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Joel Hodgell brought a spammer to court under Washington state's anti-spam law. Did he collect? No, his case was dismissed (the reasons aren't clear), and then the judge "imposed a $6,925 judgment against Hodgell to compensate ... the spammers' lawyer". The state law is facing inconsistent application; some judges don't think a state law can be used on out-of-state residents, others refuse to hear it in small-claims court, despite a published opinion by the state's attorney general. News.com has a story on this and other cases.

Joel Hodgell brought a spammer to court under Washington state's anti-spam law. Did he collect? No, his case was dismissed (the reasons aren't clear), and then the judge "imposed a $6,925 judgment against Hodgell to compensate ... the spammers' lawyer". The state law is facing inconsistent application; some judges don't think a state law can be used on out-of-state residents, others refuse to hear it in small-claims court, despite a published opinion by the state's attorney general. News.com has a story on this and other cases.

(yay news.google!)

Southwest Alaskans say bird is the size of a small plane
Seattle Post Intelligencer,WA
A super-sized bird in Alaska-Scripps Howard News Service
Raptor-like bird spotted in Alaska-Ananova
Southwest Alaskans say bird is the size of a small plane-Kenai Peninsula

Or here.

Or a short one here.

Article

According to this it is legal to film up womens skirts...

Yes it is the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILUW).

Here's an article on the situation from the Seattle P-I.

Include your Gender, Race, and Ethnicity on any electronic resume.

I know it doesn't sound right but the fact is employers are required to keep records of these figures for prospective 'job applicants'. When the law was enacted, the employer would simply write this info on a resume as the person came in to apply. Now they get so many electronic resumes they either have to hire someone to call the applicants who did not include the info or round-file it.

I just recently learned this from a Seattle Times article this weekend; Online résumés are taxing employers.

Now I'm just trying to figure out a tasteful way of including this info in my own resume; as a footnote? in the header?

Is it a cool future of gadgets and super powerful, helpful AIs, antigravity, alien societies, incredibly advanced technology from mysterious lost races, see-thru tank tops, holographic projection and bionic augmentation,

No. No aliens, no latex in 'Firefly,'

or a dark future where a relative of GW's is still running the rights of the consumer^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H citizens into the ground?

No, if it fits into any existing category, it's "Western", actually.

Something like that..

The Patriot Act.
The national ID cards are being pushed with 9/11 rhetoric. They will most likely become law.
A story on Fox news should also have some good information for you.
The 1st amendment has also been under attack. Read about it here

There's a wealth of more information I could gather, but it's best to find this stuff out for yourself. And of course, there's community legislation. In my community, lots of ridiculous garbage has passed that attacks all kinds of rights, mostly privacy. The article here is a great example.

('Never' added, as implied on the supplied link to urbanlegends.com).

Of course Bill Gates has an excellent memory and never tells any lies.

Jack

Income smoothing was a problem for Microsoft too.

Here's a Seattle Times article talking about the settlement.

After they got many billions of dollars in corporate welfare for converting and "leasing" 767's to the military as refueling planes the military doesn't want or need. Your tax dollars at work.

I'm curious why Mozilla is so slow on your system.

One thing I've noticed is that when I save an image (say, a Dilbert or a political cartoon) Mozilla downloads it again, even though it's in the cache; MSIE just saves it from the cache. Mozilla treats images as if they were marked max-age=0 -- what's up with that? Same with printing a page -- reloads it first, every time. This simply sucks, and if it's a setting I've munged I'd love to be able to fix it. But that still doesn't explain the overall slowness of the beast. Maybe they slowed Mozilla on purpose to make Netscape look better.

It's not fun though...

Over here in the UK they're threatening people with jail time if they don't stop selling things in imperial measurements. Google has the story.

Since a lot of tiny businesses' can't afford to replace all their tills and scales, it hit's quite a lot.

BTW, I've been to some peaceful demonstrations, in our nation's capital and other places, and no tanks and soldiers have ever shown up, shot large numbers of peaceful demonstrators, and covered the numbers up. That kind of thing just can't happen here

Can you say Seattle 1999 World Trade Organization meeting?

BTW, I've been to some peaceful demonstrations, in our nation's capital and other places, and no tanks and soldiers have ever shown up, shot large numbers of peaceful demonstrators, and covered the numbers up. That kind of thing just can't happen here

Can you say Seattle 1999 World Trade Organization meeting?

You don't fool us for a minute!

Larry Ellision is the diametrical opposite of a 'SensitiveMale.'

I really cannot understand why these articles keep popping up saying, "Why are cell phones so popular in Japan and Europe when they are not in the US?"

The reason I am so sick of this is that the reasons are basically obvious to anybody that does not have a business degree. There are two main categories for this problem: Greed and marketing stupidity. And these problems are also pervasive in the US broadband market.

The first problem, greed, should be obvious to any customer or individual who has even inquired about cellphones at any store. Every company has their own proprietary cell phones and will not allow customers to use their service without buying a new phone. This was covered in this slashdot article.

This practice essentially creates a monopoly where the customer must deal with a large expense to switch service providers. Companies might think this is good for business because it protects their customer base, but it, in fact, harms their business because people do not like to commit like that. In this case, the cellphone becomes disposable, and who is going to shell out 300+ bucks for a disposable phone?

The other aspect to this greed was pointed out by Linus himself in his book Just for Fun . He said the fact that all of the service providers had proprietary systems instead of agreeing on a standard, like GSM, caused the market to be stagnant. I agree with this point. In addition to the fact that it would alleviate the problem stated above, it would also have avoided a lot of the other problems encountered by the cell phone industry. The biggest of these problems was the problem of building cell towers. Without a common standard, the companies all had to build their own system of cell towers, so the service varied greatly from place to place. Service was bad, so customers were annoyed.

In a common system where companies would be using compatable equipment, they could just pay eachother for bandwidth usage and compete on price and service. However, they wanted to spend all that extra money to attempt to create monopolies. I really do not see the point of having a monopoly over a small number of customers, though.

The other aspect was stupid marketing. This article talks about what American consumers are doing in their cars. It says that they might want a wireless app to give them a traffic report. This is typical of the marketing decision that was made by some brainiac way back in the early days. Some genius thought that the people who would use cellphones the most would be businessmen. The cellphone industry should find and castrate this guy. He has not only made cellphones bad for business but for the consumer as well.

Why was this guy stupid? Because businessmen know how much work they do for their dollar. They are not going to spend one more second on the phone than is necessary. They also do not care about aesthetics (unless they are in sales, but even then, most business men have notoriously bad taste, and it is often quite entertaining to watch yuppies feign artistic appreciation). Therefore, businessmen are not going to use their cellphones excessively, and neither are they going to pay top dollar for the prettiest phone on the market.

Who is going use their phones a lot and pay for the most expensive ones, then? The article has a clue. It says:

Japan's use of wireless phones has frequently been dismissed as superficial fun, a phenomenon driven by teenage girls, Hello Kitty screensavers and an endless variety of ring tones.

Teenagers are the key to cellphone market. They always have been. Teenagers will talk until the battery dies. Teenages will carry an extra battery. Teenagers will buy extra accessories for their phones. Teenagers will use their phones as status symbols to their friends.

But who pays for these cell phones? Well, the parents, of course. The parents will buy cellphones for their teenagers because they want their kid to be safe. They will want to check up on the kid now and then.

Now, we have a responsible group (the parents: those businessmen whose money everyone wanted) funding the excesses of an irresposible group (the teenagers who have a hormonal imperative to generate big bills). A phenomenon? I think not.

As obvious as this may sound, it did not occur to the author of the article or the businessmen she interviewed. Cell phones have always been ugly in the US. I will not buy Motorola products because they always released ugly products to the US market (although their cellphones are quite pretty in Asia). I think this attitude that Americans have no aesthetic taste is quite insulting.

In any case, I am sick of this whining about the consequences of stupid business decisions. It sounds like GM in the late 70's blaming Japan because American consumers did not want the big cars that GM could make greater profits on. Did any of these people read Adam Smith? The market cannot be forced to accept a product (unless of course you are Microsoft).

I really cannot understand why these articles keep popping up saying, "Why are cell phones so popular in Japan and Europe when they are not in the US?"

The reason I am so sick of this is that the reasons are basically obvious to anybody that does not have a business degree. There are two main categories for this problem: Greed and marketing stupidity. And these problems are also pervasive in the US broadband market.

The first problem, greed, should be obvious to any customer or individual who has even inquired about cellphones at any store. Every company has their own proprietary cell phones and will not allow customers to use their service without buying a new phone. This was covered in this slashdot article.

This practice essentially creates a monopoly where the customer must deal with a large expense to switch service providers. Companies might think this is good for business because it protects their customer base, but it, in fact, harms their business because people do not like to commit like that. In this case, the cellphone becomes disposable, and who is going to shell out 300+ bucks for a disposable phone?

The other aspect to this greed was pointed out by Linus himself in his book Just for Fun . He said the fact that all of the service providers had proprietary systems instead of agreeing on a standard, like GSM, caused the market to be stagnant. I agree with this point. In addition to the fact that it would alleviate the problem stated above, it would also have avoided a lot of the other problems encountered by the cell phone industry. The biggest of these problems was the problem of building cell towers. Without a common standard, the companies all had to build their own system of cell towers, so the service varied greatly from place to place. Service was bad, so customers were annoyed.

In a common system where companies would be using compatable equipment, they could just pay eachother for bandwidth usage and compete on price and service. However, they wanted to spend all that extra money to attempt to create monopolies. I really do not see the point of having a monopoly over a small number of customers, though.

The other aspect was stupid marketing. This article talks about what American consumers are doing in their cars. It says that they might want a wireless app to give them a traffic report. This is typical of the marketing decision that was made by some brainiac way back in the early days. Some genius thought that the people who would use cellphones the most would be businessmen. The cellphone industry should find and castrate this guy. He has not only made cellphones bad for business but for the consumer as well.

Why was this guy stupid? Because businessmen know how much work they do for their dollar. They are not going to spend one more second on the phone than is necessary. They also do not care about aesthetics (unless they are in sales, but even then, most business men have notoriously bad taste, and it is often quite entertaining to watch yuppies feign artistic appreciation). Therefore, businessmen are not going to use their cellphones excessively, and neither are they going to pay top dollar for the prettiest phone on the market.

Who is going use their phones a lot and pay for the most expensive ones, then? The article has a clue. It says:

Japan's use of wireless phones has frequently been dismissed as superficial fun, a phenomenon driven by teenage girls, Hello Kitty screensavers and an endless variety of ring tones.

Teenagers are the key to cellphone market. They always have been. Teenagers will talk until the battery dies. Teenages will carry an extra battery. Teenagers will buy extra accessories for their phones. Teenagers will use their phones as status symbols to their friends.

But who pays for these cell phones? Well, the parents, of course. The parents will buy cellphones for their teenagers because they want their kid to be safe. They will want to check up on the kid now and then.

Now, we have a responsible group (the parents: those businessmen whose money everyone wanted) funding the excesses of an irresposible group (the teenagers who have a hormonal imperative to generate big bills). A phenomenon? I think not.

As obvious as this may sound, it did not occur to the author of the article or the businessmen she interviewed. Cell phones have always been ugly in the US. I will not buy Motorola products because they always released ugly products to the US market (although their cellphones are quite pretty in Asia). I think this attitude that Americans have no aesthetic taste is quite insulting.

In any case, I am sick of this whining about the consequences of stupid business decisions. It sounds like GM in the late 70's blaming Japan because American consumers did not want the big cars that GM could make greater profits on. Did any of these people read Adam Smith? The market cannot be forced to accept a product (unless of course you are Microsoft).

I would post examples from The NYTimes, but they don't let you see previous issues of the paper online for free. However, as I recall their picks closely mirrored The Washington Post's:

The Washington Post
Top Story: Cyber-Attacks by Al Qaeda Feared
No. 2 Story: SEC Charges WorldCom With Fraud
No. 3 Story: U.S. Court Votes to Bar Pledge of Allegiance

The Los angeles Times
Top Story: 'Tweens: From Dolls to Thongs
One of the store mannequins wears a fringed denim skirt riding low on the hips and a top pushed high on the midriff. Another has shorts that roll down on the tummy and a one-shoulder top.
No. 2 Story: Pledge of Allegiance Violates Constitution, Court Declares
No. 3 Story: WorldCom Hit With Federal Fraud Lawsuit

The Los Angeles Times shows a consistent bias toward "Reader's Digest" type stories that are entertaining and give you something to gossip about but don't really tell you anything of value. I also get the sense that many LA Times reporters are really failed screenplay writers who can't let go of the need to create drama. However, they do occasionally print something worth reading.

The LA Times is owned by The Chicago Tribune , which puts even less original content on its Web site and is more "in-your-face" about pressuring you to subscribe.

I suspect Slashdot would link to The Wall Street Journal more often if the paper made more than 1% of its content available to non-paying subscribers. (I had a paid subscription to wsj.com for about a year, but I no longer do because it's just not worth that much to me.)

I'd like to read Le Monde , but the French refuse to publish an English version. Go figure.

All of Knight-Ridder's newspapers (The San Jose Mercury News , Miami Herald , Philadelphia Inquirer , et al) have been crippled by the "RealCities Network" which forces all of its sites to use the same content-poor, ad-rich design. The saddest story of the group is the SJMercury though, which has just fallen apart since the parent company began slashing costs and forcing the RealCities conformity on its once industry-leading site. The Miami Herald is an unofficial training school for future Washington Post reporters, but that doesn't matter if you can't find their content on the Web.

Slashdot doesn't link to the Financial Times often (ever?), though it's a great paper. It just doesn't turn out a lot of unique content that's of interest to most Slashdot readers.

Newspapers aside, Slashdot has linked to CNN and the BBC in the past, though not the CBC . ABC, CBS and NBC generally provide watered down news for people who don't like to read newspapers -- not Slashdot readers.

Slashdot often links to MSNBC , but I expect that will begin to decline -- MSNBC.com's founding editor (Merrill Brown, a former Washington Post reporter) recently announced that he's resigning after 6 years to pursue other, undisclosed "opportunities." The New York Times noted on June 12 (you'll have to pay for the archived version of the story) that he offhandedly mentioned that MSNBC.com is about to be swallowed by MSN for economic reasons. (In other words, Microsoft put its foot down and said financial concerns outweigh editorial concerns.)

The International Herald-Tribune writes some of its own content, but a lot of the paper is an amalgamation of New York Times and Washington Post stories.

I haven't read the Seattle Post-Intelligencer or the Seattle Times in a while, but you may find some good technology stories there.

Bottom Line: Slashdot links to a disproportionate number of New York Times and Washington Post stories because both papers' sites post a lot of content and that content is top notch. It also helps that they're among the most recognizable names in journalism, but the Slashdot system is set up to allow editors to pick from the best stories that are submitted, regardless of the content provider's brand recognition. If you read a good story somewhere, submit it -- the quality of the story is more important than the misguided registration policies of the content provider. And if I've missed a good site people should be reading, reply to this message and let people know.

Fly by wire was used first on the Concorde, not an Airbus. Airbus has been using it since 1988, too, so it's not like it's new untested technology

There's an interesting article here on Boeing and Airbus and their different ideas of how it should be used, an interesting read.

well, East Timor was hit (allegedly by Indonesia), but the infrastructure involved was exactly massive. A small ISP called Connect - Ireland was hosting .tp for them.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/technology/h tml98/issu_020799.html

"Why, you may ask - They don't appreciate in value. It's simple as that. Usually it take a generation for a home to gain in value..."

Simply put, you're nuts. You don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about. Where have you been, Afghanistan? Or Indiana?

Do you have any familiarity with the real estate market in California over the last 15 years, or in Seattle, for that matter?

In an article dated Tuesday, February 19, 2002 from the Seattle Times, and I quote:

"In fact, the value of a single-family home continued its escalator ride up in most parts of the Seattle area last year, a Seattle Times computer analysis of year-end data from the King County Assessor's Office shows..."

Given that you're this far off on this one, I won't bother to blow holes in the rest of what you've said...

But while you're at it, make up your mind:

"...My advise if you absolutely have to have a new home: buy one outside the city on a few acres and, yes, build it yourself..."

And then:

"...The best thing to do is buy a home near the city, in a neighborhood that is beginning to revive itself..."

Make up your mind.

Personally, I don't think you have a clue about real estate...

t_t_b

Well, I guess it was just a matter of time. Now we have artificial hearts (pop-up warning), artificial lungs, and artificial kidneys. (I mean that we as a society have them available to us as a technology, not that we as individuals actually have those things inside us, though some of us no doubt do.)

How long before we also have artificial skin to hold our artificial hair? How long before we decide what to put in our artifcial stomachs with our artificial brains?

The human race is about to step aside to make room for the cybernetically enhanced. May God have mercy on our souls. My one request is that none of my organs run anything made by Microsoft. See you in the future.

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (AP-Asia):

Beijing Orders Internet Cafes Closed

Monday, June 17, 2002
Last updated at 2:06:53 AM PT

By AUDRA ANG
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

BEIJING -- Beijing has ordered its 2,400 Internet cafes to close for safety inspections after a fire that killed 24 people in the Chinese capital's university district, state media said Monday.

The owner of the cafe where the fatal fire broke out before dawn Sunday has surrendered to police, said a woman who answered the phone at the district administration office. She wouldn't give her name or any details, and police weren't immediately available to confirm the report.

Mayor Liu Qi ordered Internet cafes in Beijing to close while the city draws up new regulations, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Cafes that can't meet safety and other standards will be shut down and their property confiscated, Liu was quoted as saying.

Those that meet the standards will have to reapply for licenses, although the mayor added that he did not want to encourage an increase in the number of cyber cafes, which are immensely popular in this city of 12 million.

Xinhua said just 200 of Beijing's 2,400 Internet cafes are properly licensed. Many are typically smoky and crowded, located in converted residential buildings or other spaces not necessarily equipped to handle large numbers of customers.

The fire at the 24-hour Lanjisu Cyber Cafe in the lively Haidian university district broke out early Sunday, when most of the customers were students taking advantage of lower Internet access rates.

Neighbors said they were awakened by screams for help.

A survivor, who was identified only by the surname Li, told the state-run newspaper Beijing Times that there were about 30 customers at the cafe, which could seat 100.

"It was around 3 a.m. when I smelled GASOLINE and saw thick smoke coming up from the bottom of the stairs," said Li, who went to the cafe with about 10 other students from Beijing Technology University.

"I told a cafe employee who went downstairs to check. He yelled that there was a fire and we all tried to escape," Li said.

Li said the fire had blocked the stairs and people began yelling for help through the windows, which were covered by iron grills. Neighbors managed to unscrew one grill and Li said he escaped with about seven other people.

...

The Seattle Times link says he put his code into the public domain, but the freshmeat link says the code is subject to the MIT/X consortium license. So what's the issue here?

Some stuff Seattle did a couple years ago.

Nevertheless the author cheerfully reports that "87 per cent of Human Resource managers surveyed believed that MCSE's are equally or more successful than college graduates."

Right you are! Why waste money on those useless traditional education system, while we could save a lot of money just to get MCSE for kids!

Look at these kids, see how much money their parents have saved and they can obtain an employment straight out of grade school!

"...maybe we could convince the 1.2 billion Chinese, that you can dump your junk on their soil, if they can dump their junk on your soil.
Come to think of it, the US might still be better off: It is still the world's largest poluter per capita and *not willing to do anything about it*."

China is polluting the USA soil. Actually, a lot of the pollution is their soil. Fortunately, they have a large population to reduce the pollution per capita.

The Seattle P-I has a piece this morning about the monopoly aspect of this. Bottom line: In Tacoma, where there's competition for cable and broadband, you pay less; in Seattle, where AT&T has a monopoly, you'll be paying more.

> Isn't anyone afraid the game will be filled
> with advertisements for the military, such as
> tons of "Join NOW!" buttons, and pop-ups
> displaying the US Army website?

You know what would be funny?

I'm assuming the game runs on Windows. With the Bush Administration working so much with Microsoft-- you know, getting rid of th pesky lawsuit and trying to get Passport made a type of nationwide ID .

So imagine you're playing the game on Windows XP with all your Passport stuff filled in, like a good End User. You finish a really hard level, and suddenly a dialog box pops up and asks, "Do you wish to continue?". When you click yes, you get signed up for the army!

Isn't this the company that was proposed as a gatekeeper to our government -- that is, use Passport to authenticate citizens?

Disgusting.

One of the hugest fallacies the media companies have spread, are spreading, and will keep spreading is that they are the innocent content producers that everyone is stealing from.

Through some handy maneuvering they have convinced our congress to take huge amounts of content that would ordinarily been licensed for free use by the public and give to them so that they may continue to control it and use it as a cash cow instead of creating new art. They did this by convincing congress to take reasonable copyright limits and extend them into all eternity. Thanks to them no new works will become public domain in the remainder of my lifetime. In fact, the public domain is practically a forgotten concept.

We can't blame the congressmen. They're trying to do a good job but what can we expect when they are hearing one side of the story from some very convincing people it is natural they might be swayed. Heck, after I hear the media companies whine I almost feel sorry for them. Well we can blame them a little since, as our representatives they should have taken a "how will this hurt or help my constituents" instead of a "gee, that does sound bad. we'll pass a law and make it all better for you" approach.

We can thank the media companies for hijacking the public domain for their own profit. The original copyright length in the USA was 14 years plus a 14 year extension. There is a wealth of artistic creations that should have reached the public domain by now.

We can thank the media companies and their paranoid ramblings for attempting to kill the VCR, killing the DAT tape, and now they're attempting to kill the personal computer (good luck).

I understand they have concerns but they need to be addressed in the proper light. Sure, some people steal but handcuffing everyone is not the way to prevent it. And before calling all consumers thieves it should be noted just how much they have stolen from us, even if they did use "legal" means to do it.

See also this link

They give a brief mention to Kroger in the linked article as well..

Whoever modded me 'Flamebait' is dumber than Dan Marino. Anyway, sorry for munging the link, here's the correct one (even clickable this time!)

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/baseball/pdf/pitchin gpage.pdf

Would you look at that, Slashdot thinks I'm a page widener. Fuck it, might as well turn troll full-time if this is how I'll be treated anyway.

Oh, you mean like the phenomenally successful .NET strategy?

You should know by now that any attempts that MS makes in that direction have not and will not be tolerated by their customers. That's why they haven't ever done it.

I love it when under the picture of a chubby guy sticking out his belly, they write Click for a larger photo

In Washington state there is an initiative petition to require all state and local polititions to take the state wide education test, and then to have the info made public and posted in the official voter guides.

you can see that story here.

Given the usual hassles and cluelessness with polititions, I like this.

Why a monorail?

There's a reason why this is being sponsored by a citizen's initiative while light rail and commuter rail have been driven by your municipal and county governments.

Why a monorail?

There's a reason why this is being sponsored by a citizen's initiative while light rail and commuter rail have been driven by your municipal and county governments.

Why a monorail?

There's a reason why this is being sponsored by a citizen's initiative while light rail and commuter rail have been driven by your municipal and county governments.

hell, look at wal-mart.

The Seattle P-I has a story about it

The display is a red, transparent computer screen, but, in fact, is no screen at all. The device shoots a tiny laser beam that draws patterns onto the retina so that only the wearer sees the images.

Still, this does sound like promising technology.

The article referenced at the top of the page doesn't go into much detail regarding the outcome of the suit (which will finally be decided in a year or so), but here is an article that might be a bit more informative.

The most interesting part of that article is the following quote:

"'There's no evidence Windows is generic and strong evidence it's not,' responded Karl Quackenbush, an attorney arguing for Microsoft. He said Microsoft has spent more than a billion dollars promoting and protecting the name Windows. That includes sending letters to hundreds of infringers warning them not to use the name, he said.

In any case, he said, names such as Amazon.com and Apple -- two other generic words -- have been adjudged valid trademarks because they've acquired a 'secondary meaning' through their strong association to products."

So, even though Microsoft might not win the preliminary injunction, it is likely to win the case. After all, if Apple and Amazon were both held up as trademarks in court, it's likely that the ubiquitous "Windows" will be as well.

I, for one, will be glad if "Lindows" loses in court simply because it is confusing to say out loud. Try saying this out loud: "I'd like some help with configuring Lindows, please." I fully support anyone's right to create a new OS, but I don't support naming a product in a confusing manner (and playing off the name of a more popular product), which is exactly what Lindows is doing. This sort of infringement is what trademark law was designed to protect, and I think Microsoft will win this one in the end.

Microsoft came in at a disappointing #7 with:

7. Last May, Citizens Against Government Waste, a group that received funding from Microsoft, is caught simulating a "grassroots" campaign to get state attorneys general to drop their antitrust suit against the software giant. One detail that gives the scheme away: Some of the letters supporting Microsoft are from people who have long since died.

Personally, I can think of many other, much more comical MS events...one of my personal favorites being this...

Anyone else with any votes for stupid MS trick of the year?

According to this article, AT&T Broadband will be offering Earthlink service to both Washington state and Boston, MA customers within the next few months.

I'm betting they're probably doing that so they aren't forced to as a condition of merging with Comcast, but hey, I'll take it... Earthlink's service has to be better than attbi.com! "Sure, we'll take half your bandwidth away, screw your reliability and charge you the same amount every month!!"

There's a better article about this in the Seattle Times at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/13 4418970_software12m.html