Re:What's even more disturbing...
on
Worst Buy
·
· Score: 1
Compaq has just pulled this bait and switch to get business:
Two weeks ago (Friday April 12 2002) compaq offered the Viewsonic 19" LCD monitor VG191 for a sale price of $805 after a 20% weeklong promotional coupon on their monitor selection.
Compaq is now weaseling out of LCD monitor orders: Everyone who ordered a Viewsonic VG191 19" LCD flatpanel monitor for $805 from Compaq.com two weeks ago will have their orders cancelled. Compaq decided not to fulfill anyone's order at that price, claiming that the product was unavailable even though viewsponics replacement model is still available for purchase on their website for $350 more ($280 more after 20% discount). They are attempting to pull a classic bait-and-switch, encouraging people to purchase the newer more expensive model at full price.
I do NOT want this to become common practice, please complain if something like this happens to you, all of will suffer if we let this become an acceptable business practice.
"Encouraging" link text quoted below, in case linked site removes page:
We really appreciate your order that was placed on 4/12/2002.
However, we regret that the VG191B is indefinitely not available. We would like to fulfill your order with the Viewsonic VX900, which is a new model of the Viewsonic 19" LCD family. We will honor the price of $999.99, however the 20% discount is not applicable to this order.
The VX900 is a two tone, silver and black monitor with identical specifications, it has the same SuperClear MVA technology with OptiSynch Analog/Digital capability. The VX900 has in addition multimedia capability with 2 x 3 watts speakers with a microphone. Attached is a document, which compares the two monitors and/or spec sheets
I understand your current selection is your first choice. The following options are available to you:
Change your selection, or
Cancel your order.
Unless we hear from you by April 26, 2002, federal regulations require that your order be cancelled, as Compaq will be unable to ship your order as entered.
Please feel free to contact me via email if you wish to make a change which may assist in the processing of your order. Thank you for choosing Compaq for your technology needs.
Sincerely,
{name removed} NAOPS
Your Account ID is {removed} Check this order's status at the Compaq.com website: www.smb.compaq.com
Select Order Status
"
Re:Cowboys and Indians
on
Worst Buy
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
How "American" can you get?
The "Indians" were here first, and the only reason they weren't called "Americans" was because some white guy couldn't read a map or take a look around him to see that he wasn't in India.
The police report is not for disorderly conduct or harassment, they arrested him because they had "red flagged" the "video card customers" that came in to be arrested.
He walked in and asked why he didn;t get his card, they called the cops and he was arrested for asking a question, after the cops found out what exactly Best Buy was pulling, they let him go.
"This is just a typo in the system, including the billing system. It wasn't done on purpose and nobody was forced to buy the card at $400, they had a choice to either take the refund and go away or order it at the higher price."
They were not given refunds, Best Buy still has most of the people's money that have not called their credit card companies and requested a "denial of payment" to that transaction from Best Buy.
It's more than a bait and switch, it's a "Give me your money and I'll give you this product, oh wait, no, I'll give you nothing, oh wait, I'll give you the option of nothing, or being arrested, oh wait, I'll give you a class action laws.... oh wait, I'm fired."
Looking at the turn of events latley I'm glad to see that someone is taking such an active role in keeping the Govt agencies in check.
If they have the right to enact the holy "DMCA" then what do we have to ensure they are not using computers to break the law for their own benifit?
We can't even have code distributed that might possibly break someones rights, but they can copy every data transmittion across a network that they don't own? I don't think so. There needs to be some sort of fair play here, or else we're not much better than a dictatorship in which they get to tell us what we can't do and we get to shut up and take it or be arrested under laws we didn't vote on (read DMCA).
They only look at things as though they can't be done or are hard to do, without questioning if they could be done differently.
Case in point:
From the article on the 5 year old's patent: "Intellectual-property experts said the patent clearly should have not been issued, but that such mistakes were inevitable from an underfunded government agency that issues 3,000 patents each week."
This is the reaction I'm talking about, not that the patent office should not be giving out 3,000 patents every week, but since they do, there are mistakes. And underfunded? anybody file a patent lately? It cost this boys father $1,000 dollars to file his patent. With that as an example cost, the process cost the patent filers 3,000,000 dollars a week. Someone gets that money, and the patent office is the most likely cantidate that I can think of.
If the lawyers are getting that money, well that's the patent office's fault for not looking over the patents themselves and billing the same as the lawyers. It's their only job after all.
From the article: "Even if the pages no longer exist on XS4ALL sites, we want the search engines to remove the link because it still advertises a handbook for destruction. People will start looking for it elsewhere and we don't want that,"
What part of the united states law do these people not understand? The part about our people's right to distribute knowledge, any knowledge, even bad knowledge perhaps? Oh wait, that's not our right anymore. The DMCA and the Corporations that bought it into being took care of that.
I know that they don't actually manufacture them. but they supply the bulk of the functionality of the product, without the Windows operating system can the winmodem be used? can linux use a winmodem? can any other operating system that is not windows use this product?
They, like any other manufacturer, should be responsible for the quality and "claimed" compatibility of their product.
Why should AMD be expected to support abit motherboards? Why should microsoft be expected to support AMD? Why should ATI support ViewSonic?
BECAUSE THEY ARE DESIGNED TO WORK TOGETHER! That's why you bought them.
We who do not choose to use those programs should not have to run the code they do not use when they're not being run. If I do not want to run internet explorer code then I should have the right to disable it. Especially if by having it running it slows my system down and provides no benifit to me. If I want to run outlook (and suscribe to microsofts Outlook Virus of the Week Mailing List) then I would benifit from having the code running.
98lite.net provides me with a choice to remove code, if I want to use that code then I do not disable it. Simple. 98lite has many settings not just concerning explorer. Actually look at the site before you comment. And use some common sense.
OK, there really needs to be some coverage about this site 98lite.net
It's a program for modularizing windows into components to speed up Windows operation and stabilize the platform. in other words... you can remove internet explorer. And many other "integrated" features that microsoft says will "cripple" the OS.
I'm saying that the technology and the process described in the article are just like Niven's description in the book, neither the article nor Niven's book state any superconduction properties.
My statement: This is exactly like the "Black Power" described in Larry Niven's "Flatlander" series.
Your reply: Nope, Mr. Niven never said it (black power) was superconducting in nature.
My comment: Read the article. It never says that their invention is superconducting in nature. So they are the same concept.
They do not have the right to just assign themselves the right to do something just because they haven't been told specifically not to do it.
They should present a proposal to the FCC to ask for jurisdiction clarification on this point, it the article it specifically states that they have not been given any rights whatsoever and that they are using this ruling (that they made) to make rights available to themselves, which is exactly the same thing as the analogy of the child determining that he has the right to decide who makes the bedtime rules.
The moral of the post is:
Ask for a ruling from someone in power don't just assume that you have it because they haven't told you that you don't.
"Flatlander" by Lary Niven, Page 328 Sixth paragraph down, and I quote:
"What's finally knocked the bottom out is this new solar electric paint. Black Power, they call it. It turns sunlight into electricity, just like any solar power converter, but you spray it on."
"Flatlander" is a collection of stories about Gil "The ARM" Hamilton and the short story that this is quoted from is called "The Woman in Del Rey Crater" It's the sixteenth page in the actual story.
This is exactly like the "Black Power" described in Larry Niven's "Flatlander" series. A black substance sprayed onto any surface to provide solar collection.
I love it when science fiction leads the way to science fact.
So I can legally send a notice to a spamming company that serves as legal notification if they do not list a phone number or physical address, and it will be backed by this precident.
I love it when a ruling can affect something intelligent, especially when the ruling itself isn't that smart.
"I'd imagine that the unreputible companies just use thier database to build thier own list full of verified email addresses."
Then they would be more likely to get massive complaints since these people on this list actively do not like spam, they're more likely to raise a fuss than someone not on the list.
"So you only advertist to people who haven't found the list yet. That idea is broken on so many levels I don't know where to start. I choose to allow people to access my computer, not choose to disallows them."
The point is that your address is being harvested anyway, not asking you for permission gets around your choice not to hand them your address.
Mailing the people that haven't found the list would not bother anybody that isn't looking for a way to block spam, the peope that want to have services that require you to give them your e-mail address and not be spammed would find the list program and thus recieve less spam.
"s/agency/single point of failure/g"
since when do people automatically think that a business is going to run a product that couldn't handle load balancing database requests? If spammers are willing to buy e-mail address lists that have a claim of 80% valid addresses, then they'll pay to verify that and also avoid lawsuits from anti-spam activists. Hence having beowulf clusters to serve the database.
"And watch it get DOSsed off the Net by the real spammers."
Hence geting more money for beowulf clusters from suing them for doing it.
"How would the 3rd party database recoup its bandwidth costs?"
Like any other service, charge the people with money for providing them a service that makes them better at what they do. Spammers want sales not complaints and litigation, this benifits them as well as us.
"That's called the Direct Marketing Association. But how much good does it do to get your address off the lists of 10 reputable companies when 1000s of spammers pay no attention to the opt-out list?"
Because there aren't that many mass mailing companies out there. And the ones that really do the most damage are super mass mailers.
slashdot stories elude that Spam companies have: "... simply got someone at one end of a home broadband pipeline using open relay mail servers, and most likely being paid to redistribute spam on the email addresses they harvest."
and it's only a start, before such a list becomes a mandatory check, or opt-in is elected internet law (hopefully). It's optimistic but what's the point in fighting spam if you don't try something.
It'd be interesting to have an agency that you could send your e-mail address and preferences to that could be checked by potential buyers of e-mail lists.
It could serve as a free service to the people who care enough to act on their need not to recieve spam. Any reputible company would check their databases with the 3rd party database and remove the e-mail addresses of people who opted out of all spam. Maximizing their direct marketing costs of sending out mailings.
That's the point, "...all excess funds go back into itself.
That's fundamentally wrong.
So the more "excess funds" they can generate the more they make. They require payment for the use of a right to participate and be represented in the proceedings. That's frankly BS.
A non profit organization that claims to be a public service company, should not be giving out paychecks in excess of the cost of the service they provide.
PBS employees don't make 250,000 a year even if they are the most highly paid exec in the company. This is because the service they provide is expensive to run, bandwidth, airtime, show costs, sets, etc. This is where a nonprofit business should spend the money. I don't see 13 beowolf clusters serving as root servers for the net. (not that I think they need that kind of power)
But the budget should be used for the company not the management board.
Slashdot Mirror
Compaq has just pulled this bait and switch to get business:
Two weeks ago (Friday April 12 2002) compaq offered the Viewsonic 19" LCD monitor VG191 for a sale price of $805 after a 20% weeklong promotional coupon on their monitor selection.
Compaq is now weaseling out of LCD monitor orders: Everyone who ordered a Viewsonic VG191 19" LCD flatpanel monitor for $805 from Compaq.com two weeks ago will have their orders cancelled. Compaq decided not to fulfill anyone's order at that price, claiming that the product was unavailable even though viewsponics replacement model is still available for purchase on their website for $350 more ($280 more after 20% discount). They are attempting to pull a classic bait-and-switch, encouraging people to purchase the newer more expensive model at full price.
I do NOT want this to become common practice, please complain if something like this happens to you, all of will suffer if we let this become an acceptable business practice.
"Encouraging" link text quoted below, in case linked site removes page:
"
From: Compaq.com
Sent: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 16:26:30 -0500
Subject: Compaq Order
Dear {removed},
We really appreciate your order that was placed on 4/12/2002.
However, we regret that the VG191B is indefinitely not available. We
would like to fulfill your order with the Viewsonic VX900, which is a
new model of the Viewsonic 19" LCD family. We will honor the price of
$999.99, however the 20% discount is not applicable to this order.
The VX900 is a two tone, silver and black monitor with identical
specifications, it has the same SuperClear MVA technology with
OptiSynch Analog/Digital capability. The VX900 has in addition
multimedia capability with 2 x 3 watts speakers with a microphone.
Attached is a document, which compares the two monitors and/or spec
sheets
I understand your current selection is your first choice. The
following options are available to you:
Change your selection, or
Cancel your order.
Unless we hear from you by April 26, 2002, federal
regulations require that your order be cancelled, as Compaq will be
unable to ship your order as entered.
Please feel free to contact me via email if you wish to make a change
which may assist in the processing of your order. Thank you for
choosing Compaq for your technology needs.
Sincerely,
{name removed}
NAOPS
Your Account ID is {removed}
Check this order's status at the Compaq.com website:
www.smb.compaq.com
Select Order Status
"
How "American" can you get?
The "Indians" were here first, and the only reason they weren't called "Americans" was because some white guy couldn't read a map or take a look around him to see that he wasn't in India.
The police report is not for disorderly conduct or harassment, they arrested him because they had "red flagged" the "video card customers" that came in to be arrested.
He walked in and asked why he didn;t get his card, they called the cops and he was arrested for asking a question, after the cops found out what exactly Best Buy was pulling, they let him go.
"This is just a typo in the system, including the billing system. It wasn't done on purpose and nobody was forced to buy the card at $400, they had a choice to either take the refund and go away or order it at the higher price."
They were not given refunds, Best Buy still has most of the people's money that have not called their credit card companies and requested a "denial of payment" to that transaction from Best Buy.
It's more than a bait and switch, it's a "Give me your money and I'll give you this product, oh wait, no, I'll give you nothing, oh wait, I'll give you the option of nothing, or being arrested, oh wait, I'll give you a class action laws.... oh wait, I'm fired."
Looking at the turn of events latley I'm glad to see that someone is taking such an active role in keeping the Govt agencies in check.
If they have the right to enact the holy "DMCA" then what do we have to ensure they are not using computers to break the law for their own benifit?
We can't even have code distributed that might possibly break someones rights, but they can copy every data transmittion across a network that they don't own? I don't think so. There needs to be some sort of fair play here, or else we're not much better than a dictatorship in which they get to tell us what we can't do and we get to shut up and take it or be arrested under laws we didn't vote on (read DMCA).
Which would be the problem with people.
They only look at things as though they can't be done or are hard to do, without questioning if they could be done differently.
Case in point:
From the article on the 5 year old's patent:
"Intellectual-property experts said the patent clearly should have not been issued, but that such mistakes were inevitable from an underfunded government agency that issues 3,000 patents each week."
This is the reaction I'm talking about, not that the patent office should not be giving out 3,000 patents every week, but since they do, there are mistakes. And underfunded? anybody file a patent lately? It cost this boys father $1,000 dollars to file his patent. With that as an example cost, the process cost the patent filers 3,000,000 dollars a week. Someone gets that money, and the patent office is the most likely cantidate that I can think of.
If the lawyers are getting that money, well that's the patent office's fault for not looking over the patents themselves and billing the same as the lawyers. It's their only job after all.
From the article:
"Even if the pages no longer exist on XS4ALL sites, we want the search engines to remove the link because it still advertises a handbook for destruction. People will start looking for it elsewhere and we don't want that,"
What part of the united states law do these people not understand? The part about our people's right to distribute knowledge, any knowledge, even bad knowledge perhaps? Oh wait, that's not our right anymore. The DMCA and the Corporations that bought it into being took care of that.
Nevermind.
I know that they don't actually manufacture them. but they supply the bulk of the functionality of the product, without the Windows operating system can the winmodem be used? can linux use a winmodem? can any other operating system that is not windows use this product?
They, like any other manufacturer, should be responsible for the quality and "claimed" compatibility of their product.
Why should AMD be expected to support abit motherboards? Why should microsoft be expected to support AMD? Why should ATI support ViewSonic?
BECAUSE THEY ARE DESIGNED TO WORK TOGETHER!
That's why you bought them.
"A Microsoft representative was
unaware of any additional details
about what was to be presented."
With the problems I have getting any support from their pay support for winmodem compatibility, this is such a telling statement.
You have the choice to use those products.
We who do not choose to use those programs should not have to run the code they do not use when they're not being run. If I do not want to run internet explorer code then I should have the right to disable it. Especially if by having it running it slows my system down and provides no benifit to me. If I want to run outlook (and suscribe to microsofts Outlook Virus of the Week Mailing List) then I would benifit from having the code running.
98lite.net provides me with a choice to remove code, if I want to use that code then I do not disable it. Simple. 98lite has many settings not just concerning explorer. Actually look at the site before you comment. And use some common sense.
good reboot-monkey...
now go read the site.
internet explorer code is disabled and not running to slow your system down if you use netscape.
you no longer have two sets of html rendering code running. just the one you choose.
OK, there really needs to be some coverage about this site 98lite.net
It's a program for modularizing windows into components to speed up Windows operation and stabilize the platform. in other words... you can remove internet explorer. And many other "integrated" features that microsoft says will "cripple" the OS.
I'm saying that the technology and the process described in the article are just like Niven's description in the book, neither the article nor Niven's book state any superconduction properties.
My statement:
This is exactly like the "Black Power" described in Larry Niven's "Flatlander" series.
Your reply:
Nope, Mr. Niven never said it (black power) was superconducting in nature.
My comment:
Read the article. It never says that their invention is superconducting in nature. So they are the same concept.
Let me spell it out for you:
They do not have the right to just assign themselves the right to do something just because they haven't been told specifically not to do it.
They should present a proposal to the FCC to ask for jurisdiction clarification on this point, it the article it specifically states that they have not been given any rights whatsoever and that they are using this ruling (that they made) to make rights available to themselves, which is exactly the same thing as the analogy of the child determining that he has the right to decide who makes the bedtime rules.
The moral of the post is:
Ask for a ruling from someone in power don't just assume that you have it because they haven't told you that you don't.
"the California Public Utilities Commission has ruled that it has the authority to regulate DSL-based Internet services in addition to the FCC."
Doesn't this sound like "I give myself the right to hit you" or "I give my company the right to regulate what car you drive"
Who gave them the authority to rule over this in any way?
Does the child say wether he or his parents get to set his bedtime?
"Flatlander" by Lary Niven,
Page 328
Sixth paragraph down,
and I quote:
"What's finally knocked the bottom out is this new solar electric paint. Black Power, they call it. It turns sunlight into electricity, just like any solar power converter, but you spray it on."
"Flatlander" is a collection of stories about Gil "The ARM" Hamilton and the short story that this is quoted from is called "The Woman in Del Rey Crater" It's the sixteenth page in the actual story.
This is exactly like the "Black Power" described in Larry Niven's "Flatlander" series. A black substance sprayed onto any surface to provide solar collection.
I love it when science fiction leads the way to science fact.
"avoid the issue..."
yeah, more like "avoid being bitch slapped by the hords of loud bitchy anti-spam leagions of the internet."
Good call Battle Creek, Michigan
So I can legally send a notice to a spamming company that serves as legal notification if they do not list a phone number or physical address, and it will be backed by this precident.
I love it when a ruling can affect something intelligent, especially when the ruling itself isn't that smart.
Then we can have viruses and plagues that are more evolved than us.
I also wonder what evolution we would have "naturally" gone through.
K.
"I'd imagine that the unreputible companies just use thier database to build thier own list full of verified email addresses."
Then they would be more likely to get massive complaints since these people on this list actively do not like spam, they're more likely to raise a fuss than someone not on the list.
"So you only advertist to people who haven't found the list yet.
That idea is broken on so many levels I don't know where to start. I choose to allow people to access my computer, not choose to disallows them."
The point is that your address is being harvested anyway, not asking you for permission gets around your choice not to hand them your address.
Mailing the people that haven't found the list would not bother anybody that isn't looking for a way to block spam, the peope that want to have services that require you to give them your e-mail address and not be spammed would find the list program and thus recieve less spam.
"s/agency/single point of failure/g"
since when do people automatically think that a business is going to run a product that couldn't handle load balancing database requests?
If spammers are willing to buy e-mail address lists that have a claim of 80% valid addresses, then they'll pay to verify that and also avoid lawsuits from anti-spam activists. Hence having beowulf clusters to serve the database.
"And watch it get DOSsed off the Net by the real spammers."
Hence geting more money for beowulf clusters from suing them for doing it.
"How would the 3rd party database recoup its bandwidth costs?"
Like any other service, charge the people with money for providing them a service that makes them better at what they do.
Spammers want sales not complaints and litigation, this benifits them as well as us.
"That's called the Direct Marketing Association. But how much good does it do to get your address off the lists of 10 reputable companies when 1000s of spammers pay no attention to the opt-out list?"
Because there aren't that many mass mailing companies out there. And the ones that really do the most damage are super mass mailers.
slashdot stories elude that Spam companies have: "... simply got someone at one end of a home broadband pipeline using open relay mail servers, and most likely being paid to redistribute spam on the email addresses they harvest."
and it's only a start, before such a list becomes a mandatory check, or opt-in is elected internet law (hopefully). It's optimistic but what's the point in fighting spam if you don't try something.
It'd be interesting to have an agency that you could send your e-mail address and preferences to that could be checked by potential buyers of e-mail lists.
It could serve as a free service to the people who care enough to act on their need not to recieve spam. Any reputible company would check their databases with the 3rd party database and remove the e-mail addresses of people who opted out of all spam. Maximizing their direct marketing costs of sending out mailings.
OK, keep up with the complex logical banter...
my quote:
It's a wonder he even got the position with an attitude like this...
your response:
So Karl wasn't chosen by ICANN management. He was chosen by a somewhat reasonably clued subset of Internet users in North America.
my reply:
I did not say he was chosen by management.
You seem to understand the article fairly well but you might want to read the posts before you start subtly insulting people for things you misread.
That's the point, "...all excess funds go back into itself.
That's fundamentally wrong.
So the more "excess funds" they can generate the more they make. They require payment for the use of a right to participate and be represented in the proceedings. That's frankly BS.
A non profit organization that claims to be a public service company, should not be giving out paychecks in excess of the cost of the service they provide.
PBS employees don't make 250,000 a year even if they are the most highly paid exec in the company.
This is because the service they provide is expensive to run, bandwidth, airtime, show costs, sets, etc. This is where a nonprofit business should spend the money. I don't see 13 beowolf clusters serving as root servers for the net. (not that I think they need that kind of power)
But the budget should be used for the company not the management board.