01.14.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:47 pm by blog
Sick of marketing calls and companies which demand your phone number for the sole purpose of calling you up to sell you stuff you don’t want?
So give them the following US number: 1-254-243-1704
This number goes through to an automated system that plays samples of Borat saying various random things… He starts off saying hello, and then says he’s pleased to meet you, followed by a few other quotes. In my limited tests, unwanted callers usually tend to speak to Borat for a while, as they think the person saying hello and asking who he’s speaking to is a real person and not a recorded message.
For legal reasons I think I will have to add a recorded message at the start saying that the call is being recorded, then I will be able to record the calls and post them here…
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01.13.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:37 pm by blog
I am looking to register a new domain name for the free disposable mail site - currently http://commodore.in.
Basically what this site does, is allow anyone to read email for any address at the supported domains anonymously… The site currently has 4 domains for mail receiving:
dharmatel.net
commodore.in
slave-auctions.net
deadchildren.org
You can receive for any address at these domains, and read it anonymously for free. This is extremely useful for sites that force you to sign up with a valid email address for whatever purpose, such as posting a comment or downloading something. If you use your real email address, these sites could send you mail continuously or worse, let spammers get hold of your address either by selling it to them or suffering a security breach allowing them to get it. If you use the free disposable mail service, then that’s where the spam will go to and you don’t have to worry about it.
The site also has a nice AJAX-ish interface, based on Roundcube webmail.
Because some of these domains may come and go, i need a permanent domain for the service… Something simple, easy to remember and to the point, something like tempmail.com, but that is already taken…
All suggestions welcome, post suggestions as comments below!
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11.09.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:55 am by blog
Well, i have setup a new TGP site on http://nutcustard.com, any support is welcome so please spread the word.
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10.11.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:56 pm by blog
We now have disposable email accounts on several new domains….
www.slave-auctions.net
www.deadchildren.org
www.dharmatel.net
www.commodore.in
Use once email accounts, so you can sign up for things online without being bombarded by spam!
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10.10.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:20 pm by blog
It’s now possible to get a free disposable and anonymous email account from http://www.spamdecoy.net . This site will let you receive email for any address @spamdecoy.net or several other domains, and is incredibly useful when you need a temporary throw-away email account… Think of all those websites that require you to enter an email address in order to sign up, and signing up results in floods of spam… If you use commodore.in then you need never worry about spam going to your real email account.
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08.20.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:39 pm by blog
Aparrently the Skype service went down this week, and stayed down for 2 days leaving users unable to use it…
Now Skype uses it’s own proprietary protocol, it’s not based on any kind of standard like SIP or H.323, so you have to use the Skype client and connect it to the Skype service.
But when the service is not available, your screwed, and if you want to communicate with people you have to use something else.
If you had used a standard protocol such as SIP, then you can easily have a backup provider which your client can switch to automatically. You may not even notice that your primary service provider went down at all.
Similarly, because they can be replaced so easily, standards compliant service providers have to compete for your custom. There are hundreds of SIP providers out there, your free to shop around for the best value provider rather than being stuck with a single supplier.
So if you use a standard protocol you get choice, the choice of where to get your service from, and the choice to use another service if one fails you (eg: an outage) and even to use multiple services at once, automatically switching to another if the primary fails.
If you use proprietary protocols like Skype, you are at the mercy of a single provider. You have to pay whatever prices they decide to charge, and simply put up with whatever outages they have.
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07.09.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:53 am by blog
Today i had a listing cancelled on ebay, for:
“Circumvention of eBay Fees (=LS &12362 JM119848267)”
However, your listing was in breach of eBay’s Circumvention of eBay Fees policy and has been removed from eBay. All fees related to this listing have been credited to
your account. We also notified members who placed bids on the item that the listing has
been canceled.
We would like to take this opportunity to let you know what part of your listing is not permitted.
Your listing(s) contains the following information:
Payment by paypal will incur a 5 additional charge to cover fees
You may not manipulate eBay’s system in order to avoid paying certain eBay fees. This includes practices such as adding previously unspecified fees after the end of the
auction, or charging excessive postage and packaging in order to recoup your listing and Final Value Fees. Fee avoidance provides a poor buying experience and gives you
an unfair advantage over other eBay sellers.
Payment surcharges are a form of fee circumvention. eBay prohibits surcharging by sellers. Surcharging occurs when sellers pass the charges they incur for using eBay or
third party services such as payment services onto buyers.
eBay has adopted this surcharging policy to ensure that all buyers receive clear and accurate pricing information when trading on eBay.co.uk. This surcharge policy
applies only to items listed on eBay.co.uk.
For more information on Circumvention of eBay Fees copy this link into a new browser window:
http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/listing-surcharges.html
What this basically boils down to is. I as a seller cannot make the buyer pay to cover the charges imposed by paypal… Thus, if a buyer pays for the item with cash, a cheque or some other method I receive all the money. If they pay using paypal, I lose a percentage of it. I don’t consider this at all unreasonable, if a buyer wants to use a method of payment that will cost more, they should foot the bill, not the seller. Ebay are doing this because making buyers pay the paypal charges discourages people from using it, so they screw the sellers instead.
Also let’s not forget that paypal take a cut from the money intended for shipping costs, so sellers have no choice but to inflate shipping costs to cover it.
So as a consequence, i will stop using paypal.
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07.04.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:06 am by blog
A followup to my earlier posting on http://www.ev4.org/wordpress/2007/03/03/keziefoodscouk-are-cheeky-bastards/ regarding the way their registration page uses javascript to fake you signing up for their newsletter, even when you explicitely unchecked the “subscribe to newsletter” box.
As i stated in my earlier post, i wrote them an email complaining about this horrendous behaviour. A few days later, i got a reply:
From: "Wendy Biggins" (wendy@kezie.com)
To:(MY ADDRESS)
Subject: RE: March Offer
Can you deal with this one!!!!!!
-----Original Message-----
From: MY_ADDRESS [mailto:MY_ADDRESS]=20
Sent: 03 March 2007 10:04
To: wendy@kezie.com
Subject: Re: March Offer
How dare you send me this unsolicited mail.
Your registration form uses javascript to recheck the “subscribe to
newsletter” tickbox, even if it’s explicitely been left unchecked.
I was planning to make a purchase from your company, and i went through
the registration form while intentionally leaving the newsletter option
unticked as i don’t like to receive floods of junk mail. When i clicked
submit, the newsletter box got automatically ticked by javascript within
the page. This is an illegal and incredibly insulting act, and caused me
to immediately stop placing an order and go elsewhere.
I want my details removed from your system IMMEDIATELY, or else i will
be
forced to report you for sending of unsolicited commercial email.
I also suggest that you modify the ridiculous policy of tricking people
into subscribing to your newsletter, as this highly offensive and
underhanded act will certainly cost you more customers than just me.
This looks like a pretty stupid screwup… It’s obvious she tried to forward this to one of her colleagues, but fucked up and hit reply instead of forward…
I did reply, to let her know of the mistake but have since not received anything back. How very rude of them.
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07.01.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:08 pm by blog
I doubt i’m alone in being frustrated with the ridiculous anti-piracy measures these days…
The requirement to have the original CD/DVD in the drive to play a game for instance. I have several games installed on my HD, and the idea of installing games in the first place, was to improve load times and AVOID THE HASSLE OF HAVING TO LOAD ORIGINAL MEDIA AND/OR DAMAGE IT.
I work away a lot, and carry a laptop with me at all times. I don’t want to carry a stack of CDs on the off chance i might want to play them. I dont want to keep transferring the media between my stack at home, and my laptop bag.
People with pirate copies are much better off, they dont have to worry about losing media, they dont have to worry about bringing it along with them. It is actually advantageous to the game player to download a pirate copy. This is in stark contrast to the old anti-piracy advertising associated with analogue video/audio, where pirated copies were noticeably inferior to the originals. The advent of digital media levelled the ground, but rather than do something to compensate for that, companies have gone the other way and taken steps to make the originals actually inferior to the pirate copies.
Having to enter license codes or serial numbers is equally irritating, most people simply aren’t organised enough to keep track of all these small scraps of paper with serial numbers on them, and most people don’t want that much paper laying about. And losing that small piece of paper results in them being completely unable to use software they may have paid a large amount of money for.
Also the old code wheels, and requirements to enter a word/letter from the manual. This was common years ago, on the amiga for instance, and was incredibly irritating. Some even required you to re-enter codes at random points throughout the game, and would punish you if you entered them wrong.
So, i won’t buy games where i have to keep the DVD in the drive to play, and i won’t buy software where i need to enter a code to use it. Why should legitimate customers be at a disadvantage relative to pirates? If this is the thanks we get for buying software, then i think i’l side with the pirates as they don’t shaft their own customers.
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06.25.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:00 pm by blog
Does anyone else see the problems with for-profit drug companies doing all the research into new medications?
For one, when a drug company develops a drug, they will patent it, giving them an artificial monopoly on that drug. They can then keep prices artificially high, because there’s no competing companies offering the same drugs. If you cant afford that price (and many people in poor countries cannot) your screwed.
But how about the hypocrisy of it all? Imagine for a minute that you run a for-profit drugs company… Will you:
a, develop a cure for AIDS, that sufferers will take for a brief time before being cured.
b, develop combination-therapy that, with continued use, will keep sufferers alive but infected with HIV for many years
For-profit companies will take the latter. Why? It’s obvious, why sell a quick effective cure when you can keep selling people a whole cocktail of drugs for many years? It’s in the drug companies interest to offer a less effective treatment that the sufferer will need to keep taking.
So what *should* be done?
1, Abolish patents on medications, and publish medication details in the public domain, use capitalism for what its good for, pushing down prices with competition as drugs companies are forced to produce the same drugs cheaper in order to compete.
2, Have all medical research be done by charities, or non profit organisations like the UN, with all the research openly published and collaborated, so as to avoid multiple organisations repeating the same work.
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