News and general opinion, often privacy, security or computer related, but could be about anything really, including religion, politics, the environment, business or audio books. "Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence/stupidity/neglect." -- Hanlon's Razor
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.
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.
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.
PerfectDisk has, for me, always been the defrag program by which you measure other commercial defrag programs. I recently learnt that the developers (Raxco) have obtained another patent for PerfectDisk. This affects the way files are analysed, and is supposed to be much faster than the standard way used by most Windows applications. Patent #7,672,982 has been awarded by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for new file query technology that improves the speed of the disk defragmentation process on Microsoft Windows platforms. Raxco has incorporated the new file query technology into its PerfectDisk 11 disk defragmentation solution.This is in addition to their SmartPlacement patent, #5,398,142 which was awarded in 1995.
I'm never sure what to make of software patents, but as long as it isn't used to "attack" other products, I'm sure it's OK. Raxco doesn't have the litigious reputation of other software companies such as Apple.
One of the most annoying things about modern life is the misleading information on product packaging, particularly food. Consider the quiche shown on the plate above. The packaging states "Serves 4". Note that is doesn't say "Feeds 4 adults" because that simply wouldn't be true.Did I mention that the photo above is using a side plate and not a main serving plate? Perhaps it should have said "Serves 4 toddlers" because there is no way on earth that 500g of quiche could ever actually provide a satisfying meal for 4 adults, let alone teenagers.Why do companies lie to us? Clearly the label "serves 4" is intended to tell the gullible shopper that there is enough quiche in the packet to present to a dinner party of 4 guests? If not, then why is it there? To say that you can cut the contents into 4 pieces? That it's too big to put the entire thing in your mouth at once? The mind boggles.After eating the contents of this box I will never believe food packaging again. Now I know when I read "Serves 4" it really means: We think that you are stupid enough to believe that this tiny packet could actually provide 4 slices to 4 adults and actually pass off as a "serving" even though it clearly does not have enough nutrition for 1 teenager. Of course we think we can get away with it because no sane person would actually complain, and even if they complained we'd just ignore the complaint. We think all our customers are stupid, and this is our subtle little way of misleading them further.
Update: The supplier wrote and said "[we] in no way intentionally mislead customers, it is our understanding that most customers who buy this product do so with the intention of serving it with a salad or other side dish".
Update Wednesday 21 July: Leonora Daniels, who has worked at Woolworths for many years and is familiar with all their systems, phoned and explained that she has done some investigating on my behalf, and even informed the CEO, who was horrified by the "ten times" rule. This is what I have learned:I have worn Woolworths clothing for over 4 decades, and had a Woolworths account for several years. Recently they sent me a new card, to replace my old store card that has become somewhat tatty. The "new card" has extra security: you have to "activate" it in the store and produce your ID. So far so good.Now the idiotic part: for the I could understand the first purchase, or maybe even the first two purchases, requiring ID, even though the same ID was probably used to activate the card in the store at the same time. I wrote to Woolworths about thisI bought 5 pairs of underwear, individually of course, each with its own packet and till slip, a newspaper, two nut bars, and other food items. Each item was paid for separately. It took about an hour in total. No alarm bells rang, no phone calls have been made to confirm any "suspicious activity" on my card, and today I could use the card without producing ID.There is a huge black market in fake IDs and driver's licenses, and it's probably easier to forge these documents than to forge a WW card. Certainly, the WW "extra security" is meaningless because the extra admin achieved nothing other than wasting the time of the tellers who had to type in the ID number. Their barcode scanners clearly can't read the barcode on the ID or the driver's license.My advice to Woolworths: give it up. Require ID when activating the card, and that's it. The rest is just a waste of time, both yours and mine. 
