QuickTime UpDater runs adware process ‘Moozy’ ( DeleteMe1.exe )

Today I allowed the apple auto-updater to install what I thought was an updated version of QuickTime,  the apple updater ran and detected an update to QuickTime was required, on attempting to install this the installer appeared to hang, and was manually terminated. Subsequently SpyBot resident protection detected the process ‘moozy’ an adware plugin running from Quicktime plugins directory as ‘deleteMe1.exe’.

The following is the Spybot Search and destroy Resident protection log entries ;-

22/05/2012 18:41:44 Allowed (based on user decision) value "QuickTime Task" (new data: ""C:\Program Files\QuickTime\QTTask.exe" -atboottime") added in System Startup global entry!
22/05/2012 18:42:29 Allowed (based on user decision) value "QuickTime Plugin Install" (new data: "C:\Program Files\QuickTime\Plugins\DeleteMe1.exe") added in System Startup global entry!
22/05/2012 18:42:29 Encountered and terminated Moozy in C:\Program Files\QuickTime\Plugins\DeleteMe1.exe!
22/05/2012 18:46:45 Allowed (based on user decision) value "QuickTime Plugin Install" (new data: "") deleted in System Startup global entry!

As you can see from the above it appears that Resident caught them red handed !

Google complicit in UK premium rate phone number scams?

So you need a phone number fast right, and you know that if you call directory enquiries from your mobile or land line you are going to get charged for the call, so you Google the service you need,..

As an example let’s use the UK National Health Service direct health advice line, NHS Direct. This line is an 0845 number that’s free to call from a land line. You Google it and the first result is this site :

http://www.medhelpline.co.uk/nhsdirect.html

which offers to connect you to NHS Direct through an 0906 number which is actually PREMIUM RATED! (Only the words ‘premium rated’ do not appear anywhere near the number itself, Well you’d think that most people would not fall for this scam, but at 4am in the morning, perhaps your having palpitations? taken too much of your medication? or are having other symptoms that have you in a panic?)

Looking closer at the Google search we can see that the legitimate website entry NHS Direct, has been pre-empted by a paid avert which is barely distinguishable from the genuine search results. The scammers have used Google Adwords advertising to gazump the real service, and the spoof website even uses the same style as the legitimate one. This is just one example among many.

Now the question is , is Google aware that its adsense program is being exploited in this way or are they quite happy to continue making revenues from such scam advertising? The advertising that appears in your search results is clearly being deliberately disguised as a legitimate search result, google itself exploiting the tendency for users to take the first result in the list. And the next question to ask google is , what if any checking are they doing on sites advertised in this way?

If you have been scammed into calling a premium rate number you can report the scam to Actionfraud.org.uk

General Increase in benefits : UK Government Claw backs

From 12th April 2012 there is scheduled to be an increase in the General Level of Benefits, this will mean that for example the basic rate of Incapacity benefit, long term will become £99.15 per week. The incapacity age addition will be £5.90 making to total weekly benefit for a single sick and disabled claimant over the age of 45 to be £105.05 per week, from a previous figure of £99.85

However those who are also in receipt of housing benefit, possibly the majority of such claimants face a considerable government claw back which will come into effect on 13th August 2012 when protection ends against the governments reduction in LHA to £80.77 This will be the second such reduction in LHA which will impact the sick and disabled during this government. Housing benefit is an essential form of income for benefit claimants and is being systematically targeted by this government for cuts. Housing benefit is calculated using a figure determined by government of how much the law says a sick and disabled person needs to live on, this figure is £67.50 plus £28.85 for sickness or disability. £96.35 in all.  If this figure is not increased on 12th April, or by 13th August sick and disabled people face a considerable reduction in the total amount of benefit awarded.

Housing benefit awarded prior to 12 April :         £84.02

Housing benefit projected after 12 April if the amount the law says a sick and disabled person need to live on remains the same :  £80.64

Housing benefit projected after 13th August :      £75.11

The net effect of all this is that the general increase in benefits for all those on incapacity benefit of £5.20 per week stands to be offset by a reduction of housing benefit of £8.91 per week, leaving them on average £3.71 per week worse off DESPITE the general increase in benefit. And that sick and disabled people will now have to pay on average £12 per week towards their rent to make up the housing benefits shortfall. Where prior to the incumbency of this UK government LHA in most cases covered all of their rent at its previous level.

This is simply the final straw in this governments’ scapegoating of the sick and disabled, the amounts seem tiny until you look at them as a percentage of weekly income, in this case a reduction of 11% during the course of this government.

The Great Mobile Broadband Rip-off

Are you a mobile broadband user? If you are a heavy user of mobile broadband and this is your only form of connection you are doubtless quite happy paying £10-£15 per month for your 3-5 GB data allowance, after all wherever you are the connection is perfect and and the data allowance you get for the money is more than enough, isn’t it? No? Surely you jest, surely mobile broadband is just as good as fibre optic in terms of connectivity and price and even better because you can use it at any time and place? No? so are you trying to say that Mobile Broadband suppliers have been Bullshitting us and ripping us off? Well who would believe it!

Of course if you are a light or occasional user of Mobile Broadband you well know that you are being ripped off. If Mobile Broadband is something that you only really need when you are not at home or in the office, something that you would only need to use two or 3 times a year because you have wireless broadband at home or in the office then you like me have experienced having to top up every time you want to connect using your dongle, usually £10 at a time for a data allowance that will expire in 30 days. But to be fair most carriers are now offering a pay-per-day option, usually £2 for 250MB that expires in 24 hrs. That sounds fair doesn’t it? after all that’s £60 per month for daily use and a data allowance of 7GB. Humm well maybe not so fair when you put it like that! When you put it like that it sounds like blatant usury.

Here’s an example of what recently happened to me : My Cable connection went out at peak time on Saturday afternoon, so I phoned them and they said it was an area fault and it should be fixed within 24 hours. Ok so that’s 24 with no TV and no broadband ,. so I got my mobile broadband dongle out (3 mobile) and of course  I had no data allowance left cause it had expired, it being some months since I had needed to use it. So what are my options? well I can pay £10 for a month of pay as you go, or £3 for one days allowance of 500MB. Fine they said my broadband will be back in 24 hrs so I paid my £3 and got connected. THEN my TV came back online, THEN my cable broadband came back online,..

IN 24 hours my data allowance will have EXPIRED and I wont have actually used more than a few bytes ,. To say I am unhappy with 3 Mobile Broadband is the understatement of the century!

Mobile Broadband data allowance expiry is the biggest rip off thought up by the mobile communications industry, these people need to be sent to jail for fraud and usury. And what is OFCOM doing about it ? well looking on their website there is NOT EVEN AN OPTION to complain about this. Thanks bunches OFCOM, you were no help at all.

Windows live writer – test post

This is a test post , the idea is to verify that I have configured Windows Live Writer correctly to access and post to my blog.

You too can do this if you have Windows Live installed on your PC, I have been using it for some time however when my old laptop blew up , died a death and became defunct I  lost this functionality until now that is. Unfortunately all my drafts etc are now on the old laptop,..  anyone know how to get the hard drive out of a busted lappie and recover the data ? LOL

Some advice for amateur website developers

I recently heard about another website that has been stolen from under the noses of its developers, which happens more often than you might think these days. Good ideas are at a premium and if your idea takes off online you are at considerable risk from unscrupulous internet 'persons'.

When a 'lay' person gets an idea for a website they usually go to a 'friend' who knows about these things to get it going, often that 'friend' is not a real life friend at all but rather an 'online' acquaintance with expertise and possibly contacts that the lay person lacks. This is a really good way to get ripped off!

The first thing to remember when developing a website is that without control of the Domain Name you have or own nothing! Register the domain name you intend to use with an independent registrar, DO NOT register your domain name with the hosting company or 'person' as this will leave them in control of it. The second most important thing you need to do is to keep an up to date copy of all code and data that the site consists of. You must have FTP access to the hosting server and update your backup every time a major change is made to the site, any reputable host will have staff that can help you with this. You should also choose a hosting company that is In Your Country of Residence because as a last resort you may need to go to court to establish your ownership of the site.

Be careful who you grant access to! how well do you know the person or persons who are working on your website? If you meet them socially in real life you retain the option to smack them on the nose but if you grant access to an online acquaintance you have no real proof as to who or where they are, and hence NO recourse if they screw you over. The sort of things that they can do to you are possibly; insertion of 'phishing' holes in your site and other unauthorised code. Theft of your data including credit card info, email addresses and IP addresses of your members and visitors. Note that any website is valued depending on the number of members it has and the number of page hits it gets, if your website takes off you could be sitting on a membership/email list some company's will pay a fortune for! And ultimately they could steal the entire site and deny you any further access to it. You are particularly at risk from this type of theft if your host is an online 'friend' and they control the host server, which is why it is always best to go with reputable hosting company in your own country even if this means that you have to comply with restrictive laws and legislation.

Finally: A 'Gentleman's Agreement' is worth only the paper its printed on, i.e. nothing at all. Get written contracts for expensive development work, transfers of ownership of sites and or domain names and know that the most important page on your website is the 'Terms of service' page, get this wrong and you could loose your shirt.

Get your rotten eggs ready for Ian,..

Ian Duncan Smith (Tory) has been put in charge of sorting out the benefits fiasco which affects an estimated 5.9 Million people in the UK including me, I suggest we all get our rotten eggs ready in case Mr Smith gets it wrong!

The important thing to realise here is that people on benefits are living on a knife edge, one miscalculation can ruin the family budget and leave you eating mush and smoking ‘dimps’ for a couple of weeks, or worse in hoc to a loan shark. Most people on benefits would like to work if it were financially practical to do so, unfortunately in most cases it’s simply NOT practical and taking what work is available would leave them even worse off. For example a person on Job seeker's allowance cannot take part time work for the simple reason that they are only allowed to keep £5 per week of earned income while claiming, this in most cases will not even pay their bus fares to their job. So its full time permanent employment for them or nothing.

A similar situation exists for those of us on Incapacity Benefit, we are allowed to keep £12 per week of what we can earn part time. However for the vast majority of Incapacity Benefit claimants full time permanent employment is physically impossible.

Clearly New Labours approach, i.e. bullying claimants into taking whatever work is offered even if it makes their situation worse rather than better is not acceptable, but considering the huge deficit which is New Labours legacy to the UK what can Mr Smith do that will not hurt claimants, the sick, disabled and impoverished?

UK Election : No Overall Control WINS !!!

So we have a hung parliament here in the UK as a result of Thursdays general election. Its now been 5 days and negotiations between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are still underway however talks between Labour and the Liberals have clearly failed.

Personally I have been waiting for this particular circumstance to come about for over 20 years, in fact ever since I became old enough to vote. As a life long Liberal I have always know that this is THE chance for liberals to make a lasting impact in British politics. I am keeping my fingers crossed right now in the sincere hope that this chance is NOT wasted. It has to be the case that Proportional Representation has to be the price for Liberal cooperation in any coalition government, anything less would be a betrayal of the 23% of our population who voted Liberal.

Gordon Brown must go! Mr Brown was not elected to be the British PM, he got in by default when Tony Blair left, and in this General Election the British people have decidedly NOT voted for Gordon Brown to continue running this country. In my view there is no circumstance where Gordon Brown remaining PM could be acceptable to the British People. Even if talk between the conservative and liberal parties should fail Gordon Brown personally has lost the mandate to govern, in fact he never had any such mandate from the people of this country.

So we are living in interesting times, the Conservatives look set to lead the next government, whether in a full coalition with the Liberal Democrats  or as a minority government remains to be seen. At present there is still much horse trading being done behind closed doors and hopefully the long term result will not only be electoral reform but also long term stable consensus government of this country.

DONT BUY ‘SAN MARCO’ PIZZA

Just sent the following email, and copy here for your information :

To whom it may concern;

I have just had one of your 'san Marco deep pan pepperoni' pizzas
ref : APR 2010 A 9107 10:11

To say that the thing was vile is the understatement of the century, your 'cheese analogue' is positively disgusting, it made me want to vomit. How on earth you manage to earn a living producing such garbage is beyond understanding. I will NEVER AGAIN purchase ANY san marco product no matter how attractively packaged.

You don't even care enough about your product to put real cheese and tomato on it, I simply can't be bothered packaging the remains and sending it to you for a refund, instead I SHOULD be sending it to environmental health to have it checked for contaminants and to see if it actually contains anything of real food value.

I had to eat 2 oz   of REAL cheese just to get the vile taste of your foul product out of my mouth.

Yours disgustedly
a very unhappy customer

A big THUMBS DOWN for ZoneAlarm

I recently installed the current free version of ZoneAlarm, which is for those of you who don’t know a personal firewall application. I had used older versions some time ago and though it could help me resolve current problems,..

The problem I was having was that FireFox was hanging while I was playing Zynga poker, causing me to loose a shit load of play money. Now I was planning to try real money online poker so you can see that I was majorly concerned. Loosing $5000 play money is nothing but when your playing for real money you do not want this to happen.

So I figured that one possibility was that I was being pinged to death, ( Ping flooding in order to deny me the service, see DOS attacks) and decided to use ZoneAlarm to detect and block this.

Sure enough I was getting unsolicited pings etc but no more than the usual background noise one expects these days, however that was just the start of my problems. ZoneAlarm itself became a problem! First of all there’s the usual malarkey in-re configuring the damn thing, then it starts messing with Global hosts, preventing SpybotSD from doing a full immunisation,1078 global hosts could not be immunised until after ZA was removed. Then it hogs my CPU resources using on average 25% of available threads, which led me on to the REAL problem: Spybot’s TeaTimer (resident protection from malware and spyware) was working overtime and chewing vast amounts of memory, why? Because I had too many damn applications running; Messenger, Iplayer, Skype  etc. With ZoneAlarm running as well 100% of my available resources were being used!

So I fixed that, but then Windows Live Messenger would NOT connect. I ran a diagnostic, no connection problems. I ran the trouble shooter and it detected a problem with the hosts file but would NOT complete, it hung at ‘key ports’ preventing the fix, more ZoneAlarm interference I expect because again after removing ZoneAlarm the problem magically resolved itself. BUT That not the end of it,..

As a parting present from ZA a windows application window opens on my desktop on reboot after removal, ‘cpes_clean_launcher.exe’ scaring the shit out of me. I googled it and found a guy who couldn’t get rid of it, others who feared it was a trojan dropper but no definitive article. Not even on ZoneAlarm’s own website! Anyways my system scanned clean and ‘cpes_clean_launcher.exe’ did not reappear on reboot so all is well. But its a big thumbs down for ZoneAlarm from me, more trouble than its worth!

Big Brother is watching !

I’ve just watched two police officers clamp a strange object to the lamp post at the bottom of my street, which is a busy ‘T’ junction in a medium size town. This object then proceeded to climb the pole under their direction, then after it had reached a point not far from the top it turned its eye up our street and then down the cross street while the two officers observed from their riot protected van. Clearly it is a surveillance camera, but what the HELL is it doing on our street?

I’m not a criminal, my neighbours are not criminals, not so far as I know anyway, though that bloke at number 159 looks a bit shifty to me. Yet this THING will see me every time I leave my house, and observe everyone who comes to my house. I ask you is this really necessary? Who authorised this invasion of my privacy? And why were we, the residents of this area not informed or consulted?

Some years ago a young black poet asked us ‘Is Britain becoming a Fascist state,..’ and at the time I laughed. Then came Margaret Thatcher and the police beat the living shit out of the miners at her direction, and I wondered. Some time later we got Tony Blair and no one really hated him because he never really did much, then Tony Blair handed the country over to Gordon Brown the penny pincher without a fight. All the time the numbers of cameras on our roads have continued to grow, the numbers of police helicopters in our skies have continued to grow and Gordon Browns management of our economy has led to a worse recession and more unemployment than Margaret Thatcher was ever responsible for. What will it be next, remote operated camera drones peaking in our windows? Gestapo at the bus and rail stations checking our ID passes? Already there are moves to require that we all carry biometric ID cards.

And Gordon Brown sits there unopposed, as everyone knows the Tory wimp  doesn’t stand a chance and after Thatcher we don’t want him anyway. Nobody believes the Third Party has a chance either but Liberal Democracy may be our only way out of this mess if only we could see it. But no, our government swings from left to right to left and so called ‘New Labour’ has turned out to be more conservative than even Thatcher. All the time the numbers of surveillance cameras grow and no one , NO ONE complains!

Caveat Emptor – Let the buyer Beware!

So it’s nearly Christmas right? And money, as usual is tight. So tight that you are looking at any and all ‘special offers’ in order to get the best value for money you can find. Well watch out because many of these ‘Special Offers’ have a sting in the tail!

I was playing this game on Facebook called Mafia Wars, a cool game but it uses a system of ‘reward points’ which make the game easier if you buy stuff they advertise or sign up for ‘special offers’. So inevitably I find myself needing some reward points, well one of the ‘free’ offers was for ‘The Complete Road Dahl children’s Collection’ £4.95 and was worth 100 reward points. I have a niece and this I thought would be an ideal gift. So I clicked.

I was taken to a webpage and I duly entered my details, there was a terms and conditions PDF which I downloaded and a text box with a shipload of text crammed into it which I couldn’t be bothered reading. Gave ‘em my Card details and in short order I had my 100 reward points. A few days later the books arrived and they were as advertised, so I figured I had got a damn good deal,..

Then I started getting emails from ‘Books for Children’ saying I had agreed to take another 4 books and that their ‘editors choice’ would be sent automatically if I didn’t order anything else and on further investigation I discovered that in order to cancel I would have to pay £10 for each book I did not take. The ‘editors choice’ arrived a few weeks later and it was a piece of crap with an invoice for £16.95. I think you can now see where this is going, I phoned them to cancel and had to pay £46.95 in order to do so. To sum up those 100 reward points have cost me ( inc postage and packing ) approximately £60!

I’ve complained to Zynga the makers of Mafia Wars about this so called ‘free’ offer and the advert is no longer there, but when I complained to Trading Standards there was bugger all they could do. Why? Because I hadn’t read the terms and conditions, hadn’t read the crap in their little text box and the webpage I’d signed up on was no longer there! I’d been clobbered by your classic BookClub scam.

They hook you in with an offer that is too good to be true, and in the fine print claw back the real cost of the initial offer by forcing you to take over priced crap you don’t want, and there is bugger all Trading Standards can do about it because ‘The information needed to make an informed decision was all there’.

Well in my book this amounts to ‘Theft by Deception’ but I seriously doubt that a court would agree with me, so next time you are thinking about clicking on a ‘special offer’ remember this : CAVEAT EMPTOR , which is Latin for ‘Let the buyer beware’.

It’s Fucking Obscene !

Have you seen the images that now disgrace all cigarette packaging here in the UK ?

Under a British Government sponsored initiative the manufacturers of cigarettes and tobacco supplying the UK market are obliged to place some of the most horrendous images I have ever seen on all packaging. The images used include babies in incubators but mainly feature the most ghastly and grotesquely untreated tumours they could apparently find. No British doctor would ever permit such tumours to go untreated to this extent and therefore one must assume that these images where collected from abroad.

It’s Fucking Obscene ! If a private individual published such images in anything other than a medical text book they would be prosecuted and jailed, the offending material being immediately removed from sale and display. Yet the British Government believes that offending the sensibilities of every British and visiting smoker to the UK is justified because of the statistical correlation between smoking and such diseases. Now I am NOT about to argue the case here as to whether or not smoking causes cancer, anyone who smokes is well enough aware that what they are doing is bad for them.  What has pissed me off is that the British Government is gratuitously subjecting a very large segment of its population to these obscene images when there is no proof that causing serious offense to smokers will have ANY affect on their consumption of tobacco. The stuff is after all Addictive.

Considering that cigarettes and tobacco are in fact addictive, if the British Government did actually have the courage of its convictions surly the thing to do is to make them illegal? Rather than subject us to disgustingly obscene images every time we reach for one. It occurs to me that the true fact is most likely that, since the British Government is heavily dependant upon the insanely huge tax revenue from tobacco and prohibition would pump these billions of pounds into the hands of organised crime, these horrendous images they have caused to be placed on tobacco packaging are a sop to the anti smoking lobby in the hope that they will shut the fuck up, if only for a while. Meanwhile organised crime is already taking advantage of the huge taxation imposed on tobacco products and looks set to reap even greater profits in the future.

The British Governments’ hypocrisy not withstanding does any government have the right to legislate that obscene material must be published where it can be viewed by minors? Finally it is my considered opinion that causing and giving offense is no way to resolve the problem of smoking.

Ill Wind by Rachel Caine – Book Review

Sometimes you pickup a book at the book store on the off-chance, in the hopes that it will at least be entertaining enough that you feel you got your money’s worth. Sometime you are disappointed, sometimes you are reasonably happy and rarely, so rarely are you totally blown away.

So it was with Ill Wind by Rachel Caine . I bought the book on impulse, taking a chance on an author I’d never read before, something I rarely do these days, preferring, usually to stick with authors who have become like old friends. To say I was pleasantly surprised by this book is an understatement, ILL WIND literally blew me away. It sat on my coffee table for several days while I consumed ‘Paul of Dune’ by Herbert and Anderson, which left a bitter taste in my mouth because while that novel was sufficiently entertaining that I did NOT rush back to the book shop demanding a refund it still felt like a cynical milking of Herbert Senior’s reputation. ILL WIND washed the bitter taste away almost from the first page, gripped me in its vortex, and took me on the wildest ride imaginable. The book is about a ‘weather warden’ in fact its subtitled ‘Weather Warden book one’ which bodes well for more of the same or better, basically the heroine is a girl that can control the weather. A reasonably good idea for a novel, any half way decent writer could run with it. Rachel Caine didn’t just run with it though, she had a ball and though I know it sounds cliché I could not put the book down. Some books are suitable for winding your mind down sufficiently to get a good nights sleep, a few pages or maybe a chapter before you turn out the light, and some books you have to devour from cover to cover in one sitting, ILL WIND is the latter type.

USB sticks a growing source of infection

When we set-up our anti virus and anti spyware software these days we often forget about a potentially major source of infection, that is our USB data sticks. Automatic scans miss these devices because we don't take steps to include scanning them in our maintenance routines.

A friend of mine told me recently of a major incident in which a virus worm in fected 70 pc workstations in his college out of a possible 1000 before it was detected. This virus had entered the network from a USB stick and propagated internally accross the network infecting the server before it was detected.

While USB sticks and removable drives of all types are not automatically scanned by your anti-virus software they remain a threat to networks, it behoves us to become used to routinely scanning these items for our own safety. The fact that these devices are so portable and are often used casually in multiple machines makes them an ideal vector for virus and malware infection, be warned.

Offline Message Spam - Windows Live Messenger

There seems to be a problem with Windows Live Messenger being abused to send spam messages, sometimes called SPIM, what I have been noticing recently is that several of my contacts have apparently sent me 'offline' messages asking me to go to various websites, the usual format of these messages is:

yourContactsHandle says:
Tony and Julie told me today about this amazing new product called bugger berries, I tried them and they are great, you really should have a look at their website http://www.buggerberries.com/

These messages have appeared in various languages (usually the home language of the contact) and the website content has varied from a very genuine looking site for said berries to blatant activeX exploits designed to infect your system.

When you call your contact on this they will usually deny all knowledge of sending the message, or may admit that several of their contacts have complained about receiving similar messages from them. There is absolutely no point getting angry at your contact about this, you could loose a friend who is not necessarily at fault. There is also no point in panicking about your system having been infected, unless you did actually click on the link and your anti virus and anti spy ware systems are not up to date, in which case more fool you. If you didn't click the link you are unlikely to have been infected.

The precise cause of this SPIM seems to be a bit of a mystery, the likelihood is that it is your contacts system that has been compromised rather than your own. There are a couple of ways this could have happened to them; Their windows live messenger login could have been compromised , perhaps their login details were phished by a spoof message, a keylogger on their system has relayed the login details to its server or their password was so weak its simply been hacked, or they have been infected by a bot on their system that can access Windows Live messenger. Clearly the first thing you need to persuade THEM to do is to change their Windows Live ID password however this on its own may not proved to be effective, especially if the culprit is a keylogger or a bot infection. I have found only one product which purports to specifically target bots that abuse Windows Live Messenger, this is Clean Virus MSN which supposedly can detect and repair 3,800 MSN virus variants however I can not at this time validate its efficiency in the case of this 'Offline Message Spam' .

At present there seems to be nothing definitive available to tackle this problem, and the problem itself appears to be escalating if the numerous blog messages and screams for help on technical boards are anything to go by, so here is my current advice in regards to this problem:

1. Be very cautious about ANY offline message you receive from anyone, but especially from your trusted contacts if it contains a link to a website, before you click on any such link get your contact to confirm that they sent the message.

2. Let your contact know that you received such a message from them as it is more likely that their system has been compromised by a bot and they need urgently to run anti virus and anti spyware scans on their system as well as changing their Windows Live ID password.

3. Make sure your own anti virus and anti spy ware software is uptodate and is scanning regularly, if it doesn't scan automatically its time to do a manual scan.

4. If your contacts are telling you that you are the source of such offline spam messages don't panic!. Make sure your anti virus software is uptodate and running properly and do a spyware bot scan using the very latest definitions. Personally I use AVG FREE and Spybot search and destroy (also free) and have had no major infections, touch wood, for a long time. If your scans turn up anything at all but particularly remote access trojans or keyloggers you MUST change you passwords once you have cleaned the infection(s). Then its time to apologise or simply explain what has happened to your contacts.

I will be keeping an eye on this problem and if any information surfaces on the precise cause and remedy for this problem I will post the information as soon as I have verified it.

further update

In addition to the outlined work in the previous post I am currently investigating the feasibility of creating Combat X3d as opposed to combat 3 VRML97. Naturally I am looking at some software assistance in converting VRML to X3d and will report on the efficacy of what I find after I have done a few test conversions of the combat modules,..

Update 2009

Combat3 still inprogress

Anyone expecting the imminent role out of Combat3 as discussed in previous posts is unfortunately going to be disappointed by this post. Due to personal circumstances involving but not limited to having had to relocate, the work I had planned for Combat2, updating it to combat3 as cross platform MU development game, has been considerably delayed. Looking back to my original development notes for this project I have discovered that user/developer based instructional documentation is a significant lack in the distribution. There are also a number of features I discussed in PC Game weapons(paper) which I'd like to incorporate into Combat3 as standard. Other outstanding work includes a revamp of the game Hud, consolidating features built into different Hud versions into a single general purpose Hud. To say that there is still a lot of work to be done before Combat3 can roll out is therefor a considerable understatement.

Be Nice to noobs you turds!!!!!!!

Ok so I recently rediscovered shoot em up gaming, I had never played multiplayer except on Blaxxun communities where I built my own VRML game engine ( Combat2 ) ,.. so this buddy of mine (Karamba) from SL (second life) finally persuades me to register with Steam . Now I had baught Half-Life ( Generations ) quad CD pack some time ago to supliment my original HL , and put it in the cupboard unused because I lost my PC to a Trojan, and the replacement system only had a onboard GPU (SIS) that couldn't hack the 3d so well. Any way , now that I got a decent GPU (nvidia G-force 7600 GS AGP) I figured 'WTH , lets give it a go'.



Steam lets you register an existing CD game, so lo and behold I found my CD key unlocked the platinum pack , including Counter Strike. So I thought I was good to go ,.. but no Karamba only plays CSS ( Counter Strike :Source ) ,.. so Out came the plastic ( Oh the joys of being an adult :P)

Cut a long story short I got creamed, burned , blown up , knifed , strafed often without even getting a shot off. Now I'm getting on a bit , but I hadn't realised just how bad my reflexes had gotten. And I am gonna blame SL for it, the lag dontcha know is sooo bad sometimes in some SL Sims thats you get used to having actions and reactions delayed for long seconds. Not so in CSS, Its fast and furious and the servers dump you if your latency(ping) goes to high.

So I kinda expected Karamba to lead me around the first few maps, nut uh, he just wanted to frag me! Damn Sweed!

The Broken Man

Fiction,...

He lived on disability and had done for many years but The Money Man had recently taken over the government of the country and he says that everyone must work. The Broken Man had been getting by, he still suffered from depression but had so far avoided sectioning, which is where they lock you up with a bunch of mad people until you become sane by their definitions, only now he was getting letters from The Powers That Be, again.

This particular letter from The Powers That Be arrived on a bad day for The Broken Man. He had woken up at 7 a.m. as usual and as usual had immediately taken the daily meds, and the first dose of his 4 hourly. The time between waking and the next 4 hourly was spent on and off, mostly on, the toilet. As well as everything else The Broken Man had IBS, which kept him in low-level constant pain all day, everyday but was much worse in the mornings for obvious reasons. The letter stated that under the new Welfare to Work rules he would now have to work for The Powers That Be, doing whatever they said he was capable of, that or loose his disability money. The letter went on to say that he must report to The Rich Man’s factory at 9 a.m. the following Monday, where he must do at least 16 hours of satisfactory work over the course of the week. For this he would be paid 80 bucks on top of his disability.

On the face of it this looked like a good deal, 16 hrs of button sorting for 5 bucks an hour and he still got his disability money. The Broken Man may be broken but he was no bodies fool, he knew that The Community Council would have something to say about that. A couple of calls latter and The Broken Man had the true skinny, The Community Council would reassess his income based on the extra 80 bucks and adjust his rent check and Community Charge accordingly. The Broken Man was already having to pay The Landlord 5 bucks a weeks that the rent check didn’t cover so this 80 bucks for Slave Wages would be swallowed up by The Community Council and he, The Broken Man would be working 16 hrs per week, even though he was sick, for nothing.

So The Broken Man went to work in the factory. It costs him 2 bucks each way for the bus, and because he spent a total of 2 hrs in the toilet he only got 3 hrs of satisfactory wok done on the first day, according to the Permitted Work Supervisor anyway, and even though he had been at The Factory all day. He shit himself the next day, but he carried on working and managed 4 hours of satisfactory work. The Dribblers he was working beside didn’t care about the smell, still he was humiliated but no one at The Factory cared. By the end of the first week The Broken man had spent 40 hours at The Factory, and had managed 15 hrs satisfactory work. He had paid out 20 bucks in bus fares and spent 10 bucks in the canteen ( 2 bucks a day for soup and a sandwich ). The Permitted Work Supervisor said he was settling in very well and could make up the hour next week.



The Broken Man had been working at The Factory for a month or so when it came time to refill his prescription. Now when all he had received in income was his disability check The Broken Man was able to get his prescriptions for free, all he had to do was sign a declaration of poverty and state that his income consisted solely in the 80 bucks per week disability check. Of course it never had, The Broken Man knew that his income actually consisted in the disability check plus the rent check and his rebate from Community Charge, but now he would have to fill in that part of the forms that specifically enquired about any Permitted Work he was doing and how much he was getting paid for it. That would put his income over the threshold for free drugs and he would have to pay for his meds. Six items per month at 8 bucks an item, 48 bucks per month not including ad hock requirements.

At the Pharmacist shop The Broken Man sighed and handed over his debit card. The Machine beeped, the Pharmacist frowned and handed the card back, and The Broken Man watched his meds taken back off the counter as the man turned away. The Broken Man had no money left and would have to manage without his meds.

A week later The Broken Man’s Next of Kin got a call from The Hospital, The Broken Man had been sectioned under the terms of The Nutter’s Act and could be visited between 2 and 4 pm on Tuesdays. When The Broken Man’s brother duly arrived at The Hospital the following Tuesday he was shown into The Broken Man’s room. The Broken Man was standing looking out of the window and every 10 seconds he would bang his bleeding head against a red patch on the otherwise white wall. The Broken Man’s brother broke down and cried, and had to be escorted from the building.