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Slashback: Epson, AbiWord, Justification
It was the least they could do. Last week, AbiWord's PayPal account for donations was lightened to the tune of several hundred dollars. Now, an anonymous reader writes "According to this posting, PayPal has succumbed to the pressure. They have agreed to reimburse the AbiWord team for the money that was stolen from their account last week. I still want to know how the AbiWord account was broken into..."
Because licenses matter. specht writes "I am a bit surprised that nobody has reported this yet. EPSON KOWA made their scanner and printer software available for downloading again after they had to pull it because of a GPL violation (see the previous Slashdot story). More information about this (and why it had to be removed in the first place) are here . Kudos to EPSON KOWA and EPSON for working with the FSF to resolve these issues."
No, that's "Gorilla marketing." akiaki007 writes "As many might have noticed, Friday most of Manhattan was covered with butterflies. This article on CNN that states that NYC fined MS $50.00 and the cost of cleaning up the static-cling plastic ads. On a side note, most other companies probably would have been fined per ad, though somehow MS got off, pretty much scot-free."
Priceless -- which is nice when you're paying. Digital Soldier writes "HERE is an article from Government Executive Magazine justifying, from a security perspective, the use of open source software in government. In short, the article makes the point that open source software allows security administrators to be pro-active rather than purely reactive in their work. I guess they don't like waiting for service packs."
Lovely spam, lovely spam ah ah ah ah ... ghostrider_one writes "Australian IT is reporting that notorious Australian spammers T3 direct have appealed the recent dismisssal of their lawsuit against the person they blame for being blacklisted in SPEWS."
"I still want to know how the AbiWord account was broken into..."
So do I!
I need a new digital camera...
I'm pretty tolerant about /.s occasional posting of the same article twice. But doing it within the same article is just too wierd ...
So buying .Net server is going to cost me what, a quarter? =)
I'm enjoying the idea of a handful of Microsoft PR employees rubbing these static-cling butterfly ads over their heads, vigorously no doubt, to achieve the desired sticky effect.
I am certain that high-profile news stories on Slashdot, The Register, and elsewhere had nothing to do with PayPal's decision to refund the money to the Abiword account. Now if any of us loses hundreds of dollars off of PayPal, we can be comfortable in the knowledge that PayPal will refund the amount we lost.
I think it's pretty funny that Micro$oft would choose a bug as it's logo.
As opposed to when Mickey and Minnie stood up to giant corporations?
I stole this Sig
sig:-Let's just hope we accidentally build God
Which reminds me of the old quote. "Jesus is coming. Everybody look busy!"
Am I the only one to see the irony in the fact that a /. Ed goes a bit copy/paste mad and suddenly there's not 1 dupe but at least 16 comments (out of 32 at the mo) all saying the same thing. I mean, did you think that no one else had noticed?
And Microsoft had to pay $50 and clean up the garbage?!?!?!
Typical case of American Blind Justice, I think!
--
Evan "Ah, the classics..."
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Two facts:
1. I've never used PayPal.
2. I've never lost any money to PayPal.
Somehow these seem connected.
This time, I want to walk around town with a marker,
putting swastikas on all the butterflies.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
The idea of a grown man in a butterfly suit quite frankly scares me.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
How about giving M$ a taste of their own medicine? NT users have to pay per server and per license fee, so why not charge charge M$ per square meter and per pedestrian that walked by at the time?
Update: 10/31 00:09 GMT by T: Oops, doubled news of AbiWord / Paypal situation update has been halved; apologies. Those responsible have been sacked.
Thank you.
#define SARCASM biting /. but never duplicate inane discussion messages!
Boy, I've seen duplicate stories on
What next, duplicate discussions of duplicate discussions?!? Quick, call CNN, they're sure to not give a crap.
#undef SARCASM
Silly, because everyone in San Francisco is gay. The most likely reason, though, SF citizens are a bunch of hippies and don't tolerate vandalism to the point that New Yorkers do. Seriously, when you go out into the street and smell the bitter aroma of human urine, you can deal with some little butterfly stickers.
MS: Let me introduce you to the BSA.
NY: Did I say $1,000,000? I meant $50.
MS: I thought so.
I feel this sudden urge to make a joke about performing illegal operations and Microsoft, but after a while you just start to wait expectantly for the legal ones. So, once again, Microsoft has performed an illegal operation and will not be shut down. Look on the bright side of this one though. This one is actually minorly entertaining from the stupidity factor. You sit back and wonder about a few things. 1.) Which ececutive woke up one morning and said "I know what we can do to drum up buisness! Lets annoy and confuse people by having a bunch of people in butterfly costumes litter a section of a major metropolis! Customers will be SO impressed with our superior marketing that they'll switch ISP's in the DROVES!!!" 2.) How much it costs to get someone to throw dignity out the window and skate through NYC in a brightly colored butterfly costume. 3.) How they were able to find so MANY people willing to skate through NYC in a brightly colored butterfly costume. 4.) How hard did the judge laugh/cry while in his chambers that with all the dealings with Microsoft in court, he had to deal with this part, as opposed to something possibly weighty and constructive like the antitrust dealings. and finally... 5.) We know they paid the $50.00 fine and cleaned it up, but how much was it to buy the dignities of all the skaters, pay for the actual cellophane ads, buy/rent the butterfly costumes, and pay for the lawyers time in the courtroom that bought them such a low fine. When you think about ALL that, it was a little more expensive for their little ad campaign. Was it still cheaper than a TV ad? Probably. But still, I'm actually curious as to the $$ ammount M$ pays people for a slice of dignity and a few minutes ot time on skates...
----- I want my LART.
I ran a mail order sales business and took PayPal. I started when PayPal started...in fact, I used their $10 free/$10 referral to drum up business. Sign up for PayPal through me and I'll give you the $10 referral I get in store credit. Worked great, business boomed.
Then PayPal took all my money (or allowed someone else to), forced me into bankruptcy, the bank took my house and my wife ran off with the PayPal support guy - we had so many problems they fell in love after talking on the phone and exchanging e-mails so much. Now I'm posting this from the public library, I sleep in my '75 Vega, shower at the Y (don't drop the soap), eat out of McDonald's dumpster.
Yeah, you all wish that was the story, don't you? The fact is neither I nor any customers had any trouble with PayPal. I continue to use PayPal for auctions, again without trouble. My password is "fraGTh1$BuddY**867-5309" so you see it's very secure and I keep it safe - not even my wife knows it.
Basic security precautions, people. The fault lies not with the stars but with ourselves (or something like that).