geller

I've been running location 1 using IE for two hours, with no popups. So unless I get the popups from now on when I'm not logged onto BBO or looking at "location 1" I will tentatively conclude that the Travelocity ad was the culprit. Incidentally, (1) Uday explained to me by email that BBO did not accept any ads from DriveCleaner (so however they popped up--now seems to me this was somehow connected to the Travelocity ad--this was not a conscious decision by BBO). (2) There is a technique called exit popups. The Travelocity ad might have contained an exit popup script. Can someone check the HTML source code for the Travelocity ad to see if this was the case?

Tried location 1 it with Mozilla Firefox for about 15 min. No popups. I'm belaboring the obvious, but even a cursory search with google confirms that DriveCleaner is not a product with the world's greatest reputation. (Whether this is unfair to them or is an accurate reflection of reality may be debatable.) That means, to me at least, that they're starting out with two strikes against them (possibly unfairly). All I know is (1) I'd never had DriveCleaner popups before, (2) I get driveCleaner popups now is when I'm logged onto BBO with ads enabled or when I'm accessing location 1 with IE; (3) I don't get the DriveCleaner popups now that I'm not accessing location 1 or BBO (if this ever changes I'll post it right away). In view of the above, I think the chance that DriveCleaner is innocent is even less than the chance OJ didn't do it. Maybe I'm wrong though, but if so I'd like some hard evidence.

Confirmation: Location 1 is guilty!

BINGO! I ran both of them at the same time. One of them (it seems to be Location 1) produces the obnoxious popups for DriveCleaner (basically the same ones as before). I just killed it. I'll let location 2 run for a few more min to confirm it's OK (i.e., no popups), then I'll kill it and run location 1 only to confirm that location 1 is the culprit.

I use IE as my normal browser (how lowbrow, I know, I know). Since I last logged off BBO 5 or 6 hrs ago I have been using IE extensively with no popups of any sort, either for DriveCleaner or any other product. -Bob

There's a program called "Hijack This" that prints out a log of one's system that can be used by a pro to find hidden spyware or adware. I made a Hijack This log of my system and sent it to Uday, just so he could eliminate the remote probability of pre-infection of my system. I'd say BBO has a big problem. Hope you guys can find it and eliminate it right away.

A question for jw_nl: Are you also using 4.9.9? It might be the case that for some reason this problem only occurs on 4.9.9 and not on earlier versions of the BBO client....

I just logged onto BBO again and immediately got the same sequence of popups. here is the second one (below). http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m275/quake_03/popupagain2.jpg Note that this spurious "warning message" identifies itself as a security warning (this part is in Japanese) coming from BBO. Sorry, but I think I'll stay off BBO for a few days till the problem is identified and solve. In the event I get this message (or similar ones) when I'm not logged onto BBO I'll immediately post that here.

Anything is possible, but I just ran Windows Defender http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m275/quake_03/windowsdefenderscancropped.jpg and AdAware http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m275/quake_03/adawarescancropped.jpg scans, and they both say my machine is clean. So if my machine were somehow pre-infected with adware for Drive Cleaner it would have to be some form of infection that both AdAware and Microsoft Defender were unable to find. Well, the DriveCleaner ad popups appeared on my machine just when the ad appeared in the BBO window, and I'd never gotten any such popups before. A highly unlikely coincidence, if there wasn't a causal relation. I don't know much about their product, but the link I cited up-thread suggests that they might not be the type of advertiser with whom one should want to be associated......

I also use a pop-up blocker and normally I never have any problems, but somehow the popups that appear to have been generated by the BBO ad (the various popups urging the user to download Drive Cleaner) weren't blocked by the pop-up blocker. Have other BBO users also had the DriveCleaner popups displayed on their systems?

I just downloaded the new 4.9.9. Whenever the ad for "Drive Cleaner" http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m275/quake_03/Idrivecleaneradcut.jpg appears in the upper right hand corner of the BBO screen in the BBO advertising rectangle, a series of annoying popups (here's the first one) simultaneously seems to spontaneously appear (without my having clicked on the "Drive Cleaner" ad). Here's the first of the popups. http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m275/quake_03/popupcropped.jpg For those of you who don't read Japanese it says that the user's job and marriage and credit card information could be at grave risk unless he downloads and installs "drive cleaner" immediately.... I don't know anything about this product, but at least one site says the following I personally wish this product wouldn't be advertised (at least not in this way) on BBO. Has anyone else had this kind of popup appear on their screen recently while using BBO?

Here in Japan the JCBL (Japan Contract Bridge League) has a policy that Japanese language commentators need to have their name displayed in their profile while they're commentating. (Obviously we have to assemble the Japanese language commentary team ourselves, as Roland can't do this, superhuman as he is.) -Bob Geller

Thanks for the tip. I read the same microsoft page and I already tried it. Supposedly (according to Microsoft) it works in most cases, but unfortunately it doesn't work for me in this case. Microsoft's software is real garbage. They ought to make it possible for the user to identify particular programs as "trusted," but they don't. This stupid warning message is as useful as a warning message that the passenger is a potential hijacker for every single passenger who buys a ticket..... Thanks for trying to help Ben... If there's any way to get around this with digital (self)-certificates could someone please let me know. Thanks.

As a diversion from my real field (geophysics) I'm also teaching a bridge class at my university. We use LTPB and LTPB-2 (the Japanese versions) as our primary texts. In my first lecture I give a little demo in the midst of a powerpoint presentation, where I launch LTPB from powerpoint (either as a hyperlink or as an object). Whichever I use, Office displays an error message saying "this might be a virus, are you sure you want to open it?". This "warning" apparently can't be turned off. It's not too bad because you can just say "OK" and then LTPB launches with no problem, but it's a slight distraction. Does anyone out there have a work-around to get rid of the warning message? No big deal if it can't be fixed, but if anyone has the solution please let me know. Thanks. -Bob Geller

Source: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...753C1A967948260

Send it to bridgeguys@cox.net -Bob Geller P.S. There also was another English version published in India. It'll be interesting to compare the two versions.

As Roland said, Fred is aware of the problem, and hopefully it will be fixed in the not too distant future.

If anyone who was watching it is reading this, the comments should be stored in the bridge movie on their machine. Maybe they could mail you the lin file from their machine.

Yes, that's the same kind of pattern I found, but your survey is much systematic. Good work. Hope this bug will be fixed sometime soon. -Bob Geller

I went through the archive files for some matches I played in in Japan last (since I was playing I obviously couldn't see the live broadcast), and it appears that the archived commentary for, say, board 3 in one session includes comments for board 3 from earlier matches that occurred slightly earlier. So apparently there is a buffer someplace that isn't getting cleared out each time a new VuGraph is started. Hopefully this problem will be fixed eventually....

"Midterm between elections, I don't think anyone has anything to gain by trumping up a non-event." You should know that in 3 months (early Nov 2006) ALL members of the lower house of the U.S. Congress and 1/3 of the members of the U.S. Senate are up for reelection, and the Republicans are trailing by about 15 points in the opinion polls now. Anyone looking for an ulterior motive doesn't have to try very hard to find one. (I'm not implying whether or not this is the case, merely pointing out the obvious possibility.)

I would have called the director on the opening bid out of turn. But other than that I wouldn't psche a 1♥ open myself or anything like that. But there's nothing wrong with taking the legally prescribed penalty for the opening out of turn. Similarly, if we're the ones who committed the infraction we should ungrudgingly pay the penalty.

There are two separate problems here. (1) Whether or not the WBF expenditure on worlld championships is reasonable; (2) whether there is adequate disclosure. (1) is arguable but my impression from the discussion on this thread is there may be room for trimming. But it seems clear (2) is a problem. WBF is a federation of federations, rather than a membership organization of individuals. So theoretically WBF is answerable to the representatives of the various federations at its general meetings, but in practice there doesn't seem to be much accountability. Perhaps it might be a good idea for WBF to make its finances much more transparent by divulging relatively detailed accounts on its home page, so that individual players would be convinced that expenditures and staffing levels are reasonable (if they are in fact such).

A Mitchell should work OK if you change the movement. In a normal Mitchell the boards go down, NS stays, and EW go up. Say you change it so the boards stay, NS moves up, and EW skips up. Then if you use (say) table 1 as the Vugraph table you'll have R NS EW Boards 1 1 1 1-2 2 13 12 1-2 3 12 10 1-2 etc. When there's a skip round (with an even number of tables) then NS moves up and EW moves up three tables. The only drawback of the above is that the same boards will be on Vu Graph all the time. That might or might not be interesting to the specs. You could avoid that by using a barometer if you don't mind duplicating all the boards for each table.

The explanation seems clear to me. Oppts just trying to get a free shot.