Ubuntu 9.10 Dell Wireless fix

I have a Dell D620 with a Broadcom Wireless Mini Card.  I guess I had to venture out on the bleeding edge and install this latest version of Ubuntu.  When I finished I found that my wireless was not working.  I found any number of secret incantations on the web that purported to fix it.   Here's how I did solve it.

I hooked via ethernet and performed all the updates.  I then opened Synaptic Package Manager and did a search on Broadcom.  I found a package called bcmwl-kernel-source.  I installed this pacaked and viola! my wireless works.

Woohoo!

Up to my neck

Wow I have been up to my neck in end of year deadlines and projects.  Unfortunately my postings have lagged.  When the new year comes I will renew writing more, but, I have even more deadlines coming up.

Best Buy customer service fail

Like many IT pros I end up doing a certain amount of PC support for the extended family. My mother in law lives 100 miles away so supporting her is usually over the phone or when I can get by her house. Recently she bought a netbook from BestBuy. This was before Microsoft had released Windows 7. When she bought it they told her it came with a free upgrade to Windows 7. Well Windows 7 has been released and she went after her upgrade. She asked the BestBuy Geek squad about it and the said that it was ummm... not actually 'free'. It would cost $40 for them to install it on her netbook. OK....(Crickets chirping) Well I understand the whole 'I need to get paid for work' but the upgrade was 'Free' right? Free is free right? Wrong. So she gives in and says oh well go ahead and do it. Then the Geek Squad guy comes back and says that the Antivirus package that she uses is not compatible with Windows 7. He offers to install Norton or McAfee. At a cost of $30. What a load of BS. How does a 'free' upgrade lead to $70 in charges? Why does Best Buy think they can take advantage of my Mother in law?

*** Update***
I sent this link to the store manager and he immediately got back to me. He informed me that there had been another option which had not been presented to my Mother in Law.  This option was to get the free copy and load it herself.  Since I support her PC this is the one I would have directed her to.  He asked if he could talk to her about the situation.  At the time I had directed her to go ahead and get it loaded but I had not thought she would have done it so quickly.  So net effect is that they did load it and she was charged the $40.  I just wish she had been presented with the other option.  To his credit the manager tried to make it right but the timing just wasn't there.  They did do the work so they do deserve the money for loading it.

Usability: Fail

In the tradition of the Fail blog I am going to list some technology Fails that I have come across. They bother me because people should think this out a bit better before it goes in the store.

Blackberry Fail: If the advertiser gives their 1 800 number as a vanity number like 1 800 BUY STUF, how do you call that on a Blackberry? FAIL

HP Fail: With my HP All in one printer if I am low on a colored ink the driver will ask me to OK printing in all black. But then the printer needs me to press the OK button on the printer upstairs to answer the same question... For each document. To print 4 documents I have to run up and down the stairs 8 times. EPIC FAIL

If you have others send them to me!

Hmmm?

Today wired had this article http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/st_essay_terroralert on the terror alert system. It's title - Why Color-Coded Terror Alerts Have Made Us Less Safe. And the only thing I could think of was... We are all color blind?

Challenges of PCI

An excellent article on Walmart's security woes and what steps they are taking. If you are familiar with PCI you will recognize it's effect on what Walmart is doing.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/walmart-hack/

"Investigators found that the tool had been installed remotely by someone using a generic network administrator account. The intruder had reached the machine through a VPN account assigned to a former Wal-Mart worker in Canada, which administrators had failed to close after the worker left the company. The day the server crashed, the intruder had been connected to Wal-Mart’s network for about seven hours, originating from an IP address in Minsk, the documents show.

The security team disabled the compromised VPN account, but the intruder, who should have realized the jig was up, came back in through another account belonging to a different Canadian employee. When that VPN account was closed, the intruder grabbed yet a third account while Wal-Mart workers were still scrambling to get a fix on the scope of the breach.

When Wal-Mart reviewed its VPN logs, it found that the activity had begun at least as early as June 2005, according to memos written by Wal-Mart employees during the initial stage of the investigation. The company’s server logs recorded only unsuccessful log-in attempts, not successful ones, frustrating a detailed analysis.

Wal-Mart declined to respond to questions about the initial date of the attack, the server logging or the conclusions it reached in its final report, which Wired.com has not seen.

Nonetheless, Wal-Mart’s security team was able to identify “over 800 machines that the attacker either tried to brute force or actually made a successful connection,” according to a Nov. 10, 2006 e-mail summarizing the early investigation."

Let's do a bit of analysis here. Mistakes were made and the innocent will be punished:

1. Walmart failed to close old employee accounts. They should at least have the password age off.
2. Walmart does not restrict traffic to specifc IP spaces. If they don't do business in Minsk they should not accept traffic from there. This is a hard assumption to make for a giant like Walmart but if you have a smaller company and you don't do business in Russia, Bulgaria, or China then setup your routers not to accept traffic from there.
3. Why would you just log the unsuccessful attempts? These can indicate that you are being targeted but the paranoia should be on the SUCCESSFUL logons.
4. No two factor auth for your VPN?

Obviously since I am outside the situation I don't get the big picture. But what I have listed are low hanging fruit on the tree.

Your passwords are showing...

Here is a instance of password stealing that I talked about in my Nov 2008 column Password Managment. Crooks are scamming your bank account password because you used it to secure your email... Surely you didn't do that. Read all about it below.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,561240,00.html?test=latestnews

Joel understands what takes to make something ship...

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/09/23.html

Why is IPhone successful?

For the same reason the PC of the 90s was. Thousands of applications written by developers with specific domain knowledge. Microsoft opened their API and a flood of applications pushed the PC to huge volumes. Apple was pushing the Mac at the time and wanted to retain control and thus did not facilitate outside development without some sort of licensing. This was the difference in the 90s. A parallel situation is happening again with the iPhone. Apple has opened development of iPhone / iPod application to the development horde and is benefiting from it. Don't misunderstand... You can make mucho dinero selling a proprietary charger and accessories to a captive audience. The difference is this, Apple has fallen back to making sure they control the hardware. They realized that software by it's digital nature want's to be open, low cost, and democratic. This is why I find no surprise that they let Spotify coexist with iTunes. It's about using software to sell the hardware. This strategy is paying off in spades; congratulations Mr. Jobs for learning from past experiences. Based on this my question to you is, is the iPhone hardware the razor or the razor blades?

Truth is stranger than fiction

Some of my curious collection of sites.

RunPee - Tells you when you can go pee during a movie

http://www.gotahoe.com/ gotahoe? GOTaHOE oh... GOtahoe What an unfortunate Domain name.

FailBlog and the sub site EngrishFunny

Here's a seasonal favorite Elf yourself!

The Squirrellizer!

The Dialectizer... Try FoxNews!

Pirates punishment disproportionate

I'm scratching my head here. Personally, I'm against piracy, however, I don't understand the RIAA's vigorous pursuit of peer sharing thieves. At the same time I do believe the old methods of music distribution are dying. The music industry is fighting hard against this but the result is inevitable. Like the buggy whip before the car, the store bought album is approaching it's sunset.

What got me to write this is two recent articles I read.

Whats next for Jammie Thomas-Rasset

Mrs. Thomas-Rasset had a judgment of $80,000 per song x 24 songs = $1.92 mil. All she did is drop some files in a directory (and tried to cover it up later).

But consider the take down of Rabid Neurosis. They had an outright organization promoting the stealing and active distribution of the music they stole. Some of it was even stolen before it hit shelves, thus competing directly with the studio's roll out of the album.

Feds crack Rabid Neurosis prerelease piracy group

Their possible fine... wait for it...

A maximum five-year sentence and $250,000 fine.

I realize one is a civil suit and the other is criminal. Wouldn't you agree something is still wrong here?

Get rid of the dead wood

A coworker and I were discussing the nature of IT in large organizations. I firmly believe that software can be created and deployed by large organizations but better software and better service comes from small organizations. Many experts will tell you that the amount of communication increases rapidly as team size increases. That is a factor yes, but my thought is that big companies have a larger percentage of deadwood. Most large companies have so many people that are arranged in silos and want to do very little if it is outside their domain or comfort zone. Most small companies have people that wear multiple hats and aren't afraid to learn something new or roll up the sleeves to get it done. That being said I have worked in teams in a big company that were competent and completed on time and under budget. Why is this like this? It's the nature of how big companies want to manage their staff. They offer buyouts (politically correct choice) to get rid of the deadwood and guess who takes it... the people that get the job done. Why? Because they can thrive elsewhere and they know it. The deadwood is comfortable staying where they are at (and they know it). Think about it.

The future is now

Last night I was driving my youngest son home from soccer practice and we got into a conversation about the advances in technology and what he might see in his life time. I thought about it a bit and figured out the since I was born I have seen the rise of many things that he takes for granted. Calculators, PCs, cell phones, broadcast TV, cable TV, satellite TV, Central AC, seat belts, air bags etc.

We discussed why the air car has flaws that will not make it feasible (when you stop you fall), cars that drive themselves, holovision, and other technologies seen in the movies. My questions are:

1. Do you think the rate of technology development is accelerating?
2. Does the slowing of space exploration reduce the development of new technologies?
3. How does ScFi media affect the technologies that are produced?

District 9

Wow! I was totally blown away by this movie. It is sad that you have to look outside of Hollywood for great original plot lines. This movie was a political statement, an action film, a love story all layered in with great sci-fi. The effects were spot on, and the actors, all unknown in the US, were terrific.

I can imagine the cheesy dialog that the hero would have uttered if Hollywood would have made it.

Alien: (in Arnold voice) I'll be back

Wikus: (in Arnold voice) I'll be here


Go see District 9!!

Netflix prize so close

So the Netflix prize is close to being awarded, however, an interesting thing is occurring. The rules were that once one team achieved 10% improvement then all other teams would have 30 days to better that number. Obviously working on tweaking software that long you would probably be fresh out of ideas... so these teams are combining themselves, their techniques, and their code to win the prize.

I find it interesting that competition is driving the teams to consolidate. I'm glad that the rules allow it. Usually competition means ensuring that you have to have multiple players (economically speaking). I think this situation mirrors the business world (Microsoft, Oracle, GE) when they purchase a company to get the technology, customer list, talent, etc. I would expect too, that like companies that get bloated and fragmented when they gobble up other companies, the combined code for these teams will be bloated and slow. I would imagine too that combining the teams has led to some huge conflict and angst for the team members trying to manage the merge. There you have it, a software contest as a microcosm for the business world.

GM Volt to get 230 MPG in City

Sorry for my absence. I took a completely relaxing vacation to PAGOSA SPRINGS CO.

GM announced today that the new Volt model they will be marketing in 2010 will get 230 in the city. Understand in these hybrid cars that the gas engine does not kick on for the first 40 miles so it skews the in city mileage estimate. Don't get me wrong though, this is an impressive achievement because the electric for the first 40 miles will cost 40 cents at off peak rates( this is about 10 kilowatt hours ). WOW! Now the downside... just like any other new technology it takes time to cover the tooling and startup costs. This means the Volt will come in around $40,000. But the flood gates will be opened!

GM comes out of bankruptcy

Wow that was quick... So quick I guess most of you didn't even see GM and government pull the wool over the eyes of GM's creditors. Basically GM sold its assets to the a new GM owned by the union and the government and totaly f'ed any creditor the old GM owed money to.

This will be strange bedfellows. A leaner meaner General Motors Company (new name), will be owned by the Gov'ment and the UAW. Watch this combination... We might as well change the classification the new GM to not for profit. They will make cars for the people by union labor that is overpaid and inefficient, for owners that don't really know that they own the company (taxpayers).

Here are my predictions. In addition to selling cars on ebay, Each model will have it's own Facebook page. 'B' lite specials will go out via twitter (sorry Kmart). After profits suck for a while the government will pass legislation for tax breaks if you buy a bailoutmobile.

Just goes to show you, Truth is stranger than fiction

My Top Ten iPhone killer apps

The iPhone is democratizing app development and distribution... Here are my top 10 favorite application yet to be written

10. The guy who wrote this is rich iPhone app. Basically an 'I am Rich' redux.
9. The iPhone Pocket Fisherman.
8. The iPhone taser.
7. Cougar on the Prowl for iPhone (I think some already has created this).
6. The Staples Easy Button for iPhone.
5. The History Eraser Button for iPhone (props to Ren and Stimpy).
4. Liar,Liar for iPhone (polygraph).
3. HeadOn for iPhone.
2. Scratchers tickets for IPhone.
1. The iPhone pregnacy test.

Seriously, If I can get someone to rub their iPhone on their forehead or pee on it then my job is done...

PIN for Credit Cards... NOW!

Within the last ten years the infrastructure to support Credit Card PINs has been installed. The rush to allow debit cards to be accepted in the marketplace has paved the way to apply the PIN concept to the credit card. Many millions of POS terminals have been added into locations across the world. These POS terminals can be made to ask for a PIN on credit transactions.

In reality, the introduction of the POS terminal and phone transactions have bypassed the original intended purpose for a credit card transaction. The credit card is supposed to be a presentment system. The fact that I present the card to the seller says something about the legitimacy of me as the owner. With the advent of mail order, and phone transactions the need to have the card has dried up. The POS system does much the same. Now I don't have to present my card to the cashier, I swipe and control the transaction myself. If I am a crook using a stolen card, the cashier doesn't even know. Obviously with a phone or a mail order transaction the PIN concept does not work, however, the crook would leave a trail (shipping address) to follow. At a POS terminal there is no trail to follow. Once the crook is out of the store it is done.

By implementing a PIN system for the CC transaction you will be cutting down on the crooks ability to do a non traceable transaction. Use of stolen cards, duplicated cards would all be hindered by adding a PIN to the card present transaction.

Security at my bank

I went to the drive through the other day to deposit some checks... Now this is a typical drive through except the bank had removed the teller window and replaced it with a monitor in a weatherproof steel box. While filling out my deposit slip I looked up and noticed that the screen saver on the monitor was the Microsoft Windows 2000 logo. As a web developer I go through pains to remove all traces of OS version, server version etc. to give attackers less info on what is in the black box. So is this a vulnerability or just a comment on the state of the technology at that particular branch?

Former ATT chief tapped to head GM

Well here we are expecting a leaner meaner GM to come out of bankruptcy and who do the pick as the new Chairman? Why Ed Whitacre of SBC/ATT fame.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9134143&intsrc=news_ts_head

How is GM supposed to get smaller when you hire this guy to lead? He resurrected ATT from the ashes of MaBell. His resume is built around putting humpty dumpty back together again, Is that what we need? Don't get me wrong Ed is a sharp business man, however, he does not have the right set of skills or perspective for this task. Why do I care? Mr. Obama has made me an owner.

Who knows, maybe Pontiac is not dead yet after all... or Nash, American, or Pierce-Arrow.

Java Unicode Regex

Working on an internationalized application has it's challenges. As we accept data from each country we need to validate the inputs. Regex is a great tool for this and Java's ability to do unicode regex is excellent.

Here are some details. Java takes the POSIX concept from Perl and groups unicode characters together based on purpose. Here are some of the base groups.

Numbers
\\p{N}
Alpha characters (all languages)
\\p{L}
Symbol characters (all languages)
\\p{S}
Punctuation characters (all languages)
\\p{P}
Spacing characters (all languages)
\\p{Z}
Mark characters (all languages)
\\p{M}

You can also use the '\\P' to xor the condition. So \\P{N} means not numbers.

These groups also have sub groups, for example \\p{Lu} would represent Uppercase letters. Lowercase would be \\p{Ll}

Java also has some flags that control the evaluation of the regex. I use the following flags when I create my pattern.

Pattern.CANON_EQ          This allows the regex to accept a suitable substitute char, for example a for à.
Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE  This allows the regex to ignore case
Pattern.UNICODE_CASE      This allows the regex to ignore unicode case.

Below is a code snippet showing how to use these for AlphaNumeric, Numeric and Alpha.

/**
* A regex for valid UTF-8 characters.
*
* Numbers  and notNumbers
*    \\p{N}           \\P{N}
* Alpha characters (all languages)
*    \\p{A}
* Symbol characters (all languages)
*    \\p{S}
* Punctuation characters (all languages)
*    \\p{P}
* Spacing characters (all languages)
*    \\p{Z}
* Mark characters (all languages)
*    \\p{M}
*/
private static final String ALPHANUMERIC_CHARS = "[\\p{N}\\p{P}\\p{Z}\\p{L}\\p{M}*]+";
private static final String NUMERIC_CHARS = "[\\p{N}*]+";
private static final String ALPHA_CHARS = "^[\\p{L}*]+";

/**
* Tests for alphanumeric characters in the string.  This also allows comma, period, space, dash and ampersand.
* @param testString
* @return
*/
private Boolean isAlphaNumeric(String testString) {       
Pattern p = Pattern.compile(ALPHANUMERIC_CHARS, Pattern.CANON_EQ |
Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE |
Pattern.UNICODE_CASE);
Matcher m = p.matcher(testString);
return m.matches();
}

/**
* Tests to make sure only alpha characters are in the string.
* @param testString
* @return
*/
private Boolean isAlpha(String testString) {
Pattern p = Pattern.compile(ALPHA_CHARS, Pattern.CANON_EQ |
Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE |
Pattern.UNICODE_CASE);
Matcher m = p.matcher(testString);
return m.matches();           
}

Note: With in the code the regex is java escaped. If you are testing this in a regex tester the regex would look like this:

[\p{N}\p{P}\p{Z}\p{L}\p{M}*]+

Excellent resources on this are here http://icu-project.org/docs/papers/iuc26_regexp.pdf
and here http://www.regular-expressions.info/unicode.html

Enema of the state

Well we've spent billions upon billions of dollars, GM has become Government Motors, and our retirements are out the window. This is the enema of the state.

GM has been in trouble for years. Their inept management compounded by the unions stranglehold ensured that they would be bankrupt. The government is playing the white knight and riding to the rescue. This is what is keeping this bankruptcy from being a liquidation and not a reorganization. But think hard about this all you that are cheering... This is the same government that can't make Amtrack, or the postal service work. Why do we think this will be any different?

So whose to blame? The unions sucked on the blood of GM until they were fat as ticks. Don't get me wrong, the unions had their place in the the development of labor within this country. Their early efforts were about insuring work place safety, and rightfully so, the rail and stock yards were incredibly dangerous places to work, and the company barons did not care. Then after the safety issues were alleviated, they moved from hours and pay to benefits to job security. As they moved through all of these legislation was written that ensured the protections and limits they were fighting for. But they did not realize that they no longer had a purpose. They did not go away. They stuck around. The union dues gravy train was here...

Combine the strangulation of the company by the unions with the incredibly shortsighted management of GM, and this result was inevitable. Now we have the most laughable of situations, the biggest spending organization in the world is going to ensure that GM is successful. By the way the biggest spending organization is powered by you and I the taxpayers. I can only hope the administration will take a hands off approach. If not we will surely be driving electric versions of the Yugo (You heard it here first).

Oddly enough several banks that initially wanted money have said they do not want it any more
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/09/report-allow-banks-repay-tarp-money/. They have discovered that public knowledge of having taken the TARP funds is a "Scarlet letter". Ford who was wise enough to refuse government money has determined that this period is a time to make significant inroads in market share and will increase their output 10%. http://www.autoblog.com/2009/06/01/ford-to-increase-production-by-10-in-third-quarter/ They were wise enough to understand that having the government as a business partner is the equivalent of tying a rock to their ankle and jumping off the deep end. Kudos to Ford for understanding that when all others zig you should zag.

The economy is coming back. Knee jerk legislation is not what saved it. Bad fiscal policy is not what saved it. The free market righted itself. Most of the money yet to be distributed as aid to companies will be wasted. This is the government doing what it does best... Now bend over and bear down...

If you think spin distorts your news I have references from several different sources on where the money is or was, and where it should go.

http://projects.nytimes.com/creditcrisis/recipients/table
http://money.cnn.com/news/storysupplement/economy/bailouttracker/
http://bailout.propublica.org/
http://www.grailresearch.com/PDF/ContenPodsPdf/Global_Bailout_Tracker.pdf



If the government wanted to do something helpful it could setup a clearing house that would aid in the classification of all the unknown debt out there. This is not a crisis of liquidity. This is a crisis of transparency. The banks balance sheets need to be understood for the unknown risk they contain. This needs to be quantified. Then and only then will credit flow properly again.

By they way... get your refi now. In 3 -5 years we will be at 10%.... or more. As this debt gets quantified rates are going to jump significantly.

iPhone initial thoughts

I purchased a iPhone for my wife for Mother's day. She previously had a Blackberry Curve and she is a heavy user of net services over the phone. She has multiple email accounts, and utilizes the calendar extensively for both business and family. We needed a solution for the email and in particular the calendar. We utilize yahoo mail and calendar. I never did like the whole sync thing with phone >> outlook >> yahoo and back. She was always getting errors with no way to tell what the offending item was, thus no way to correct it.

When her iPhone came I was quite impressed by the quality. It was heavy in my hand suggesting it was built well. I purchased the iFrogz red two piece cover that I was very impressed with. I think it will protect it nicely.

After the requisite charging period, I installed iTunes so that I could active her phone. Now iTunes an I go way back (my kids have nanos and iPods) and I am not a fan. But that is a topic for a different time. I did have a problem in activating in that I was trying to use my wife's old SIM card so that she would not lose her contacts. A call to the ATT activation service cleared this up as she advised me to use the new SIM card that came with the phone and then have a ATT store transfer her contacts.

Once the phone was running now it was time to tackle the whole email, calendar mess. I was not looking forward to this. I went to Yahoo mobile and downloaded their package. Wow! was I ever surprised. I was able to add multiple email accounts and view and edit her calendar because of her internet connection. What a difference! Appointments entered on the phone showed up on the pc immediately. Ditto for the reverse. Awesome! Excellent job Yahoo. After setting all this up I then moved the native iPhone Calendar app to the last page (out of site out of mind).

After this I configured the wifi connection. Since my lan is MAC locked, I had to google to find out where you lookup the MAC on an iPhone. I configured the phone and my lan and presto it came right up.

I like the iPhone. My wife likes the iPhone. Appointments are flowing and all is right with the world. What a great Mother's Day.

Analysis of the 419

So we all get them... And a fraction of one percent fall for them. That's why they continue to happen. Here is the 419 phish and my analysis.


OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF OPERATION
INTERNATIONAL CREDIT SETTLEMENT,
ATM PAYMENT DEPARTMENT (CBN)
CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA . (It's in all caps so you know it's important)
Email: remittancedeptcentral88bank@gmail.com
(All the best Central Banks use gmail)
Telephone:+2348028241762
(234 is the country code for Nigeria...)

VERY URGENT ATTENTION!!! (Wow he's got me now... This must be important!)

This is to officially inform you that we the international credit
settlement of central bank of Nigeria has verified your contract/inheritance file and found out that why you have not received your part payment of $16 million is because you have not fulfilled the obligations given to you in respect of your contract/inheritance payment.
(Did you understand any of that? BTW I doubt I have any relatives in Nigeria... at least none in the last 14o generations!)


Secondly we have been informed that for you not to deal with the non officials (Those Bozos!) in the bank and your entire attempt to secure the release of your fund to you will be in vane.(Your'e so VAIN, you probably think this phish is about you... regrets Carly!) So we wish to advise you that such an illegal act like these have to stop if you wish to receive your payment since we have decided to bring a solution to your problem. (I don't have a problem... you do because you don't have my account number) Right now we have arranged your payment through our swift card payment center Asia pacific that is the latest instruction from MR. PRESIDENT. ALHAJI UMAR MUSA YARADUA (GCFR) FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA. AND NEW CHAIRMAN ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL CRIMES COMMISSION(EFCC) MRS FARIDA WAZIRI (He is indeed the president, and she is head of the commission to crackdown on 419 scams), which will not involve any fraudulent act or money laundering and because the CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA is running for the yearly payment that's why the order is given,

As well as the INTERPOL and FBI in conjunction with HOMELAND SECURITY (what about OSHA, the FDA, IMF, and World Bank?) so you have absolutely nothing to be afraid of and due the previous scam and fraud act from imposters (so the other scammers are imposters. I guess this makes him the original scammer) in our country we have mapped out that this card is sent to your personal address so, This card center will send you an ATM CARD which you will use to withdraw your money in any ATM MACHINE in any part of the world, but the maximum is twenty thousand dollars per day, so if you like to receive your fund this way (I like my cash dropped from a helicopter, thank you. I'm a pirate at heart...) please let us know by contacting Deputy Governor, Financial Sector Surveillance/the card payment center officer MR ERNEST C.EBI (MFR) on his,

Contact name: MR ERNEST C.EBI (MFR)
Email address:::remittancedeptcentral88bank@gmail.com (He must be working from home.)
Telephone/fax line: +2348028241762 (he gets fax and phone on the same line... don't you think the Central Bank could buck up for separate lines?)

And also send the following information:
1. Your full name (the ironic spelling mistake here would be to ask for fool name)
2. Phone and fax number
3. Addresses were you want them to send the ATM card
4. Your age and your current occupation.
5. Attach copy of your identification

The ATM CARD PAYMENT CENTER has been mandated to issue out ($6,000,000.00) as part payment for this fiscal year 2009/2010 payment year. (HE said $20,000 per day max, that only covers me for 300 days. That means he still owes me.) Also for your information, you have to stop any further communication with any other person(s) or office(s) to avoid any hitches in receiving your Payment. (Don't say nutin to noone) For oral discussion, call and email me back as soon as you receive this important message for further direction and also update me on any development from the above-mentioned office.

Note that because of impostors, we hereby issued you our code of conduct, which is (ATM-822) (Is this like double secret probation?) so you have to indicate this code when contacting the card center by using it as your subject.

Regards,

OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF OPERATION
CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA
(He doesn't even have the balls to sign with his own name)

(I think this guy needs to trade his PC for a RPG and AK, move to Somalia and buy a fishing license... He sure ain't phishing here)


(And below since he is using gmail, here is the requisite ad to subsidize the scam/spam)
Shopping for Mom? Save yourself a little time and money on AOL Shopping

.
Trustworthiness:
Vendor reliability:
Privacy:
Child safety:

Mastercard CC closed

I received a letter from Citibank. They are reissuing my Mastercard credit card because it was determined to be among the ones taken in a retailer breach. I asked which retailer when I called and they did not know or were purposely vague. (I suspicion it was the TJ Maxx hack). TJ Maxx happened before March 30, 2007. Why does it take 2 years to reissue cards?

Credit card companies have a concept of acceptable loss, however, with my identity, money, and credit rating THERE IS NO ACCEPTABLE LOSS!

Credit card companies.... pull it together and get tough with this problem now, or you might be surprised when losses reach a point where they are not acceptable. Prepare for that now while you can.

Content completion does not work - Solved

A co worker of mine uses Eclipse and his content completion just quit working. I have had this same problem in the past as well. He found the answer to it.

Go to Window >> Preferences >> Java >> Editor >> Content Assist. Then click Restore Defaults and then Apply. Evidently something gets garfed in there and it kills the content completion.

Thanks for the FYI Adam!

Engineer humor

This is not mine so credit goes to whoever had the extra time to come up with this. If you are the copyright holder, have your lawyers call my lawyers etc.

Conversion Table:

1. Ratio of an igloo's circumference to its diameter = Eskimo Pi
2. 2000 pounds of Chinese soup = Won ton
3. 1 millionth of a mouthwash = 1 microscope
4. Time between slipping on a peel and smacking the pavement = 1 bananosecond
5. Weight an evangelist carries with God = 1 billigram
6. Time it takes to sail 220 yards at 1 nautical mile per hour = Knotfurlong
7. 16.5 feet in the Twilight Zone = 1 Rod Sterling
8. Half of a large intestine = 1 semicolon
9. 1,000,000 aches = 1 megahurtz
10. Basic unit of laryngitis = 1 hoarsepower
11. Shortest distance between two jokes = A straight line
12. 453.6 graham crackers = 1 pound cake
13. 1 million-million microphones = 1 megaphone
14. 2 million bicycles = 2 megacycles
15. 365.25 days = 1 unicycle
16. 2000 mockingbirds = 2 kilomockingbirds
17. 52 cards = 1 decacards
18. 1 kilogram of falling figs = 1 FigNewton
19. 1000 milliliters of wet socks = 1 literhosen
20. 1 millionth of a fish = 1 microfiche
21. 1 trillion pins = 1 terrapin
22. 10 rations = 1 decoration
23. 100 rations = 1 C-ration
24. 2 monograms = 1 diagram
25. 8 nickels = 2 paradigms
26. 2.4 statute miles of intravenous surgical tubing at Yale University Hospital = 1 IV League

vi gotcha

Here's a little gotcha that I ran into editing a MySQL cnf file on unix. I just opened it to comment out some lines, save and restart. When I attempted to restart it refused and died. So not thinking that I squished it with my ham handed edit, I emailed the SA about it. He found it. After I had commented out my lines and I went to save, I must have hit the '~' key when trying to get into escape mode (its right next to the escape key). The '~' in vi capitalizes the next letter after the cursor.

List of phone regexs for all countries