Reboot and roll the dice

If you call tech support with a computer problem, what's the first thing they tell you to do? Reboot it, right? Have you ever wondered why?

Some people say that the Tier 1 techs are given scripts, and they're required to run through the scripts with you over the phone. The script starts with "Make the customer reboot the computer. While that's happening, you can finish your game of Minesweeper."

But I'm not so sure this is actually what happens. Because I've just located the device by which these techs probably come up with their solutions for you: PC Dice. They can't be less useful than simply reading the script.

On an entirely unrelated note (and speaking of stream of consciousness): I couldn't let this article slip by: "Washington prisons settle lost penis case." (via protein wisdom)

By the time a doctor at Grays Harbor Community Hospital in Aberdeen found Manning had necrotizing fasciitis, or flesh-eating bacteria, and he was flown to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, the bacteria had spread to his pelvic area.

Surgeons had to remove several pounds of flesh, including his penis and a testicle, to save his life, DeLue said. A replacement penis was made with skin from Manning's thigh.

One of the pw commenters had this take: "Is that a thigh in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?" "No, it's a thigh."

All I can say is it's too bad body parts can't be rebooted.

Click here to read more . . .

Saturday evening linkfest

If you've been wondering whether I've been taken into the Witness Protection Program -- kind of like those shirts sold by Chinese vendors on the streets of Washington ("You Don't Know Me") -- the answer is YES! I've been taken into the Witness Protection Program.

But I've just been kicked out.

This has been the busiest period for me at work in over three years, and I've been in total panic mode. Until Friday, I didn't think I would be able to handle it, and now I think there's a least a slim chance. So things are looking up.

In honor of this, I'd like to give you a short linkfest. I should have some original stupidity up relatively soon.

1. The Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington is having a book festival, and one of the books featured (see page 5 of the PDF brochure here) is Louis Ferrante's Unlocked: A Journey from Prison to Proust, which the brochure describes this way:

Louis Ferrante, former Mafia associate in the Gambino crime family, was taken down by federal agents and sentenced to over twelve years in prison. In prison, he began a dramatic journey towards redemption and rehabilitation – culminating in the surprising and unexpected discovery of an innate passion for literature, writing and Orthodox Judaism. This is a Mafia memoir unlike any other!

I mention this solely to repeat my son's quip: "An aufruf you can't refuse."

2. Public Service Announcement: If you feel the need to urinate on your neighbor's porch, don't dress in a cow suit.

3. Your web browser hates you. (scary hat tip: fee simple)

4. Your wedding guests hate you.

5. Sarah Palin hates you.

Na, I'm just kidding. Actually, Sarah Palin used a PR consultant in Alaska. (via HotAir) And speaking of Sarah Palin, I did a post about six weeks ago called "Sarah Palin is evil." The post attracted numerous internet bottom-dwelling scum-suckers and has my largest number of comments for any post. My total for visitors who arrived on searches for "Sarah Palin is evil" or an equivalent is now up to 1650. The total who arrived on searches for "Sarah Palin is an idiot" or an equivalent is well over 1000.

Click here to read more . . .

"It was Microsoft"

I have to report a totally true conversation I had at shul with a member of our congregation who is a computer consultant. I'm leaving nothing out between my question and his answer.

Me: Do you use ZoneAlarm for your firewall?

Him: It was Microsoft that did it.

To explain: This past week, Microsoft pushed an update to Windows XP that apparently "broke" ZoneAlarm in the sense that internet traffic was blocked. I figured out ZA was broken by eliminating about 10 other possible causes of our inability to reach the internet. The workaround was to go from High to Medium on the internet zone, which seems to unstealth one port but otherwise leaves things alone.

The guy I was chatting with said that many of his clients had called him this week to solve the problem -- which is why he knew what I was going to ask. Incidentally, he didn't blame Microsoft. He said these updates can't be tested on every software (although I would think major firewalls would be in the top 10 to test), and he thinks ZA could have alerted its registered customers with the solution and later with the upgrade. He's right, and I still don't have the upgrade.

But the idea that a Microsoft fix could be harmful was an amusing turn of events. And really not so surprising.

Click here to read more . . .

Note from the underground

I know no one's surprised that I haven't posted anything over this three-day weekend. But I wanted to let you know that, aside from socializing today, I was busy formatting the hard drive on one of my computers and reinstalling Windows XP.

If you've never formatted and reinstalled, you don't know the pleasures you're missing. Why, just this evening, I had a chance to speak to Microsoft's representative in Redmond, India. I love the Indians, but he was just a little hard to understand. See, I had to call to activate the Windows software. My Dell restoration CD didn't boot, so I used a freestanding Windows CD I'd bought for another computer. When I tried to activate using the Windows key for the computer's OEM installation, it didn't work. It took me a while to explain this to the Microsoft guy, but finally, he read off the nine sets of six digits that allowed me to activate. Approximate elapsed time: 12 minutes. But a mere fragment of the time needed for the overall project.

I've given up for the night. Tomorrow morning is software installation time, followed by restoring my settings, followed by restoring my backed up files. All I can say is that I once had to restore a clone of my drive to a new hard drive, and it was a heck of a lot easier.

UPDATE (5/26): With time off to go the baseball game today (and get sunburned as all get-out), I'm about 95% of the way to restoring the computer. So I guess that means posting will resume soon.

UPDATE (5/27): Finally done with the tinkering. Let me say, though, that the unsung hero of this was Acronis TrueImage, a backup program that lets you clone your hard drive. I did a clone before formatting, and TrueImage allowed me to pick and choose what I wanted to restore. You still have to install software from scratch (assuming you're not simply reimaging your drive, which would defeat the purpose, anyway), but being able to select some file and not others, including the image on my wife's desktop out of gazillions of others, was a blessing.

Click here to read more . . .

Doom at the Democratic Convention

Some of us thought it couldn't get any better. Hillary and Obama were mercilessly attacking each other, causing their supporters to become embittered (without clinging to guns and religion). The superdelegates were dithering, leaving the resolution of the nomination to the Convention itself. People were suggesting that a totally new candidate be brought in. Some groups were threatening violence in Denver, shades of Chicago 1968.

But now, it does get better, much better: The Democrats have hired Microsoft to run the technical end of the Convention.

Get a load of this, from the link above: "For Microsoft's part, the software giant said in a statement that the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) picked it to 'create a technically flawless event and engage more people in the Convention experience using cutting-edge technology.'"

Microsoft? A "technically flawless event"? Seriously?

Here's what I foresee. Obama or Hillary up on the stage, giving the acceptance speech for the hard-fought nomination.



And right there in the middle of the speech, Microsoft's technical prowess is put on display for millions of viewers to see:





UPDATE: Old Bill Gates video.

UPDATE: Is that you, Bill?

Click here to read more . . .

Spammers' delight

Every once in a while, it's amusing to check your spam filter to see what you're missing. And by "your" I mean "mine," of course.

While a lot of the spam has to do with Rolexes and cheap prescription drugs, an increasing amount offers male enhancement products, usually spelled in funny ways in an unsuccessful effort to elude those same spam filters (\/1@ g-r/\, for example).

At my office, our filtering software sends us an email every morning that lists the blocked spam by sender and subject line, just in case something was blocked that wasn't supposed to be. If there was a false positive, we can click a link to move the mail to our in box and allow the sender's address in the future. (I once found a message from my wife in the list. Never figured out how that happened.)

I've been looking at the subject lines for the past two weeks or so, and for some reason, very few of the enhancement emails fall into the category of deliberate misspellings of product names. I've noticed that there are several other approaches these spammers use in their subject lines.

1. The simple and direct approach.

* Enlarge
* Girls like big
* Size is very important
* Your measurement calls for improvement
* 9 massive inches in weeks

2. The slightly, but only slightly, elliptical approach.

* Don't be looser lengthenn your banana [that's how it was spelled]
* Don't satisfy your wife. Here is the solution
* Increasement of your baby-maker length is not a dream [increasement?]
* Gain valuable growth on your package [not malignant growth, I'd hope]

3. The polygamous approach.

* Enlarge your baby-maker and you will have sex with any wife you want

4. The New Age approach.

* Define your masculine identity

5. The dramatic approach.

* Be the superman she always wanted

But I think my favorite approach -- the one that actually made me laugh -- would have to be called . . .

6. The "even lions will fear you" approach.

* Even lions will fear you

The amazing thing is that these pitches seem to work for some people. There are actually dupes out there who open these spam emails, and some of them even order the pills or creams or whatever it is these folks are selling.

But I believe in Truth in Advertising, and if you advertise that even lions will fear you, we should certainly hold you to it. Just stride confidently right in to that lions' cage at the zoo. Because I'm selling tickets to the event.

Click here to read more . . .

Senator Reid goes to Nigeria

After yesterday's entry about Karl Rove's lottery notification email, I asked myself, "Who could be the well known political figure involved in the next fraudulent email scheme?" My guess was Harry Reid.

And, sure enough, today I received the following email message, with the subject line "Request for Patriots Act on international fund transfer in your favor." It was from "Sen. Reid of Nevada, Senate Majority Leader."

The body of the email was this:

www.senate.gov
www.congress.org
7TH MARCH, 2008
FROM: -
THE CHAIRMEN AND RANKING MEMBERS OF THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS,
THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS, THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS,
AND THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS.

Approved and Witnessed by -
Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wisconsin
Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisconsin
White House and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Illinois,
Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wisconsin, Senate filibuster.
Senate Majority Leader Sen. Reid of Nevada.

ATTN:
Subject Matter - Request for Patriots Act on international fund transfer in your favor

After very long meetings held by the above mentioned officials and the Minister of state for finance including the Board of Directors of the World Bank, the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund, to see to the release of long term debt owed to many foreigners around the globe who have been denied of their funds, the United States Senate has been authorized to handle the urgent release of all funds owed by any of the financial institutions or Government that is a member of the United Nations, this is based on the loans and disbursement agreement signed between the US Government and Governments of these debtor nations, the release of your fund will be supervised by the World Bank representatives in Nigeria to ensure immediate payment in your favor and avoid delay.

From the records of outstanding claims due for payment submitted by the United Nations, your name is next on the list of the outstanding bills to be settled, I wish to inform you that your payment is being processed and will be released to you as soon as you respond to this letter.

Kindly re-confirm the following information to SENATOR JEREMY WILLIAMS the US SENATE REPRESENTATIVE AND HEAD OF THE PAYMENT CENTER IN NIGERIA for final verification of your details so that the funds will be transferred in your favour, please contact SENATOR JEREMY WILLIAMS via email: senate_usgov@keromail.com

1) Your full name
2) Phone number (mobile should be included).
3) The claim amount
4) Your complete Banking details to avoid mistakes

As soon as the above information is received, your payment will be made to you without further delay. Note that the senate officials in NIGERIA have been authorised to handle this payment to keep a clean slate of foriegn debt settlement because some Government officials and individuals have tried to transfer this fund to you but failed due to dishonesty and unneccesary demandfor fees,

You are hereby advised to stop any further communications with any one else or any other financial institution and comply to this to avoid any further delay.

Please note that the United Nations and Government of the debtor country will not be interested in any complaint from you if you fail to receive your fund via this programme or fail to abide by this instruction.

Your urgent attention is expected

Sen. Reid of Nevada
Senate Majority Leader

Naturally, before I agreed to this plan, I wanted to verify that this actually came from Senator Reid's office. I did have a suspicion about its bona fides, because I didn't think the Senate would use Nigeria as its base of operations. I figured it would be a call center in India.

So I decided to write to Senator Reid in response. His website says he has no real email address and can only respond to requests from Nevadans, from people with ties to the state, or from people who make large campaign contributions in small, unmarked bills.

I gather that's all a brick wall set up so he doesn't have to answer questions from people who question his sanity, but I wasn't sure how to get around it, so I figured I'd post my response here. I know he and his staff are regular readers of Pillage Idiot.

Dear Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid,

In response to your email to me earlier today (below) where you offer an international funds transfer under the Patriot Act, I'm uncomfortable with this whole scheme. I realize you have a lot of experience as the leader of the WORLD'S GREATEST DELIBERATIVE BODY, and I see that your plan is approved and witnessed by several leaders of both parties, but maybe you can explain to me why I should do what you tell me to do.

1. First thing is I don't trust things when the Democrats and Republicans work together. If no party is attacking the other, they've probably both lost their senses.

2. I think "Jeremy Williams" isn't a real senator. I think you meant Jerome Williams, who pitched for Washington last year, and the team isn't called the Senators any more. It's the Nationals. Besides which, I'm sure you know what a lousy job Williams did on the mound for the Nats. Based on that, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't entrust my fortune to him.

3. Your idea of running this operation out of Nigeria raises some red flags. What would the Washington Post say? Don't you know that both Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton are attacking free trade agreements with other countries? Using Nigeria as a base for this could really hurt their position in the November election. Also, did you realize that a lot of Nigeria is Muslim, so how do we know that the funds won't be diverted to support our terrorist enemies? Do you realize how embarrassing that could be for you and the Senate, not to mention for all Americans?

4. You asked me to send you my "complete Banking details to avoid mistakes." I'm wondering what kind of mistakes you intend to make? If you might make mistakes, should I really go along with you on this scheme? Or maybe are you saying that I'm the one who will make a mistake? What I want to ask you, though, is I'm not an expert at computers, but pretty much every one I've heard from says don't give out your personal information to somebody you don't know. So if I'm going to do this thing you want me to do, can we meet in person? I'm free for lunch Wednesday and Thursday next week. I can meet you in the Senate lunch room. I ate there a long time ago, and it was a blast. (That's just a saying. No reason to get jumpy about it.) Can you take me there? I promise I won't eat much. And then I can give you my banking information in person so there won't be any mistakes.

Please let me know by reply. If this will work, I'll give you my unlisted phone number.

Best regards,

Attila P.

Maybe one of my other readers can forward this to Sen. Reid, because I suspect we can do a deal.

Click here to read more . . .

You magnificent bastard

I'm sure you're familiar with the fake-lottery spam, right? You receive an email that says you're being notified that your email address won some European state lottery, as if lottery entries were made by email, and as if you could win without entering. People who are greedy are dumb, and there must be a few who fall for it.

Well, from the lottery email I received today I now know who's behind this phony lottery scheme. It's the magnificent bastard himself:

Contact our accredited claims agent Mr. Karl Rove, for immediate processing of your winning with the information below;

Name: Karl Rove
E-mail: uknational_officerove@yahoo.co.uk

I always knew there was more to this than appeared on the surface. Undoubtedly, this is a scheme to dupe the Obama campaign into revealing sensitive campaign strategy. Be forewarned.

Click here to read more . . .

Stupidity squared

As my regular readers know, I'm something of an expert in stupidity, mostly my own. But that's not what I'm referring to right now.

I write for a living, and I'm also anal-retentive enough to be careful about grammar, usage, and spelling. Not that I never make a mistake, but you're not going to find totally illiterate writing here, the way you might in some sectors of internet-land.

So I had to ask myself: How difficult is it really to distinguish between coherent writing and stupid, illiterate writing? Not at all difficult is my answer. But apparently some people think it's necessary to have a computer analyze the writing to determine whether it's stupid. (And this is not some April Fool's joke, like that pathetic joke Google put up on Blogger Buzz.)

Here's the deal. Go to stupidfilter.org and you find this: "Too long have we suffered in silence under the tyranny of idiocy. In the beginning, the internet was a place where one could communicate intelligently with similarly erudite people. Then, Eternal September hit and we were lost in the noise. The advent of user-driven web content has compounded the matter yet further, straining our tolerance to the breaking point. It's time to fight back."

Sound annoying enough yet? Well, just wait.

The solution we're creating is simple: an open-source filter software that can detect rampant stupidity in written English. This will be accomplished with weighted Bayesian or similar analysis and some rules-based processing, similar to spam detection engines. The primary challenge inherent in our task is that stupidity is not a binary distinction, but rather a matter of degree. To this end, we're collecting a ranked corpus of stupid text, gleaned from user comments on public websites and ranked on a five-point scale.

And just how useful do you think this project is? Consider this: "u r dum !!11! lol" is stupid to the extreme. But do we need a computer applet to tell us that? Not really, but that's what we find at stupidfilter. From the FAQs:

The idea is that the most egregiously stupid comments will also be the easiest to detect while remaining ignorant of context; comments with too much or too little capitalization, too many text-message abbreviations, excessive use of "LOL," exclamation points, and so on.

And how hard is it to rate comments like the one I made up above? Not very, but that's what we find at the same FAQs:

Keep in mind we grade stupidity on a scale of 1 to 5. Someone might get a 1 or 2 for a comment that used no punctuation, whereas a comment consisting of nothing but text message abbreviations with a dash of LOLLLLL thrown in for good measure would probably rate a solid 4 or 5.

Oy, vey. Well, just to show I'm a stand-up guy, I decided to give the program a chance.

Test 1. I took two phrases from a relatively recent post of mine about some stupid parent in Montgomery County who was arrested at his kid's elementary school when he got over-aggressive about his desires for his kid's curriculum.

First, here's a baseline test: "Is it just me or is it somewhat odd for a parent to be arrested (second item) when discussing his kid's elementary school work with school officials? I don't know. I've lived for over 20 years in Montgomery County, where helicopter parenting takes on a whole new meaning, and yet this still seems a little out of line." Fairly non-stupid, at least for Pillage Idiot, right?

Here's the result at stupidfilter:

Text is not likely to be stupid.

CLASSIFY succeeds; success probability: 0.5066 pR: 0.0114
Best match to file #0 (/home/sfp/code/nonstupid_cor.css) prob: 0.5066 pR: 0.0114
Total features in input file: 11472919
#0 (/home/sfp/code/nonstupid_cor.css): features: 11472919, L1: 240419182 L2: 340256281 L3: 553124907, l4: 1327203205 prob: 5.07e-01, pR: 0.01
#1 (/home/sfp/code/stupid_cor.css): features: 1510682, L1: 29910336 L2: 41683685 L3: 67105951, l4: 160824653 prob: 4.93e-01, pR: -0.01

I have no idea what most of that means, but perhaps that's because I'm, er, stupid.

Next, I checked the statement of the man who was arrested, who said this: "According to an arrest document, the 6-foot-4 Rogers 'stood up, cupped his hands around his mouth and screamed very loudly, "'I am Rosa Parks. I will not ride on the back of the bus."'" That's about as stupid as a person can be, but here's what the stupidfilter computer showed:

Text is not likely to be stupid.

CLASSIFY succeeds; success probability: 0.6175 pR: 0.2080
Best match to file #0 (/home/sfp/code/nonstupid_cor.css) prob: 0.6175 pR: 0.2080
Total features in input file: 11472919
#0 (/home/sfp/code/nonstupid_cor.css): features: 11472919, L1: 130118990 L2: 202077007 L3: 390256047, l4: 1207598011 prob: 6.17e-01, pR: 0.21
#1 (/home/sfp/code/stupid_cor.css): features: 1510682, L1: 16486110 L2: 23417883 L3: 38819315, l4: 94786575 prob: 3.83e-01, pR: -0.21

It's "not likely to be stupid," eh? Well, I guess the "not likely" gives them an out. Yeah, yeah, I know the filter isn't directed to substantive stupidity. That's my point.

Test 2. Hillary's early response to the Tuzla exposure was this: "You know, I think that, a minor blip, you know, if I said something that, you know, I say a lot of things – millions of words a day - so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement." Totally stupid, right?

A little surprise here:

Text is likely to be stupid.

CLASSIFY fails; success probability: 0.4605 pR: -0.0688
Best match to file #1 (/home/sfp/code/stupid_cor.css) prob: 0.5395 pR: 0.0688
Total features in input file: 1510682
#0 (/home/sfp/code/nonstupid_cor.css): features: 11472919, L1: 136163155 L2: 194867166 L3: 334824012, l4: 914439786 prob: 4.60e-01, pR: -0.07
#1 (/home/sfp/code/stupid_cor.css): features: 1510682, L1: 17608926 L2: 25394698 L3: 45709338, l4: 138558262 prob: 5.40e-01, pR: 0.07

I guess it must have been all the "you know's." To verify this, I deleted them and tried it again: "I think that, a minor blip, if I said something that - I say a lot of things – millions of words a day - so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement."

The results? A surprise again.

Text is likely to be stupid.

CLASSIFY fails; success probability: 0.4804 pR: -0.0340
Best match to file #1 (/home/sfp/code/stupid_cor.css) prob: 0.5196 pR: 0.0340
Total features in input file: 1510682
#0 (/home/sfp/code/nonstupid_cor.css): features: 11472919, L1: 118999011 L2: 174065450 L3: 306798586, l4: 865356242 prob: 4.80e-01, pR: -0.03
#1 (/home/sfp/code/stupid_cor.css): features: 1510682, L1: 15294168 L2: 22135632 L3: 39684900, l4: 120275436 prob: 5.20e-01, pR: 0.03

And now, I've rewritten Hillary's stupidity so that it reads well, even though it's still substantively stupid: "It was a minor blip. I say perhaps millions of words a day, and this was just a misstatement."

This time, the result is negative:

Text is not likely to be stupid.

CLASSIFY succeeds; success probability: 0.5241 pR: 0.0420
Best match to file #0 (/home/sfp/code/nonstupid_cor.css) prob: 0.5241 pR: 0.0420
Total features in input file: 11472919
#0 (/home/sfp/code/nonstupid_cor.css): features: 11472919, L1: 71720625 L2: 104271070 L3: 181129542, l4: 487604746 prob: 5.24e-01, pR: 0.04
#1 (/home/sfp/code/stupid_cor.css): features: 1510682, L1: 9177190 L2: 12891812 L3: 21612594, l4: 56643680 prob: 4.76e-01, pR: -0.04

Well, I'm a little tired of this, and I'm sure you are, too, which is why you're not even bothering to read this post any more.

What I'm looking for is a computer that can distinguish substantively stupid writing, like my rewrite of Hillary's statement, or some of the rantings of her supporters, or the New York Times editorial page. Find it, and that's when I'll be interested.

Click here to read more . . .

Another email horror story

Two years ago, I wrote about a hostile email exchange that became public between a lawyer and a job applicant: "Latest law jerks." I'm not entirely sure how the exchange became public, but it presumably was forwarded by one of the parties to a third party.

Which is how most of these things become public.

As Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical company, and its lawyers have found out to their dismay.

Picture this: You're a company that's in confidential settlement talks with the government. Confidential, by the way, means non-public. And that's with good reason:

With the negotiations over alleged marketing improprieties reaching a mind-boggling sum of $1 billion, Eli Lilly had every reason to want to keep the talks under wraps. It was paying the two fancy law firms a small fortune to negotiate deftly and quietly.

I'm sure you've figured out by now that this story doesn't have a happy ending for Eli Lilly. Last week, the New York Times published an article disclosing the confidential settlement talks. Who had leaked the information?

Here's a hint: The Times reporter is named Alex Berenson, and one of the company's outside lawyers is named Bradford Berenson.

So when the Times' Berenson began calling around for comment, and seemed to possess remarkably detailed inside information about the negotiations, Lilly executives were certain the source of the leak was the government.

As it turned out, one of Eli Lilly's lawyers at Pepper Hamilton in Philadelphia wanted to email Sidley Austin's [Bradford] Berenson, about the negotiations. But apparently, the name that popped up from her email correspondents was the wrong Berenson.

Alex Berenson logged on to find an internal "very comprehensive document" about the negotiations, the consultant said, and on January 30, Berenson's article, "Lilly in Settlement Talks With U.S." appeared on the Times' website. A similar article followed the next day on the front page of the New York Times.

If I were the lawyer in question, I'm sure I'd be on the phone with headhunters STAT. An innocent mistake, no doubt, but even if the lawyer is kept on, she's going to suffer from Ralph Branca Syndrome.

Click here to read more . . .

Adam Liptak, your readers want to know

I think some of us need a clarification from Adam Liptak.

Yesterday, Liptak's New York Times column examined the government's frequent success in fending off challenges to searches of laptop computers at airports and the borders. The idea is that searching your laptop is like searching your luggage.

Liptak discussed three cases in which the laptop that was searched contained kiddie p*rn.

Then, he closed his column with this odd statement:

There are all sorts of lessons in these cases. One is that the border seems be a privacy-free zone. A second is that encryption programs work. A third is that you should keep your password to yourself. And the most important, as my wife keeps telling me, is that you should leave your laptop at home.

And just what is on his laptop that makes his wife keep telling him to leave it at home? Your readers want to know, Mr. Liptak.

Click here to read more . . .

GMail, reimagined as a Microsoft confection

If you're a Hotmail user, like me, you're going to laugh your butt off over this one. (It's old, in internet terms, meaning it's over a week old, but it's a goodie.) Via KesherTalk.

From Google Blogoscoped comes "What If Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft?"

One little excerpt, because it's my absolutely favorite Hotmail idiocy: "Another security measurement we’ll add is that you won’t be able to log-in with just username anymore but are required to enter the full username@gmail.com."

Why the hell does MS make me sign in with "pillageidiot -at- hotmail.com," instead of just "pillageidiot"? If I'm on a computer where I'm the only user, it doesn't matter much (because I can save my user id), but if I share access, that means I have type the whole thing out each time.

You really have to read the whole shtick, because excerpts can't do it justice.

Click here to read more . . .

Tech support

I feel your pain, buddy.

These days, it isn't enough to get your kid his own system to keep from screwing up yours. You have to do the maintenance too. For me, this means monthly sessions at each PC in the house, removing unused applications, updating virus definitions, purging spyware, and maybe defragging the drive for good measure. It is a pain, but in return I get a solemn promise that no one installs anything on the family's primary (read "my") system.

Last week, I had to get a Trojan off the kids' computer. (For you Luddites, a Trojan is a variety of computer virus, not a . . . not a . . . well, it's not what you think.) This meant researching the solution online, downloading some mysterious program, and doing the usual rub-my-head-pat-my-tummy stuff in safe mode that the solution called for.

I love my kids, but why can't they do my tech support instead of the other way around?

Click here to read more . . .

Those pills

How does the stuff of spam end up in a full-page ad in a respected magazine?

My look at this will be a little rambling, unlike my usual clear and logical prose. But I think I'm going to end up in the place I want to be, so please bear with me. I'm putting this in the extended post, so feel free to scroll down without reading it.

In my family -- in fact, in my extended family -- I'm the tech guy, for better or worse. I was always told that kids know how to deal with technology far better than adults, but while my kids enjoy using technology, they don't really care much about how it works. And to add insult to injury, I do tech support for them.

It's not just computers, mind you. Last week, our freezer's automatic ice maker, which had been turning out only a few anemic "cubes" each day, passed over the line from "not working very well" to "hardly working at all." So my wife persuaded me to take a look at it. Now, when it comes to refrigerators and freezers, my usual practice is, as Dave Barry might say, to look at it and frown in a thoughtful manner, as if I have a clue what I'm looking at. This time, however, I figured maybe I'd tinker with the thing. I went downstairs and shut off the valve to the small copper pipe that brings water up to the freezer. I pulled the refrigerator away from the wall and examined the place where the pipe connects and the place where the plastic tube goes into the freezer. My theory was that there was an ice blockage in the larger plastic tube inside the freezer, but it seemed totally inaccessible to me. After about 15 minutes of frowning, I told my wife we should call the repairman -- an experienced, nice, helpful, and relatively inexpensive fellow I'd recommend to anyone in this area.

After making this sage pronouncement, I pushed the refrigerator back to the wall and went downstairs to turn the valve back on. As I was turning it, I remembered that the last time I opened it, there was a slight leak, so I turned it carefully and got ready to adjust it to stop the leak. For some reason, there was no leak, and I kept turning and turning until it was all the way to the end.

Surprisingly, this story has a happy ending. The next morning, we found a large quantity of full-sized ice in the freezer's ice bucket. I told my wife it looked as if, in a reversal of Pharoah's dream, the seven healthy ice had eaten the seven sickly ice. And amazingly enough, we've had a full bucket of ice ever since. "The accidental repairman," I call myself.

Now, getting back to computers, I've been reading computer magazines for more than a decade, even though a lot of what's in there is way above my head. Right now, I subscribe to three. I don't know what their readership demographics are, but I would describe PC Magazine as a publication catering to earnest and somewhat boring people who treat their computer as an appliance -- the magazine has an emphasis on the practical. The second, CPU (which is short for Computer Power User), is targeted to serious hardware fiends who have a good technical background. This magazine is way above my abilities, but I still find one or two useful tidbits every month. Besides, I started subscribing because I know one of the columnists, who is the brother of someone I went to school with. I mean, I knew him when he was a teenager.

The third magazine, Maximum PC, is probably the most interesting of the three to me. I used to subscribe to the late, unlamented Home PC, which, as I recall, my son sold me when he was a Cub Scout. When Home PC went out of business nearly 10 years ago, its subscription list was purchased by the company that published Maximum PC (which was previously known as boot). Maximum PC seemed like a bad fit for mild-mannered Home PC subscribers, or so it seemed at first. I was a little startled by the magazine's attitude. It boasted, "Maximum PC, Minimum BS," and it offered "Kick Ass" awards to some of the hardware it reviewed. In general, it seemed to appeal to the younger crowd, rather than to the geezer crowd that Home PC was marketed to.

Fortunately, I let it ride for a couple of months, and I actually began to enjoy the magazine. While some of the attitude was juvenile, even by my standards, it was coupled with an irreverent approach to an industry that evoked too much "gee whiz" already. To give you an example from the current issue (July 2007), Maximum PC invited three of its editors to try to hack several different parental control programs, and it reported on their strategies and successes.

Now, I've told you that to tell you this: Maximum PC's July issue also has a remarkable ad near the back. I'm going to give you a content warning about it: Subject matter arguably NSFW, photo borderline NSFW. If you want to read it, click here for a scanned copy.

I fully understand that magazines rely on advertising to bring in revenue; subscription revenue doesn't pay the bills. Still.

This ad says a lot about what the advertiser thinks of the reader demographics -- young, insecure, and gullible. But I wonder whether the magazine's decision to run it might indicate that the magazine has the same view of its demographic. Or else, the lure of the advertising dollar is too great.

For what it's worth, I checked over at the magazine's forums, and there's a thread about this ad, and the editor of the magazine asked that anyone who objected to the ad send him an email. Most of the participants in the thread were joking about the ad, but one participant wondered whether a magazine that has a feature warning readers about web scams should be advertising with people who promote web scams. Another participant pointed out that the editors and the advertising people don't have a direct relationship.

So I'm left to ponder whether magazines should place limits on what they're willing to do to sell their advertising space. Somehow, I think the answer is yes, at least as it applies to "enhancement" ads.

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