LivingSacrifice - Slashdot User

Belkin's Amazon Rep Paying For Fake Online Reviews 369

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday January 17, 2009 @01:19PM from the fake-them-yourself-like-everybody-else dept.

remove office writes "I recently discovered that Belkin's lead online sales rep, Michael Bayard, has been secretly paying internet users to review his company's products favorably on Amazon.com and other websites like Newegg, whether or not they've ever used the devices. Bayard instructed the people he was paying to 'Write as if you own the product and are using it... Mark any other negative reviews as "not helpful" once you post yours.' Ironically, he was using Amazon's own Mechanical Turk service to hire his fraudsters. Did he honestly think he wouldn't get caught? Are Slashdotters aware of other examples of other such blatant astroturfing on behalf of a large tech company like Belkin?"

What Restrictions Should Student Laptops Have? 1117

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday December 17, 2008 @10:05PM from the the-less-you-know dept.

An anonymous reader writes "We're a school district in the beginning phases of a laptop program which has the eventual goal of putting a Macbook in the hands of every student from 6th to 12th grade. The students will essentially own the computers, are expected to take them home every night, and will be able to purchase the laptops for a nominal fee upon graduation. Here's the dilemma — how much freedom do you give to students? The state mandates web filtering on all machines. However, there is some flexibility on exactly what should be filtered. Are things like Facebook and Myspace a legitimate use of a school computer? What about games, forums, or blogs, all of which could be educational, distracting or obscene? We also have the ability to monitor any machine remotely, lock the machine down at certain hours, prevent the installation of any software by the user, and prevent the use of iChat. How far do we take this? While on one hand we need to avoid legal problems and irresponsible behavior, there's a danger of going so far to minimize liability that we make the tool nearly useless. Equally concerning is the message sent to the students. Will a perceived lack of trust cripple the effectiveness of the program?"

Comment Re:What a deal (Score 1) 286

by LivingSacrifice on Thursday February 16, 2006 @10:59PM (#14739247) Attached to: Build a Homemade Media Center PC

Brutal.

I set up mythtv for the first time in about 3 hours. With zap2it and all the various tools available to the end user, it was trivial. The software is powerful, and does everything I want it to.

But hey, if you are bent on using a proprietary, expensive solution, so be it.
It must be better, cause you paid for it right?

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