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Domain: seattlep-i.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to seattlep-i.com.

Comments · 6

  1. Not the whole story by Rick+the+Red · · Score: 2 · on Code Red Refunds?
    The article referenced does not tell the whole story. Here are some stories that appeared recently in the Seattle Times and the Seattle P-I:

    Times:
    Qwest refuses refunds to DSL customers for Code Red outages
    Qwest falls short tackling Code Red worm, but other DSL customers appear to fare better
    'Code Red' wrigglings put users in knots

    PI:
    State pressing Qwest for refunds after 'Code Red II' DSL breakdowns
    Worm has Qwest DSL customers seeing red

    The real story is not in the articles about the State pressing USQwest for refunds, but the earlier ones describing how USQwest basically ignored the problem for as long as possible, then gave people like your Aunt Mildred complex instructions on how to patch their computers and DSL modems, which were broken by Code Red even though the affected customers were not running NT and ISS! Naturally, the Aunt Mildred's of the world had, shall we say, difficulty following the instructions, and if you didn't follow them exactly you only made it worse. It was USQwest's Cisco DSL modems that got hosed, not their customer's PCs, and the customers were first demanding that USQwest fix it and now are rightly demanding a refund for the DSL service they paid for and did not receive.

    As the excite.com article said, this is the same as not getting your newspaper or cable TV -- if a customer pays for a service they did not get, they deserve a refund. Unfortunately the outcome in this case will be less than optimal, because it won't result in USQwest leaving Washington State for good!

  2. Not the whole story by Rick+the+Red · · Score: 2 · on Code Red Refunds?
    The article referenced does not tell the whole story. Here are some stories that appeared recently in the Seattle Times and the Seattle P-I:

    Times:
    Qwest refuses refunds to DSL customers for Code Red outages
    Qwest falls short tackling Code Red worm, but other DSL customers appear to fare better
    'Code Red' wrigglings put users in knots

    PI:
    State pressing Qwest for refunds after 'Code Red II' DSL breakdowns
    Worm has Qwest DSL customers seeing red

    The real story is not in the articles about the State pressing USQwest for refunds, but the earlier ones describing how USQwest basically ignored the problem for as long as possible, then gave people like your Aunt Mildred complex instructions on how to patch their computers and DSL modems, which were broken by Code Red even though the affected customers were not running NT and ISS! Naturally, the Aunt Mildred's of the world had, shall we say, difficulty following the instructions, and if you didn't follow them exactly you only made it worse. It was USQwest's Cisco DSL modems that got hosed, not their customer's PCs, and the customers were first demanding that USQwest fix it and now are rightly demanding a refund for the DSL service they paid for and did not receive.

    As the excite.com article said, this is the same as not getting your newspaper or cable TV -- if a customer pays for a service they did not get, they deserve a refund. Unfortunately the outcome in this case will be less than optimal, because it won't result in USQwest leaving Washington State for good!

  3. Re:unlimited TLDs is a bad idea by Rick+the+Red · · Score: 2 · on New TLDs Loaded with Fraudulent Registrations
    How many hits do you think Slashdot gets a month that are redirected to slashdot.org from slashdot.com?

    Uh, none. Try it. Hits to slashdot.com are directed to slashdot.com. Same content as slashdot.org, but it's still slashdot.com. Once there, try to log in. That's when you'll find yourself redirected to slashdot.org, where you must log in again. You may have to erase your cookies to make this happen, because if you already have a slashdot.org cookie then you don't have to log in there and you miss the fact that your slashdot.com login cookie is ignored by slashdot.org.

    Your suggestion to make them use osdn.com/slashdot, osdn.com/sourceforge, etc. would just make the Internet harder to use.

    Gee, you're right. It's so much harder to click on this than it is to click on this.

  4. Other services, same issues by sohp · · Score: 1 · on Telocity Wants Its Gateways Back

    I'm a former ReFlex customer and I have one of their little boxes, a Tut Systems LR100T but it's not really DSL, it's proprietary. I don't really have much use for it, but then again it might be worth something to someone.

    Also, the apartment complexes where they installed the services have (I understand) a pretty setup in a rack somewhere on the property. Anyone know what happened to that?

    There's a nice little thread a FuckedCompany

  5. MS Hypocrites demand others souce code! by Rick+the+Red · · Score: 2 · on Shared Source?
    From this story in the Seattle P-I:
    Microsoft demands the source code for every piece of software supplied by outside companies for use in its own operations, said James Van Dyke, formerly an executive at one such company.

    Van Dyke, now a senior analyst for Jupiter Research, said two years ago he was employed as director of product management for Harbinger Corp., a company producing encryption software and selling it to Microsoft, among other companies.

    "They demanded a copy of our source code if they were to continue to use it," Van Dyke said. "If you're a vendor to Microsoft, you have to give them your source code. There's no question this policy was in place. If someone says it never was, I can tell you firsthand that's not true."

  6. real world case by L-Train8 · · Score: 1 · on Read Einstein's FBI File

    I just read an article in the local Seattle paper yesterday on this topic. Its at http://www.seattlep-i.com/local/pot141. shtml.

    Seems that a local gardening store specializes in hydroponic equipment. This type of equipment is sometimes used by people who grow illegal pot, so the police stake out the store. They follow the customers home, then check thier electric bills to see if there is any unusual activity that might indicate grow light use. The suspicous activity here is the legal act of shopping in a store that sells legal products, that might possibly be used for criminal activities.

    But couldn't just about any product be used for illegal activities? Would buying bolt cutters from a hardware store be considered suspicous ? Would visiting a hacker(cracker) website ? Would being black and driving a nice car?

    I am really afraid of what the government would consider suspicous. Law enforcement is made up of people, and people have their own predjudices. I'm wary of giving anyone in power free reign to act on their predjudices. It's kind of hard to define the line between valid suspicions and harrasment, but these FBI files show the government can often be clearly on the wrong side of it.