Here amazon admits the issue and how they have stopped the bot until they can investigate the issue.
Amazon is actually very affiliate friendly. They have banned the scumware like wurldmedia, ebates and others that try and hijack affiliate comissions. Unlike affiliate programs by overstock.com,buy.com and others that are so desperate for short term cash they will screw over their current affiliates for some quick cash.
Considering buy.com is so deep in with the scumware people, i am surprised slashdot.org advertises them.
You might need a lawyer once you get papers served. It isn't a lawsuit until registered US mail tells you it is one. Tell him to sue you. Trust me it is the quickest way to resolve this.
He will go to his corporate lawyer and they will laugh at him and it will all go away. If you do get served papers, and if it is the do this by this time or else variety or any other kinds of threat, remember threats are not lawsuits, lawsuits are lawsuits. Once you get the papers there are two options. If they are from the corporate lawyer, take them serious. Get a lawyer. They are paying this guy anyways, he is only going to get off his ass if he has a reason.
If they are from this guy's private lawyer, Call him and tell him his client is an idiot. He knows it. He is just taking the work because that is how he is paid and this guys corporate lawyer already told him he doesn't have a case.
If anything comes from the police, or worse, they show up at your door with a court order. Call a lawyer. And don't make jokes with any of the following in them - pig, bacon or donuts. Whatever thoughts come into your head, don't say them out loud. Offer them coffee and ask them if they ever shot anyone. If you have one who did, they will probably forget what they were serving you by the time his story is over.
If it is the secret service, don't worry. If they were going to arrest you, they would have already. By the time they contact you, they know who you are and if they are going to arrest you.
I have been the legal point man for fatchicksinpartyhats (no longer), fatbabies (the game rumor site), evilemail and many other sites. I have been threatened with emails and phone calls more times then I can count. I have been served enough papers from all of the above scenarios that I have two file folders full.
I have never been taken to court, I have never paid a lawyer.
So don't get a lawyer yet. You will only be wasting money and they will try and convince you that you need to put them on retainer. Try logic and reason if you get the papers. Suprisingly enough logic and reason still win out in most cases.
And if you listen to my advice, and something bad happens to you - why in the hell were you listening to legal advice from a guy who had something to do with fatchicksinpartyhats?
Chet
I submittes stories on this last spring when they first started. How big of scum are these guys? After speaking out on affiliate boards against this company and personally talking some merchants into dropping them, wurldmedia/morpheus sent a goon to my house and threatened me. I am not kidding. They kept saying what I was saying was libelous and that one of their biggest investors was the second top cop in NY state and he could fast track any legal action against me.
Nice!
The idiot Kirk did create my favorite juxatposition of quotes:
Morpheus referred inquiries to Wurld Media, which operates its shopping rebates program. Kirk H. Feathers, the chief technical officer of Wurld Media, said that it had been wrongly accused of stealing and that the company would readily go to court to defend itself.
He acknowledged that an earlier version of the company's software did divert commissions away from other affiliate sites but said that new versions dealt with that situation.
So now he is threatening to sue people who quote him? He is a complete ass.
The stupidest thing out of all of this. The merchants who go with them see an increase in affiliate sales - sure, because they are paying affiliate comissions now even if someone just typed the site name into the browser! These companies do not drive traffic or promote the companies, they leave that to webmasters, they just step in at the last minute and grab the sale. In the long run this seriously impacts merchants and causes them to see a lower return on their affiliate programs, and then as affiliates leave since their commissions are being taken, the merchant is left with nothing.
The ad networks love this because they are paid a % on each comission. So what do they care? Comission Junction has gone from trusted third party, to scam that will do anything not illegal. I guess the idea of being ethical is beyond them? Phww.. Surprise, they are an idealab company.
I would never would have thought MS would spam, that is something only desperate companies do.
And here I thought that was a personal note to me. I have spent the last three hours writing my personal reply. Guess I will just send it to this nice Nigerian man who just emailed me, he just suffered a personal tragedy and seems to need some support.
I contacted them about hosting this scumware and here was their response.
When we were alerted to the problem we removed the software but then the author removed the questionable function so we reposted it.
Ahh, so the virus writer has new software so you will let them in again! Great job, good to see Digital River cares... why would they do this?
To capitalize on the outrage and the traffic it brought. Digital River is throwing away any idea of community or protecting their community to cash in on the publicity of this scum ware. Screw digital river. We had used them previous for symantec purchases, no more.
Digital River is the enabler in this whole mess, who would think CNet would be smart and responsible enough to take the proper action - but not Digital river. Sad.
Chet
To hell with the idiots downloading porn or warez.
This affects website owners. Many small websites make ends meet by their affiliate links. This will steal that money away. This is one of the few way small webmasters can make money - short of begging.
And aren't we all sick of the virtual begging cup by now? Don't let the last legit way for sites to make money be destroyed. Sites that don't have traffic for banner ads sales, need these sales. They need this income. If this takes off, it will wipe out small sites everywhere.
As an example, look at http://www.gonegold.com
Informative helpful website. IGN pays them squat. But they do make money on their affiliate gaming links. Take them away and who will pay the site's bandwidth? That is the real issue, that is the real fight. And for some smaller sites, this really is a fight for their survival.
By the way- what is the implications that the only thing you have to agree with when installing morpheus is the gnu license. their is no mention of this spyware(even though it is installed).
Less likely? Give me a break. The bank side that handles the credit processing is not the same side that has friendly tellers and someone giving you a lollipop.
When there is a suspicion of fraud what do you think citibank will do? Hold you hand and give you money?
They are going to freeze your account and make you eat the loss. They do not have some magical "real bank" spell they cast and make fraud go away or take the burden away from the seller.
In 1984, I went to cleveland state university. My first cis class was fortran. They handed me stack of cards and a simple program to write.
I punched out the program on a puncher that made barely deciphrable marks above the punches (so you could read your code.)
Handed the cards off to be processed. 24 hours later I was told there was an error. I couldn't read one of the 24 cards. As I was trying to figure it out, and walking back to class, I was bumped and dropped the cards in a mess.
I dropped the class. Left CSU. Never took another computer science class in my life.
I was going to say I should curse punchcards, but in the long run, I guess I should thank them.
> Dear Chet,
>
> By the way of introduction, I am the Business Development
> Administrator at TRUSTe, the Internet's leading privacy seal program.
> Privacy, the handling of personal information collected from consumers,
> has become the key issues that dramatically shapes consumer trust.
> According to Business Week/Harris Poll, 92% of users mistrust privacy
> statements unless the site uses a third party oversight program. It
> also stated that 78% of online users said they would increase use if
> Internet was more protected and 61% of non-users would more likely to
> begin using the Internet. Clearly, consumers are demanding enhanced
> privacy protection and, responding to these demands, smart companies are
> beginning to take steps to ensure that their customers have control over
> their personal information. To that end, there are several best
> practices that companies can follow to ensure that appropriate, trust
> building privacy guidelines are in place. One of which is to join
> TRUSTe's Web Privacy Program.
>
> TRUSTe, the leading online privacy organization, is the most
> trust-invoking symbol on the Internet. TRUSTe currently has more than
> 2000 licensees, which includes companies such as MICROSOFT, INTEL AOL,
> EXCITE@HOME and many more. The TRUSTe Privacy Seal program was founded
> on the core tenets of Fair Information Practices, which are endorsed by
> the Federal Trade Commission, and is constantly updated. In addition to
> its privacy seal program, TRUSTe has several other programs such as the
> Children's Privacy Seal Program, EU Safe Harbor, e-Health Seal Program
> and the Software Pilot Privacy Program.
>
> One central element in all of these programs is the TRUSTe Watchdog, an
> alternative dispute resolution mechanism that allows consumers to bring
> their privacy-related complaints to TRUSTe.
>
> By addressing consumer privacy concerns, you can take the initial
> steps to gain user trust. If you have any questions about the issue of
> privacy or the TRUSTe program, please feel free to contact me or visit
> or Web site at www.truste.org for more in depth information. I look
> forward to hearing from you.
>
> Best,
>
>
> Israel Canjura, JR.
> Business Development Administrator
>
> TRUSTe
> 1180 Coleman Ave Ste. 202
> San Jose, CA 95110
> Phone (408) 494-4970, Fax (408) 494-4960
> __________________________________________________ __
>
> TRUSTe http://www.truste.org
> Building a Web you can believe in.
Oddly enough, it is impossible to contact truste.org through their main phone number, you only get a machine. The phone number here is Israel's and he does answer it. So maybe I am wrong, maybe this unsolicited piece of mail is not spam, maybe it it is just what i asked for when I blew out my birthday candles... I guess you could give Israel a call and ask him.
There is not one golf store. If you said, okay anyone who wants to send me info on golf, go ahead. You would get 100 golf stores, emailing you weekly. Would you like that? The Internet is not your local mall, before you agree to something or think it is a good idea, think of it on a big scale. Your simple answer does not scale, spam means unsolicited, so you don't control all these friendly golf companies sending you their tips, their hot items, their penis growth forumlas.
That is the problem with all legislation so far. It does not look at the Internet and see its true scale and global reach.
Chet
-California residents, vote against spam, vote against the spammer bill jones.
That is what pissed me off about this. In the version of the install that infected me - there was no option and the user agreement made no note that there was spyware - except if I checked a link mentioned, that would discuss the spyware.
So the notice of spying was not in the agreement and it was not an option. AudioGalaxy to be complete pricks, then changed the package after some period of time to include two new items with warnings, but never changed their package number. I think this was on purpose to discredit people complaing about the spyware install.
Which is why, when someone proposes that the CIA monitors every email,phone call etc - I have to laugh. What good would that do? If you can't process the information in real time the backlog would just keep growing at an explosive rate.
At $8 a year I have about 100 domains. We use them for evilemail so they just don't sit, but not enough of you have registered for a chetrocks.com email addresses...
We get offers every so often for the more popular domains but nothing over $500. And no one ever actually says, yes I am sending the money.
We own istillhateyou.com and I thought having ihateyou.com would be cool. I emailed the idiot who runs the 'site' - aol address - he emailed back an asking price of $25,000. I will just wait. We have picked up more than a few domains from people who just didn't renew them, but even that is getting harder to grab with crap like verisign's snapback program.
If I try to associate my old name with my new passport name, I get an unknown error has occurred.
If i try and create a new alias, i get a 500 error.
One looming bug I found, if you enter the wrong password to your passport account and have it remember you, you have to delete the zone cookie. It will keep acting like you logged in and not offer you the login screen, yet you can't access anything.
Other fun bugs, almost every single page during the signup process asks you if you want to download both secure and insecure elements. Most forms take 2-3 times of submitting before one takes.
My thought, I guess.net does not allow you to easily setup a test enviroment. This was not tested. This is a mess. All I want to do is play some hearts, not create another account with fake data. And it won't even let me do that! If you remember the old apple game Prisoner, I think this is MS's tribute to it. It is a maddening quest to defeat the interface.
3 years ago we had a fraud case with our merchant account used to process credit cards. Some seemingly Russian individual using our merchant information first fraudulently sent two $1500 charges to our accounts on stolen credit cards. Once they knew there was $3000 in the account, they withdrew the money as refunds onto two other credit cards located in Russia that we had never charged.
Since in the credit card world (maybe it is different now) you don't see your statement until almost 45 days after some transactions, we had no idea this happened.
I called the bank. They looked into it and refunded the two charges from the stolen credit cards (so there goes $3000 out of my account) froze my account until further notice. And said it was all fixed. My contact at the bank could not understand why I was upset.
But what about the $3000 we refunded? I talked to their security guy, he said their system was secure and a red flag went off in the system when the fraud happened. When he traced it back, he reported the agent that found the fraud was Chet... my name. Yes! I am their security. That money was gone.
Our account was frozen for over 2 months. We lost both the refunds and magically, though they could give those people their refund, they could not refund us our stolen money.
This from a major bank, the Huntington. Paypals warning is only they act like every other bank when it comes to processing charges. The customer is right, the merchant is wrong. The merchant be damned.
I think the paypal outcry is only louder because many of these people have tiny little business, that had never experienced this lovely situation before. Ask a merchant about credit processing and watch the veins in their forehead grow.
Again - I will defer to the real world versus fairyland.
You do not fire the woman who can remember everyone of your clients kids birthdays and warn you before you take a call - just because she can't adjust to a new software you installed for zero benefit besides the fun of running on linux.
Why rock the boat for zero benefit?
I will answer your fire the person rant with this - if your company can't afford a new $600 windows desktop - you might want to close down your business.
Why do articles like this always skip the real cost of moving to a new OS? They act like every company has a linux expert just kicking around waiting to be utilized if they ever change their os. The cost isn't in the hardware, its in the people and the training. Like it or not, most offices have been using MS based client software on their desktop for years, to switch a whole office, even a small one, is not the same as for some geek in his bedroom to create a peer network so he and his friends can play quake.
The training/learning costs associated with moving not only one pc but a whole office would be overwhelming. No OS is dummy proof in setup. You can write off hardware expenses - you can't with people expenses.
Why do I always feel the people who write these articles have never worked in an office? They think, somehow the person who threw a fit when their desktop background changed when you upgraded them from win95 to 98 is going to be able to handle all the changes in moving to a new OS? I don't think so.
What is the benefit to a company? These are not some academic exercises - a company needs to weigh cost vs benefit. With zero benefit and high cost, it just doesn't make sense. Also lets be honest, hardware is cheap - you buy it once and it last 3+ years. Not much of a problem for most companies.
Schools are becoming nothing more than vocational schools for the tech industry. In the 60's if they would have insisted every kid learn about cars and give cars to ever 16 year old- people would have called such an idea moronic.
But now? I guess since its computers - its cool.
Computers are an interface to information - they are not the information. They are a tool. Not every kid needs to learn the tools of information. Especially if he has nothing to say - as more and more of these kids are going to show.
They spend money on this while they kill music programs around the country. Can't afford new books. Its sad. We will eventually become a nation of high-tech plumbers and carpenters.
Chet
Re:Wrong point
on
Seanbaby.com
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I am not paying $3000 for a T1. Reread what I said. We are currently utilizing almost 3 T1's worth of bandwidth. Our actual out of pocket costs are $1400 - and that is not colocation.
Chet
Re:Wrong point
on
Seanbaby.com
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I run poe, the sub network sean is on.
Seanbaby is currently hosted on ugo's servers. We had to make a deal with UGO (when they won't pay you money get something else). Sean was utilizing 60% of our T1 on most days. Now he has a T1 to himself on ugo's shared server but its metered, hence the no response today. But it is capped so no extra cost to us.
Our current bandwidth bills (if we actually paid for everything) would be over $3000 a month. Not what we are making in ad dollars anymore.
Eventually bandwidth will get cheaper, but will ad dollars just keep dropping as well? Right now this is all an expensive hobby.
Chet
Slashdot Mirror
To start yet another rocket company.
Isn't that what every geek does when he has money and free time?
Here amazon admits the issue and how they have stopped the bot until they can investigate the issue.
Amazon is actually very affiliate friendly. They have banned the scumware like wurldmedia, ebates and others that try and hijack affiliate comissions. Unlike affiliate programs by overstock.com,buy.com and others that are so desperate for short term cash they will screw over their current affiliates for some quick cash.
Considering buy.com is so deep in with the scumware people, i am surprised slashdot.org advertises them.
You might need a lawyer once you get papers served. It isn't a lawsuit until registered US mail tells you it is one. Tell him to sue you. Trust me it is the quickest way to resolve this.
He will go to his corporate lawyer and they will laugh at him and it will all go away. If you do get served papers, and if it is the do this by this time or else variety or any other kinds of threat, remember threats are not lawsuits, lawsuits are lawsuits. Once you get the papers there are two options. If they are from the corporate lawyer, take them serious. Get a lawyer. They are paying this guy anyways, he is only going to get off his ass if he has a reason. If they are from this guy's private lawyer, Call him and tell him his client is an idiot. He knows it. He is just taking the work because that is how he is paid and this guys corporate lawyer already told him he doesn't have a case.
If anything comes from the police, or worse, they show up at your door with a court order. Call a lawyer. And don't make jokes with any of the following in them - pig, bacon or donuts. Whatever thoughts come into your head, don't say them out loud. Offer them coffee and ask them if they ever shot anyone. If you have one who did, they will probably forget what they were serving you by the time his story is over.
If it is the secret service, don't worry. If they were going to arrest you, they would have already. By the time they contact you, they know who you are and if they are going to arrest you.
I have been the legal point man for fatchicksinpartyhats (no longer), fatbabies (the game rumor site), evilemail and many other sites. I have been threatened with emails and phone calls more times then I can count. I have been served enough papers from all of the above scenarios that I have two file folders full.
I have never been taken to court, I have never paid a lawyer.
So don't get a lawyer yet. You will only be wasting money and they will try and convince you that you need to put them on retainer. Try logic and reason if you get the papers. Suprisingly enough logic and reason still win out in most cases.
And if you listen to my advice, and something bad happens to you - why in the hell were you listening to legal advice from a guy who had something to do with fatchicksinpartyhats?
Chet
Nice!
The idiot Kirk did create my favorite juxatposition of quotes: So now he is threatening to sue people who quote him? He is a complete ass.
The stupidest thing out of all of this. The merchants who go with them see an increase in affiliate sales - sure, because they are paying affiliate comissions now even if someone just typed the site name into the browser! These companies do not drive traffic or promote the companies, they leave that to webmasters, they just step in at the last minute and grab the sale. In the long run this seriously impacts merchants and causes them to see a lower return on their affiliate programs, and then as affiliates leave since their commissions are being taken, the merchant is left with nothing.
The ad networks love this because they are paid a % on each comission. So what do they care? Comission Junction has gone from trusted third party, to scam that will do anything not illegal. I guess the idea of being ethical is beyond them? Phww.. Surprise, they are an idealab company.
Chet
I would never would have thought MS would spam, that is something only desperate companies do.
And here I thought that was a personal note to me. I have spent the last three hours writing my personal reply. Guess I will just send it to this nice Nigerian man who just emailed me, he just suffered a personal tragedy and seems to need some support.
Chet
Hum... and I thought the ending meant, we will all be saved through pre-martial sex. Or maybe that is just what I was hoping.
Chet
Ahh, so the virus writer has new software so you will let them in again! Great job, good to see Digital River cares... why would they do this? To capitalize on the outrage and the traffic it brought. Digital River is throwing away any idea of community or protecting their community to cash in on the publicity of this scum ware. Screw digital river. We had used them previous for symantec purchases, no more.
Digital River is the enabler in this whole mess, who would think CNet would be smart and responsible enough to take the proper action - but not Digital river. Sad.
Chet
To hell with the idiots downloading porn or warez.
This affects website owners. Many small websites make ends meet by their affiliate links. This will steal that money away. This is one of the few way small webmasters can make money - short of begging.
And aren't we all sick of the virtual begging cup by now? Don't let the last legit way for sites to make money be destroyed. Sites that don't have traffic for banner ads sales, need these sales. They need this income. If this takes off, it will wipe out small sites everywhere.
As an example, look at http://www.gonegold.com
Informative helpful website. IGN pays them squat. But they do make money on their affiliate gaming links. Take them away and who will pay the site's bandwidth? That is the real issue, that is the real fight. And for some smaller sites, this really is a fight for their survival.
By the way- what is the implications that the only thing you have to agree with when installing morpheus is the gnu license. their is no mention of this spyware(even though it is installed).
Chet
Less likely? Give me a break. The bank side that handles the credit processing is not the same side that has friendly tellers and someone giving you a lollipop.
When there is a suspicion of fraud what do you think citibank will do? Hold you hand and give you money?
They are going to freeze your account and make you eat the loss. They do not have some magical "real bank" spell they cast and make fraud go away or take the burden away from the seller.
Chet
The site is just filled with people who have no comparisons. Pay Pal acts just like any other credit processing company - no better, no worse.
They all freeze your accounts at the drop of a hat.
They all stick the seller with a loss when there is fraud.
They all hold your money in some stasis where you cannot access it, but you can lose it.
The only thing new paypal did was bring the nightmare of credit processing to the normal joe.
Chet
In 1984, I went to cleveland state university. My first cis class was fortran. They handed me stack of cards and a simple program to write.
I punched out the program on a puncher that made barely deciphrable marks above the punches (so you could read your code.)
Handed the cards off to be processed. 24 hours later I was told there was an error. I couldn't read one of the 24 cards. As I was trying to figure it out, and walking back to class, I was bumped and dropped the cards in a mess.
I dropped the class. Left CSU. Never took another computer science class in my life.
I was going to say I should curse punchcards, but in the long run, I guess I should thank them.
Chet
Do you participte in discussions that list your real email?
Do you have a website?
Do you just want to say FU to all the people who interact with you from these sources, but live outside the USA?
Another solution ignoring the scale and reach of the Internet.
> Dear Chet,_ __
>
> By the way of introduction, I am the Business Development
> Administrator at TRUSTe, the Internet's leading privacy seal program.
> Privacy, the handling of personal information collected from consumers,
> has become the key issues that dramatically shapes consumer trust.
> According to Business Week/Harris Poll, 92% of users mistrust privacy
> statements unless the site uses a third party oversight program. It
> also stated that 78% of online users said they would increase use if
> Internet was more protected and 61% of non-users would more likely to
> begin using the Internet. Clearly, consumers are demanding enhanced
> privacy protection and, responding to these demands, smart companies are
> beginning to take steps to ensure that their customers have control over
> their personal information. To that end, there are several best
> practices that companies can follow to ensure that appropriate, trust
> building privacy guidelines are in place. One of which is to join
> TRUSTe's Web Privacy Program.
>
> TRUSTe, the leading online privacy organization, is the most
> trust-invoking symbol on the Internet. TRUSTe currently has more than
> 2000 licensees, which includes companies such as MICROSOFT, INTEL AOL,
> EXCITE@HOME and many more. The TRUSTe Privacy Seal program was founded
> on the core tenets of Fair Information Practices, which are endorsed by
> the Federal Trade Commission, and is constantly updated. In addition to
> its privacy seal program, TRUSTe has several other programs such as the
> Children's Privacy Seal Program, EU Safe Harbor, e-Health Seal Program
> and the Software Pilot Privacy Program.
>
> One central element in all of these programs is the TRUSTe Watchdog, an
> alternative dispute resolution mechanism that allows consumers to bring
> their privacy-related complaints to TRUSTe.
>
> By addressing consumer privacy concerns, you can take the initial
> steps to gain user trust. If you have any questions about the issue of
> privacy or the TRUSTe program, please feel free to contact me or visit
> or Web site at www.truste.org for more in depth information. I look
> forward to hearing from you.
>
> Best,
>
>
> Israel Canjura, JR.
> Business Development Administrator
>
> TRUSTe
> 1180 Coleman Ave Ste. 202
> San Jose, CA 95110
> Phone (408) 494-4970, Fax (408) 494-4960
> _________________________________________________
>
> TRUSTe http://www.truste.org
> Building a Web you can believe in.
Oddly enough, it is impossible to contact truste.org through their main phone number, you only get a machine. The phone number here is Israel's and he does answer it. So maybe I am wrong, maybe this unsolicited piece of mail is not spam, maybe it it is just what i asked for when I blew out my birthday candles... I guess you could give Israel a call and ask him.
I disagree.
There is not one golf store. If you said, okay anyone who wants to send me info on golf, go ahead. You would get 100 golf stores, emailing you weekly. Would you like that? The Internet is not your local mall, before you agree to something or think it is a good idea, think of it on a big scale. Your simple answer does not scale, spam means unsolicited, so you don't control all these friendly golf companies sending you their tips, their hot items, their penis growth forumlas.
That is the problem with all legislation so far. It does not look at the Internet and see its true scale and global reach.
Chet
-California residents, vote against spam, vote against the spammer bill jones.
That is what pissed me off about this. In the version of the install that infected me - there was no option and the user agreement made no note that there was spyware - except if I checked a link mentioned, that would discuss the spyware.
So the notice of spying was not in the agreement and it was not an option. AudioGalaxy to be complete pricks, then changed the package after some period of time to include two new items with warnings, but never changed their package number. I think this was on purpose to discredit people complaing about the spyware install.
Chet
Which is why, when someone proposes that the CIA monitors every email,phone call etc - I have to laugh. What good would that do? If you can't process the information in real time the backlog would just keep growing at an explosive rate.
It would be useless.
Chet
At $8 a year I have about 100 domains. We use them for evilemail so they just don't sit, but not enough of you have registered for a chetrocks.com email addresses...
We get offers every so often for the more popular domains but nothing over $500. And no one ever actually says, yes I am sending the money.
We own istillhateyou.com and I thought having ihateyou.com would be cool. I emailed the idiot who runs the 'site' - aol address - he emailed back an asking price of $25,000. I will just wait. We have picked up more than a few domains from people who just didn't renew them, but even that is getting harder to grab with crap like verisign's snapback program.
Chet
If I try to associate my old name with my new passport name, I get an unknown error has occurred.
.net does not allow you to easily setup a test enviroment. This was not tested. This is a mess. All I want to do is play some hearts, not create another account with fake data. And it won't even let me do that! If you remember the old apple game Prisoner, I think this is MS's tribute to it. It is a maddening quest to defeat the interface.
If i try and create a new alias, i get a 500 error.
One looming bug I found, if you enter the wrong password to your passport account and have it remember you, you have to delete the zone cookie. It will keep acting like you logged in and not offer you the login screen, yet you can't access anything.
Other fun bugs, almost every single page during the signup process asks you if you want to download both secure and insecure elements. Most forms take 2-3 times of submitting before one takes.
My thought, I guess
Chet
3 years ago we had a fraud case with our merchant account used to process credit cards. Some seemingly Russian individual using our merchant information first fraudulently sent two $1500 charges to our accounts on stolen credit cards. Once they knew there was $3000 in the account, they withdrew the money as refunds onto two other credit cards located in Russia that we had never charged.
Since in the credit card world (maybe it is different now) you don't see your statement until almost 45 days after some transactions, we had no idea this happened.
I called the bank. They looked into it and refunded the two charges from the stolen credit cards (so there goes $3000 out of my account) froze my account until further notice. And said it was all fixed. My contact at the bank could not understand why I was upset.
But what about the $3000 we refunded? I talked to their security guy, he said their system was secure and a red flag went off in the system when the fraud happened. When he traced it back, he reported the agent that found the fraud was Chet... my name. Yes! I am their security. That money was gone.
Our account was frozen for over 2 months. We lost both the refunds and magically, though they could give those people their refund, they could not refund us our stolen money.
This from a major bank, the Huntington. Paypals warning is only they act like every other bank when it comes to processing charges. The customer is right, the merchant is wrong. The merchant be damned.
I think the paypal outcry is only louder because many of these people have tiny little business, that had never experienced this lovely situation before. Ask a merchant about credit processing and watch the veins in their forehead grow.
Chet
I find if I close my eyes while I browse, all the big bad men who spend all their lives tracking me go away.
That or type left handed - that always throws them off. Gotta run before they figure out my whereabouts from this post.
Chet
Again - I will defer to the real world versus fairyland.
You do not fire the woman who can remember everyone of your clients kids birthdays and warn you before you take a call - just because she can't adjust to a new software you installed for zero benefit besides the fun of running on linux.
Why rock the boat for zero benefit?
I will answer your fire the person rant with this - if your company can't afford a new $600 windows desktop - you might want to close down your business.
Chet
Why do articles like this always skip the real cost of moving to a new OS? They act like every company has a linux expert just kicking around waiting to be utilized if they ever change their os. The cost isn't in the hardware, its in the people and the training. Like it or not, most offices have been using MS based client software on their desktop for years, to switch a whole office, even a small one, is not the same as for some geek in his bedroom to create a peer network so he and his friends can play quake.
The training/learning costs associated with moving not only one pc but a whole office would be overwhelming. No OS is dummy proof in setup. You can write off hardware expenses - you can't with people expenses.
Why do I always feel the people who write these articles have never worked in an office? They think, somehow the person who threw a fit when their desktop background changed when you upgraded them from win95 to 98 is going to be able to handle all the changes in moving to a new OS? I don't think so.
What is the benefit to a company? These are not some academic exercises - a company needs to weigh cost vs benefit. With zero benefit and high cost, it just doesn't make sense. Also lets be honest, hardware is cheap - you buy it once and it last 3+ years. Not much of a problem for most companies.
Chet
Schools are becoming nothing more than vocational schools for the tech industry. In the 60's if they would have insisted every kid learn about cars and give cars to ever 16 year old- people would have called such an idea moronic.
But now? I guess since its computers - its cool.
Computers are an interface to information - they are not the information. They are a tool. Not every kid needs to learn the tools of information. Especially if he has nothing to say - as more and more of these kids are going to show.
They spend money on this while they kill music programs around the country. Can't afford new books. Its sad. We will eventually become a nation of high-tech plumbers and carpenters.
Chet
I am not paying $3000 for a T1. Reread what I said. We are currently utilizing almost 3 T1's worth of bandwidth. Our actual out of pocket costs are $1400 - and that is not colocation. Chet
I run poe, the sub network sean is on. Seanbaby is currently hosted on ugo's servers. We had to make a deal with UGO (when they won't pay you money get something else). Sean was utilizing 60% of our T1 on most days. Now he has a T1 to himself on ugo's shared server but its metered, hence the no response today. But it is capped so no extra cost to us. Our current bandwidth bills (if we actually paid for everything) would be over $3000 a month. Not what we are making in ad dollars anymore. Eventually bandwidth will get cheaper, but will ad dollars just keep dropping as well? Right now this is all an expensive hobby. Chet