BlackWind - Slashdot User

Journal Journal: Boycotting Broken Gadgets

Journal by MattSparkes on Monday February 19, 2007 @08:00AM

I've become bored of my gadgets, because they don't seem to do what I want them to do. A few years ago I had a smart phone, which let me download and listen to MP3 tracks via bluetooth, carry files from computer to computer and lots of other tricks that were very useful. Now I have 'upgraded', and my phone does none of those things. My MP3 player looks very good, but I can't just drop MP3 files on and listen to them, and I can't sync with my work PC as well as my Mac at home. What are the option

Submission + - MPAA: We were just trying it out

Submitted by

Firmafest

on Monday February 19, 2007 @06:45AM

Firmafest writes: "Yesterday, slashdot ran a story about MPAA violating a software licence. Now MPAA responds with "We were only testing". Is this a fair response? The author of the software writes: "Whilst that all sounds fair enough but I doubt I'd get away with pirating a few movies providing I didn't advertise it and only used them for testing purposes. hmmm!""

Submission + - JetBlue's Windows Infrastructure Crashes

Submitted by hawks5999 on Monday February 19, 2007 @06:28AM

hawks5999 writes: JetBlue's reservation and communication systems have been down for 5 days leaving thousands of passengers stranded and stockholders seeing red. It was almost exactly 4 years ago that JetBlue trumpeted it's reliance on Windows to help it see black. From a 2003 news.com article:

So we marched down the road of the Windows platform. We don't have any Unix; we don't have an AS/400; we don't have any mainframes — we don't have anything outside of Windows. There has been tremendous cost savings. ...everything's Windows. Every technician that works on a server works on a Windows server. Every technician working on a desktop works on a Windows desktop. That's quite a bit easier than other flavors of desktops or OS/2 or whatever else is out there.
I guess they didn't look at redundancy or reliability in their cost equation...

Submission + - Did D-Wave really demonstrate a quantum computer?

Submitted by Qubert on Monday February 19, 2007 @02:32AM

Qubert writes: Was D-Wave's quantum computer demo last week the real thing? Ars Technica takes a look inside the cold, black box and concludes that whatever was in there, it probably wasn't a 'pure' quantum computer: 'Jumping off the fence, we will say that we think D-Wave demonstrated a real device; however, we think their device is going to set off a debate in the physics community over where the boundary between classical and quantum computation is. At present, quantum computers are "globally phase coherent," which means that every qubit's state is entangled (and therefore correlated) with every other qubit... The D-wave system, however, is certainly not globally phase coherent, which raises the question of whether it is a quantum computer.'

Submission + - CompUSA Gives Customer 4+ Month Run-around

Submitted by

Andy

on Monday February 19, 2007 @01:29AM

Andy writes: "I've had an ongoing...adventure...with CompUSA's repair and customer service departments for the last four months, the short version of which is that — two years in a row — they damaged my laptop while repairing it (this second time more than once!) and are dragging their feet in responding to me and replacing the computer their service center damaged. I've tried to handle it privately for four months, but at this point, I'm running out of options and hope that Slashdot can help bring some attention to my troubles and turn the heat up on CompUSA a bit so they'll do the right thing!

In October 2005 I brought my Sony laptop to them for service, and it came back with all the case screws in the wrong places, causing physical damage to the case and a big loose gap in the front edge. Then, a year later, they again returned my laptop to me with incorrect screws, and with a wad of tape wedged between the keyboard and the cooling fan!

That started a saga, still ongoing, with more missing screws, a heat-related video problem, a damaged hinge cover, missing protective covers for the LCD's screws, and four months of broken promises, abysmal customer disservice, and lack of returned calls on all levels from the local store's tech services manager, operations manager, and GM up to the corporate manager of customer service and chief of escalation.

I've posted my story on my blog at http://www.onefromtheroad.com/index.php?cat=11 (posts are in reverse order, since it's a blog!)

Please help me spread my story, and hold CompUSA responsible for mistreating their customers like this!

— Andy

P.S.-For futher episodes of CompUSA being involved in grossly mishandling repairs, see http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=28004 5"

Submission + - Journalist arrested for taking photo of CT Governo

Submitted by reub2000 on Monday February 19, 2007 @12:38AM

reub2000 writes: Journalist Ken Krayeske was arrested for taking a photograph of Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell during a parade. Krayeske a pacifist, was on a list of "potential troublemakers" and his photo had been sent to cops on the parade route.

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