DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Someone just clicked through to my site from a Google search for “women missing front teeth.” Heh.

John Batteiger of the SF Chronicle assembled a list of government and commercial websites giving information on how to save energy. The original article is here: Energy-saving tips can be found on many government websites

Because the Chronicle’s site has broken many of the URLs, I’ll list them here.

• California’s energy portal has tips, resources, and info on the 20/20 rebate program
• Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s energy-savings calculator offers tips customized to your home size and location
• Another LBL energy-savings calculator
• Another portal for CA energy savings, offered by the Consumer Energy Center. Of special note:
  • A rebate database lists hundreds of rebate programs statewide
  • What to do if your power goes off
  • Summer energy-saving tips for home and office

• Industry-specific savings tips for groceries, restaurants, contractors, etc.

The original article lists even more sites.

Today’s Tech Tip: the top of the subwoofer is not a good place for the CD-ROM burner.

Thanks to Network Solutions providing my name and address to every spammer and con artist on the Internet for the past five years, I’ve received over a half-dozen copies of the “internet business guide” invoice scam from utp-online.com.

The mailing is from Switzerland, and it arrives in a glassine-window envelope (as might a real invoice). My name and address show through the window. Inside the envelope is something that looks a lot like an invoice. The billed amount is $960.

It’s an interesting scam. Presumably some companies are large or disorganized enough that these fake invoices are inadvertently paid. But if there is anyone with half a brain at UTP, they should realize that this scam is only likely to work with the first copy of the invoice. To say that another way: if I was smart enough to recognize this as a despicable hoax when I received the first copy, why on earth do you think I’d pay the sixth? Please.

Here’s more on the UTP-Online.com pro-forma invoice scam

Heh, I just wish UTP was sending out prepaid reply envelopes with their invoices.

In case you haven’t already seen it (via Slashdot or Camworld or, no doubt, countless other places): check out Steve Gibson’s dissection of a distributed denial-of-service attack against grc.com. It’s long, but fascinating to read — reminiscent of Cliff Stoll’s The Cuckoo’s Egg, a 1980s techno-thriller about tracking an international spy ring.

Even if the content doesn’t interest you, you should probably go to grc.com anyway to run Steve’s ShieldsUP! program, which does some simple testing to see how vulnerable your Windows machine is to a network-based attack.

Workstation security is particular important if you’re a broadband user. Folks with cable modems and DSL are favorite targets for the IRC bots described in the article above. Windows users are more vulnerable than anyone else.