Dr Who?

Well, well... even the dear old Beeb is not immune to the current frenzy of anti-copying that seems to be sweeping the planet these days. The BBC have produced a new series of Dr Who and placed it online. Unfortunately it can only be watched by those with online access, and even then it has to be fairly good access. I have a slow dial-up connection these days so watching streaming files is a royal pain in the butt. What I usually do is download the file then watch it locally, on my hard drive.

I dug through the source of the page, found the files (a minor annoyance) and downloaded them, but they won't play locally for some reason. I may eventually work out how to do it, but I am not really a big fan of Dr Who -- I was interested mainly from a historical perspective -- so if it is too hard I just won't bother and the stupid files can just go unwatched. I've got better things to do with my time.

What, I wonder, is the point of all this anti-copying protection on files that are meant for free distribution in the first place? And where would Dr Who be if the anti-copying nuts had got their way years ago? Back in the early days of video recorders when the broadcasting companies were baying for blood in an attempt to prevent people taping TV shows, there were a few good souls who taped Dr Who anyway. Then a decade or so later BBC said oooops! they'd destroyed all the early Dr Who tapes. So they made a worldwide appeal to people who might have (illegal) recordings of Dr Who so that Beeb could restore their collection. Many people came forth to help out and freely gave copies to Beeb. Does anybody else see the irony here? It seems that Beeb doesn't. *sigh*

The only thing you learn from history is that nobody ever learns from history.

another lowlife scam

I received this in my email tonight:
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From: "PayPal.com" <donotreply@paypal.com>
Subject: YOUR PAYPAL.COM ACCOUNT EXPIRES

Dear PayPal member,

PayPal would like to inform you about some important information regarding your PayPal account. This account, which is associated with the email address

miriamwerple.net.au

will be expiring within five business days. We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause, but this is occurring because all of our customers are required to update their account settings with their personal information.

We are taking these actions because we are implementing a new security policy on our website to insure everyone's absolute privacy. To avoid any interruption in PayPal services then you will need to run the application that we have sent with this email (see attachment) and follow the instructions. Please do not send your personal information through email, as it will not be as secure.

IMPORTANT! If you do not update your information with our secure application within the next five business days then we will be forced to deactivate your account and you will not be able to use your PayPal account any longer. It is strongly recommended that you take a few minutes out of your busy day and complete this now.

DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE VIA EMAIL! This mail is sent by an automated message system and the reply will not be received.

Thank you for using PayPal.

ihoivnov

Attached file: "www.paypal.com.scr"
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It all looks harmless and above-board right? Wrong. The file attached to it called "www.paypal.com.scr" is almost certainly a key logger that would watch my computer while I enter my details into PayPal. Now what use would some scum-sucking lowlife have for my PayPal password and account details? Hmmm? Well they wouldn't have much use for mine because I live below the poverty level and never have much money in the bank... but of course that wouldn't stop them taking what little I have anyway.

I don't use Microsoft's terrible "Outlook" for my email so I am safe from the file attachment unless I actually clicked on it to activate it. Outlook has the awful security flaw of running attachments just by looking at their associated email -- incredibly dangerous! (There is apparently a security patch you can download from Microsoft to fix that nasty behavior though.) If you use Outlook and have received one of these emails then I wouldn't go logging onto any important sites until you found out whether you now have a key logger watching and reporting on you.