Isn't Jenicam that sleazy site where a bunch of perverts and recluses can fulfill their petty and depraved desires by watching some excentric exhibitionist get dressed in the morning and occasionally have sex?
It's not sleazy (or at least intended to be sleazy -- you make of it what you will). She puts a camera up on the net and goes about her life. I've seen maybe one "show" she puts on (that was before she graduated from college) -- I've stopped watching, more or less, but if \. lets me get my News For Nerds and see what she's up to in the meantime, that's okay with me.
Can't we be a little bit better than this?
Isn't the whole point of this thread discussing the options we'd like to have for customizing Slashdot?
If you don't want to see JenniCam (and providing that \. isn't violating the terms of linking to her, as someone else suggested) then don't click the damn checkbox.
Was I the only one who interpreted Starship Troopers (the movie, haven't read the book) as a parody of Fascism?
The director made comments about how he wanted to portray Heinlein's world "but in a manner which made you think".
Idiot. Heinlein's book already makes you think. The director's problem was that he didn't agree with Heinlein's vision, so Starship Troopers the movie becomes, not propoganda for the Federation (as the newsreel-esque scenes would imply), but subversive propoganda against the ideals of the Federation.
But I watch it on a regular basis anyway, largely for the FX...
If it helps to promote the advance of computers, and software, then I say go for it. What ever happened to the true hacker ethic.
I thought the "true hacker ethic" was "the best code will win."
Do you honestly think MS Office qualifies as the best code? Best-promoted, probably; best-protected-from-competition-by-crushing-altern atives, highly likely...
You know, I meant that subject line as a joke, but then Is tarted to think: what if they did "release the source"?
Think of it; you could have the right to create your own "homegrown" episodes of MST3K, and even try to get them on TV (be it public access at 3 am or as a professional network/cable show) but you'd have to make the tapes (or scripts) of your episodes readily available, so others could do the same.
I know people already do their own "mistings", both privately and at conventions, but I'm talking about making it legal to do so.:)
Let the free market decide who should be the replacements for Joel, Mike, Dr. F, TV'S Frank and the rest...
As long as you get a fixed IP address and you are sunning MacOS8, there shouldn't be ANY problem getting an ADSL hookup no matter what the phone company says. I don't see what he's whining about.
Steve Godun is "whining" about that fact that BellAtlantic will "certify" that their ADSL will work for an iMac, but not any non-iMac Mac, and can provide no technical reasons why that should be the case.
Here's a quote from the part 4 of the series:
I asked him: If an iMac owner called BA for an ADSL line, would BA support him?
YES, was the answer.
I then asked: If the installation guy came to the iMac owner's house and found that the little sticker on the side of the iMac (with the MAC address on it) had been removed, would that customer still be supported?
YES, was the answer.
Next: If that's the case and the sticker were removed, then how would BA's installation guy get the hardware address for that iMac?
I was told that he would have to use "some kind of software" to get the hardware address.
Finally: Okay, so if an installation technician comes to an iMac owner's house and has to use a software package to get the hardware address, how is that any different from the same scenario but substituting a regular Mac for the iMac, for which that same software would yield the same result?
The answer: Only the iMac has been tested so that's the only computer BA can support.
And another one:
Side Note: With this in mind I decided to perform an experiment a few hours later, just to see how accurate Kevin's statements were. I called Bell Atlantic in the guise of a neophyte Windows user. I gave a false name and other information, but gave them a phone number which I knew was within their ADSL service area.
When I was asked what kind of computer, I told them "some kind of Windows thing". I was asked who manufactured the computer, and I told them that "a friend of mine put it together from some parts he had left over from when he upgraded".
I was then asked if it was running Windows 98 or Windows 3.1 and I played dumb. "Is there a button in the corner that says START?" I was asked. "Yeah, that's right," I replied. "Okay, that's probably Windows 95." I was then told that installation would be no problem, when would I like to have the guy come in, etc.
So they can apparently "certify" any scratchbuilt PC running Windows9x, but they can't "certify" a non-iMac Power Mac. Maybe Linux users don't find dragging out the ol' dual-boot system to get their ADSL, but you shouldn't have to. That is the point of the whole ordeal Godun had gone through.
Godun even points out that he's received e-mail on this topic from people who are getting ADSL for their non-iMac Macs -- from BellAtlantic, even! -- and suggests that these people, since they're technologically savvy enough to get it done themselves, be used as a quick-and-dirty beta-testing program. BA replied that they'd look into it; maybe that signals some sort of progress...
We should coin a new term for Microsoft other product breaking enhancements. Something resembling Snafu would be nice.. maybe MSSE -- Microsoft Standard Enhancement or something to that effect.
I've had my home page on GeoCities for years (I kept changing ISPs after college and wanted a consistent URL), but the popups and now the "branding" are enough to make me leave. The Javascript code that gets appended for the popups prevents me from getting a "Valid HTML 4.0" from W3's validator.
I was working on a couple of sites for one of my hobbies (a live-action roleplaying group) and I was planning to produce them on GeoCities until they started the branding. And now it's a damn logo! *sigh*
I was fine with voluntarily putting a link to GeoCities on my front page in exchange for the space, but that brand is just obnoxious...
According to Iomega's info, you stick a CompactFlash memory card into one end of the drive and a Clik disk into the other.
Could you just carry around a Clik drive, and a pile of disks? I guess it'll depend on if you can download info fromt he disk TO the card at this point.
I know we're getting too unwieldy... maybe another commercial MP3 player will incorporate such a drive in the future.
Well, you know, them "Macintoshes" are pretty weird, compared to PCs. They probably had to wait until Apple made a cute and cuddly-looking one (the iMac) so the trained tech chimps wouldn't get scared and fling their feces at it.
*rolls eyes*
Maybe someone should buy a "lime" iMac, and give it great big googly eyes and sharp teeth sticking out of the CD-ROM drive. That'll teach 'em...
Unless *anything* goes wrong, and trust me, it can.
Such as?
I've gone from System 7 to MacOS 8 to MacOS 8.5 (including going from HFS to HFS+) and I've never had a problem with any of the Macs I've ever owned.
Most of my problems have either come from out of date third-party shareware add-ons, or beta software that still had a few kinks to be worked out. (Well, then there's Netscape Navigator...)
Do I pay more in the first place? Maybe (though I bought my current machine as refurbished) but I think I've more than made up for it in productivity. The most downtime I've had was making the backup, reformatting in HFS+ and restoring.
I'd like to know the kinds of problems that the typical Mac owner has to face, cuz I haven't seen them.
I thought in Open Source there was not supposed to be anyone making money off it?
As I understand it, the concept behind Open Source is "you can compile it, hack it, sell it or give it away for free -- but anything you do with it, you must allow people to see what you did (make the source freely available) so they can have the same freedom."
The reason it challenges "closed source" is that since they control the source, they decide what features will be added, what bugs will be fixed, and how often the two happen (and how much they can gouge you for it). With Open Source, if you have the technical know-how to fix the problem yourself, go right ahead. (And if you do, please share with the rest of us who might have the same problem.)
If Redhat wants to sell a commercial Linux distribution and only update once a year (to please the corporate types who see rapid updates as a bad thing -- you know, "how stable is this stuff if they keep updating it all of the time?"), that's fine. If you can't wait, then get the new source when it becomes available and do it yourself.
I thought one of the advantages of having commercial resellers was that those of us who are not hacker-types but want to use Linux can pay to have someone do much of the grunt work (and provide tech support). If I want to do it myself, I can. If I want to pay someone to do much of the work for me, I can. That's the freedom of Open Source.
Fruits of good do not grow on the tree of evil. You've chosen to affiliate with Microsoft Evil Empire and now you whine.
VB is a great idea - I admit. But Tcl/Tk is much better implementation of that idea. Since you live in the Gate's world, you probably don't know what Tcl/Tk is. Never mind. But just one final word - "Lust of money is root of all evil". So I think your sufferings are desrved.
Wow -- who relieved their bladder in your Wheaties this morning?
A person who was an MS advocate -- or at least an advocate of one of their products -- is admitting his displeasure with said product and refuses to continue affiliating himself with it, and your response is effectively "Too bad, you're still going to be one of the first against the wall when the revolution comes?"
We're talking about a freaking software company, and not a particularly talented one at that. Well, talented at software, anyways...
If Microsoft charged an extra dollar for Windows98, would anybody care?
Apples and oranges.
For one, we're not talking about an series of pits in a CD (or a set of magnetic impulses on a hard drive platter) we're talking about an actual, consumable, marketable thing -- I still have no idea how they calculate "cost" of engineering software.
(Well, in MS's case it seems to be "whatever the market will bear, plus 10%".)
Second, you don't charge an additional dollar just because it costs you an additional dollar to make the damn thing. They'll just add it in the costs of production, and end up raising the price by $2 (or $5 or whatever to make it a round, marketable number).
And why is it that most patents aren't owned by single persons, but large corporations?
What is a corporation? It's a collection of people working together in pursuit of common goals. If the group comes up with the new idea, the group gets the patent. What's wrong with that?
You're assuming that the entity that created the idea is the one who holds the patent; the original comment wasn't that large corporations are creating all of the ideas that are being patented, only that they hold the patents to those ideas.
Isn't this what everyone accuses Microsoft of doing -- buying up smaller companies that have products or technologies they can implement?
There was an article about how a possible culprit in the Nova Scotia crash of the SwissAir jet may have been a fire caused by the overheating of its inflight entertainment system... Running NT on an Intel processor... One can only think, if Linux was used the system may not have required as much CPU (and related heat)... How many more must die before NT is unmasked as the incubus it is?
I've seen ridiculous Linux propaganda on Slashdot before, but this takes the cake.
To take something as deadly serious as the Swissair crash and twist it to meet your Linux bigotry needs is absolutely disgusting.
Um, couldn't it have just been a feeble attempt at humor?
Not that I think making light of personal tragedy is any more acceptable than using it to feed someone's twisted propoganda needs, but you might be reading more into his comment than he intended...
The way I see it, Star Trek has had the same problem for the last couple of movies that Return of the Jedi had. Instead of creating a movie that appeals to dedicated fans, they attempt to bring in new fans by putting to much "cute" or "funny" into the movie. I really enjoyed the dark tone of the first two Star Wars movies, and was disgusted when I went to see Jedi and saw a bunch of nausea inducing ewoks.
While I will not disagree with you one whit about the Ewoks (I thought they were cute at the time, but not so much any more) there's a reason movie and TV producers try to cater to new viewers as well as die-hards, and it starts with "$"...
You have to open the franchise up at some point to new viewers, otherwise as the die hard fans start leaving (as some Trek fans are apt to do when Voyager is the only TV left) there's no one left to fill their shoes.
Babylon 5 is the exception that proves the rule, by the way... it's only now at the end we can say it was a success. It could have foundered and died after the 1st season when they lost their leading man. When I'd heard that O'Hare was leaving, I thought "that's it, the show is toast."
I'm not ashamed to admit that I stopped watching B5 halfway through season 1, and didn't start watching again until they started dropping hints about the Shadows, which appealed to the H.P. Lovecraft and conspiracy fan in me. I'm glad I stuck around for the ride the second time around (plus getting to catch up on the episodes I missed in seasons 1 and 2 on TNT...)
Jay (= (Who knows someone who honestly thinks that a Trek series based on and starring Klingons would actually be a success...)
Proverb: if you want to be believed, KEEP THE EVIDENCE!!
Did you actually read the article?
At this point, knowing that I wasn't out to keep the money, I called up the bank's senior legal counsel and told him I wanted to give the money back. "I'm the world's easy guy to get the money back from - all you have to do is write me an official letter from the bank that addresses this fiasco from a fair point of view. I invited him to meet with me, to draft such a letter and come to a resolve, and we did."
and
"After a month of negotiations, I got my letter and was ready to return the money."
If you think the guy is a liar, just go find him and ask if you can see the letter.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't Jenicam that sleazy site where a bunch of perverts and recluses can fulfill their petty and depraved desires by watching some excentric exhibitionist get dressed in the morning and occasionally have sex?
It's not sleazy (or at least intended to be sleazy -- you make of it what you will). She puts a camera up on the net and goes about her life. I've seen maybe one "show" she puts on (that was before she graduated from college) -- I've stopped watching, more or less, but if \. lets me get my News For Nerds and see what she's up to in the meantime, that's okay with me.
Can't we be a little bit better than this?
Isn't the whole point of this thread discussing the options we'd like to have for customizing Slashdot?
If you don't want to see JenniCam (and providing that \. isn't violating the terms of linking to her, as someone else suggested) then don't click the damn checkbox.
And/or suggest your own options.
Jay (=
Sherman's Lagoon -- http://www.slagoon.com/
Jay (=
Was I the only one who interpreted Starship Troopers (the movie, haven't read the book) as a parody of Fascism?
The director made comments about how he wanted to portray Heinlein's world "but in a manner which made you think".
Idiot. Heinlein's book already makes you think. The director's problem was that he didn't agree with Heinlein's vision, so Starship Troopers the movie becomes, not propoganda for the Federation (as the newsreel-esque scenes would imply), but subversive propoganda against the ideals of the Federation.
But I watch it on a regular basis anyway, largely for the FX...
Jay (=
If it helps to promote the advance of computers, and software, then I say go for it. What ever happened to the true hacker ethic.
n atives, highly likely...
I thought the "true hacker ethic" was "the best code will win."
Do you honestly think MS Office qualifies as the best code? Best-promoted, probably; best-protected-from-competition-by-crushing-alter
Jay (=
You know, I meant that subject line as a joke, but then Is tarted to think: what if they did "release the source"?
:)
Think of it; you could have the right to create your own "homegrown" episodes of MST3K, and even try to get them on TV (be it public access at 3 am or as a professional network/cable show) but you'd have to make the tapes (or scripts) of your episodes readily available, so others could do the same.
I know people already do their own "mistings", both privately and at conventions, but I'm talking about making it legal to do so.
Let the free market decide who should be the replacements for Joel, Mike, Dr. F, TV'S Frank and the rest...
Jay (=
As long as you get a fixed IP address and you are sunning MacOS8, there shouldn't be ANY problem getting an ADSL hookup no matter what the phone company says. I don't see what he's whining about.
Steve Godun is "whining" about that fact that BellAtlantic will "certify" that their ADSL will work for an iMac, but not any non-iMac Mac, and can provide no technical reasons why that should be the case.
Here's a quote from the part 4 of the series:
I asked him: If an iMac owner called BA for an ADSL line, would BA support him?
YES, was the answer.
I then asked: If the installation guy came to the iMac owner's house and found that the little sticker on the side of the iMac (with the MAC address on it) had been removed, would that customer still be supported?
YES, was the answer.
Next: If that's the case and the sticker were removed, then how would BA's installation guy get the hardware address for that iMac?
I was told that he would have to use "some kind of software" to get the hardware address.
Finally: Okay, so if an installation technician comes to an iMac owner's house and has to use a software package to get the hardware address, how is that any different from the same scenario but substituting a regular Mac for the iMac, for which that same software would yield the same result?
The answer: Only the iMac has been tested so that's the only computer BA can support.
And another one:
Side Note: With this in mind I decided to perform an experiment a few hours later, just to see how accurate Kevin's statements were. I called Bell Atlantic in the guise of a neophyte Windows user. I gave a false name and other information, but gave them a phone number which I knew was within their ADSL service area.
When I was asked what kind of computer, I told them "some kind of Windows thing". I was asked who manufactured the computer, and I told them that "a friend of mine put it together from some parts he had left over from when he upgraded".
I was then asked if it was running Windows 98 or Windows 3.1 and I played dumb. "Is there a button in the corner that says START?" I was asked. "Yeah, that's right," I replied. "Okay, that's probably Windows 95." I was then told that installation would be no problem, when would I like to have the guy come in, etc.
So they can apparently "certify" any scratchbuilt PC running Windows9x, but they can't "certify" a non-iMac Power Mac. Maybe Linux users don't find dragging out the ol' dual-boot system to get their ADSL, but you shouldn't have to. That is the point of the whole ordeal Godun had gone through.
Godun even points out that he's received e-mail on this topic from people who are getting ADSL for their non-iMac Macs -- from BellAtlantic, even! -- and suggests that these people, since they're technologically savvy enough to get it done themselves, be used as a quick-and-dirty beta-testing program. BA replied that they'd look into it; maybe that signals some sort of progress...
Jay (=
We should coin a new term for Microsoft other product breaking enhancements. Something resembling Snafu would be nice.. maybe MSSE -- Microsoft Standard Enhancement or something to that effect.
How about MESS?
(Microsoft-Enhanced Superior Standard)
Jay (=
Is it me, or does this CSS patent smell like Microsoft's first shot fired in the war to "de-commoditize protocols" a la the Halloween Document"?
If we (MS) can't keep the protocol closed or the API proprietary, fine; we'll just patent the whole dang concept.
Sheesh.
Jay (=
I've had my home page on GeoCities for years (I kept changing ISPs after college and wanted a consistent URL), but the popups and now the "branding" are enough to make me leave. The Javascript code that gets appended for the popups prevents me from getting a "Valid HTML 4.0" from W3's validator.
I was working on a couple of sites for one of my hobbies (a live-action roleplaying group) and I was planning to produce them on GeoCities until they started the branding. And now it's a damn logo! *sigh*
I was fine with voluntarily putting a link to GeoCities on my front page in exchange for the space, but that brand is just obnoxious...
Jay (=
I can see it now... shoebox.com.
Jay (=
Would that new Iomega Clik drive work with this?
According to Iomega's info, you stick a CompactFlash memory card into one end of the drive and a Clik disk into the other.
Could you just carry around a Clik drive, and a pile of disks? I guess it'll depend on if you can download info fromt he disk TO the card at this point.
I know we're getting too unwieldy... maybe another commercial MP3 player will incorporate such a drive in the future.
Jay (=
"You're going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyenas!"
Jay (=
(I might have to buy one of these...)
Well, you know, them "Macintoshes" are pretty weird, compared to PCs. They probably had to wait until Apple made a cute and cuddly-looking one (the iMac) so the trained tech chimps wouldn't get scared and fling their feces at it.
*rolls eyes*
Maybe someone should buy a "lime" iMac, and give it great big googly eyes and sharp teeth sticking out of the CD-ROM drive. That'll teach 'em...
Jay (=
They claim they do it to stop pirates. They also say the prices of software are high because of them.
Ah, but don't forget, Microsoft insists that piracy actually keeps the prices lower for their products...
(Which, to me, actually makes more sense. I know that I'm less likely to buy a program if they raise the price with no evident benefit...)
Jay (=
Unless *anything* goes wrong, and trust me, it can.
Such as?
I've gone from System 7 to MacOS 8 to MacOS 8.5 (including going from HFS to HFS+) and I've never had a problem with any of the Macs I've ever owned.
Most of my problems have either come from out of date third-party shareware add-ons, or beta software that still had a few kinks to be worked out. (Well, then there's Netscape Navigator...)
Do I pay more in the first place? Maybe (though I bought my current machine as refurbished) but I think I've more than made up for it in productivity. The most downtime I've had was making the backup, reformatting in HFS+ and restoring.
I'd like to know the kinds of problems that the typical Mac owner has to face, cuz I haven't seen them.
Jay (=
I thought in Open Source there was not supposed to be anyone making money off it?
As I understand it, the concept behind Open Source is "you can compile it, hack it, sell it or give it away for free -- but anything you do with it, you must allow people to see what you did (make the source freely available) so they can have the same freedom."
The reason it challenges "closed source" is that since they control the source, they decide what features will be added, what bugs will be fixed, and how often the two happen (and how much they can gouge you for it). With Open Source, if you have the technical know-how to fix the problem yourself, go right ahead. (And if you do, please share with the rest of us who might have the same problem.)
If Redhat wants to sell a commercial Linux distribution and only update once a year (to please the corporate types who see rapid updates as a bad thing -- you know, "how stable is this stuff if they keep updating it all of the time?"), that's fine. If you can't wait, then get the new source when it becomes available and do it yourself.
I thought one of the advantages of having commercial resellers was that those of us who are not hacker-types but want to use Linux can pay to have someone do much of the grunt work (and provide tech support). If I want to do it myself, I can. If I want to pay someone to do much of the work for me, I can. That's the freedom of Open Source.
Jay (=
Fruits of good do not grow on the tree of evil. You've chosen to affiliate with Microsoft Evil Empire and now you whine.
VB is a great idea - I admit. But Tcl/Tk is much better implementation of that idea. Since you live in the Gate's world, you probably don't know what Tcl/Tk is. Never mind. But just one final word - "Lust of money is root of all evil". So I think your sufferings are desrved.
Wow -- who relieved their bladder in your Wheaties this morning?
A person who was an MS advocate -- or at least an advocate of one of their products -- is admitting his displeasure with said product and refuses to continue affiliating himself with it, and your response is effectively "Too bad, you're still going to be one of the first against the wall when the revolution comes?"
We're talking about a freaking software company, and not a particularly talented one at that. Well, talented at software, anyways...
Jay (=
If Microsoft charged an extra dollar for Windows98, would anybody care?
Apples and oranges.
For one, we're not talking about an series of pits in a CD (or a set of magnetic impulses on a hard drive platter) we're talking about an actual, consumable, marketable thing -- I still have no idea how they calculate "cost" of engineering software.
(Well, in MS's case it seems to be "whatever the market will bear, plus 10%".)
Second, you don't charge an additional dollar just because it costs you an additional dollar to make the damn thing. They'll just add it in the costs of production, and end up raising the price by $2 (or $5 or whatever to make it a round, marketable number).
Jay (=
WRONG. They haven't killed Firewire. It will be stock on all new G3's.
Yeah, but who is going to be making peripherals for that slot if it costs them $1 each?
I don't know how much that is in terms of costs of manufacturing, but I have to assume from the hubbub that it's not an inconsequential amount.
Jay (=
(Likes his Mac, gets annoyed with the manufacturer a lot -- I thought they were over these kinds of bonehead plays...)
And why is it that most patents aren't owned by single persons, but large corporations?
What is a corporation? It's a collection of people working together in pursuit of common goals. If the group comes up with the new idea, the group gets the patent. What's wrong with that?
You're assuming that the entity that created the idea is the one who holds the patent; the original comment wasn't that large corporations are creating all of the ideas that are being patented, only that they hold the patents to those ideas.
Isn't this what everyone accuses Microsoft of doing -- buying up smaller companies that have products or technologies they can implement?
Jay (=
There was an article about how a possible culprit in the Nova Scotia crash of the SwissAir jet may have been a fire caused by the overheating of its inflight entertainment system... Running NT on an Intel processor... One can only think, if Linux was used the system may not have required as much CPU (and related heat)... How many more must die before NT is unmasked as the incubus it is?
I've seen ridiculous Linux propaganda on Slashdot before, but this takes the cake.
To take something as deadly serious as the Swissair crash and twist it to meet your Linux bigotry needs is absolutely disgusting.
Um, couldn't it have just been a feeble attempt at humor?
Not that I think making light of personal tragedy is any more acceptable than using it to feed someone's twisted propoganda needs, but you might be reading more into his comment than he intended...
Jay (=
The way I see it, Star Trek has had the same problem for the last couple of movies that Return of the Jedi had. Instead of creating a movie that appeals to dedicated fans, they attempt to bring in new fans by putting to much "cute" or "funny" into the movie. I really enjoyed the dark tone of the first two Star Wars movies, and was disgusted when I went to see Jedi and saw a bunch of nausea inducing ewoks.
While I will not disagree with you one whit about the Ewoks (I thought they were cute at the time, but not so much any more) there's a reason movie and TV producers try to cater to new viewers as well as die-hards, and it starts with "$"...
You have to open the franchise up at some point to new viewers, otherwise as the die hard fans start leaving (as some Trek fans are apt to do when Voyager is the only TV left) there's no one left to fill their shoes.
Babylon 5 is the exception that proves the rule, by the way... it's only now at the end we can say it was a success. It could have foundered and died after the 1st season when they lost their leading man. When I'd heard that O'Hare was leaving, I thought "that's it, the show is toast."
I'm not ashamed to admit that I stopped watching B5 halfway through season 1, and didn't start watching again until they started dropping hints about the Shadows, which appealed to the H.P. Lovecraft and conspiracy fan in me. I'm glad I stuck around for the ride the second time around (plus getting to catch up on the episodes I missed in seasons 1 and 2 on TNT...)
Jay (=
(Who knows someone who honestly thinks that a Trek series based on and starring Klingons would actually be a success...)
Proverb: if you want to be believed, KEEP THE EVIDENCE!!
Did you actually read the article?
At this point, knowing that I wasn't out to keep the money, I called up the bank's senior legal counsel and told him I wanted to give the money back. "I'm the world's easy guy to get the money back from - all you have to do is write me an official letter from the bank that addresses this fiasco from a fair point of view. I invited him to meet with me, to draft such a letter and come to a resolve, and we did."
and
"After a month of negotiations, I got my letter and was ready to return the money."
If you think the guy is a liar, just go find him and ask if you can see the letter.
Jay (=