drteknikal 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (26) comment rss

  • On the post: Press Release, Spam, What's The Difference?

    drteknikal ( profile ), 29 Jul, 2004 @ 01:10pm

    put them on notice

    You should put them on notice that in the future such submissions will result in public humiliation of the company and their PR agency BY NAME.

  • On the post: JibJab Threatened Over Use Of Woody Guthrie Song

    drteknikal ( profile ), 28 Jul, 2004 @ 06:52am

    I hope so

    I can only hope they pursue litigation. Aside from a slam-dunk example of satire and parody, there would be the sheer joy of having Woody's ghost testify for the defense.

  • On the post: Blaming Anti-Virus Companies For Adding To Spam Mess

    drteknikal ( profile ), 29 Jan, 2004 @ 10:26am

    you can turn off the bounce messages...

    Rather than blame the anti-virus vendors for including the option to generate a non-delivery report or other bounce messages, why not blame the system administrators who accept the default settings without question?

    All the products we work with allow us to modify or disable these messages, which we do. We notify our own internal users when we munge their mail because it was infected, but we don't bother notifying senders that their message wasn't delivered because it was infected or spam.

    We looked at the volume during spam or virus outbreaks, and found that the bounce messages were clogging our system more than the spam or viruses. Beyond their being futile, we disabled them because our systems perform better without them.

  • On the post: AOL Hoping To Staunch The Bleeding With Superbowl Commercials

    drteknikal ( profile ), 29 Jan, 2004 @ 10:16am

    Corel tried this, worked pitifully

    Whenever I see a company state that they're no longer trying to attract new customers, just trying to keep their old customers from leaving, it's obvious they're in decline. Corel tried this with WordPerfect, and had to settle for a cash infusion from Microsoft with attendant poison pill instead.

    When you're already going over the cliff, why not try to fly?

  • On the post: Bill Gates Grabs Patent For Distributing Art

    drteknikal ( profile ), 31 Dec, 2003 @ 07:42am

    it's his house

    When Bill built his new house (circa '96) there was a lot of ink about his installation of display panels everywhere to display artwork. There was a little less mention when he bought a few major photo and artwork collections that are commercially licensed (stock images). I'm not surprised that with his own home as a laboratory, and access to large collections of commercial content, that he developed a content delivery system. On a much smaller scale (three screens, once server, little software), I have a similar setup at home.

    Watch for the next steps -- commercialization, particularly under the auspices of the stock image vendors...

  • On the post: When Choice Beats Price

    drteknikal ( profile ), 18 Oct, 2000 @ 02:18pm

    sometimes selection, sometimes one-stop convenienc

    I've been shopping on line for years. Spent tens of thousands of dollars on line.

    I like a lot of stuff that I have a hard time finding at retail. It's much easier to find a copy of the new widescreen DVD of "Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom" online for some reason... Ditto when it comes to music, many of my favorite bands don't show up in record stores. If the new releases by Melting Euphoria or Ozric Tentacles show up in YOUR local record stores, consider yourself lucky. Not to mention the obscure stuff. Hell, I've even had to resort to shopping on line for blank videotape - the retail outlets seldom carry high grade tapes any more, and if they do, they're at ridiculously high prices.

    I've also found that it's much easier to place one or several orders on line rather than spend a whole weekend running errands to a number of different stores. Sometimes I pay extra for the convenience. It's also nice to be able to place one big order instead of visiting a half-dozen botique shops.

    And yes, sometimes it's purely on prices. A site like dvdpricesearch.com can save me a lot of money, especially if I've suddenly decided to stock up on a big pile of movies. I've got to find something like that for CDs...