It's not too late, i'm sure there are still some circulating somewhere.
Seriously, though. This is one reason why I don't buy CD's anymore. I have been afraid of the CD's ever since the late 90's when a KRS-One CD installed AOL on my computer from the Autorun feature of Windows 95.
Putting a commercially packaged CD into your Windows computer is like opening an attachment from an unknown sender.
I've no idea why someone would pay for the priviledge.
Let the artists starve until they come up with a sensible distribution method. If we are truly taking money out of their pockets, then let them put the screws to the label. I don't have time to protect everyone's interests. It's time for them to do something for themselves.
Hey Brittney, it ain't my fault you and Kevin can't afford forumla for little Shitney Jr. I don't feel like rolling the dice on the new "Whoops I did it yet again" CD. If i'm curious i'll download it.
Unless you are going to come over and personally re-install my OS... which I doubt.
I agree it sets a precedent. However, it's not the kind of precedent it should have set. It sets the precedent that a large corporation can do things that are completely illegal and cause widespread damage to the public and they'll just get a slap on the wrist.
Not if you opted out. Which EVERYBODY should do to class action suits.
The more people that opt of of class action suits, the less likely the punishment is to be a "slap on the wrist". The last thing Sony wants is a bunch of individuals out there with money hungry lawyers free from the confines of the class action settlement. It makes the class action settlement worthless.
We enable the slaps on the wrists because 99.9% of us don't take the time/effort to opt out of class-action scams.
This may seem obvious, but I wouldn't play this kind of game with IE. Or from Windows at all, for that matter.
Firefox. Java off. TOR Plugin Enabled.
I always use this configuration when going to a site that I think is of questionable repute.
It's slow, but it works.
And to the following post, I don't think it would breed more phishers. You can only pound a banking site with bad usernames/passwords from the same subnet without someone noticing (I hope). The more junk they receive from knowledgable users, the more time it will take them to accomplish anything devious, and the greater the chance that they will be detected... again, I hope.
I try to throw them some bogus info every now and then. It's really all I can do. I am not law enforcement.
It seems that even if I got duped into believing that some email written in broken English was from my bank, and even if I went ahead and logged in to the phony site, once I got there I'd see that it wasn't really my bank's site. At that point I could change my account information or cancel my credit card or whatever, and the info the phishers had harvested from me wouldn't be of any use to them.
I have clicked on several obvious phish emailed specifically to see what happened.
I would usually enter completely bogus information into it like:
Usernname: Bunghole
Password: eatmenowyoubuttmuch
It would take me to a plain page that simply said "Thank you for verifying your information!" or somethign similar and generic.
Every now and then it would redirect me to the real site.
I've never actually gotten into anything that looked like an account site. Once you provide the username/password, they are done with you and the phish ends there.
Sometimes it is fun to play around with the phishing scams. If everone who knew what they were clicked on them, and provided useless and inaccurate info, Phishing scams would become so overhwhwlmed with usueless information that they just might have to come up with another idea.
In the whole scheme of things, they've got much larger fish to fry than someone duping Americans into giving away their credit card numbers.
When the banks and large corporations start hurting and eating more and more of this fraudlent activity, I have feeling it will be bumped up a notch or two on the priority scale.
The only reason it has not reached this level already is because many of the attempts to date have been very inept and amatuer.
As they get better and more sophisticated, success rates will inevitably go up.
Because the person who owns the server is almost always some home user who plugged their Windows box directly into the internet. In the same way as compromised boxes are used to send spam, perform DDoS attacks, etc they are also used to run web servers for phishers.
Agreed. But wouldn't the ISP of the innocent user have some kind of record of where the fraud messages are being sent?
Earthlink (or whatever the ISP was) was able to tell the DC Police the exact locations that Chandra Levy pulled up on Mapquest.
Most likely the home user is plugged into a mainstream ISP... and almost all do some kind of logging. I have a hard to believe that they couldn't figure it out to some degree. Or maybe the just sends email through 5 chained mixmaster remailers. I don't know.
These phishers have to be pretty darn good to get away without leaving any trace whatsoever.
Given their technical prowess, you'd think they could spell better.
At least 3/4ths of my phishing messages contain blatant typos or grammatical errors.
"Please to update your accont with Citibank". I mean... come on.
(a) Avoiding the use of email for business is surrending to the s[pc]ammers.
I conduct almost all of my business online and I don't think this is necessary.
I am never, ever asked for a password or identifying information via email. At least never by the legitimate company.
And I never click a link in an email. If my bank/company wants me to update my information, I type their website URL by hand into Firefox, log into my account section, and do what I need to do.
It basically comes down to this: Don't click links in email.
This one basic rule really does solve 99.999% of all scam problems, while allowing you to conduct business online safely.
I can easily believe many, if not most could fall for well crafted phishing expeditions. I would agree with the cited article, those are weak examples unlikely to catch savvy users (though they still could catch the naive, of which there are millions!). (And, I would claim some of the examples really are nothing more than SPAM.)
I agree with you. Some are sophisticated, but the link is ALWAYS a give away. It is either some kind of redirect, an IP address, or a Bogus URL altogether.
Then again, how many people that use AOL know what an IP address is? 10... 20%?
Fine, they obviously do work.
But, this is what I don't understand...
How do these people avoid getting busted? They have IP addresses that point directly to the fake server. Finding out who owns the servers and where it is should be fairly elementary.
I mean, Sony/BMG can track down the exact studio apartment in Chicago of someone who downloaded "Ooops, I Did It Again", but we have people conducting massive financial and wire fraud with blatantly displayed IP addresses, and we can't just go an snatch them by the by the head and give them a solid flogging?
Okay, so many are in another countries. But how many countries DON'T have laws against this?
Post a threat against the President, and the Secret Service would be at your door with K-Y and rubber gloves in 3 minutes and 21 seconds. Attempt global financial fraud, broadcast your IP, and everything is cool?
How do these people NOT get busted, and busted hard?
There seems to be a huge amount of misunderstanding about the law regarding the use of SSN's. It is a violation of federal law to require a person to submit their SSN for anything other than certain finance related purposes (actually that's a pretty big and unfortunately hazy list, but one that is far smaller than businesses respect). I think it is legal for anyone to request it, but probably 90% of the time they have no basis for requiring it.
I don't use mine (except for financial institutions).
When my dog's vet asks for my SS#, I simply say "I don't have one".
There's really little that they can do about it. They give me a quizzical look, but that's about it.
Maybe I'm from Canada. Maybe I never applied for a number (technically, you don't have to).
I've yet to have anyone ask me "why?". I wouldn't be their business.
Of course, this doesn't work with banks. I give it to people who have an overt legitimate legal need for it.
But, if they don't pay me interest or wages... I have no Social Security Number.
That's been my position for years. Is it always convenient? No. The cellphone carrier required a deposit (which was paid back with interest after 1 year).
Utilities required a deposit when they were first set up (which were paid back with interest after 12-18 months).
You have to decide whether you want to trade short term convenience for privacy.
Most people choose the former, but I usually go with the latter.
I know it's yet another bugbear of this terrible modern age we live in, but you could actually have been a victim of identity theft.
I have no doubt that this is what happened.
The first time it took me literally 80 hours of my own time to get it "fixed". Unfortunately, it doesn't stay "fixed" for long as the same creditors simply report it the next month.
I don't have 80 hours per month to work pay-free for TRW & Experian.
I could hire a lawyere, sue, etc... and MAYBE get it resolved then, but I actually have a life. I never asked Experian to keep reports on me. It is THEIR report, not MINE. I have nothing to do with it.
When people say "my credit", I don't get it. It's a publicaly traded corporations file with your name on it that they sell to other company's for money. There is nothing "yours" about the report. If it was yours, you'd get paid when it was sold.
I am fortunate in that I do not use credit. I have a simple checking account, and pay for what I need. I bought a used car for a few thousand dollars in cash, I rent, I pay for what I need, etc. I pay all of my bills either early or on time. I don't care terribly much about TRW's file.
But, everyone who wrings their hands over "oh my credit, oh my FICO score!!!!!" (which is most Americans) would surely see me as an outright deadbeat who could not be trusted to babysit a sterile chicken egg from the refrigerator.
People are stupid. What can I do about it?
I just live the best I can and let people think what they want.
Heck, maybe a trashed "credit report" is a good thing. Since it is already toast, I am not a slave to it. Gives me one less thing to think about when I wake up.
-- Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose - Kris Kristoffersen
Good. If you can't manage your shit, why would I want to hire you? Or, why would I want you working for someone I do business with?
Pay your damn bills and there's no problem.
LOL. In a perfect world my frient.
The "credit reports" are managed by publically traded corporations and a recent survey showed that over 30% contained "major errors", and the trend is up.
I had two mortgages on "my" report, and have never owned a house.
Then, when you notice errors, it becomes YOUR full time job to work for the three Credit Reporting Agencies to clean up THEIR reports so that they will have more accurate data to sell. Assuming they even bother and don't simply declare the protests "frivolous".
Hey, tens of millions of unpaid employees maintaining the accuracy of your data. It's good work... if you can get it.
It's not a simple as paying your bills on time. You have to do that, and then order your credit reports constantly and spend half of your free time doing free work for the CRA's if there are errors. Of course, all of the major reporting corporations also offer a "monitoring service" so that you can actually pay to work for them.
What a bargain.
Credit Reports can be as much a work of fiction as they are to be accurate. People who work all of their lives as slaves to the FICO score can see it wiped out in one hour without any wrongdoing on their part.
If you are a slave to the credit report, then you aren't very free.
Private, publically traded credit reports should not be used for anything truly important until they get the accuracy of such reports to a reasonable level.
I have installed 1.5.0.3 on multiple sytems with no problems. All extensions working fine and settings stayed the same. Perhaps you have anither problem that coinicdentally showed abot the time you performed your update.
It's entirely possible that you are correct. I updated it via the "Automatic Update" on 5 machines in our network before stopping the process. All of the machines have lost all of the extensions except for some reason... "DOM Inspector".
I didn't do any tweaking whatsoever except press "upgrade" and then let Firefox restart itself. So it *shouldn't* have been any kind of operator error (unless I really just stink at pressing dialog buttons).
Since most of the same software is running on said machines, this could indeed be some sort of isolated conflict to our configs.
As always in these situations, your mileage WILL vary.
It may or may not happen to a particular user, but if you have taken alot of time to tweak things specifically to your liking, you may want to consider a quick backup before the upgrade.
FWIW, when I installed the newest 1.5.0.3 this morning, it removed ALL of my extensions (except for DOM inspector) and reset all of my settings to default... including my cookie exeptions.
I'm not too terribly happy at the moment, but life isn't pefect.
I would urge caution to possibly NOT update to this release as the extention scrubbing fix will probably be released within a few days.
. I call back the number on the card. The human there says, "why don't you call the number they gave you?" I explain. They think about it and realize this makes sense. About 15 minutes later, I'm connected to the right people -- usually after going through a supervisor at the call center.
The right way to do it, of course, is to have the human from the security department leave this message: To call us back, call the number on your card; then, immediately enter the following code to be directed to the right department. But they still haven't learned.
I shudder to think what will happen when I'm eventually home when they call. I certainly won't do anything except hang up and call back the same number.
I believe you have sufficiently illustrated the problem.
The banks do use the same methods as phishers, despite their claims to the contrary.
I also get voicemails from the "bank" asking me to call back, and when I call back I have to "verify my identify" through at least a couple of personal questions and at least part of my social security number. I have no way of knowing whether I have indeed called the bank, or some guy at a payphone.
It's not so much that the customers are stupid, it's that the banks have trained customers that they must respond to these types of inquiries, or they very well may have their checks/charges declined.
The banks created the system which is being abused. And they have done little to change their practices.
It's hard to determine who, exactly, are the stupid ones in this situation.
If it's not, and you really like Madonna, then stay home and jerk off to the cover of your old vinyl copy of the "Like a Virgin" LP. You'll probably get just as much out of the experience.
True. But at the concert, someone else cleans up the mess.
The Better Business Bureau is really a scam. It is funded by the companies that are a member of it.
It's simply a marketing tool. "Better Business" sounds great, and anyone who is a member must be good.... right?
Instead of going to Small Claims Court or filing a complaint with the FTC, Attorney General or something that could actually have teeth, you are basically encouraged to complain to a non-binding entity that works for the company you are complaining about.
They figure that if you go so far as to file a complaint, then maybe it will be a good idea to settle the claim. Then, the "Bureau" reports the event as "satisfactorily resolved", when all they really did was resolve an issue which they should have resolved in he first place. So, they get good publicity out of screwing you... after all, they eventually "resolved" your issue. Therefore, they must be great guys. Right?
Never mind that it costs you a bunch of time and inconvenience and they know they should have resolved the issue on the spot. It is much easier to screw you and hope you do nothing, but go ahead and make it right for the 1% of people who will take it as far as complaining to the BBB.
This gives them a spotless "BBB Rating", even though they may be the most customer unfriendly business on the planet. They have a biased judge mediating your complaint. Yippie.
The BBB is not accountable to the consumers and the numbers are not audited in any way. I'm quite sure you can pay to drop unresolved complaints. This is why many BBB complaints are ignored or not resolved. I doubt they pay the big claims. They just dispute it with the BBB and it stays "pending" forever. Or maybe they pay a few bucks to have the issue dropped from the ledger.
I wouldn't be shocked if they also sold your information to marketing firms.
The most intelligent thing for the American public to do would be to STOP filing anything with the BBB, declare it an irrelevant marketing scheme. If people stop using it, the marketers will have to come up with another scheme, or maybe just start treating the customers better.
The BBB works for the companies, not the consumer, and it just encourages companies to continue acting irresponsibly.
Too many people get the BBB confused with some kind of government entity working for the consumer. It's not.
It's a marketing tool. They even offer a referral service. You can go here to get a quote from "member" businesses who pay them for the referrals:
Doesn't Samsung's "zero dead pixel policy" only apply in Korea?
There was an annoucnement here in the USA some time ago. I believe./ even carried an article about it.
In any case, I refuse to buy anything with an LCD anywhere except at places that give full refunds if you're unsatisfied in any way with the product. (eg: Future Shop, Staples, London Drugs) Otherwise it's just too much of a pain.
Makes sense.
It's a shame, because I was interested in the Dell Latitute X1, but I couldn't find it from a 3rd party vendor, and their Dead Pixel Policy stinks.
Does Dell still offer the 30 Day no-questions-asked money back garantee, or have they scrapped that?
Laptops with stuck pixels has always been a problem - and one that most manufacturers will not return. And I think it is unreasonable for them to do this (although it would also really annoy me, having stuck pixels)
They always replace mine or the credit card charge gets disputed and I have never had to pay it.
When they tell me it is "industry standard", I tell them to feel free to send it to "The Industry" who should be thrilled with it, but that it is not up to my standard.
LCD technology is no longer bleeding edge. Do I know how many components go into making a 1600x1200+ LCD screen? Yes. But I have seen enough perfect ones to know that they exist in huge numbers.
Why should I pay the same price for 5 burned pixels that someone else paid to get a perfect screen?
An LCD with ANY burned out pixels is... defective. Period. I don't care what anyone says, burned pixels are a pain in the ass, and when you have forked out $3,000 for a machine, they stick out like a big middle finger.
I buy Samsung panels because they have a zero dead pixel policy. They also have competitively priced displays. Apparently it can be done without a company going into bankruptcy.
It's just easier and cheaper to have you accept a mistake by quoting "Industry Standards" which are no any more legally binding or carry any more weight than my preference for chocolate ice cream over vanilla.
Set your personal consumer standard. If it is not met, dispute the charge until it is met. If it is between that, or a chargeback, you will get your display replaced 99% of the time.
I've had to go through this dance 3 times, and have never settled for a fried pixel.
For the consumers that don't care about burned pixels, "slightly imperfect" LCD's should be offered to those consumers at a discount.
Being that roughly the same quality graphics chips are being used, we will get pretty much the same quality gaming experience this November, that we could have gotten last November, I don't see how this isn't bad for Sony.
I was waiting for the PS3, but i'll go ahead and spring for the Xbox.
You can't lag a competitor by a year on a next generation machine that (from all accounts) provides a very similar gaming experience.
Sony has been sitting back and resting on it's market dominance for some time (even releasing the PSP after Christmas last year when the DS was released before).
IMHO, Sony is to gaming what Microsoft is to computing. Overconfident.
I think the lack of urgency is going to bite Sony in the ass at some point.
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It's not too late, i'm sure there are still some circulating somewhere.
Seriously, though. This is one reason why I don't buy CD's anymore. I have been afraid of the CD's ever since the late 90's when a KRS-One CD installed AOL on my computer from the Autorun feature of Windows 95.
Putting a commercially packaged CD into your Windows computer is like opening an attachment from an unknown sender.
I've no idea why someone would pay for the priviledge.
Let the artists starve until they come up with a sensible distribution method. If we are truly taking money out of their pockets, then let them put the screws to the label. I don't have time to protect everyone's interests. It's time for them to do something for themselves.
Hey Brittney, it ain't my fault you and Kevin can't afford forumla for little Shitney Jr. I don't feel like rolling the dice on the new "Whoops I did it yet again" CD. If i'm curious i'll download it.
Unless you are going to come over and personally re-install my OS ... which I doubt.
Time to look out for the fan's interests ....
Not if you opted out. Which EVERYBODY should do to class action suits.
The more people that opt of of class action suits, the less likely the punishment is to be a "slap on the wrist". The last thing Sony wants is a bunch of individuals out there with money hungry lawyers free from the confines of the class action settlement. It makes the class action settlement worthless.
We enable the slaps on the wrists because 99.9% of us don't take the time/effort to opt out of class-action scams.
As usual, the enablers of this nonsense is us.
My copy of "Depressed, Drunk, and Alone" is supposed to arrive on Thursday. They added the cool new 'Suicide' feature.
Can't wait to get my hands on that thing.
I just happen to be very fashion-concious, but for some reason ....
Firefox. Java off. TOR Plugin Enabled.
I always use this configuration when going to a site that I think is of questionable repute.
It's slow, but it works.
And to the following post, I don't think it would breed more phishers. You can only pound a banking site with bad usernames/passwords from the same subnet without someone noticing (I hope). The more junk they receive from knowledgable users, the more time it will take them to accomplish anything devious, and the greater the chance that they will be detected ... again, I hope.
I try to throw them some bogus info every now and then. It's really all I can do. I am not law enforcement.
I have clicked on several obvious phish emailed specifically to see what happened.
I would usually enter completely bogus information into it like:
Usernname: Bunghole
Password: eatmenowyoubuttmuch
It would take me to a plain page that simply said "Thank you for verifying your information!" or somethign similar and generic.
Every now and then it would redirect me to the real site.
I've never actually gotten into anything that looked like an account site. Once you provide the username/password, they are done with you and the phish ends there.
Sometimes it is fun to play around with the phishing scams. If everone who knew what they were clicked on them, and provided useless and inaccurate info, Phishing scams would become so overhwhwlmed with usueless information that they just might have to come up with another idea.
Do your part! Screw with a scammer.
When the banks and large corporations start hurting and eating more and more of this fraudlent activity, I have feeling it will be bumped up a notch or two on the priority scale.
The only reason it has not reached this level already is because many of the attempts to date have been very inept and amatuer.
As they get better and more sophisticated, success rates will inevitably go up.
Agreed. But wouldn't the ISP of the innocent user have some kind of record of where the fraud messages are being sent?
Earthlink (or whatever the ISP was) was able to tell the DC Police the exact locations that Chandra Levy pulled up on Mapquest.
Most likely the home user is plugged into a mainstream ISP ... and almost all do some kind of logging. I have a hard to believe that they couldn't figure it out to some degree. Or maybe the just sends email through 5 chained mixmaster remailers. I don't know.
These phishers have to be pretty darn good to get away without leaving any trace whatsoever.
Given their technical prowess, you'd think they could spell better.
At least 3/4ths of my phishing messages contain blatant typos or grammatical errors.
"Please to update your accont with Citibank". I mean ... come on.
I conduct almost all of my business online and I don't think this is necessary.
I am never, ever asked for a password or identifying information via email. At least never by the legitimate company.
And I never click a link in an email. If my bank/company wants me to update my information, I type their website URL by hand into Firefox, log into my account section, and do what I need to do.
It basically comes down to this: Don't click links in email.
This one basic rule really does solve 99.999% of all scam problems, while allowing you to conduct business online safely.
I agree with you. Some are sophisticated, but the link is ALWAYS a give away. It is either some kind of redirect, an IP address, or a Bogus URL altogether.
Then again, how many people that use AOL know what an IP address is? 10 ... 20%?
Fine, they obviously do work.
But, this is what I don't understand ...
How do these people avoid getting busted? They have IP addresses that point directly to the fake server. Finding out who owns the servers and where it is should be fairly elementary.
I mean, Sony/BMG can track down the exact studio apartment in Chicago of someone who downloaded "Ooops, I Did It Again", but we have people conducting massive financial and wire fraud with blatantly displayed IP addresses, and we can't just go an snatch them by the by the head and give them a solid flogging?
Okay, so many are in another countries. But how many countries DON'T have laws against this?
Post a threat against the President, and the Secret Service would be at your door with K-Y and rubber gloves in 3 minutes and 21 seconds. Attempt global financial fraud, broadcast your IP, and everything is cool?
How do these people NOT get busted, and busted hard?
I don't get it.
I don't use mine (except for financial institutions).
When my dog's vet asks for my SS#, I simply say "I don't have one".
There's really little that they can do about it. They give me a quizzical look, but that's about it.
Maybe I'm from Canada. Maybe I never applied for a number (technically, you don't have to).
I've yet to have anyone ask me "why?". I wouldn't be their business.
Of course, this doesn't work with banks. I give it to people who have an overt legitimate legal need for it.
But, if they don't pay me interest or wages ... I have no Social Security Number.
That's been my position for years. Is it always convenient? No. The cellphone carrier required a deposit (which was paid back with interest after 1 year).
Utilities required a deposit when they were first set up (which were paid back with interest after 12-18 months).
You have to decide whether you want to trade short term convenience for privacy.
Most people choose the former, but I usually go with the latter.
I have no doubt that this is what happened.
The first time it took me literally 80 hours of my own time to get it "fixed". Unfortunately, it doesn't stay "fixed" for long as the same creditors simply report it the next month.
I don't have 80 hours per month to work pay-free for TRW & Experian.
I could hire a lawyere, sue, etc ... and MAYBE get it resolved then, but I actually have a life. I never asked Experian to keep reports on me. It is THEIR report, not MINE. I have nothing to do with it.
When people say "my credit", I don't get it. It's a publicaly traded corporations file with your name on it that they sell to other company's for money. There is nothing "yours" about the report. If it was yours, you'd get paid when it was sold.
I am fortunate in that I do not use credit. I have a simple checking account, and pay for what I need. I bought a used car for a few thousand dollars in cash, I rent, I pay for what I need, etc. I pay all of my bills either early or on time. I don't care terribly much about TRW's file.
But, everyone who wrings their hands over "oh my credit, oh my FICO score!!!!!" (which is most Americans) would surely see me as an outright deadbeat who could not be trusted to babysit a sterile chicken egg from the refrigerator.
People are stupid. What can I do about it?
I just live the best I can and let people think what they want.
Heck, maybe a trashed "credit report" is a good thing. Since it is already toast, I am not a slave to it. Gives me one less thing to think about when I wake up.
-- Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose - Kris Kristoffersen
Pay your damn bills and there's no problem.
LOL. In a perfect world my frient.
The "credit reports" are managed by publically traded corporations and a recent survey showed that over 30% contained "major errors", and the trend is up.
I had two mortgages on "my" report, and have never owned a house.
Then, when you notice errors, it becomes YOUR full time job to work for the three Credit Reporting Agencies to clean up THEIR reports so that they will have more accurate data to sell. Assuming they even bother and don't simply declare the protests "frivolous".
Hey, tens of millions of unpaid employees maintaining the accuracy of your data. It's good work ... if you can get it.
It's not a simple as paying your bills on time. You have to do that, and then order your credit reports constantly and spend half of your free time doing free work for the CRA's if there are errors. Of course, all of the major reporting corporations also offer a "monitoring service" so that you can actually pay to work for them.
What a bargain.
Credit Reports can be as much a work of fiction as they are to be accurate. People who work all of their lives as slaves to the FICO score can see it wiped out in one hour without any wrongdoing on their part.
If you are a slave to the credit report, then you aren't very free.
Private, publically traded credit reports should not be used for anything truly important until they get the accuracy of such reports to a reasonable level.
It's entirely possible that you are correct. I updated it via the "Automatic Update" on 5 machines in our network before stopping the process. All of the machines have lost all of the extensions except for some reason ... "DOM Inspector".
I didn't do any tweaking whatsoever except press "upgrade" and then let Firefox restart itself. So it *shouldn't* have been any kind of operator error (unless I really just stink at pressing dialog buttons).
Since most of the same software is running on said machines, this could indeed be some sort of isolated conflict to our configs.
As always in these situations, your mileage WILL vary.
It may or may not happen to a particular user, but if you have taken alot of time to tweak things specifically to your liking, you may want to consider a quick backup before the upgrade.
Then again, this really applies to any upgrade ...
I'm not too terribly happy at the moment, but life isn't pefect.
I would urge caution to possibly NOT update to this release as the extention scrubbing fix will probably be released within a few days.
The right way to do it, of course, is to have the human from the security department leave this message: To call us back, call the number on your card; then, immediately enter the following code to be directed to the right department. But they still haven't learned.
I shudder to think what will happen when I'm eventually home when they call. I certainly won't do anything except hang up and call back the same number.
I believe you have sufficiently illustrated the problem.
The banks do use the same methods as phishers, despite their claims to the contrary.
I also get voicemails from the "bank" asking me to call back, and when I call back I have to "verify my identify" through at least a couple of personal questions and at least part of my social security number. I have no way of knowing whether I have indeed called the bank, or some guy at a payphone.
It's not so much that the customers are stupid, it's that the banks have trained customers that they must respond to these types of inquiries, or they very well may have their checks/charges declined.
The banks created the system which is being abused. And they have done little to change their practices.
It's hard to determine who, exactly, are the stupid ones in this situation.
Leave PayPal out of this.
No, it comes that way out of the box.
True. But at the concert, someone else cleans up the mess.
Maybe your sister-in-law didn't meet his expecations either, and he became just as disallusioned.
If she married him because of future promises, I say the fault lies 100% with her.
I won't buy Vista until I know exactly what I will get from it on the exact day I buy it. I won't buy it for what is "promised" down the road.
The Better Business Bureau is really a scam. It is funded by the companies that are a member of it.
.... right?
... after all, they eventually "resolved" your issue. Therefore, they must be great guys. Right?
It's simply a marketing tool. "Better Business" sounds great, and anyone who is a member must be good
Instead of going to Small Claims Court or filing a complaint with the FTC, Attorney General or something that could actually have teeth, you are basically encouraged to complain to a non-binding entity that works for the company you are complaining about.
They figure that if you go so far as to file a complaint, then maybe it will be a good idea to settle the claim. Then, the "Bureau" reports the event as "satisfactorily resolved", when all they really did was resolve an issue which they should have resolved in he first place. So, they get good publicity out of screwing you
Never mind that it costs you a bunch of time and inconvenience and they know they should have resolved the issue on the spot. It is much easier to screw you and hope you do nothing, but go ahead and make it right for the 1% of people who will take it as far as complaining to the BBB.
This gives them a spotless "BBB Rating", even though they may be the most customer unfriendly business on the planet. They have a biased judge mediating your complaint. Yippie.
The BBB is not accountable to the consumers and the numbers are not audited in any way. I'm quite sure you can pay to drop unresolved complaints. This is why many BBB complaints are ignored or not resolved. I doubt they pay the big claims. They just dispute it with the BBB and it stays "pending" forever. Or maybe they pay a few bucks to have the issue dropped from the ledger.
I wouldn't be shocked if they also sold your information to marketing firms.
The most intelligent thing for the American public to do would be to STOP filing anything with the BBB, declare it an irrelevant marketing scheme. If people stop using it, the marketers will have to come up with another scheme, or maybe just start treating the customers better.
The BBB works for the companies, not the consumer, and it just encourages companies to continue acting irresponsibly.
Too many people get the BBB confused with some kind of government entity working for the consumer. It's not.
It's a marketing tool. They even offer a referral service. You can go here to get a quote from "member" businesses who pay them for the referrals:
http://www.dallas.bbb.org/equote.html
There was an annoucnement here in the USA some time ago. I believe ./ even carried an article about it.
In any case, I refuse to buy anything with an LCD anywhere except at places that give full refunds if you're unsatisfied in any way with the product. (eg: Future Shop, Staples, London Drugs) Otherwise it's just too much of a pain.
Makes sense.
It's a shame, because I was interested in the Dell Latitute X1, but I couldn't find it from a 3rd party vendor, and their Dead Pixel Policy stinks.
Does Dell still offer the 30 Day no-questions-asked money back garantee, or have they scrapped that?
They always replace mine or the credit card charge gets disputed and I have never had to pay it.
When they tell me it is "industry standard", I tell them to feel free to send it to "The Industry" who should be thrilled with it, but that it is not up to my standard.
LCD technology is no longer bleeding edge. Do I know how many components go into making a 1600x1200+ LCD screen? Yes. But I have seen enough perfect ones to know that they exist in huge numbers.
Why should I pay the same price for 5 burned pixels that someone else paid to get a perfect screen?
An LCD with ANY burned out pixels is ... defective. Period. I don't care what anyone says, burned pixels are a pain in the ass, and when you have forked out $3,000 for a machine, they stick out like a big middle finger.
I buy Samsung panels because they have a zero dead pixel policy. They also have competitively priced displays. Apparently it can be done without a company going into bankruptcy.
It's just easier and cheaper to have you accept a mistake by quoting "Industry Standards" which are no any more legally binding or carry any more weight than my preference for chocolate ice cream over vanilla.
Set your personal consumer standard. If it is not met, dispute the charge until it is met. If it is between that, or a chargeback, you will get your display replaced 99% of the time.
I've had to go through this dance 3 times, and have never settled for a fried pixel.
For the consumers that don't care about burned pixels, "slightly imperfect" LCD's should be offered to those consumers at a discount.
That way, everyone gets what they pay for.
>Uh...that was a stupid thing to say.
How so? They use different vendors, but the quality of the products spec'ed by Nvidia and ATI respectively are quite similar in capabilities.
Please, go right out and buy a Dreamcast 360. Heh.
There is no such thing as a Dreamcast 360. Heh.
Being that roughly the same quality graphics chips are being used, we will get pretty much the same quality gaming experience this November, that we could have gotten last November, I don't see how this isn't bad for Sony. I was waiting for the PS3, but i'll go ahead and spring for the Xbox. You can't lag a competitor by a year on a next generation machine that (from all accounts) provides a very similar gaming experience. Sony has been sitting back and resting on it's market dominance for some time (even releasing the PSP after Christmas last year when the DS was released before). IMHO, Sony is to gaming what Microsoft is to computing. Overconfident. I think the lack of urgency is going to bite Sony in the ass at some point.