Force Windows to Use a VPN's DNS Server

I often connect to my home network when I'm on the road, to encrypt my traffic as well as access my computers at home. Unfortunately, even though I had set up the VPN as the default route ("Use default gateway on remote network"), which encrypted most traffic, I noticed that my DNS queries were still being passed to the local (untrusted) DNS server rather than the one at home. Not only is this insecure, it also makes it difficult to use the hostnames of my home network devices.

Fortunately, the fix is pretty easy once you know it. Based on Microsoft KB311218, I discovered that the problem is a faulty binding order, which causes the dialup/VPN network adapter to be secondary to the local network adapter(s) with respect to DNS priority. These steps fixed my problem:

1. Open Regedit.
2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Linkage
3. In the right pane, double-click Bind
4. In the value text box, select the "\Device\NdisWanIp" item, press CTRL+X, click the top of the list of devices, and then press CTRL+V.
5. Click OK, and then quit Registry Editor.
6. Restart your VPN connection.

The article only mentions 2000 and XP, so hopefully Vista and Windows 7 don't suffer from this problem.

Debit Cards are Bad for You

Overdrafts are a Pain

I recently read an article by the New York Times, titled The Card Game - Overspending on Debit Cards Is a Boon for Banks. This article underscores my antagonism against debit cards, in contrast primarily to credit cards. I have never owned a debit card, and despite my bank's efforts to get me to convert my ATM card to a debit card, I've always preferred my credit card as my primary form of payment for goods and services. My argument is that you should only have a debit card if you're unable to get a credit card, or if you can't get a credit card with a limit high enough to support your typical spending habits ... but you can work toward that and toss the debit card once you get a limit that's high enough.

I have two credit cards only because my first one was not usable during my trip to Europe in 2007, but most of my daily purchases still go to my first credit card. I pay off both credit cards at the end of every month and make a comfortable bonus in cash-back rewards. Similarly, many people use debit cards for daily purchases and rely on their paycheck[*] to fund their checking account through direct deposit each month. In theory, the diligent customer will experience the same benefits from both cards. However, everyone has the occasional lapse in judgment or memory, and the protections provided the two card types vary greatly.

Conventional Wisdom

The primary argument I've heard for debit cards is that they force you to spend only what you can afford, since you can't spend money you don't have (if you disable overdraft protection). Credit cards, as the argument goes, encourage willy-nilly spending and happily let you borrow money that you can't yet pay back. If, however, you're a responsible individual, credit cards have the advantage because there's a psychological difference in how the two card types help you control your spending each month. A debit card could be interpreted as a credit card that is immediately paid off each time you use it.

Similarly, if you pay off your credit card each month then it's like having a bank account that automatically has a fixed amount at the start of each month. There's a big difference here, though: that fixed amount is your credit limit, which is probably a good bit more than your monthly income. As a result, credit cards encourage you to maintain a healthy buffer between the amount you can afford to spend and the amount you're allowed to spend. If you accidentally overspend your income one month, credit cards give you a one-month buffer to correct the problem (either by lowering spending the next month, paying a penalty in the form of interest, or borrowing money from savings), whereas debit cards penalize you immediately and with much greater severity.

Some Scenarios of Interest

There are other benefits to credit cards. Here are some scenarios to describe some differences between the two types of cards:

Scenario 1: You accidentally spend more in one month than you can afford to pay that month.

• Credit card: You are charged interest (upwards of 35%, possibly) on the total amount overspent until you pay it off, assuming you stay under your credit limit. Alternatively you can pull a bit out of savings and loan yourself the money. In any case, you'll have roughly a month to decide how to pay for the excess with no interest penalty.
• Debit card: You are charged one overdraft fee (upwards of $35, possibly) per transaction, with the largest transactions applied first to cause the maximum number of overdrafts. Even if you have money in savings that could cover the transactions, the overdraft fees have already been charged. If you have overdraft protection disabled then you simply can't spend the money, which could be serious depending on the situation.

Scenario 2: Bad guys steal your card number and spend a bunch on it.

• Credit card: You notify the CC bank and they delete the fraudulent charges a week later[*] and refund you any interest charged on those purchases during that period. When the bill comes due you pay the correct bill amount.
• Debit card: You notify your bank and they credit your account a week later, but in the meantime you have no money to spend. Your debit card might still work (racking up overdrafts that will hopefully get refunded), but you can't use an ATM, your paper checks may bounce, and online bill pay will probably not work.

Scenario 3: You're close to your income limit and you buy a bit of expensive gasoline downtown to get you home for the evening, then plan to fill up when you get home.

• Credit card: Your card is charged the exact amount used by both pumps.
• Debit card: In order to approve your debit card to activate the pump, your bank account has a $100 "hold" placed on it to cover whatever amount of gas you buy, even though you only dispense $5 worth. Since you only had $120 in your account, you can't buy gas at home because your debit card says you don't have another $100 to spend. The hold may not clear until tomorrow—it's up to the retailer.

Scenario 4: You're ready to buy a house and you're applying for a mortgage.

• Credit card: You've been paying off your bills on time, and maybe you kept an occasional balance, but you have a good credit history and score, so you get a good mortgage rate.
• Debit card: You use your card all the time and have never overdrafted, but none of this history is reported to the credit agencies and you basically have no credit score. It's a real pain to get a mortgage of any sort.

The Lesson

Get a credit card and work toward getting the highest limit possible, even if it's way over what you need. Routinely ask for limit increases as long as the company will give them to you. This helps your credit score (by lowering your total debt utilization) and it helps you maintain an "oops" buffer. Oh, and you'll usually get rewards! Once you have enough to cover any large purchases, toss the debit card and have it replaced by a standard ATM card. Just make sure to pay off your credit card bill each month, and don't think of that credit limit as any indicator of how much you should be spending each month—it has nothing to do with that!

Canon Model-Numbering Heuristic

Here's a guide explaining how to decode Canon's numbering scheme. First, pick any two Canon DSLR cameras. Use the official model numbers, not the regional names (Rebel, Kiss, etc.). With model numbers in hand, follow each step until the two cameras differ. The better/worse designation at that step will distinguish the two cameras.

1. First, is it a "1"? If so, it's better. Skip to step 5.
2. Does it start with a letter? If so, it's really old and it's worse. Skip to step 4.
3. More digits in main number = worse.
4. Higher numeric value = better.
5. More letters/numbers after the main number = better.

There ya go. Can anyone think of a model that doesn't match this heuristic?

Monday Morning Quarterback vs. AIG

Setting the Conditions For Failure

First, a flashback. Prior to last September, AIG was in the very profitable business of selling insurance to banks and other entities. These policies were a bet against the chance that the mortgages the banks were holding (or securities comprised of them) became insolvent. In that heyday AIG was raking in dough (in the form of premiums) and brought on a bunch of fancy-pants executives, who would not work for AIG without the promise of big salaries and big bonuses. AIG signed contracts with these executives committing millions of dollars as an incentive for the executive joining the company. "If person X works at AIG during the previous year, he/she will receive $Z million as a bonus for that year."

We'll put that aside for now. Concerning the topic of insurance, AIG was an enabler. When a banker looked at a securitized collection of mortgages, he/she thought "Wow, these could be profitable but they're quite risky. How could I take advantage of this profit opportunity without all that risk?" Enter AIG: the insurance they sold was cheap enough that the banker's risk was greatly reduced at the small cost of an insurance premium. In the banker's mind, AIG is a huge multinational corporation, so the odds that:

1. The mortgages go bad, and
2. AIG can't provide coverage in the case of failure

...are theoretically very low. Unfortunately AIG was making the same assumption about mortgages and was taking a huge risk of its own, rather than building up capital in safe investments. It bet all those premiums, along with its wedding ring, chopper, and yacht that the dealer would bust.

Experiencing Failure

When the dealer showed 21, the banker, sitting at the same table, reluctantly gave up his chips and turned to AIG, expecting most of those chips to come back. Alas, AIG was penniless. Thus, last September it was suddenly realized that AIG owed gobs of money because tons of mortgages were going sour. Why did these bankers expect money from AIG? That's easy: they had a contract. The contract stated, very roughly, "Banker X will give $Y as a premium. If the attached mortgage goes insolvent, AIG will give $Z to Banker X."

Overreaction and the Sanctity of Contracts

Fast forward to March 2009. AIG has received $170 billion from taxpayers because it owes at least that much, mostly to banks. Unfortuately for US taxpayers, the contracts it has with those banks are just as legally binding as the contracts it signed with its executives concerning their bonuses. As the government shoveled into the company, AIG simply funneled it to its debtors. It gave billions[1] to Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, etc. etc. It then gave $165 million in bonuses to those executives who were owed money. Cue mass hysteria among the public, and even outrage from President Obama. There's some merit for the anger: how can a company that the US Government rescued from certain death turn around and dole out a chunk of it to people who were probably already richer than most Americans?

After much gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands, the US House decided that the best way to solve this "problem" was a 90% tax on bonuses for those earning over $250,000. This is incredibly dangerous. Much like the recent insanity surrounding the Terri Schiavo case, Congress decided to put the important issues on hold in order to intervene in a very specific situation, one that is arguably not theirs to solve.

What is at stake here is the sanctity of contracts. Strictly speaking there are no contracts being violated in this case, but this is essentially the same thing. The US House can't break the bonus contracts, so they decided to steal the money back instead. The message this sends to all of corporate America is: commitments mean nothing. The House's actions are simply like those of a child, pitching a tantrum on the floor because they weren't doing anything about bonuses back when the contracts were signed. AIG's name has been destroyed as a result.

Fortunately, my frustration is waning as Obama and the US Senate seem to have little interest in this silly bonus tax, and several of the bonus recipients have returned at least $50 million total. Slowly the focus is shifting back where it belongs: the birthplace of executive compensation. If these bonuses defied logic (and it seems like they did), then why were they set up in the first place? We're already the current mess, but we can prevent future problems by encouraging companies to keep their bonus policies sane.

Inverse Telecine for 24p Video

"24p" files that originate from recent Canon AVCHD camcorders (such as the HF10 and HF100) tend to have a 3:2 pulldown (or 2:3 pulldown) applied to them, which means the file you get from the camera is actually 60i. Fortunately the original 24p data is available in these files, but extracting that data seems to cause lots of problems for new users of these cameras. The best approach depends on the tools you have at your disposal, but as someone with a limited budget, free software is my method of choice. Note: These steps rely on Windows-based technologies and software, so I can't speak for other operating systems.

I prefer using AVISynth and the TIVTC plugin. AVISynth is a powerful scripting language for video editors, but if you've never used it before, I must warn you that this method isn't for the faint of heart. AVISynth is the "command line" of the video world. Still, it's a great tool to learn. TIVTC gives us the filters required for pulldown removal.

The first step is making sure that your computer has the DirectShow filters necessary to play .MTS files natively. That is a topic outside the scope of this document, but if you need help, tools like ffdshow, Haali Matroska Splitter, and Media Player Classic should be helpful. These tools provide AVCHD decoding, M2TS demuxing, and playback, respectively. VLC is not an option here because it uses its own codecs rather than the Windows DirectShow filter architecture that AVISynth relies on.

First, confirm that you can open the file and play it as-is. Create a file named "inversetelecine.avs" in Notepad and put it in the folder with the downloaded MTS files from the camera. Here is the script's contents:

# Open the source file (change the filename as necessary)
DirectShowSource("00001.MTS")

In Explorer, open your new .AVS file in Media Player Classic and make sure the video works properly. If you get errors, tinker with the codec settings until things are working. This is often the hardest part of editing a relatively new format like AVCHD.

Next, make sure the TIVTC plugin is installed in AVISynth's "plugins" directory, then complete the script as below. This full script takes in a .MTS file from the camera and outputs uncompressed 24p video (23.976 fps) for use in a video editor or other compression program. You can "play" the script in any video editor that supports AVS files, such as VirtualDub, to produce a recompressed 24p file.

# Open the source file (change the filename as necessary)
DirectShowSource("00001.MTS")

# Pull out interlaced frames (the parameter means "find interlaced frames but don't blend any of the other frames")
TFM(PP = 1)

# Remove duplicate frames (the parameters mean "throw out 1 of every 5 frames")
TDecimate(CycleR = 1, cycle = 5)