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Complete Computer Services, Inc.
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hardware & software * sales & service since 1983
- Wall of Shame: phony offers and rebates
- Is Paypal Losing It?
- Your Options in Portable Storage for Digital Cameras and Handheld Devices
- More On Windows XP
- Microsoft Security Attacks: Passport Hacked
- Shut Up Those Rude Cell Phone Gabbers
- Has Rock Music Affected Their Brains? the Music Industry's stupid response to Napster
- More on Search Engines
- Useful Sites
Don't wait until the last second to do your holiday shopping. Many manufacturers underestimated the holiday season and expected that the economy would greatly affect sales. Many stores and websites did the same. As a result, lots of websites are running out of stock. Many don't even have the decency to let you know. They will take your order and leave you to greet the angry faces when you have nothing to present but empty gift wrapping.
The most popular digital cameras are becoming difficult to find. The PDR-M25 is gone. The M21 supply is dwindling. The popular Epson 785 printer with the $100 rebate if purchased with a camera is all but impossible to locate. The 820 is a great alternative, but it won't last long and the $50 rebate ends December 31. So if you are thinking about digital cameras, printers or related items, act soon.We now have batteries, chargers and adapters for just about any digital camera, camcorder and even cordless phones. We have the GE 320v uninterruptible power supply. This is the most effective protection you can buy for your computer and until the end of the year, it is available at the amazing price of $45. It provides 6 wide outlets, all with surge protection, 3 with battery backup, surge protection for your phone line, software to bring your computer down safely in the event of a power failure and $25,000 insurance if your computer fails and the GE UPS fails to protect it. We have ink cartridges for Epson (including those with the chip like the 777, 780, 785, 875, 1280, C60 and 820) and most Canon printers. Need a low-cost gift? Our discsavers CD holders are 25 cents each. Our online catalog.
Two companies have now made it to our Hall of Shame, for dishonest practices. First is KBGear, makers of the Jamcam digital camera. I wouldn't use it personally because of its barely acceptable resolution and at $65, it's too expensive for a child's gift. But the $30 rebate they offered made it a tempting gift. Problem is they don't seem to have any intention of honoring the rebate. First they sent a number of people postcards stating that the product they purchased was not valid for the rebate. Excuse me? The rebate states Jamcam 3 and the product states Jamcam 3, what's the difference? After several phone calls and transfers (don't you just love toll-free numbers?) we finally spoke to someone who claimed it was all a mistake and we would be getting our rebates. Then they quickly changed the phone number. The number now had a recording that referred you to yet another 800 number where someone claimed that yes, it was Jamcam's number but no, they had no information about a rebate. After a few days, that number now referred you to yet another (non toll-free) number that no matter what time it was called, responded with "please try your call later." Now all three numbers state that the number is out of service. Emails to KBGear have gone unanswered.
What's the next step? Perhaps a concerted effort by a number of people emailing KBGear and any distributor who carries their products to get the word out that this rebate is a scam. I have already contacted my distributor to let them know that I will not be placing any orders until they can get an answer from KBGear. I have also contacted the Minnesota attorney general (where KBGear has its headquarters). If anyone would like to assist, feel free to contact webmaster@kbgear.com or rebates@NothingButSoftware.com (a company that is pushing this great 'bargain'). These cameras (and phony rebate) are also offered for sale at buy.com and amazon.com.
Bulletin as I was putting the final touches on this newsletter, I received an email from Nothingbutsoftware.com. It says that they will be contacting KBGear to find out about the rebate. In the meantime, they have given me $30 off my next order, should I not receive it. So while KBGear goes on my wall of shame, Nothingbutsoftware.com deserves my vote for a company that stands behind its offers, even when the manufacturer doesn't.
Ubid.com - this site always got a mixed review from me. They have a strange method of operation. They start all their items at $9 with no reserve. However, the markup is $10. So if an item is worth $50 and the bidding is $39, you have to bid $49 to win it and that may just be too high, considering their higher-than-average shipping fees. Many of their items are refurbished or discontinued. They offer no warranties and you must contact the manufacturer if there is a problem. However, at rare times I have found a good deal there. I recently thought I did when I won the bid for a 6 gigabyte digital wallet. They had several dozen for auction. But what I received was a 3 gigabyte device. I had mentioned it to others before receiving the item and at least one other person also won. She too received a 3 gig. We both contacted Ubid repeatedly. My emails were completely ignored. She received a number of canned replies and then an offer of a $20 rebate. The following week when these same devices were again auctioned, this time as 3 gig devices, they sold for $50 less. In my opinion, the correct thing for Ubid to do would be to offer a $50 rebate. Since they have refused to respond, I shipped the item back UPS C.O.D. for the freight and charged it back on my credit card. Just today, a whole month after sending out my first email, I get a response from Ubid asking for the order number, item description etc so that they can "look into it." Why haven't Internet businesses learned that if you plan to do business on the Net, answering email is a requirement and it should be done more than once a month?
First I was a Paypal cheerleader. Personally, I never had a problem with their service. But others, and even people I knew personally, did. As the complaints mounted and the stories became more egregious, I started seeing the other side. After all, basing my opinion on only my personal experience wouldn't be accurate. I never had a problem with Billpoint, Paydirect, Exchangepath and even the infamous Paymentalt. I know people who smoke and don't have lung cancer (yet). Does that mean I should recommend smoking?
So I set up my payment service ratings to present a more balance picture of what a payment service user can expect. I frequented the bulletin boards where people reported their experiences. I chimed in where I could, at times blaming Paypal and at times blaming the poster for contributing to his own problem. I discovered that posting on the boards was a waste of time. The Paypal bashers blamed everything on Paypal and anyone who suggested PP wasn't at fault was branded a cheerleader. The cheerleaders blamed everything on the poster and anyone who suggested that PP's own policies were at fault was a basher. I tried to stay "middle of the road," judging each case on its own merits. When Paypal has numerous customer service issues, I recommended against using them. When it appeared that they were working to resolve these issues, I changed the rating to "recommended with caution." At this point I can only conclude: "recommended for sellers with personal accounts where credit cards will not be used. recommended for buyers only if a credit card is used."
The problem is the Paypal's "protection plan," though probably set up with the best of intentions, has the exact opposite result than what was intended. It protects the guilty and harms the innocent. Because Paypal is run by a bunch of young and arrogant managers, they refuse to admit that there is a problem. So the fraud continues and the number of scammed buyers and sellers continues to mount. Many have found that there are ways to leave Paypal stuck with the bill. So Paypal now has millions in losses to recover. Could this be the reason for the new trend that I am seeing?
I used to get one or two complaint letters a day. In the past week, I am getting a dozen a day. The letters used to be "run-of-the-mill." Someone paid a seller and got cheated. Someone sold an item and the buyer charged it back for no good reason. They were issues between buyer and seller with Paypal bearing only tangential responsibility. But these current problems are far more serious and has Paypal taking an active hand in creating the problem. There has been an increase in accounts restricted by Paypal due to the possibility of fraud. This would be fine if there was a mechanism by which the account holder could contact Paypal and have the matter quickly resolved. But it appears that once Paypal has decided to restrict an account, it takes nothing short of an act of Congress to get them to change their mind. But even as the account stays restricted, Paypal continues to accept money into it. In my eyes this is theft. If the money does not belong to the seller, then it belongs to the buyer. We know for a FACT it does NOT belong to Paypal. There have been a few complaints of possible hacked accounts or credit cards where the writer says he contacted Paypal numerous times about transactions on his account that he did not make and they have refused to do anything about it. We saw a post on Auctionwatch where a buyer says three transactions of over $6,000 each were made from his account in under one minute, hitting his credit card and two bank accounts and we saw Paypal's rep answer that somehow the buyer must have done this accidentally. I defy any of the cheerleaders to enter three transactions into Paypal, have them funded from three different sources and complete the entry in under a minute. You can't do this deliberately but we are supposed to believe that someone did this accidentally?
There have been complaints about Paypal retrieving money from a seller's account that was paid from existing paypal funds because the payer received a fraudulent payment from another party. What kind of nonsense is this? Someone receiving a credit card payment will be careful to validate the source of the payment, but how vigilant can you be when receiving the equivalent of cash? Paypal won't even reveal a scammer's name and address to another party. How can the seller know where the buyer got his money? Can you imagine depositing a money order into your bank account and having your bank confiscate it, telling you "the guy who gave you that money order got cheated by someone else so we're taking it from you"?
What's amazing is that when a buyer gets scammed and files a complaint, Paypal's usual response is, "Yes, you were cheated but the seller emptied his Paypal account so there is nothing we can do." Yet when it is Paypal who gets scammed, they manage to track that money across several accounts and find a way to recover, even if it is from an innocent third party.
There are many policies at Paypal that I believe will not stand up to legal scrutiny. There are currently lawsuits in process which will test these policies. Until the courts speak, the only guarantee with Paypal is that there is a good protection plan in place to protect Paypal and no one else. The definition of a Paypal cheerleader is someone who hasn't been scammed yet.
With reference to Computer Shopper November 2001 "Sizing Up Portable Storage"
There are a number of storage mediums available today for portable devices. These mediums were created to solve specific problems of:
-size: digital cameras based on floppy disks tended to be bulkier
-speed: floppy disks are slow to record data
-durability: floppy disks are prone to sector errors. Portable hard drives can be easily damaged
-power consumption: floppy and hard drives take more power than saving to solid state memory
-data retention: RAM memory wouldn't work because it loses the data when the power is turned off
The first widely adopted form was Smartmedia, which I believe was invented by Toshiba. But Smartmedia cards do not contain a controller. Access to the card is controlled by the device. If the digital camera or MP3 player was designed to access a 32mb card, you could not use a 64mb card with it. Because of this limitation, currently 128mb is the largest smartmedia card available.
Sandisk invented the compactflash to address this limitation. The CF card has its controller within the card, so a device that can handle CF cards can handle any size. CF cards come in two varieties, Type II which is a thicker card and Type I, which is the thinner version. Generally, cameras that handle Type II can also handle Type I but the reverse is not true.
Compactflash was larger than Smartmedia at a time when the focus was to make devices smaller. To address this issue, Sandisk along with Siemens, invented the a postage-stamp-size multimedia card (MMC). Another group invented the Secure Digital (SD) card. It incorporates encryption so it can protect the copyright of data stored on the card. SD is backward compatible with MMC, so devices that can read SD cards can also read MMC cards, but the reverse is not true.
Sony complicated matters by introducing the memory stick. As always, the market consists of Sony and everyone else. Those who remember Betamax will probably avoid proprietary Sony products.
IBM has a tiny hard disk called the Microdrive that fits the Compactflash type II slot. However, this device draws a lot of power from the batteries and is prone to failure in the field.
A new device that will probably be introduced in the next few months is the Dataplay. It is a tiny cartridge, slightly larger than a quarter, which holds 500 megabytes. It is a write-once device. You can not erase what was recorded. However, at 2 cents per megabyte ($10 per cartridge), it is so cheap that you probably wouldn't bother to erase it.
Another possibility for the future is a device like the Terrapin Mine or MindsatWork Digital Wallet. These are 3 to 20 gigabyte devices that you attach to your belt and download from the camera or media card. With up to 20 gigabytes of re-useable storage, you can take thousands of photos and download them to the PC later. Currently, these devices are not cheap ($250 and up) but when compared to the cost of the same storage in media cards ($2000 and up) they are a bargain.
In my opinion, based on Microsoft's incompetence, lies and double-speak illustrated below, a good title for this whole piece could be: "Microsoft - the Paypal of Software"
A number of folks have emailed to ask me what I think about moving to Windows XP. Based on what I have read in numerous publications, I am holding off. I have finally tweaked my Windows 98 to work the way I want it to (most of the time). I am not about to spend several hundred dollars and days (or weeks) switching to XP just because Microsoft wants more money. From what I have read, XP is what 98 should have been. It is more stable and for the first time, MS has released a new operating system that does not require you to upgrade your computer. If 98 runs on your machine, so should XP. So if you are buying a new machine, you might want to get it with XP. But if you are getting what you want with 98, stick with it. Here's why:
1) Like any new MS product, XP is missing a number of drivers. In "The Hard Edge" of November's Computer Shopper, Bill O'Brien reported that his upgrade from 98 cost him the use of his sound card, CDRW drive, and DVD.
2) Microsoft's new software activation procedure built-in to XP is nothing short of idiotic. You have to type in a 25-character install key as with many MS products. Then XP generates a 52-character key that is based on certain settings in your computer system. You can either register on the Internet or call in a recite this 52-character key to an operator. The operator or the registration site, then sends you back a 50-character key you must enter into your machine to complete the process.
3) Software activation "gotcha." Once the operating system is installed, you may never be able to upgrade your machine. Since the key is based on settings in your computer, any change may fool the program into thinking it is running on a different machine. Since the purpose of this whole megilla is to prevent piracy, XP will shut down if it thinks it has been pirated. It happened to Bill O'Brien when he upgraded. It happened to ZD Net reporter David Coursey when he disconnected his laptop from the docking station and thus "changed" the configuration. Unfortunately, it happened while he was in an airplane and thus he was unable to do the work he had been planning on accomplishing during the flight.
Fortunately, help is at hand - not from Microsoft, but from the very pirates they are trying to stop. There are pirated copies of XP available overseas for as little as $5. What's more is that these copies do not require activation. Though I do not recommend using pirated software, those who have bought XP legitimately might want to get hold of one of these pirated versions so that they can avoid the tedious activation process and its shortfalls. I would hope that once MS realizes that this ridiculous activation requirement is not only a problem but has already been defeated, they will remove it from their product. (See more in next section)
4) Though booting time is faster by a few seconds, ("Gosh honey, you're home fifteen seconds early!" "Yes, dear, and I owe it all to XP's reduced boot time!") everything else appears to be slower. Testers from numerous organizations (Ziff Davis, Fred Langa) have reported that XP uses far more CPU time for graphics and can sometimes run at half the speed of Win2k. What's worse is that there is no way for even an experienced user to correct this. Even turning off all the bells and whistles that you can control does not make a noticeable difference.
5) XP is more tightly integrated with Passport. The Passport system centralizes all your information in a digital wallet that Microsoft accesses to prove your identity as your surf and shop online. Being forced to use Passport robs you of your anonymity and also opens you to credit card fraud and identity theft, as the following segment shows.
ZDNet article about MS security attacks.
In case the article gets taken down, here is a synopsis.
Microsoft: No relief from security attacks
By Robert Lemos, ZDNet News, November 6, 2001 4:35 AM PT
Microsoft's security response center must be feeling a little punch-drunk these days.
After the one-two combination of the Code Red and Nimda worms that targeted the company's server and PC software this past summer, the titan announced an initiative in early October to promote security-savvy administration among its partners.
However, almost every week since it announced its Strategic Technology Protection Program, a new security flaw has cropped up. In the past few weeks, holes have been found in Excel and PowerPoint and a new system for protecting music content. A major security patch was issued for Windows XP, and the company had to shut down part of its Passport service to fix a set of flaws in the technology that Microsoft hopes will become the foundation of its .Net initiative.
The company will have to do some fancy footwork to quell concerns of its .Net partners and current customers, said John Pescatore, an analyst with research firm Gartner. The .Net initiative is Microsoft's overarching plan for ubiquitous online services.
In a column following the outbreaks of the Code Red and Nimda worms, the analyst urged companies hit by both attacks to consider alternatives to Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) software.
This week, Microsoft will meet with security experts, privacy advocates and policy-makers at its Trusted Computing Conference in Mountain View, Calif. The meeting will give the software giant a chance to renew its push to rewrite the ground rules for disclosing information about vulnerabilities. The company wants to see fewer details in the independent advisories that illuminate the holes in its products; getting its way could give Microsoft a bit of breathing room to respond to the flaws before malicious hackers target its customers. That could also help the company regain some of the credibility lost in the recent security compromises.
Consensus or concealment?
Microsoft's aim is to curtail hackers' access to such details. Yet others worry that Microsoft's main motive is to dial down its own public-relations disasters. In the latest security faux pas, Microsoft released an update for Windows XP that included as many as five security fixes, but the company has issued advisories on only two.
Electronic rights activists, worried about what .Net might mean for privacy, aren't comforted by the knowledge that the giant has yet to prove it can secure its systems. Last week, a software engineer demonstrated a way to use several flaws in the company's Passport authentication system--the key to security for .Net.
"The security lapses further support our claims that Microsoft's guarantees of privacy and security are deceptive and unfair to consumers," Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, wrote in a letter to the Federal Trade Commission. "Further, Microsoft's failure to disclose the actual risks associated with the collection and use of personal information in the Passport service constitutes an unfair and deceptive trade practice."
Wired article about a hack to Passport.
In case it gets taken down, here it is
Stealing MS Passport's Wallet By Brian McWilliams, 12:25 p.m. Nov. 2, 2001 PST
To correct serious security flaws, Microsoft on Friday disabled the virtual wallet function of its Passport service and has begun notifying partners about the vulnerabilities, the company has confirmed. The bugs in Passport, a sign-on service used by more than 200 million people, were discovered this week by Marc Slemko, a software developer who lives near Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, headquarters. Slemko is a founding member of the Apache Software Foundation.
Hole found in Microsoft's Passport wallet By Matt Berger, November 4, 2001 7:02 pm PT
VULNERABILITIES DISCOVERED IN Microsoft's free e-mail and Passport authentication services allowed a programmer to access credit card information stored on the company's servers, forcing it to shut down the electronic wallet feature in Passport until it can fix the problem, Microsoft confirmed Friday.
By exploiting holes in Microsoft's Hotmail e-mail service, as well as the Passport.com Web site used behind the scenes when a user logs onto Passport, a Seattle-based programmer was able to create a program which he said exposed personal information submitted by subscribers. The Web site Wired News first reported the exploit after testing the vulnerability with the programmer who discovered it.
"We took some quick steps to verify and fix the issues," said Adam Sohn, a product manager with Microsoft's .Net team. "As a general safety precaution we made the decision to take the (wallet) service off line."
He said there is no evidence that anyone exploited the holes or that information was compromised before the fixes were made Thursday afternoon. Microsoft will reinstate the wallet service soon, he said.
Passport allows users to log on to the Web once and then gain access to a range of Microsoft properties and services, from its MSN network of Web sites to the Web services it is rolling out called .Net My Services. The company also has deals with third-party Web sites, such as eBay Inc. and Starbucks.com, that allows users to log into those sites without re-entering their user name and password.
The electronic wallet feature of Passport, called Passport Express Purchase, stores credit card information and mailing addresses so that users can also make purchases at Web sites that support the technology.
Marc Slemko, a software engineer and founding member of the Apache Software Foundation, identified the vulnerability after discovering what he described as a series of weaknesses with Microsoft's Internet services. "I started looking at the security of Passport when Microsoft began pushing it for much broader use," he said Friday.
Slemko wrote a program that can be used to reveal information in a user's Passport wallet in the minutes after that user logs into their Hotmail account, he said. To do so he took advantage of a vulnerability known as "cross-site scripting." Simply put, this weakness can allow a malicious coder to get between a Web site and a user's machine and compromise the security of the connection.
Sohn said cross-site scripting is a vulnerability that affects the Internet as a whole, not just Microsoft's services. "This is a very sophisticated exploit," he said, adding that it takes "considerable expertise" to recreate the process. For those who do, it is even more difficult to actually steal any information, he said.
When a user signs onto Passport there is a five-minute period in which information in their wallet becomes accessible, allowing them to make an electronic purchase. After that time period, a user would need to re-enter their login and password to use the wallet.
Slemko said his program uses cross-site scripting to access user information during that five-minute window. Microsoft has reduced the window to about one minute since it was alerted to the problem, according to Sohn.
The exploit was successfully tested on the Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6.0 Web browsers running on Windows 2000 and Windows 98 machines, Slemko said. Windows XP users were never affected because security has been beefed up in the new operating system, Sohn said.
Passport is used by 165 million subscribers, and about 2 million of those users also have electronic wallet accounts, according to Microsoft. The service is a central component in Microsoft's strategy to provide software and services that will allow users to share information on the Web among a variety of devices and applications.
Slemko has created a Web site at Alive, which details his findings and discusses what he said are other security issues with Passport.
More on XP Software Activation
From the Langa Newsletter: (We recommend you subscribe to this excellent newsletter at langa.com).
It's true that other apps from other vendors also require a WPA-like signup. But usually, this practice is restricted to low-volume, high-end software, (where the risks of piracy were very high), and to free software (like Netscape's browser) where the vendor needs to try to make a buck by getting its marketing hooks into you. But this kind of registration has never been tried on anything as ubiquitous as a Windows operating system.
At first, Microsoft said WPA was intended to crack down on serious pirates, but this was clearly a smokescreen: Pirates have never been stopped by copy-protection schemes in the past. And in fact, they haven't been stopped by WPA:
Within hours of the operating system's glitzy launch on Oct. 25, malicious coders in Asia began distributing a software program over the Internet that allows users to bypass Microsoft's Product Activation technology... more details.
The hack--- widely available on "warez" and cracker sites--- tricks the OS into always thinking it's day one of the activation process, leaving you with 60 more days to register/activate. Because the activation countdown timer never decrements, the software never reverts to reduced functionality mode.
Since XP came out, Microsoft has modified its stance: It now admits that WPA was never intended to stop professional software cloners--- the guys who make millions by churning out mass-produced illegal copies of Microsoft software. Instead, WPA was to prevent casual users from making extra copies of our software on our laptops and PCs. In other words, Microsoft admits it wasn't going after the major criminals, but instead was targeting the little guys all along. Does this seem like a good plan to you?
The more I look at Passport and WPA, the less there is to like about them. And consider: There's even something called "Managed Passports," in which Microsoft intentionally and by design allows someone to create a Passport in your name, but over which you have no real control. Yikes! (Sort of like a Paypal restricted account. The money goes in, but neither the sender nor the receiver can control it.)
Please come read about "Managed Passports" and the whole WPA/Passport mess at InformationWeek.
So there you have it. Incompetence, followed by lies, followed by more of the same incompetence. Is there a MicrosoftDamon around to provide company spin?
Puff the Magic Dragon
put that magic program on a new cd
Little Jackie Diskette loved that program well
he sat for hours mesmerized by its hypnotic spell
after school he raced home to sit by his machine
and stared with rapt attention at his 21 inch screen
put that magic program on a new cd
to frolic in the megaherz of a Pentium PC
put that magic program on a new cd
to traipse through all the bits and bytes of random memory.
On sad day it happened, Jackie had no fun
he booted up his system but the program wouldn't run
games all need their drivers in order to be played
his was incompatible with a microsoft upgrade
put that magic program on a new cd
to frolic in the megaherz of a Pentium PC
put that magic program on a new cd
too bad it's incompatible with new Windows XP.
A company is marketing a device that will block cell phone reception for approximately 8000 square feet. Some countries (the U.S. among them) has made these devices illegal. Other countries are considering making them legal for use in certain buildings, including museums and libraries. I hope our lawmakers come to their senses and permit their use in many places, particularly concert halls and theaters. There is little that is more annoying than going to an important public meeting or a class in computer programming (boht of which I did recently) and having the musical tunes of a cell phone interrupt every few seconds. Of course having the caller then take the call and converse out loud with total disregard for those present is even more annoying. I would love to have a device that renders the phone inoperable, hopefully on a permanent basis. I would also love to have a device that would render blasting boom boxes inoperable. But since our lawmakers have decided to make such devices illegal, I'll guess I'll have to stick with using a gun on the cell phone and boom box owners.
A friend of mine who is a medical student related that at around 2 AM as he was studying, he heard someone march down his block with a blasting boom box. Then he heard a shot, followed by sudden silence that was broken by some profanity. Running to the window and observing the scene, he realized that someone had taken a gun and blasted the boom box to oblivion. I think even the owner would have preferred a device that simply renders it temporarilly inoperable.
The music industry has just revealed that loud music causes diminished mental capacity. There is no other way to describe the idiotic decision they recently made with regard to downloaded music. They could have gone the way of many booming software companies: allow downloading of music samples and then charge a fee to get the real thing. Many software companies are doing tremendous business this way. Some writers including Stephen King are releasing novels this way. But when Napster (the company that invented sofware which allows folks to share files over the Internet) offered to set up such a plan, the music industry chose instead to sue them practically out of existence. Now realizing that they can't really stop the spread of music file swapping, they have decided "if you can't beat 'em - join 'em." The music industry will now create their own Napster-like software to facilitate the distribution of music online.
Then why spend a fortune suing Napster and another fortune setting up a different method of accomplishing the same thing? Napster had already offered to work with the music industry to control the distribution of music so that royalties would be collected. But the stupidity doesn't stop here. In addition to developing their own distribution software and then hoping that folks will adopt it over the many Napster versions already out there, the industry is also sending the files out in different formats which are incompatible with today's music players. So users will be able to download these files to their PC and then play them ONLY on their PC. Does the music industry really expect folks to walk around with laptops in order to take the music with them?
Remember the slogan "We're number two - we try harder?" Add the music industry to the growing list of those whose slogan is: "We're number two and trying hard to become number twenty."
Here's a link to an article about the situation: ZDNet Article.
In past issues, I gave some advice, seconded by contributing writer Irving Weiss, about checking out the various services that claim to increase traffic to your site. Some are ineffective. Others are just plain crooked. Here is an article I found in Sitepoint.com illustrating the problem.
AdBumb published a report this week that may have you re-thinking the quality of the traffic that you're paying for:No one uses SPRINKS for searches first of all - the site gets no traffic whatsoever except from potential advertisers. There isn't really any consequential search placement, despite their claims, as SPRINKS doesn't have any significant partners (minus maybe Mamma.com).
Thus, almost all traffic comes from their context links, which are supposed to be on relevant sites. They say that these links will be only put "on contextually relevant placements on over 700 targeted destination sites", but they don't really live up to this.
Since SPRINKS doesn't have enough visitors to their program, and has more money in the program than they can use, they have had to falsify contextual clicks. What they do is really simple, and it is amazing more people haven't caught on. They put highly IRRELEVANT LINKS on large traffic sites that have high click-through in general for advertisements.
For example, on the SALON.COM site, in their COMICS section, there are SPRINKS links. Despite being the comic section, it seems that someone felt that "Avoid Jail! Free Consultation" and "Earn your advanced degree entirely online" was relevant. I'm sure neither of the advertisers had signed up to have their links in the COMICS section of SALON.COM.
This is of course completely ridiculous - but why would SPRINKS do it? Simply put, these are some of the highest paying links in the industry and thus generate the most income when clicked on. The advertiser makes the assumption as per what they are told by SPRINKS that their listing will only be on relevant sites and through the search engine. When they search SPRINKS for keywords, they see good placement and make the assumption that is what is happening all over the place. Of course, they are getting ripped off.
Incidentally, Sitepoint is another highly recommended site to visit if you are a web developer. They have many informative articles on web development and Internet trends as well as a free newsletter to which you can subscribe.
Ever run Msconfig and wonder what all the mysterious applications are that are run automatically on your system? Visit Startup Identifier and find out.
Travel Back In Time - well almost. This URL is incredible! It will show you several versions of a web site going back in time. I entered my own URL, www.ygoodman.com and was surprised to find that they had saved several different versions. You can see how the site improved (I hope) as I became better at Javascript and ASP. Internet Time Machine.