For the Google archive, I am quoting a transcript of a telejunker's toll-free announcer:

<quote>
[1 second burst of music] You have reached our automated information system. You're probably calling one of our toll-free numbers that appeared on your display phone. Fund-raising efforts are now well under way and we will be calling you back to explain the programs we have for this year. Calling you is the most cost-effective way to reach our goal. If you prefer, contact our Customer Information Centre at [1-8xx-xxx-xxxx]. They will be glad to provide you with any further information. Those phones are staffed 9AM to 9PM Eastern Time. Goodbye for now.
</quote>

More information on this telejunker-for-hire can be found here (just follow the links, or search here or here).

If you've been contacted by a "charity" such as The Fraternal Order of Police ["FOP"] or a State Troopers' organisation, chances are you've been tele-spammed by Xentel DM, AKA Xentel Inc (in the US). Be aware that most of the organisations that Xentel calls on behalf of do not have charitable (tax deductable) status and even then, Xentel keeps ~80% or more of the donations.

Unfortunately, Xentel exploits/abuses a loophole in the law that allows non-profit organisations to harass scam call anyone, even if you have registered for the DNC list. The fact that Xentel makes millions of dollars a year in profit, doesn't seem to matter to either the FCC or the CRTC. It seems that only the state AG's do any real job of spanking these telespammers.

I love my VoIP service. In the bad old POTS days, we'd get 3, 4... 5 telejunk calls a day, 7 days a week, some days worse than others.

Now I can block the telespammers, my phone only rings for the occasional low-level telejunker: usually a local duct cleaner, or some 2-bit company trying to hawk windows and doors. All the toll-free numbers go straight to voicemail.

Repeat offenders get auto-forwarded to an out-of-service number. But, just as the email spammers ignore 5.5.x SMTP error messages and keep trying an email address that will never deliver, it seems the tele-spammers' autodialers ignore "number out of service" messages too:

SelectiveCallFwd   112595140000002    Unavailable 2007-10-20
SelectiveCallFwd   112595140000002    Unavailable 2007-10-27

Here are a few more parallels:

Email Spammer	Tele-Spammer
Ignores 5.5.x mailer messages.	Ignores "out-of-service" messages.
Plays numbers game: harasses millions of email users with unsolicited messages for one lousy sale.	Plays numbers game: harasses millions of phone users with unsolicited calls and voicemail messages for one lousy sale.
Sells "sucker lists" of email addresses.	Sells "sucker lists" of phone numbers.
Routinely forges "from" addresses.	Routinely forges Caller ID.
Uses rogue ISP’s to host their "bulletproof" websites.	Uses rogue SIP providers to host their VoIP systems.
Obfuscates messages to bypass spam filters.	Obfuscates Caller ID to bypass Privacy Guard.
Uses cost-shifted advertising to spam your mailbox.	Uses cost-shifted advertising to spam your cell-phone.

I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, including parallels between tele-junkers and fax spammers.

My personal favourite site for reporting telejunkers: Who Called Us.

A few weeks back, I purchased a Panasonic DMR-ES16 DVD Recorder. So far, I'm really pleased with it. The functionality is great and it's very easy to use, even for a beginner.

Of course, I needed discs to record on, so I bought a stack of 50 no-name DVD-R's for movies we edited in MovieMaker from our mini-DVD camcorder. I also bought a stack of 25 4.7GB 4x DVD+RW's, manufactured by CyberHome [more CamelCase].

So far, 2 of the 25 discs have failed to format. Even if none of the other discs fail, that's a fairly bad failure rate.

Naturally, I did not have the luxury of checking out CyberHome's reputation, as I bought the discs on impulse when I got my DVD Recorder. In hindsight, had I visited their website [or in this case, webshite] I would not have bought this brand anyway. Seeing a domain-parking page with their logo would not have inspired confidence in their brand. Perhaps they can't afford to maintain their webshite, after federal agencies seized more than 20,000 CyberHome-brand DVD recorders that allegedly used Philips patents without a license last year.

Just in case anyone's interested (since Googling for "authoring engine failed" yielded only 2 search results with no clear answer) I managed to get PowerProducer to work in the end.

Since I don't have the time to test each of these 3 remedies separately, I did all of them before re-attempting the burn:

(1) Although I had over 12GB free, I deleted the source .WMV files that I had used in MovieMaker to make the final cut - this freed up ~2GB.
(2) Pulled a different DVD-R from the stack.
(3) Ran PowerProducer under an Admin account.

I really don't know which one (or more) of these remedies worked, but now PowerProducer is working again. Still, I stand by what I said originally: that hardware manufacturers test OEM software before releasing it with their products.

When I purchased an LG multi-DVD rewriter drive, I acquired a software suite with CyberLink PowerProducer [their CamelCase, not mine].

Honestly, this program is a piece of crapware. Not only does it take HOURS for it to generate the DVD top-menu, it seems to take just as long to actually finish the burn process, so I usually set it to do its work overnight.

So I set this program running last night and find a cryptic error message this morning:
"Burning Failed
PowerProducer has failed to complete the task(s) because:
(e0080007)
Possible cause(s):
Authoring engine failed."

I mean, what kind of idiotic error message is this? It doesn't tell me the cause, only that it possibly, perhaps, might be due to the "authoring engine failed" (whatever the fsck that is - Googling for "authoring engine" yields many different types of applications, from 3D RPG's to DVD's). Was the DVD-R bad? Did I run out of disk space? Not enough memory? WHAT?

Of course, it couldn't tell me this shortly after I started the burn process (I had it running for about 30 minutes or so before shutting the monitor off).

LG and all the other manufacturers who bundle OEM DVD software: you really need to test these OEM software suites before bundling them with your hardware.

Reading a News Bar article today, about spam-fighters who close down spamvertised websites, I was amazed at the amount of sites project KnujOn has claimed to close down.

Apparently, 32,000+ sites are 404-compliant due to their hard work. And that's a lot of hard work, given that many of the big-player ISP's are still spam-friendly. Then it occurred to me: that's a lot of time and money these folks have invested in contacting these ISP's and webhosts. Must be a full-time job!

When everyone adopts tagged email addresses, the real culprits (the ones who sell your personal information) will be exposed. Turning off a tagged address won't prevent that first piece of UCE coming in, but at least it guarantees you won't be bothered again. Of course, there are some that believe that temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome. True, but not as cumbersome as JHD'ing or continually tweaking filters/blocklists.

The trouble with most anti-spammers, is that they like to in-fight. Very few will have anything positive to say, only comment that this won't work, that won't work. They're like the PFJ versus the JPF:

Naturally, project KnujOn hasn't closed down 32,000+ spammers, only 32,000+ websites operated by around 50 groups of spammers. Not that I'm not grateful, but this means that they are simply playing Whac-A-Mole, providing short-term relief from the current tide of spam flowing from rogue networks.

Another dumb advert using more tedious R&B nonsense. Of course, Pantene is one of numerous products made by Proctor & Gamble - the same idiots who use R&B for the Tide commercials. Just another reason to boycott P&G.

Here are some more reasons to boycott P&G:
WorldNetDaily: P&G boycott builds momentum
Gillette Pulls RFID Tags In UK Amid Protests

As if proof were needed that the CRTC has no teeth, the news today is that they are finally launching a nation-wide DNC list. Great news, huh? Well, wait a sec... according to The CBC, the same exclusions will apply as the US' version: quasi-charities, or the telespammers-for-hire who call on their behalf; political parties; public opinion surveys; newspapers of general circulation; businesses you have done business with in the last 18 months (thereby establishing an EBR). The CRTC also excludes B2B calls as well.

What this essentially means (at least for me) is that the same telescumbags that I've been blocking on my VoIP line will be able to keep trying to call me. The only telemorons that this will affect, will be your common-or-garden telescum who telespam for themselves (it seems that duct cleaning and windows installation companies seem to be predisposed to this type of abusive advertising).

Some relevant links:
Fact Sheet - National Do Not Call List
Fact Sheet - Information for telejunkers

Back on 2006-01-02, I outlined my disgust at Sony's rootkit fiasco. Today, I happened to be Googling around for the term astroturfing and chanced upon another (albeit old) story involving Sony's marketing around the PSP during Christmas 2006. Turns out that Sony hired an outfit called Zipatoni to create a fake blog (mirrored here) shilling the PSP amongst your stereotypical, leet-speaking gamers. Ironically, Zipatoni sounds like a character out of a Nintendo DS game... he could be Mario's long-lost brother!

Along with their patronising behaviour towards gamers, it seems that Sony's greed makes them believe that they are above the law when it comes to graffitti. This is the same sort of stupid viral marketing that big corporations with no scruples indulge in these days. This is why I tell everyone I know that I boycott Sony and now I have 2 more reasons to add to that list.

Hope the PSP and PS3 sales sink without a trace.

Disclaimer: I have Chinese acquaintances - this is not aimed at Chinese people per se, only the incompetent, dictatorship Chinese Government.

In these dangerous and difficult times with rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea testing nuclear weapons, it's easy to lose focus on other threats.

In the space of just over one month, I have heard and read about at least 3 stories involving tainted products from China... pet food protein tainted with melamine, fake blood protein and fake Colgate toothpaste contaminated with diethylene glycol (a toxic chemical used in engine coolants).

One has to wonder if this truly is the result of an incompetent, rogue nation dictatorship with no controls over its industries, or if the Mandarins are deliberately using this as a weapon to poison the West. In any case, one has to wonder why it isn't already time to stop doing business with these types of Governments. How Beijing managed to win the hosting bid for the 2008 Olympic Games, given their history on human rights violations, still amazes me.

Boycotting does work. When complaints about massive amounts of spam went ignored by the Chinese Internet Administrators (appointed by the incompetent, nepotistic, retrograde Chinese Government) half of the world decided enough was enough and started blocking emails originating from their IP net-space. When the Mandarins found out about this, they suddenly became very co-operative with Spamhaus.