billso.com

This article first appeared on my old blog at http://www.bloglines.com/blog/wsodeman?id=37

URL: AOL to slash 5,000 jobs

The death spiral for AOL’s dialup business hit a new low this week, as the company announced it would distribute its access software free of charge in the United States.

AOL will also offer some content and services for free, including e-mail. Some of these services will include advertising, following the model that Yahoo and Google have employed.

The company announced massive layoffs in its operations, primarily in call centers. These layoffs will help compensate for the lost subscriber revenue.

The dialup access business has been in decline for years in the U.S., as residential customers choose faster “always-on” connections like cable modems and DSL. In Hawaii, Time Warner Cable is the dominant provider.

Clearwire has entered the Honolulu market with a wireless broadband service that uses cellular phone signals to provide broadband. This service does not require a fixed-wire installation, and it may be attractive to users who change their residence frequently, such as students.

This article first appeared on my old blog at  http://www.bloglines.com/blog/wsodeman?id=38

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/internet/0,71387-0.html

“In Nigeria, we are always amazed that anyone could be so stupid as to respond to such an offer.” - Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

This article describes how a few Internet users have battled so-called “419” scammers.

These 419 scams are named after a Nigerian law that prohibits fraudulent financial transactions. While this is an old scam, it became associated with Nigeria in the early 1990s. Scammers mailed thousands of postal letters to addresses gleaned from paper membership directories. North America, Australia and Western Europe were frequent targets.

Typical 419 scams involve advance fee fraud, in which the scammer asks the recipient to receive or launder a large sum of money. The scammer often portrays themself as an innocent victim stranded in another country, and promises the recipient a percentage of the funds in return for assistance.

The 419 scam is a risky venture, but it only takes one or two paying victims to make this a profitable endeavor for a scammer. As the scam progresses, the scammer asks the victim to send money in advance, as a token of good faith. The scammer may send photographs, forged documents and other materials in an attempt to gain the vitim’s cooperation.

Most victims lose all of their money. An average victim loses around US$20,000, and estimates have placed losses at US$1.5 billion annually. (http://www.419eater.com/html/ethics.htm)

Victims find there is no easy way to pursue the matter across international borders. In rare instances, victims have travelled abroad to meet the scammer, sometimes with disastrous results.

As Internet use became more popular, scammers around the world shifted their efforts to e-mail. Internet e-mail, in its basic implementation, lacks systems to verify the identities of senders and recipients. An alarming number of Internet users assume that the “from:” address included in an e-mail message is authentic, despite the content of the message.

These 419 scams have become a significant source of “spam” or unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE). While most server-based filtering systems can detect 419 messages, scammers find new ways to get their e-mails delivered.

The people described in this article feign interest in a scammer’s proposition of quick wealth. The assumption is that the scammers will have less time to find new victims. Users sometimes post their correspondence with the scammers, including names, pictures and other information, in an attempt to shame the scammers and warn unsuspecting victims.

Does the good intent of the 419 “baiters” justify their activities? From the perspective of the scammers, the baiters are engaging in fraud. One might also question the cultural and moral implications of baiting.

See Chapter 13 for a good discussion of ethics in IT, and chapter 14 for an examination of global issues.

These web sites have additional information on advance fee fraud. Snopes.com is an excellent site that debunks urban legends and hoaxes. In the United States, the Secret Service maintains a page about these scams. The third link is a cache of the Secret Service site.

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/nigeria.htm
http://www.secretservice.gov/alert419.htm
 http://cc.msnscache.com/cache.aspx?q=3869416205478&lang=en-US

The other three sites feature the work of baiters. If you are easily offended, please avoid these sites.

http://www.aa419.org
http://www.419eater.com
 http://www.419baiter.com

This article first appeared on my old blog at http://www.bloglines.com/blog/wsodeman?id=36

 http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,70946-0.html

What happens when your new computer can’t open an file you created or bought years ago?

In IT, we call this a “legacy” issue. See chapter 9 and pages 326-7 for a brief discussion of legacy issues and end user resistance.

I’ve used several different word processors since 1981.

During the first year of my MBA program, our university’s computer lab used Samna Word. Samna was ugly, but it worked. The software had one ridiculous feature - if you swapped the floppy disk while a document was open, Samna would overwrite the new floppy disk’s directory tracks with the old disk’s directory information. This was a fast, effective way to lose every file on both floppy disks.

Between my first and second years, our computer lab switched to WordPerfect, which had a commanding market share at the time. WP couldn’t open Samna documents easily, but we kept Samna around so that users could save their old documents to the WP format. The converted documents still required some cleanup, as Samna’s conversion wasn’t word perfect enough. (rimshot)

File conversion is a common legacy issue for IT departments. If I had to convert my old MBA files today, I’d use Google to find a conversion service like this one. They’ll even process a 5.25 inch floppy disk, which is what I used as an MBA student.

In 1997, such conversion services were difficult to find at a moment’s notice. While I was packing for a cross-country relocation, I gulped down hard, said “goodbye”… and tossed all of my 5.25 inch floppies into a dumpster.

I hadn’t owned a working 5.25 inch floppy drive in years. Those floppy disks were in bad shape, and I didn’t see the point in retaining them. I still have some digital and hard copies of my MBA work, but the original disks are sitting deep inside a landfill in Indiana.

Between 1987 and 1997, I used WordPerfect. I can still open and read the files I created, including my dissertation.

In 1997, I moved from academia to the corporate world, and I switched to Microsoft Word. I’ve been using Word ever since, even though it’s a bulky troll of an application when compared to WordPerfect. Most Windows computers don’t have WordPerfect installed these days.