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A Grueling Free Trial With Earthlink
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By Ed Foster, Section Columns
Posted on Thu Sep 20, 2007 at 10:22:41 AM PDT
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Earthlink has borrowed from the AOL playbook before in terms of luring users in with free trial offers and then making it hard to cancel the account. But one reader says Earthlink has added another offensive weapon -- namely, harassing customers by phone.
(20 comments, 299 words in story) Full Story
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The Gripe Line, the GripeLog, InfoWorld, and Me
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By Ed Foster, Section Columns
Posted on Mon May 08, 2006 at 01:26:50 AM PDT
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As today marks the third anniversary of my first GripeLog column, it seems like a good time to let my weblog readers know that they're going to be seeing a few changes soon. The GripeLog and the InfoWorld Gripe Line, which have been appearing under two separate banners even though they are largely the same content, are going to be merged. Together again, as it were, but I think you'll find that -- whichever site you have been using -- it will soon be easier to use, more interesting, and even more effective in dealing with the vendors that bug you.
(97 comments, 660 words in story) Full Story
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Oklahoma!!!
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By Ed Foster, Section Columns
Posted on Tue Apr 25, 2006 at 12:58:28 AM PDT
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What would you say if your elected representatives quietly and surreptitiously deleted 50-year-old rules for how consumers and businesses are treated in many legal disputes involving sales of goods, and didn't bother enacting new laws to govern those transactions? Well, if you live in Oklahoma, you should say what you will because that's exactly what's already happened in your state.
(32 comments, 1085 words in story) Full Story
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How the Copyright Office Protected Sony's Rootkit
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By Ed Foster, Section Columns
Posted on Fri Apr 14, 2006 at 12:43:17 AM PDT
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When Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 1998, it threw one small bone to those who feared the new law imperiled fair use rights. It mandated the U.S. Copyright Office to conduct a rulemaking process every three years to study and correct any adverse effects the law might have. And since we all know that the DMCA has had little but adverse effects ever since, it certainly leads one to wonder when the Copyright Office is going to do something about it.
(9 comments, 813 words in story) Full Story
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In the Company of Spyware
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By Ed Foster, Section Columns
Posted on Tue Apr 04, 2006 at 12:30:38 AM PDT
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What do such pillars of American enterprise as Chase, Citi, Sprint, T-Mobile, Travelocity, and United Airlines have in common? Well, at least for one thing, they are all advertisers with adware vendor Direct Revenue. Which means of course that they are all helping fund the plague of intrusive software that threatens the security of our computers and the Internet.
(27 comments, 895 words in story) Full Story
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Is Software Quality Getting Worse?
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By Ed Foster, Section Columns
Posted on Tue Mar 21, 2006 at 12:21:07 AM PDT
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With all the recent news stories about zero-day bugs in IE and anti-virus updates that quarantine AOL or Excel, you might wonder whether the quality of software products is deteriorating. Judging from the everyday complaints the GripeLog hears about software that just doesn't work, I'd say you need wonder no longer. Software is indeed buggier than ever.
(42 comments, 872 words in story) Full Story
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Dead Pixels Tell No Tales
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By Ed Foster, Section Columns
Posted on Tue Mar 07, 2006 at 12:03:40 AM PDT
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With the growing popularity of flat panel monitors and increasingly sophisticated portable devices, dead pixel policies aren't just for laptop manufacturers any more. How many bad pixels do you have -- and of what type, and in what area of the display, etc. - before a manufacturer considers replacing the product under warranty? And how can customers find out which convoluted dead pixel formula a particular vendor uses before they buy an expensive device?
(42 comments, 888 words in story) Full Story
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The Patently Absurd Blackberry Case
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By Ed Foster, Section Columns
Posted on Tue Feb 21, 2006 at 12:34:38 AM PDT
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The RIM v. NTP patent case has been hanging fire for so long that it's easy to lose sight of what it means in the big picture. Quite simply, a company that invented a truly innovative device and its customers are being held hostage by some invalid patents and a few legal sharks who know how to exploit our intellectual property system. And what that means obviously is that something is very, very wrong with this picture.
(63 comments, 702 words in story) Full Story
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Licenses, Families, and Apple
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By Ed Foster, Section Columns
Posted on Fri Feb 10, 2006 at 12:42:09 AM PDT
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Our recent discussion about whether licenses should apply to the user or the machine drew many interesting comments about the vagaries of Windows licensing. But it also led several readers to point at a surprising example of a vendor whose licensing policies seem to cut both ways against the user: Apple.
(47 comments, 840 words in story) Full Story
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