Archive for February, 2007
The enemies list, Feb 2007
In no particular order:
- eBay, whose debt collectors - Intrum Justitia - sent me a nice letter about the listing fees that are nothing to do with me promising they’ll either “instruct solicitors to take legal action” or “instruct our local collection agent to make a personal visit”. Cocks!
- Domain Registry of America, whose official-looking domain registration letters are a crude scam designed to make you switch your domain to them. Cockity cocks!
- Acer, who charge you £50 for replacement software disks if you’re daft like me and reformat the hard disk before making backups - and who make you wait a week before telling you they can’t provide disks for your particular model. Naturally they don’t return the cheque - the buggers have cashed it. Cockity Cock Cock McCocks!
Conspiracies, anti-virus and eBay
One of my favourite conspiracy theories goes roughly like this: anti-virus companies would go out of business if their products were 100% effective, so they have a vested interest in keeping computers insecure. Depending on which version of the theory you subscribe to, the conspiracy means they either deliberately make insecure products, or they do the computing equivalent of black ops and actually fund the virus writers.
It’s complete cock, of course, although they’re certainly prone to exaggerating potential threats - have any of you had a virus problem on your phone, PDA or Mac? - and while Microsoft’s entry into the anti-virus market certainly looks bad (Microsoft’s responsible for the flaws, the argument goes, so if it’s got a financial interest in selling stuff to fix the flaws there’s no incentive to fix Windows), that’s equally daft: Microsoft isn’t one big monolithic corporation but a collection of individual product teams, not all of whom get on - so the people whose job it is to make Windows secure aren’t the same people involved in Microsoft security products.
That said, I am inclined to believe the age-old conspiracy theory about eBay - the one that says “eBay won’t stop scammers, because they make money from scammers”. If you sell to a scammer and lose all your cash, tough luck: eBay still expects you to pay the listing fees. If you buy tickets that never turn up, and the user’s long gone, tough luck: eBay still got the listing fees. If you get hoodwinked and pay £700 for what turns out to be a photo of a PS3 rather than a real PS3, eBay got the listing fees. If you want to take advantage of payment protection policies to reduce the risk of being screwed, you need to use PayPal - which eBay owns, and which takes a cut of each transaction. And so on.
I’m curious: as long as sufficient people use eBay to keep it in business, what incentive does it have to crack down more tightly on scams?
More fun with eBay buyers
David’s selling a phone for me on eBay, and the first listing was invaded by scammers. Relisted with the usual “I’ll only deliver to the UK” stuff and the following bit of blah:
This is a re-listing thanks to time-wasters, so unfortunately I need to take a few steps to avoid the scammers. I’m afraid I’ll only accept PayPal, I’ll only deliver to a verified PayPal address and I won’t sell outwith the auction, so please don’t email me offering a million jillion pounds if I promise to end the auction immediately and send the phone to your brother-in-law who lives on Mars.
Auction progresses, auction ends, winning bidder is from the UK, invoice sent. Winning bidder replies with a different email address and says:
Please deliver to my home address in Nigeria.
*bangs head off desk*
Fergie “looks like something Aquaman would fight”
If you’ve ever wondered why celebs are mumbling unhappily about appearing on giant, high definition TV screens, the professionally nasty What Would Tyler Durden Do? gives an insight: hi-res pics of erstwhile Black Eyed Pea Fergie are perhaps a little more hi-res than she might like.
Usual disclaimer: WWTDD is usually foul-mouthed and more often than not, unsafe for work.
eBay again
[Quick recap: my eBay account was compromised by villains; eBay spotted and spanked them, but forgot to credit the fees they'd run up. Many emails ensued, and most recently eBay promised to refund the fees and said "don't worry, we don't expect you to pay these fees".]
INT. A CRAMPED HOME OFFICE - DAY
Gary is slumped in front of his Mac, trying to find a few good jokes for a feature. The phone rings.
GARY
Hello?
VOICE:
Hello? Could I speak to Gary Marshall please?
GARY:
Speaking.
VOICE:
Mr Marshall, I’m from The Big Scary Debt Collector Company.
GARY sighs.
VOICE:
You owe eBay money. Pay now or we’ll break your legs.
Not exactly a surprise, but still - extremely annoying. I explained the situation and now, I need to wait for a letter from the Big Scary Debt Collector Company. When it turns up I need to enclose copies of my correspondence with eBay, and the Big Scary Debt Collector Company will then refer the account back to eBay with, I hope, an explanatory note including the words “you”, “incompetent” and “bastards”.
Slugger O’Toole on battling bloggers
Mick from Slugger O’Toole casts his eye over the current Britblog battles. Although the current barney revolves around political blogger Guido Fawkes, Mick’s interested in the bigger picture.
And yet, according to Ipsos-Mori: “Blogs, or weblogs, are a more trusted source of information than television advertising and email marketing.” So it is the case that people trust blogs, sometimes, perhaps, even when they shouldn’t?
Worth a read if you’re interested in the whole blogs vs media topic.
Now that’s what I call an opening paragraph
From the Daily Mail:
A female teacher at a church high school is being investigated over complaints that she operates erotic vampire websites.
Dr Ben boots old boot-face
Ben Goldacre’s gone after Zelda from Terrahawks Gillian McKeith again, and this time it’s serious: ASA verdicts that she can’t call herself a doctor, selling products in defiance of the law, that sort of thing. So naturally he does what any right-minded person would do: he sticks the boot in. Heh.
You don’t need Vista to view Da Vinci
Can’t remember which paper it was in, but there was a piece this morning saying that Bill Gates is a big old baddie because if you want to see the British Library’s digitisation of his Leonardo Da Vinci notebook, you need to spend at least £100 on Vista. Not true: the app runs on XP too, although you’ll need to install the .NET 3.0 framework. It’s the same tech I wrote about the other week.
The dangers of decorating
I’m painting walls this weekend, which gives me an opportunity to catch up with the various tunes on my iPod I haven’t really got round to. However, I think paint fumes do something to my brain: while I’m not particularly surprised to discover that I love Tom Petty’s Highway Companion, that I like roughly half of the Lily Allen album and hate the other half or that the new Four of Us album is pretty decent, I caught myself thinking “wow! The new Take That album is great!”