Musings from a small IPP

Well you are of course.

Then there are spammers, whom we try to control with SPF records in the DNS to limit where your email can come from to the servers you use.

Then there are misguided websites which try to use your email address to send mail when someone fills in a form claiming to be you.  You didn’t send that mail, the website did, so the 4 players in the message should be set appropriately; they are

From — who he message purports to be from — you in this case
Sender — the website administrator
Reply address — again probably you
Error Reports — Probably should go to the website admin

Websites will usually fix this once they understand the problem.

Finally there are people doing stuff for you, for instance payment portal providers, or webservice consolidation sites such as  house or employment search services.  Most of the above applies, with the added wrinkle of you as the named responsable (EU French term for the person accountable) for the service.

The portal will correctly show you as the From address, but should not be using your email as the sending address that’s just simply wrong, if you do agree to it then the portal should provide a portal SPF record that can be included by your own SPF record, how otherwise are you supposed to maintain your email security with random contractors thinking they can send as though they are you vs someone providing a service to you?

One does not use another company’s headed notepaper after all. That’s fraud. Why then should you use another company’s email address, without making the ‘on behalf of‘ relationship clear?

After 10 years of use my Kingston Print server gave up the ghost for no discernible reason.  At this point I discovered what a rare thing a parralel print interface had become.  Still that was what was needed for my trusty old LaserJet 6MP (main virtue unchipped toner cartridges)

Quickly went on the net and found the Edimax PS1206P which plugs straight into the parallel port, and presents an RJ45 socket for the network lead.  Unfortunately it also has a wall-wart PSU, which is however switched on the low voltage side!

The only trouble with the unit is how the manual lies about the defaults.  Rather than coming up with DHCP enabled as stated, it came up on 192.168.2.2.  That was fun to find.

The validation on the advanced configuration is rather too well aligned with the low unit cost, but now configured it is working nicely.  If you use windows, and don’t worry about what you are doing it will work well for you.

So when someone phones you up, saying they are a Microsoft Technician, or someone employed by Microsoft you can be sure it is a fraud attempt. I suggest you say “Hold on a moment, be right back” and put aside the phone without hanging up so that their bill keeps growing.

The current scam is quite clever. The caller will ask you to run a program “eventvwr” which will show you the log events handled by your operating system in normal operation. They will then try to convince you this demonstrates a problem that you should pay them to help you fix.

Typically they will ask for £49 for a program for you to download. This is a really bad idea, you do not want this malware on your computer, or to give them your credit card number.

Microsoft have a system called “Microsoft Updates” for sending you patches and fixes , which you should be running regularly anyway,and the £50 the caller is asking you for is about the same amount that you paid for the Windows Operating System, bundled with your computer.

Sometimes I don’t think English is adequate.

“Here it is, I’ve configured it for you, you just have to plug the bits in.” I said.  Unfortunately I made the mistake of leaving all the ancillary bits in the box.  Next thing I hear is it coundn’t fit as there were no ports.  Router has 4 ports, 1 PC, 1 printer, 1 cable for laptop therefore 1 spare port.  “Huh?”

Then I hear “It kept getting to a screen, then not going any further.”  I should have confiscated the CDs.

This customer is extremely intelligent, but gets annoyed, and feels their mental competence is being attacked, whenever one attempts to diagnose a problem. They definiely will not pick up the phone to ask, which is why I spent 3 hours making sure that all they had to do was

Just plug it in

I’ve just experienced the perils of being left behind by Moore’s law, and lack of commercial incentive.  I’ve been on holiday in the Scottish Highlands. Let’s say upfront that the cellular network provision was significantly better than the essentially non-existant service here (30 miles from London), but none the less it was appalling.

In the early days of cellphone networks, 1-2-1 as was (T-mobile now) was subsidised by Highland Enterprise to actually get some coverage up the West Coast of Scotland, and they did a good job of getting PCN (higher frequency GSM) rolled out to these areas which really need wireless phones. For some reason I had assumed that this deployed infrastructure would have been updated with 3g service as it became available.

I can attest that it is possible, though slow, to use 350M of tethered download on 2g over a week, but it’s advisable to go for a walk when Adobe spring an upgrade to LightRoom on you leading to a 100 minute download.

I also discovered that my subscriptions to some on-line training sites absolutely require high-speed broadband, as the video feeds are designed not to buffer (an anti-piracy measure I presume).

Of course the area also has no DAB Radio, and has only this month switched to Digital TV, with significantly fewer channels than in the south, yet a massive step up from the four analogue channels that were all there was last month.

All in all a disconcerting experience. The communications links, be they road, rail, or data are essential components to ensuring the commercial health of an area, and will not happen at the behest of those already functioning in an area. They will either live with what is available or relocate. It is a job for the community as a whole (ie government / Enterprise boards) to make sure that the basics are in place to attract and retain commerce.

Sometimes one can’t go out because something is due to be delivered.

With International shipments one does not get the luxury of the 1 hour timeslots offered by the responsible on-line grocers, and sometimes the truck’s depot can be 40 miles away in dense population areas, and more than 100 miles in more open areas.

But as the truck progresses on it’s route and the various drop-offs sign for their packages,it is in continuous contact with fleet management reporting when each delivery is made.  I know that emergency services vehicles check in even more frequently giving their GPS co-ordinates to allow the dispatchers to select the best-placed  responders.

As someone waiting for a parcel I would just like to track the truck’s progress by delivered postcode translated onto an online map to at least know when it is in the area.  Not, I think, a difficult re-use of data that is already to hand.

It’s really nice that so many people share their thoughts on a regular basis, and only fair that they should get some idea of where their traffic is coming from. As a reader I’m getting massively fed up with failing to read the blogs on blogspot whose RSS feed comes through feedproxy:

Feedproxy out to lunch 40% of the time

often one can wait 2 minutes and click refresh and the redirect comes through, but I wonder how many false impressions are being recorded, and worse, how many readers are being turned off?

That’s why I run WordPress directly, and offer it to OA5‘s web hosting customers at no extra charge.