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Here is the home page for it. Keep it bookmarked!

The problem with this attitude is that you seem to imply that the renters aren't to blame for not paying their bills, for not providing forwarding information to people they owe money to etc. People need to be responsible for their own actions (or lack of action in this case).

When I was in college, I had collectors hound me because they couldn't find the previous thenants to collect an outstanding debt on the phone line at the apartment I moved into. The phone company tried to say they couldn't establish service unless they I furnished proof the other people didn't live there any more. When my name got established at the address in the phone company's database, the collectors linked my name with the address of the previous delinquent account.

When I moved out of that apartment, I gave the phone company a forwarding address, and told them to disconnect on the date my lease was terminated. Actually, I told them that I would not (and could not) be responsible for the phone line usage after that date. I also filed a mail forwarding request with the USPS. I didn't get the bill for a while, but got phone service established at my new apartment, and I assumed the charges would show up on the new bill at the end of a billing cycle or something. To make a long story short, I didn't get my final bill until two months late, (mangled by the USPS) and it had charges on it past the end of my lease.

2 Days later, after I had negotiated and paid the phone company, a collection agency called me with a rude warning that I owed an amount that was more than the old tenant's bill plus my last month, and the extra charges past the end of my lease. I told them outright that their records were not in order, and that I had paid the phone company what I owed them. They tried to get me to pay them anyway. I said I had no business with them, and their client has no claim against me. I told them that If I recieved any further contact from anyone in their company regarding this matter that I would pursue criminal harassment charges and this call would count as damages. I also told them that if they had anything else to say to me it was "on the record" as in I would record them.

In college, people move from year to year. This incident wasn't the first of its kind, just the worst. My point is that these people don't keep records with your interests in mind. If you don't use the laws and threaten to use them in defense, then they will run you over with a garbage truck. They don't care if it was you who racked up the bill or not. Collectors are often little more than telemarketers without a product to sell. They don't care about you, they have to get their quota.

You have to go far beyond just being a responsible consumer. You have to do a lot of research to protect yourself. You have to cover your assets, and you have to threaten to recover damages legally if people threaten to abuse you. I don't have a problem with fiscal responsibility, but the system is more like guilty until proven innocent than I am comfortable with.

The security push marketed by Chairman Bill and co. seems to have little or nothing to do with security and is perhaps only a smoke screen to distract from lobbying efforts, other security privacy and false advertising problems, or losses on various fronts. Alternately, the security rhetoric could be a simple case of "pump-n-dump" as options are offloaded to chumps.

Seriously, that company has such a long and poor track record on all fronts, except marketing, that it is not a viable alternative to consider for servers or embedded systems where *BSD, Linux, QNX, Solaris, and others are best practice. Similarly, the desktop market is looking for security, stability, ease of use, ease of maintenance areas where Microsoft is far behind OS X and the major Linux distros.

They had their chance, in fact many. For a dot-com, they've had a long run, but now the best thing they could do for the economy and for the Internet would be to get out of the way.

and stop whining about "losing freedoms" or "privacy". Sure it can be abused. But we need a way to identify people, and if you think that driver's licenses and social security numbers aren't already doing this, you're just closing your eyes to it.

If anything, requiring fingerprints or retinal scans will make these ids more secure and trustworthy.

or do you like the way id theft is so common in the US that there's a form you can fill out when yours has been stolen? look here

Send it again. Also, you might take note of the following section of the "Billing Rights" portion of your credit card terms: (Emphasis mine, source)

"We must acknowledge your letter within 30 days, unless we have corrected the error by then. Within 90 days, we must either correct the error or explain why we believe the bill was correct. ...

After we receive your letter, we cannot try to collect any amount you question, or report you as delinquent. ...

If you fail to pay the amount that we think you owe, we may report you as delinquent. However, if our explanation does not satisfy you and you write to us within ten days telling us that you still refuse to pay, we must tell anyone we report you to that you have a question about your bill. And, we must tell you the name of anyone we reported you to. ...

If we don't follow these rules, we can't collect the first $50 of the questioned amount, even if your bill was correct."

Make their life hell tossing these requirements at them. They are part of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, as I recall, and must be included with all credit card terms. Sooner or later you will either wear them down and they admit defeat, or you can take them to small claims court for your time and trouble in enforcing their duties under the law. (good luck)

The video game industry is not like the others, except perhaps the SI swimsuit edition. The difference is that the game industry produces content then *themselves* deem inappropriate for minors with "M" ratings and the like. Yet it is well established that that actively market such content to teenagers. Please see the FTC report on the issue to learn more about why restricting purchases helps with the problem:

FTC Report

I agree with you in princple - this law is not a substitute for good parenting, and it is possible to be a good parent without this law. However, we are talking about an agressive multi-billion dollar entertainment industry. This is not a po-dunk nazi web site, or the Jehovah's Witness that visits your house once a year. Furthermore, the interests of this industry (making money) conflict directly with the interests of good parenting. I think laws protecting people from potentially predatory industries are a good thing.

I have used a fake email address with realplayer since 1998. points to /dev/null. has never been a problem.

If you think real.com is being deceptive, you could complain about it.

but that statement make it sound as if the law is a secondary concern, an inconvinience that need be followed only if you're in a good mood.

You are obviously not familiar with the debt collection industry in the United States. It is impossible for a debt collector to call a consumer, and not violate the FDCPA. Those who have attorneys who complain to the collection agency, and/or file suit will find the agency writing checks for $5K or more, just to get the person to go away.

Even if Palladium eventually dries up and blows away it's serving as a good distraction: either Windows is being dropped from .Net or .Net is being dropped from Windows.

Stay focused on standards, interoperability, and development.

The credit-rating agencies jointly offer a service designed to prevent pre-approved credit card offers from being sent. As you probably have heard, these offers can be a security risk if someone pilfers one and fills it out with their address (why the credit card companies don't use better security is beyond me).

More information from FTC.

Note this is a junk mail problem, lasts just 2 years, and won't suppress offers from companies that do not use the credit-rating agencies -- but the call is automated and really fast. The FTC also lists the addresses for DMA junk mail and telemarketing opt-outs.

FTC Consumer Complaint form

It's that simple. Once the federal government starts to get half a million reports of spam a day, may be someone will realize that it's costing a lot of money to a lot of people and maybe Congress will act.

Consider this:
In these articles, you have just read the names and locations of spammers bragging about how they lined their pockets with profits from abusing ISPs' and every user's resources by massively junk-mailing "postage due" at everyone else's expense - so wouldn't your provider's postmaster and legal department (especially if the company has suffered a veritable, miserable "nightmare before Christmas" this year because of these spams), as well as the Federal Trade Commission officials processing the Consumer Complaint Forms, and usually agencies like your State's Attorney General (or in some states, even your personal legal counsel) be more than happy to go after those guys who have just admitted their spamming practices and actually identified themselves with all of their profits ripe for the reaping?
Sorkin's Spamlaws Site gives a good idea about who will certainly appreciate receiving all these pieces of information from the media reports and the spams you've received as a present for Christmas, probably to prosecute by 01/02/03 at the latest...
Providing profitable pointers about proven perpetrators might just be what the enforcement people prefer even over Santa himself showing up in their offices...
They'll know what to do and they'll know whom to sue.

But is there anything that prohibits non-U.S. gov'ts from using .gov?

This whole nomenclature thing is getting increasingly random. Isn't it odd that only U.S. federal agencies get the appealing .gov, while the rest probably will have to qualify their gov with a country code? (Then again, I wonder how many languages have a good fit between gov and their word for government?) Shouldn't the U.S. append .us in conformity? Don't some already?

A comprehensive list of TLD's. ... and thank you FTC for nailing some TLD fraudsters.

1. Google Cache of State Do Not Call lists which has been relaced by FTC List of State Registries
   
   
2. The DMA's list Useful cache versus the Real soon now revised list
   

require[s] that [telemarketer's] do-not-call request records must be maintained for 10 years after a request is
made.

The regulations required by paragraph (2) may require the
establishment and operation of a single national database to compile
a list of telephone numbers of residential subscribers who object to
receiving telephone solicitations,

"Do Not Call Law"(Alaska's Black Dot Law)
AS 45.50.475 prohibits telephone solicitation of persons identified in a telephone directory as not wishing to receive telephone solicitations. These telephone customers have a "black dot" by their name in the directory. The statute also requires local telephone companies to provide a list of "black dot" customers to telephone solicitors who request one.
For a small fee, your local telephone company will identify your residential listing in your telephone directory with a

• black dot.
• This informs telephone solicitors that you do not want to receive telephone solicitations.

1. Google Cache of State Do Not Call lists which has been relaced by FTC List of State Registries
   
   
2. The DMA's list Useful cache versus the Real soon now revised list
   

require[s] that [telemarketer's] do-not-call request records must be maintained for 10 years after a request is
made.

The regulations required by paragraph (2) may require the
establishment and operation of a single national database to compile
a list of telephone numbers of residential subscribers who object to
receiving telephone solicitations,

"Do Not Call Law"(Alaska's Black Dot Law)
AS 45.50.475 prohibits telephone solicitation of persons identified in a telephone directory as not wishing to receive telephone solicitations. These telephone customers have a "black dot" by their name in the directory. The statute also requires local telephone companies to provide a list of "black dot" customers to telephone solicitors who request one.
For a small fee, your local telephone company will identify your residential listing in your telephone directory with a

• black dot.
• This informs telephone solicitors that you do not want to receive telephone solicitations.

1. Google Cache of State Do Not Call lists which has been relaced by FTC List of State Registries
   
   
2. The DMA's list Useful cache versus the Real soon now revised list
   

require[s] that [telemarketer's] do-not-call request records must be maintained for 10 years after a request is
made.

The regulations required by paragraph (2) may require the
establishment and operation of a single national database to compile
a list of telephone numbers of residential subscribers who object to
receiving telephone solicitations,

"Do Not Call Law"(Alaska's Black Dot Law)
AS 45.50.475 prohibits telephone solicitation of persons identified in a telephone directory as not wishing to receive telephone solicitations. These telephone customers have a "black dot" by their name in the directory. The statute also requires local telephone companies to provide a list of "black dot" customers to telephone solicitors who request one.
For a small fee, your local telephone company will identify your residential listing in your telephone directory with a

• black dot.
• This informs telephone solicitors that you do not want to receive telephone solicitations.

Look at complaining to FTC.gov (obviously if you are a US citizen only 8-). Go to "Consumer Protection" and there are several forms that may apply. The FTC can really work. Yahoo is big business and involved in stealing your money (those messages use up your money or your minutes etc.) so it is Trade Comission business.

My roommate ended up costing Bank Of America a $60,000(US) fine for holding a certified check.

There are petty buraucrats out there waiting to help...

As with every other law, I'm sure the lobbyists will make sure that we'll still get our fair share of calls from "legitamized" companies.

From the FTC website (emphasis added):

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has amended the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) to give consumers a choice about whether they want to receive most telemarketing calls. Consumers soon will be able to put their phone numbers on a national "do not call" registry. It will be illegal for most telemarketers to call a number listed on the registry.

We'll see exactly how it holds up...

FTC Announces Final Amendments to Telemarketing Sales Rule, Including National "Do Not Call" Registry

It seems fairly obvious that Amazon is doing a very self-destructive thing here, similar to when the marketing consultant posed as an "I Switched" customer for Microsoft. It's not just a question of, "Take it with a grain of salt," it's fraud. IANAL but I believe that misrepresenting paid advertising as bona fide customer feedback is illegal, and the company should face criminal charges if they are doing it. If you agree, take 5 minutes and complain to the FTC here.

Your linked document doesn't spin it that way, but that's what it means.

To clarify, here's a quote from the FTC that spells things out more directly:

While it is not illegal to have a monopoly position in a market, the antitrust laws make it unlawful to maintain or attempt to create a monopoly through tactics that either unreasonably exclude firms from the market or significantly impair their ability to compete.

The DOJ negotated Microsoft Communications Protocol Program effectivly grants Microsoft the ability to boycott GPL/LGPL licensed implementations.

Credit, ATM and Debit Cards: What to do if They're Lost or Stolen

I think it's also interesting that you have no liability if the number is stolen but not the card. Many credit card companies have been touting that as a feature of their service when in reality it's the law!

I use my debit card as a credit card because my bank instituted a 25 cent per transaction charge for whenever I use my card and PIN, including when I withdraw money from their ATM machines!

All stupid companies should be killed!

All stupid companies should be killed!

Everytime you get an unsolicited e-mail that has an unsubscribe option, unsubscribe webmaster@ftc.gov... also use in a message on a board known to be freqented by spambots. That should put an end to the stupidest of spammers, at least.

Everytime you get an unsolicited e-mail that has an unsubscribe option, unsubscribe webmaster@ftc.gov... also use in a message on a board known to be freqented by spambots. That should put an end to the stupidest of spammers, at least.

I have uce@ftc.gov in my .forward.

You can forward your spam to uce@ftc.gov. Some spammer took a random address from one of my domains to use as a return address. I was suddenly getting hundreds of bounced spam per hour. I redirected that address to uce@ftc.gov. Hopefully they are using some of those bounces in this roundup.

As the article points out, Uncle Sam wants your spam! Forward your unsolicited commercial email to uce@ftc.gov - it will go into a magic database that they can use as ammunition against spammers!

From: antispam@ftc.gov
To: evilspammer@somewhere.kr
Subject: !!!!NEW!!! SPAM BUST!!

Yes, YOU! We are busting you up big time for crimes against humanity. This is a free service to you from the FTC! A unique one time offer!

To be acquitted and removed from our list, please go to this web site and leave your home address.

This could work, though. There aren't really that many different spammers. If the FTC can find 20 of them a year, that should make a dent. If 20 a year were sent to jail for six months, the spam industry would probably start to shrink rapidly. This thing is winnable.

Apparently my submission of this same story was too late, but I included a link to the FTC proposal to create a national registry of numbers that telemarketers CANNOT call. They have extended the public comment period, so go make yourself heard.

Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Wisconsin, Wyoming,

See Also, The Feds

Why oh why did you link to the New York one? Don't you know there are more?

There's also an effort to make a national one.

And don't forget the DMA lists.

The merits of the entire patent system is being determined by bogus devices that will continue to yield occasional patents?.

Please, I hope I am not being imposing by providing a bit more of a substantial view on the merits of our patent system:

Remarks from Judge Pauline Newman, Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Ph.D. in chemistry from Yale:

link

The Federal Circuit arose from the broad policy study of industrial innovation, as some of the speakers have already mentioned this afternoon, in 1978 President Carter's domestic policy review of industrial innovation. It was a time of serious industrial stagnation. The Federal Circuit was formed as a dramatic move for the purpose of adding stability to the patent law. It was the first change in judicial structure in over a hundred years, perhaps the last 10 for another hundred. Let me tell you something about our court. Patent cases are about a quarter of our case load.....

Patents are directed at innovation. That's their purpose, and of course they affect competition. That's how they work. That's the only way they work....

The patent system serves to encourage the start of this lengthy and expensive and risk-laden process. Unless the process of innovation is successfully completed, the patent is of no value. I shouldn't say no value. The knowledge it discloses can be of enormous value. But one of my first assignments as an industrial scientist was to review the technological history of synthetic rubber, and I did easily find about 150 detailed scientific references. Every single one was in the patent literature. None existed elsewhere. In virtually all fields of technology today as well, patents are the major if not the only source of technical information.....

Patents cover only things that are new, things that were unknown before the patentee discovered them and disclosed them. The technologies have driven the economy since the Industrial Revolution have all invoked the commercial incentive of patents. There are, I'm told, no exceptions, from the cotton gin to the electric light, the airplane.

As soon as the inventor showed the way, the entrepreneurial spirits of the nation took hold, and the copiers appeared, and litigation ensued. All the major patents have been through the courts. The economic role of patents was studied as well as it might be at the time of the formation of the Federal Circuit court. You may recall that in the late 1970s, the economy of the nation was at a low point. Investment in basic science and in applied research had disappeared. There were mass layoffs of scientists and engineers. I recall the revolution in the American Chemical Society to try to somehow adjust or interact with what was happening to scientists who had studied and were jobless. Our production in the United States was no longer competitive. Old technologies were stagnant. New ones were dormant, and the balance of trade had turned negative for the first time perhaps in our national history. Only technology-based industry made a positive contribution, and there was concern, real concern, that national policies were not attuned to the needs of this industry, that we had created disincentives to industrial innovation. I was a member of this Domestic Policy Review in the Carter Administration, and I recall talking and thinking about the conclusions, and the conclusion that didn't take much to know, that a diminished patent incentive had evolved in the United States. Chairman Pitofsky mentioned some of the 1970 procedures and guidelines that were being followed. It was clear that antitrust policy as well as judicial attitudes were providing disincentives to technological industry, and the economic consequences were quite apparent, and they led to some major policy changes, new examination practices in the patent office. The Reexamination Statute came out of that study, formation of the Federal Circuit and changes in competition policy, changes still pretty much present. In 1981, a spokesman for the patent section of the Antitrust Division, Roger Anderwell, summarized the economic premises for the policy changes. He said that companies that invest heavily in the research and development of new technologies have about three times the growth rate, twice the productivity rate, nine times the employment growth, and only one-sixth the price increases as companies with relatively low investments in R&D....

The creation of our court was a major step that was taken as part of the design to restore the statutory and indeed the constitutional role of intellectual property.....

The common thread, the fundamental theme of patents is that the prospect of a commercial advantage is an effective incentive, effective enough to meet our national economic goals, and that reducing that prospect reduces the incentive.........

I see the strength of the patent system drawn from the principles of property. The securing of property, as one discovers, this is the word that the Constitution uses, to secure the right, was viewed as the securing of a natural right. It's interesting to me to compare Jefferson's view of patents as primarily an instrument of fairness with Madison's view as an incentive to commercial enterprise, but both of these accord with a powerful view, the powerful belief of the framers in the sanctity of property. And it's these property rights, as I see it, that are the foundation, the economic foundation of the innovation incentives that are built on technology. I have yet to come upon an improvement in the simplicity and effectiveness of the principle that legally protected exclusivity for a limited time in exchange for the disclosure of the new knowledge is an incentive, an effective incentive to innovation.

In the spirit of piling on, let's run with this quote: "One of the things we're discovering is that people are not aware that that they are engaging in conduct which is clearly illegal."
You mean like the very recent price-fixing case the RIAA lost to the tune of $143 million? This is their *2nd* price fixing settlement in 2 years, the first one happened in 2000.

Peace.

<cheap shot>
Kinda reminds me of the Microsoft proposed settlement.
</cheap shot>

In the past, Passport has been shown to have zero security. See the Wired News article, Stealing MS Passport's Wallet.

On August 8, 2002, the U.S. Government's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ordered Microsoft to stop lying about its Passport service. The FTC's order is titled Microsoft Settles FTC Charges Alleging False Security and Privacy Promises.

From: Windows XP Shows the Direction Microsoft is Going.

Write the DMA (see near the bottom of the page.) I did it and my junk mail was reduced, but not eliminated. I get a lot less national stuff though, most of what is left is local offers.

The webpage linked to in the submission mentions you can forward your 419 spam to the US Secret Service Task Force. It wouldn't hurt to sent it to the Federal Trade Commission as well.

Interesting.

The computer industry has a scam that they use with unsuspecting executives. It is the "security" scam. The industry ran this scam against the DVD consortium. In actuality, there was no security, but the computer industry managed to convince the DVD group that there was. The deception was, and is, immensely profitable for some hardware manufacturers. But, of course, a 16-year-old released a method of breaking the encryption (with help from more knowledgeable people.)

More recently, Microsoft tried to run the security scam against the entire world. The Passport scheme was working well in the sense that only a small percentage of people realized that it was a scam. But the U. S. government's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) told Microsoft to stop in its August 8, 2002 order: Microsoft Settles FTC Charges Alleging False Security and Privacy Promises

Microsoft has run the security scam against its corporate customers. In actuality, the (local) security of Windows 2000 and Windows XP is very limited; if corporate customers realized this, they might not invest in these operating systems. See the section "Windows XP provides no local security" in the article Windows XP Shows the Direction Microsoft is Going.

You and others in your comments are questioning the HDTV security scam. You are saying, "Hey, wait a minute. Isn't this, and this, and this wrong with the scheme?"

Now Microsoft and Intel and AMD are running the scam with a thing called Palladium. With Microsoft's Palladium, we will, supposedly, have security in an inherently insecure operating system. Palladium's security certificate system is like putting all the world's money in one bank. If someone, a disloyal employee perhaps, breaks into that bank, the entire security is lost, and everyone who spent millions trusting that system will both lose, and have to continue with the system, just like with DVD's.

Palladium prevents security vulnerability the way the U.S. government's "War on Drugs" prevents illegal drug use. In actuality, the real purpose of the "War on Drugs" is to prevent competition by small illegal drug manufacturers, which would lower the price. The big manufacturers are selling more drugs now than before the "War on Drugs", and at artificially high prices.

If you are getting a large number of unsolicited faxes, earn a little income, go to court!

Then last year, the Washington State Supreme Court upheld the law, finding that the only burden the rule "places on spammers is the requirement of truthfulness."

What truth-in-advertising rules apply to advertisers?
Under the Federal Trade Commission Act:

* advertising must be truthful and non-deceptive;

They are prosecuting the chain mail sending people, and they sollicit forwarding of those types of SPAMs.

looking at the ftc site, i see no such restriction.
for example this page says "Send a copy of unwanted or deceptive messages to uce@ftc.gov." they do have a particular interest in fake "remove" instructions.

So yes, not new at all. Amazing what makes it to slashdot these days.

They prosecute when they can. And (blatant self promotion) they use grepmail to help them. I got a bug report from a guy on the project:

Specifically, grepmail -r reports a grand total of 3,046,173 messages, but MHonArc generated only 2,558,869 HTML files.

And you thought your mail archive was big. ;)

It's dated April 2002, so as previously pointed out, this isn't really hot news.

The document also lists some ways to reduce spam, but they are all pretty much common sense, such as this clever piece of advice:

"Try not to display your email address in public."

The FTC encourages consumers to forward any spam they receive to the e-mail address uce@ftc.gov

This is old news (26th April 2001).

Already done.

see page 8 .