Eclectic Views

    
Perfect for people who are huge fans of the old Batman TV show....
  

    

   Is There A Spam Filter For This?

The Radio Shack Corporation just laid off about 400 employees with a bulk e-
mail to them reading "The work force reduction notification is currently in
progress. Unfortunately, your position is one that has been eliminated."
  

    
You left off the last line, "F*** you very much."
  

    
Sadly, their IT department got ahead of itself and closed all those email
accounts before the spam could be read.
  

    
Har!
  

    
That's just mindboggling horrible. Is their HR run by a 23 year old?
  

    
Next up: a cell phone text message.
U R gone dude
  

    
Dear Sir or Madam as the case may be:


You're fired.

Please do not reply to this address.

In fact, don't do anything; just go away.


Sincerely,

The Management
  

    
eBay needs a better filter for its ads on the results of a Google
search:

Great deals on B Cell Lymphoma
Shop on eBay and Save!
www.eBay.com
  

    
Oh, dear.
  

    
<46>, etc., I saw an item some months back about somebody developing a
cell phone with no features other than basic phone capabilities and no
ability to upgrade.  It was for ultra-orthodox religious people who
didn't want the temptations of Internet browsing and such but did want to
be able to talk to each other.

So there can be markets for seemingly strange clunky versions of stuff.
  

    
Our not-well-received gaming phone was apparently popular among a certain
sect of engineers working in places where camera phones weren't permitted
because it was an otherwise fully functioning series 60.  Just didn't have a
camera.
  

    

   WikiBucks

The technology and culture spawned by the non-profit Wikipedia site, in
which unpaid volunteers provide content that users can look up, is edging
toward a business model. A recent news story relates how the owner of
eHow.com which relies on paid freelance writers sold it to start wikiHow, "a
how-to guide built on the same open-source software as Wikipedia." He claims
the articles provided free are "more informative" than the ones he used to
pay for. Other sites like ShopWiki and Wikitravel are appearing with the
same basic idea, and entrepreneur John Gotts paid $2.86 million last month
for the rights to wiki.com, which he plans to franchise out in pieces like
soccer.wiki.com and smokedsalmon.wiki.com. Even Mr. Wiki himself, Jimmy
Wales, has joined with Marc Andreessen and Mitch Kapoor to found the for-
profit Wikia company which has 1500 divisions including one for Star Wars
fans called Wookieepedia. While skeptics doubt there is big money in the
field, it seems to tap into a strong need for people to publicly display
their knowledge; one 75-year-old Floridian who has posted her secrets for a
good pot roast and graceful aging says "I've been writing all my life and I
always wanted to have my name known". (It's Sondra Crane, by the way.)
  

    

Interesting. I never knew how to feed a snake frozen food,
http://www.wikihow.com/Feed-a-Snake-Frozen-Food for example.
  

    

   Blue Doom

IBM has been awarded a $110 million contract by the US Department of Energy
to develop a new supercomputer that can run 1,000 trillion operations per
second; it will be constructed from 16,000 processors originally designed
for the Playstation 3 game device. It is expected to be operational in two
years and will be housed at Los Alamos, where it "is intended to safeguard
and sustain the nation's nuclear weapon stockpile".  A University of
Tennessee computer scientist observed "there are a number of risks involved"
in the design.  But it will probably play a mean game of Pong.
  

    
In the context of nuclear stockpiles, supercomputing is an alternative to
periodic testing, and therefore a good thing.
  

    
The real trick is to figure out how to best use this thing for porn.
  

    

   Bad Continent! No Operating System

Two and a half years ago the European Commission, the administrative arm of
the European Union, fined Microsoft $633 million for abuse of Windows'
dominant market position. In March of this year EC competition commissioner
Neelie Kroes advised Microsoft that some features of Vista, the upcoming
release of Windows, might violate the same antitrust laws.  Microsoft has
just responded by threatening to withhold the new release from European
customers, obliging nations from the Baltic to the Mediterranean to remain
with the older, more stable, less resource-intensive Windows XP unless the
EC stops being so mean. Specifically they want a kind of guarantee that
changes they propose will get an antitrust pass in advance, or they won't
sell the software over there. Already four British MEPs, fearful of seeing
"European companies at a competitive disadvantage", have written to Ms.
Kroes urging her to capitulate. She hasn't. Instead the EC responded with a
strong statement that "It is not up to us to tell Microsoft what it has to
do to Vista. The onus is on Microsoft to design its product in conformity
with European competition laws, which it is well aware of."  Stay tuned.
  

    
Wouldn't people in Europe be able to purchase the software from
overseas providers? While the EC might be able to regulate the sale of
Vista within the confines of the EU (and I think that would be a
challenge), I can't imagine that the customs agencies want to be
charged with booting every laptop that enters the EU to see what
operating system it's using.

And think of the advertising opportunities. "Vista--so hot it's been
banned in Europe!"

Lastly, is the US just giving Microsoft a pass, or do we also have
antitrust reguloators breathing down Microsoft's neck?
  

    
What Microsoft has apparently threatened to do is "delay the introduction of
Vista to Europe" by some indefinite amount of time. While users could
smuggle in copies, I doubt if most businesses or individuals would choose
to, and it's possible that the MS validation process which requires the user
to register the product may look for the IP address's country of origin.  Re
the US, business-practice laws differ with Europe to some degree: generally
speaking, as I understand it EU laws consider both harm to consumers and to
business competitors in evaluating the actions of a company, while US law
looks only to the effect on consumers.
  

    
That's a significant difference!
  

    
Also, Microsoft isn't so much interested in keeping Vista out of customers'
hands as in avoiding liability; if some European users circumvent the
restriction on sales, the effect on competition would probably be limited
and in any case I doubt if MS would be held responsible.
  

    
>  Lastly, is the US just giving Microsoft a pass, or do we also have
 antitrust reguloators breathing down Microsoft's neck?

We HAD some in this country until the current administration took power.
At that time, the regulators were replaced with fluffers.
  

    
(adding that to the list)
  

    
If I was richer than God already and got told that my software was
unacceptable, redesign it or we won't allow it, I'd do the same thing.

My press agent would probably delete the "doorknob... butt" part of my
comments.