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I ordered a set of these years ago when they came out...

http://gallery.bcentral.com/GID4822370DD186320-Col lectible%2BPostage%2BStamps%2BSouvenir%2BSheets/St ar-Wars-Sci-Fi-Collectible-postage-stamps.aspx?pag e=1

Besides my knife I've also been known to grab other things that are handy such as a large pair of Klein side cutters.

Canon's Replacable Print Head

I don't know why on earth one would want a permanent print head when you can get one that is both removable and separate from the ink.

I did not know that Microsoft makes popcorn poppers.

I heard that all they have to eat there is a handful of corn each day.

With no computers, what use would they have for any Microsoft products other than Microsoft Cookware.

You're talking about something which happened 5 years ago.

Was this 5 years ago? If it was then after VIII was aired circa 1999 they were nice enough to show them all for 1 year weekly, and show them all daily.

According to TV tome, there are 52 episodes. If they showed the new season in March of 1999 then repeated them weekly, it would bring us up to March of 2000. Then airing them daily twice for a year would bring us up to March of 2001. I *could* have been 4 years ago they stopped but I don't honestly know. I thought it was 2 years ago as i'm sure there was a nice pause between showing it weekly and daily, but who's to say.

My point is they showed these outside of the marathon. You could have watched them. You didn't. How many times do they have to repeat something for your benifit? You can buy the VHS
videos from the channel 9 store for $15 per season. You can wait for the DVDs if you like. They are a touch more spendy. Or you can make friends with someone who's nice enough to tape them.

The way I see it KCTS went out of their way to show this and make it available to you. Show me another network in America that would carry Red Dwarf fresh off the presses... and repeat it. Show me another network that would go out of its way to carry the tapes so you don't have to wait for mail order.

But if this still makes you unhappy... subscribe to cable and get BBC-America and request Red Dwarf be shown. If they do it won't be comercial free.

Blackadder is shown on BBC America.

You have a choice.

Sorry, BCentral among other sites have tried that and have not done so hot.

The recommendations for "legitimate" bulk e-mail senders are purposily vague just so that MS can continue to declair that MS bCentral.com sends "legit" bulk e-mail.

Consider the following:
"Do not harvest e-mail addresses ... without the owners' affirmative consent."

They do not provide any details as to define "owner" or "affirmative consent." Legit mailing list servers will frequently email a random string which must be replied to via email to confirm that the email address is correct and the person claiming to own it can actually recieve email at that address. MS bCentral customers will frequently send email based on the fact that someone filled out a web form *claiming* to be the owner (no confirmation via email). Hence, MS will make no distinction between email confirmation and web form "confirmation" of email subscription. In fact, MS bCentral claims no responsiblity to provide any logs as to where/when/who issued a subscription request , they only state that the customer claims that such an act took place at some unknown place and unknown time by someone claiming to own the email address. If someone accidently or purposily put an incorrect email address then the actual owner must go through the work of opt'ing out. Which leads to my next point...

- "Always provide clear instructions to customer about how to unsubscribe or opt-out of receiving e-mail."

Oh. I frequently get "clear instructions." I get clear instructions on what web page to go to. I get clear instructions on how to enable cookies in my web browser. I get clear instructions on how to check the box saying I agree with all the terms of services document for the website. Regardless of if it is clear:
- I should not have to open a web browers to opt out.
- I should not have to change how my web browser is configured to opt out.
- I should not have to agree to anything to opt-out.

Again, if it stated that a clearly documented method of removal via **email** reply (with no additional web/phone/snail-mail hoops to go through) must be provided then some of the emails sent by MS bCentral would no longer be legit. Therefore, they give a recommendation that still allows demanding the user jump through hoops via a web browser to remove themselves from the email list. The ATSA does not take into consideration the fact that just because a device is capable of recieving/sending email does not mean it is capable of web browsing. Rather, their priority is defining "legit" bulk e-mail in such a way that the opt-out methods "provided" by bCentral are legit.

The basic common sense rules of subscription and unsubscription from mailing lists do not apply to bCentral so it appears they also do not apply to the ASTA defination of "legit" bulk e-mail. When the ASTA is made up of only members that themselves follow the logical rules of mailing lists, then maybe they will make recommendations that make sense. Until then, skip the ASTA vague crap and just blacklist bCentral -- "legit" bulk e-mail my behind.

Yes, it did. And it is continuing to happen.

A large fraction of the consumer herd is very well characterized. But it's not in the interests of those database owners to make that known to consumers, only to potential clients, like direct marketers.

If the government were to mount an attempt (TIA, anyone?) to start gathering the kinds of information that already has been collected and sits in privately-owned databases, the outcry would be deafening.

Expect the insidious encroachment to continue, with only fringe tin-foil hat objections. Until the day that Something Happens because of this technology. At which point, the herd will start bellowing and the politicians will start posturing.

Re: sick of removing it from people's computers

You sould charge them for this. After all it is a service. Hell, you could set up a contract to remove them every month.

You know that the spyware/adware will be back in a month don't you.

Newbies will and do go back to the sites and click the (I agree) button again and again. This could be a good business.

"Email Marketing? from MS no....that can't be.

Thanks for your informative reply. I didn't know there was a difference between hibernate and sleep. I googled around a bit and found this explanation. However, it seems that in sleep mode the battery will only last a day or two (on a Dell laptop, at least), and that's just unacceptable--my PowerBook lasts a week or more. I imagine this has more to do with the hardware than the software, however, so I guess the only way to find out how long it would take for my PowerBook to wake up from sleep under Linux and BSD would be to just try it myself. Perhaps I'll get around to it someday. :)

Of course Microsoft supports the weaker bill. They are a spammer (sorry, "opt-in email marketer") themselves. Not as dirty as the others, but by no means clean.

But 1 out of 20 piece of SPAM that I get originates from MS bCentral. It would be nice if companies that claim to be fighting SPAM recognize that even if they label the email they send as "targetted opt-in email" (where "opt-in" mean they include a way to opt-out) that it is still Unsolicated Commerical Email (UCE). I'm getting sick of bCentral's implied opt-in due to lack of opt-out notification. All legit mailing-lists require a responce which includes random string before considing the email address subscribed/opt-in.

indeed!

Yes, it's all supposedly "opt-in," but the bcentral spams I have received tell me otherwise.

However, I'm getting tons of spam from Microsoft-owned bcentral.com, and as far as I am concerned, bcentral is a spamhaus. And that is not only spam from bcentral customers, but also spam advertising bcentral itself.

I suspect that they are spamming old Linkexchange users. Linkexchange was actually pretty cool, as long as you had a better-than-average click-through rate. MS bought Linkexchange in the dot-com days, I pulled out instantly, by apparently, the address I used then followed the purchase through to bcentral, and is now being spammed.

So, yeah, I think I can say that I am being spammed by MS.

Check out http://www.bcentral.com/products/lb/
Here is what it states

Microsoft bCentral
E-mail Marketing with List Builder

Attract and retain customers with professional-looking e-mail announcements and newsletters. This is a very cost-effective way to reach customers, with the added benefit that you can target different customer segments with personalized messages. With Microsoft bCentral List Builder, you can: Use personalization features to address your subscribers by name, or to customize your messages based on their profile and demographics. Track the number of mails that are opened and the links your subscribers follow. Enable customers to opt in or out of a subscription.

Looks like a commercial junk mailer to me.....

When we put SpamAssassin into production, our organization decided to use it to mark email that tested postive for being in RBL. What ended up being discovered was that by not blocking RBL email, the mail server was getting swamped and back-logged. The logs showed that what normally pushed the mail servers into a snowball of back-log was not classic SPAM with a fraudulent from address but tons of email from "targetted opt-in email" systems such as vmadmin.com and MicroSoft's own Bcentral. Dealing with the latency caused by this required either getting budget approval for better email servers or blocking the targetted email. When communicating with these targetted opt-in email companies which claimed to be "different than SPAM", we found two things that remained consistent:

1) Despite charging the author of the email, they claimed that none of the charge should be passed on to the recieving company/organization since the user "opt-in"

2) The targetted e-mail company is not responsible for explaining from what IP address and when the e-mail account owner opt-in--even when presented with facts showing that the e-mail was sent to a fake/invalid e-mail account.

So, because we where not entitled to assistance in budgetting new hardware and because the companies could not provide an acceptable defination of "opt-in," our organization now explicidily rejects ALL SMTP RCPT from these companies. Oh... and the latency for processing incoming email has gone back to normal. :)

I agree. When Microsoft took over fastcounter (where my web counters are, now part of bCentral), they decided that they didn't want it to work with certain browsers. When I tried to access my counter stats in Konquerer, it wouldn't even let he hit the button to log in. I had to boot into Windows and use Opera (which can identify itself as IE) to get at it. That's a likely scenario.

are in this article.

http://www.bcentral.com/articles/msnfeature/108.as p

I can't say I understand it myself, but apparently the cost associated with a product purchase versus leasing for three years with depreciation is beneficial to the lesee. In addition, there is a (somewhat) fixed cost of ownership regarding hardware and software since the average desktop hardware gets replaced coincident to the three years. And accountants like to have these types of plans. The crux is that Microsoft software really doesn't have a three year lifespan, especially if you want all your MS programs current, which is provided for in the lease.

Or something like that ;)

It's too easy for them to take the idea and not pay for it. Even if it means they have to do some moderate amount of development themselves. Like another poster said, they may have all they need except one crucial piece which viewing your source code will give them.

I also have some anecdotal evidence. First off, look at Microsoft's history -- littered with the carcasses of "partners." You don't want to end up like one of them (Spyglass, Stacker, many more).

My own personal anecdotal evidence: I lost a large sum of money investing in LynkUs (their website is now gone, and I can't find it in Google's cache). They were a Tampa-area company which provided two-way paging service, useful for stockbrokers to communicate with all their clients at once rather than phoning each of them serially. It also had medical applications, which is what got them screwed over.

They are now a one-person company operating out from home; basically, a shell waiting for the lawsuit .

I'm still hoping that something will come of my investment, but as of right now it's a total loss. I pray that the same doesn't happen to your company. Be careful!

Several (not just one, several) attorneys should review this for you prior to you giving up the family jewels.

Perhaps, the answer for your situation would be Sole Proprietorship. The chief appeal of sole proprietorships is that they are simple, simple, simple. Boy, are they simple. More can be gleamed on this subject here and here.

Just a few examples of their simplicity:

Simplicity in taxation: Sole proprietorships have the simplest form of tax filing. You don't have to file a separate return.

Simplicity in formation: You don't have to pay any fees to the IRS or the federal government for starting your business.

Simplicity in employment: As a sole proprietor, you don't have to worry about paying employment or unemployment taxes for yourself.

Simplicity in home-office deductions: If you have a dedicated space that you use regularly and exclusively as your place of business, you may qualify for a home-office deduction.

Simplicity in retirement plans: As a sole proprietor, you can put money into a Simplified Employee Pension (SEP), a SIMPLE plan, a Keogh or an Individual Retirement Account.

Of course, this simplicity does come at a price - a complete lack of personal liability protection. However, in a scenario such as the one described above, that may not be a primary concern.

Alternatively, there are several other options that are present for individuals wishing to start their own legal entity. For example, an entrepreneur with a profitable business who wants to set up a fully deductible health benefits plan will want to know more about a C Corporation. A sole proprietor looking for some liability protection with a minimum of additional paperwork will probably consider a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC). Anyone who wants to bring in partners or outside investors is going to have to look at a partnership or corporate structure. The self-employment tax (15.3% on the first $76,200 of net income, compared to the 7.65% you pay as an employee) drives sole proprietors nuts, even with the partial offset of being able to take an income deduction for half of the tax paid.

This happened in the Louisville, KY Airport back in May 2001... here's the article.

Curious that this is happening in some of the smaller airports first. I'd have expected San Francisco's airport to be an early adopter. They certainly spent enough on construction costs to throw in a few wireless routers around without anyone noticing. Still, at least it's getting out there somewhere.

There's a lot of information about KPMG and medicaid/medicare fraud. They claim they're innocent, but they paid $9,000,000 rather then allow the case to come to trial.

According to an article in the Orlando Business Journal,

The lawsuit alleges KPMG made false statements in Basic American's Medicare home office cost statements for fiscal years 1990 and 1991. It contends KPMG knew it was making inaccurate repayment claims for its clients' facilities and hid mistakes from government auditors so the hospitals could keep Medicare funds.

It further asserts KPMG drew up "reserve" cost reports to estimate the impact on the hospitals' reimbursement if the claims were discovered during a Medicare audit. In both the "reserve" and "filed" reports, the lawsuit said KPMG detailed which expenses and allocations weren't allowed and suggested the hospitals put aside funding in case the alleged false claims were discovered.

The article fails to state how old the DMV records were, but it's very possible they could've been obtained at this timewhen the records were a little easier to access. Of course, even records 5 years old contain enough data that there's still plenty of accurate info there.

As to supersonic, the concorde suffers greatly from being supersonic. Sure, it is wicked fast, but since it is so small (aerodynamics at those high speeds just suck) you don't really get that much room to yourself...but you do get very personalised service. Kindof ultra first class :-)

As to whether supersonic flight is worth it. For me? Hell yes! To get back home (Australia) I have to fly for about 20 hours, I would love to cut that in half at an affordable price... Plus, think of all the smokers that would pay extra for shorter flights.... :-)

Because these are two largest examples of nations who have have set their networks up such that all traffic within their borders is monitored by law enforcement.

Russia: Civilians worried about blackmail, KGB tactics
China: Operating an Internet service under government restrictions in China is just business as usual

While I agree that Chinese and Russian citizens are arguably more free than the citizens in certain Arab regimes (interesting, why didn't you list the Taliban in your list of Bad Places? Embarassed about something?), and I agree that even when FBI gets its hands on everyone's communications, US citizens will still be more free than those of Russia and China, I'm still distressed at the fact that US citizens will be less-free than they were before FBI instituted its "webtap" -- which appears to be nothing more than a carbon copy of the systems instituted by Russia and China.

And exactly how would a Java/Oracle/.NET/AOL/{insert company here} card have prevented this?

"Oracle planed to donate database software for the purpose of creating the global ID."

Aw, now, shucks, Larry. We all know that you're such the humanitarian, but to know that your donation would not help you financially in any way, now that just warms my heart...

You could always color coordinate with purple ketchup.

Given how quickly cell phone networks overload or can get damaged, especially in emergencies, BellSouth's and Verizon's plans to eliminate some or all payphones don't seem so smart. I've heard reports of people lining up at payphones around the WTC because their cell phones weren't working there either.

I've seen something like that, but the only thing I could find about it was this
anyone know it's real name? is it still around?

1. Webvan: 25 to 1 reverse stock split.
   
   
2. Iomega: 5 to 1 reverse stock split.
   
   
3. 24/7 Media: 25 to 1 reverse stock split
   
   
4. Egghead.com: Between 5 and 10 to 1 reverse stock split
   
   
5. Quokka.com: 50 to 1 reverse stock split

Microsoft has cash on hand (cash and short-term investments) of $26.9B (report).

Although they've had it coming for some time, and I can't think of any other dotcom outfit that deserves to bite it as spectacularly as DC, I have to admit that I'm going to miss those crazy bastards.

I really thought if anyone had a shot at revolutionizing the way that advertisers and media exploit consumer data, it was DigitalConvergence.

What continues to amaze me about DigitalConvergence is the sheer enormity of it. The scale of the undertaking, the breadth and scope of it all, it dwarfs some of the larger dotbombs of record. If/when it actually completely explodes, it seems like it would signal the definitive end-of-the-dotbomb-era... .(who else at this scale has yet to bite it?) DC is the archetypical dotbomb. A privately held company valued most recently at well over $500,000,000.00, which reported revenues in 1999 of only $1,500,000 (and a loss of $4,000,000).

A company which continues to incur enormous costs in the manufacturing and distribution of their devices (what might 10,000,000+ CueCats cost to build and ship to retailers? who can imagine?) and seems to have no hope of profitability, ever...

A management team populated by players from Time Warner, AT&T, GE, Disney, Barings, etc.

A CEO (who owns 50% of the company) who seems pathologically given to making unfathomably exaggerated marketing claims, including, "We think we're the fourth evolution of computing. A cat can do everything a mouse can't!" , and "It's a torrid love affair I'm having with the power to mold not only an industry, but also the mind-set of America's consumers..." (As an aside, this man should be forced to eat his every press release and media clipping as punishment for this sort of hubris...).

In his prior career hosting a tv show called "NetTalkLive", he claimed, "Our show reaches into 802,000,000 million homes each week..." - Yes, roughly 1/6th of the world population is tuning in to watch an informercial (although conveniently, the Nielsen ratings system didn't track shows like NetTalkLive that run during the dead-zone of infomercial hours on d-grade & public television channels...)

Other gestures of indulgence include spending a ton of money in decorating the offices of DigitalConvergence to be "feng-shui" compliant ("...the building should face in a direction that is positive for the company's owner or chief executive...", plants and water are added to the environs because "....plants represent growth and water represents money..." (well I guess they've been smoking the plants and lighting the water on fire...).

I look forward to the case studies on this corporation. I suspect that we'll see lots of people conclude, "It probably doesn't make good business sense to entrust hundreds of millions of dollars to people who claim to be marketing-geniuses, and yet somehow fail to focus on that most basic of marketing fundamentals, determining the needs of the consumer."

Other interesting reading material, for those concerned....

a funny "Dallas Observer" article and a not quite as funny but still very interesting article from "Editor and Publisher" online.



"If you build it, they will laugh."

Indeed, only 51%, as of the end of 2000, had payphones, according to Gartner Dataquest, and of those, only 40% used them regularly.

Alright, I'm blowing my mod points on this article, but I need to respond to this troll-ish post.

The St. Louis Business Journal is and has been a well-respected print publication in St. Louis for years. Just because their web site is moronic (they don't really publish it themselves, Microsoft bCentral should really take the blame) doesn't mean you must discredit the entire publication.

I have absolutely nothing to do with the SLBJ, aside from being a resident of St. Louis.

zsazsa (and to think I considered applying at Linuxgruven. I obvously would have refused to take their training course, though..)

Ooops, didn't notice that the link I provided is already in the article. RTFA (read the fucking article), right?

This does not appear to highly classified, if they are putting out stuff like this and this article, the company is looking for many other uses for this software. Doesn't sound secret to me

A company in Lousville, KY [full disclosure: I worked for thier previous incarnation], has been working on this with great success for quite a long time. Agora Interactive the system they call "GATE" also includes video conferencing in the system.

They also developed a virtual reality game based on a doom/quake-like engine using the iGlasses, a standard arcade box, and a Pentium 133.

Unfortunately, look like they filled for Chapter 11 (reorganization) in January.

IP agreements can be enforced, if the company thinks they would profitable enough. As an a example: Intellectual property or mind control? provides an example where a company tried to sue to force the idea out of the person's head, even though it hadn't been put on paper, or developed. This could come very close to developing works for free. Not signing such IP agreements or requiring companies to modify them, is only self-defence.

Got some evidence for this? The deregulation battle dragged on for years. Several new power plants have been approved since deregulation was finally settled, and except for one recent approval for a peaker plant near SFO, I'm not aware of a case where they lowered environmental regs. But since they take years to build, I don't think any of them have come on line.

An article from EEI in November claims: "In fact, virtually no new large powerplants have been built in California or New York for nearly two decades--at a time when the economy has surged and new demands have been imposed on the electric grid." Another article from the San Jose Business Journal in 1998 claimes: "In Northern California, the newest utility thermal unit began operating 26 years ago."

I think the key here is large powerplants. I know there are two Northern California powerplants being built to provide about 500 MW each, but I think the definition of "large" EEI is talking about is 1000 MW and up.

To get an idea of scale, today's forecast peak demand in California is around 30,000 MW. During the summer, it can be as high as 45,000 MW. If California has a problem now, wait until this summer which is supposed to be hot (i.e. air conditioning loads) and dry (i.e. less hydroelectric from the Northwest).

If it was easy to build large powerplants, someone would have done so, since the wholesale electricity prices in California have been high for quite a while now, and it has been obvious to many for years that demand was outpacing supply.

Atrowe, your link goes to the Denver Business Journal. This is not a peer-reviewed scientific paper. As such, it is not written by scientific experts, and has not been peer-reviewed by other experts.

By spreading sources like these around, you are only contributing to blind, public hysteria. If you want the sources that are taken seriously by physicians and the scientific community, you need to hit the medical library and search on Medline. Business journals are not good sources of scientific info.

HERE