Category Archives: Technical and Legal

Be Careful what you Wish For..

There is a saying that dictates “You should be careful what you wish for” and, further to my diatribe on this blog the other day, it would appear that this is very true.

After asking publicly for a better class of spammer, in place of the idiots with stupid names and dodgy email addresses, I received this in my email this morning:-

Hi,

I was just checking out your website, and I think it would be a great site for my client to partner with.

My client is looking to place an advertisement or exclusive content on your site. Please let me know if you are interested and I can send you more details. Thanks for your time.

If you do not want to receive any more emails from me please respond with unsubscribe in the subject line.

Amanda Smith

Content Manager

Upward Slope

I must admit that this made me smile, and would like to convey a sincere “Thanks” to the sender (presumably not Amanda Smith), for carrying out my request. I will not be replying to this email, nor offering the use of this blog to advertise casinos, but it was a very good try!!

By the way, does anyone know who Upward Slope are? Their website (or lack of) doesn’t give much away!!

Malware Warning – Your friend added a new photo with you to the album

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Please let your friends know that there is a new email circulating containing a trojan that looks like it has come from facebook. Under no circumstances should you open the zip file as it contains an .exe file which embeds a trojan on your system (Windows only, of course – if you use Linux then you can open it quite safely of course).

Here is a screenshot of one of these emails:-

Bogus email from facebook

Bogus email from facebook – do not be tempted to open the attachment.

The attachment is called New_Photo_with_You_on_Facebook_PHOTOID(random).zip

I received 3 of these in succession this morning and noticed that it was bogus in that it didn’t give the name of my ‘friend’ as is usually the case. Please let friends and colleagues know about this.

More information about this can be found on Naked Security.

Wanted – Intelligent Spammers and Trolls!

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TrollfaceOne thing that appears to be inevitable in life is that the more successful you become, the more hangers-on you get wanting to free load some of your success. It is to my great delight, therefore, that I am now seeing ever increasing numbers of spammers trying to get part of this blog’s high google ratings by becoming members and trying to post long advertisements about foot spas, reiki crystals and numerous other ‘essential’ items and services on here. To me, this is flattery indeed, and long may it continue! I like lots of members!

Unfortunately, the game that they are playing is about on the same intellectual level as the ‘Sun’ crossword, as they all share the following modus operandi:-

  1. Register with an unpronounceable name such as ‘ytHdfrfv06′ and have an email address to match wi.t.h.lot.s.of.do.ts.in.it@gmail.com
  2. Ensure that they can’t be seen using a ‘stealth browser’ facility. (Unfortunately you still register as being on here, so that does not work too well).
  3. Quickly cut and paste an advert for something that is nothing to do with the nature of this blog in one of the forums. (This gets caught by Akismet as spam and is automatically removed).

Once stages 1 to 3 are completed, I keep them as a member (to improve my figures) and give them a status of ‘blocked’ so that they can’t do anything on here. This is hardly on the same intellectual level, even, as the weekly puzzlers that I set and I am frustrated that the removal of these people is so trivial!

So, if you are a spammer or the type of person that looks upon trolling as entertainment, do me a favour and give me a more interesting puzzle to solve and if you can’t manage it, please go back to reading ‘The Sun’ and stop bothering me!!

Important Warning about Internet Explorer 9

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I have discovered tonight that Internet Explorer 9 does not display the home page of this blog correctly. In fact, it hardly manages to display it at all. Certainly, the menus are all missing and the functionality is greatly impaired.

As I have no control over the richest man in the world and his defective and expensive software, perhaps you might consider installing a better web browser such as Firefox, Safari, Opera, Seamonkey, Chrome, Epiphany or even downgrade to a Microsoft offering that nearly functions, such as IE8.

As soon as Mr Gates manages to get his act together, and IE9 works as it should, I will let you all know. In the meantime, you might consider making an upgrade to Firefox or something similar…all of which are free.

Are you Colour Blind? If so, help me out!

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As you are all aware, the company is in the throes of recruiting a new materials controller and, as the successful candidate will be having to check garment colours, part of the interview will be a colour blindness test, as I indicated in the advertisement.

Ishihara

Some of the plates from the Ishihara Colour Blindness tests. Click on image to enlarge.

As a result of my searches for a suitable Ishihara Colour Blindness Test, I came across a very useful blog posting which I would recommend to you. This test allows you to check your own sight quickly and easily and I will be using some of the images contained therein for my interviews.

An interesting concept that I also discovered during my investigations was a Reverse-Ishihara plate – in other words an image that would only show a number if you are colour blind, and only show dots if your sight is normal. Unfortunately, I don’t know what the image should show, as no answer was given! :-)

If there is anyone, therefore, who is colour blind and can see a number or message on the image below, can you please tell me what it is? This is frustrating … I now know what it must be like to be colour blind!

Reverse Ishihara

A Reverse Ishihara plate. If your eyesight is normal, you should just see dots. If you are colourblind you should see a number (I think), but what is it?

Steve Allen

August 2, 2012

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Tonight I have introduced another chat room which is easier to find. This can be found by putting your mouse over the ‘Forums’ menu and then clicking ‘Chat Room No.2 – The Lounge’. Another way of entering is to follow this link.

From here, you will be able to see the ‘Lounge’ chat room and, by scrolling down the page, you can also visit the ‘Public Bar’ where I can be found cleaning the ashtrays! Hope that some of you will come and join us soon! Remember that only members can see these rooms and join in the chat, and I have full control over any offensive behaviour. Here we have a place that you can relax and meet new friends.

Steve Allen

July 31, 2012

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Now that we have introduced the Forums and Groups system on this site, we are starting to see a lot of Spammers coming on here and leaving their advertisements for lots of various interesting products which, unfortunately, are not in the slightest related to our company.

Owing to this, I have decided to restrict membership so that I have to approve any applications before you can start leaving comments, joining groups, chatting, or making use of our forums. As I am on here most of the time, I don’t see that this will cause any problems to anyone, as acceptance will be pretty quick for all genuine requests.

Those of you who are already members might like to join some of the groups and leave messages, or even chat with us in the chat room. I hope to see more of you joining in shortly.