Category Archives: Internet

Chrome crashing in OSX – fixed by re-installing

I’m no OS X expert, so I was a bit befuddled to find Google Chrome began crashing on startup a few days ago. Was it some evil Apple plot to lock Google out of the Mac?

Chrome crashing on start up in OSX

All the grisly details from the automated report are below… it's not the most readable of reports.

The fix: What I did was to download Chrome again and re-install. That seems to have fixed it for now.

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Much spam from iCMG/KnowledgeHut/bmsend

At work I’m getting repeated spams from one mob which send surprisingly similar emails about conferences and training from various domains, which include:

enterprisearchitecturetrainingtoday.com
businessawards2013.com
BPMArchitects.com
newbpmtraining.net
myenterprisearchitecture.com
telcoarch.com
thebpmtraining.com
businessintelligencelive.com (added 2014-01-13)
enterprisearchitecturetrainer.com (added 2014-04-01)
mycloudcomputingtrainingnow.com (added 2014-04-07)
sixsigmaaccreditation.com — (added 2014-07-24 — also noted use of the brand name KnowledgeHut )
itilfoundationoceana.com — (added 2014-08-06 — still using KnowledgeHut name)
Sent by pmta90.dedicated.bmsend.com on behalf of BusinessAnalysisProgram.com (added 2014-08-18)
primeverastudy.com (added 2014-08-26)
mybusinesscasewriting.com (added 2014-09-16)
finance4nonfinace.com (added 2014-09-16)
ApacheHadoopbootcamp.com (added 2014-09-18)
pmtrainingPrograms.com (added 2014-09-18)
sixsigmaforbeginers.com (added 2014-09-26 — note typo)
msptrainingnow.com (added 2014-09-26)
mspaccreditationnow.com (added 2014-09-30)
prince2bootcamptoday.com (added 2014-09-30)
pmprojectnplanning.com (added 2014-10-03)
myprince2certification.com (added 2014-10-13)
mspbootcamptoday.com (added 2014-10-15)
ITILfoundationgulf.com (added 2014-10-22)
financialmodelinginexcel.com (added 2014-10-27)
scrumbootcampnow.com (added 2014-10-30)
knowledgehutglobal.com (added 2014-10-30)
businesssuccesstrainings.com (added 2014-11-10)
primeveratraining.com (added 2014-11-14)
sixsigmaintialsquare.com (added 2014-12-09 — note it appears to misspell “initial”)
projectmgmttoday.com (added 2014-12-19)
businesscasewritingcourseware.com (added 2014-12-19)
mspadvancecoursefinder.com (added 2014-12-19)
agilescruminitiatives.com (added 2015-01-12)
fpasnap.com (added 2015-01-13)
itilfoundationstudy.com (added 2015-01-22)
financialmodelingnexcel.com (added 2015-02-17)
scrumaccreditationcase.com (added 2015-02-17)
pgmpinitiatives.com (added 2015-03-05)
pmcertin.com (added 2015-02-17 — includes “itilsearch.com” in unsubscribe links)
sixsigmalearnings.com (added 2015-02-17 — other domains mentioned include bmsend.com, bmetrack.com, alliancestudy.com)
agileinitiatives.com (added 2015-03-11)
hadoopclassroomwork.com (added 2015-03-11)
pmprojectsolutionprogram.com (added 2015-03-16)
scrumtrainingtoday.com (added 2015-04-10)
global-health.com (added 2015-05-14 — using bmsend.com… Is this ICMG branching out into health services, or a different company making use of the same spam sending service? Looks like the latter. They even quote an Melbourne address: Level 2, 607 Bourke Street)
prepmtrain.com (added 2015-06-25 — also quotes pmatsearch.com in the dodgy unsubscribe link)
businesscasewritinginfo.com (added 2015-07-15)
cbapcourses.com (added 2015-07-15)
BusinessanalysisProfessionals.com (added 2015-07-15)
msproject2013tutor.com (added 2015-07-21)
businesscasewritingnewapps.com (added 2015-08-24)
agileandscrumintro.com (added 2015-12-02)
projectmanagementgain.com (added 2015-12-02)
itilpractice.com (added 2015-12-02)
msprojectmethods.com (added 2015-12-10)
Pythonread.com (added 2015-12-10)
bcwbusiness.com (added 2015-12-10)
businesscasewritingnow.com (added 2015-12-22)
learnbusinesscase.com (added 2015-12-22)
itilfreshtutor.com (added 2016-04-06)
coreproject.co (added 2016-04-06)
androiddevelopmentnow.com (added 2016-04-06) – emails include subject lines proclaiming “Learn Andorid”!
officepersonalsecretary.com (added 2016-04-06)
projectsmgmts.com (added 2016-04-28)
msprojectnewprofessional.com (added 2016-05-18)
sixsigmaapps.com (added 2016-05-18)
prince2newsession.com (added 2016-05-18)
Professionalsofbusinessanalysis.com (added 2016-06-21)
deftanalyze.com (added 2016-06-21)
skillcentrics.com (added 2016-06-21) – used as a Reply-To address
bigdatahadooptutors.com (added 2016-06-21)
iosdvptraining.com (added 2016-06-21)
angularjsconceptstraining.com (added 2016-06-21)
pm-careers.com (added 2016-06-22)
Latestprojectmanagement.com (added 2016-06-22)
scrumstudies.com (added 2016-06-28)
scrummasterscert.com (added 2016-06-29) – this appears to be sent via mailerinteractive.com
elationproject.com (added 2016-07-04)
itsm-skills.com (added 2016-08-23)
certs-skill.com (added 2016-08-23)

Apart from using many different domains, these guys also continually change the address within the domain, and Outlook doesn’t appear to be able to consign an entire domain to the blocked senders list.

Many include this footer:

You are receiving this e-mail because you happen to be either our client or were added to our comprehensive database on account of your contribution in the IT domain. However, should you no longer wish to receive any further mails from our side, please Click here Unsubscribe iCMG | Level 9, Avaya House, 123 Epping Road, North Ryde, NSW.| Phone +61 2 8005 0977

…but of course I’ve tried that and it doesn’t work… it probably only served to prove to them that mine was a live address.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the street address quoted is a serviced office.

I have been putting these domains into the spam senders list in Exchange, but they still get through. I can only assume that the list in Exchange is a “soft” one.

Annoying.

I have, of course, passed on a spam message to the ACMA spam reporting people… but I don’t hold out much hope of any success there.

I’m adding additional domains as they come up — when I get the chance. It’s interesting to see that some of them include spelling errors; most are just semi-random buzzwords stuck together.

Thunderbird does error message wrong

Thunderbird discovered that yahoo have changed their mail server’s POP3 behaviour, meaning you can’t leave mail on their server and download it locally. So it pops up the following message box:
POP3 has failed
This message box is app-modal. You can’t just fix the problem, you’ve got to take notes (a screenshot suffices) and then fix the problem. A bunch of faffing around, when it could have just said “Do you want your Server Settings automatically changed so that your mail can be fetched? Yes/No”. Or you could have this pile of technical information in a non-modal dialog box, and bring up the settings dialog for the user to solve the problem. Or just have this pile of technical information in a non-modal dialog box, so a screenshot isn’t necessary.

Or you could just make people angry, that works too.

Wikipedia is now blacked out

Wikipedia is now blacked-out for 24 hours.

Wikipedia blacked-out

Note that at the time of writing, clicking the “Learn more” link takes you to a page that momentarily has more information, but then itself gets blacked-out. D’oh. I’m guessing they’ll fix that soon.

I’m guessing the Google Cache will get a good workout in the next 24 hours. To use it, search Google as normal; look for the Wikipedia link, and click the right button [1] to make the cache preview appear, then click the “Cached” link [2] to look at it in full size.

Using the Google Cache to read Wikipedia

More about the SOPA protest

Top spams

The work email server spam filter does not simply reject everything suspicious – this would risk us losing legitimate emails, something made worse by some companies choosing to send invoices and remittances as PDF attachments with no accompanying text whatsoever, something the mail server considers dodgy.

So (until I work out a better, foolproof automated process, or take the time to properly tweak the spam settings on the server) I manually look through some of the doubtful messages to pluck out those that are not actually spam.

The most common types of spam messages caught seem to be…

5. Your credit card is blocked (enter all your details into our dodgy web site)…

4. Work from home and earn $$$…

3. Marry a gorgeous Russian girl…

2. Cheap replica watches (Rolex etc)…

1. Cheap medicine to help gentlemen with, err, size-related personal problems.

…though it appears cheap Canadian pharmacies are also gaining in popularity, despite this being for a .com.au address.

Bye bye Google Wave

Google Buzz went west; the lesser-known Google Jaiku is shutting-down in January. No surprise to hear another aborted Google social media product will go belly-up: Google Wave to go read-only from 31/1/2012, and being switched-off on 30/4/2012.

They must really be hoping that Google Plus stays the distance.