Eddie On Everything » PSA

Why you shouldn’t use Amazon’s Unbox Service

eddie — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 16:01:26 +0000

Amazon’s Unbox service allows customers to purchase movies & tv shows for viewing on their computer or Tivo DVR. When purchasing a movie, you’re often presented with 2 choices – you can rent the movie for around $4, or you can purchase the movie for about the price of a DVD, about $20. If you choose to purchase the movie, a copy is stored in your “Digital Locker” and you are entitled to watch and re-watch the movie as many times as you’d like. Sounds like a pretty cool idea, right?

Not so fast.

Check out Amazon’s Wii purchase policy, found over on the Slickdeals forum:

Wii Purchase Policy
As you may know, the Nintendo Wii is in great demand, and there are shortages of this product across the U.S. In an effort to provide as many customers as possible with the opportunity to purchase a Wii, we are limiting the number of Wiis customers can purchase in a given calendar month. As a result, each household may only purchase up to 3 Nintendo Wii units per calendar month.

Failure to comply with this policy will result in account actions including, but not limited to:

Cancellation of all outstanding orders, including Wii orders and other orders.
Closure of the offending customer account and related accounts, including:
The customer account used for making purchases and selling items on Amazon.com Seller accounts
Any international accounts at Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, or Amazon.co.jp
The Your Media Library account area, including any digital products you may have purchased
Any Amazon.com Associates account or Advantage account attached to the closed account
When an account is closed, access to any Amazon Wish List, Baby or Wedding Registry, or profile pages is lost. Any purchase history, saved gifts in Gift Central, and digital products in Your Media Library will not be accessible. Additionally, any outstanding Amazon.com gift certificate or check funds balance will be unavailable.

That’s right – if you do something that Amazon doesn’t like, which can be (gasp!) simply purchasing too many of a particular product from them, they will CLOSE your Unbox account, taking away all of the digital content that you’ve previously paid for.

This is no different than Amazon sending an agent out to your house to repossess all books & DVD’s that they’ve sold you i the past, simply because the decided that you shouldn’t have them any more.

Amazon Unbox? Thanks but no thanks, Amazon. I’ll never use the service again.

Random Posts

Comcast DNS slow? Use these easy to remember DNS IPs

eddie — Sun, 28 May 2006 18:38:21 +0000

I have Comcast cable at home. Overall, the service is pretty good – certainly light years better than the Verizon DSL to which I previously subscribed. One problem that Comcast is plagued by, however, is notoriously slow DNS servers.

For those of you non-technical folks out there, “DNS” stands for “Domain Name Service/System.” Think of it like a phone book for computers – when you type “yahoo.com” into your browser, your computer must first look up “yahoo.com” in the DNS to find the number it needs to “dial” to contact yahoo.com. Comcast has a history of running a slow phonebook. This means that even though they offer lightning fast connection speeds, your internet browsing can slow to a crawl waiting for these lookups to occur.

When I first ran into this problem a year ago, I reconfigured my router to use alternate DNS servers (I’m fortunate to have access to my company’s lightning-fast DNS servers) and forgot all about the problem. I recently installed a new router, though, and my old configuration was lost, meaning that the new router was once again using Comcast’s DNS servers. You’d think that they’d have fixed the problem after over a year, wouldn’t you?

You’d be wrong.

It took me about 10 minutes to notice a significant lag in my browsing, due to the apparently ever-present Comcast DNS problem. I did an internet search and found that I’m certainly not the only one who has noticed the ongoing problem. Fortunately, David Bau has a solution that everyone can use:

For future reference: if my DNS servers ever go out, I will use the following DNS servers with easy-to-remember IP addresses – thanks to AT+T and Level 3:

4.2.2.1, 4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.3, 4.2.2.4, 4.2.2.5, 4.2.2.6

Here in Pennsylvania, these servers are all just as close as Comcast’s DNS servers to me, < 20ms ping, and they are serving DNS faster today.

Awesome – Easy to remember AND very fast. If you’re a Comcast customer, I suggest that you start using these servers if you run into problems.

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The “Perfume Robbers” Email is a Hoax

eddie — Fri, 26 May 2006 20:23:55 +0000

I have this gullible friend, we’ll call her “Suzy.” Even though we live hundreds of miles apart, I can always tell when Suzy is reading her email because my inbox invariably fills with exclamation mark-laden messages with subject lines like “FW: Fwd: Fw: Very important, not a joke. Please read” and “FW: Re: Getting to know you! I’d better get this back!!”

Today I received an urgent alert from Suzy about nefarious sounding perfume robbers – they reportedly ask you to smell a perfume. No big deal, right? You take a sniff, say “I liked the third one! It was like poppies. POPPIES!” You then leave, thinking everything is just hunky-dorrie, oblivious to the fact that you were just secretly knocked-unconscious by a special chemical in the innocent smelling perfume. While you were out, the uber-sophisticated thieves took your watch and your wallet, and like the schmuck you are, you come to and happily go on your merry away, blissfully unaware of what just transpired.

Now, it doesn’t take much in the way of critical thinking to deduce that that this fantastic story is complete hogwash – unfortunately, people like Suzy seldom exercise any judgment before hitting the “Send” button.

Snopes reveals that this particular hoax has been zipping from inbox to inbox since at least the year 2000, and provides a number of specimens:

[Collected via e-mail, 2006]

This is something that happened to us on the way back from vacationlast spring. I didn’t think much of it until now. The reason we were a little suspicious is we had been riding in a jeep all day with 100degrees temps and we stopped at a truck stop for something to drink.When I was leaving, a young girl followed me out and asked what kind ofcologne I was wearing. Well, after 7 hours in the car sweating, I don’tthink you could tell I was or was not wearing any cologne. We just gotin the jeep and said no thanks.

Then it was about 3 weeks ago, I was at a service station in Birmingham getting gas. It was about 9:30 pm. I was approached by 2 men and 2women in a car. The man that was driving asked me ‘What kind of perfumedo you wear?’ I was a bit confused and I asked him ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Weare selling some name brand perfumes, at cheap prices.’ I said I had nomoney.

He then reached out of the car and handed me paper that was laminated;it had many perfumes on it. I looked quickly at it and gave it back. I said, I have no money. He said it is OK, we take check, cash,or creditcards. Then the people in the car began to laugh. I just got in my carand said no thanks.

Then I received this e-mail yesterday and it sent chills up my spine. Please read this. It is no joke. Here is the e-mail I was sent.

Dear Friends:

I know not all of you are women that I am sending this to, but amhoping you will share this with your wives, daughters, mothers, sisters, etc. Our world seems to be getting crazier by the day. Pipebombs in mailboxes and sickos in parking lots with perfume. Be careful.I was approached yesterday afternoon aroun d 5:30 PM in the Walmartparking lot by two males asking what kind of perfume I was wearing.

Then they asked if I’d like to sample some fabulous scent they werewilling to sell me at a very reasonable rate. I probably would haveagreed had I not received an e-mail warning of a “Wanna smell this neat perfume?” scam.

The men continued to stand between parked cars, I guess to wait forsomeone else to hit on. I stopped a lady going towards them, pointingat them and told her about how I was sent an e-mail at work about someone walking up to you at the malls or in parking lots and askingyou to SNIFF PERFUME that they are selling at a cheap price.

THIS IS NOT PERFUME…IT IS ETHER!

When you sniff it, you’ll pass out. They’ll take your wallet, your valuables and heaven knows what else.

If it were not for this e-mail, I probably would have sniffed the’perfume’ but thanks to the generosity of an e-mailing friend, I wasspared whatever might have happened to me.

I wanted to do the same for you.

PLEASE PASS THIS ALONG TO ALL YOUR WOMEN FRIENDS AND PLEASE BE ALERTAND B E AWARE. IF YOU ARE A MAN AND RECEIVE THIS, PASS IT ON TO YOURWOMEN FRIENDS.

Ladies, this happened to me yesterday and I didn’t smell the perfume either, thanks to this email. This is true. Believe me, I know. I wasover by Big Lots in the parking lot at lunch time when I wasapproached. So either day or night, it does not matter. There were 3guys together when I was approached. I called the police when I got back to my desk. Like the email says above, LET EVERYONE KNOW ABOUTTHIS – YOUR FRIENDS, FAMILY, CO-WORKERS, whomever. It helped me. Thefirst thing that popped into my head was this e-mail warning.

[Collected via e-mail, 2001]

PLEASE PASS THIS ALONG TO YOUR WOMEN FRIENDS!!!

I was approached yesterday afternoon around 3:30pm in the Wal-Mart parking lot at Forest Drive, by two males, asking what kind of perfume I was wearing. Then they asked if I’d like to sample some fabulous scent they were willing to sell me at a very reasonable rate. I probably would have agreed had I not received an email some weeks ago, warning of a “wanna smell this neat perfume?” scam.

The men continued to stand between parked cars, I guess to wait for someone else to hit on. I stopped a lady going towards them, pointed at them, and told her about how I was sent an e-mail at work about someone walking up to you at the malls or in parking lots, and asking you to SNIFF PERFUME that they are selling at a cheap price.

THIS IS NOT PERFUME – IT IS ETHER!

When you sniff it, you’ll pass out. And they’ll take your wallet, your valuables, and heaven knows what else. If it were not for this e-mail, I probably would have sniffed the “perfume”. But thanks to the generosity of an emailing friend, I was spared whatever might have happened to me. Iwanted to do the same for you.

PASS THIS ALONG TO ALL YOUR WOMEN FRIENDS, AND PLEASE BE ALERT, AND AWARE!!

[Collected via e-mail, 2000]

I WAS SENT AN E-MAIL AT WORK ABOUT SOMEONE WALKING UP TO YOU AT MALLS OR PARKING LOTS AND ASKING YOU TO SNIFF PERFUME THEY ARE SELLING AT A CHEAP PRICE. THIS ISN’T REALLY PERFUME BUT ETHER, AND YOU WILL PASS OUT AND THEY TAKE YOUR WALLET AND ALL YOUR VALUABLES. THIS IS NOT A PRANK E-MAIL, THIS IS TRUE BECAUSE I WAS STOPPED IN GOVERNORS SQUARE PARKING LOT TODAY.

A MAROON CAR PULLED UP TO ME WITH TWO FEMALES. THE FEMALE ON THE PASSENGER SIDE ROLLED DOWN THE WINDOW AND ASKED ME IF I WOULD BE INTERESTED IN “SNIFFING” SOME PERFUME THEY WERE SELLING. I REMEMBERED THE E-MAIL I JUST RECEIVED YESTERDAY, AND SAID NO. SHE ASKED ME A SECOND TIME, KEPT ON WALKING SAID NO ONCE AGAIN AND THEY PULLED OFF. IF IT WEREN’T FOR THE E-MAIL, I VERY WELL MAY HAVE DONE IT. PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS AND TELL THEM TO BEWARE. THIS IS TRUE!! IF IT WEREN’T FOR THE E-MAIL I GOT YESTERDAY, I COULD VERY WELL MAY HAVE BEEN A VICTIM. (AIN’T GOD GOOD?) REMEMBER TO PASS THIS ON!!!!!

Why do people like Suzy fall for hoaxes like this? I mean, she isn’t a dumb person. On the contrary, she’s pretty bright. Sure, maybe she’s a little a gullible, and maybe she’s a bit absent minded. But why she always sends stuff like this on, I’ll never know.

All I can do is smile and shake my head. And post about it here, of course. ;-)

Random Posts

Ashley Flores Isn’t Missing

eddie — Tue, 23 May 2006 03:39:10 +0000

And if you send an email to HelpfindAshleyFlores@yahoo.com, you’ll get a “no such user” error.

Contrary to what you may have read in your email, Ashley Flores isn’t missing.

I received an email today from a friend who’s never met a “forward me” email that she didn’t oblige – the email pleaded for me to be on the lookout for a “deli manager’s 13 year old daughter who’s been missing for two weeks.” The curious thing about the email is that it didn’t contain any of the information that you’d expect if a girl was really missing – for instance, her last known location ,her parents’ phone number, the phone number of the local police department, etc.

I did a quick internet search and found that it is indeed a hoax. Turns out that Ashley Flores is a real person, it’s just that she’s not missing. According to Snopes, “her ‘missing’ status was one concocted as a kids’ prank.”

The Email

Please look at the picture, read what her mother says, then forward hismessage on.

“I am asking you all, begging you to pleaseforward this email on toanyone and everyone you know, PLEASE. Maybe if everyone passes this on,someone will see this child.

That is how the girl from Stevens Point was found by circulation of herpicture on tv. The internet circulates even overseas, South America, andCanada etc. Thanks

We have a Deli manager (Acme Markets) from Philadelphia, Pa who has a 13year old daughter who has been missing for 2 weeks. Keep the picturemoving on. With luck on her side she will be found.

My 13 year old girl, Ashley Flores, is missing. She has been missing nowfor two weeks. It is still not too late. Please help us. If anyone anywhere knows anything, please contact me at:HelpfindAshleyFlores@yahoo.com I am including a picture of her.

All prayers are appreciated!! “It only takes 2 seconds to forward this. Ifit was your child, you would want all the help you could get.

The Snopes site reports that on one day alone (19 May 2006), 25,000 visitors came to their site looking for information about Ashley Flores.

Since email forwards never seem to die, Ashley Flores will likely be famous for a long time to come.