Well, I guess it was bound to happen eventually. Today, I got the credit card bill for a Visa card that I barely ever use, and was surprised to find a charge for $59.95 with a transaction description of "REMARQ COMMUNITIES, INC. 4089383954 CA" (don't bother calling what appears to be a phone number in there - it's been disconnected.

Needless to say, I've never done any business with "Remarq Communities" (which appears to be a pay-based news (as in NNTP) service). I've called my credit card company to cancel the account, and contacted Remarq to see if they have any records of the transaction.

I've always considered myself a pretty savvy online shopper - I'm not exactly keying my credit card number into every pr0n site I run across - but I'll be thinking twice before doing any online shopping in the future. Anybody out there had a similar experience, and if so, how much luck did you have getting the charges wiped off?

Well, since I submitted this story and subsequently got it bounced by the editors, I might as well throw it out in my journal because *I* thought it was interesting. I'm sure the story got bounced because the editors just figured it was Dvorak rumor-mongering and not because IBM's in bed with the penguin.

John Dvorak suggests in his November 20th, 2001 'Inside Track' column that IBM has been taking credit for other folks' inventions. Specifically, one of the "inventions" refuted by Dvorak is IBM's hard drive "pixie dust".