Debt neverending

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Some people still get on my case for being such a strong proponent of business regulation. They think that because of that, I don't put enough of the blame on the consumer (who is obviously at fault for the trouble the get themselves into). However, it's clear that the playing field is not level, the businesses use tricks and manipulations that no normal person has a chance against.

You don't even have to do anything wrong in some cases. Consumeraffairs.com looks at how the credit industry is still as full of abuses as before the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act was passed in 1977.

"Even more startling, debt buyers have learned to work the system to win judgments and coerce payments even when they have the wrong person or lack any evidence that the consumer owes the debt," NCLC and NACA wrote in a filing with the Federal Trade Commission.

…

"Debts that may be a decade or more old are now sold in bundles to debt buyers for pennies on the dollar. Debt buyers then file cases by the thousands in overworked courts. The courts typically enter default judgments even if the collector has no proof that the consumer owed the debt, that the amount owed is legal and correct, or even that the debtor being sued is the right person,"

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What's the best way to attract a pile of threatening lawyers' letters from Microsoft? Sell pirate copies of Windows? Write a DRM-busting program? Londoner Jamie Cansdale has just discovered a new approach. He had the temerity to make Redmond's software better.

Oh wow! First they give him an award (the Most Valuable Professionals MVP award), and then they threaten lawsuits. Classic Microsoft.

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For a company who's motto is "Don't be Evil", they sure aren't putting up much of a fight in their slide towards wretchedness.

I love Google’s technology, don’t get me wrong. But I think Google has turned a page here. They have now enabled a piece of software that is hard to remove and forces users to look at a really bad page. In fact, Google knows that this provides users with a dramatically worse experience.

Of course, Microsoft has done this for years. If you type a wrong address into IE, it automatically comes up with an MSN search page. But I don't agree that it's hard to uninstall, just that people who don't know better won't realize that they CAN uninstall it.

I DO agree that this is a bad move on Google's part. If they are truly trying to create a better customer experience and make some money on the way, they made a bad move here. What they've done instead (and Dell too), is make some money by making a worse experience for the customer.

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.

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If you have an outstanding debt that you eventually decide to make good on, you may get penalized. The "Date of Last Activity" field on your credit file will get updated if you make a single payment making it appear as if your delinquency was yesterday instead of 3 years ago.

This practice has been challenged and it seems that the consumers are winning.

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.

Free Speech Flag

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This article is worth reading just from this tagline alone:

Last night, the AACS LA's attempts to keep an HD DVD crack under wraps backfired in a spectacular fashion. Pandora's Box is now wide open, and there's no going back now.

The problem with DRM is that they companies are doing this for entirely their benefit at the detriment of normal users. It's no wonder that the entire Internet community is against them. Now if we could only get that kind of response for RFID.

Brilliant Plan

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Congress is now considering a bill similar to the CAN-SPAM act for spyware. Like the CAN-SPAM act, it doesn't actually stop anything, but rather legalizes it instead.

Let's sum up. If the Spy Act become law, hardware, software, and network vendors will be granted carte blanche to use spyware themselves to police their customers' use of their products and services. Incredibly broad exceptions will probably allow even the worst of the adware outfits to operate with legal cover. State attempts to deal with the spyware problem will be pre-empted and enforcement left up almost entirely to the FTC. Gee, what's not to like in that deal?

Microsoft dirty trick: installing stuff you don't need or want

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The Windows Updater is supposed to patch your system against critical flaws and exploits. To make things easier for normal users, there's an "Express Install" button where you don't have to review each update one at a time and can just trust Microsoft to install only the most security critical patches.

Enter the Windows Genuine Advantage notification tool. It tool doesn't protect you or do anything at all to help your system, it collects data about your computer and declares your copy of Windows legal or not. In millions of cases, it wrongly identifies systems as being "pirated" and nags users repeatedly about having an illegal copy and how to contact Microsoft for a legitimate one. Even worse, it locks you out of further security updates until you do.

To make sure that you don't miss WGA, they slipped it into IE7, Windows Defender, and Windows Media Player 11. But the worst of all was issuing it as a "critical update" on Windows updater. This way, anyone who clicked the "Express Install" button would get it by default without knowing better.

It's because of practices like this that geeks don't like Microsoft. They slipped a tool onto your machine that spies on your system and disables functionality. Sounds like a virus to me.

So why am I posting such old news now? First, I haven't talked about this before and it really ticks me off. Second, the WGA made PC World's 20 all time most annoying tech products (at number 9).

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So companies don't want Vista? Well, we can fix that…. (hand rubbing and evil snicker).

Microsoft will stop allowing companies to install OEM versions of XP by the end of the year.