“Upgrading” To XP From Vista

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A good story about a man who had terrible problems with a slow Vista computer that became so fast after downgrading to XP that it was more accurate to call it an upgrade.

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Wikileaks Proves Useful In Exposing Scientology “Secrets”

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Hopefully we'll see more material like this.

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A More Clever Way to Get Customer Satisfaction

Unscrewed: The Consumer's Guide to Getting What You Paid For: Burley
(See online!)

Here's a new book on my list: "Unscrewed. The Consumer's Guide to Getting What You Paid For".

The Consumerist has a great interview with the author that describes some of the techniques in the book. Check this one out:

BURLEY: As you know, none of the techniques require anyone to scream or yell or spit at great distances. As a matter of fact, those are disqualifiers. There's an old-school belief, yes, walking into the middle of a showroom and screaming at the top of your voice, "They cheated me!" These days that will get you escorted out by the security guard. A lot of the techniques in the book put a twist on the old techniques of being a squeaky wheel. Such as writing a letter. Writing a letter to the president of the company these days is not going to get you anything. They've got legions of people and the president of the company is never going to see that letter. But I have a letter-writing technique that's called "Spokesperson For The Competition." You don't write a letter to the company that's causing you a problem, you write a letter to the president of the company that is their number one competitor, telling your true story and offering to become their number one spokesperson, and giving them permission to give a copy of your letter to every one of their sales people. Now before you send that letter to the competitor, you send a copy of that letter to the president of the corporation that's causing you a problem. And now they do the math. They say, ok, instead of losing just that one customer, our competitor is going to have evidence of just how poorly we treat our customers. And since we're in a highly competitive business, and we're trying to get those business accounts and fleet accounts or whatever, if every one of their sales people have evidence of how badly we treat our customers, how much business will we lose? You see what's happened there, it's the same technique, you're writing one letter, but you have somehow multiplied the effect, because you're not now one individual against the company that is causing you a problem. Using this technique of writing a letter to the competition, and offering to become a spokesperson for the competition, you've now multiplied your impact, your effect, a thousand fold? Ten-thousand fold? And suddenly, once again, it becomes more cost-effective for the company to take care of you than to ignore you.

That's quite brilliant actually. I should definitely get a copy and see what it's like.

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Online Password Checker

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My first thought is to be very cautious about using an online password checker to test the strength of your passwords because you might inadvertantly give away your password to a rogue site. However, this Microsoft sponsored password checker requires no logins or personal information and being that it's a fairly well-known company, chances are smaller that they would abuse the info if they even store it (which I can't imagine it being cost-effective to do so).

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Fight Unauthorized Charges

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It's worth repeating that if you get charged for something you didn't ask for, you should challenge it. One point this article makes that I want to stress, sometimes you get signed up for something because you didn't notice and uncheck a box during a transaction with some other company or you had a free trial and it charged you after it was over.

These are dishonest and while they might technically be legal (though they shouldn't be), it's worth challenging them all the same.

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Wide-spread Drinking Water Contamination

Water contamination is no bueno
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Just another example for why we need federal monitoring and regulation of certain industries and services. Stuff like this would go on all the time if there wasn't oversight and corresponding accountability. Just look at the presidential administration for an example.

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Bittorrent For Legitimate Purposes

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Lest one think of torrents and illegal downloads at the same time, it's worth reminding the public that torrents are just a file distribution system and one that has many legitimate uses. For example, one IT department used torrent technology to distribute a set of system patches and upgrades in just four hours. The same patch would have previously taken over 4 days!

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Comcast Must Die

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Comcastmustdie.com is a blog where people are invited to post their customer numbers so Comcast can get in touch with them to resolve issues. Given that people sometimes have vast difficulties that never seem to get resolved over the phone, this is a pretty good idea.

And according to the blog's comments, people have been getting results. It's worth checking out.

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Science vs Scientology Timeline

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A timeline comparing the beliefs of Scientology versus actual science. And also this:

Science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard's most notorious space opera is the religion of Scientology, which is packed with aliens and space battles and waves of invaders to our solar system.
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Bush Says America Should Thank Telecoms

George W. Bush
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[Bush] Now the question is, should these lawsuits be allowed to proceed, or should any company that may have helped save American lives be thanked for performing a patriotic service; should those who stepped forward to say we’re going to help defend America have to go to the courthouse to defend themselves, or should the Congress and the President say thank you for doing your patriotic duty? I believe we ought to say thank you.
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