internet kaspersky security: Loud Noises in the Dark

Loud Noises in the Dark
Well, Friday the 12th was a day to remember.

Disturbed played Christchurch. To be more precise, Disturbed blew the roof off the Westpac Trust centre and rained Metal all over Addington.

What a concert - my lovely wife & I went along expecting to feel old and colourful against the sea of black t-shirts & jeans and were surprised to be nowhere near the oldest rockers there. And there was much more than just black t-shirts on view.

Redline started up OK - tickets said first band on at 7.15 but I'm fairly sure that Redline started earlier than that; they were over by 7.30pm. Alterbridge did their set against intermittant house lights that kept coming up - their set was OK, but not quite what I expected. P.O.D. were OK as well - we both expected more from them though.

However, from the moment Dave Draiman was wheeled on until the house lights came back up at the end, Disturbed owned the show! Audio was loud & clear, the lighting was great and their prescence on stage was impressive.

We had seats dead centre at the top and we could see everything really well. We watched the moshpit sway left and right as those up front got right into it. It was funny to see the large number of glowing cell phones held up and recording in the standing crowd from up top where we were. And the clouds of dubious looking smoke rising to the lights. :)

DD had a few words to say at the end of the gig, and his comments on the chick(s) who decided to remove articles of their clothing (and everything for one girl) got a good laugh for all. (FWIW apparently the 2nd chick who presented herself to the crowd to have a look at wasn't all that hot, according to a friend in the moshpit who was right there next to her).

Then Disturbed ended up their set with 'The Sickness' and had the crowd really pumping and jumping. And several thousand happy sweaty people made their way out into the cold Christchurch evening.

What a night!!!

Money is main cause of Internet security threats--Symantec - Inquirer.net

Fake popup study: Users are idiots? I don't think so...
The Psychology Department of North Carolina State University has conducted a study, in which they tested how likely it was that users clicked on fake pop-ups. Those fake pop-ups are often associated with exploits and the installation of malware on yo... (more in the full post)

NZ Shopcity = spammers
I use to buy the odd thing from http://www.shopcity.co.nz but have gone off there stuff, so I unsubscribed from their mailing list. But a week later I get another email of their specials, so I unsubscribe agan. Another week passes and they spam me again.

If you visit http://www.shopcity.co.nz don't subscribe as you will go into there spam list for ever.
Why do NZ company's break the law of the land, it just shows how dodgy they are.

http://www.shopcity.co.nz = spammer

I sent an email, and they replay with this.

Thankyou for your clear and concise email. If you tell me what email address the
letters are going to or your ShopCity handle we will happily disable your account.

Why are they making it so difficult.

update: Thanks for all the help, I went to their website and had to fill in a contact us, which I hope has sorted the problem.

The unsubscribe on their mailouts, doesn't work.

Vodafone Music Store goes DRM Free & adds Subscription music.

So Stuff.co.nz is reporting that as of today/tomorrow Vodafones Music store is about to loose it's DRM laden WMA's for 256k MP3's and not only that but off NZ's first true subscription service (still heavly DRM'd).

Apparently the costs will be the same at $1.99 a track and they don't say wether previous purchases will be able to redownloaded DRM free. I do like the fact they are quoted as saying "...at 256 kilobits per second, which makes them "significantly higher quality'' than those sold by many music download services, including Apples' iTunes" although if you buy an iTunes Plus (AAC DRM free) track you get a 256k Unprotected AAC which is better compression at the same bitrate. Also from what I can tell iTunes is actually cheaper still - $1.79 for a DRM Free track.

For subscription you're looking at $10p.month which certainly offers a sweet spot on pricing but sucks big time by only being available on VMUSIC compatible phones. If it is indeed only available to your phone and only your phone the advantage of subscription seems to go out the window and kids (VMUSICs main market) will just steal music as usual.
Of course theres no mention of iPhone compatibilty for the subscription side of things, but its safe to say it won't work.

No matter what, actually having an option other than iTunes and Amplifier for DRM free music in NZ can only be a good thing.

Everything you wanted to ask Freeview...

I've just opened a discussion in our Freeview forum on Geekzone where you can post your questions about the Freeview broadcast service.

Freeview will be answering your questions and we will post the replies to start a discussion on that.

With time, if people show interest we could even schedule a live on-line chat. It all depends of your participation.

If you have been living under a rock, Freeview will become the standard open to air TV broadcast standard with satellite (standard definition) and and terrestrial (high definition) services.

More on Orcon
I tried to add this as a comment to my previous post, but for some reason I couldn't, so:

So today I got my new Sky City Movies 2 for 1 pass from Orcon as promised. I was pleasantly surprised, given the previous experiences, I didn't think I'd hear from them again.

As to the service I've had 8 days in the last 3 weeks where it didn't break down at all. Last night however the wireless router was playing up and killed me off in the poker tournament I had worked so hard to qualify for. One hand I had pocket Kings and bet 2/3 of my chips, by the time the modem reconnected instead of doubling or trebling up they were gone. $300 I won't be seeing.

I did have 2 bad days last week, one with 79 disconnections and the other with 362 and I still don't have Caller ID, otherwise I would have to say it was pretty good.