Robert Accettura's
Fun With Wordage

I’ve seen a few of these types of blog posts before. This one being “7 Confessions of a Cingular Sales Rep“. Overall it’s a good read, but it has me wondering. Are these legitimate “confessions”? Or Lonelygirl15 reincarnated?

There was an underlying message in that confession: If you buy more, we’ll be nicer to you. So please buy accessories.

I’m not calling it a hoax, but I do have to admit I’m cautious when reading these. I’ve seen them on several sites before. Either way it’s worth a read, and likely mostly accurate. But I can’t help but wonder if they are really as genuine as they sound. Many legitimate organizations have fallen victims to hoaxes before.

Just remember: Not many things on the Internet are what they seem. All that is printed is not fact. The barrier to entry isn’t high.

We all know Tax season is here (in the US). So don’t forget to file. We also know there is a Microsoft Tax (you know, the price of the pre-installed copy of Windows on your soon to be Linux PC), and it is possible to get it refunded. New this year is a browser tax, as seen on Digg.

Want to know how much you’ll be paying? There is a formula, but I’ve got a cheat-sheet to help you out. Simply find your browser/platform and look at the filing price. Click to see the full screen and get all pricing. I did this myself between 6:40 and 7:00 PM EST today. Took a little while to crop and get it all together. Yes they are real. No photoshopping done. Note that free filing is offered in certain cases and not in others (which I presume is the offering as part of the free filing program).

Want to get the biggest deduction on filing your taxes with TurboTax? Just look below for the best deal.

For more great financial tips keep an eye on this blog. Next time we’ll talk about how my 401(k) is also incompatible with my browser, and since I used the contact form to mention the bug, it now warns me on every visit.

I’d love to hear Intuit’s explanation of why they are serving different products to certain browsers, and why they are charing different prices in some cases. Amazon tried something like this based on user profiles a few years ago, and it caused some trouble. You can find some information on that by searching Google for amazon price fixing.

Is it legal to make the Free filing option less visible to some users? Hard to say. There is an agreement with the IRS in place that facilitates all that. Didn’t see much about promotion or hiding the offering.

Images in various browsers/platforms can be found below on this post.
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A very interesting piece by iLounge is creating a little buzz today. Hopefully in the next few weeks it will become clear if this is really true, or just FUD. Given my development background, and business education (especially going to school post-Enron) this was particularly interesting.

Most software and hardware products these days are updated after release through software updates to enable features that either weren’t reliable enough to be turned on when released, or weren’t possible (waiting for standardization, licensing, testing, certification, etc.). It’s not at all uncommon.

It’s no secret Apple has been shipping computers for several months with 802.11g/n cards, but calling them 802.11g. Presumably all it takes is a firmware upgrade, and it’s ready to go. Now it appears that because of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) [PDF], they are required to charge a small fee to enable the feature because:

…supposedly prohibits Apple from giving away an unadvertised new feature for one of its products.

The logic in a way makes sense, but this raises a lot of business ethics. If an update enables added security (such as changing a default in a software firewall), does the software developer need to charge an upgrade fee according to US law? What about when Microsoft added support for WPA2? Presumably at least some of the buts utilized were in Windows prior to that update.

Here is an even more twisted example: Starting this spring with the new Energy Policy Act of 2005 in effect. Daylight Savings Time has changed. It starts earlier and ends later. For accounting and legal purposes you must correctly date your records, for example in Quicken/Quickbooks, or even timestamp on email could also be important. Does Microsoft need to charge for this upgrade to comply with SOX? Remember, this patch isn’t a bug “fix” since nothing was “broken” (the functionality was correct). This patch adds support for the new Daylight Savings Time. Hence it’s technically a [boring] feature to an existing product (Windows). Just like enabling 802.11n.

But what about Nintendo Wii or Playstation III which will presumably be getting firmware updates along the way to enable new features. I’m pretty sure Sony would be bound by the same laws. Not sure about Nintendo since it’s traded on the Nikkei Stock Exchange.

Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer. I hope the Apple lawyers messed things up here and really misinterpreted the law. Since this is pretty messed up. I have a good feeling we’ll be learning more about this in the upcoming weeks.

Update [01/19/2007]: It’s Apple speaks: It’s $1.99.

Update [01/20/2007]: It’s not SOX, it’s GAAP causing the issue. CNet discusses.

I find it hard to believe an iPod vending machine will ever take off. I see a few things wrong with this:

1. I can’t imagine what the insurance must be when you have a vending machine with hundreds of dollars in iPod and iPod related gear in a giant box. I’m pretty sure it can’t be good.
2. How many would be willing to spend that type of money like that? Return policy?

Just strange.

SiteAdvisor has an interesting article up on a scam where a site makes people pay to download Firefox. As much as $37.95!

I’ll let you all in on a little secret. For the next 30 x 6.022 x 10²³ days, you can get Firefox completely FREE! No ads, no spyware, and no spam! Just download here.

What’s the catch? Enjoy the internet, and perhaps tell a friend ;-).

Ok, but seriously it’s pretty sad to see people scamming innocent internet users. Just remember when you tell people about Firefox, to give them an official URL (getfirefox.com, mozilla.com, mozilla.org), and tell them it’s 100% free.