NSA

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Verizon, who I was pretty certain hadn't handed over any customer records according to them, is now saying that it's ok for them to do it, it's free speech.

Essentially, the argument is that turning over truthful information to the government is free speech, and the EFF and ACLU can't do anything about it. In fact, Verizon basically argues that the entire lawsuit is a giant SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) suit, and that the case is an attempt to deter the company from exercising its First Amendment right to turn over customer calling information to government security services.

Debt is the pitts

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In clever application of the law, debt collectors have started to garnish wages from debtors. To stop the garnishment, you have to pay to file the case in district court.

Darn those hackers... so clever.

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This is so, so stupid. It's not weak security, its that you data-abused us for all our customer data that we didn't want you to keep anyway. If you hadn't stored all the data on us, you couldn't have lost it.

In addition to pilfering over 45 million—and possibly as many as 200 million—credit card and debit card numbers, the hackers were also able to obtain other personal data from over 450,000 customers. This included driver's license numbers and Social Security numbers.

I already know they don't need to store our credit cards, but licenses and SSNs?

Bullies

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Here's an interesting discussion of how RICO might (or might now) apply to the RIAA. For those who don't know, RICO is a special statute that provides for harsher penalties and triple damages for plaintiffs as long as it can be shown that the defendant is a member of organized crime (look it up on wikipedia for a better description).

Anyway, I have always thought that the RIAA counted under RICO. They're an organization that is purposefully breaking laws, extorting innocent people, and has been doing it for years and years.

Goodbye DRM

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Here's a neat article about how DRM is dying, but more importantly, how companies are realizing that searching for violators and charging them is far better than trying to implement DRM which doesn't work and ticks off customers at the same time. Duh.

This is an amazing essay from a former Geek Squad tech as to why Geek Squad was great, but isn't anymore.

The fact is that you are no more likely to see a real technician at a Geek Squad today than you would be to see a real 5'10" mouse, wearing red suspenders at Disneyland. It is all an act... a show to provide what the customer assumes they need to see. The shoes, the ties, the badges, the pants, the socks, and the shirts do not increase the persons ability to fix your computer, they merely fulfill the customer's subconscious expectation of what a competent computer technician looks like.

He talks of the time he opened a "new" computer only to find that it was in reality, used. His manager told him to clean it off and give it to the customers like nothing had happened of which he said "On this day, I would favor the respect of my superior, rather than that of my integrity".

Wow.

Then there's the time that they were backlogged on computers to repair so management decided that things like crashes and viruses could be fixed easily by wiping all data on every computer. They don't have to worry about legal ramifications because customers are forced to sign a disclaimer that says they've backed up all their data.

And don't forget that Geeks are lonely. If you have (or had) any porn on your machine, they'll find it and save a copy:

If there were a competition between a Playboy editor, a photo lab technician, and a voyeur for the person who has seen the most random pictures of naked people... the only way any of them would win is if the Geek Squad agent was late to the contest.

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This is an iteresting article about how Vista, with it's poor security, lack of compatibility, high price, and integrated features that users hate (like DRM and security alerts) might make people start to seriously wonder why they're still using Windows.

I don't personally buy the argument that Linux will be the system they run to because I haven't yet seen a version of Linux that could match the user friendliness of Windows (with the possible exception of SUSE). But I'm no Linux expert. We'll have to see.

And on that note, be sure to check out this link for an article comparing Ubuntu Linux VS MS Vista.

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I had to laugh at this. It seems that Microsoft is offering a discount to anyone that downloaded a beta test of Vista. The article suggests it's because no one really wants Vista and why should they?

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From the "consider the source" department, Microsoft is tooting their own horn about how well Sender ID prevents spam. The part about this that kills me is that if Microsoft made one stupidly obvious change to Hotmail, I would almost never open spam e-mails.

All they need to do is let me see the actual address of the sender instead of just the name. That way I wouldn't confuse barbara@realsite.com with barbara@diywehhh.du.ru (which I do because Hotmail will only show you "Barbara" as the sender for both if that's the name they entered).

Right now, it is only this ridiculous flaw that causes me to open spam messages at all. Sometimes I can't tell if a message is real or not until I do.

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While Dell originally switched wholesale to Vista (as did most vendors), due to high demand, they will be offering XP preinstalled again. Of course, if Microsoft refuses to license them to do so, I wonder how that will work out…