NerdBlog

So anyways, I started playing this new game Benign Online : Tales of Taridia. Its not bad. Its free, its 2d like old school Final Fantasies, and its multiplayer and everyone online is very nice, and helpful.

To download a copy and start playing today, go to http://www.benignrpg.com

I decided that Redneck Bank was worthy of a review.

When I setup my Redneck bank account, I was taken to a 3rd party application (Redneck bank apparently does not have their own online banking software, I cannot confirm this, but every URL on their site is something different than Redneckbank.com) I filled out the form, and was awaiting the Trial deposits before the initial deposit was sent.

I verified the initial deposit, and waited around 5 days with no information sent, and could not login. I called, they said they were overwhelmed with applications and I would be online Monday (it was Friday). I waited, and did receive information to login on Monday.

I signed up for their Mega Money market savings (paying 3.10% at the time). I went to their cheesy online interface, and filled out the information, selected savings, and it repeatedly rejected my information… I called again… the lady said “You have to selecte Checking, not Savings” I was thinking why the heck do I pick that???? I didnt select checking in any way shape or form, and the application did not mention Checking… but whatever. I selected Checking, and it allowed me in…

It allowed me into the worst online banking system I had ever seen in my entire life. It was very cheesy, and very flawed. I clicked one link, and it logged me out and gave an error message about the session timing out… whatever.. I logged back in… I was trying to setup my external accounts, and no where on the page was there anything remotely close to mentioning that. I called…. YET again… this time I spoke with a very rude lady who made it sound like it was MY responsibility to know to click on “Setup merchant and recurring deposits” yea… like that sounds like “Setup external account”.

Whatever… I tried adding it in, but that was the worst interface ever, and just decided to use GMAC’s bank to setup the auto deposits. So, I called AGAAAAAAAAAIN because there was no way to get the routing number… I got the routing number, set it up in GMAC Bank, and sent a transfer over. (GMAC Bank places the funds in my other external accounts within 2 days)… The funds never appeared in Redneck for over 5 days!!!!!!!!!!!! (I was setting this up because I wanted the most out of my money, I was going to bounce funds back and forth to whoever paid the most at the time)

Finally on day 6, it showed the funds in my account. Great I thought…

Then, I get an email from Redneck Bank saying that due to the overwhelming response they received, they were lowering their rate from 3.10% to 2.00%… I was in shock… I was so pissed off I was freaking… I sent them a private email from their secure online banking section telling them I was taking every cent out and to close the account…

So I had to wait another 6 days for the funds to get back into my GMAC Bank account, and guess what… to this day (Around 4 weeks later) I have NOT gotten a response to the email I sent… (Some customer service)

So if you are thinking about Redneck, think again… they also run a bunch of satelite banks which is kind of scary in itself, I would NEVER consider this bank… EVER, take your money somewhere else… they also have AmericaNetBank and one other one… they all have the same footer, say beware, I wouldnt not put your money in here unless you want a huge headache…

Rating: 0/10

I wanted to make a post about a review for GMAC/Ally Bank since I think it is worthy of one.

I originally opened my account with GMAC Bank about 5 months ago. The online process was very simple, you needed to fill out all of the basics like Address, Name, SSN, and your initial deposit account (unless you live in the stone age where you will be mailing deposits in).

They do an initial credit check to make sure you are a real person, so if you do not have a credit history, you probably will get rejected (This is based on other reviews I have read online, where the writer gave a negative review based on that one simple fact). I completely agree with the check, they want to make sure you are real, to protect both the bank, and you.

So my account was approved and online within 15 minutes.

GMACs system was very easy to use, as is Ally Bank (after all it is the same company and the same software).

The transition between GMAC Bank to Ally Bank was 100% seemless, I received multiple notifications via snail-mail about an upcoming change, and then a welcome letter from Ally Bank.

I have had not 1 single problem since signing up, I have tested the phone support, which was responsive and answered my question immediately (I was curious about the date interest is credited to the account, the answer is the 21st at 12pm)

Interest is compounded daily (it takes interest which is accrued and compounds that onto the total, while it may not mean much for a small depositor, it can add up over time for larger depositors, and well, your basically getting the most interest possible unless you are compounded by the minute or second (which you will never find))

Setting up external accounts is easy as pie. You need your bank’s routing number, and account number, and you need to find out the trial deposits to verify that the correct bank information has been entered.

So overall I would have to score Ally bank 10 out of 10 for overall. Since I have not had a negative situation arise in 5 months, I cannot say anything other than that. I have a recurring weekly deposit set, I have added multiple external accounts, have withdrew money from the account, and have deposited over $1000 in one transfer with no problems.

You can also setup for CDs as well as multiple savings accounts (so you can have christmas accounts, college accounts, general savings, home, car, or whatever you may need to stay organized)

So give them a try today and have your hard earned money, earn more money for you than your traditional account at your local bank (Ally pays 2.05% as of today, where a local bank can pay as little as .3% or sadly… .01%)

Good luck!

So, I just read on the news that 2 pro football players… 1 from the history making Detroit Lions, and the border line history making Oakland Raiders went off with a couple of South Floridian University players. None of the players were captains.

Supposively they went out for a three hour tour, but the weather started to turn rough… And according to experts, the ship was too small for the choppys seas, and the tiny ship was tossed.

No one knows if the crew was fearless enough to prevent this tiny ship from being lost.

Hopefully the ship touched down on a island and they are ok… but… im sure we will see in the next several weeks if a new sitcom appears on ABC…

Ok, so everyone in the world gets spam, either filtering is setup to stop most spam, and then false positives become an issue (whenever a good message is considered as spam), or you dont have filtering on, and well… your inbox is rendered unusable.

So, this is my rant, maybe someone out there will read this and it will find the right people to have the spam stop.

The ICANN assigns internet names and numbers. (IP addresses and www addresses). They have the sole power to stop this, and they no matter what anyone else says, can. They can begin instituting new policies which I will guarantee will stop spam… I will name what they need to do, when they need to do it, and I wont even have to explain how it works because the process will explain it.

So basically the ICANN assigns Internet Service Providers classless subnets which that ISP in turn assigns smaller subnets to its customers, and sometimes those customers provide service to other customers… So basically the ICANN controls all names and numbers on the net, and its a trickle down effect.

My method to stop spam would be to institute HEAVY punishment to ISPs permitting spam over their network. And the ICANN could use this for stopping all kinds of nasty people for promoting internet crime, it would stop identity theft, fraud, and so much more.

The ICANN would first need to setup a new department solely to handle all of these new complaints, and swift action would be taken against complaints.

The ICANN would issue warnings to the IP block holder, and after X number of days, the ICANN could terminate that IP block and basically put an embargo against the company who obtained the IP block for not complying.

To lift the embargo, the ISP would need to pay a HEFTY fine, and im not talking $100/$200 dollars, im Talking maybe a light punishment at first of $100,000. A subsequent offense would result in extremely large fines, the next tire would be $1,000,000. After that $10,000,000 then the final tier, beyond that should be permanent embargo, would be $25,000,000.

Now, there would need to be new sets of rules in place so that normal ISPs arent getting shut down because of this, basically if XO has leased an IP block to me for my T3 line, and I spam out of my network, someone issues a complaint to the ICANN, and XO would be contacted regarding the problem, XO would contact me and tell me that I need to stop. So if ICANN says “Hey, XO, if this continues for 45 days, were pulling the plug and issuing a embargo against you, and you have to pay $1,000,000 to get new IP blocks flowing again”.. Then XO should call me and say “Mr ISP, you have 30 days to stop, or your gone…” After 30 days, if I continue, XO should pull the plug on me, so that they dont get an embargo against them.

Its all pretty simple, the trickle down would take time away from the overall ICANN time… So if I sold Dial-up to people, and XO told me spam was coming from one of my IPs, I warn the customer to stop in 15 days or something, and if they dont, I terminate their account.

That way, we can target countries harboring online criminals, and pull the plug on them… and all of the money coming from these large fines would be paying for the task force against online criminals.

So, of course new adendums would need to be made for contracts. But thats the way it goes. The internet is still VERY young, and policies like this NEED to be put in place to make the internet a better, safer place for everyone, and there is no better place to start than ICANN, because without a number on the net, your not on the net!

So, I started working on these Grandstream Phone systems the other day, and well, they can be a bit confusing.

This post addresses a couple major issues with a particular phone from Grandstream, the GXP2000. Basically when you dial in, and someone answers, the phone quality is in horrible shape, sounds distorted and crackly, there is an easy fix for that, but you can kill 2 birds with 1 stone. The second problem is that when you try to dial *99 for voicemail, and the attendant asks you to enter the extension number, you press it, and nothing happens. Well here is the fix for you!

You need to be on the same subnet as the phone (usually plug in and grab a DHCP address) and type the address of the phone (on the Phone LCD screen) into Internet Explorer. The default password is admin.

You want to typically go to Account 1 (other accounts may be setup, but if your on a SIP trunk, its usually Account 1). On this page, you need to change the DTMF to be RFC 2833 instead of in-audio. This will allow communication to your PBX. On this same page, you need to change your Voice Options (there are 8 boxes that say Choice # beside each) set each to PCMU.

Save the settings, and you should be ready to rock and roll!

Alot of people have been asking me about this nasty, disgusting, creators should be drug out into the street and shot execution style, virus. And well, removal is actually quite simple. However,  getting re-infected is even simpler!

Using a cool little app called ComboFix, you can remove this. ComboFix will remove WinAntivirus 2009, as well as some other very nasty viruses.

It is available for download here: http://download.bleepingcomputer.com/sUBs/ComboFix.exe

When running this app, I would go against instaling the Recovery Console… I mean, wtf… But after running and rebooting, your comp should be clean.