How Bad Was It
I was so bummed out about the election that I forgot about Bonfire Night, the commemoration of the Gunpowder Plot. I now understand why Anonymous wears Guy Fawkes masks.
Of course, in the US only Republicans think that blowing things up will solve anything, but they are consistent in advocating the use of force for everything that happens. That’s why they get along with the Likud Party of Israel so well.
Another reason it slipped my mind was that I was reading a book suggested by Steve Bates: Three Bags Full. It is the story of an investigation of the death of a shepherd in Ireland by his sheep written by a German. I liked it and it occupied me most of the day.
Anything was better than contemplating four more years of the Fraudster-in-chief. At least he won’t get to appoint three Florida Supreme Court Justices, thanks to the failure of Amendment 3.
20 comments
Bryan, it sounds as if you enjoyed it as much as I did. Good! 🙂
The style was in line with a Terry Pratchett novel, all that was missing was snarky footnotes. From the end notes in the book the English translation was by Anthea Bell and Ms Swann is working on a doctorate in English literature, so she could read the English version and was in contact with the English editor.
Hmm! That sounds like an interesting read. 😀 I just got a bunch of 2nd hand books today. The Rotary Club had a marque set up in the local park with a sausage sizzle and book sale with nothing over $3 (they were manly hard covers). 🙂 It was a pretty warm day, with a dry wind that didn’t help.
Tomorrow, i get to prevent a divorce or murder (it’s a tossup) thanks to Russian mafia malware. Seriously… some people are soooo damned stupid! They don’t have an AV and have had several infections over the years. Their daughter disables MS Windows Defender because “it annoys her with stupid question!” (Seriously! She said that today!) Anyway, the wife went to go online, and was greeted with a message that their PC was locked and everything encrypted because they were guilty of d/l child porn and they had to pay the FBI/CyberCom etc. $100 to get it unlocked! She blamed the husband and threatened a divorce etc. LOL He called me, I went over and explained that 1. No real western Police org would do that (yet), and 2. We don’t live in the USA so they have zero jurisdiction anyway! It took me ages to explain these simple (to me and the dog anyway) concepts! I’ve been d/l all the latest tools and will probably spend a few hours or more fixing it all tomorrow instead of reading one of my new books as I was planning. I told them I’d charge $200 take it or leave it! Normally for a friend it’d be free or maybe $50. But honestly! I know this will happen again, so maybe the fee will make them more careful since there is little common sense in evidence! I’ll also create a standard (non-admin) user acc’t for the daughter and lock it down so she can’t change anything!
I’ve heard there are others around here that have been infected with Ransomware… I think I’ll make $200 the standard rate! I need some expensive s/w and a couple hardware bit’s. If people want to be stupid, they can pay for it! I have better things to do, and my time is money lately (why I haven’t been around much. Really busy!)
I don’t mind helping people out, but there are limits. What’s that saying? “Givers need to set limits. Because takers rarely do!”
Oh! And I’ll change their password which is “banana” and they use for everything and have for years! I’ll setup a policy with a minimum 8 mixed characters and a dictionary check so they can’t use stupid passwords! May even force them to change it every 3 Months. Honestly! The things I have to do to save people from themselves! Should charge $500! Most PC service places charge $80-$120/hr!
Malware Tips: Ransomeware
In the real world form of this scam they would have gotten a registered letter from the lawyers from RIAA or MPPA demanding thousands for d/l music or videos. If the daughter plays games it probably came from a game ‘cheat’ site. A former neighbor’s kids were constantly asking to access those sites, and I used my old laptop to let them. It was always out for hours afterwards as the AV scan was removing all the crap that the sites would attempt to download. I would clear space for the huge log file that would be generated from the scans, and then wait while all of the new and interesting garbage was sent to the AV home base for analysis.
These people need the industrial strength, cover everything version of Kaspersky. I don’t use it because I don’t do IM or many of the other things it covers, but if you have a child to young adult on your machine, it will take care of business.
Of course, the best solution I can think of for the ‘child’ situation is the Raspberry Pi. You just dupe the SD card and let them do what they want on the ‘Net. If there is a catastrophe, you plug in a new card and reformat the corrupted card – No Worries, M8! Wean them from M$ and introduce them to Linux and Android.
Your friend’s daughter would probably have a meltdown if you did it, but think of it as a learning experience. She obviously doesn’t appreciate the warnings that what she is about to do is dangerous, as in “Do you really want to install this software from an unknown publisher?”.
Charging $200 is not unreasonable as most of these damn things will require hand-editing the registry to really get rid of them, as well as search and delete multiple copies of the offending virus. Given your prevailing wage rates, all time you spend after 2½ hours is savings, and we both know this is going to be a long process to really get rid of the current virus as well as the other crap that has built up over time.
[For non-Australians: Marque is a stall or canopy and sausage sizzle is a hotdog stand.]
LOL I’ve been up all night d/l & setting up a couple USB pen drives as bootable with various tool kit’s. Also setup burning bootable CD’s w/ various tools because it’s an old PC that may not recognize a bootable USB. Haven’t had to do this for a few years now, so everything I had was out of date (except what i have on my own machines of course). It’s 6 AM now. I’ll grab a few hours sleep and go get it over with.
I should have mentioned the daughter is 24 and has a 6 yo of her own. If you met her, you’d think she was a bobble-head teen though, and she dresses accordingly (next to nothing as tight and revealing as possible, not that she has much to reveal. More hope than substance!) 😉 She’s also definitely a full supporter of the makeup industry! Not the brightest light in the shop for sure! Feel sorry for her daughter. Your suggestion has merit! Sadly, she can only cope with IE & barely her iPhone, which she asked me to look at because it was broken. She had it locked! *SIGH* She also said she wanted to get a 2nd hand MacBook off eBay and asked what she should get! I said I wouldn’t get it from eBay and left it at that! Wouldn’t matter what I said, some people never listen, and others wouldn’t understand anyway.
I’ve concluded after many decades, that some people shouldn’t have kids, own a pet of any kind, or operate anything more complex than a spoon or fork! And I DON”T mean people with disabilities! I’ve worked with many, and they do better than many supposedly *normal* human’s!
Almost right! 😉 Marque is like a big open sided tent, and a sausage sizzle is generally beef and/or pork sausages on a BBQ, put on a slice of bread diagonally with/without grilled onion and/or grated cheese and/or tomato sauce (ketchup/catsup) or mustard. We also call them a ‘snag sanger’ (Aussie slang). 😉 Cost $2 with proceeds to a charity sponsored by Rotary. 🙂
BTW… Glad you had a chance to enjoy a book. 😀
Oh! I’m designing a basic low-cost gaming system for a friend’s teen boy’s Xmas gift (about $1,500). The lad came over and he was pretty switched on and paid attention. So, I don’t mind helping him out. Anyway, he noticed your blog on one of my FF tab’s and I told him about you, and he was interested. So I showed him your service/aircraft site, and he was very respectful after reading about the time you walked/ran from a crash, and the tragic loss of Rivet Amber. He did think you might be a little crazy being based at Shemya! And I couldn’t honestly disagree! 😉 😀 (Though, the same could be said for me with some of the places I served!) LOL
Nice kid. A rare pleasure! 😀
You could try a safe start and going back one restore point, but a lot of these suckers wipe restore points, so it probably won’t work. It is going to a real pain rooting that sucker out of there.
If she wants a used Macbook she should be checking out Amazon.au. Amazon is a plague on humanity, but they keep their vendors/store owners on a tight leash and you get what you ordered. Her biggest problem is she doesn’t know what to order. The big used vendors are selling machines coming off leases, so all of the parts tend to be there, along with the standard software load.
I know a couple of guys who repair cellphones and they make a lot of money off iPhone users who lock their phones, so don’t knock it. I would limit it to spoons, the rubberized version for small children as forks can be dangerous in the wrong hands and tricky to remove after a family dinner goes wrong [one of the joys of ‘domestic dispute’ calls]. You are absolutely correct about people with real disabilities. You give them a job and they do it the way they were taught every time with no complaints.
A canopy is a sideless tent and they are often used with stalls, usually display tables where goods are sold. Other than using bread instead of the special rolls used in the US, that is a hotdog stand. The good ones add chili, sauerkraut, and pickle relish to your choices of condiments. Stalls can be commercial or charitable, but hotdog stands are almost always charitable down here.
Shemya had real beds, running water, and hot meals which were not part of a number of places I flew from, and few, if any of the places you went. It was the most isolated from humanity, but in other places the humanity was attempting to kill me, so it wasn’t that bad. There were a number of ‘mental health’ med-evacs from the island, but it wasn’t a really large number. Anybody who flies is a little crazy, but we didn’t jump out of perfectly good aircraft which is really crazy, especially when jump pay was half of flight pay.
He sounds like he might make something of himself, if the politicians don’t steal all of his opportunities.
Job done. Was a tough sucker! Took a few hours. Had to boot off a CD (used AntiWinBlock 2.9.1 live CD). Recovered their passwords and settings. Then ran the Antimalware scanners to clean the system which took about an hour to run. After that, I could boot into safe mode and run Bitdefender to clean up what was left. Reconfigured the system, reinstalled a few app’s and installed a 2nd HDD for data/backups. They only had a 250 GB HDD. Got a 1 TB for $48. Got them a 3 yr BitDefender Internet Security license for $75. They had Norton AV which had expired years ago! Wouldn’t have helped with this invasive root kit/trojan anyway. Got paid $250 (they paid extra as they found out that all the local PC shops said they would just format/reinstall win and they lose everything for $160. 🙂
Now they want me to get them a new AiO Printer/scanner/copier/fax (Theirs just died, was 6 yo) and a WiFi router/modem (the router they have is 5 yr old and slow) and adapter for the PC. Decided on a TP-LINK Archer D7 AC1750, which supports VDSL (for NBN next year) and ADSL2+, dual band WiFi & uses the BCM chipset (one of the most reliable for use in Aus). RRP is $215, but I can get it for $155. Also the TP-Link Archer T4U AC1200 WiFi dual band USB Adapter for the PC for $40. For the printer, was going for an Epson Workforce AiO for their home/SOHO setup, but just got a great deal on the Brother MFC-J470DW Wireless Compact Inkjet AiO with duplex scan/print for $115 (normally $159). They paid me another $50 for doing that, almost felt guilty because that took me all of 20 min’s. Still… They offered. 😀
What’s wrong with jumping outa aircraft m8? After a couple HALO jumps, any carnival ride is as boring as white paper! LOL Rappelling out of choppers into a hot LZ was fun also. 😉 😀 At least I got paid pretty well to do crazy shit I guess. 😉 Still, in hindsight… *shrug* 😉 We had plenty of running water in most places. Just had to filter, add a little chlorine then boil it and say a voodoo prayer. Slept on some soft rocks too (moss & lichen covered). 😉 LOL
I really hate the bloody rootkit crap whether it’s a malware or DRM. I hate it almost as much as the worthless AV that is sold under Peter Norton’s name. It came with a lot of computers and it is a PITA to eliminate when you finally admit that it is worthless and kills speed by hogging resources.
Even for Australian dollars $160 to reformat and reinstall is outrageous. It takes time for the computer to do it, but you don’t have to watch it in the shop, just start it.
You earned your money by getting them good prices on decent equipment, and established the principle of getting paid for what you know and do for a living. Nice work!
Some of that running water of which you speak was Run Away! water based on the other creatures that gathered there, including non-human creatures.
You had two chutes, we only had one and we didn’t get to pack them, so I’ll stay on the aircraft if it isn’t burning and parts aren’t falling off because there was usually someone on the ground who didn’t like my aircraft very much and would have liked to have seen me hanging below that 28-foot circle of fabric out in the open. Generally the HA wasn’t an option, but the LO was guaranteed if you had to leave one of our aircraft in some areas that we are both familiar with.
Rocks, you got to sleep on rocks and not mud? It must have been nice. The guys on the ground would get back from one their extended jaunts in the woods and just burn everything they had on as it was rotting away. Even a couple of days did nothing good for leather boots or your feet.
Yeah, rootkits are a pain. Went back today for a follow up and generally set up accounts for the daughter & granddaughter (installed her favorite games and eLearning s/w, she likes painting by numbers and interactive stories) 🙂 Just waiting for the new h/w to arrive later this week then I’ll set all that up. 🙂 They offered to pay me again, but I said no. Quite adamantly. I am quite content with what I have, and more would be greed and abuse of their generosity. I’m not a *taker*. 🙂 If they were significantly wealthy, and not very nice, I’d take everything I could get! Funny thing though… they are the ones who give the least, except when it makes them look good to those whose opinions they care about. Ironic, isn’t it? 🙂
I and my team had some very special training over a couple years. Part of that, was building a tolerance to certain poisonous substances, and certain drugs. The human body is truly amazing in it’s adaptability, given enough time. 🙂 We spent much of those years feeling ill. 🙂 One of the substances was arsenic. Unfortunately, whilst we can build a tolerance, it’s a metal. And the body has a problem disposing of it. Whilst it saved my life on a specific occasion, I now live on Pantoprazole – and some other med whose name escapes me right now – because the arsenic caused my stomach to over produce acid. I almost died from liver failure about 15 years ago, but a good Naturopath saved me when I told him about the arsenic and other substances. Took a year to clean me out so that my eyes were back to their proper colour and my skin was no longer a mustard colour. 🙂 Things the Mil/Int industry forget to mention. Given the short life expectancy of people who do those jobs, I suppose it’s somewhat understandable. 🙂
So yeah, I became quite used to ingesting toxic substances. 🙂 Water-boarding and other fun games too! 🙂
I slept in worse things than mud. Many of the places we went, we slept up trees (if there were any). Ground was too dangerous. 🙂
At least the government was quite generous when it came to our gear. 🙂 They had to be. Wouldn’t do you have their massive investment in time and money be lost because of cheap boots etc. 😀
After all that excitement, I prefer the mundane and ordinary these days. But lately… I’ve been getting *involved*! Signing petitions (and with my real name too LOL) Even calling out Aus politicians in the media. We have had a couple win’s, And I have to say, I feel more useful now than I did in the Biz! I’ll become a nuisance eventually no doubt. 🙂 But then, I always was! LOL *shrug* 😀
here’s a couple petitions I signed and helped pass on:
Bayer release drug for Endometriosis sufferers in Australia
WE WON! We’ve just heard from Bayer – thanks to more than 74,500 of you who signed our petition on change.org and wrote personal letters in, Bayer will release Visanne (Dienogest) in Australia early next year!
Drug companies. Scum of the Earth!
Catholic Health Care: my sister desperately needs spinal surgery
Gee… I am so not surprised the Church cares more for money than someone they promised to care for. What was that about Satan being the Deceiver? I guess they would know.
And this one! This makes me so angry, I could consider using my old training!
Attorney General: I was gang raped when I was 20 and you’ve delayed compensation 6 years
After more than 120,000 signatories, the premier finally deigned to to contact Katrina to patronize her!
I am really getting so tired of all this m8. Something is going to have to change, and soon.
In Jewish thought the anonymous gift is the only kind that really counts. When you take credit for your ‘charity’, you negate the benefit as far as the ‘final judgment’ is concerned. I think about that every time I read a story that includes ‘made possible by a generous gift from’ whoever, because most of those gifts are from people who got rich at the expense of others, usually under-paid workers. Some people just don’t want to admit who they really are and spend their entire lives hiding behind a facade of their personal delusions.
Yes, the child will probably benefit from her own account tailored to her needs and likes. At least she won’t have to wade through the dross her mother collects. When she’s old enough she will figure out how to break out of the restrictions, so it’s a good learning tool. 🙂
Trees are good, especially when you start in trees. It isn’t always possible to free the canopy when you land in trees, but you have to get away from the area quickly, and then find a good place to be invisible until the ground search leaves the area. It’s a lot easier to stay hidden in the trees than on the ground in a lot of areas.
We didn’t deal with toxins, but we were definitely over medicated. Uppers, downers, and antibiotics were handed out like penny candy at the same time command was having a fit over marijuana and hash. I did not get it at all. I also didn’t get buying heroin when all the medkits had morphine caps. Weird time, and not a surprise that so many vets came back with drug problems.
Governments all seem to think that the troops are going to die, so there’s no point in putting a lot of money into veteran benefits. To them the higher survival rates of the wounded is a bug, not a feature of military medicine.
I read about that victim compensation case. All they have to do is pass a bill and the problem goes away, but they don’t seem able or willing to do it. WTF, over? Does the premier have a parliamentary majority or not? Even the Florida legislature speeds these bills through, because it is ‘feel good’ politics at election time. Hell, they even speed wrongful conviction bills through, although they are sure ‘the guy was probably guilty of something’.
Everyone is guilty of something, according to many politicians and the wealthy, existing is one of the crimes apparently.
Katrina Keshishian is one tough lady! I wonder is she is actually a redhead? 😉 😀 She isn’t going to quit, and it seems the politicians are realizing that! She isn’t just fighting for herself, but the many other victims. She can be proud. 😀
Significant win in gang-rape victim Katrina Keshishian’s fight for justice
I wouldn’t call it a “significant win”, but it’s a step in the right direction.
I also received an email from the sister of the catholic Nurse with some partial good news. I’ll just post the email:
It’s a numbers game now. The more who disprove, the more likely something will happen. Although, historically, the Catholic church is loath to change any standing on such issues as they know it would open the floodgates on their many crimes against humanity. Look at how many decades people have been waiting for them to acknowledge the rampant pedophilia and other abuse within their ranks, and put a stop to it rather than being a safe haven for pedophiles. *shrug*
It’s called projection – they know how many crimes they have gotten away with because of money and position, so they think everyone else is just as guilty. For them the crime is being dumb or poor enough to get caught and prosecuted.
Ms Keshishian has no intention of letting politicians victimize her again. She’s right morally and legally. She was due the compensation and politicians changed the law to avoid paying it after they failed to award it in a timely fashion. I don’t doubt for a second that the award was stalled to await a change in the law.
Especially under the previous two Popes the Church has become a corporate entity with all of the ethical problems of that structure. They deny responsibility just like BP or Dow to protect the hierarchy/management.
You are right about Katrina. 😀 She has my utmost admiration, and she’s becoming the darling of the media! Seriously bad news for the stupid polies! LOL
Here’s an update on the Nurse:
Great to hear all went well, 😀 Now, for the next phase! Perhaps this family will get a win against the notoriously unforgiving & unrepenting Catholic Church! Could start a landslide! Ohhhhh… I really hope so! (I can dream.) 😉 😀
I’m also involved in this petition “Toughen the regulations for Foreign Investment in Australia by Simon Hosking”. We made a submission to the House Standing Committee on Economics. It’s early days, and this will be a very tough battle!
Info & updates here:
Toughen the regulations for Foreign Investment in Australia
I’ve also been involved with the Climate Change Campaign by the Australian Conservation Foundation. Just got a great email from the Campaign Manager, Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
It’s nice to be a part of even a partial victory. It’s early days, and there is a lot to do. Still, it is nice to know that thousands of Aussies are intent on fighting Abbott and his greedy cronies. 😀
Every once in a while the ‘good guys’ win one, but it isn’t easy to overcome the multiple advantages of the entrenched money.
Abbott’s catering to the wishes of the extraction industries shows a basic misunderstanding of reality – there is a finite amount of minerals available, and when they run out you are screwed. Look at the markets for oil and iron ore – the prices are dropping and may not rise again for an extended period. They have been too dependent on the Chinese market, and that market is changing.
Failing to account for climate change and to expand and modernize manufacturing is a long term formula for failure and people are starting to notice.
The Church and extraction industries are the past, and you need to embrace the future to grow. The only thing worse than standing still is moving backwards when the rest of the world is going forward.
Yeah, it is nice to get a win. Though, I’ve learned that good/bad depends on perspective. 😉 I’m sure that there are many who consider me *bad*. However, since I don’t care what people in that group think about much of anything, it doesn’t bother me. 😀 As Holmes said (Sherlock: The Reichenbach Fall): “Oh, I may be on the side of the angels, but don’t think for one second that I am one of them.” I think you get my point. 😉 🙂
I decided earlier this year that unless I am willing to fight for what I believe in, I have no right to complain about it. Or I should say, I remembered. I was that way for a big part of my life, until some years ago. I guess it just became all too hard, and I think I lost a lot of my confidence in deciding who or what was worth fighting for. That and that I was spending most of my time just trying to survive. *shrug*
Here’s another Indie project I found quite interesting! I think primarily because if it really succeeds, it will piss off Apple, Google & M$! So it’s worth it for that! LOL Given that they have raised over $933k for a $380k goal (almost 250%) since the campaign started Nov 19, I don’t think I am alone in that! 😀 However, I do also love the idea of it, so I ordered one. 🙂
It’s a tablet with a new fully open sources OS, that is fully Android compatible, and also comes with root access (unlike Android & iOS that are locked). There are ways around that, but they generally prove to be problematic. 🙂
Jolla Tablet – world’s first crowdsourced tablet
Good thing I’ve made some reasonable money this year for a change! 😀
I’m certain that the people in my town would consider me evil incarnate if they read this blog. Like I care what they think 😈 Most of them have lost the ability to actually think and just blindly follow demagogues.
The tablet looks interesting, but I really don’t want another device at the moment. If I didn’t have the iPad, I would definitely get one, just to play with at the other house. I may still get one if the iPad dies, because it sounds like it will be cheaper than trying to get an iPad fixed.
The majority of human’s are sheeple. *shrug* Much easier to blindly follow than think. I think we should put them in a pasture and let them graze. The rest of us would be better off. 🙂
The Jolla Tablet project is going gangbusters! I’ve been watching several tech projects, but this is very telling. It reached it’s initial funding goal of $380,000 in just over 2 hours! They’ve sold the first two production runs in 3 days, and have already almost sold the third. Funding has reached $1,057,308, and nobody has even seen one yet! Considering the first batch won’t even begin shipping until May, it’s almost crazy. LOL
Steve would be drooling in his grave! 😉 😀
I think people are pissed with the *big three*. 🙂
Kryten, the kids in my office aren’t pissed at all about Android. They buy the Google Nexus devices, which here in the US are *not* locked down, and hack them in various ways. One of my officemates who rides a motorcycle, for example, has his Android phone not only wake him up in the morning, it also tells him whether he should drive his car or ride his motorcycle based on the weather report (it looks at the expected highs, lows, and chance of rain, if it’s going to be too hot, too cold, or rainy it tells him to drive, based on threshholds he set).
That said, I think they’d like this Jolla tablet thing. Except they’re not much into tablets. Tablets don’t fit into their skinny jeans. LOL.
It would be nice to relocate them all and their ‘dogs’ to Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Montana so we could ignore them, Kryten.
The privacy features of the Jolla are what appeal to me most, with the Android app compatibility coming in second.