Oh, no, PETA is at it again...

PETA, or People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, is always generating new headlines, and they are very good in generating publicity with various stunts. Here are two examples...

Pescadero State Beach in Pescadero, California is slated for closure due to a severe budget pinch in California. PETA offered to keep the beach open by paying... If the state agrees to change the park's name to "Sea Kitten State Park", and ban fishing at that spot.

Why? Pescadero means "fisherman" in Spanish. And "sea kitten" is what PETA wants you to call "fish". According to them, "fish" is a derogatory term, so to bring "respect" to fish, everyone should start calling them "sea kittens".

Elsewhere... In Iowa State Fair, two local sculptors want to create a sculpture of Michael Jackson with butter as homage. PETA decided it's not a good idea, and suggested "Earth Balance" Vegan spread instead.


So, are the PETA guys just plain nuts, or is there some genius behind that nuttiness?

Argh! Incompetent tech support folks...

Image via CrunchBase

A month (or possibly several months ago, when I was still using NAV2007) I had inserted a VCD into the drive, and on the VCD is a VCDPlayer program set to autorun, but it's infected with W32.Pinfi.

NAV2007 caught it right away, and prevented the VCD from auto-running. I played it with VLC, no problem. But somehow it went into unresolved threat queue. The VCD has since been nuked (I made a copy of it, without that player program).

In June 2009, I installed NIS2009. And somehow the unresolved threat list migrated over. So every time I have a full scan, I get that unresolved threat.

I just spent TWO HOURS in online chat with Norton Tech Support this afternoon. The first guy, upon hearing the word W32.Pinfi, immediatley forwarded me to "Virus and Spyware Removal Department", and I got a regular case ID as well as a priority ID.

The V&SRD guy will NOT believe me that my computer itself is unaffected (and uninfected). I told him MULTIPLE TIMES that every scan, quick or full, came back clean, ever since install of NIS2009 in June 1, 2009. I gave him the whole history of this problem. He simply kept pushing that technician remote scan. I asked him how can NIS2009 itself cannot find the virus, he ignored my question, and kept droning that a technician remote scan will solve all of my issues and problems.

I flat out asked him "How can I purge the unresolved threat list?" And he went back to that sales pitch again.

Finally, I asked him how much, and was absolutely flabbergasted when the reply was $99.

You see, I got my 3-license NIS2009 FREE after $50 rebate. And I've so far only used ONE license. So asking me to pay $99 for a 'scan' on a computer that doesn't even have a virus, just to prove to Norton that the program has problems, is simply out of the question. I ended the chat session 30 seconds later, absolutely exasperated with Norton Tech Support.

And I can see that I am NOT the only one who has experienced this problem. There are MULTIPLE TOPICS on this very issue, and the solution posted above, original by Tufe, and reposted by Quad, did solve my problem (I also found the original post by Tufe last December).

So, Symantec / Norton, you guys need to do two things:

1) Solve this problem in NIS. Clearly, your program should NOT flag a risk on a removable drive without a way to purge it. Either offer up an IGNORE button, and file the risk under "ignore risks" with optional purge command, or simply be SMARTER about the device's capabilities. After all, why offer to "remove" a virus from a file on a CD? Just warn the user, and offer to eject, but don't force the user.

2) Stop the heavy-handed sales pitch. I thought the 2nd guy I was talking to was a 2nd level tech. Turns out he's even MORE clueless than the first tech I talk to. All he can do is recite the standard sales pitch and he's rather pushy about it. If he can't help me, he should just say so. Clearly neither actually tried to understand my problem, as the solution was in their forum all along.

I have been using Symantec/ Norton products for a VERY long time. In fact, I wrote some of the programs that print those yellow labels that go on the bottom of retail boxes. I like Symantec products, but if this is the current state of tech support, I am worried about Symantec's future.

Buying used cars, argh!

Image via Wikipedia

Buying a used car from private party off Craigslist is full of suspects nowadays.

My dad needs a new van, so I was looking on Craigslist, and found a couple candidates. I went with a friend. When I got there, the guy has no less than HALF DOZEN vehicles for sale. Alarm bells started going off in my head. This ain't "private party" at all.

Then he said he doesn't have room to park all his vehicles, we'll need to go to a "lot" about 15 blocks away to see the vehicle in question. Hmmm... Okay, I'll bite.

Once we got there, the vehicle is in immaculate condition... In places that are visible. However, my friend is an old hand at this. He told the guy to check on something else, while he checked under the hood and unscrewed a cap with a hose going into a reservoir... Outside the cap the hose is pristine. INSIDE the bottle, there's a TON of crud attached to the hose. In other words, the engine compartment was steam-cleaned multiple times, but the cooling system is in serious need of a flush, with a lot of crud inside. In other words, this vehicle is a ticking timebomb. I'm surprised that the water pump actually works.

We thanked his time and got out of there.

New month, new rant... Intersection panhandlers

You probably seen them in and around San Francisco... they stand in popular intersections, usually near highway onramps with a traffic signal. When cars are stuck, they walk between cars with a sign hoping for handouts. I've even seen two working the same intersection... One does the left side and the other does the right side.

Then there are the oddball ones that wave a funny sign, like "I admit, I just want a beer", or even one that flashes the victory sign.

Don't they know that "aggressive panhandling" is ILLEGAL in San Francisco? And a lot of intersections prohibits panhandling? AND there's a law that you can't panhandling within 100 ft of an ATM? Yet I see people doing that every day.

The problem is there's a "Homeless Coalition" in San Francisco, that are defending the offenders, and they are using various tactics to get the tickets dismissed, often without even the defendents appearing in court. In fact, it's believed that 85% of the "quality of life" tickets are dismissed outright. These are attorneys working pro bono out of the some of the biggest law offices in town, in fact.

The point of the tickets is to get the homeless into treatment programs, and for that, they have to appear in front of a judge in court. But the lawyers, often demanding an incident report (which must be filed, admitted into evidence, and all that) is getting tickets dismissed due to lack of such a report (which is NOT REQUIRED, by the way), often over the objection of the prosecution, completely defeating the purpose of such laws.

But the Homeless Coalition claims that the tickets are merely harassment of people who are down on their luck and need to panhandle to get by.

Police and DA are getting tired of such circular reasoning. Think about it... It's like saying if you provide services I would not be breaking the law. It's completely backwards, as you should not be breaking the law in the first place. As one cop put it, "It's like saying 'if you had bought me new tires I would not have ran that stop sign.'"

And don't people know giving those guys cash doesn't really help them? It's like feeding wild bears... it makes them dependent on handouts of human food so they that will no longer hunt / scavenge in the wild. Same with panhandlers. Once they know they can make X dollars per hour doing this, do you really think they'll go get a job?

Business based on tricking people

The only business that relies on tricking people is magicians. Anybody else, and we call them crooks, and put them in jail.

Except the guys who manage to toe a fine line between warning you not to be stupid, and make you fall for the scam any way.

Here's one example... In California, every corporation incorporated here have to file an annual "minutes" with $25 processing fee that basically updates the government on how your corporation is doing, and who are responsible. Here is one such form:



However, there are some "legal scammers" out there that want to do the same work, except charge you $75 more, for a total of $100. But you do all the work any way, since you get to fill out THEIR version of the form, all the same info. They just copy your info onto a real form, and pocket the extra $75 you sent in. Sounds like easy work, doesn't it? Here's such a form:



He's making money even if he got a response of just 1% (i.e. only 1 out of 100 fall for this "legal scam"). Yikes, too bad real businesses don't profit like that.

I only just now sorta realized how old I am...

I was looking through my credit card statement when I realized that I was STILL paying $9.99 a month for America Online. Yes, AOL. So I called them and canceled. Of course, the rep have scripts trying to keep you as a paying member... They suggest this, suggest that, and only finally reluctantly let you go. Though one interesting item did emerge... I was an AOL member for... twenty years and eight months.

Gee, that means I subscribed when I was just out of high school. Though that would make sense. I subscribed back in 1988, when there's this thing called PC-Link (which is derived from Quantum Link, for Commodore 64 and 128 users). In 1989 the company renamed itself America Online, and redesigned the software for GEOS, and later Windows.

So why did I pay for AOL at all? At the time (a couple years back) I downgraded to their $9.99 limited plan as I want to keep my websites up. I used to run a website called "Star Trek Nexus" that indexed other Star Trek websites and even assigned some ratings. It was manually kept and extremely tedious to the point I stopped after a year or so... I was in school at the time. AOL canceled their webspace late 2008. So you can no longer access Star Trek Nexus... and the Nexus Annex, and the Novel Annex... plus my old website: Kasey's Korner.

Most of the pages are available at Internet Archive's Wayback Machine... But not all of them.

How the mighty has fallen...

See, even Miss USA agrees...

Image via Wikipedia

Miss USA Kristen Dalton, the winner that night over Miss California Carrier Perjean, was interviewed by Al Roker of NBC's Today Show. When the topic came up, she stated:

"The beautiful thing about America is that we have the right to choose what partner we want to love, commit and spend the rest of our lives with," Kristen said.

"I think that all couples should be able to be recognized legally, to enter into a union. Whether or not that should be defined as marriage, I'll leave that to politicians."

http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2009/04/kristen-dalton-supports-gay-marriage-carrie-prejean/

So essentially speaking, she is in support of "gay unions". Whether that's called marriage or not, that's a different problem. It's a more political answer than Carrie's, but that's because she's had a lot more time to think about it. And in all fairness, it's NOT that different from Carrie's answer:

“Well I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one way or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. You know what, in my country, in my family, I do believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, no offense to anybody out there. But that’s how I was raised and I believe that it should be between a man and a woman. Thank you.”

In other words, she believes in gay unions. She just don't think it should be called "marriage".

Perhaps gay activists are getting a bit too big for their britches? At this rate, I'll have to join the conservatives, even though I consider myself a moderate.