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Submission + - Barnes and Noble Refuses to Refund Lost Package

Submitted by

Flavio Ribeiro

on Tuesday January 16, 2007 @09:54AM

Flavio Ribeiro writes: "On September 2006 I ordered $300 worth of books from Barnes & Noble. I've been ordering books online regularly for about 10 years, but this was my first order from B&N. I'm a grad student on a budget, so I payed for the cheapest shipping. Since I'm overseas and I've had packages take almost 3 months to arrive, I waited diligently. When nothing arrived, I e-mailed B&N. This is the response I got:
The package has not been returned to our warehouse as undeliverable to the shipping address you provided. (...) When no delivery confirmation is available, we will refund a lost package up to sixty (60) days after the expected delivery date. As it is now beyond sixty days, kindly contact your credit card issuer to dispute the charge.
My second attempt to contact B&N was answered with the same pre-written message, which I find quite insulting. My credit card issuer (Credicard Citi) refuses to dispute the charge, as is their policy with all charges. The fact I payed with Paypal also complicates matters. Additionally, Paypal automatically deferred and closed the claim I filed with them. The way I see this, B&N failed to deliver the purchased items, and refuses to take any action. They set an arbitrary short deadline that exempts them from further responsibility, which lets them bully international customers. This practice would never work out if B&N were a local company, since I'd be able to file claims at the local equivalent of the BBB.

I need your advice. What can I do to get a refund?"

Submission + - Cell phone sets off fire, man charred

Submitted by superash on Tuesday January 16, 2007 @08:25AM

superash writes: Vallejo (California): "A cell phone apparently ignited in a man's pocket and started a fire that burned his hotel room and caused severe burns over half his body, fire department officials said.
Fifty-nine-year-old Luis Picaso was in stable condition on Monday with second- and third-degree burns to his upper body, back, right arm and right leg, Vallejo Fire Department assistant chief Kurt Henke said."

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/cell-phone-sets-off-fi re-man-charred/31317-11.html

There was a incident some time back where a laptop battery exploded endagering life of many in a high profile conference. Are the hardware manufacturers taking the common man for granted? Are these a result of low-cost production(outsourcing) ??

Submission + - DRM, GPLv3 is 'hot air': Torvalds

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16, 2007 @04:50AM

An anonymous reader writes: In Sydney this week for the annual Linux conference, Linus Torvalds has described DRM and the GPL as "hot air" and "no big deal". From the interview: "I suspect — and I may not be right — but when it comes to things like DRM or licensing, people get really very excited about them. People have very strong opinions. I have very strong opinions and they happen to be for different reasons than many other people. It ends up in a situation where people really like to argue — and that very much includes me... I expect this to raise a lot of bad blood but at the same time, at the end of the day, I don't think it really matters that much."

Submission + - is Pascal Worth learning ?

Submitted by Compaq_Hater on Tuesday January 16, 2007 @03:19AM

Compaq_Hater writes: I ask this because I have tried many variants of basic and have gotten pretty good with them and I was wondering if anyone out there would like to share any thoughts on Pascal like what you think of it and how you may have found it useful.

myself I want to learn somthing new and some what easy to understand and I think Pascal is it, right now all I have to use is the Free Pascal 32bit compiler from http://www.freepascal.org/.

sadly I cannot find any Community Colleges in my area that teachs it, is there no job market for it anymore ?, I do not want to spend the rest of my Life at Wal~mart.

Submission + - Where does Google's Hardware go to die ?

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Tuesday January 16, 2007 @02:36AM

Anonymous Coward writes: "I was talking with a co-worker today about how Google is so big, and how they make such great use of commodity hardware to do their business, and one of the topics that came up is where does Google's old hardware go ? Google has been around for many years now, and they have more machines than any sane person would own, and they are continually expanding. At some stage they must have to push out old equipment, either when it starts entering into its MTBF limits or it's been depreciated down. Searching (using Google of course) wasn't particularly fruitful. Has anyone seen where Google's hardware goes when it dies ?"

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