Here’s how this worked. I first received a call from someone who presented themselves as a worker for the charity, thanking me for committing to sponsor books that help children understand how to deal with issues such as bullying. What? Well, I may have done but I was away from my office when I received this call and it is the sort of charity I like to help, so I may well have said I would help out in the past. Then this person says I will be contacted by one of her colleagues who will take the relevant details about my company so that they can be printed on the covers. Curious, but fair enough.

Almost immediately I am called by someone else who informs me the call is being recorded ‘for training and quality purposes’ (by the way, the reason for this separate recorded call is to give the appearance on the recording that their sales pitch is straightforward, without all the bullshit about charity work from the first salesperson). They then steamroller through the details and finally announce that 60 books will be £700. Damn! But okay, this is for charity and for kids and I may have said I would help out.

Two days later an invoice arrives demanding settlement within 7 days (note that period) and things become complicated. Firstly, the invoice is so amateurish as to be comical. The first thing that immediately concerned me was that nowhere on the invoice was the registered charity number. (I checked later with the Charities Register and CSI is not a registered charity.) There was a trading name for the ‘Child Safety Initiative’ a publishing company New Media Marketing, which was odd. I must point out that there is a legitimate child safety charity, the Child Safety Education Foundation, which should not be confused with the Child Safety Initiative.

Having received this suspect invoice, I checked through my records and found nothing about agreeing to sponsor books, worse I did find a note that I had asked CSI to remove me from their contact list back in January 2009. Well, I was incensed that I had been misled, so I immediately attempted to call the company to cancel my order. There was, of course, no answer.

There are a number of points worth highlighting at this point. So far, all contact (barring the invoice) had been by phone. The call from the CSI had been made in the afternoon of 3rd December 2009. This means that any agreement was covered by the UK’s distance selling laws. This very clearly provides a 7 day cooling off  period during in which the contract made on the phone can be cancelled (remember that invoice settlement period?). This cooling off period is to protect people from assholes who pressure sell like this.

The seller is also obliged to confirm any phone arrangement in writing (presumably the invoice would satisfy this condition in part), but the seller must also provide  ’additional information’  and this additional information must include:

• the conditions and procedures to enable the consumer to cancel the contract;
• whether the consumer must return the goods to the supplier if the consumer cancels;
• whether the consumer or the supplier is responsible for the cost of returning the goods to the supplier if the consumer cancels;
• in the case of contracts for the supply of services, information on the consequences of agreeing to performance of a service starting before the end of the usual 7 working day cancellation period ;
• the geographical address of the place of business of the supplier to which the consumer may address any complaints;
• information on any after-sales services and guarantees; and
• the conditions for cancelling the contract, where it is of an unspecified duration or a duration exceeding one year.

I had received virtually none of this information. The invoice has only a phone number, fax number, address, trading name notification and the ‘Children’s Safety Initiative’ banner. No information was provided about the conditions or procedure for cancellation, the only confirmation of what was to be provided was the line on the invoice, no details, nothing.

Furthermore, this information must be given to the consumer either:

• prior to the conclusion of the contract, or
• in good time before or during the performance of the contract and, in contracts for the sale of goods, at the latest at the time of delivery of the goods where goods not for delivery to third parties are concerned. This means that where consumer A orders goods to be despatched to consumer B, the information must be given to consumer A prior to the conclusion of the contract.

Summing up, New Media Publication had failed to provide almost all of the information they are obliged to provide.

So, back to the story. I had tried to call, and failed to get an answer, anyhow I should cancel in writing according to the distance selling law so I wrote a letter and sent it to CSI on the 5th December 2009. I then realised that they could ‘lose’ the letter easily as I had not sent it registered post. Had I been confident that they were a legitimate charity or business I would have not been concerned, but I was concerned.

I was still failing to contact them by phone, but I faxed a cancellation notice to the fax number on the invoice on 7th December 2009, I used a fax service rather than my own fax so I had a witness, a receipt for the service and I kept the fax send receipt. All well within the 7 day ‘cooling off’ period so regardless of any other issues I had made all good faith attempts to cancel the order.

I tried once more to cancel the order by phone. And finally got an answer. To be safe I recorded the conversation. I asked whether they had received my cancellation, “No, we have no cancellation.” I pointed out that I had both written and sent a fax. “Oh, well I’ve only just arrived, perhaps its on the fax machine.”

“Okay,” said I, “can you assure me that this order will be cancelled?”

“Yes”

Result. That, I thought, was the end of the matter.

Oh, how wrong.

I received a call today (8 March 2010) from CSI. Their opening gambit this time was “we are about to remove you from our list”. This is well over a year since I asked to be removed and apparently they were just about to do so. Hmmm!

“Just before we do, I can confirm your books are printed and ready. Which school would you like to receive them?”

“Hang on. I cancelled that order months ago.”

“But the books are printed.”

“Tough. The order was cancelled”

“Well, the invoice is £700 so it’s tough on you. Goodbye.” And she hung up.

Now, I deal with many legitimate charities and businesses and none of them would deal with a customer this way.

Following my initial suspicions I had looked into this high pressure publication selling and it’s a scam, plain and simple. They operate barely on the right side of the law. They do indeed provide books to schools (they are apparently very shoddy, certainly nothing like the quality one might expect given the amount charged), but there their similarity to a real business ends. As you can see from the previous story, they use high pressure sales, rely on people’s poor memory, prey on their good nature, constantly call back, ignore instructions to cancel order, and basically behave in a very shoddy way. The Child Safety Initiative (or more accurately New Media Publications Ltd) are either monumentally incompetent or they are dishonest. I suspect it is actually both. There are plenty of reports of this scam in various forms and Trading Standards bodies have information on dealing with them. This advice is, in summary, ignore them.

I am of course never going to pay their invoice. What is more when they phone in future I will keep them on hold (they are calling a Call-Sure number, paying something like 43 pence per minute so there is  a certain piquant thrill for me here) besides the cost, the longer they are on hold with me the less time they have to call other people. I shall also record all conversations with them. I suspect that as soon as I inform them I am recording the call they will hang up. We shall see.

I shall also be reporting them to Ofcom (who police the telephone selling system), Data Protection (because they have repeatedly failed to remove my details) and Trading Standards (for fraudulent practices). This is all a but of bother and I doubt that any of this will do any good (they have a history of shutting down the publishing company, restarting a new company and carry on without pause), but one can but try.

So, what does this have to do with belief? Well, many of the blogs I read are written by atheists and sceptics and they, naturally enough, often discuss matters of the philosophy of belief. They, and their counterparts on blogs written by the faithful (yes, I read some of these too) often fire salvos at one another about believing the ridiculous or holding contradictory beliefs. “How can someone simultaneously believe X and Y? These are contradictions.” That sort of thing.

Every time I read these claims and assertions, whichever side makes them, I am left wondering who among us doesn’t hold contradictory, logically inconsistent beliefs? I know I do. I know I struggle with things like “is it ever justified to kill another person”. On the one hand I firmly believe the answer to this is, “absolutely not,” but then, when discussing the justification of killing in self-defense I find myself holding to the view that if it came down to him or me, it would be him. I abhor the idea of capital punishment. Not only because mistakes are made, but also on principle. Then again, when faced with some evil like Charles Manson it is difficult to ague against ending such a life on the same grounds that one might put down a dangerous animal.

And these are just two really obvious difficult beliefs. My life is replete with contradictory beliefs and sometimes I’m called out on them. Someone will point out my apparent hypocrisy, or raise an issue that causes me to critically evaluate a set of beliefs. I change my beliefs regularly when confronted with good argument to do so. The tough part is the ‘good argument’ part.

Most of my beliefs are relatively inconsequential to me. I am willing to change them without much argument because I am not really invested in them. I suspect the same holds true for most people, unlike the electric monk in Doulas Adams’ Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency people seldom hold to every belief with unwavering zeal.

And here is the difference I see between the faithful (those who believe uncritically) and believers in general. It is the willingness to abandon a belief when it becomes untenable. The faithful (whether a faith in religion, political doctrine, woo-woo medicine, etc.) are blind to critical assessment of their beliefs. Arguing with a person of faith is pointless because they are invested in their beliefs to such an extent that they are unable to see another point of view. It is not simply a case that they are unwilling to see another point of view, or the inconsistency of their position, they are unable to see. Their internal model of the world does not extend beyond the boundary of their beliefs, they are unable to step beyond that boundary to reflect on their beliefs.

Holding false beliefs is not generally a problem, it’s part of being human. The ability to hold inconsistent beliefs is probably an evolved ability, one of the many shortcuts that the brain has evolved to prevent us locking up into a ball every time we attempt to assimilate a new idea — much simpler to take the intellectual shortcut of adopting a new idea until it is apparently useless or harmful to our existing world view, rather than invest time critically analysing each new idea. If we were to critically analyse every piece of new information, ensuring it was consistent with all our other beliefs and our world view, I suspect we would be lion shit pretty quickly.

The danger is hold on to false beliefs even in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence (or in the absence of any supporting evidence). In other words, beliefs become potentially dangerous when they are held on faith. If you believe homeopathy is a suitable medical intervention then you are holding a faith based belief. For the most part homeopathy is harmless (after all it’s only sugar pills, water and big ol’  a dollop of placebo), but it is severely harmful when you believe it can actually cure serious conditions like cancer and so you refuse real medical help (you know, the kind that actually works) in favour of the woo-woo that is homeopathy. (Having said that, the cynic in me thinks this is just Darwinian selection at work eliminating the terminally gullible from the gene pool. The real problem is when some asshole parent kills their child be forcing them to use homeopathy in favour of real medicine, or worse those religious pricks who kill children with prayer.)

How then can one cultivate a world view that allow beliefs to be challenged? Well, that is a very, very big question and one that will take some time to address properly, but briefly, I believe (there’s that word again) that young people must be exposed to many world views early in their development. This prepares their mind to accept new ideas and challenge existing ones as they grow. The worst thing one can do is limit a child’s exposure to ideas (and this is the beef I have with so called faith based schooling). Teaching a child one specific doctrine (and let’s face it, it’s usually a religious faith) and then teaching that child that this is the one world view available to them immediately closes their mind. No matter how well intentioned such indoctrination is, it is harmful to open mindedness. It can do nothing but close a mind to possibilities. It is, in short, a disservice to the child and to society.

Firstly, there often are books that present simple information but the same people who complain about books not being simple enough will also complain about these books being too simple. The fact is, when you are learning a new subject it is probably going to require an effort in understanding on your part.

I read a great deal. I read a lot of technical papers that deal with my professional subject matter and even now, after twenty years of reading this sort of material, I still run into papers that take several read throughs to appreciate and fully understand. Now, I could say that the authors should have simplified their presentation, but they are addressing an audience that they, reasonably, expect to spend some time understanding the subject matter. They write in technical shorthand. They write using jargon specific to the field. And they write for an audience that they presume is expert in the field, and one which may well challenge their material. It is reasonable then that reading this material requires an effort. One must first understand it, then interpret it, then integrate it with your existing knowledge. Once this is complete, one analyses and criticises the material in light of all this comprehension.

Case in point, I recently started looking into graphs and hyper-graphs. Now, much of the material on these topics requires a good understanding of the mathematical notation around graph, group, and set theory and it has been a while since I studied this sort of thing even superficially. I looked through the papers and understood maybe 60% of the material. I had to go away and read a lot more material on the various notation methods and some ‘Janet and John’ versions of the theories before coming back and re-reading the original material. It should be no surprise that when revisiting the material after this research it all seemed much simpler than after the first read through.

The reason I bring this up is that I recently produced a paper, for a technical audience, but unfortunately I presented it to someone who was unprepared for the material. They requested it, but they were not ready for it.

The response? ‘This material took me a long time to understand.’ Well, of course it did! It was a technical subject. It dealt with some difficult concepts. And it was written for a technically competent audience.

Once the reader in question had grasped the content of the paper he concluded that it was very good. Very clear even. Before reaching this condition though he complained that the paper was ‘too difficult’.

He complained that he could not present this information to a non-technical audience. And I agreed. This particular paper was not written for a non-technical audience. He had not requested that the material be accessible to such an audience.

One writes to a specific audience. In my own field I present to many different audiences. Presenting to developers is different to presenting to process engineers. Presenting to project managers is different to presenting to company directors. There is no one presentation that can be given to all audiences because there is no one message that can be universally presented to all audiences — each audience has its own agenda, its own existing knowledge on the topic, and its own required outcomes.

Bottom line, if you read something and do not understand it, do as I do; reread, research, or abandon.  Try reading the material through again, it may make more sense once you have the entire message in mind. If you encounter specific concepts or topics in the material that you do not understand, go away an research those topics. Revisit the material once you are confident you have a grasp of this underlying material to understand the original topic. Finally, if you do not understand something, and it is not really important to you, put it aside and focus on something important.

I can’t imagine it’s particularly comfortable and if I can face-to-pubis with something that looked like a cross between a disco ball and a diamond  cutter my reactions would be, in order; What the fuck? Why the fuck? Are these things safe to eat? Closely followed by, ‘Ow my fucking tooth, you’re getting my dental bill you crazy bitch’.

I suppose it might be funny once, but to do this to make yourself feel better about your crotch (as Jennifer Love Hewitt claims she does) is a whole bag of crazy. If your self esteem is so low that a crotch full of diamonique makes you feel better you need therapy, not vajazzling.

Do I use this information to target my blog posts so as to attract more views, or do I continue to blog about whatever is buzzing around my head at the time?

The conclusion I reached was that on this personal blog I should maintain the latter approach. Attracting visitors is not what this blog is about. This blog is more about mind dumping, writing for the sake of writing, entertaining and informing friends. This blog is not ‘about’ anything in particular, the only theme (if indeed one can call it a theme) is that everything written here comes from me, it’s something that interests me at the time I am writing, and interested readers will, over time, build up a fairly accurate picture of who I am, how I think, and what I believe.

As for my professional blog, well I guess I should take the former approach. That blog does have a theme and it serves two purposes; to inform people about topics and ideas in lifecycle management, and to promote me and my business. This last one requires that people visit the site, and I hope that by serving the first purpose the second is also served. People seem reluctant to tell me directly what interests them, but the statistics provided by the WordPress system provide enough information to at least guide my writing, telling me what type of article attracts attention to the blog.

So this blog continues to be me in written form, while my other blog will be shaped by the visitors.

A Newsnight episode back at the start of December 2009 invited an ex-scientific advisor to the UK government to present the case for global warming to the great unwashed public. Almost the first words out of his mouth were, ‘if all land ice melted the sea level would rise by 100 metres’. Now, this may be true but it is nothing, nothing, to do with the current debate. The IPCC present a worst case scenario for the next hundred years, in which it predicts… Prepare yourself… A rise in sea level of… 0.58 meters.

Now, call me a cynic but 100m is just a little different in its impact that less than 60cm.

Yes. The world is warming.

This warming may even be a direct consequence of human activity (the case for this is less than overwhelming). But even if it is the case that current warming trends are wholly attributable to human activity this in no way implies that the solution lies in some form of self flagellation, hand wringing, or even self denial.

The problem is that current climate models are akin to Ptolemaic models of the cosmos. Somewhat shaky in the ability to make predictions and subject to constant revisions in the light of new data (and there is nothing wrong with this providing we do not pretend any degree of certitude where none exists).

I say, continue the research, continue improving our understanding of the immensely complex relationships that affect the climate, but for heaven’s sake do not pretend that by cutting carbon emissions we will fix things or even make them substantially better in the future. Even the IPCC’s own report makes fairly conservative estimates of the difference such measures would make and even worst case predictions place almost all of human enterprise in a better position in 100 years than they are now, even if we do nothing.

Apart from the current inability to accurately forecast climate change, there is the more general problem of how we deal with the change when it comes (and the one thing of which we can be certain is that the climate will change in one way or another, it always has, and it always will).

So, do we succumb to the political promise of a globally concerted effort to change the climate, or do we unilaterally prepare for the worst while hoping for the best?

Let’s consider the global option first. This option assumes that all countries will agree to reducing carbon emissions for the greater good. Even if we assume such action will actually make a difference to the climate the chances of actually getting all countries of the world to agree and actually act on that agreement is so close to zero it might as well be zero.

The governments of the world cannot even agree on how best to control an entirely artificial system like the world banking system so what are the odds they will control something like the climate? What do you suppose the motivation is for rising industrial countries to curb their carbon emissions at the request of countries that have already accrued all the benefits from burning fossil fuels? And if countries like China and India do nothing, what will the response from the West be? Just sit back and lose competitive advantage? I doubt it.

So, there’s pretty much no chance of curbing the current carbon emissions in any serious way. Certainly not enough to actually change the climate significantly.

The alternative approach is to shovel money into dealing with the, pretty well inevitable, consequences of climate change. Figure out how to grow crops in arid conditions and obtaining greater crop yields, using genetic modification if necessary. Work on engineering projects to protect against flood or drought (according to need). Work on better utilisation of land for living to deal with denser populations. This is the approach mankind has always taken; use tools, make fire and clothing, in other words modify your immediate environment to suit yourself and protect against the vagaries of climate, weather and the external environment over which you have little control. It’s has been our evolutionary advantage for over 60,ooo years and I suspect it will continue to be into the foreseeable future.

In the meanwhile, work on alternative sources of energy. After all fossil fuels will eventually run out, even if they are not abandoned. Solar, wind, water are all eco-appealing and all of them are more or less uselessly inadequate to sustain the growing energy demands of the human race. Nuclear is the only realistic source of energy at the moment.

Although nuclear fission has done well, it is not very efficient and has that nasty tendency to produce byproducts that kill people. It is puzzling why governments are not investing more heavily in nuclear fusion research. (Well, actually it’s not puzzling when you look at tax revenue generated from fossil fuels and all the lobbying interests that accompany them.)

Nuclear fusion is safe (sustaining a reaction is so difficult that any accident at a fusion plant would almost instantly result in a failure of the reaction releasing little more than a bang and a cloud of water, hydrogen and helium) and the byproduct of, for example, hydrogen fusion is helium; neither of which pose a great risk in the small quantities required in a fusion reactor. Sadly, producing a sustained fusion reaction is still a few years away.

The really sad thing is that governments are not seriously finding fusion research, the one energy source that holds the promise of fulfilling the worlds energy requirements cleanly and cheaply. It’s more politic to keep talking about measures like carbon capture and carbon reduction. Measures that are easy to promise and almost impossible to deliver. Measures for which an easy promise will garner great headlines today, but with the promised (and far from certain) rewards decades away, politicians today will never be held accountable for their failure.

It requires a little mental fortitude, but not an excessive sacrifice of life’s small pleasures. Eating once a day, cutting out snacks during the week, and only drinking a pint with my meal seems to be doing the trick. At weekends I allow myself some snacks and either a few shots of whiskey or a bottle of wine. Once a week, if the mood takes me, some junk food (though the urge to eat junk food seems to have abated as the weeks pass, I guess my body has less cravings as it is weened of fat, salt and sugar).

Now, none of this success is particularly attributable to virtue on my part. I’m not sure that I’d be half as inclined to self denial during the week if I were still working at home (I have the breaking strain of tissue paper when it comes to self denial). However, it’s working and hopefully, by the time I return to solitary work at home, my body will no longer be craving food in large quantity or with lots of fat, salt and sugar, making it easier to maintain a healthier diet. This, however, remains very much to be seen.

There are many ways to examine your hard drive to identify where it’s all being used up. In my case I pretty much knew which directories where eating up all the space, but out of curiosity as much as anything else I tried a couple of disk analysers.

The first was OmniDiskSweeper, a free utility from the OmniGroup (the same people who make the spectacularly good OmniGraffle diagramming tool, and the ever-useful task management tool OmniFocus).

OmniDiskSweeper is simple and efficient. It scans your disk, reporting the total space assigned to each folder. Folder sizes are totalled so that it is relatively each to see which folders contain the most material.

The weakness of OmniDiskSweeper is that is it possible to miss large files that could be removed if they are buried in among other large files. The lack of a broad overview means these files can be overlooked.

This is not a weakness shared by the second disk analyser I used, the beautiful (and useful) DaisyDisk (free unrestricted demo with a nag screen, or $19.95). The reason for the apparently odd name of this tool becomes clear when you see the analysis display.

It looks vaguely flower like and I assume ‘Daisy’ was chosen for it alliterative quality.

DaisyDisk performs the same task as OmniDiskSweeper. It scans the selected drive, noting each files size and totalling each directory’s content. Where DaisyDisk wins out it in this flower-like display. It is a simple matter to see where file space is being used and spotting large files or directories among all the other clutter is simple, just look for the larger coloured segments. The colour coding provides easy identification of the sort of space (differentiating Library, User, Applications, and System files, among others). Hovering the mouse over one of the coloured segments provides specific details of actual size, path and for folders a breakdown of the largest constituent files and folders it contains.

Need a closer look at a specific folder? No problem, double click the relevant coloured segment and the display focusses on that folder. The makes examining deep folder structures with many smaller files much more comfortable.

Well worth a look if you want to figure out what is eating up your disk space.

The result of all this investigation is confirmation of my previous suspicions and so I have just archived three large folders containing media for the training course I produced last year (a grand total of 60GB of data). Add to this the removal of temporary render files used by Final Cut and my previously 10GB or so of free space has expanded to a comparatively capacious 91.2GB.

Anyway, long story short. With the archive and cleanup complete it provides a bit of breathing space and let me get on with producing some more media projects I have in mind.

The next time I’m in an Apple store I’ll ask about the possibility of dropping in the 500GB clone drive. If they can do this under the support contract I’ll definitely take that option as it will mean less messing around archiving data (and inevitably restoring it the next time I need to work on the files).

So, there are fewer exploits for OS X, what’s all this vampire stuff? It is said that a vampire can only enter a private residence if invited in, and the same applies for the vast majority of OS X exploits. Almost all exploits on OS X require you (the user) to install them. You have to take a deliberate actions such as opening an e-mail attachment, running software containing malware (again, ‘patches’ claiming to circumvent licenses are a prime source of these), visiting suspect websites (links in e-mail are a prime source of links to iffy websites and should NEVER be clicked unless you know the sender – double check the real sender and reply address, never trust the display name – and recognise the actual link address – NEVER trust the link text).

Protecting your OS X machine is more about not inviting the vampire in than garlanding your environment with garlic:

1. I do not run ant-virus software (this is the equivalent of garlic, it may be effective but it stinks up the place and is only effective at close range, i.e. the vampire has already made it through the door). Anti-virus software is a massive overhead and, in most cases on OS X, provides a false sense of security and most of it has a history of creating as many problems as it solves. This is not to say I will never run anti-virus software in the future. When the threat outweighs the cost I’ll be first in line.
   I guess a case can be made that running anti-virus software helps out by catching viruses in files and attachments that might infect other OSes if we pass them on, so we would be good citizens by helping stop their spread. But this is like punishing yourself for someone else’s mistake. Having chosen a secure environment I should make it less secure and slower just so I can protect those who chose a less secure option in the first place? Where’s the sense in that?
2. I always use a firewall to block all incoming connections (except those I specifically allow for periods when I need them).
   1. Use Shields Up to check your system for open ports through which naughty people might attack.
   2. Make sure that you are not sharing any services unnecessarily. (Open System Preferences… → Sharing and make sure nothing is selected that you do not mean to be sharing, most especially things like Remote Login or Remote Management should be OFF for most people. I leave everything OFF by default and only turn on sharing when I actually need it, turning it off again as soon as I’m finished. I do this because I’m often roaming and using WiFi connections. Any time your WiFi is on you’re potentially vulnerable, so playing safe is sensible.
3. I use LittleSnitch to control all out-going traffic. This is a great little program. It’s irritating at first, but once you’ve used it for a while it is an invaluable tool in ensuring you’re aware of all the software that’s trying to connect from your machine to the outside world.
4. Leave Bluetooth and WiFi off unless actually using them. (Saves the battery too if your not plugged in.)
5. Make sure any WiFi connection is encrypted and password protected. This is especially true when using an ad hoc computer-computer network — always set a password when creating an ad hoc network!
6. Keep software up to date.
   I always install updates for any application as soon as possible, but especially security updates for OS X. It is very, very rare that this policy causes more trouble than it’s worth.
7. Never open attached files in e-mail unless certain of the source.
8. Isolate suspected Spam in the mail tool’s junk/spam folder. If possible, only review sender and titles (do not open junk mail at all, even in a preview), move any messages that are accidentally junked back into the inbox and add the sender to my address book so it is no longer junked.
9. Do not allow previews of e-mail messages to display images unless you explicitly permit it. Alternatively, view all your messages in text only previews.
   This one is more of a privacy concern (although some image handling exploits have been known). Spammers commonly use embedded images (linked back to their site) to confirm ‘live’ e-mail addresses. as soon as you open the preview your e-mail system effectively announces it’s presence by visiting the spammers site to fetch the image. Turn off images in preview and selectively turn them on for addresses you know to be safe.
10. Do not click links in e-mail unless 100% certain of both the source of the e-mail and the link.
11. When receiving unsolicited e-mail about billing or account problems from an apparently legitimate source (especially your bank!), DO NOT click the provided link. Log in to your account on the supplier’s web site manually and check your account from there. If you cannot verify the account this way, use their support, billing, or sales contact on their website and ask if the e-mail is legitimate before following any link — caution is the better part of valour.

No system is perfect and mistakes inevitably get made, but using these common sense precautions I’ve survived online pretty well problem free since before the WWW started. Sooner or later I do not doubt I’ll have a problem, it would be unreasonable to expect to spend so much time online without a problem.

Being online a lot and expected to stay problem free is a little like running back and forth across a busy highway and expecting to avoid being hit. No matter how carefully you think you are checking the road on each run, sooner or later your attention will waver, or someone will approach in a stealth car, and you’ll get hit. The best we can do is be as careful as possible (or stop using the internet/running across the highway).

Anyway, I will continue to try maintaining a reasonable flow of posts. I have several posts in draft form but they need some attention before I cast the forth.

In the meantime, a song…

Nah. Just kidding.

Actually I’m currently listening to Newsnight, on which some appalling self-righteous religious assholes are promoting a law to make homosexuality punishable by death in Uganda. It really is revolting that these vituperrious shits select one passage from their story book and use it to abuse other human beings. Especially as they ignore the vast majority of the rest of the book.

Okay, that’s pissed me off so I’ll leave you now and go steam quietly in the corner.