Scootinger’s Blog

Many people know that male drivers (especially teens) have to pay more for car insurance in the US than females, in some cases nearly twice is much! This is because of statistics that say that male drivers are more likely to get into crashes than females.

I’ve begun to wonder - why is this legal? Per federal law, it is illegal to discriminate based on gender, race, religion, as well as several other categories. Why is car insurance an exception, simply because of statistics and stereotypes?

What genetalia you have does not decide if you are a good or a bad driver. Just because some males have a tendency to do stupid things does not mean that the rest of us are this way as well. I’m a younger male that has been driving for about 2 years, and I have managed to only get myself into one tiny accident in which I didn’t even need to use my insurance, and no tickets either. But I know girls that have gotten into several major accidents. Just because I have a penis does not mean that I am going to be a crappy driver!

In the same way, why don’t the insurance companies give discounts to certain race groups? Why don’t they do some research on it, if there isn’t any out there already? I don’t intend to be racist or offend anyone, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s certain races that have a higher rate of vehicle thefts and maybe even accidents than others. Since they use gender-based stereotypes already, why don’t they use race-based stereotypes to increase prices for their higher-risk customers and lower prices for their lower-risk customers, and maybe make themselves some profit in the process? Does that sound right to you?

Simply put they should base car insurance rates off of factors such as the type of car that you own, driving experience, and number of crashes/tickets. Some of you may say that I am suggesting discrimination based on age, however I am suggesting that they set rates based on experience, not age. For instance, assuming that all other factors were the same, a 16-year-old new driver and a 30-year-old new driver should get the same insurance rates, since experience definitely does affect your ability to drive and your likelihood of having to make an insurance claim.

Do you hate Cingular? There’s 2 easy ways to get back at them, especially if you have rollover minutes you’re never going to use!

Recently I read that Cingular has begun to block free conference call services. The phone numbers for these services are located in remote exchanges in Iowa whose telcos charge the incoming carriers subsidies (often called “termination fees”) due to their remote location. These services locate themselves in these exchanges since they get a cut of the subsidies, which they use to run the service.

As a result, Cingular is not happy, since these services have caused their monthly bill for the “termination fees” to go from about $2000 to $2 million….within one month! They are suing some of the telcos over this issue, since they believe that this practice is illegal and in violation of FCC regulations.

Method 1

Sign up at FreeConferenceCall.com - all you need is your name and email address. You will get a phone number in the 712 exchange as well as an access code that you will use to begin the conference call. Call the number and put in the access code. It will place you on hold until someone else uses the same code to join the conference call. You can just leave your phone there overnight if you want to, while Cingular has to pay for it! Or you can actually use the conference call functionality - it supports up to 96 callers on one line! Have some fun with it!

The number that FreeConferenceCall gave me was not blocked yet however it eventually may be. If it is blocked, we can try Method 2…

Method 2

Find a 712 conference call/international calling number that is blocked on Cingular. Try calling it on your non-AT&T landline, Skype, etc just to make sure it isn’t a disconnected number. (I have not been able to find such a number…yet!)

When you do have such a number, call Cingular and complain about it. I don’t know how effective it will be, but they will probably take notice if a lot of people start calling!

File complaints with the Federal Trade Commission, Better Business Bureau, the FCC, and possibly your state’s Attorney General (links go directly to their complaint sites.) You have a legitimate complaint, since by paying for phone service you should be able to call any number in the US, and they are arbitrarily blocking these numbers because they don’t want to pay the fees. The BBB will most likely contact Cingular about your particular case and possibly take greater action if the volume of complaints is enough. The FTC/FCC probably won’t take an individual action but if enough people complain they will probably do something. Regardless, it’s definitely worthwhile to file complaints with all of them - it’s not hard at all.

I’m sure that some of you have heard of the American Family Association. For those of you who don’t know, the AFA is a very conservative fundamentalist/evangelical group. The AFA has several million members.

The AFA likes to whine a lot. They have been complaining for a while now about how Ford advertises in gay media. For instance, the AFA claimed that Ford explicitly supported gay polygamy because they had an ad in a gay magazine that had an article on the cover regarding this issue. If somebody advertises on a TV show that they don’t like, such as Desperate Housewives, AFA members will be writing letters to advertisers (see OneMillionDads.com), demanding that they pull ads from the show. When something happens on TV that they don’t like (e.g. Janet Jackson Superbowl incident or swear words on TV) you can bet that the FCC’s inboxes will be filled with “cookie-cutter” letters from AFA members. And you can’t forget that the AFA runs massive campaigns every holiday season, threatening to boycott any retailer that does not use the words “Merry Christmas” in their advertising!

I read an article by AFA founder Don Wildmon today called “Without Christian ideals, democracy dies“. It’s pretty obvious by the title that this lunatic seems to believe that Christianity (probably evangelicalism too) is necessary to keep democracy running. But it gets far, far worse! (more…)

Deals on Apple products seem to always be popular, because Apple stuff is almost never on sale. However everyone seems to forget about Apple’s refurbished store where you can get great deals on current-gen as well as previous-gen Apple products! These products all have the same warranties as new products. I’ve ordered from them before and the products are almost always in great cosmetic shape. They run out and restock all the time - if you see something that you want you should probably buy it ASAP, and if you are looking for something that is not in stock, check back every couple of days to see if they have what you want.

You can get a current-gen 1GB iPod Shuffle for $59, or a previous-gen one for $49. This is a great deal over the $79 you would pay for one otherwise. 2GB and 4GB current-gen iPod Nanos are $119 and $169 (respectively), taking $30 off of each. 8GB iPod Nanos are $209, meaning that those are $40 off. Previous-gen iPod Nanos can be purchased for an even larger discount - 1GB models are $79, 2GB models are $99, and 4GB models are $129. Current-gen 80GB iPod Videos are available for $299. Those are the only video iPods that are in stock as of this writing. If I recall correctly you could get the previous-gen 30GB models for $179, which is a great deal.

Of course they’ve also got great deals on Macs too. The base Core 2 Duo MacBook is available for $949 and the black model is available for $1299. If they restock the Core Duo MacBooks those would be $150-$200 cheaper (the base one was available for $799.) They don’t currently have any good MacBook Pros in stock but those will be 15%-30% off, depending on the model and type of processor. The $999 Core 2 Duo iMac sells for $849 and similar deals are available for other models. A Quad Intel Xeon Mac Pro can be purchased starting at $2199. You can even find old Power Macs and PowerBooks for even greater discounts. In addition you can get refurb Apple accessories, such as displays, keyboards/mice, and AirPort stuff at good discounts as well.

My school uses a filter called Shelterbelt from a company called TwoTrees Technologies. I have to say - it has to be some of the most unprofessionally designed software that I have ever used.

EFF.org blocked

First of all I was doing a project at school where I was writing something about the EFF. When I tried to go to the EFF’s website at school, I found this:

I felt that there was no reason for them to be blocking the EFF’s website. I did feel that maybe since the EFF opposes censorship on the Internet, they may have had something against that. I wrote this email to the email address on the “blocked” page, proxymaster@twotrees.com, on February 20, 2007:

“My school uses the Shelterbelt filtering system. While doing some research I noticed that the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s website, EFF.org, is blocked. Why is this? Your website claims that “Twotrees Internet Management is an outside company without any biases” yet I cannot help but believe that this may be a result of your own personal biases against Internet civil liberties organizations.”

It is March 3, almost two weeks later, and I still have not received a reply from TwoTrees! And of course EFF’s site is still blocked!

BoingBoing blocked

Sometimes I want to go to BoingBoing.net when I am at school (not in the middle of class!) But of course I get this:

I thought that Iran was the only place where BoingBoing was blocked, but I guess I’m wrong!

Competitors’ websites blocked

I noticed that if you go to Websense’s web site you get this: (Websense is a very popular filtering system in case you don’t know)

Same thing with Secure Computing, the developer of the well-known SmartFilter filtering software:

What legitimate business should feel the need to use their power as a developer of filtering software to arbitrarily block their competitors’ websites, especially major ones?

Shelterbelt’s reaction to PHProxy and other web proxies

The Shelterbelt filter gives you a “special” blocked page if you try to go to a recognized proxy/anonymization site. In my case it gave me this page when I looked up PHProxy on Wikipedia.

I got the same thing if I went to ProxyPlus.cz or CCProxy, which are both network proxy/firewall software programs. Maybe they want to block these competitors’ sites just like they blocked Secure Computing and Websense?
The most interesting part is where it tells you that “the browser may have frozen.” It does work, and they do it by running a loop, therefore the browser with JavaScript (it does it whether you use IE/Firefox/anything else).

I cannot share the JavaScript code because there is a copyright notice in the code. I would like to stay on the safe side, as you never know what TwoTrees might do if they find out, even if it’s as low as going after me for posting their little piece of JavaScript code written in 15 minutes. But I can say that basically it’s a script that runs a loop over and over again to crash the browser. Overall, it looks like it was written by a 10-year-old!

In addition if you do get to a PHProxy site that is not blocked the filter will block your IP as soon as you try to get to a website. Fortunately, at many schools (including my own), getting a new IP is as simple as restarting the computer!

Other Pages

Go check out http://db1.twotrees.com/errorpages/. It has a lot of error pages from Shelterbelt that easily show how unprofessionally TwoTrees’ system is designed. Of course, it’s unprofessional enough that they leave this directory open in the first place!

Half the pages say something to the tune of “the Proxymaster has been paged to immediately review the activity of this workstation.” They’re just “dumb” HTML pages!

Here’s a few of the best ones:

http://db1.twotrees.com/errorpages/00009.html - “This workstation has been identified as making intentional attempts at pornographic sites.” - how does it know that all attempts at accessing certain porn sites are intentional? Looks like crap too!

http://db1.twotrees.com/errorpages/freeze.html - DO NOT GO TO unless you want your system “frozen” - “freezes” your web browser by repeatedly making JavaScript dialog windows.

http://db1.twotrees.com/errorpages/mailform2.html - Automatically pops up a mailto with the subject “Feedback for webdevelopersnotes.com” and body “The Tips and Tricks section is great”. Seriously, how dumb can they be?

TwoTrees’ Website

Don’t forget to check out TwoTrees’ website! It’s almost as bad as their products.

Here’s one example of a major mistake from the site:

“Typically an institution will install a security device and then move on. Not realizing that the security within that device becomes outdated daily. If the device is not continually updated and monitored, then it will become ineffective.”

Of course, they also brag about their logging system and their supposed ability to contact the school regarding abuse. In my school’s (as well as many other schools’) case it is very ineffective because the Shelterbelt system only logs the IP and does not log any information about the user of the system. And if you look at the “error” pages at the URL above, you could easily doubt many of the claims that TwoTrees makes on their website.

Conclusion

It seems like I’ve been able to show you how crappily the Shelterbelt system is designed. I don’t think a whole lot of schools/organizations use the Shelterbelt system, and it appears (according to their website) that the schools that do use it are mostly located in the Midwest. However if your school is looking at using Shelterbelt, show them this article and make sure that they don’t make a decision that they’ll regret!

The Houston Chronicle recently reported that the US Postal Service is going to be removing clocks from post offices, most likely to reduce the number of people that complain about near-eternal wait times in post offices.

“We want people to focus on postal service and not the clock,” said Stephen Seewoester, Dallas spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service.

“Focus on postal service”? Oh, give me a break!  What IS there to focus on? It’s not like this is a church or anything. Heck, even churches have clocks!

Who doesn’t carry a watch or cell phone with them these days anyway?