The flood of Chinese spam is not only a nuisance in itself. I get about 150 to 200 spams a day. I have not yet been able to make it clear that 1) I am not a sexy guy 2) I don’t need a boost in bed 3) I don’t suffer from underdeveloped body parts (except my brain maybe). But the Chinese spam has suddenly brought some real nasty problems.
In short, I have suddenly adware that from time to time forces Firefox to visit Chinese gaming websites (plus a pop-up)(two different sites). We all scanned the web to find comments, a solution – nothing.
Many say, MAC does not have real virus problems nor adware. Whatever they say, dead wrong. You are invited to check my MAC. It definitely has adware 100% confirmed. Finding any program at all to remove adware on the MAC resulted in NOTHING.
Let me give an overview for the techies:
– MAC OSX 10.4.7 with all updates done
– Firefox 1.5.0.6 (where the adware appears!)
– Norton Antivirus 9.0.4 (5) (did not find anything)
– downloaded and run: MACSCAN 2.2 (version 31 July 06) – no spyware found
– deleted: all cookies, checked passwords, etc.
– checked HD for funny looking files (tough job, did not find anything really, even looking at invisible files, startup items, etc. – the usual suspects)
– updated Flash Player (the older version was apparently a security risk)
– did not understand the ActiveX story and Firefox (underdeveloped brain?)
– disabled pop-ups in Firefox
I have done all kinds of funny things, watch the CPU activities but since then the adware does not show up. Maybe I did something without knowing it? The adware came mostly after being one hour on Firefox.
So, if anybody has a comment, except “use PC”, or “use a PC adware remover” or alike, happy to read.
MAC and IT
IT, telecom, Macintosh
E-mails in Beijing: back to “normal”
As I reported in earlier blogs, we have been suffering from e-mail problems since May at least. I wrote a couple of strong-worded reports to the Beijing authorities, my usual frustrating task. Indeed, one should never expect a direct feedback from our Chinese officials. But they did take note as I learned in a meeting with them.
On the other hand, our not-so-enthusiastic (foreign) chambers of commerce here were running away and burying their heads in the sand. Pathetic really. I wrote to some people who were experiencing serious problems; some did not even bother to acknowledge receipt. Sometimes I wonder why I try to help people. As my wife says, I am too friendly.
As I have explained, I was convinced the problems were rather technical, not really a result of a tightening control on communications – just bad software.
Well, we certainly have to say thanks to our English “boffins” from Cambridge University, one Mr. Richard Clayton in particular. They made a serious study of the way CISCO routers look for keywords that the Chinese government wishes to censor. The routers allow data packets in and out, but send a burst of resets to shut connections if they spot particular keywords. And they found a couple of interesting hitches. In a surprise move they have reported their findings to the Chinese Government so that it can fix the problem. This is not the first time Cambridge boffins have assisted a Communist power with its security, according to an article from Nick Farrell. In this case it was a smart move and we are grateful.
You can guess who provides all the equipment!? (cartoon from the IHT)
Yes, “thank you Uncle Sam”. We all know how much you are concerned in “defending freedom”. Just put them together with all those other famous companies of the same kind – no need to name them, you know who they are. Except Wikipedia who refuses to “cooperate”.
At least CISCO and their friends started cleaning up their mess and we are now again back to normal, well, kind of. At least for our e-mail. I did not experience any more breakdowns in downloading e-mails from overseas servers (e.g. to Outlook, not my case coz I never touch this pest).
Even download speeds seem to have picked up. I also note the Internet routing has been reconfigured through different routers before diving into the submarine cable – where we still see a sizeable reduction in transmission speeds before emerging on the US West Coast.
All in all, reason to be more happy.
If now our Chinese “specialists” would take care a bit of the flood of spam that has increased lately. We all can see the bulk is generated in China – even foreign spammers are said to use Chinese servers. The spam is totally out of control, I was told there is lots of sex stuff as well as scams (I don’t read the Chinese spam). Despite some tepid announcements from certain officials, nobody really cares. I guess they want to respect our freedom of choice?
I’ll be back!
Some people have been complaining about one month of inactivity. They are right but I have some good excuses. First of all, I needed to put some order in my private papers, neglected since FIVE YEARS. Done. Then, this blog site needed a software update and it scared the hell out of me. Done all backups, studied the instructions over and over again and finally just did it. Unless I did not see the disaster in front of my eyes, seems it is working. So, unless the sky falls on my bloghead, I’LL BE BACK and with a vengeance. Just hold on.
We lost our server of the main website and mail system in the US for several hours this week because some clever worker dug up and cut the fiber cables in the area. The blog remained on line – being on a different server in a different location. The ISP (HostMySite.com) at least was so nice to send a report with apologies including pics of the cable being repaired; the CEO remained with the repair crew, well that is something people can learn from here: 1) communication with the clients 2) transparency 3) hands-on top management 4) no meetings with speeches and lots of tea drinking to decide what to do.
That also explains why I stick to that company instead of opting for a cheaper hosting: you get what you pay for. You can even call them up and a REAL PERSON will answer the phone.
Drugs and the Internet in Beijing
Beijing has set up the “Beijing Center to Report Drug Abuse” just recently. Their e-mail address:
bjgajjdc@sohu.com and contact number: 010-83552022/83552012
I had sent a report to the Center about the increasing drug trade in Sanlitun and the negative impact it has on the image of Beijing, the expatriate community and the tourists. Now you can freely buy drugs, pirated DVD and afterwards get a “sexy bar visit”, all thanks to Chinese and dark-skinned touts roaming free.
The South China Morning Post published some sharp articles on the drug trade in Beijing and the indignation of the African community:
2 July 2006 “Beijing’s new street hustlers” and 2 July 2006 “African community fears backlash over drug dealers” – both by Peter Simpson
Not all Africans are drug traders and many fear all black people will be suspected to be in drugs, fights, scams. All explained in the SCMP articles. The journalists and others tried to report the drug trade and other dubious activities to the local police. They were not interested.
I sent my e-mail, no reaction yet. But I don’t give up and I am still passing my comments to the Beijing authorities who are digesting it all. The wheels of the bureaucracy turn slowly – everywhere.
Lip service with the usual Beijing style. Media articles of drug dealers being executed, international drug day, etc.
But hey! the police just LOVES those black-skinned people, also, you don’t want to have the nice police accused of racism, do you?
Anyway, silly me. The police is just too busy with the REAL problems: cleaning up the Internet, cutting scenes from movies, shutting down blogs. Internet screening is becoming worse by the day. Finally some businesspeople are getting very upset by the problems – not even being able to download normal e-mails.
I would not be surprised one day there will be a serious backlash from the international community. It will be very interesting to see how it will be by 2008 – and during the Olympics. I am not exactly part of the optimist’s club. As far as I understand from the foreign media they are preparing themselves for a good scoop.
While it is often so pathetic the way they are getting paranoid, it is sad for Beijing.
Yesterday I watched the DVD “Memoirs of a Geisha”. Never mind what one thinks of the movie in itself, our family was just wondering for what sensible reason the movie could not be shown in China. Bad Chinese girls really, going to bed with Japanese actors. Disgrace for the country. Imagine, with Japanese! Horror. (*)
No problem for our Japanese guests here however, they can go to Sanlitun, just get out of a taxi and the touts will promptly arrange “sexy massage” with all the trimmings. They can increase their stamina by buying some drugs with our friendly dark-skinned friends before heading for the massage. And in case of need, I am sure they can buy some real good blue DVD to get inspiration. And no need to look for it, it will come to them. That’s service!
By the way, I wanted to write about the daily thunderstorms we are having lately in Beijing (we are rather happy with that). The highest authorities are now clamping down on any media writing about “public emergencies” (to include accidents, public health crises, social unrest and natural disasters). Chinese journalists expressed strong resentment against the draft law that has provisions for heavy fines, despite officials’ assurances it would apply only if a report caused “serious damage”.
So I am having second thoughts. Is a thunderstorm a “public emergency”? Hmmm…. tough question. Better safe than sorry. Look, we have perfect weather here, blue sky, no polluted Internet and so much more.
(*) On a more serious note, it all tells a lot about cultural differences and clumsy politics by the Japanese government. While it has funded tremendous financial assistance for China’s development it has failed to address its war history, upsetting both China and South Korea. In China, the word Geisha is assimilated with prostitution but in Japan it is seen as “skilled persons”, going through rigorous training. I see nothing wrong with multi-national casts of actors. One can argue Chinese don’t look like Japanese but I found the Chinese actresses trying to perform reasonably well even if some aspects of their Geisha interpretation conflict at times with the traditional Japanese concept of the “skilled persons”. Also, would the American public be shocked if a famous US actress would be cast in a role of a “prostitute”?
Backing up my iMAC
2 May 2006
Just a couple of days ago my daughter’s PC died. It wasn’t that bad, some chip got tired and needed replacement. She did not lose any data but is was a warning – the May holidays are a good time to back up the many GB in my iMAC.
Yep, I live (rather happily) on my Apple island in the office, all others use PC. I never managed to work on those. When I travel I can use them for some work as long as it is simple stuff like e–mail and the usual MS Office.
I am indeed one of those loners, no PC and certainly not Outlook and Explorer (Yuk – who that live with that stuff?). Netscape is still great, forgotten and even ridiculed. But on MAC OS X it runs great, in one program you have Explorer, Outlook and (mini) Web Design. I edit webpages before I print them or save them as PDF. Try that with that Explorer. Finally MS has decided to modernize their old stuff called Explorer, now the Beta version is available. I use only Explorer for narrow-minded websites that think the only browser in the world is IE. Our website is tested with several browsers and OS platforms. Nothing that spectacular, only requires a bit more work.
I just downloaded Firefox. Works just like Netscape and runs well. Safari is also good. But Netscape remains my default program at least as for now.
Doing the back-up is not really your dream of spending a holiday. My MAC OS 10.3.9 needs the new 10.4, since one year sitting on the shelf and you never know what happens with an upgrade. Hopefully the new OS will improve some of the pesky OS X little problems. First I thought my MAC wasn’t right but then reading on the Web, I wasn’t the only one.
Downloading on a PC external HD is a good test to see if all files are OK, names are correct and folders do not have those irritating hidden files, messing up downloads.
I finally understand (?) the simple ABC of names: the PC disk hates any “/” in a folder name. I mostly thought the file names were too long or contained those “special characters”. Well no, I did a “Find” search for files with a /, changed those to _ and there we go without problems.
Well not entirely.
Even MAC external disks were complaining about some of my folders while at first there seemed nothing wrong. I found the (unexplained) problem: some folders have the invisible files “_Icon”. That’s the bad guy.
With Find File plus the additional setting “invisible files” I got the list of the bad folders, not that excessive, some 25 in total. Trashing the Icon in the Search Results did not work. The solution was Norton Antivirus, “View Files” and show invisible. You look for the bad folders, find the Icon and trash it within Norton. Works and then the downloads went fine. I am still not clear if the trash is really emptied – Norton sees still some of those pests in the trash while the desktop trash folder is empty.
But real pesky are those zillions of new files created by OS X on PC disks, serving no purpose at all: all files are joined by namesakes preceded by _ and DS_Store in all folders. I have thousands of pics – on the PC disk they just double in quantity… They confuse, take up space and are a pain to delete if you want to do it, what I mostly do in a PC or on my good old PowerBook with OS 9. Apple can say what they want – I loved OS 9 and keep as a treasure my old PowerBook. At least I could understand what OS 9 was doing – OS X sometimes makes me wonder if we are being led into PC world by force. Or maybe I am getting too old. Well, till now I have not seen one MAC guru who really knows what all that stuff is in OS X “you don’t need to know, if it does not work just re-install the OS”. Great. Sounds like my PC people in the office: about once a month the PCs (with Chinese OS) need some “reloading”. They say it’s normal, also PC crash is said to be normal (at least in my office – not really a reference). We Macfanatics are NOT used to that.
the office of one more Macfanatic, in Beijing
Hopefully OS 10.4 will be better….
Comments from gurus and alike are welcome. I am NOT one, I just try to survive…