There is. It's mentioned in the story:
"Since 2007, Suffolk County Sheriff Vincent DeMarco’s office in New York, where ComputerCOP is based, has bought 43,000 copies of the software—a fact trumpeted in DeMarco’s reelection campaign materials. ComputerCOP’s parent company directly donated to DeMarco’s campaign at least nine times over the same period.

Indeed, ComputerCOP markets itself as the “perfect election and fundraising tool.” As part of the package, when a law enforcement agency buys a certain amount of copies, ComputerCOP will send out a camera crew to record an introduction video with the head of the department. The discs are also customized to prominently feature the head of the agency, who can count on a solid round of local press coverage about the giveaway."

That's just sad - why are you even buying new PCs with Windows preloaded and paying for something you'll wipe immediately? You're clearly not the clueless user so just buy the parts yourself and stick them together. Dell/HP basically use the cheapest, crappiest parts they can get, and that's why their standard warranty is 1 year when most quality computer parts have a 3-year warranty. That is why the Apple fanboys always rag on PCs. For just slightly more than Dell/HP, you can build a faster, quieter quality computer that will last 10+ years and with parts you can individually upgrade. SSDs are cheap now too, and they give the huge speed boost. Dell/HP gives you like a pathetic 60GB hard drive and change you an arm and a leg to upgrade it.

Same experience. WinXP has serious fragmentation issues, and the included Disk Defragmenter is not enough to fix it. I have had success with third-party defragmenters that do more - in particular Norton Speed Disk, which is unfortunately part of the horribly bloated Norton Utilities. Even disabling everything, the Norton Control Center still starts up, so I had to remove the startup entry from the registry manually. However, it's worth the trouble because it really does return the system to its original snappiness.

Haven't seen it on Win7, although I am running on a well-performing SSD, so that mask some of the problems.

Well, you're on a tablet - that's why! Microsoft made the bone-headed decision to force mouse-and-keyboard uses to use the same interface, and not only it is awkward, but it is just plain inefficient. Also, most of the people who would take the time to try Windows 8.1 or buy it are not Win haters. They are the bonafide Windows users. That's why so desktop users are sticking with Win7, my gaming rig included. Or you could disable most of that Metro crap with Classic Shell.

Wait until they auction off the .sucks TLD!

@thejynxed: No need for insults. Needing to throw one on the first sentence is usually an indication that you lack the means to back up your claims normally. This restaurant owner doesn't know what the intent of the grocery store is - for all she knows, they love her business because many local grocery stores do survive just off that (and as someone else just pointed out, most loss leaders actually aren't, and they might be missing a big sales opportunity). Is anything you just repeated about the restrictions of the sale communicated by the store? No, and that's the problem. It's the store's fault.

And let's see, if it were you, you'd also ban kids, right? Because how would you know they are related? I've been conscripted to buy limit 1 eggs before when I was a teen. We were a poor family of 4. Would you interrogate and demand ID from anyone looking young? Can the store not deal with 2 or 3 customers buying the sale item up to the limit they set themselves?

And let's see, you say your corporation bans this kind of thing - how so?
And you ban extreme couponers by policy? Huh? Do extreme couponers have a badge or something? Do you ban use of any coupon? It's funny because except for store-issued coupons, those are all manufacturer's coupons. Read the fine print - the manufacturer will pay the store the face value of the coupon plus 8 cents handling fee! The stores make a killing off these extreme couponers buying overpriced items for the coupon discount. The only thing is that managers may limit them to 4 or 8 so that all the couponers get some rather than one clearing them out. By the way, I did try couponing for a while, but it just wasn't worth the time spent, and the coupons are usually for packaged foods which are not healthy. Also, those extreme couponing videos you see with the dozen carts of stuff for free are fake - it's all been revealed to be totally staged.

I think ... you just have way too much hate for customers. Just make good, clear policies, and you won't need to treat your customers like criminals.

Liable? You mean like the business can take me to court, and I have to defend myself before a judge?

I know what you're getting at, but bringing government bureaucracy into this isn't the answer. People know that a product with few reviews isn't a good representation, and they learn which review sites are more reliable. People have greater trust in reviews from "verified buyers" as marked on many sites like Amazon. Many review sites also do have various safeguards in place to handle situations like you've mentioned (Yelp included), and those review sites gain popularity because of that. I think sometimes businesses are just paranoid about a few bad reviews. Most people don't believe everything on the Internet.

Why does the story keep changing? Your original story said very clearly that she would clear store out, so then they put limit signs. Then, she would get the limit, and her kids would get the limit. Do you only have 5 customers or something? How can that clear you out if you put up a reasonable limit? Seems like she was following the rules, and they banned her anyway. I'm sorry, but that's not her fault. It's your store's fault. If they don't want to people buying just the loss leader, then make it clear that you must buy $X dollars worth of stuff in order to get the deal. Every grocery store in my area does this for turkey during Thanksgiving now. Your store harbored hidden expectations, and they just banned people who didn't meet them rather than state them clearly. That's low.

Amazon and Newegg will now mark reviews as "verified buyer" if they bought the product, and I'm sure it affects the overall rating in some way.

Okay, I got a new hit on Google, it explains the rating system:
http://www.businessinsider.com...

User ratings are not changed. Instead, this is a rating system internal to Amazon. Based on your internal Amazon rating, it will chose how to promote your book. I'm assuming this means advertising on other pages, items in the "featured" section, etc. In other words, Amazon is saying that they will more heavily promote books that make them more money.

To tell you the truth, I'm surprised they don't do that already. I always assumed featured items were paid advertisements (i.e. they get a commission if you click and make a purchase) and/or high-margin items. Anyone know if that's the case with Amazon in the U.S. already?

Our finance dept is on a different floor, and I say dept, but it used to be only several people, not all of which were always in the office. When they printed something sensitive, they'd immediately make a mad dash down the stairs to the printer room.

They have a printer on their floor now and they are happy, so yea, a robot is pretty overkill.

I don't know if you realize, but your post is all over the place and at times refutes your own points.
1) You say it's not "patriotic duty," and then immediately explain how deep ingrained and important patriotism is to guiding Japanese behavior. Didn't you just agree with the point you were trying to refute?
2) Japan is very safe compared to California. Okay, I don't think anyone disagrees with you. Water is wet. Earth is round.
3) You explain that used books need to be kept expensive so that small publishers can make money easier ... except publishers don't get any money from used book sales. Maybe you meant new books? Also, this is what exactly they mean by protectionist, so you just proved the point.
4) Then you end with the statement - "Japan can do business in Japan however it chooses." See #2.

So as far as I can see, you totally agree with the first post in this thread, except that the first post says this is bad, and you say this is good.

The summary says:
"Amazon has launched a new rating system in Japan which gives preference to publishers with larger ebook catalogs (and publishers that pay higher fees)."
This is the main point of the post and yet there are not even a mention of how this rating system manipulation works in the articles linked? Online search just shows sites copying the same line from each other and again w/o explanation. Does anyone know?

What's the secret message for "remember to bring the anti-tank explosives?"

...set up some streaming cameras. I'm sure the nerds on the Internet will write something to count them.

Or are they afraid the videos will go viral. WATCH BIRDS GET ROASTED OMG WTF LOL!!!!