Saturday, December 19, 2015

Non-optional perpetual customer

Must be coming up on Christmas, as I've received the quasi-annual threatening email from Network Solutions, requiring that I update/validate my contact information with them.  The penalty for not doing so is loss of domains.

The problem is that I am no longer a customer of Network Solutions.  A year ago, I finally was successful in transferring the last Network Solutions-managed account to a different, more customer-friendly registrar.  This was not an easy thing to accomplish (took days).

I can't post the email here as Network Solutions posted a copyright at the end of it and, given my to-date experiences with them, I'm of the opinion that they wouldn't hesitate to sue for theft of intellectual property.  I can, however, respond to its content and make comment:

To Network Solutions:

1) My cease and desist demand:  I am no longer a customer of yours.  I haven't been for the better part of a year.  I view your threatening email as a nuisance and will starting reporting your actions to appropriate Agencies if I receive another.

2) Your embedded statement that you will continue to send me notices, in order to fulfill your "service obligation" to me, is nonsensical.  If I'm not a paying customer, you have no service obligation and your email amounts to nothing more than unsolicited email, which might be actionable (see #1).

3) You no longer manage the domain that I'd purchased from you so many years ago.  All of my domains are managed via a different registrar (primarily because of the tone of your periodic emails and the labyrinth that you've placed in front of your customer service).

To State and Federal Agencies:

4) A copy of the Network Solutions email can be made available via the usual formal request/demand.

To everyone else:

5) Network Solutions has a practice of "slapping" a copyright notice on electronic messages (emails) to individuals.  I find this a bit strange.  I'd be interested in hearing if this has ever been tested in litigation.

Monday, December 7, 2015

Meh, meh, and more meh

I've been writing this blog for what, 12 years now? Anyone that's followed it knows that I continue to mistrust Microsoft's marketing departments (Cisco's, Oracle's, and Red Hat's too), but that's a hazard from past employment (in part, validating vendor claims).

Anyone remember being told how amazing Windows 8 was, that it booted faster than any other version before it (and faster than OS X or Linux)? It's probably old news to most but today, I found out why.

While figuring out how to reset local admin credentials, the tool I was using kept indicating that the target partition hadn't gone through a full shutdown. This was a head-scratcher because I'd logged out and then selected shutdown.

While it's probably not actually news to anyone other than me, it turns out:
  •  "sleep" == pause, 
  • "shutdown" == hibernate, and 
  •  "reboot" == full shutdown plus restart
The really bad news is that of the three options, none involve actually turning power off. Although "shutdown" consumes the least amount of power, it's still sipping at the battery.

So, for those of you that can't clear a password with an external tool: when the tool complains about the target partition not having been through a full shutdown, the above is "why".  Just select "reboot" instead and then interrupt the machine before it starts loading from the hard drive.