Pho

Allen was apalled at my attempt to hijack the symbolism of Boromir's death scene for my gluttony.

FreeiPods.com Sold Private Data -- Despite Promising Not To

Thus proving once again that "there is no such thing as a free ipod lunch."

FreeiPods.com Sold Private Data -- Despite Promising Not To: "

FreeiPods.com, the wildly popular marketing scheme that offers free iPods for trying out various subscription offers, sold the data it gathered on 7.2 million Americans to an email advertising firm, according to a story at Wired News by my colleague Ryan Singel.

(New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer) announced Monday that e-mail marketing giant Datran Media had agreed to a $1.1 million fine for knowingly buying marketing lists from companies with privacy policies that promised not to sell or transfer the lists to a third party.

... Datran's biggest purchase, according to the text of the settlement (.pdf), was a list of 7.2 million Americans' names, e-mail addresses, home phone numbers and street addresses from Gratis Internet, a company best known for promising free iPods, televisions and DVDs to users willing to sign up for promotions offered by partners such as Citibank, Blockbuster and BMG's music club.

The sites inspired dozens of 'Is there really such a thing as a free iPod?' stories in the press (including one by Wired News), and internet forums were packed with pleas for information on how to acquire a free version of Apple Computer's signature fetish item. The freebie required a registrant to sign up five others into the program, and eventually the legalized pyramid scheme reached its inevitable saturation point.

While many did indeed get a free iPod, all ended up with inboxes full of marketing pitches, which began showing up within hours of registering.

Gratis lied to me for the story I wrote originally about the company (also linked above), which did wonders for their early credibility, and then lied again for a follow-up story I wrote about it's privacy practices that was prompted by the avalanche of spam its customers mysteriously received.

In addition, Gratis Internet was a member of Truste, which provides a 'privacy seal' to companies it says have a trusted privacy policy.

When asked by Wired News in 2004 how third-party spammers got hold of Gratis members' e-mail addresses, Truste said it could not find a problem with Gratis' practices.

'The results of our investigation indicate that Gratis Internet did not violate their privacy policy,' Truste investigator Alexander Yap wrote in an October 2004 e-mail. 'Truste did, however, work with them to strengthen and clarify their privacy statement.'

Several months later, Truste revoked Gratis' seal of approval, then quickly reinstated it, then pulled it again, but declined to state publicly its reasons.

In the wake of this week's settlement, Truste's spokeswoman did not return repeated phone calls, and executive director Fran Maier did not respond to e-mailed questions about why Truste never discovered the alleged sale or informed the public that Gratis was not adhering to its privacy policy.

"

(Purportedly Via Cult of Mac.)

Windows XP on Intel iMac: confirmed

How to do it.

This is what I'm doing later tonight.

Windows XP on Intel iMac: confirmed: "One Mac user is over US$13,000 richer, as his solution for booting Windows XP on Intel Macs is verified. Are you ready to dual-boot Windows XP and Mac OS X natively on the same machine?

"

(Purportedly Via Ars Technica.)

pstdelta 060315 (Default branch)

I can't believe somebody didn't implement this before. Having a large number of Outlook users on your network backing up (or storing) PST files on the server makes differential backups a complete nightmare.

pstdelta 060315 (Default branch): "Pstdelta can be used to store the differences
between an old and new version of an Outlook .pst
file. It can then generate the new file using just
the old file and the output generated by pstdelta.
It was created in order to vastly reduce the size
of differential backups of .pst files.

---

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

---

Changes:

This release fixes a bug that caused verification failure in specific situations. It adds a nightly script to help facilitate the use of pstdelta in differential backups.

"

(Purportedly Via freshmeat.net.)

This Poor Excuse for a Winter

Coats and T-Shirts coexist on the street, cats and dogs lying together...

Friends, this doesn't look good..