Hackers Put Malware On Football Site

Thursday night I got home from work & went on a fansite for my team. Problem was: I couldn't get on it. OK, so the NFL draft is on, maybe the servers are overloaded. Problem with that is I go on this site every Sunday during football season, & never have a problem getting on the site.

This isn't the official site. It's a fan based site where I was hoping to see what the fan reaction would be to the teams first draft pick, which i thought was an odd pick. But first, I couldn't get on the site at all. Then I got on it, but the forum threads seemed surprisingly small. Then when I clicked on any topic the browser would time out.

Then it happened. My antivirus popped up a malware warning. What to do. "Remove it". Heck yes I clicked that. Then 10 minutes later that popup came back, clicked "remove it" again. So I closed my browser, launched Malwarebytes & did a complete scan. After 40 minutes it found nothing. Now the really weird thing is the malware was listed as HP.exe. Since when does a computer manufacturer have an executable file on it's hardware?

A couple of years ago I had another malware attack. but that time the same anti-virus program didn't find it. I knew about that one because one of those phony av popups showed up. I knew it was phony because it had a different name than my av software.

So I wonder. Was this a false positive? A re-direct to a phony site? I say that because as I said this site has dozens of topics on a normal day & this was draft day, so there should have been a lot more threads especially on the player my team drafted at #7. Instead there was very little & none of the discussions would come up. And if it was a fake site, what was the point? You don't need to register to read the posts. Thus no e-mail addresses to steal.

This is why I am wary of registering with lots of sites. As of tomorrow I will no longer be on Facebook. I found a way (thanks Google) to actually delete my account, not just de-activate it. Mark Zuckerberg doesn't need all my info.

Firefox Extension Fights Flash Cookies

If you are a tech geek you know about these. Local Shared Objects AKA Flash Cookies. They are stored on your computer but your browser can't detect them. They are used for tracking info about users like you & me. yes this is what regular cookies do, but you can delete those. these you can't.

Some companies use them to re-install cookies you have deleted. That is just wrong & is the reason we are suspicious of big corporations. You can delete them through Adobe's website but who knows how to do that or have ever been on the site except to update the Flash Player?

So someone created an extension for Firefox that deletes them on exit. Better Privacy® also lists all the LSO's on your browser. It's amazing how many there were when I first installed it. Now I only have a couple that I have whitelisted because I need my e-mail, the rest are unneccessary.

Another thing about these is their size. A regular cookie is 4kb, LSO cookies are up to 100kb. That's a big difference especially if you don't have a lot of memory. I do, but I still find this to be a security issue. Mainly because these things don't expire & companies use them to track you usage, within their websites & where you go afterwards. I don't need that.

So hopefully the message gets out. Some companies including Adobe & Mozilla suggested a new API that would clear them. Apparently it hasn't been done or Firefox wouldn't need an add-on.

HBO's Firefox Failure

Drama series on HBO can be confusing at first. What is great about the network is how rich the shows are. No easy stuff there. Game of thrones just had it's second episode. I never read the books, so I rely on what I see on Sunday nights.

Like most HBO shows it has a large cast with interconnecting stories & sometimes it is hard to keep track of who everybody is. What is their relationship to other cast members. Or even who exactly they are. Especially in a show like this with 3 different families fighting over the royal throne.

So because of this, I want to know who the cast members are. Well, HBO does have a cast page with photos of the actors & their names. So I want to print that page so I can figure out who everybody is. It's not like I'm going to be on the website during the show. Yeah there's a lot of info on there. HBO does a great job except for one thing.

When I tried to print the cast pictures, no luck. Print preview showed a black page. no photos, no nothing. I was like "what the hey?!". Then I thought "what if the website creator is a loon who wrote it only for IE?", which would be stupid. Are we still doing that nonsense? I mean IE has gone from 90% share to under 60% in 2 years. Firefox has between 22 & 25%, Chrome around 10% & Safari 5-6%.

So I closed Firefox 4 & opened IE8, went on the website & low & behold! I could print the page. Note to Time Warner & HBO: Get your act together. If your webpage designer doesn't want to code your page for more than one browser-get rid of him! It's just lazy. IE doesn't meet international browser standards, especially not version's prior to IE9 which just came out. FF, Chrome & Opera always have, not sure about Safari (never sure what Steve jobs thinks about them).

Yeah I was finally able to do it & printing actors photos for some show isn't that big a deal, but it's the over all lack of support for a major browser that is just silly. This should not still be happening. I used to have the same issue with PG&E & Verizon, but that has gone away, meaning they figured it out. for a major media company not to is a bad sign.

Buying Wallpaper For Prepaid Phone

I'm trying to spend some money on my prepaid phone because it has such a high amount on it. I will never spend the money because I only use the phone once a week. No one has my number. I don't want work to know it & my relatives don't have it. Maybe they should but this phone isn't the greatest. I have to move around to get the best reception. i don't know if that's because it's a cheap prepaid phone or because cell service isn't that good in my condo.

So I said "Oh what the hell, I 'll get a wallpaper". It cost 2 bucks so no biggie. Except when i tried to actually set it as the wallpaper. I kept doing what the website said. kept going back to messaging>inbox>options. Damn, it was confusing. I kept clicking on the picture(Golden Gate Bridge), clicking save, close phone open it up, still old picture. Finally I must have done something because now it's on the phone.

Why do they have to make things so difficult? I suppose I could add a ringtone, but since no one has my number it would never ring anyway. But at least I got the balance down to $150. That should last until July when I have to buy another card. Or will I? Again it's not like I use this thing.

Linux Loses Again

God I hate Linux. I have Ubuntu on a USB stick. I decided to use it tonight instead of just using Windows. Bad idea. Why? Because I tried to update Firefox to 4. It wasn't in the repositories. Huh? So I went to Mozilla to do it that way. Downloaded it, but guess what? The Tar file wouldn't work. Good god would you just go away. What a worthless OS. Never works right. Nothing ever downloads right. Downloads never work but the Linux fanboys contend that Windows sucks.

That's rich. When has any flavor of Linux ever worked. How about never. Video is awful, the music players are hideous. The filing system is a joke (try finding anything in there). You'd think after 20 years they could make at least an effort to make it usable. But noooh. I guess they want you to think you have to be a genius to use it. Actually you could use it if it was written properly. A 5 year old could code better than the fools that write this incomplete, badly developed non operating system.

Another reason to Use Firefox

I was trying to read comments on Gizmodo & they wouldn't load. One reason is because they ruined the website with the awful change they did to the UI. God knows what they were thinking. So I decided to see if the issue was incompetently writing it for IE but not Firefox.

Well guess what? IE won't even load. Nice. I never use it but really? A browser that doesn't work. How exactly am I supposed to get updates since they require IE? More incompetence from Microsoft. Would you please just get rid of this POS?

There is exactly no reason for a browser not loading. That is unacceptable. It doesn't matter if you don't use it. You can't have something that just plain doesn't work. All the jokes about IE aside, it is an outrage to have a program that important not work. I wonder about businesses. Most only allow IE, so they will be hurting if that browser is suddenly offline. How will MS explain the damage done to businesses that rely on their computers to stay in business. I will be interested in the explanation. BTW-I'm clearly online because I am using Firefox to write this.

TV Show Studies Genealogy

I have found a TV show to watch that I find quite fascinating. It's called "Who do you think you are?". It has just finished it's run on NBC & hopefully will come back next year. Like a lot of shows it's based on a british show of the same title.

What this show does is take a semi-famous person & look for ancestors. It has a link to the Ancestry.com website(which the celebrity is seen looking at at least once per episode). Obviously a TV show with a celebrity is going to find stuff out faster & easier than you or me could but it's still fun to watch.

I've been on the website once & since I didn't want to register & pay since I didn't know how much I could find out anyway I only did a cursory search. This only took me back a couple of generations but you could find out stuff. This is what technology does. There are now more ways to preserve & collect this kind of information. Technology haters don't understand this. Technology allows us to preserve records that would be lost otherwise. Every episode shows someone looking through microfiche files of pre-20th century documents.

Yes there are a lot of documents preserved by other methods but stuff several hundreds of years old still needs some kind of tech to preserve the item so it doesn't just disintigrate because of age. For instance in most episodes the celebrity is shown some hand written document that was an official record-a death certificate, a book that listed the ancestors name, maybe an army census. Ashley Judd was shown a series of papers from an ancestor's Kentucky regiment showing that he was captured by the Confederate Army twice. Tim McGraw was shown a diary with handwriting that showed that an ancestor of his hosted a 16 year old dinner guest named George Washington! Without tech these items would be long gone.

My family has nothing like that, but that's because both sides emigrated here only 100 years ago. Still it's an interesting field. I have cousins who have visited my grandmother's home island off of Sicily. I don't have the money to do that, so maybe a website is the best I can do.

Multiple Media Players On One Computer

I have I think 4 media players on my computer. Why you ask. Well, the built in one is Windows Media Player, which I don't use. I use iTunes to manage my iPod & to listen to podcasts. My computer came with something called HP Media Smart that plays music, shows DVD's, manages photos (uh, doesn't Windows do all that anyway?) & some other things. i also have Real Player on there so I can watch Al Jazeera (needs it for some reason).

Now the problem is to use any of these players they have to be set as the default. Lovely. They can't all be the default. That's iTunes for me. The problem with iTunes is that i can't create mp3 CD's because I import everything into iTunes as an AAC file, not MP3. Now if I use WMP, everything will be imported as WMA but you can burn MP3 CD's. But I have to make it the default so I can do that. No thanks.

HP Media Smart? No really. I tried to create a playlist(everything is already on there, hmmm) but it would only list 17 songs. Huh? Genius in iTunes starts at 25 & also 50. Why 17? Makes no sense. Real Player is real pathetic. Only songs downloaded using it's own downloader, not all the songs on the hard drive. Weird.

Now the only reason I want MP3 CD's is because I have so many CD's from my downloads I would like to cut down by having them all on one CD (I've only bought 75 songs that should fit on one MP3 Cd). So for now I'm not going to do anything.

Deleting Facebook

Yes I wrote a post last week asking does anyone use Facebook. Today I made the decision to delete my account. Not deactivate it, delete it. this is difficult because Zuckerberg doesn't want you to know you can, so it's hidden. But there are ways of doing it.

First you should search on Google for "delete facebook account". The first few listing are on Facebook itself. I ignore those. I found one on something called WikiHow. It has a link to the actual delete screen. Outstanding. What's humorous is the warning if you log on within 14 days the request for deletion is voided. Duh. I haven't logged on in 2 months, I think i can stay away for 2 weeks.

So this is a good thing. The thing is useless. No one I know uses it. This publicity nonsense of 600 million users is just that. Yeah there might be 600 million registered users, but how many regularly use it? Maybe 100 million go on once a week or even every day? So I don't think the hype is that justified. Mostly college age people when e-mail would work just as well & wouldn't involve giving all your personal info to a 26 year old billionaire.

Anyway, I got an e-mail from Facebook telling me what I already knew "don't log on for 2 weeks". Thank you very much.

The Phone Co Wants me To Go Wireless

I find this interesting. Today I got a letter from the phone company(which is also my ISP) . It listed 3 cell phones I could get for free. Of course I would have to sign up for a 2 year contract but they wanted to offer this to me.

I'm not interested. I have a prepaid phone I'm going to have to add $30 to next week or it goes out of service. Never mind that it has over $100 on it because of rollover, you have to add to it every three months or else. Now $30 isn't a big deal but still. Of course this wouldn't be $30($10 a month), it would be a minimum of $40 a month. With a smart phone probably $70-100 a month. No thank you. The reason my phone has over a hundred on it is because I never use it.

The alternative is signing up for Google Voice or Skype. neither of which I can figure out. And since I never make phone calls, why bother? The thing that gets me is the phone company supplies my internet service & yet they never offer deals that combine land line service with internet for a discount. Sometimes they offer TV, but I am already using the provider they deal with, so that doesn't work because those are always "new customer" deals. Oh well.

My Printer Hates Me

I've had this printer for, well I don't know six months? When I first got it, it was great. yeah it's a low end HP, but I don't use it that much. Basically to print a grocery list once a week. But for the last couple of months it has been acting up.

What it does is when I'm ready to print my list I click "print". I hear the mechanism move, I sounds like it's picking up a piece of paper, but it doesn't. Then of course, I get a notice on screen:"printer is out of paper". No it isn't. It just didn't grab a sheet. It's not like there's only a couple of pages in the loader either. I make sure there's at least 10 sheets in there.

Now the power button is flashing instead of completely on. So I push it, take the paper out , put it back in, click print again, & now it prints 2 copies of my list! A waste of paper (OK, it's going to take a long time to use 500 pages ), but more importantly, it wastes ink which is expensive. Over $20 for the 2 cartridges(color & b&w). This has nothing to do with Firefox 4, it's been doing this for months. Plus my grocery list is in Word. In fact it's a saved template in Documents that I open & all I do is erase the previous list & re-list everything.

This is probably one reason I barely use the printer. It's such a hassle when it does this & I have now idea why it does it. This was a $30 printer, but I wonder if a $100 printer would do the same thing. I mean when it does print it's fine (clear and bright looking). Just one of those tech issues I have to live with I guess.

Does Anyone Really Use Facebook?

I'm quite serious about this. I signed up last year, but haven't logged on in two months. The people I know contact me by phone or e-mail. Even if they want to contact a bunch of people at once they simply send out a bulk e-mail. So what's the point?

I think it's mostly for college students to set up keggers.LOL. Seriously, I watched the movie & yeah Zuckerberg claims it's fiction, but the point is, it mostly allowed students to make plans with one another even though e-mail could do the same. Also, e-mailclients like Outlook or Windows Mail or Thunderbird can do the same since they can set up appointments.

I kinda knew this so when I set it up I used an e-mail address I never use. My main address is a Gmail account. That's only known by relatives & a couple of businesses. My old Yahoo account is what I call "The Spam Collector". If I don't go on it once a week, it will have hundreds of e-mails from marketers & female names I don't know. (I have Web Of Trust which tells you if a site is bad like Site Advisor. No surprise anytime I click one of these e-mails from "Jessica" or whoever I get a red dot meaning Get Out!

The address I used for Facebook is from my ISP. Never ever use it. Also used by Sports Illustrated to send spam. Besides what am I gonna get? Some Nigerian prince wants to be my friend?LOL Feel free to tell me I'm wrong. You won't because in one year of writing this blog I've gotten a grand total of two comments.

Status Bar Add-on Slows Down Firefox 4

I wanted the status bar back on my browser. Mozilla had removed it from the new version, or rather had hidden it. This is a problem, since some of my add-ons have their icons on the status bar including the one I use to post to this blog.

So I downloaded Status Bar-4-Ever. Bad idea. Yeah, it put it on the browser & added a progress bar at the bottom. But after I added it i noticed it was taking longer for pages to load. Sometimes a page would just sit there. Finally I got fed up & removed it. Things immediately picked up. Now why this would do it is a mystery, especially since none of the reviews mention this issue. Hmmm. Not saying there is censorship because there are plenty of add-ons that are ripped apart on Mozilla's website. Just not this one.

I want an add-on that helps me with my computer, not one that slows it to a crawl. My ISP is slow enough as it is. So this one is a failure.

Windows Effects Don't Work In Firefox 4

I don't know if this is an example of problems with the new browser or just general dickness by Microsoft, but I suspect the latter. At first I thought there might be a problem with my computer although everything else works, then i decided to see if it worked in IE8. Yup no problem. What a surprise! Not.

This came up because I was trying to write something on my other blog, which is a sports blog on Fannation, a subsite of SI.com. No template, you just post to a page of blogs. I wanted to write about something I read in my paper so i went on the website & found the article. Now I tried to use Aerosnap which is where you grab the top of a page & drag it to the left, release your mouse & now the page covers only half the screen, meaning you can go to another page & have it fill the other half, so you can read both at once. But you can't do that in FF4. Thanks a lot Mr. Ballmer.

So this comes off as a futile attempt to force me to use IE. Not gonna happen. Somebody needs to understand that if your browser is hated & you are rapidly losing market share (IE has gone from 90% to 57% in 5 years. Whoops), instead of artificially trying to force people into using it, just admit defeat & move on. Let Mozilla & Google take over(sorry Opera), & concentrate on continuing to improve Windows.

Epsilon Hack Is Why I Don't Bank Online

March 30 a marketing firm called Epsilon had a major security breach. It's been all over the news. Names & e-mail addresses of thousands hacked. The clients include several banks. Meaning that the hackers can send you an e-mail using your name while pretending to be your bank.  It's called "spear phishing". A new way of trying to get hold of your info.

This is why I refuse to use online banking. I don't even like to shop online. It's just not safe. Yeah I buy music from iTunes, but guess what? I only log in to buy. 99.99% of the time I'm not logged in. I can look for music, put CD's I own into iTunes without signing in. And there is no credit card info. I leave that blank. When I'm ready to buy then I put the info in & immediately remove it. Online banking? Not gonna happen. Put my bank account # on the internet. Are you crazy?

I love how Epsilon says "no personal identifiable information associated with those names was at risk". Yeah until someone uses you name to contact you claiming to be your bank & needs to double check your account number or credit card number. If you are someone not aware of the hack you might reveal the info & ...bye bye savings account. It's not only banks but Verizon, Walgreens, Best Buy, etc. In other words retailers that you might buy something online & thus have an account with that you wouldn't think was at risk. Something to think about.

Memory Add-On Not Available For Firefox 4

I like to keep track of what's going on on my system. Before i updated my browser I had an extension called StatusBar Ex. This thing sat on my status bar & told me how much RAM Firefox was using, both in size & percentage. It also said how much the computer was using & the total installed. This was much easier than having to go in the control panel & trying to find System Information. And when I did do that I noticed that the extension was very accurate.

But it hasn't been updated & a lot of people on the add-on page are requesting it. I realize that it will take time to update. After all FF4 has only been out what? A week maybe. Yes I can type about:memory & a list will come up but it's only about Firefox & because it lists in kb it's not really informative. (What is with listing that way? Windows does the same. My computer has 4gb of RAM, listing in kb is silly)