Cut down unsolicited mobile and telephone calls

The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) is a free service. It is the official central opt out register on which you can record your preference not to receive unsolicited sales or marketing calls. It is a legal requirement that all organisations (including charities, voluntary organisations and political parties) do not make such calls to numbers registered on the TPS unless they have your consent to do so.

http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/tps/

This will cut down the number of unsolicited (marketing) calls you get to your mobile or land line telephone. You will still get unsolicited calls if you have filled in a research poll or survey but with a bit of investigation, you could stop these too! See my other posts on this forum.

Further reading
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/phones/no-more-junk

Nuisance telephone cold calls and what can be done

You have gone to all the trouble of registering your home and mobile phones with the TPS (Telephone Preference Service) http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/tps/ but you start getting nuisance telephone cold calls. Sometimes there is no one on the other end, just silence.

It is likely that someone has obtained your data (personal details) and sold them on to companies, they think, you would want to receive marketing calls from. A computer database selects your telephone number and rings it. If you answer it is meant to connect one of their operatives. Thing is, all the operatives are busy troubling others and so you are met with silence!

I sometimes get lucky and find the companies details via a web search of their telephone number. This is a growing problem and now there are websites dedicated for the annoyed to post a nuisance number and help each other find out who the company is. You will see these listed in your search results and someone may have already posted the companies details. Sometimes you get lucky and the companies website appears in the results!

If you get their address or email address then you can send them a 'Cease and Desist Notice'.

Quote:   

Subject: Cease and Desist Notice!

Dear Sir / Madam,

I have received unsolicited nuisance calls from telephone number <enter number here> which appears to be on your behalf.

Please remove my telephone number <telephone number> and other details from your database. You have been mis-sold my data and I do not want your service.

Failure to comply with this request will be deamed a breach of at least the following UK Laws:

Harrassment Act 1997, Telecommunications Act 1984 and Data Protection Act 1998.

Thank you,

<signed>

   
So far, it has worked although today I have had two calls that originate from Indian call centres for UK companies. I have emailed the UK companies and will see how quick the calls from those telephone numbers stop.


Further reading
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/phones/no-more-junk

DO NOT fill in a mail surveys!

Someone in my house hold filled in a ruddy survey that came through the post. They entice you using some 'research' type company name and may promise that you be entered in some prize draw.

These companies are just data harvesters. You get them on the internet as well. They may guise themselves as a free competition on a webpage or even via a Facebook advertisement. Be wary what information or tick box you tick.

I now am getting about a dozen cold call telephone calls a week from Debt Solutions (IVA) and re-mortgage companies.

Grr! On this forum topic, I'll either name and shame or, advise how to get de-listed.

I have a pair of digital telephones in my house and I add the offending telephone numbers to the phone's inbuilt telephone book. I name the entry as something like, 'DO NOT ANSR2', etc. The family then know not to answer the call and this hopefully gets you removed from their list (database) after x number of failed attempts.

In this instance, Acxiom harvest my details, under the guise of 'Research Opinion Poll". I am now removed from their database but, they have already sold my details on and so the nuisance calls.  

How to fix "system missing or corrupt"

Problem:
You turn off your computer with M$ one day and then go to restart to find an error message that says:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt
C:\windows\system32\config\system

check out this very good article that offers several fix solutions, including using a Linux Live CD.

I successfully fixed my son's XP problem, using the bloke's (PartieHonteuse) option 4 but, using my Kubuntu 9.10 and USB IDE docking station!

http://www.help2go.com/content/tutorials/28-c-windows-system32-config-system-missing-corrupt.html

User account gets locked when trying to access mapped drive

We recently changed our security policies at work and set user passwords to expire every 60 days in GPO. Now time for people to change their passwords. A couple of users thus far have had no problems but, one user had problems. Having changed their password and then tried to access a mapped drive they get,

'The referenced account is currently locked out and may not be logged on to'.

Even if I removed the mapped drive, unlocked the account and then tried to map the drive again, the account would get locked.

I Googled and tried some suggestions with no result. What worked for me was, map the drive again and then click, 'Connect using a different user name' and type in users credentials, including the domain name.

i.e. '<domainname\username>' (mycompany\joebloggs) and their password.

This worked! Huh!???

Rollback to previous package version after upgrade

Say that you find that an app. no longer works due to a problem with an upgraded package. As long as the previous version of the package is still in the cache, you can roll back.

The following will show all the versions of the package in the cache
Code:   

apt-cache show [package name] | fgrep Version:

   
The following will install (roll back) an older version of the package
Code:   

apt-get install [package name]=[version]

  

Another way may be possible via Synaptic.

Open Synaptic and find your package then, right click on it and there should be some menu option like "force downgrade".

Spotify for Linux

Spotify is a proprietary peer-to-peer music streaming service and application software from a Swedish based company. It allows instant listening to specific tracks or albums, with virtually no buffering delay.

Finally, they are developing a linux desktop version, packaging the first release as Debian Squeeze/Ubuntu 10.04 package.

http://www.spotify.com/int/blog/archives/2010/07/12/linux/

Sadly on Kubuntu KDE 9.10 I get a 'Segmentation fault' so, I must upgrade to 10.04 soon.