Good2go2Mexico

Senor and Linda Lou have been in Pueblo Alamos, Sonora, Mexico for 13 years.
Every day brings a new discovery.
They are still working on the casa............Senor says, it won't be long.........but Linda Lou says, it won't be long until what..............stay tuned to find out what's next.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Someone Explain That to Me..........



Hola, we continue to have some very good storms.
Senor took the photos above of what we thought would be a huge event last night, but it never really amounted to much more than light sprinkles and a whole lot of sheet lightning.


This afternoon the wind picked up and it got very dark. The clouds were just pouring over the tops of the mountains.
We secured everything and got prepared because Senor noticed on the weatherunderground that a huge storm was off the coast near Mazatlan and Mochis and heading north. The temperature dropped to a nice 75 degrees and it is breezy and dark, but nothing else is happening.......................

other than this................playlist removed my playlist!
Did you get to hear it at all? It was attached to the blog for about a month. Then, it was gone. Bleep! Just gone, vanished, off the radar................ the list is still on the blog, but no longer works.

Playlist attached a message stating that the songs I had chosen for my playlist were not licensed to be played in my country................okay, well, the songs were Mexican. I looked at the cd's, they were produced and copywritten in Mexico, I am in Mexico.............


Then I got a second notice about my other playlist, which is mostly USA music and the notice said the same thing.....................


Now, I am trying to figure this out. How does playlist know where I am?
My computer was bought in the states, but I am using it in Mexico. I do not understand.............

One day I was adding to my Mexico playlist and at the top of the screen about ten busty, unclothed Latino women started dancing around on a pop up. I was a little surprised...........


There was an x in a red box in the upper right hand corner, and I should have known better, but I clicked, thinking it would close the screen, and then, it got worse. A huge screen popped up telling me in Spanish that I could see more women if I called Telcel right now. I tried to click on the x again and then, I just shut off the computer.


Guess what......................TELCEL CALLED ME!

The woman asked if I wanted to open a Telcel account so I could make an online purchase..................I said no...................she asked if she could speak to my esposo so he could open an account..............i said..........no.


She told me to tell my husband to try again if he was the one who wanted to open an account.
I really had to think about all of this for awhile.............

Now will somebody tell me, how did Telcel know that I had clicked on the naked women screen? How does Telcel even have our phone number? We don't even have a Telcel mobile phone or account................... so how is all of that explained?
Senor says maybe Telcel, the Mexico mobile cell phone company, can tap into Telmex, the Mexico landline telephone company (which supplies our internet) , but then still, how would they know there were naked women dancing on my screen?
By the way, Senor is innocent in all of this and I was on my screen name anyway.............he wants that made very clear..............

I am very confused about all of this. I thought about trying my playlist again. I thought it was pretty good................


I am also confused about this whole dvd business. I bought the rest of the seasons of '24' in the states. We put one in.
Our laptop, on which we play them, told us we had changed our region code too many times from One (USA) to Four (Mexico). So, now we can't watch '24'.
However we can watch dvd's from the video store allright. We can watch dvd's that have been brought from the states to Mexico, by other people, allright. None of those tell us we have changed region codes too many times.


Now someone explain that to me.......adios. linda lou




7 comments:

Nancy said...

I sure hope someone explains all this because I would sure like to know, too.

The storm here in Mazatlan was quite amazing. The water in our fountain increased by half a tile, I bet that is more than two inches, and I think it only rained for an hour.

panoptica said...

Weird stuff happens here in Mexico, Linda!!

Telcel and Telmex are actually owned by the same person, so I think that's got something to do with that... Otherwise, I can't be of help.

oH, and the DVD, that's weird!! Normally, if you have a multiregion DVD you have no problem playing discs you bought outside Mexico...

Sorry to hear that Mexican technology is not being nice to you!!!

Love,
Jimena

Brindy said...

I think the website access will have been done, somehow, through your IP address, but to then get your phone number is really intrusive. I'm going to send your post to my brother and see what he says.

If he has any answers, I'll let you now

Brindy said...

And my brother says:

Generally speaking:

Every time you connect to the Internet whether via land line or some other mobile device we know where you are because you are assigned an IP Address that is specific to your provider. Each provider has an area so even at the top level you can tell what country it came from. With a bit of work we can drill down through it and find the general area even though the provider may be providing for the whole Country, they will assign blocks of IP Addresses for areas. We generally only need the Country for most things if something is being checked such as iPlayer or ITVCatchup that you experienced when you tried.

As for the playlist music being removed, that might be because of DRM (Digital Rights Management). When you buy a song or a CD or whatever, you are buying it for yourself personally to listen to it. If you then put those tracks on something where an audience can listen to it, or play it in a hall for example, you are not licensed to do that. You would need to license the song/CD for public broadcast. Playlist knows where she is because of her Internet Connection and her IP Address and may have removed it for those reasons.

The next problem with the dancing ladies is likely an adware infection that is likely to have been installed by going to a webpage. Yes, you can get these from web pages as well. Clicking on it was certainly not the best idea, they confirmed they were there and made a connection to the host which downloaded and installed the full page. At the same time the information known as a trigger was sent to a watcher, they retrieved what they had looked at, the dancing ladies, got the telephone number by whatever means they are able to and called. They need to install Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware software and probably software to prevent browser hijacking. Meanwhile all this has to be cleaned up. As for Telcel calling them I don’t know how it works in Mexico, they might have some sort of agreement with TelMex, pay for the detail, a host of other possibilities, I just don’t know how things work at that level in Mexico – I have never heard of it happening here or in the USA.

DVD regional problems – that’s what they are. It’s to do with movie distribution and the “24” DVD’s bought in the States will have been coded with a 1, the others that were brought from the States will either be un-coded or multi-region coded so will work. A series like “24” will be heavily protected so that the rest of the world cannot play them until the distributor is ready. The DVD player has to be able to switch to that region or be able to automatically detect the region and change, all the changes are counted and only 5 are allowed with a CD/DVD drive that maintains the count. Doesn’t happen to have a Toshiba Laptop does she ??? Pass this link on to her to read http://www.dvdidle.com/dvd-region-free.htm, it might help and a Google search on DVD Region Locking might help as well.


OK ???

Linda Lou and Senor, Too said...

Wow, Jacqui, I can hardly belive your brother took the time to give me so much information. I am not very computer smart, but the greatest thing is your brother explained it all very clearly, no mumbo jumbo stuff and words that had no meanings to me. I am so very impressed and grateful. He is obviously very intelligent and knows his computer stuff.
We do have spyware and all that stuff, but I don't think it has any control over certain things down here and the Playlist is the free online one ( artists have given rights for people to use and copy as well and the website even gives you the choice to add your playlist to your blog or website).

Nancy, I hope this helped you as well. What great information. I went to the dvdidle site and that is also interesting and something mmore to think about.

Jimena! You are right, wierd stuff happens here...sometimes.

My biggest piece of advise is: when you see something on your screen, here in Mexico, and you just don't think it should be there, do not click on the x in the red box to try and get rid of it!!!
Jacqui, can you please thank your brother for me? I am very grateful for all of his information.

Brindy said...

Hi, this is what my brother does for a job, but yes, he does explain it in words we can understand, he's used to explaining things to me! I have sent him a copy of your post and thanks.

And I agree, be careful what you click on!

I'm just about to get Brinkley to update his puppy blog - he's found a new place to keep cool.
Jacqui

kattz*cottage said...

Wow - dontcha sometimes just hate computers....what a bunch of craziness! Sounds like you got some good answers & advice though! See you day after manana - can't wait!