioning the cheque deposit fee, although it mentions that cash deposits at an ATM are free. Evasiveness is not that different to dishonesty.
A complaint on HelloPeter is answered equally evasively, with no one owning up to the new fee structure or admitting anything. How nice. I'm sure "agrityre" at HelloPeter must be delighted. "Emile" on Facebook was thrilled. He wrote

GOOD GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IS THERE NO LIMITS TO THE WAYS IN WHICH YOU WILL RIP US OFF???????????????

Now my biggest customer is having to charge R12.49 for any cheque payments under R1000, even if the cheque is from another bank. That's because R12.50 without VAT is R10.964, so rounding it off to the nearest cent and then adding VAT gives either R12.49 or R12.51. What a nightmare.
Update 27 Jan: My customer received the following notification via email from Gary Larsson, Account Executive, Standard Bank Business Banking - Sandton:

On 1 January 2011 Business Bank introduced a cheque deposit fee of R12.50 for each cheque deposited. Following further feedback received on this matter, we have decided to suspend the cheque deposit fee with immediate effect and reverse all cheque deposit fees that have been incurred by yourselves from 1 January 2011 to date.
Please note that this is a fee suspension and not a fee withdrawal. The intention remains for the Bank to promote alternative forms of making and receiving payments that are more affordable, more secure and faster to use.
Where it becomes necessary to review our position on this matter, we will do so and advise you accordingly.

That's the closest we'll get to the bank admitting that it screwed up. I guess they can always blame it on "the man with the melon hat". That's why I no longer bank with the (sub)Standard Bank.

Face to face with a false defrag program

2011-01-19T11:20:00.010+02:00

I don't encounter malware very often, and this program reminded me how bad it can be. Michael Kaur from the Malware Removal Instructions blog sent me a copy of this program, since I requested it. It's a nasty piece of work, installing itself surreptitiously in your system, and then pouncing when you reboot.
When you boot up it runs its "scans" and then falsely tells you lies about your machine. I prepared my "FRAGG" test machine and made sure the files were fully defragmented and everything was in order, so I knew all the "errors" it reported were bogus.
I had to deactivate the Microsoft Security Essentials program in order to be able to install the malware, but once it was installed my machine was effectively held to randsom. It wouldn't let me run any other programs, or even copy files to my USB memory stick.
Even the payment information is bogus. To prevent the malware from spreading on my network, I had unplugged the network cable before installing it. Nonetheless the malware managed to dupe Internet Explorer into believing that the payment URL was legitimate (the domain is not registered) and secure. Who knows what they'll do with my credit card details? I'm not about to try to find out.
I eventually had to boot up from an Ubuntu boot CD just to copy the files for this blog post. Then I wiped the hard drive using DBAN, to make sure the darn thing was gone. Nasty. Fortunately there are helpful web sites like the Malware Removal Instructions blog to clean up your machine, if this stuff manages to get past your antivirus program. What do you mean you don't have one??? I suppose you don't do backups either ...

My Blackberry isn't working

2011-01-03T12:27:00.002+02:00

This is the modern day version of the parrot skit. Brilliant!

Defragmentation Scareware wants your money

2010-12-29T12:31:00.003+02:00

It's a scam: rogue software installs itself or lures unsuspecting users to install it. Then it "analyses" your system, generating a whole bunch of alarming messages about how your system is "critical", and then insists that you pay the authors for the full version to "fix" the problem. Once you pay, miracles happen: your system no longer has errors. Of course these messages were all bogus to begin with, and now that you have handed over your cash, they no longer appear.
This tactic is not new, but before it was done using fake "security" scanners, antivirus programs, or malware scanners. Now the authors have turned their attention to rogue defrag programs, as reported by GFI Labs and other web sites. I heard it first on the Security Now podcast #280:

... watch out for fraudulent defraggers.
That's the latest thing to happen. There's so many useful free software out there, it's not surprising that the bad guys are going to be mixing their own malware in with the good stuff.
So there's HDDRepair, HDDRescue, HDDPlus, UltraDefragger, ScanDisk, DefragExpress, and WinHDD have all been identified as bogus. They claim to be a free defragger to make your computer run faster, the way it used to. And who doesn't want that? What these things do, though, they're scareware. You run them; they actually do no defragging at all, but they apparently do something. And then they come back with a note that, oh ... you've got serious problems, baby. We're going to need another $20, or an initial $20, or more in some cases, to fix this problem. So again, this is going to catch a certain number of people who unwittingly download this and don't know any better.

What worries me is that this kind of scareware is likely to give defrag programs a bad name, in the same way that anti-spyware and registry scanners have been given a bad name. So, before you download any defrag software, check whether it is on this list and use the correct URL supplied. If it isn't on the list, report it, and use a trusted program instead.

My OUTsurance misunderstandings

2010-12-22T18:17:00.003+02:00

I probably complain more than most, especially when I feel unjustly or unfairly treated. Hence my rant earlier this week about OUTsurance. What I can honestly say is that I'm embarrassed at how badly I got it wrong. And before you sceptics start asking difficult questions, no one has threatened me or asked me to remove my previous post. It is entirely voluntary, and is in response to the considerable efforts by two dedicated people: Kitso Seitshiro in claims and Peter Khan in management. Let me explain.
I first got upset because I understood my vehicle to be insured for approx R10,700 - a figure quoted verbally by the sales department, and confirmed by an assessor report. But the claims department insisted that the actual value of the vehicle is actually only R 8600. So something was "off", and I got very suspicious. It turns out that if you do an electronic lookup on the "TransUnion Auto Dealers Guide" you won't find my wife's 1988 VW Fox 1600 listed any more. It's listed instead in the more generic "Cars and Commercial Vehicles over 10 years old" category. Why their computer system doesn't reflect this is something that OUTsurance and TransUnion will have to figure out. TransUnion are already scratching their heads over this one. So what appeared to be different values from two different departments in the same company was a genuine mistake, not an evil conspiracy. Furthermore, I was quite impressed when management offered to use the higher value when sorting out the claim.
The next problem I faced was trying to get a copy of the "fine print" booklet, referred to as the "Personal Facility Booklet". Both the sales department and the claims department kept thinking I was referring to the insurance schedule, not the "green booklet". No one thought to say that it was on their web site all along. They were genuinely confused when I said "fine print" because there isn't any. No, really, there is no fine print. The principles and terms and conditions are written in plain language that even a programmer like me can understand, and the writing is big enough to read without a magnifying glass. Now if only some other insurance companies did that we'd all be better off. The only shortcoming of this approach is that it may err on the side of over-simplification. But still, 63 pages covering all kinds of insurance is pretty amazing.
I hate financial surprises, and the surprise I found was that if the repairs on a vehicle get close to or exceed the insured value, most people simply write off the wreck and get a new car. Our cars are old and cheap, and we wouldn't dream of scrapping a car that we could repair, because finding a replacement vehicle is going to be a financial nightmare. Call me a cheapskate, but I'd prefer to pay off my house than buy another car.
So what the claims department originally said was that rather than writing the vehicle off as scrap and selling the wreck on auction, they would pay out the equivalent "wreck" price (70% of the retail price) and allow us to keep the vehicle and repair it ourselves. I was disappointed that the car was worth so little, but not entirely surprised. They were actually trying to be helpful, but with all the other confusion about the costs I didn't see that. Now I do.
One lesson I have learnt: read the documents carefully. Every year they send out a letter informing us of the new premium values, but what had slipped my attention even though it is clearly written in full sight is that the excess increases as well. What started as R1000 ten years ago crept up to R2860. I have changed the policy to put it back at R1000, and don't mind the minor premium increase.
Another lesson: when you are insuring a cheap clunker you are mainly covering yourself if you hit something expensive, not if someone hits you. Old clunkers may be fully paid for, but they cost money to repair.
So now ask yourself this question: how many insurance company executives are willing to spend half an hour on the phone from 5.30 (i.e. WAY after office hours) to 6pm to sort out a misunderstanding and turn an irate but confused customer into a happy one? That's what Kitso and Peter did today. Plus they called me individually on Monday and Tuesday. Awesome.
I am now convinced that at no point was anyone trying to rip me off, and my frustration at their lack of understanding was simply that I was demanding to see "the fine print" when there really wasn't any. Hence their confusion and my frustration. It has eventually dawned on me that they were actually taking my complaint far more seriously than anyone could reasonably expect. Awesome.

Man's Best Friend

2010-12-21T12:37:00.001+02:00

Thanks to Jeremy Nell for making my day with this one ;-)

Stupidity is not a disability

2010-12-20T17:01:00.004+02:00

I just had to take this picture. I saw it at a filling station on my way to our holiday destination. At many highway stops there are designated parkings for disabled drivers or passengers, but most of these spots are marked by the architect and the actual garage owners or managers just couldn't give a damn if brain-dead drivers park there instead.
I have seen fancy sports cars and taxis using these spots and no-one gives a damn if people on crutches or in wheelchairs have to struggle to get to the toilet or buy something. It's great to see at least one garage where the owner or manager actually cares. I'd love to put signs like this at other garages. Maybe I should just get my own wheel clamp and carry it around in the boot. Mmm ...

The WikiLeaks War

2010-12-11T09:34:00.004+02:00

I found this interesting interview by Riz Khan formerly of CNN and now working at AlJazeera, called The WikiLeaks War. It would be great if other media were less shrill and spineless and asked more difficult questions like this.
What annoys me the most about the whole Wikileaks saga is how the US government can come out with rubbish about them "breaking the law" but they don't accuse the New York Times or the Guardian of precisely the same "crimes"? Why don't PayPal, MasterCard and Visa refuse to do business with these companies? What right do they have to arbitrarily cut off one of their customers? If they can do it to Wikileaks, they can do it to Google. A chilling thought.

Press Freedom is priceless. For everything else there's MasterCard ;-(
Update: Private Manning in solitary confinement for 6 months. That's the kind of thing that used to happen under Apartheid. Now it happens in the USA.

Homeland Security reveals its true purpose: stupidity

2010-12-03T13:50:00.010+02:00

Despite vehement denials by the Washington regime, it seems that fascism is alive and well in the USA. How else could the "Department of Homeland Security", the euphemistically named department of domestic spying, lose the plot so badly?
In the same month that they decided to introduce invasive and unhealthy airport scanning equipment, they also decided it would be OK to randomly censor web sites around the world, cheerfully joining the same repressive regimes they criticise for internet censorship, like China. The screen shot above comes from www.torrent-finder.com, a site run by an Egyptian. No, it does not contain any "counterfeit goods" or copyrighted materials that I can see. You can now see his site at www.torrent-finder.info instead. I never realised it would be so easy to make the USA look so stupid.
There is an interesting article on "How to find the ip address of a seized website" and an update to your hosts file that lists 82 of "seized" web sites. This kind of behaviour gives the US a bad name, as if invading countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Panama, Vietnam and others hadn't already done so. Since when did these arrogant bastards think it was OK to censor the internet anyway?

Secrets of the "New Music Industry" that the "Old Music Industry" Doesn't Want to Know

"Red" Espresso gets a green light

2010-11-13T11:54:00.008+02:00

It came as a bit of a shock when my doctor and my cardiologist told me to stop drinking coffee, unless it was decaf. A morning pot of coffee to help me wake up has been a ritual for years. In the last two years I have taken to drinking my coffee black, with minimal sugar. What now?

I have recently experimented with Laager "Rooibos Cappuccino", a mixture of Rooibos tea and frothy milk powder, that makes an enjoyable drink pretty close to instant Cappuccino, which is a special treat. So when I visited my local supermarket, the packaging of Red Espresso caught my eye, and I decided to try it.

It's refreshing, with or without milk. So now my morning pot of coffee has been replaced with a morning pot of Red Espresso. There is no caffeine at all, but plenty of anti-oxidants instead, which I'm told is good for me. If I get the urge for coffee, I can always have decaf, but I must say I'm enjoying the Red Espresso just as much. I found more information about it on the marTea site, and there is a web site where you can buy it in several countries. Even Amazon.com sells it. It is available at most supermarkets in South Africa and online from Pick 'n Pay.

Update: It seems that their "patent" is one of those dodgy ones. See Noseweek #134, or check out a competing product at www.teaspresso.com. I can't understand how anyone would try to patent a natural product like tea.

Awesome "Change"

2010-11-03T20:57:00.011+02:00

Four talented young musicians recently recorded this album. I gladly paid the US$15 to buy the album, and enjoyed listening to the songs and reading the lyrics. I think its pretty awesome. Last year they played at the music festival at Clarens and impressed a lot of seasoned musos with their energy and talent. This year they are even better. They even recorded, mixed and produced the album themselves. I'm seriously impressed.
The band is called "When in September"
From left to right in the photo:
Thomas Quinn - Guitar and Backup Vocals;
Levon Lock - Guitar and Lead Vocals;
Timothy Edwards - Drums and Backup Vocals;
Warren Graham - Bass and Backup Vocals;
They have a Facebook Fan Page and there are 4 extra free songs on their MySpace profile.

Pathetic Lies from Clientele Life

2010-11-01T16:55:00.003+02:00

I finally got an evasive response from Clientele Life, and it's not good. They sent a response, retracted it, and then sent it again. Obviously they can't decide on which lies and/or half-truths they should include.

"As a company we obtain prospect information from numerous sources. We would like to assure you that this is perfectly legal ... Clientele obtain personal information to be used in our Call Centre from many different list providers. One only has to go to the Direct Marketing Association of South Africa (see www.dmasa.co.org) and they will provide us with many and numerous accredited list providers, whereby we then go to these list providers and buy lists for prospecting.

This shows how cheap they are. They are not members of the DMA themselves, but claim to obtain lists from DMA members. However, my details are on the DMA's "Do Not Contact" list, so either they are lying or the DMA members are not cleaning their own lists.
They assure me that they are not breaking the law, which is a lie. Their inability to tell me who they got my details from is in itself a violation of the ECT Act. Obtaining my details from a DMA list means they already know that I don't want to be contacted. That's another violation. Failure to respond to my "stop" SMS message is a third violation.
If they duck and dive this badly with a simple request for information, what kind of ducking and diving do they do when you make a policy claim? The mind boggles. How can any organisation be this stupid?

Salander's T-Shirt Slogans

2010-10-23T08:00:00.001+02:00

I love Stieg Larsson's Millenium Trilogy for various reasons, such as Salander's hacking abilities. But I also think her T-shirt slogans are amazing.

Salander was dressed for the day in a black T-shirt with a picture on it of E.T. with fangs, and the words
"I am also an Alien"

Then there is:
"Armageddon Was Yesterday — Today We Have a Serious Problem."
"I Can Be a Regular Bitch. Just Try Me"
"Kill Them All and Let God Sort Them Out"
"Consider This A Fair Warning"
"You Have The Right To Remain Silent"
and in classic understatement at her trial,
"I Am Annoyed"
The audio books are fantastic, and are well narrated. I can thoroughly recommend them

I'm tired of being called a "racist"

2010-10-21T09:19:00.008+02:00

One of the most annoying things about South African politics is the speed and rapidity with which any criticism of any ANC politician is dubbed "racist", especially if the minister concerned is accused of incompetence. If the critic happens to have a "white" complexion, no further justification is given. If the complexion is different, then some long tedious argument about "reactionary forces" is added, in order not to look too ridiculous.
Take Gareth Cliff as an example. He is a presenter on a State-controlled radio station, as well as a judge on the SA Idols TV show. He has a "white" face, therefore he must be racist, because he wrote an open letter to the Government that was critical. The Times contacted Nzimande's office about Cliff's letter and Nzimande's chief of staff, Nqaba Nqandela, said: "Please note that Minister Nzimande is not going to dignify these rantings of a racist with a response."
Read it carefully and underline all the racist remarks that it contains. I couldn't find any. But that's because I must be a racist too. By definition.

Dear Government
OK, I get it, the President isn't the only one in charge. The ANC believes in "collective responsibility" (So that nobody has to get blamed when things get screwed up), so I address this to everyone in government - the whole lot of you - good, bad and ugly (That's you, Blade).

We were all so pleased with your renewed promises to deliver services (we'll forgive the fact that in some places people are worse off than in 1994); to root out corruption (so far your record is worse than under Mbeki, Mandela or the Apartheid regime - what with family members becoming overnight millionaires); and build infrastructure (State tenders going disgustingly awry and pretty stadia standing empty notwithstanding) - and with the good job you did when FIFA were telling you what to do for a few months this year. Give yourselves half a pat on the back. Since President Sepp went off with his billions I'm afraid we have less to be proud of - Public Servants Strikes, more Presidential bastard children, increasing unemployment and a lack of leadership that allowed the Unions to make the elected government it's bitch. You should be more than a little worried - but you're not. Hence my letter. Here are some things that might have passed you by:

1. You have to stop corruption. Don't stop it because rich people moan about it and because it makes poor people feel that you are self-enriching parasites of state resources, but because it is a disease that will kill us all. It's simple - there is only so much money left to be plundered. When that money runs out, the plunderers will raise taxes, chase and drain all the remaining cash out of the country and be left with nothing but the rotting remains of what could have been the greatest success story of post-colonial Africa. It's called corruption because it decomposes the fabric of society. When someone is found guilty of corruption, don't go near them - it's catchy. Making yourself rich at the country's expense is what colonialists do.

2. Stop complaining about the media. You're only complaining about them because they show you up for how little you really do or care. If you were trying really hard, and you didn't drive the most expensive car in the land, or have a nephew who suddenly went from modesty to ostentatious opulence, we'd have only positive things to report. Think of Jay Naidoo, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi and Zwelinzima Vavi - they come under a lot of fire, but it's never embarrassing - always about their ideas, their positions, and is perfectly acceptable criticism for people in power to put up with. When the media go after Blade Nzimande, Siphiwe Nyanda and the President, they say we need a new piece of legislation to "make the media responsible". That's because they're being humiliated by the facts we uncover about them daily, not because there is an agenda in some newsroom. If there had been a free press during the reigns of Henry VIII, Idi Amin or Hitler, their regimes might just have been kept a little less destructive, and certainly would have been less brazen and unchecked.

3. Education is a disaster. We're the least literate and numerate country in Africa. Zimbabwe produces better school results and turns out smarter kids than we do. Our youth aren't usemployed, they're unemployable. Outcomes-based-education, Teachers' Unions and an attitude of mediocrity that discourages excellence have reduced us to a laughing stock. Our learners can't spell, read, add or subtract. What are all these people going to do? Become President? There's only one job like that. We need clever people, not average or stupid ones. The failure of the Education Department happened under your watch. Someone who writes Matric now hadn't even started school under the Apartheid regime, so you cannot blame anyone but yourselves for this colossal cock-up. Fix it before three-quarters of our matrics end up begging on Oxford Road. Reward schools and teachers who deliver great pass rates and clever students into the system. Fire the teachers who march and neglect their classrooms.

4. Give up on BEE [Black Economic Empowerment]. It isn't working. Free shares for new black partnerships in old white companies has made everyone poorer except for Tokyo Sexwale. Giving people control of existing business won't make more jobs either. In fact, big companies aren't growing, they're reducing staff and costs. The key is entrepreneurship. People with initiative, creative ideas and small companies must be given tax breaks and assistance. Young black professionals must be encouraged to start their own businesses rather than join a big corporation's board as their token black shareholder or director. Government must also stop thinking that state employment is a way to decrease unemployment - it isn't - it's a tax burden. India and China are churning out new, brilliant, qualified people at a rate that makes us look like losers. South Africa has a proud history of innovation, pioneering and genius. This is the only way we can advance our society and economy beyond merely coping.

5. Stop squabbling over power. Offices are not there for you to occupy (or be deployed to) and aggrandize yourself. Offices in government are there to provide a service. If you think outrageous salaries, big German cars, first-class travel and state housing are the reasons to aspire to leadership, you're in the wrong business - you should be working for a dysfunctional, tumbledown parastatal (or Glenn Agliotti). We don't care who the Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces is if we don't have running water, electricity, schools and clean streets. You work for us. Do your job, don't imagine you ARE your job.

6. Stop renaming things. Build new things to name. If I live in a street down which the sewage runs, I don't care if it's called Hans Strijdom or Malibongwe. Calling it something nice and new won't make it smell nice and new. Re-branding is something Cell C do with Trevor Noah, not something you can whitewash your lack of delivery with.

7. Don't think you'll be in power forever. People aren't as stupid as you think we are. We know you sit around laughing about how much you get away with. We'll take you down, either at the polls - or if it comes down to the wire - by revolution (Yes, Julius, the real kind, not the one you imagine happened in 2008). Careless, wasteful and wanton government is a thing of the past. The days of thin propaganda and idealized struggle are over. The people put you in power - they will take you out of it. Africa is tired of tin-pot dictators, one-party states and banana republics. We know who we are now, we care about our future - and so should you.

I couldn't agree more with what Gareth wrote. He expresses our frustrations well. And before you rant and rave about how I'm a white racist South African who benefited from the Apartheid regime, stop right there and check the facts. I did not "benefit" from the state education system: my parents sent me to private schools, and used up a huge part of their income to do so.
I only got to university by means of a bursary, i.e. on merit. I refused to serve in the SADF, the army that shot people in the townships. For this I nearly landed up in jail for 6 years. I was not without its cost, or risks.
I met and worked with several Anti-Apartheid activists who later became cabinet ministers. I was not a "trendy lefty" who spent all day talking out strategy: I was a person who did grunt work like printing pamphlets at teaching media skills. Later I put my programming and computer skills to good use by helping media companies around the country, and today my software is used by companies that benefit all South Africans.
So, don't bother to call me (or Gareth Cliff) a racist. It just shows how desperately stupid or totally ignorant you are. Perhaps you call me a racist because of my skin colour. That's the definition of racism, stupid!

20h10 20-October 2010 plans?

2010-10-19T10:56:00.005+02:00

I'm not a clock watcher, nor do I think that anything particularly significant happens at midnight on 1st January. Still, I decided it might be fun to do something significant on Wednesday evening, given the unusual pattern of numbers in the date: 20:10 20/10/2010. I'd be interested to know what other readers ~~will do, or~~ did.
Update: We spent a pleasant evening having dinner at the Cape Town Fish Market restaurant. Both the food and the service was great.

Cell C forced to stop using 4G logo

2010-10-17T12:48:00.005+02:00

South Africa's most exaggerated mobile operator just "apologised" for using the term "4G" in interviews, billboards and adverts. The CEO claims that it was a "marketing term" (i.e. lies) and they did it because other networks do it. What a lame excuse. It would be much more honest for Lars to admit they lied.
Naturally this "apology" wasn't voluntary. They were forced to do so by the Advertising Standards Authority, after the other networks filed formal complaints. The other networks quite correctly pointed out that Cell C doesn't use 4G technology, and in any case the final 4G standard has not been drawn up yet. Given the ratio between the "G" and the "S" in the "4Gs" logo, the ASA clearly didn't buy the excuse that "4Gs" doesn't stand for "4G" but for "4 Great Speed".
Cell C's excuses are as lame as their service. Perhaps when they get their new network to actually work, things will improve. Right now the best they can do is get their "other" CEO to tell jokes and check that the coffee in their stores is OK. What a joker.

First Federal Insurance - Scam Alert!

2010-10-15T15:27:00.002+02:00

Today I was called by someone from a call centre claiming to be from "First Federal Insurance" which they assured me was part of First National Bank (they are not) and a "registered financial services provider", which they are not. A search for "First Federal Insurance" on the FSB web site revealed nothing. The closest is "First Federal Investments", which is a private company.
These scam artists have been using direct marketing techniques for years. I last ran into them in 2006, and the company secretary of the FirstRand group assured me they had never heard of them.

Clientele Life's illegal SMS spam

2010-10-12T10:44:00.005+02:00

Would you trust a financial services company that buys spam lists and uses them for marketing? I certainly don't. Especially when they don't check the database against the DMA's "Do NOT Contact" list before they send out the spam. Just because they are a "Registered Finacial Services Provider" doesn't mean I should trust them with my money. Because they buy spam lists I wouldn't trust them with my personal information, or my money.
My views on unsolicited marketing messages are well known: don't send them. Get permission from your potential customer before you annoy them with messages on their cell phone or in their inbox. They sent and SMS and gave me the option to send a "STOP" message, which I did. They ignored it and called me anyway. How stupid is that? Not to mention that it's illegal.
The second illegal part is that they are unable or unwilling to tell me where they bought the spam list from. So I have now filed a HelloPeter complaint. It seems I am one of three people in the last 2 days complaining about spam. I have already emailed them to tell them to add me to their do not contact database, but it seems they have no idea about the difference between "opt-in" and "opt-out" lists, or the damage that it does to their reputation.
I have also complained about this activity to the Financial Services Board, not that I think they'll do anything about it.
Update 21 Oct: I have complained again on HelloPeter because they promised to "get back to me" but nothing has happened after a week.

How to find the real Nemo

2010-10-09T16:27:00.011+02:00

Nemo belongs to a group of fish commonly known as Clownfish. The scientists have given Nemo the scientific name, Amphiprion percula. Clownfish have a very interesting relationship with the anemones in which they live and produce their young. Because of this relationship, Clownfish are often also known as Anemone Fish. Although Nemo is now bred in large numbers in tanks, owning a Nemo clownfish impacts on the fish populations of the oceans, because some are still captured from the wild for the aquarium trade. I know this because I have been helping Dennis Polack with Fishwise Pro, an extensive fish database that he is publishing on the web at www.fishwisepro.com.
To quote the instructions on the web site: Go to Common Names, click in the "Used In" column filter and type "Disney". This will show all the Disney cartoon characters that are fish. Look for "Nemo" and click on the record. Click on the "Back: Species" link to find out about Nemo's Species. Click on the species record and choose "Pictures" to find 11 photos of Nemo's real life relatives, Amphiprion percula ("Clownfish").
Sally Polack took the best picture, shown here. Dennis would also appreciate any comments or feedback on the site. There are currently 33,200 pictures on the site, covering most of the known fish species.
After reading the October 2010 edition of National Geographic, I wonder how long it will be before Nemo and most other fishes are extinct. Read "Time for a Sea Change" and buy the magazine to see the maps of how we are over-fishing the oceans. Then check out their 2007 coverage of the oceans, and weep.

iBurst taught me a lesson I won't forget

2010-10-07T15:39:00.010+02:00

I'm not a conspiracy junkie, so I don't believe there are a bunch of malicious plotters at iBurst wondering how they can frustrate me next. If they were, they'd be using their champagne budget to good effect right now. No, this is a tale of a big company that has lost its way. And I doubt if their CEO will ever read this because he is part of the problem, and he should be fired.
iBurst is an ISP in South Africa. They ~~are~~ were owned by Vodacom, the largest cellphone operator in the country. They "compete" against Vodacom's own 3G offering, and appear to operate independently. One thing they share: their call centres are both worse than useless. But there are three parts to this story: support, accounts and publicity.
In spite of all assurances to the contrary, the turnaround/response time on support is one week, or longer. When I decided to get an iBurst account, I contacted them via their web site, and asked them to call me. After a few days I gave up waiting and went to their offices to speak to someone in person, because I don't see why I should pay their exorbitant phone rates: dialling their 0877 contact numbers are more expensive than calling another cell phone. ~~Only phone sex and international dialling costs more~~. R3.37 per minute to wait on hold for 10 minutes is not much fun.
The people at their accounts reception were quite helpful, and even kept my ID book for me when I left it behind. Nonetheless someone managed to mis-type my name and to incorrectly put my postal address as my physical address as well. So now I have to tell the support engineers that my physical location is not Cresta, but Emmarentia. Not that this helps.
The initial installation was a miserable failure. I was stuck with an awful "control panel" that doesn't work, and the connection kept dropping because the PC we used was too slow. Of course there is nothing on their web site about correct installation, or things to check. So their helpline is overloaded with the same query over and over again. And management is either too lazy, out of touch or incompetent to fix this.
Eventually I took the machine in to their offices and then a competent technician attended to the problem, after I had already paid an extra R300 for an extra antenna that I don't need. I keep the antenna so they can't wriggle out of fixing the problems with some half-baked excuse about reception quality.
They showed me how to set up the software on my Windows Vista laptop, basically telling me to ignore the default setup instructions and just install the two drivers from the CD. At least that works. I guess no-one would think of putting that info on their web site either, or bother to advise users of Outlook, Outlook Express or Windows Live Mail to uncheck the "disconnect when done" button. I have already written about the iBurst security problems which they have still not addressed.
When I set up Cara's Windows 7 laptop I forgot to uncheck the "disconnect when done" button, because after all it's a permanent broadband connection, right? Wrong. It's a dial-up connection, with the sluggish response times of radio/WiFi to prove it. My experience with MyWireless had taught me the difference between copper and radio "broadband".
The next problem was an issue of bandwidth: I thought 1GB per month would be fine, and then added an iCall facility to allow her to make phone calls. But that turned out to be a lame duck because the call rates to and from an 0877 number are worse than cell phone rates, plus it uses up bandwidth, when it works. The SIP software isn't intuitive to set up either.
I found out about their "unlimited" bandwidth option on the web site, and the account department was super-efficient about billing me for it immediately. I guess they are empowered to add items to the account without any problem.
So now I was paying double to get a better bandwidth package, and since Cara was using Skype instead of iCall I gave up on the iCall system and asked them to cancel it in August. Not so fast. They would have to "request" a cancellation because they are not able to do it directly. And I would have to pay for the full month, and there was no talk about refunding the unused call money.
Several weeks later I realised that nothing had been done, because they were gearing up to bill me in advance for my October "use" of iCall. I phoned to complain, and followed it up with an email to point out that under no circumstances should they bill me R457 at the end of September, but only R407.
Of course they ignored all of this and billed me R457, so I lost my sense of humour and started shouting. I asked to speak to the Accounts department manager, who not only has not taken any of my calls, but refuses to even reply to my emails. She should be fired too.
This is where the lesson comes in: if you want them to do anything, then join their Facebook page and complain about it in public. Then make the same complaint on Twitter. The Twitter responder then asks you to email your request to twitter@iburstgroup.co.za. Not that this helps, but they then "escalate" the "request" without actually doing anything. Then they followed up to ask if I had been "helped", so which I explained that nothing had actually changed yet. I had done a little "escalating" of my own, demanding a refund for both September and October, plus the remaining iCall credits: R125 instead of the original R50.
I also received an email to say that my "escalated request" had in fact been processed, not that they could tell me what had been done. It took another round of escalations to find out what had been done.
I also emailed accounts@iburstgroup.co.za to inform them that I would no longer be paying by debit order, since they had taken the wrong amount out of my account, and an "accounts consultant" sent back the following impersonal pre-written template reply:

Good Day
Thank you for contacting the Iburst accounts department, we value your email to us. Please note that as an individual we cannot remove the debit order option from our system, that we only reserve for our business/company clients. However if you wish for the debit order not to go off then a payment needs to be made into the IBurst bank account +-5 working days before the debit order day
Thank you for using Iburst.
Should you have any further enquiries please free to contact us on 087 720 2020, your call is important to us.

I was so pleased with this response I immediately posted the first part on their Facebook page. I have now been assured by a "Marketing Assistant" that my banking details have, in fact, been removed from their system. Time will tell.
As a programmer I analyse systems: both functional ones and dysfunctional ones. This is definitely a dysfunctional system: the call centre people are only there to take a message: they can't actually help. The message gets passed on to someone else who is either too lazy, too overworked, or too incompetent to understand or act on the message in time. You have to bypass or override the system by complaining on their Facebook page, at which point Marketing tries to do some damage control.
That's why the CEO should be fired: because it's management's job to prevent systems from breaking down like this, and clearly management is not doing its job. Does he even know about the 1 week response time? Does he know that the tech support people weren't able to tell me which tower I'm connecting to (for "security reasons"), or how many times a day I was disconnecting? Doesn't he wonder why the towers aren't shown on the coverage map?
Does he know how useless the accounts department is? Does he realise how little tech support information is published on their web site? Does he read the litany of (unanswered) complaints on HelloPeter? I guess the answer to all of this is no, given his response to other complaints, some of which have made the pages of Noseweek.
I'm a fast learner; I now know how to get things done at iBurst: send them an email, from their web site. Wait for it to be ignored. Then send a follow up email asking for a reference number. Wait for that to be ignored. Complain about it on Twitter (that gets the ball rolling) and then finally get it fixed by complaining on Facebook. What a bunch of losers. One day they'll put the "S" back into "ISP".
Update: As of September Vodacom no longer has shares in iBurst. There has been some useful discussion on the MyBroadband forums about this.
Update 13 October: Someone in the MyBroadband forums insists that I apply for "permission" to use their logo. So I have changed the graphic accordingly. I wonder whether they want Google Image Search to apply for permission too? Their skills at customer relations just got even worse than I thought it could possibly get.

Unsubscribe is now easy

2010-09-23T07:56:00.006+02:00

This is not an anti-spam service. I already have three of those: spamcop.net, scr.im and the ESET Smart Security program. No, this is a service that helps you unsubscribe from all those darn email newsletters and PR announcements that I swear I never agreed to and I sure as hell aren't going to read.
Unsubscribe.com is a new service, so it's a bit rough around the edges. So try the free version, which allows you to unsubscribe from 5 newsletters a month. This gives you the chance to check whether it works with your mail service before you liberate $19 per year for the "unlimited" plan. As I said, it isn't for "spam", but for "bacon": those email newsletters and announcements that companies love to send.
There is a Chrome plugin for Gmail, and an add-in for Outlook 2007/2010 (32-bit), but no plugin (yet) for Yahoo Mail. So instead you just forward the message to mail@unsubscribe.com, and they figure it out. You get a daily/weekly message that tells you which services have been unsubscribed, and you can unsubscribe from his too. Cool. Simple. And it seems to work pretty well.

Gauteng Beach Party

2010-09-22T19:46:00.002+02:00

In 2008 Aljazeera English did a documentary on the Soweto Beach Party, which I also showed on this blog.
This year it will be at a bigger venue to the West of Soweto, and everyone is invited to buy their tickets through Computicket. Click on the graphic for more info. Sounds like a blast!

Zimbabwe's Media Landscape

2010-09-19T17:02:00.005+02:00

Here's a warning for South African media, for those with enough sense to listen. Check out Radio Dialogue and NewsDay Zimbabwe. Then take a look at South Africa, and the bad spelling at The New Age, the first paper that is trying to outdo the SABC for obsequious, sycophantic journalism.

Tip: From Downloads to Installed

2010-09-17T13:53:00.006+02:00

Over the last few months I've developed a method of keeping track of what programs I've downloaded and installed on different machines. It's turned out to be quite useful, particularly when restoring from backups. I have set all my browsers to save their downloaded files in "c:\users\[user name]\Downloads", so I can find the downloaded file. Once I have run the install, I then move the download to a folder I created called "c:\users\[user name]\Installed", along with a text file containing any license information such as serial numbers. So in addition to "edpro50.exe" I have "edpro50 ExamDiff Pro Registration Instructions.txt". You get the picture.
This is useful because both Carbonite and SyncToy make backups of this folder. If I'm working on setting up another machine and I think "I need to install the latest version of Adobe Reader" I don't have to download it again, I just look in the "Installed" folder, and copy the relevant file to the network share or a USB drive. Then I copy it to the new machine's "Downloads" folder, and once I have installed it, to the new machine's "Installed" folder. I can then save the relevant new serial number files on the new machine, without them getting mixed up with my current machine.
The only file that lives permanently in my "Downloads" folder is the filehippo.com utility "UpdateChecker" which informs me of any new versions of software that is available for my PC. I don't always use the new versions, but at least this helps keep track of my apps in a systematic way.

Corporate Solutions Marketing and Media Traders get the spammer of the month prize

2010-09-16T15:54:00.020+02:00

More spam news: "Leisure Cor" bought an email list to advertise that they buy and sell Holiday Club Life Points. The less I say about these timeshare points the better, but as far as I'm concerned they suck. Badly. But not nearly as much as Corporate Solutions Marketing, the company that sent out the spam. They were gullible enough to buy ~~suckered into buying~~ an email spam list from Caroline at Media Traders in Cape Town 021-788 6801, who in turn say they bought the list from MLD Marketing. I spoke to Caroline and she is unrepentant about spamming, and doesn't consider her multiple violations of the ECT Act to be a problem.
I am publishing their details so that others affected by this kind of dubious activity can contact them to have their names removed from these lists. And make a note not to do business with them, unless of course you want them to take all your money. Spammers and those who sell spam lists have no business ethics whatsoever.

Update 19-Sept: I have contacted "Sulaco New Media" who actually sent out the emails, to inform them that their anti-spam policy was violated by Corporate Solutions Marketing. We'll see if ~~they reply, and whether~~ they actually enforce their own policy.

Update 20-Sept: Sulaco New Media have promised to investigate this matter. I got an email from their CEO, and he posted a comment to this post. Judging by the email below, it seems that Sulaco are serious about their anti-spam policy.

Update 2pm: I just received the following email message, which is rather amusing since they have been ignoring my emails until now:

From: Corporate Solutions <marketing@corporatesolutionsmarketing.co.za>
To: The CEO of Sulaco; cc: Donn Edwards
Dear Sirs/Madam
We acknowledge receipt of your mails and confirm that we have always endeavoured the act within the ambit of the law. We have further complied with all relevant acts of the law, especially requirements in accordance within the ECT Act.
We have now referred the complaints to our attorneys and in the meanwhile kindly refer should you have the contact details of Mr Donn Edwards for onward transmission to our attorneys for the necessary action.
All our rights are being reserved and we refer to the Audi alteram partem rule in law which Mr Donn Edwards has amongst other laws preferred to ignore.

Corporate Solutions

I don't recall them observing the Audi alteram partem rule when they sent spam to my wife's email address, or when they bought a spam list from Caroline at Media Traders. I have since discovered that the email was sent to me by Francois Budricks in Port Elizabeth (041) 374 1699. I see they protest vigorously about not violating the ECT Act, but say nothing about their violation of the Sulaco anti-spam policy, or the AUP of their email provider or ISP. It appears that they are members of the Vacation Ownership Association of Southern Africa, formerly known as TISA.
On Thu 06/09/2007 08:44 he received and read an email from me advising him not to send any marketing material to myself or my wife, and providing him with the relevant details, addresses, ID numbers, etc. So by sending the subsequent email he broke the ACT Act. I think he doth protest too much.

Dodgy business at Banbric North

2010-09-08T12:55:00.009+02:00

How's this for dodgy business dealings? You run a building company and you offer to one of your subcontractors (WoodWise) to send out email spam on their behalf. So they take all the flack from angry mail recipients. When I confronted the guy from Banbric he was unhelpful and unrepentant. Clearly he thinks he is above the law. I wonder whether he treats all his customers this way?

Section 45 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, no 25 of 2002. states the following:

45. (1) Any person who sends unsolicited commercial communications to consumers, must provide the consumer—
(a) with the option to cancel his or her subscription to the mailing list of that person; and
(b) with the identifying particulars of the source from which that person obtained the consumer'spersonal information, on request of the consumer.

So although they provided the "opt-out" option, if they cannot identify the particulars of the source, then they are breaking the law. So far they have been unwilling or unable to provide these details.
And the company that sent the spam has no idea where the addresses came from, and makes no effort whatsoever to filter out emails on the DMA's Do Not Contact list. So in spite of their "no spam" logo, they don't actually make any effort to stop spam: it's their business to send out emails, so why bother?
Oh, and did I mention that the Banbric North web site distributes malware?

Bye-bye HP, Hello Acer

2010-09-03T18:48:00.005+02:00

Some time ago, shortly after the launch of Windows Vista, my wife Penny bought an HP Pavilion DV6204EU laptop, mainly because it looked nicer than the other laptops we saw. Pity it didn't work better. Now the thing has finally died: it won't connect to the network, or to the printer or scanner, and the CD/DVD drive hasn't worked for months.
So she finally agreed to let me replace her laptop, and yesterday we took delivery of a spiffy new Acer eMachines E725 laptop, with Windows 7, 4GB RAM, and a 320GiB hard drive. Now the fun begins, transferring all her old files and reinstalling all her programs. I hope the 64-bit OS doesn't cause too many hassles. At least the new machine can run Spinrite and report the HDD temperature.
I have bought 8 laptops in the last 5 years (4 were gifts, one was a replacement for a machine I spilled water on). Only the HP and an IBM ThinkPad have given us grief. Similarly, the HP printer still doesn't work properly on Windows Vista. As a result I will not willingly buy another HP product. Maybe they should revert back to their original name: Hewlett-Packup.

Typekit Turns One

2010-08-29T19:48:00.004+02:00

Typekit, the guys who supply online fonts, celebrated their first birthday by announcing a deal with Adobe to supply some of their fonts. Brilliant! Now you can get some old favourites like Garamond.
Not all of them are available on the Personal plan, but in the spirit of the current South African political climate, I settled on Minion. The other improvement is that they can now do true italics with Internet Explorer, which makes this blog more readable to those who still use IE.
Update 19-Sept: a reader rudely complained about my use of ClearType because he is still using XP and switched it off. I have changed my default font to Palatino, with Minion as a fallback, as an experiment. No doubt he'll complain about that too.

Memories of the World Cup

2010-08-28T22:53:00.002+02:00

Nik Rabinowitz - South African Comedian - talks about the USA vs England match.

Buying Books the "New" Way

2010-08-27T09:50:00.003+02:00

I agree with the EFF on this one: buying digital books and audio books shouldn't be any different from paper books. And then there is the question of how copyright law has been extended from 18 years to ... forever

Striking while the iron isn't hot

2010-08-23T09:55:00.005+02:00

Every year at this time the trade unions have a go at screwing up the country even more than the politicians do. It's a sad reality that during Apartheid, when the government hated the people and banned political parties, the trade unions were a political force that could be used against the state. Hence the ANC-SACP-Cosatu alliance. Unfortunately in the last 16 years little has changed ...
The government may have changed skin colour, but they still hate the people. This is evident in the way they treat road users, teachers, health workers, police, and the poor. Ministers and their tenderpreneur cronies are systematically robbing the country of its wealth.
The unions, too, hate the poor. People are dying in hospitals while they are on strike. Babies in maternity wards are being deliberately neglected. Students preparing for exams are being abandoned by teachers who are too downtrodden to care. But the worst part is the unions have a deliberate and systematic policy of doing everything they can to negotiate away any form of incentive based on merit. "An injury to one is an injury to all" has become the rationale for ensuring that workers, no matter now lazy or incompetent, get equal pay and keep their jobs, no matter what. The result is that competent, committed workers are not rewarded for their efforts, but are held back and become demoralized by their useless colleagues. As a result, the quality of work gets lower, which hardly justifies the pay increases. And the country suffers.
Politicians hate the poor. They are happy to rip off government budgets, abuse spending allowances, and make self-important pronouncements. But when it comes to actual work, all Parliament does is sit. And talk, and talk, and talk. All talk and no action, because action is risky: it may show off how much they don't have a clue. As a result, the poor continue to suffer.
Government bureaucrats hate the poor even more than the politicians. They follow the politicians leads by misusing their expense accounts, and lining the pockets of their comrades in the ruling party. They turn a blind eye to overcharging and lack of service delivery. So the poor suffer while they line their pockets and enjoy the good life.
The ANC hates the poor the most: hundreds of thousands have died of AIDS because of their dithering. Even more have died on the roads because they lack the will to cut down on speeding (BM's and Mercs go pretty fast, especially when escorted by flashing blue lights) or keep buses and taxis roadworthy. We have one of the highest road death tolls every day on the roads, and yet nothing changes, except that there are more taxis and more lawless drivers on the roads. And more poor people die or are injured.
Now the ANC is in the business of killing babies and sick people because they dither about wage negotiations, dither about improving hospitals, and instead focus on how much money a pharmacist can charge his customers.
Municipalities charged with the responsibility of improving services to their inhabitants are corrupt, inefficient, and cannot even keep their existing infrastructure running. That applies too to Eskom, the railways and other parastatals. It's so easy to cut maintenance budgets to fund those talk shops and wasteful conferences, not to mention power lunches and FIFA tickets. But the roads still get potholes, traffic lights need fixing, and water is leaking out of pipes.
The proverbial iron isn't hot, because all the money has been spent on soccer stadiums and the FIFA World Cup, and entertainment budgets, but the government won't admit that. But the workers were promised that the World Cup would be good for South Africa and "money would flow in". So now the strikers want some of that nonexistent money, and the unions are exploiting that to further their own agendas. Instead of forming a task force with government to find the money for salaries for teachers, doctors, nurses and policemen, they chose the path of confrontation. After all, it's only the poor who will suffer from their lack of leadership. Who cares about the poor?

Carbonite gets a new look

2010-08-21T11:29:00.003+02:00

No sooner had the ink dried on my Carbonite review, than they updated their software. I guess that's the speed of the internet for you. The new version has a much better look, and is more useful. What I like the most is that there is now a progress bar that shows the current file it is backing up, and how far it has progressed.
There are other useful things, like the ability to freeze your backup while you are restoring files to the hard drive. I learnt of the update because there was an automatic update message on my machine. If you haven't seen the message, just go to the Carbonite web site, log in to your account, and choose the "Reinstall" button, and run through the instructions on screen. Simple.

If only this really happened

2010-08-16T18:46:00.000+02:00

This is one really cool video. If only politicians really did this.

Cell C PR Lies Exposed

2010-08-08T20:13:00.035+02:00

I always thought Trevor Noah was a funny guy. And his clip (above) about mobile operator Cell C is right on the mark. But there is a problem with this YouTube clip: it's a PR setup that was planned months ago.

The domain name telltrevor.co.za was registered by the Cell C ad agency on Wednesday 23/06/2010 18:27:09 SAST, even though the site was only announced in the media today. And the clip on YouTube was uploaded a week ago by "BobbyT" on Wednesday July 28th, just in time for a full page ad in last week's Sunday Times where the CEO of Cell C refers to it. The ad refers to Trevor's Facebook page, which doesn't have the video.

Update: Trevor's YouTube handle is "southafrica4you". It seems that all critical comments on the YouTube page are being systematically removed. Pity they don't remove the positive responses. It starts looking a bit obvious.
This week the full page ads in the Sunday Times announce how Trevor has suddenly been appointed "CEO" of Cell C in response to his complaint about Cell C, and disgruntled customers can go to the "new" www.telltrevor.co.za web site. This is bogus since the "response" site was planned a month before the video appeared on YouTube. A "bizarre turn of events" indeed. To make matters worse, the "complaints" section of the site wasn't working. See below.

So even if you wanted to complain, you can't, because the site is broken. It's just a load of PR double-speak, written by the spin-doctors at an ad agency. How much more bogus can you get? They clearly haven't read the ClueTrain Manifesto, which explains why consumers just don't buy that kind of insincerity and spin any more.
Update: Their "4Gs" network is actually only a 3G network. HSPA+ is not advanced enough to be classified as 4G. Most consumers have no idea of the difference.

And then there's the small matter of the new Cell C logo. Last time I checked it wasn't possible to trademark the © symbol, since it is a common typographical symbol that has been around for years. Yet the CELL©™ ads clearly show a large © with a ridiculous ™ next to it. What are these fools trying to do? Make idiots of themselves? ~~Which CIPRO bureaucrat did they have to bribe to get that one through, or do they just put the ™ sign wherever they feel like it?~~
So while the sentiment "the power is in your hands" may be a noble one, the power to complain about Cell C doesn't belong to them or their ad agency. It still belongs to the consumer, and Cell C manAGEment is still in their ivory tower getting it wrong. And the blogosphere is NOT impressed:

Cell C, Trevor Noah and the cunning stunt that got everyone talking | Trevor Noah and Cell C | Cell C – The Joke is on YOU | Cell C and Noahgate. Some lessons. | Cell C is ‘astroturfing.’ What a joke! | Cell C’s new clothes | Cell C and Trevor Noah – I’ll see for myself! | HelloPeter rating of Cell C for the past 12 months | Cell C re-invented? Brand, social media and legal specialists are not so sure | Why do you think I’m stupid, Cell C? | Why Cell C's latest ad is a #brandfail | Cell C - cosmetic makeover or real deal? | Noah-gate: Lessons learned from Cell C’s controversial ad campaign | Cell C’s campaign divides public opinion | Don't get Caught!!!

I tried calling the Cell C "Legal Department" but was put through to the wrong department and then stayed on hold for 10 minutes. So much for "give us a call".
Update: The reason I was trying to contact the legal department was to find out when the trademarks were registered, and the registration number. IF they have been registered (which I doubt), then South Africa will become the first country in the world to trademark a typographical symbol. How ironic that it would be the Copyright symbol! Oh, the shame and embarassment at such obvious incompetence! Only in Africa.

Update: It seems that their logo isn't particularly original either:

Update 18th August: Andy Rice and Jenny Crwys-Williams chatted to Andre Lombaard of Ogilvy, the agency responsible for the TellTrevor campaign. It seems Ogilvy are so used to lying they will tacitly admit it.

Click this player to listen to the show or download the mp3 extract from their show.

Ex-Spammer Apologises

2010-08-04T12:22:00.004+02:00

I was surprised and delighted to receive a phone call from the owner of the former "MLD Marketing" and "Data Inc" companies. He apologised for the spam sent, and is in the process of setting up a legitimate, opt-in email marketing and competition business.
This is wonderful news, and I'm glad he has listened to the complaints he received. He has promised to send me more details, so I will update this post once they arrive.

Shaming SA spammers: Results | ISPA Hall of Shame

Carbonite Backup Review

2010-08-03T13:58:00.004+02:00

When you make backups, you should always have three copies: (1) the original, (2) one local backup and (3) one remote backup. A local copy is there for convenience and safety, and for when you upgrade your computer. Typically this would be stored on a CD or DVD, or an external hard drive that can be stored in a safe place.
The remote copy is for disasters like your building burning down or being flooded, or all your computer equipment being stolen. The remote copy is often ignored or neglected, because it's a hassle. Not any more, provided you have enough bandwidth (i.e. uncapped) and a reasonable speed internet connection. Read the rest of my Carbonite review here.
In doing research for this review I discovered some customers who thought that Carbonite could replace their external HDD backup, and/or could be used to migrate data from a PC to a Mac. I don't think so.
Note: While I am writing these reviews I am also running some new benchmarks for Windows 7, 64-bit and 32-bit. I haven't forgotten or abandoned the benchmarks for fact-reviews.com.

HD Tune Pro helps keep laptop alive

2010-07-27T12:45:00.008+02:00

I have always recommended HD Tune for use in monitoring the temperature of a laptop hard drive, but never thought I'd use it as a maintenance tool. It was only recently, after Penny's HP Pavilion DV6204EU laptop started doing wierd things, that I decided to try out the new HD Tune Pro to see if it could tell me anything about her hard drive.
I have always been frustrated with her laptop, since the laptop blocks or hides the SMART information on the drive, and SpinRite won't run. So the normal preventive maintenance gets really tricky, and I have never had the courage to remove the drive and plug it in to a different machine to run SpinRite. After installing the trial version of HD Tune Pro I ran the "Error Scan" and discovered to my horror that there were multiple bad sectors on the drive. This could easily explain why the laptop was freezing from time to time. Next, I ran "chkdsk /R" to get Windows to move any data from those regions, and mark them as bad.
The screen shot above shows the result: the bad sectors are in red, and the rest of the drive seems to be OK. It also shows the "Speed Map" of the drive, with the faster regions near the outside. I'll be monitoring it for further bad sectors, and plan on replacing the whole thing as soon as funds permit. Had HP not blocked access to the SMART information, these problems could have been avoided a long time ago. I won't be replacing it with another HP laptop either; Acer never had this problem.
I have published a more detailed review of HD Tune and SpinRite on my new reviews site. Benchmarks are still under way.

MSISDN	27833104XXX
DATE	23/05/2011 00:01
HANDSET	Nokia 5130
IP ADDRESS	41.208.50.193

Date	Url:	Handset Details	Ip Address	Shortcode
21/05/2011 at 22:01:01	http://mobilewap1.oit.co.za/?c=160	Nokia 5130	41.208.50.193	31979
18/06/2011 at 18:43:35	http://mobilewap1.oit.co.za/?c=206	Nokia 5130	41.208.50.193	42977
19/06/2011 at 14:09:24	http://mobilewap1.oit.co.za/?c=200	Nokia 5130	41.208.50.193	31801
19/06/2011 at 18:27:38	http://mobilewap1.oit.co.za/?c=206	Nokia 5130	41.208.50.193	42977
21/06/2011 at 21:20:42	http://mobilewap1.oit.co.za/?c=206	Nokia 5130	41.208.50.193	42977