Wow. You can't make this stuff up. It just keeps getting better all the time.

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/09/11/21/147253/Apple-Voiding-Smokers-Warranties?art_pos=3

why oh why do people put up with this.

24 songs. 1.9 million dollars. Wake up folks.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/jammie-thomas-retrial-verdict.ars

wow... just... wow.

The amount of power some companies have is downright disturbing. You guys know how I feel about net neutrality. A good clip to watch:

My you-tube video of Charlie's first steps just got disabled due to copyright infringement (the video has a 30 second clip of Fats Domino's "I'm Walking").

I took the time to send in a dispute citing the four factors of fair use, so we'll see what happens. In my comments I told them I was pretty sure Fats Domino would have no issue with it.

I'm pretty sick of the RIAA running the world.

And this is how your first amendment rights are destroyed:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/11/feinstein_stimulus_amendment/

People... this is too important. The internet cannot be taken over by corporations who control what is allowed to go on the internet... that is precisely the reason it flourishes while other forms of absolutely controlled media (such as print, radio, tv) are dying!!! This is too important.

And the corporations want it bad enough to try and get senators like Feinstein to sneak it into a bill that is on its way to passage and has nothing to do with net-neutrality. They don't want a debate on the issue. They don't want it to be transparent. They don't want the public to even know it happened.

Don't let this happen. Be opposed to any legislation that allows internet service providers to filter traffic of their choosing. Take notice when senators try to sneak in legislation like this and spread the word. When they come to your town hall meetings, ask them why they would do such a thing instead of allowing it to be debated by the people.

Man. Yahoo's bot... slurp... is killing me. Their bots have been pounding my site for weeks, sucking down lots of bandwidth.

I decided to make a robots.txt and try to disallow crawling on some of the more byte intense portions of the site. But, after just watching my log for a few minutes, I could see yahoo slurp get the new robots.txt, and completely ignore it! Dangit!

That is annoying. Apparently, I'm not alone. Cmon yahoo... get your stuff together.

For those of you who thought I was joking about Comcast broadband running at dial-up speeds, these speeds are what I have been dealing with _all_night_!!!

9.0 KB/sec... isn't that nice? Comcast offers dial-up speeds for only $50 per month!

I don't know who I hate more... Comcast, or Fry's.

Ever since my earthlink cable internet got converted over to Comcast, my internet service has went down the crapper. Web pages used to be fast. Downloads were really fast. Ping times were great. And I hardly ever had outages.

But, now things are Comcastic. Comcastic apparently means slow webpages, constant dropouts, high prices, and a monopoly ensuring I have no other choice for cable or cable internet.

Ever since the change, I now receive internet that loads webpages exactly the way they loaded when I used dial-up internet in the 90's. It is absolutely abysmal. I sure hope I can get some fiber internet and cable soon. I hate all the monopolies in this country!

I enjoyed reading about this guy's comcastic experience.

But, they are in second place. First place is handed to the company who not only doesn't deliver the products you buy (like comcast), but also engages in deceptive practices and ultimately has incompetent support.

Fry's is a huge electronics retailer that loves to lure people in the stores with extremely cheap, low quality electronics, and then inundates them with overbearing salespeople and confusing, slow rebate offers.

This is bad enough. I shopped around for an hour in there once finding a cart full of things I needed and then went to buy the laptop I had found on their website. I got ready to checkout and they quoted a price for the laptop significantly higher than what I saw on the website. I pointed out this was wrong and showed the sales rep the printout from their website. He then quickly informed me that they didn't honor the prices on their website.

That's right. They don't honor the prices on their own website. He started to explain that they could sell things more cheaply online than in the store. I quickly told them that I was sure they could because they wouldn't have to pay people like him to walk around in tuxedo shirts and harass people.

But it gets worse. I decided to actually buy something off of their website. I was looking for a new TV, and found a good deal (read "bait") on their website. I ordered it. Two days later I received this email (read "switch"):

Thank you for your order. We apologize but the item(s) you ordered are currently out of stock and we are unable to provide a definite ship date at this time. However, we continually receive new merchandise in our warehouse and we hope to fulfill your order within the next thirty days or sooner if possible.

Nice. This wasn't stated when I ordered the TV. But now it was on backorder. I grumbled, but left it alone.

A week passes and still the Fry's order status page reports "Back Ordered". I call customer service. The rep tells me that they don't know when it will ship, but she can have the manager check and send me an ETA. Great. Do that.

Another week passes. Still nothing! I call again. "Your rep promised me an email and I didn't receive anything. What's going on?"

The second rep says "I don't know why you didn't receive it. I will request it again."

ANOTHER WEEK PASSES! Three weeks. Still nothing. No emails. No status change. No hope.

I called again this morning to give them an earful. I told the girl on the phone that I thought their business was deceptive and that they appeared to be incompetent. I explained how every other sales company I've worked with has always worked hard to communicate with me and follow through with their promises. I told her to mark every check box and fill in every box she could to explain how upset I was and how horrible my experience has been.

I also decided to file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. I'm sure that won't do much, but maybe if enough people do. If you have issues with Fry's, please file a complaint with the BBB!