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Missing Malaysian Airliner

I’ve got more interest than usual in this, as I happened to be on a ‘plane in the same airspace a few hours afterwards. It makes you think while waiting to board in Singapore.

Three days later, no wreckage has been found and there are rumours of the aircraft changing course. Hijack? That’s what it looks like to me, based on the facts released. First off, there was no distress call. The same was true of the Air France 477 in 2009 (discounting the automated transmissions), but that was way out over the ocean a long way in to the flight; MH370 had only recently departed and was in crowded airspace, in range of ATC and showing up on civil radar.

Much was made of the passengers travelling on stolen passports; given that part of the world I’d be surprised if there weren’t several on every flight out of KL. If it was a terrorist attack, someone would have claimed it by now anyway. And if it was external hijackers, the crew would have raised the alarm.

So what could have happened? The release of the final radio message is a huge clue – they were handing over from Malaysia to Vietnam, mid-way across the sea. Hand-overs are important – they say goodbye, change frequency and says hello. Only the goodbye happened.

If the aircraft had suffered a very sudden and catastrophic failure, the wreckage would be floating on the ocean below at that point. So that leaves the aircrew. They could have turned off the transponder and done what they liked.

If external agents had hijacked an aircraft the pilots would have triggered the hijack alarm on the transponder and made a distress call. They were in radar range, and radio range. And the security on the cockpit door would have allowed them time.

If I was flying an aircraft and wanted to take it over, mid-sea on ATC handover would be the obvious place to do it. Malaysia wouldn’t expect contact because they’d left; Vietnam wouldn’t notice loss of contact because none had been made; they’d assume they were still talking to Malaysia. Just speculating out loud…

Only military radar would be taking any interest in the aircraft, and in that part of the world you bet they were watching but don’t really want to talk about it.

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Criminals using self-assessment tax filing deadline to drop Trojans

I’ve intercepted rather a lot of these:

From: <gateway.confirmation@gateway.gov.uk>
To: <**************>
Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2014 20:33:49 +0100
Subject: Your Online Submission for Reference 485/GB6977453 Could not process

The submission for reference 485/GB6977453 was successfully received and was not processed.

Check attached copy for more information.

This is an automatically generated email. Please do not reply as the email address is not monitored for received mail.

Someone (via France, and the sender certainly does not speak proper English) is taking advantage of people’s panic about getting self-assessment tax forms in before the 31st January deadline to avoid a fine The attached ZIP file contains an executable with a .scr extension. It doesn’t show as being anything recognisable as nasty, so someone’s planned this well. Be careful; this is slipping through ISP malware scanners (and all the Windoze desktop scanners I’ve checked it against).

 

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Advertorial in Process Engineering Control & Maintenance

The relationship between journals and advertisers has always been tricky, with many of them forced to say nice things, or at least avoid saying anything bad concerning major advertisers. In my day as an editor I was free to say what I liked, as no advertiser could afford to stop advertising because it was the best route to reaching potential customers before the Internet.

Times have certainly changed, and today marks a new low. We’ve intercepted several spammed messages offering to sell editorial in Process Engineering Control and Maintenance. Normally I wouldn’t draw attention to this, but they were sent to a spamming list and picked up by no less than six honeypots – addresses than no legitimate sender of bulk mail should be using. Therefore they’re fair game.

Dear Public Relations Manager

I deal with the editorial content for the Process Engineering Control & Maintenance publication, and are just putting together our editorial feature pages within our February edition, this is a very special edition as this will not only be distributed to our exclusive 100,000 named circulation but an extra 5,000 copies will also be distributed at MAINTEC, Sustainability Live & National Electronics Week to the wide range of purchasing professionals that attend.

I wanted to contact you to see if you would be able to provide some editorial content for this special edition.

The only cost to include a press release within this special edition would be a small editorial set up fee of just £85…

…As I am only able to offer this editorial opportunity to the first few companies to respond to this offer, please email me the editorial content that you would like to include, and please confirm that you would be happy to pay the £85 set up fee.

Kind Regards

******* ******** CIE

[name and telephone number deleted]

If you’re one of the 105,000 people “lucky” enough to get a copy of the magazine, you have been warned.

 

 

 

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Direct Response monitored alarms fail to show

Not to an alarm call out, but they had an appointment at 9am today to talk about their monitoring service. At 9:30 they called to say they weren’t coming with the excuse that they’d tried to call to confirm the appointment but couldn’t get through. Except they confirmed it yesterday afternoon and there’s someone on the hot-line number they claim to have used since 6am today.

Okay, they double booked slots and got caught with their pants down and this is the best they could come up with, but a company trying to sell an ARC service, not showing for an appointment has to be the biggest no-no going. LOL!

They’re actually possibly worth talking to, because they use the rather interesting Risco panels. Risco is an Israeli company, and they’re upping the game by integrating CCTV and IDS in one system with PIR detectors that will take a snapshot of what triggered them and sending to the ARC. The lady on the phone said they just wanted to demonstrate this, and I couldn’t resist even though we’re happy with the British-made Texecom kit (although we use Risco beam sensors already).

However, this is the same Direct Response that got hauled before the OFT and clobbered in 2009 for telling porky pies about their monitored alarms getting a priority response from the police. The caller also claimed the alarms were made in Iran (“or somewhere like that”). And they’re still using the same old sales tactics (“We are calling as part of an awareness campaign, and four people in your area will be selected at random for a free alarm worth £999”, without mentioning the £400 installation fee up front and claiming a £5/week monitoring fee – I’ll be pleasantly surprised if this bit is true).

The appointment’s been re-made for 9am on Monday. Let’s see. In fairness, I did warn the first and second callers that they hadn’t called a normal householder. All they gotta do is Google me.

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BBC pulls Queen’s Christmas message

The BBC iPlayer is supposed to “make the unmissable, unmissable”, according to the BBC itself. That only applies if the BBC itself wants you (the license payers) to see something.

Even before Christmas was over, the Queen’s Christmas Message was removed from the playlist. What’s the excuse? I’m still waiting for a reply to that one (and ITV don’t feature it either). It was produced by the BBC this year, and there doesn’t seem to me to be any technical reason why they can’t keep it there for the duration of Christmas, if not the whole year. it’s not just iPlayer; it’s been dropped from the BBC web site too.

The BBC is, of course, embroiled in allegations of left-wing political and social bias, and this seems a likely explanation. At the very least, lefty decision makers will have regarded the Queens Message as unimportant and dropped it quickly.

The BBC once had a monopoly on the Royal Christmas Message, but this was ended in 1997 when it was announced that ITN would alternate with it (and Sky joined the rotation in 2011). At the time it was speculated that this decision reflected the Palace’s displeasure with the low-brow coverage of Royal matters within BBC News and Current Affairs. You can’t argue with that, although it was denied by Buckingham Palace. Subsequent revelations tend to back this up, and show it was the right decision.

It comes to something when the state broadcaster, funded by the nation, fails in its duty to make the Queen’s message available, forcing everyone on to YouTube to watch it. Perhaps its time to drop the BBC from the production rota and replace them with Google.

 

 

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When is a Psychic not a Fraud?

The Daily Mail has had to pay £125,000 in compensation and costs to self-styled psychic Sally Morgan following an article that claimed she was perpetrating a fraud on her audience. Specifically, it said she got her messages from an earpiece rather than from beyond the grave. Going on reports of the proceedings, it appears that she didn’t use an ear-peice (or at least the Daily Mail couldn’t prove it), and therefore the article was libellous. On the face of it, some poorly researched journalism, but whoever would have thought it mattered in the case of someone pretending to hear things from the spirit world?

What the Daily Mail got wrong was that they decided to publish something as fact that couldn’t be backed up – specifically that she used an earpiece. If I say Sally Morgan, and all psychics, are not receiving any super-natural help for their performances or readings it’s up to them to prove otherwise. They’d have a hell of a job doing that, so I’m not worried in the slightest.

Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, has guidelines about such things. Basically, you’re not allowed to pretend that psychics are real – every so often you have to say that it’s all a load of rubbish, and broadcast for entertainment purposes only. Majestic TV, the company behind Psychic Today, have today been fined £12.5K for not doing this, and inciting credulous punters to call their premium rate telephone lines for “accurate readings”.

I’m at a bit of a loss as to why Mr Justice Tugendhat (the judge in the Sally Morgan vs. Associated Newspapers) came to his decision. Sally Morgan is no more a psychic than a plank of wood, simply because there is no such thing. Exposing her methods incorrectly was wrong, but what’s the compensation all about? People who want to believe this rubbish will do so anyway, so her livelihood is safe. Whether a judge should be awarding damages to anyone who’s livelihood depends on pretending something is true when it isn’t is another matter. So he could have found in her favour and awarded her £1.

As it is Sally Morgan’s web site waffles on about her being “vindicated”, without going in to any detail about what the ruling was about. People reading it might well infer that the judge found her to be a genuine psychic, which isn’t the case at all.

Ofcom’s guidelines on these things seem eminently sensible (see ruling), but unfortunately their reach is limited to broadcasting and publishing. The growth of phone-in TV shows, known as audience participation, where the viewers are incited to dial premium rate numbers to hear a load of stuff made up about their future, is worrying but at least it’s regulated. The Internet isn’t, and I fear this kind of activity will soon spread to there.

If any psychic out there would care to prove they are genuine I will, of course, modify my view. Be warned, I’m a qualified magician and not as easy as the usual marks to fool.

 

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CPC charging for free delivery! Well, not quite…

CPC Farnell is great. Most of the time. They’re a well established supplier of electronic bits and pieces (components) and they’ve recently branched out in to various other items of hardware. The prices are good, the service is spot on, and they’re based in England with sensible people at the end of the ‘phone. Their catalogue and web site is best suited to professional purchasers who know what they want and can see behind the manufacturer’s marketing descriptions, but that’s just fine. They’re box shifters, but they’re very good box shifters.

Last week they had a “special offer” for free delivery, even for small orders. I needed some cables forgotten from an earlier main order, so took advantage of the offer, only to discover on the paperwork that I was nonetheless charged! Being a good company to deal with in the past, I gave them a call. Apparently some genius there made the “free delivery” offer, but the web site software knew nothing about it and has been telling everyone they’ve been hit with a handling charge ever since. I suspect their operators are getting a bit hacked off with the complaints, although they’re still professional and courteous and friendly.

So if you’re reading this, and are wondering about whether you’ve been stitched up, relax. They haven’t gone mad; their on-line ordering system is just a bit trailing-edge. I’m still happy to recommend them as a supplier. And as far as I know, they pay all their UK taxes.

 

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Edward Miliband in confusion over tax

Edward Miliband had just announced he’s going to restore the 10p rate of Income Tax if anyone is stupid enough to vote for him. Interesting. He’s going to pay for it with a divisively-named “Mansion Tax” on properties worth more than £2M. This may be appealing for the numerically challenged, but does it makes sense? What are the figures  The BBC is reporting this kind of stuff without bothering to work it out.

First off, how many houses are worth more than £2M? No one really knows, but according to the Land Registry, 1,620 houses worth £2M+ were sold in 2012. Let’s say they change hands every ten years on average, so there are about 16,000. I don’t know if this is the correct figure, but hacks reporting the story aren’t even asking the this question.

How much did it cost when Gordon Brown scrapped the 10p rate of income tax?  Apparently it raised £3.5B. I’ve seen 7Bn bandied about, but £3.5Bn was the figure Alistair Darling was working with (according to reports in the Guardian at the time). So that works out at £218K tax a year per £2M house in the country. That’s more than 10% of the value of the asset. It’s not that difficult for someone in London to end up living in a £2M house but to otherwise be of limited wealth; it’s their house not their income. They certainly won’t be earning the kind of money to pay such a huge levy – they could very well be pensioners, albeit likely to have a relatively good private pension. But not that good!

So the arithmetic doesn’t work; is anything else thought through?

In Bradford today, Miliband said: “We would put right a mistake made by Gordon Brown and the last Labour government.”

Funny that. In 2008 he said of abolishing  the 10p rate, “When you make a big set of changes in the tax system, some people do lose out. That is a matter of regret. Of course it is. But overall these changes make the tax system fairer.”

So having a 10p rate of tax is unfair? Taxing an asset value is certainly unfair.  Today he’s proposed to do both.

And that’s before you start looking at the practicalities – who knows the value of a property? A lot of it is already owned by overseas companies in order to avoid disproportionate taxation anyway.

 

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Vauxhall Helicopter Crash

I wouldn’t normally want to pre judge the reasons for an Air Accident but I’m getting a bit fed up with the twaddle appearing on the BBC and radio about the incident today where a helicopter appears to have hit a crane. Listening to Kate Hoey, MP for Vauxhall, making political points over it on the BBC just now is too much. Checking the NOTAMs for London, the following is in force between 07 Jan 2013 17:00 GMT and 15 Mar 2013 23:59 GMT.

HIGH RISE JIB CRANE (LIT AT NIGHT) OPR WI 1NM 5129N 00007W, HGT 
770FT AMSL (VAUXHALL, CENTRAL LONDON), OPS CTC 020 7820 ####
12-10-0429/AS 2.

A NOTAM, or notice to Airman, is issued to all pilots and they’re required to check them against their flight plan in case there’s anything important they need to know about. In my day it was done on paper – now it’s on-line and really easy to check. This is basically saying there’s a crane erected that’s 770′ high at this location in Vauxhall. It’s lit at night (but not during the day). Keep at least a mile away.

It was clearly foggy, so the pilot should have given it a wide berth. On the face of it, it appears he didn’t. Eyewitnesses don’t report anything unusual about the helicopter.

Helicopters are supposed to be flying in to London over the Thames in order to provide a “safe” landing area in the event of trouble. (That’s safe to the people on the ground, at least). It appears to have been broadly in the right place. Ms Hoey is being populist, but then again, that’s her job.

 

Update 13:30

News reports now say that the helicopter had diverted; this might explain why the pilot wasn’t aware of the crane it the original route went nowhere near it, although flight plans should have diversion plans and NOTAMs for diversions should also be checked.

Much is now being made of people who said the lighting wasn’t good enough. Lighting in daylight isn’t normal (or useful) anyway, and neither is it any good in fog (day or night).

However, having seen aerial shots (they’re all up there with helicopters) the crane doesn’t appear to be at the location specified in the NOTAM. That could turn out to be a story, but I’m not on the ground to check it.

The NOTAM (reproduced above) doesn’t actually give an accurate Lat and Long – it actually puts the crane next to the Kennington Oval. Normally NOTAMs in central London are a lot more precise – a couple more digits of accuracy. This is starting to look like a story, and you saw it here first.

 

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My name is Elena and I live in small city in Russia.

You may have seen one or more of these in your inbox in the last few days:

Hello,
 
My name is Elena and I live in small city in Russia. I have a little daughter and no husband since he left us. Due to deep crisis recently I losted job and can not pay the heating bills for our home anymore. I finded your address at website and decided to write you from a public library. We urgent need heating because winter arriving and the temperature in our home is very cold. We can heat our home with a portable woodburner, but we unable buy it because it cost too much for us. If you own any old transportable woodburner from cast iron which you don’t use anymore, I pray you can gift to us and transport of it to us.
 
I hope for your answer.
 
Elena.

Okay – it’s obviously a scam, but it’s interesting as it’s getting through most spam filters. It actually originates from Tellas in Greece, from mail servers that aren’t blacklisted – although today it moved on to ADSL lines.

Reading the text, it’s  reminiscent of various “I’m a poor Russian in trouble” panhandles that appear annually at about this time of year. If you reply (it’s been tried) the person at the other end will suggest that instead of sending the stove you just send the money as she can buy one from the local market for a figure just under $200.

What I’m not so sure of is that the scammer is actually even Russian in this instance, as the language isn’t quite right. Russian speakers (in fact most East Europeans) are notoriously bad at using the definite or indefinite article (‘it’ or ‘a’) because it doesn’t exist in their language. This person fails to use it pretty consistently  thus sounding like a Russian trying to speak English, but slips up with “…buy it because it cost…”. She also has “…a little daughter…”. It suggests American, as a linguist friend pointed out, because of the use of “home” instead of “house” and “woodburner” instead of “wood burning stove”.

You might wonder why on earth the request is for a cast iron stove. Are the collecting them from scrap iron? Well, no – when you think about it, if you offer them a stove the shipping will be prohibitively expensive (they are heavy) so you can save money by simply sending the cash.

Anyone up on this kind of thing will  have been thinking “Valentin Mikhaylin” from the start. Okay, he changed the name to Elana in 2007 (or sometimes Valentin and his mother, Elana), but the stove story has been used for at least ten years. It has all the hallmarks, except one: This year the spams are getting through. This could be the scammer’s undoing – as everyone is receiving multiple copies it’s lost all plausibility in 2012. So what will 2013 be about, one wonders?