Recently in Internet Category
Warning: This is just my opinion. I am no expert. I wonder sometimes if the incidence of identity theft is somewhat out of kilter with the fear of identity theft. I don't think it's as prevalent as people think and certainly not as prevalent as it could be. Just an observation from CrabAppleLane: I think the security measures implemented by most companies are likely to frustrate their employees and customers/clients much more than they'll thwart identity thieves. People are unlikely to remember a bazillion logins and passwords, especially if they're forced to change them periodically. They are more likely to write them down, allow their internet browsers to store them, or use the same information at as many places as possible. There is nothing secure about that. That's the reality and it's also the weakness in all of the security measures I've seen so far. Still, identity thieves do things that are most likely to get them caught and in a lot of trouble such as double swiping your card, stealing your mail, or, as in our case, buy a gift card (Amazon) and have it or whatever they purchased with it sent somewhere.
I really think the only thing you need to do (Or can do, for that matter) to protect yourself from identity theft is to monitor your accounts, especially debit cards, frequently and inquire into or contest any unrecognized activity as soon as you see it. With a credit card, a $1000 contested charge is in limbo while you contest it. With a debit card, the contested charge is in limbo along with $1000 of your checking account balance. That Amazon gift card was purchased against our debit card to the tune of about $400 (By someone at the bank, we think. We were never told but the charge was reversed.) and was a major inconvenience. We had to kill that card, wait for a new one, and move funds around to cover upcoming scheduled automatic debits. Fortunately, we were in a position to do so at the time. That is certainly not always the case at CrabAppleLane.
About today's QOTD: It's about an episode of Waking The Dead. I've been recording and watching that BBC-America show for a few years now. It has a quality about it that only Prime Suspect can equal. I miss Frankie and Mel but their replacements have been adequate this season. After The Da Vinci Code, I can understand Opus Dei's sensitivity. Seems everyone is taking pot shots at them. That said, they're fair game and complaining just focuses more unwanted attention on themselves. You'd think they'd learn that much.
Quote of the Day
The BBC has rejected a complaint from the Roman Catholic group Opus Dei that a drama unfairly depicted its members as “murderers, thieves and adulterers”.
Times Online
Blog of the day here.
Quote from said blog: "Netcraft, a provider of internet security services and research, is reporting that a recent batch of phishing web sites targeting Chase Bank and eBay were hosted by state-owned Chinese Construction Bank. This apparently is the first time a bank’s servers have been used to attack another bank."
CrabAppleLane needs a new DSL modem to replace the not-even-two-day-old DSL modem. Naturally, I discontinued my other internet service yesterday. What is it with equipment these days? A work colleague had cable TV installed at her house last week and three of the four brand new cable boxes are bad.
Second verse ... same as the first. Have a great weekend.
The MSNBC headline blared:
Online anonymity lets users get nasty
It's an AP story by Jocelyn Noveck. Then, about halfway down Page One, this:
There are examples everywhere of anonymous comments that cause harm. On even the most innocuous sites — a parenting message board, for example — anonymity often leads to the type of response that would hardly be likely if names were attached.
Did you just bring home your first computer, Jocelyn? There is no news here, folks. Parenting sites innocuous? Not any one I've ever seen. Parenting and baby sites are some of the most vicious. In my opinion, a lack of civility is the rule on about 98% of the usenet newsgroups and online bulletin boards and forums. They've been flamefests almost from the beginning of public use of the internet. I don't have the time or inclination for them but I can offer some unwanted, unsolicited advice. If you don't know the ropes, if you have a thin skin or big red flashing pulsating buttons, do not go to, do not read, and especially, do NOT join in. They play rough but, Jocelyn, I doubt you'll hear anything at any of those places that you can't hear in the average elementary schoolyard. The forum addicts will have fun with the latest story for a week or two and get bored with it ... unless someone tries to defend it. That's what the addicts live for. Next time, follow some of those threads for a few months before you try writing about them.
Speaking of big red flashing pulsating buttons, I love this quote from the same article:
Just because someone is overweight, fat, thick whatever you call us, doesn’t mean we are ugly, lazy or insecure ... So stop the childish remarks.
Yeah, that'll teach 'em.
Cool store. Nothing whatsoever to do with me. Not that I haven't thought of business uses for this website. A profitable website is like the Holy Grail, though. Extremely rare.
Quote of the Day
I broke my arm at the airport messing around on an escalator ( 9 or 10 years old), I broke my leg falling off of a trampoline (same year), I broke my hand when I was mad at my (now ex) husband and smashed my fist down on his shin, I broke my tailbone once when I fell down for no reason, and the second time just a couple of years ago when I slipped in the tub. I broke both thumbs at the same time playing volleyball.
Nell, This Could Only Happen To Me
Blog of the day here.
Quote from said blog: "Thanks to my cousin Ginger for sharing this...it started MY day with a chuckle!"
Mine, too. -Rob
One of the beauties of the internet is that you can access your accounts from wherever you are whenever you feel like it. Not so much any more and it may be on the way out altogether. My bank will ask you a verification question if you login from a computer “they don’t recognize”. This started about two months ago. That’s a minor nuisance and I don’t think it’s all that effective. The credit card account I logged into this morning from my home PC took that one step further and wants to call me, text my cell phone, or send me a validation code via the email I have on record with them. That’s a major nuisance but it’s also pretty cool and maybe even pretty effective. It’s a nuisance in that I may be in a place at a time when that is not possible. Why it’s cool? I deleted the cookies for the site, closed my browser, and then went back to the site. Logged right in. I think what they’re doing is recording my computer’s ID. If I log in from a different one next time, the firewall comes up. This should foil spyware that records keystrokes on compromised machines unless they’ve cloned my cell phone or know how to get into my email account. No need to ask why they’ve implemented this new layer of security. It’s to protect me AND themselves. Though it’s a nuisance, I’m OK with it. I’m as concerned about web security and identity theft as anyone. This is everyone’s problem.
Quote of the Day
If you're in this tournament long enough, you're going to go down.
Mike Krzyzewski, Duke Men's Basketball Coach
Blog of the day here.
Quote from said blog: "After trying cold-calling, she realized she doesn't have the elephant-skin that one must have to make it work; besides, we despise telemarketing and she felt awful trying to be a telemarketer. Lots of the grizzled veterans in her office swear by cold-calling, but few of them actually do much of it anymore. The world has changed and emphatically moved against cold calling."
I despise making or receiving cold calls. -Rob
It's Mardi Gras Saturday in southeast Louisiana. Endymion rolls tonight. Afraid I'm going to miss it.
Made a few changes around here in a last ditch attempt to minimize the incessant Internal Server Error messages everyone is getting. It does not appear to be working and looks like I may have to find another host. I appreciate everyone’s patience and persistence on this. The last resort has always been to move the website to another host yet again. That’s a major undertaking and it would be the 5th host in just 6½ years. One of the unintended casualties of today's changes was the gravatars. I’m going to see how all of this goes before I try to reinstate them.
A little family business for my sister’s birthday today:
Happy Birthday, Janine
Have a day.
Quote of the Day
Do something wild and woolly, willya? It will inspire me.
My sister, Janine
Blog of the day here.
Quote from said blog: "I haven't been so knackered since finals week in college"
From MSNBC, the European Union has a stunning grasp of the obvious:
Unsolicited e-mails continue to plague Europeans and account for between 50 and 80 percent of all messages sent to mail inboxes, the European Commission said Monday.
Imagine that. Further in, it says this:
Monday's EU report said spam cost $51.1 billion worldwide last year, according to San Francisco-based Ferris Research Institute.
I suppose that $51.1 billion figure includes money spent trying to stop or curtail it but it surely seems there is enough incentive to do exactly that. Need a place to start, internet? I have 4094 IP addresses in my ban list as of this writing. Those are IP addresses that have tried to post three or more spam comments on the CrabAppleLane blogs. Free for the asking. I also use a plugin here that moderates comments from IP addresses that are “known open proxies”. That list is not kept here but I’m sure that one is also free for the asking. This problem requires a little money and a lot of determination but it is fixable.
Today’s QOTD comes from San Diego, where the city council just banned Wal-Mart Supercenters. I don’t like Wal-Mart but I don’t like this, either. Patsy and I do go to Wal-Mart on occasion so we must bear some of the responsibility for small and medium-sized local merchants in proximity to our Wal-Mart Supercenter tending to wither away but those merchants bear a good portion of responsibility, too. Wal-Mart is not going away until smaller merchants figure out a way to compete effectively. Holding them up in courts, zoning boards, and city councils is not enough ... and it shouldn't be.
Quote of the Day
Quite simply, I do not think it is the role of the San Diego City Council to dictate where families should buy their groceries.
Kevin Faulconer, San Diego City Councilman
Blog of the day here.
Quote from said blog: "Okay, obviously, enough with that “how lovely to be part of this glorious now” crap. You’ve had a crawful, and I’m a little tired of not being on vacation yet."
This is my all-time favorite instrumental. Forgive me if I’ve said that a couple of thousand times. No live version I’ve heard is as good as the original soundtrack version (That's the soundtrack CD pictured). I have just about worn out my Local Hero CD. I also have the vinyl album and it is just about worn out, too. The video is Going Home and it is the closing song for the film, Local Hero (Terrific movie). Mark Knopfler wrote it and is performing a pretty good rendition of it here.
6 days until football season...
Quote of the Day
Do your worst
Mark Knopfler, Going Home Video
Blog of the day here.
Quote from said blog: "Thing is, I had to go down to that stinking hell hole two times and place more than two dozen calls in order to have one employee after another tell me "No, managers esta aqui" over and over and over."
Ever heard of Typosquatting? I hadn't. The BOTD talks about it in the linked entry. Basing a website or a company on a URL that depends on people typing in the same incorrect address and spending money registering those various domains seems like poor business sense to me. I have poor business sense so don’t go by me. I remember people doing something similar a few years ago with telephone long distance carriers.
One of the TV news magazines did a story some years ago on shady long distance companies. The details are at the far end of my hazy memory but this is how I remember it. One such long distance company was called I Don’t Care Inc or something like that. If you made a long distance call from a pay phone back then and didn’t specify which carrier you wanted to use, one would be chosen at random. One of the ways to NOT specify a carrier is to say to an operator, “I Don’t Care”. The operator would then be compelled to turn you over to I Don’t Care Inc. That company would then make the call and would charge considerably above the going rate. It was around $8 per minute when the going rate was $2 or so. I had a lot of trouble calling up sympathy for anyone in that story. The business owner had figured out a way to take advantage of people’s state of mind. Those people were usually in some distress. Bad business owner. The victim, on the other hand, had to actually say, “I Don’t Care” to be victimized. What does “I Don’t Care” mean? Instead of an $8 phone call, it was a $32 phone call. Not the end of the world and you brought it on yourself. Chalk it up in the lessons learned column and move on.
41 days until football season...
Quote of the Day
What you gonna do?
Time's caught up with you
Now you wait your turn
You know there's no return
Black Sabbath, Hand of Doom
Blog of the day here.
Quote from said blog: "These domains have been specifically registered to catch people when mis-typing the real domain name."
Something I meant to mention a while back after it happened. I was corrected on my offensive ellipse a few weeks ago and I have repented. From now on, you will only see three dots here and elsewhere from me on those occasions when I see fit to use an ellipse. I probably use them more than I should and I surely don’t want to annoy anyone on the internet...unless...............
It's past due. The guy belongs in the Hall of Fame while he's still alive. His life in baseball warrants it.
50 days until football season...
Quote of the Day
It's a 40-minute game, and we may need a guy who is going to play five minutes. And he will play those five minutes like they are the most important five minutes in his life.
Mike Krzyzewski, U.S. Basketball Team Coach
Blog of the day here.
Quote from said blog: "I still haven't seen the bear. It visits our neighbors mostly, but today the evidence was clear. My bird feeder was knocked over, the steel pole in the ground ripped up and out."
