Bastards did the same thing to me Monday. They completely botched my transaction because it was a time-is-of-the-essence matter. They accepted the credit card payment, then put a pending reversal on it the next day. I almost shipped the item I had sold, but luckily checked my email before doing so. They haven't even responded to my inquiry about the funds.
Hmm. Let's see. They don't want to abide by the rules that banks have to follow, yet they want to screw their customers even worse than a bank. Sounds like they want to have their cake and eat it too.
Does anyone have any info on how to become part of this class action suit?
Um, that's only true where there are economies of scale to be exploited, usually in markets with very high fixed cost. It's not true for all markets. When it comes to media, there aren't many scale economies to exploit. This is pure greed.
When indiscriminately sending unsolicited email, please be sure to spoof the mail headers so the mail can't be traced back to you.
When mail-bombing the hotmail.com domain, please refrain from sending mail to billgates@hotmail.com or your software liscences may suddenly expire.
Please pre-pend the subject lines of all unsolicited email with the ADV: prefix...(uncontrolable laughter ensues)
When providing a fake "remove" link in an email, be sure that the address doesn't implicate your company or the DMA. remove262@yahoo.com usually works best.
When marketing to a technically-inclined demographic, refrain from inserting the phrase "ALL YOUR PRIVACY ARE BELONG TO US" in the email. It's not only distatsteful, it's downright cliche.
I'm not surprised that Bork opposes that joke of a deal. While he's certainly been a critic of antitrust law in general, he at least sticks to his principles. Many "conservatives" bash the antitrust case out of either deference to Micro$oft (a large campaign contributor) or sheer ignorance.
Many people overlook another conservative who chose to follow the law and base his thinking on the facts: Thomas Penfield Jackson...the judge in the original antitrust case. Jackson too was appointed by Reagan. In fact, he was appointed specifically to quash antitrust cases that came his way. But U.S. vs. Microsoft was just too compelling...they openly flaunted the law and even went so far as to fabricate evidence (the infamous video showing how difficult it was to remove IE). His findings of fact in the case, which were upheld by the appellate court, paint a picture of an extremely arrogant and socially destructive corporation openly engaging in socially destructive practices in clear violation of the law of the land.
I long for the days when there were still principled conservatives to be found in positions of power. I can respect an honest difference of opinion...but that's rare anymore. In a world where most conservatives are Enron conservatives it's nice to see someone take a principled stand (Bork's work for Netscape notwithstanding).
Actually, the company got screwed too. When you have an IPO, only the proceeds from the *initial* sale of shares goes the the company going public. When an IPO skyrockets on its first day of trading, it leaves money on the table. VA went public at $30 and closed at $299 the first day. That means that it probably could have gone public for $250 per share or so and gotten roughly 14 times the amount of capital they got. Since VA sold 4,400,000 shares in its IPO, that's $968,000,000 that went to CSFB's big institutional account holders instead of the company.
I think slashdot could survive a while on $1Bn cash, don't you?
To sum up: the company got screwed because it was denied a fair and rational IPO price.
The high-end model with an MP3 player has DRM "features"...the MP3 software won't simply play MP3s off a standard memory stick. You have to buy their "copy-protected" memory stick and use their software to upload the songs....which limits your uploads to one computer and only 3 uploads per song. I bought one of these last month and am totally dissappointed. The screen res is great, but the MP3 player (the main reason I bought this model) is totally worthless. It's as if Sony wants to implement pay-per-play for music you already own.
<RANT>I *really* hate those damn logos. They always obscure the subtitles in movies and TV. On-screen text is almost *always* shown on the bottom of the screen, and these damn logos obscure them. I don't pay USD $40 per month for basic cable, USD $10 per month for Tivo, and sit through hordes of time-compressed commercials (not to mention the insidious product placements...the Truman show come to life) so that my viewing experience can be ruined by yet more fucking corporate drivel.</RANT>
That said, I think the Tivo model works well: if viewers want an on-screen program guide, they can pay for digital cable or a Tivo-like service. Those things turn themselves off after a few seconds.
Some of theose logos are insidious as hell. If you watch a program for an hour and the logo is constantly on the screen, the logo gets burned into your brain. Pretty soon you'll be seeing it in your sleep...
Um, we're not talking about the US government here...this would be done by municipalities, some of which have been running municipal utilities districts at lower cost (and with better service) than private utilities for years.
Then again, I don't think you thought much before posting...
The IIS exploit. The worm tries to get hold of cmd.exe and other IIS vulnerabilities (there are too many to count). It can enter a target machine this way.
The Outlook attachment exploit. This is the usual script attachment/dumb luser vulnerability.
The network share exploit. The worm then searches the network for Windows shares, and plants.eml files recursively in all the shares and subdirectories. It also infects.exe files. If you open any of these.eml files or run any of the.exe files, the worm will replicate again.
We were hit hard by this at my company today. Our IT department just didn't learn its lesson from Code Red, and allowed people to continue running IIS on their personal machines.
Wanna know how to get rid of it? People where I work have had success with the following:
Stop and disable IIS.
Apply the IIS patch, available from Micro$oft (not sure of the URL).
Disable all your network shares.
GREP your entire file system for readme.eml, and delete any executables that show up in this search.
Delete all.eml files from your system (a handy way to do this is with del/S *.eml at a command prompt)...
Make sure there are no.eml files left, then reboot your machine.
Finally, install a real web server....this one is a good choice.
Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer should be drawn and quartered for this one... How much have these vulnerabilities cost companies in the last two years? It's just too bad that product liability laws don't apply to Micro$oft.
Our so-called leaders continue passing laws that usurp the doctrine of fair use. What is your orghanization doing to combat laws like the DMCA and organizations like the RIAA and MPAA and to keep them from legislating away the rights we once took for granted under copyright law?
Since 80% of browsers will no longer support Quicktime, Applets, RealPlayer, or anything else, sites will start using standard HTML to convey content and stop trying to hog my processor's capacity with stupid Flash intro pages.
Since 80% of browsers will no longer support the aforementioned, everyone will switch to ActiveX. The internet is now Windows-only. Thank you for playing.
The latter is the more likely situation, as marketers won't soon give up on their pretty animated crap.
Don't even get me started on all the ActiveX security holes we'll be able to exploit.
Here's the recipe to remedy this:
Load a squadron of F/A-18s with cluster bombs and bunker busters.
Set course for Redmond, WA
Drop said munitions on the Micro$oft complex
Repeat as necessary
Of course, we should make sure Gates and Ballmer are there.
Depends on the industry. The concept you're referring to is called economies of scale. It doesn't happen in all industries, and is more pronounced in some (like auto manufacturing) than others. In the case of ISPs and telcos, scale economies are exhausted at fairly low levels of production. What's more important is a concept economists call (appropriately) network effects. This basically means that a product (like telephone service) becomes more useful as more people use it. If each ISP/telco has to build their own lines, then (a) there will be incompatabilities between the system, (b) the product will be worth less to people, and (c) the cost of those lines will have been needlessly duplicated by each company. If, however, there are a common set of lines where all ISPs/telcos have equal access, then those costs are borne only once and ISPs/telcos can compete on price.
Unfornately, there's the problem of who should build and own the lines and infrastructure. Logic dictates that it should be a third party not involved in the market, but too often politicians choose the biggest telco around, and try to force them to lease out that infrastructure at their long run cost. That was embodied in the 1996 Telecom Act here in the US, but it really hasn't worked. The big telcos that own the infrastructure can play games to limit their competition in the ISP space (limiting upload speeds to 128k, slower maintenance response, etc). Pac Bell is infamous for this, and as a result there are much fewer competing DSL providers in the western region.
Sure, "W" couldn't poke his nose into a case between IBM and Microsoft
Well, not quite. Dumbya (or, more accurately, Dick Cheney) can stick his nose in almost any case by instructing the justice department to file an amicus ("friend of the court") brief favoring one side or another. These don't always influence judges, but sometimes do.
Back to the relevant issues at hand. The fact that the appeals court (which, by the way, has historically been very corporatist in its rulings) left intact the findings of fact is some consolation, but there's still a long way to go. It all depends on two factors: (1) how vigorously and competently DOJ pursues the case and (2) the judge they get for the remanded case. I don't hold out high hopes on either of these.
Yes, Thomas Penfield-Jackson is a conservative Reagan appointee, and the findings and remedies were astounding coming from such a judge, but who's to say that the next judge will be principled and trustworthy enough to enter the same findings? I suspect that DOJ and Micro$oft will eventually settle, on terms that heavily favor M$FT. That's how our corporate-sponsored executive branch works...
I believe NBCi's little gadget worked on *all* your software, not just the browser. And as you said (or implied), the user has to take a positive action to install it.
Then again, now that NBCi is gone, we don't have to worry about that...
...several commercial solutions for something like this. If you want to save money, you should train your people on CVS. If you can affor it, you might want to look at Documentum or another document management system. Those systems are a bit less intimidating than version control tools targeted toward developers.
I see this as just one more link in the chain. Ever since people in the IT/Programming field started making more than a pittance, many companies have been looking for ways to commoditize what we do and pay us less for it. First came applications that were supposed to do away with the need for having in-house programmers. Then came outsourced support and development. Lately we've seen the H-1B conspiracy (blatant corporate welfare of ever there was such a thing), and attempts to export development jobs to lower-paying locales (India, some asian countries). And now this.
I'm not sure if I have a solution for this. An IT union might or might not work. There's a real stigma attached to this idea. Most IT people consider themselves professionals, so doing such a thing would be taboo. But then, the corporations insist upon commoditizing our work and treating us like unskilled laborers, so I don't think we're obliged to act in a professional manner.
The best thing we can do right now is remain extremely vigilant. When an employer gives you a raw deal like that, go out and get an offer for a better job. Convince your co-workers to do the same. If your current employer is reasonable, he/she will pay attention to your gripes if half the workforce is visibly looking to leave.
It's about time somebody called Phoenix and Telocity for being inept at the transfer... I never heard a word about the acquisition until the day before they cut off my service. Then Telocity lost my information 5 times. I finally had to initiate a new order...Who says corporations are more efficient than government?
Microsoft Technical Support and the Psychic Friends Network. As a
result of this research, we have come to the following conclusions:
that Microsoft Technical Support and the Psychic Friends Network are
about equal in their ability to provide technical assistance for
Microsoft products over the phone;
So now we know where Micro$oft hires its support people...;-)
Amen to that, brother. Frank Zappa and John Denver were both a boon to those of us with a shred of respect for civil liberties. May they both rest in peace.
What I despise is the fact that these politicians (and now lawyers) are barking up the wrong tree. When kids play violent video games, it's a symptom of a problem, not the cause. Same with music. No Ozzy song ever made me feel like killing myself...(now Britney Spears, on the other hand...)
Although I think this case will be thrown out, I do worry that it will have a chilling effect on companies making video games, jus like Tipper Stickers have had a chilling effect on the availability of political music (Rage Against the Machine notwithstanding).
Slashdot Mirror
Bill Jones is California's secretary of state, not a US Representative. He's running for the Republican nomination for governor.
Bastards did the same thing to me Monday. They completely botched my transaction because it was a time-is-of-the-essence matter. They accepted the credit card payment, then put a pending reversal on it the next day. I almost shipped the item I had sold, but luckily checked my email before doing so. They haven't even responded to my inquiry about the funds.
Hmm. Let's see. They don't want to abide by the rules that banks have to follow, yet they want to screw their customers even worse than a bank. Sounds like they want to have their cake and eat it too.
Does anyone have any info on how to become part of this class action suit?
Um, that's only true where there are economies of scale to be exploited, usually in markets with very high fixed cost. It's not true for all markets. When it comes to media, there aren't many scale economies to exploit. This is pure greed.
I can just see those guidelines now:
I'm not surprised that Bork opposes that joke of a deal. While he's certainly been a critic of antitrust law in general, he at least sticks to his principles. Many "conservatives" bash the antitrust case out of either deference to Micro$oft (a large campaign contributor) or sheer ignorance.
Many people overlook another conservative who chose to follow the law and base his thinking on the facts: Thomas Penfield Jackson...the judge in the original antitrust case. Jackson too was appointed by Reagan. In fact, he was appointed specifically to quash antitrust cases that came his way. But U.S. vs. Microsoft was just too compelling...they openly flaunted the law and even went so far as to fabricate evidence (the infamous video showing how difficult it was to remove IE). His findings of fact in the case, which were upheld by the appellate court, paint a picture of an extremely arrogant and socially destructive corporation openly engaging in socially destructive practices in clear violation of the law of the land.
I long for the days when there were still principled conservatives to be found in positions of power. I can respect an honest difference of opinion...but that's rare anymore. In a world where most conservatives are Enron conservatives it's nice to see someone take a principled stand (Bork's work for Netscape notwithstanding).
Actually, the company got screwed too. When you have an IPO, only the proceeds from the *initial* sale of shares goes the the company going public. When an IPO skyrockets on its first day of trading, it leaves money on the table. VA went public at $30 and closed at $299 the first day. That means that it probably could have gone public for $250 per share or so and gotten roughly 14 times the amount of capital they got. Since VA sold 4,400,000 shares in its IPO, that's $968,000,000 that went to CSFB's big institutional account holders instead of the company.
I think slashdot could survive a while on $1Bn cash, don't you?
To sum up: the company got screwed because it was denied a fair and rational IPO price.
The high-end model with an MP3 player has DRM "features"...the MP3 software won't simply play MP3s off a standard memory stick. You have to buy their "copy-protected" memory stick and use their software to upload the songs....which limits your uploads to one computer and only 3 uploads per song. I bought one of these last month and am totally dissappointed. The screen res is great, but the MP3 player (the main reason I bought this model) is totally worthless. It's as if Sony wants to implement pay-per-play for music you already own.
<RANT>I *really* hate those damn logos. They always obscure the subtitles in movies and TV. On-screen text is almost *always* shown on the bottom of the screen, and these damn logos obscure them. I don't pay USD $40 per month for basic cable, USD $10 per month for Tivo, and sit through hordes of time-compressed commercials (not to mention the insidious product placements...the Truman show come to life) so that my viewing experience can be ruined by yet more fucking corporate drivel.</RANT>
That said, I think the Tivo model works well: if viewers want an on-screen program guide, they can pay for digital cable or a Tivo-like service. Those things turn themselves off after a few seconds.
Some of theose logos are insidious as hell. If you watch a program for an hour and the logo is constantly on the screen, the logo gets burned into your brain. Pretty soon you'll be seeing it in your sleep...
can't make $$$ off a search engine can you?
...because now he can use his new super powers to deploy carnivore to your ISP (without a warrant, by the way) and spy on *all* your correspondence.
This terrorist hysteria is far too convenient for the reactionary elements of our country. I smell a rat.
Um, we're not talking about the US government here...this would be done by municipalities, some of which have been running municipal utilities districts at lower cost (and with better service) than private utilities for years.
Then again, I don't think you thought much before posting...
Or, alternatively, Start >> Settings >> Control Panel >> Add/Remove Programs, choose Outlook, and away you go!
We were hit hard by this at my company today. Our IT department just didn't learn its lesson from Code Red, and allowed people to continue running IIS on their personal machines.
Wanna know how to get rid of it? People where I work have had success with the following:
Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer should be drawn and quartered for this one... How much have these vulnerabilities cost companies in the last two years? It's just too bad that product liability laws don't apply to Micro$oft.
To quoute a DK song:
Tell me: who's the real patriot:
The Archie Bunker slobs waving flags
Or the people with the guts to work for some real change?
...
Our land, I love it too
I think I love it more than you
I care enough to fight the Stars and Stripes of Corruption!
Who the hell are you to call anyone un-American? You're the one violating American ideals.
...that www.aclu.org has been down for a while? I don't think it's hosted in NY, and it was up all day yesterday.
Our so-called leaders continue passing laws that usurp the doctrine of fair use. What is your orghanization doing to combat laws like the DMCA and organizations like the RIAA and MPAA and to keep them from legislating away the rights we once took for granted under copyright law?
This could go one of two ways:
The latter is the more likely situation, as marketers won't soon give up on their pretty animated crap.
Don't even get me started on all the ActiveX security holes we'll be able to exploit.
Here's the recipe to remedy this:
- Load a squadron of F/A-18s with cluster bombs and bunker busters.
- Set course for Redmond, WA
- Drop said munitions on the Micro$oft complex
- Repeat as necessary
Of course, we should make sure Gates and Ballmer are there.Depends on the industry. The concept you're referring to is called economies of scale. It doesn't happen in all industries, and is more pronounced in some (like auto manufacturing) than others. In the case of ISPs and telcos, scale economies are exhausted at fairly low levels of production. What's more important is a concept economists call (appropriately) network effects. This basically means that a product (like telephone service) becomes more useful as more people use it. If each ISP/telco has to build their own lines, then (a) there will be incompatabilities between the system, (b) the product will be worth less to people, and (c) the cost of those lines will have been needlessly duplicated by each company. If, however, there are a common set of lines where all ISPs/telcos have equal access, then those costs are borne only once and ISPs/telcos can compete on price.
Unfornately, there's the problem of who should build and own the lines and infrastructure. Logic dictates that it should be a third party not involved in the market, but too often politicians choose the biggest telco around, and try to force them to lease out that infrastructure at their long run cost. That was embodied in the 1996 Telecom Act here in the US, but it really hasn't worked. The big telcos that own the infrastructure can play games to limit their competition in the ISP space (limiting upload speeds to 128k, slower maintenance response, etc). Pac Bell is infamous for this, and as a result there are much fewer competing DSL providers in the western region.
Sure, "W" couldn't poke his nose into a case between IBM and Microsoft
Well, not quite. Dumbya (or, more accurately, Dick Cheney) can stick his nose in almost any case by instructing the justice department to file an amicus ("friend of the court") brief favoring one side or another. These don't always influence judges, but sometimes do.
Back to the relevant issues at hand. The fact that the appeals court (which, by the way, has historically been very corporatist in its rulings) left intact the findings of fact is some consolation, but there's still a long way to go. It all depends on two factors: (1) how vigorously and competently DOJ pursues the case and (2) the judge they get for the remanded case. I don't hold out high hopes on either of these.
Yes, Thomas Penfield-Jackson is a conservative Reagan appointee, and the findings and remedies were astounding coming from such a judge, but who's to say that the next judge will be principled and trustworthy enough to enter the same findings? I suspect that DOJ and Micro$oft will eventually settle, on terms that heavily favor M$FT. That's how our corporate-sponsored executive branch works...
I believe NBCi's little gadget worked on *all* your software, not just the browser. And as you said (or implied), the user has to take a positive action to install it. Then again, now that NBCi is gone, we don't have to worry about that...
...several commercial solutions for something like this. If you want to save money, you should train your people on CVS. If you can affor it, you might want to look at Documentum or another document management system. Those systems are a bit less intimidating than version control tools targeted toward developers.
I see this as just one more link in the chain. Ever since people in the IT/Programming field started making more than a pittance, many companies have been looking for ways to commoditize what we do and pay us less for it. First came applications that were supposed to do away with the need for having in-house programmers. Then came outsourced support and development. Lately we've seen the H-1B conspiracy (blatant corporate welfare of ever there was such a thing), and attempts to export development jobs to lower-paying locales (India, some asian countries). And now this.
I'm not sure if I have a solution for this. An IT union might or might not work. There's a real stigma attached to this idea. Most IT people consider themselves professionals, so doing such a thing would be taboo. But then, the corporations insist upon commoditizing our work and treating us like unskilled laborers, so I don't think we're obliged to act in a professional manner.
The best thing we can do right now is remain extremely vigilant. When an employer gives you a raw deal like that, go out and get an offer for a better job. Convince your co-workers to do the same. If your current employer is reasonable, he/she will pay attention to your gripes if half the workforce is visibly looking to leave.
It's about time somebody called Phoenix and Telocity for being inept at the transfer... I never heard a word about the acquisition until the day before they cut off my service. Then Telocity lost my information 5 times. I finally had to initiate a new order...Who says corporations are more efficient than government?
Microsoft Technical Support and the Psychic Friends Network. As a result of this research, we have come to the following conclusions:
So now we know where Micro$oft hires its support people... ;-)
Amen to that, brother. Frank Zappa and John Denver were both a boon to those of us with a shred of respect for civil liberties. May they both rest in peace.
What I despise is the fact that these politicians (and now lawyers) are barking up the wrong tree. When kids play violent video games, it's a symptom of a problem, not the cause. Same with music. No Ozzy song ever made me feel like killing myself...(now Britney Spears, on the other hand...)
Although I think this case will be thrown out, I do worry that it will have a chilling effect on companies making video games, jus like Tipper Stickers have had a chilling effect on the availability of political music (Rage Against the Machine notwithstanding).