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Vol. 5, No.40
10-6-05
1 Blue Hippo, RIAA
2 Computers by the pound
3 Breathalyzer contests, Google Office, recreated killer virus, iPod videos
4 Speed up Firefox
5 Buy or build?
To follow up on last week’s article on Blue Hippo I’ve been digging deeper into the company’s record and pouring through Kentucky and Indiana state statutes that might be violated by their business practices.
The obvious
place to start was the Better Business Bureau. According to http://tinyurl.com/eyf97
they have received 609
complaints about Blue Hippo since the file was opened in July of 2003. 406 of those complaints have come in the
last 12 months.
Those
complaints mainly concerned “advertising issues, contract disputes, credit or
billing disputes, delivery issues, guarantee or warranty issues, product
quality, refund practices, repair issues, selling practices and service
issues.” Needless to say, the BBB
lists them as having an unsatisfactory record.
Blue Hippo is
not a member of the BBB, but they do boast on their website that they belong to
the Fair Business Association of America.
On that website they have an “Excellent Rating” with no complaints filed
with the FBAA. This smelled odd
given the BBB rating until I scrolled further down the FBAA’s Blue Hippo page
(http://www.fbaa.us/companies/bluehippo.htm),
when the stench became overwhelming.
The page included retail offerings from Blue Hippo as well as sidebar ads
for Gucci and The Sovrana Store.
Back at the BBB
site http://tinyurl.com/c7kkj I found,
not at all surprisingly, that the FBAA is not a member and it shares Blue
Hippo’s status as having an unsatisfactory record.
It would appear
that the FBAA contacts companies such as Blue Hippo to notify them of their
negative rating with the BBB and offers them membership in the FBAA which is, of
course, “fair” to such businesses.
Ummm… yeah.
A hinky company
using another hinky company to vouch for them. The mind
boggles.
I’m also trying
to make sense of Usury statutes that might apply to Blue Hippo but my lack of
legal knowledge means I’m swimming through gelatin. If any of our readers happen to be
attorneys and can possibly help a brother out in understanding what percentage
above the prime rate at APR is legal and whether Blue Hippo can skirt those laws
the way that check kiting storefronts can I would really appreciate it. I hate quivering in a corner sucking my
thumb and nursing a blinding headache after viewing the Klingon language
passages our laws seem to be written in…
In other news
(I love that phrase ;)) the much-maligned RIAA this week found itself in an
ungainly position on two fronts.
On the public
front the RIAA has sued over 15,000 people (grandmothers, small children, Mac
users and people who don’t own computers included) for downloading and/or
sharing copyrighted music. Often
the hapless victims, presented with a settlement of a few thousand dollars
versus many thousands to defend themselves, have acquiesced and paid the
settlement.
The tide seems
to have turned, however, and a few people are starting to stand up to the RIAA
and challenge these charges. One in
particular, Tanya Anderson, has gone so far as to countersue (http://tinyurl.com/cbwj4)!
She lists
charges including violation of the RICO Act (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations), invasion of privacy, electronic trespass, violation of the
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, deceptive business practices and various
others.
She has
demanded a jury trial, which has to have the RIAA peeing themselves in
fear. What average citizen in this
country would side with them when presented with background information about
their activities? And when
presented with the plaintiff in this case, a 41 year old disabled single mother
of an eight year-old girl, who they accuse of being the notorious source of
pirated “gangsta rap” music known as “gotenkito”, I can already see the jury
collapsing into helpless laughter and throwing the book at the
RIAA.
If the RIAA
settles they show weakness and more of their innocent victims will follow suit
and countersue. If they follow
through and actually go to trial that will almost certainly lose. Rock, meet hard
place.
And if that
wasn’t enough RIAA member Sony, and many of their contract artists, have decided
to respond to customer complaints over the copy-protection schemes on many of
the company’s CDs by listing ways end-users can bypass the protections (http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/ptech/10/04/music.copy.reut/index.html). This is in clear violation of the
DMCA and invites users to violate copyright laws.
As another
untenable situation, the RIAA is screwed here. Do they let it slide, giving the
appearance that they really don’t care if their members violate the same laws
that they sue individuals for allegedly violating? Or do they go all Donner Party and start
eating their own members for seeing the damage all this copy-protection nonsense
is doing to the music industry and acting unilaterally to alleviate the
problem?
Pot, meet
kettle…
Raising a toast
in hopes that the entertainment industry grows a
brain,
Kevin Mefford,
Editor
Editor’s
Note: Matt Dattilo is on vacation
this week so I’ll be providing the Tech News and Email of the Week entries this
week as well as most of the other written content. Direct all complaints to thepcgurus@gmail.com and tell Matt to
stay at home so I don’t screw up his segments ;) Seriously, enjoy yourself Matt
(and Kelli). Be safe in your
travels and hurry back…
Terry
Wise
Tech News of the Week
Hi tech
breathalyzers in bars will help curb drunken driving? Not
exactly:
http://www.dailynebraskan.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/10/05/43435126d84da
The Google
threat to Microsoft grows… Google
and Sun ink agreement to offer free web-based office applications for word
processing and spreadsheets:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16829140%255E2702,00.html
In anticipation
of a worldwide bird flu pandemic scientists have recreated the Spanish flu virus
that killed 50 million people in 1918.
What could possibly go wrong?
http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/conditions/10/05/1918.flu.pandemic.ap/index.html
Has the iPod
made itself one of your “must have” gadgets yet? If not, consider adding it to your list
if it could play videos:
http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1305
Firefox Extension of the Week
When Firefox
came out one of its grandest features was the
configuration page (found by
typing about:config in the address bar).
This page of options was
absolutely everything that you could tweak in
Firefox, all the options,
settings and values that you could ever
want. When the first builds of
Firefox were released it was how certain
features that were being tested had
to be turned on and off, because the
options hadn't been written in anywhere
else yet.
Over time people have really dug into what
each and every one of these options can do, and some enterprising person took
the work and developed it into an extension that can speed up browsing on the
Internet. There are several different options that this extension
automatically tweaks for you, and all you have to do is pick one radio button in
a set of 5.
First, to the install page! https://fasterfox.mozdev.org and click
the
install link at the bottom of the page. After you install it and restart
Firefox, go to Tools -> Options, and look for Fasterfox in the left hand
sidebar. Click it, and you are faced with the 5 radio buttons. For
dial-up, the suggested setup is to choose Courteous or Optimized, whichever runs
a little faster for you, and for broadband Turbo-Charged is the option for
you. The reason you don't want to pick Turbo-Charged for dial-up is that
there is extra data sent out by Firefox so that it can retrieve the pages more
quickly, and
all the extra data going out impedes some of the data flow
going into
the machine, which would increase the time that it took all the
page
data to get back to the computer and load in the browser
window. Check
some of your favorite sites out with this
extension installed. Even
being on one of the fastest networks around
(they treat us pretty well
here in the dorms) I can still tell a difference
on some of the pages I
visit. In all, a handy little
extension!
Happy faster browsing!
Daniel A. Williams
daniel@thepcgurus.com
Email Question of the Week
Q: I have built my
last 2 computers (they are getting old as they are both less than 2 gigs
AMD). We are thinking about adding another computer for our 3 children
(one is a teeny bopper). Do you think I should build it or buy one, ready
made?
I enjoy building them, but it seems that it is more cost worthy to just buy one (operating system included). By the way, I am a huge AMD enthusiast. Your thoughts please.
Thanks again for your insight.
Go Cards!
A: Depending on what the PC is used for it's six of one and half dozen of the other. If the teenager is into gaming (The Sims, GTA etc.) I definitely recommend building your own. That way you can insure your’re getting good quality parts rated for the requirements of the games.
If it will just be used for Internet access and homework you're probably OK to buy a lower end ready built. One thing to keep in mind, however, is the fact that most national brands will use many proprietary parts in their PCs. Front panel connectors are usually on a block or ribbon cable as opposed to individual connectors, power supplies are often odd sizes and shapes, even floppy and CD-ROM type drives can be non-standard.
So while you may save some money up front you'll be socked in the wallet if you need a part after the warranty runs out. A coin flip but either route is OK as long as you compare what an integrated motherboard (sound, video, lan) plus processor, RAM, OS etc. would cost vs. buying a Dell or Gateway.
In this situation I think the best of both worlds would be to buy one from a Mom and Pop store. They build it and handle the warranty, you get standard parts so it won't cost an arm and a leg to fix in the future and you don't have to build it :)
Hope that helps and keep us posted...
Kevin Mefford
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