Are you a tired old granny who only uses the computer your daughter bought you once a week to buy groceries over Amazon and prowl around for action in #hotteengirls? A 14 year old who only uses it to get Wikipedia to write the occasional book report for you and find gullible men on MySpace to rob?
mp3
Another Skeptical Musing on AOL CSR Firing
By 6.16.06
Chooki brings up a great point in the comments, which is how do we know that John was actually fired? There’s no proof, just a statement from the PR department.
Some Skeptical Musings on the AOL CSR Statement
By 6.16.06
When AOL said that part of their zero tolerance asshole employee policy was “swiftly honoring [customer] requests,” we all pretty much rolled our eyes into the back of our head and spent a few minutes scrutinizing our snarky, sarcastic brains.
AOL Fires Infamous CSR
By 6.15.06
The AOL customer service rep who tried so very hard to prevent Vincent Ferrai from cancelling his service has been fired.
The Best Thing We Have Ever Posted: Reader Tries To Cancel AOL
By 6.13.06
This is the best thing we have ever posted. It’s so good that we almost don’t want to comment on this mp3 that Consumerist reader Vincent Ferrari recording him trying to cancel his AOL account. [More]
Nine Dollar Mp3 Player
By 5.17.06
Forget going Zen or joining the iGod army, here’s an mp3 player for nine bucks. No screen, but it supports USB 2.0 and 1 gig SD. Start a cult of one and put the remainder of your pod savings in the collections basket.
Creative Sues Apple, Claims They Created MP3 Menus
By 5.16.06
Could patent law be any more absurd? Perhaps we’re on the wrong end of it, but it seems that the only tangible result of modern patent law is a string of nuisance lawsuits in which one company attempts to rob consumers of a product they enjoy by suing a company that has made an ostensibly similar competing device. Re: Blackberry. But now, Creative vs. Apple.
RIAA Tells MIT Student To Drop Out Of School To Pay Fines
By 4.6.06
Cassi Hunt has recently been accused by the RIAA of being guilty of file-sharing. We all know what happens now: the RIAA will extort her for thousands of dollars (in Cassi’s case, $3750) as a “settlement” to prevent her having to go to court. Or, as Cassie puts it in her highly entertaining and witty account: ” Let us screw you over gently now, or with chains and whips in court.”
Daily Freeload
By 4.3.06
Here’s your free stuff o’ the day, thanks to Dewan, you frickin’ cheapskates.
How DRM Affects Battery Life
By 3.17.06
With all the furor over DRM lately, CNet asked itself the simple question, “How does DRM affect battery life on your iPod?” As you might expect, the answer is — badly.
Software Syncs Crappy Non-iPods with iTunes
By 3.6.06
We don’t have an iPod. We have a first-generation Dell DJ. Compared to the design of the opalescent obelisk ubiquitously clutched in every hipster’s hand, the Dell DJ is striking. It looks exactly as if Soviet super-scientists invented a time machine, traveled to the future, copped on to the inherently socialist nature of the music trading scene, and — traveling back to their own era — attempted to make their own mp3 player out of a two-inch plate of Soviet-grade titanium tank plating. Fifty years later, Dell.ru found about a million of these in an abandoned Muscovite silo, dusted them off, formatted “Lenin’s Greatest Hits” off the hard drive and sold them as is, to idiots like probably-not-you but definitely-royal-‘we’.
Morning Deals Round-Up
By 2.15.06
• Here’s a deal for we penny pinchers: SuperMediaStore.com has the Kill-A-Watt Electricity Monitor for $29, shipped. This little gewgaw tells you how much power each device you plug into it uses, equipping you with the knowledge that your desktop document incinerator is actually sort of power hungry.
Morning Deals Round Up
By 1.23.06
• SlickDeals is reporting that the Sony DSC-S40 4.1-megapixel camera is going for a $100, in store only. Yes, that would be a good deal.
Morning Deals Round Up
By 1.19.06
• Get the Rogue Hawaiian Soprano Ukulele for just $26 shipped at Musicians’ Friend. Ukulele is the new Strat knock-off, hipsters. [via Dealnews]
Latest iTunes Dials Home Without Your Permission
By 1.11.06
We don’t mind it when software dials back home to its creator company—we mind when it does so without asking. Apparently the newest version of iTunes (6.0.2) includes a ‘Mini-Store’ pane which sends information about the current song you are listening to back to Apple (via a company called ‘Omniture’) so they can push suggested albums or songs based on your existing collection. Readers of Boing Boing have determined that turning off the Mini-Store does deactivate the behavior, but it’s something of which you should be aware.
Serial Killers of Suing: How the RIAA Finds Its Victims
By 12.30.05
There’s a fascinating story over on p2pnet describing exactly the legal process the RIAA is using to blanket sue tens of thousands of people.
Morning Deals Round-Up: Shoes, MP3 Players, Games
By 12.22.05
• The clothing clearouts are getting nicer. The code holiday2005, for instance, will get you 40%—and sometimes free shipping—at Timberland.com.
