Category: Technology

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What’s in a phone call?

I’m beginning to enjoy the concept of call display. The phone rings, and the phone number is quickly shown on the display screen on the telephone. This presents the wonderful opportunity to talk to an old friend or family member or to allow the answering machine to deal with those moments when you’re feeling a bit on the anti-social side. And, we’ve all been there at some time or another.

For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been getting a call from an odd-looking phone number, 999-910-0103. It is odd since there is no 999 area code. They only come in the daytime and I’m not home to get them. Clara has answered them a few times, but by the time she gets to the phone, she only gets a recorded woman’s voice saying “Good-bye.” As I previously mentioned, they are odd. The calls come several times a day and only in the daytime.

I finally got around to considering this problem yesterday. I ran a web search on the phone number to see if there was a name we could associate with it and found that this is a rather famous, or infamous one. This is the Microsoft remote access scam phone number. Someone phones you, claiming to be from Microsoft, reporting a problem with your computer. They, however, can fix this by you giving them remote access to your computer. Of course, this is not the greatest of ideas, since you are essentially allowing a stranger to scan through all of the data on your computer, including all of your personal information such as correspondence, banking information, etc.

Consider the following questions when you look at this situation. When you bought your computer, it probably came with the Windows program already installed. At what point did you give Microsoft your phone number? How does Microsoft actually know, of all of the copies of Windows out there in the world, which one is yours? And, how do they know that your computer is having problems?

These questions quickly jump to my mind, but I’m supposed to be an expert (although you may also want to consider the maxim that those who can’t do, teach). But, these are not the first things that may jump into the average computer user’s mind when faced with such a phone call and this is why such scams work. Also, the timing of the calls is important, since the underlying idea is that people who work, possibly even with computers, won’t be at home at that hour of the day. This is particularly heinous when you remember that the scam in question is aimed at seniors who, as a rule, are less computer literate on average than those raised when computers were more commonplace.

So, when your phone rings and you don’t recognize the caller, feel free to be skeptical. Ask them to call back with their request or offer in two days after you’ve had a chance to consider the issue. Odds are, they won’t return your call since they recognize that you aren’t an easy mark.

That being said, my father received one of these calls last month. Yes, he’s a senior and should be more susceptible to this type of fraud. But, we did raise him proper and he recognized the implications from the start of the phone call. After 21 years in the navy and another 25 in the Coast Guard, Dad’s command of certain more colloquial parts of the English language is a bit more developed than that of many other people.  In fact, it’s so well developed that I may even feel a bit of sympathy for the scammer on the other end of the conversation. Not much, but a little…

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Reasonable warranty service

Having had unhappy dealings with the new netbook I bought in February, I finally opted for just starting over and buying another computer. It was an Acer and it took from February until June to convince them that it should probably get fixed because, when using the computer with it plugged in, you’d get a shock whenever you touched the bottom. However, sending it back would have cost $140 plus about another $40 in packing materials and, tax included, the computer only cost $250. I waffled for a while and then Clara convinced me to just send it on, parcel post. It came back last week with a new motherboard and you can use it without getting curly hair now.

I ordered a new Dell laptop and have been quite happy with it. However, two of the keys on the keyboard started to stick and one, the letter “M,” became almost unusable. (Note my continued use of this letter in this blog post). Therefore, on Friday, I called Dell technical support. The guy on the other end of the line was cheerful, and started off with an apology that the keyboard was defective. The only such thing I got from Acer was, “Sorry, you have to pay to have it shipped.” I explained the problem and he put me on hold for a few minutes. Seems he was trying to find a technician to install the new keyboard and had some trouble. I told him that, since I teach that sort of thing, I had no problems with installing it myself and… wait for it… he thanked me for making his job easier. Then, since it was Friday morning, he apologized that, sadly, there was no possible way to get it to Whitehorse before… here it comes… Monday. It arrived about 10 this morning. I just have to repack the old one for returning, which Dell, by the way, pays for.

I’m now happily using the letter “M” as needed. I gave Clara the netbook and she finds it a bit faster than the older laptop, which is missing the letter “K” key from a run-in with out granddaughter. Katrina now has that one. It’s the circle of life, computer style…

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Goodbye, Atlantis

Part of my past really disappears on Friday with the launch of the last shuttle mission. That, of course, is assuming the weather is good enough for a Friday launch. The weather office is working with a 70% chance that the weather won’t permit the launch on that day.

I watched the first one, although a day later than planned when the first launch scrubbed because the computers’ times weren’t synchronized. And now, I’ll see the last. Yes, I also watched most of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo launches as well. I think I’ll miss the shuttle more because it seemed, although it only seemed, to make space flight a bit more pedestrian and accessible (remember that, at the time the Challenger exploded, that there were 752 different systems that could fail on launch and result in the “destruction of the orbiter,” according to NASA). No, the shuttle was not like taking the bus, but at least, appeared more bus-like than Mercury with its single astronaut or even Apollo with its three. The first three projects gave you a hundred of millions to one chance you would ever travel in space. The shuttle, carrying crews of seven, upped the chances a small bit and there were far more launches because the orbiter was reusable.

But, this is not why I truly will miss the shuttle. It was due to be replaced due to technological reasons. They are older equipment and really need to be upgraded. The upgrade, however, the X-33 project, was cancelled due to funding restrictions several years ago. This left the STS project with a fixed timeline for ending with no system in place to replace it when gone. The resupply missions to the International Space Station will be done with Soyuz rockets. The ISS program is supposed to last until about 2020, with no real program planned for the west after that point.

We see some of the reasons for the termination of the project here as well as in the US. We see the same in Europe, too. There has become a call for tax relief and the call for “individual accountability” for taxes. Governments pander to the growing calls of the “what’s in it for me” crowd. For example, our federal government is planning to cut the per-vote payments to political parties on the grounds that taxpayers’ money may go to parties that individual people didn’t vote for. In short, the somewhat restrictive view of governments has turned from what can we actually do in the grander scheme of things to how can we save money. Sadly, progress is predicated on the former concept and once again, we seem a species destined to go its merry way, following the rule that states that 99.9% of all species that have ever existed have failed to adapt to changing environments and become extinct.

So, when Atlantis lifts off somewhere over the next week or so, and then returns, we should think on the one point that becomes evident as time goes on: we really have to stop leaving dinosaurs in charge of things…