Spalding Computer Services

Looking for a bargain from the Sainsburys website? What are you going to do, try www.sainsburys.co.uk which is the sensible option, or go to Google and search for sainsburys?
Google has published its most recent trending search topics for the USA and they’re topped by searches for an internationally unknown socialite closely followed at number 3 by Tiger Woods. The pair are supposedly involved but deny it.

After searches for the Spanish version of Big Brother come a series of searches linked to the recent Black Friday annual American online retail sales bonanza.
What’s not surprising is the number of searches that are still made for what you would consider to be blindingly obvious domains.
Wal Mart for instance is cast iron guaranteed to own wallmart.com. I don’t need Google to tell me that. The same goes for Kohls and Best Buy.

This shows nothing much changes. I recall writing something similar to this at least 5 years ago.

Number 10 is paranormal activity, up 50% over the last 7 days. I’m not sure what triggered that, possibly the impending mid season finale of Flash Forward.

I was struck by what I thought was just plain over indulgence and quite barmy thinking when I first visited Dubai a couple of years ago. That didn’t change much when we went back there last year.
I just could not figure out where they expected all the people to come from that would fill all the hotel rooms, apartment blocks, villas and offices that were being built with, it must be said, impressive speed.

The crazyness of the traffic jams on Sheik Zaeed Road, a multi lane super highway that runs the length of Dubai from the old city up to and beyond the Marina complex to the site of the new, under construction, airport. It’s actually one of the few roads in Dubai that has a name.
The Burj Dubai, the worlds tallest building. Why bother?
The Atlantis Hotel sitting out on a man made sandbank which, according to some reports, is already sinking, and so expensive to even walk into for a cup of coffee. What were they thinking?
The taxi drivers who generally speaking don’t speak much English and have no idea where you want to go anyway if it’s not a famous landmark.
And the sewage system. Well actually more the lack of a proper sewage system for all the new buildings that have shot up in last few years.
Dubai trucks it’s sewage out of the city to the one and only sewage farm on the outskirts of town in a huge fleet of tankers.
When we were there last year there was a huge stink over the tanker drivers, fed up with up 15 hours queuing in the boiling desert heat to dump their loads, driving out to a deserted beach and off loading it there. Beaches were closed as a result.

These are just a few of the examples of why in my opinion they got it all arse about face.
The banking system is a farce even against western standards, the telephone system is creaking at the seams and very expensive. The internet is ADSL, very expensive and slow even by UK standards. Mobile coverage is all there but overloaded. Calls generally drop within a few seconds.
And all this in a place that has expectations of becoming not only the major tourist destination in the Middle East, but also the economic and business hub of the region.

There is much work to do if they wish to achieve this.

When you see it in the flesh it’s like a cross between Las Vegas and Disneyland, but both those places are built better and actually work.

On the plus side the food is good and relatively cheap.

So what’s all this got to do with us? Quite a lot actually. Dubai has no real money of its own, most of what you see there is financed by debt, much of it from Abu Dhabi.
Both of these Emirates own considerable portfolios of property overseas. Abu Dhabi owns a considerable amount of Jolly Old England for a start.
The worry is that in order to save Dubai they will have “bring the money home” by offloading these investments.

What that will do to an already depressed world market is what makes these ‘Interesting Times’.

Prompted by an odd noise from the front end of my car and short on
time I cruised into the local KwikFit and asked them to check over the
brakes etc. Luckily they were not busy and looked at it there and then.
I went for a stroll while they did. Came back to find that all four
brake discs are “Totally shot mate” and all the pads will need replacing
too.
OK so how much is that?
“Blimey” he says, “they’re a bit expensive. £1250.00.”

I’m not paying that put it back together and I’ll think about it. To
their credit there was no charge for the inspection.

Slightly bothered by this I contacted my usual garage, although short on
time I made the effort to drive over to Moulton Chapel so they could have a look.

Yes the discs and pads all need replacing but the car is safe to drive,
which is good news as I need it this week.

OK how much.
£350.00.
Booked in for the job later this month.

I’m not suggesting KwikFit are ripoff merchants, I think he just made a
mistake. But mistakes like that don’t inspire confidence, do they.

I had a brief online discussion with an acquaintance yesterday in which he said he was ignoring Microsoft’s nags to upgrade his browser to Internet Explorer 8.
When I suggested this was wrong, IE8 is probably the best version of Internet Explorer so far, his excuse was as per the headline above.

Apparently he designed his personal website “in IE6″, and while IE7 rendered it ok, IE8 breaks it.

So based on this he took what he described as the reasonable decision not to upgrade, while acknowledging that the latest browser does in fact work fine on most other websites.

Suggestions that he ‘upgrade’ his website to embrace web standards that IE8 would accept went unheeded.

IE8 is not perfect, it is still way behind all the other browsers in many respects, but it is better than IE7 and most definitely superior to IE6, which no-one should still be using. Even Microsoft would implore you to stop using IE6.

The big chiefs of the old school news organisations, in particular Rupert Murdoch of NewsCorp and Tom Curley of AP, have been making a lot of noise lately accusing the search engines of stealing their content.

This is of course nonsense and it’s hard to imagine that these apparently intelligent men don’t actually realise that.

At a meeting of media moguls in Beijing this week both men gave speeches in which they warned the likes of Google and Yahoo that they had better start paying up for their content or else.

“The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content,” Murdoch said. “But if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid content, it will be the content creators—the people in this hall—who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs who triumph.”

This is all nonsense and here is why. Go to Google News or type a news topic into Google’s search box and you’ll get a list of URL’s and headlines with a brief teaser. Click the URL and you’ll be taken to the news site where you can read the story.

Google didn’t steal anything. It provided a free link to the news organisations website, where the story is surrounded by that site’s ads.
This free service on the part of Google and the other search engines actually feeds valuable traffic to the websites. Without it those websites wouldn’t get anywhere near as much traffic as they currently do. What does that do for the revenue model built on advertising.

If these media moguls really don’t want Google to list their stories it’s a very simple job to stop them. In fact Google publishes a step by step guide to doing so. It’s a simple addition to the websites robots text file:

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /

and bingo, the site becomes invisible to Google and the stories will no longer show in Google searches.

But I don’t think they’ll be doing that any time soon, as their website traffic would almost dry up overnight.
They’ll carry on accepting all the traffic Google and the other search engines send them for free, and probably carry on accusing them of theft.

An exciting new Winter Craft Fair with stalls and entertainment for all the family is to take place at Spalding’s Ayscoughfee Hall in November.

The free event will feature a whole host of home grown crafts, talks and demonstrations with something for every member of the family to enjoy.

A wide variety of stalls selling all kinds of locally made top quality crafts, there will be plenty of craft demonstrations, local history talks and the chance to stock up on some early Christmas presents.

Organised by local crafters, in partnership with Ayscoughfee Hall, the two day craft spectacular will take place at the historic building on Saturday, November 7 and Sunday, November 8.

The Winter Craft Fair will give people the chance to see these wonderfully creative crafters at work and their creations. It’s also a fantastic opportunity for the whole family to pick up some unique early Christmas presents and take in the beautiful surroundings of Ayscoughfee Hall and its gardens.

So Hotmail and Google email accounts, among others, have been compromised by a series of phishing attacks, and login details including passwords published on the internet.

Here’s a quote from a “security consultant”

“This should be a wake-up call to Google and Microsoft to educate their users”
Carole Theriault, Security consultant

I’m sorry but it’s quite clear from this incident that the users in question are blithering idiots and further education isn’t going to change that any time soon.

It’s not only Google and Microsoft either, what about the banks, the social networks, any number of other secure websites. All are being targeted on a daily basis by cyber criminals after users login details. And despite persistent warnings in all the media, both traditional and digital, stupid people still fall for it.

A wake up call to Google and Microsoft?
No. It’s the somnambulistic users who need a damn good shaking.

And if you are one of them, wake up, change your passwords, and please do not fall for this blindingly obvious scam again. None of these services will ever ask you for your login name and password by email.

If you get an email that looks genuine and contains a link to a website that looks genuine and asks for your password and user name, leave. And then go to the website through the usual url or your bookmarks, not the link in the email, to be sure you are actually on the genuine site. And then see if they still want your details for any other reason than to log in to your account.

It appears that o2 and BT have finally caved in and allowed Apple to add the 0870 application to the iTunes App Store.

iPhone users can now benefit from the cost savings on calls from mobiles previously enjoyed by Android users.

The 0870 app turns 08* numbers, such as 0870, 0845 and 0800, which cost 35 pence a minute to call, into 01* or 02* numbers which come out of your allowance or are very cheap to call on PAYG.

The free app is available to download now and is apparently supported by small and unobtrusive adverts in the footer.

The developer Simon Maddox was initially told by Apple that o2 and BT would not be happy to see this service on the iPhone. Understandable given the networks high charges for dialling 08* numbers. But why it was OK on Android is unclear apart from the different mobile network involved.

However his perseverance and Apple’s cooperation paid off when o2 finally gave the go ahead and Apple approved the app for inclusion in the iTunes App store.

“We have detected a virus on your computer. Click here to download Anti Virus software now”

If you’ve ever seen that pop up on a website then you have seen a “Malvert”

Clicking on that link will probably take you to an infected website or a link to download some infected software that will cause you some serious headaches.

Malverts are fake ads placed on websites, and security experts are concerned at the rise in numbers of these being placed on well known high traffic sites.

Earlier this month the New York Times website displayed such an advert claiming to have found a virus on the visitors machine. The advertiser was thought to be legitimate and did indeed place legitimate ads on the site for a week before changing to the malware ad over a weekend.

Hackers are increasingly using ad networks to distribute attacks to users visiting well known websites. They infect third party ad networks without knowing precisely which sites the ads will show on. But they don’t really care as all they want is the maximum number of eyeballs, so any high traffic sites that customarily take feeds from these networks work for them.

The return on investment due to the exposure gained is the same as a legitimate advertiser.

While these attacks are simply embarrassing for the websites concerned, they pose a serious threat for the visitors who get caught out. Many of whom are not running up-to-date anti virus software.

Eric Davis, in charge of Google’s anti-malvertising team, believes Internet Service Providers are best placed to detect infected machines.

“The internet service providers are in the best position to detect infected machines,” said Mr Davis, talking at the Virus Bulletin conference in Geneva yesterday. “They already have monitoring systems that could be used to identify signs of malware and botnet activity.”

Microsoft has taken a more direct approach by filing a series of lawsuits against suspected malvertisers.