Someone please help me understand this. AMD and Streamload have teamed up to offer AMD LIVE! Media Vault, which promises free online storage of 25GB of data. Or you can pay from $4.95 to $29.95 a month and up the quota to as much as 1000GB.

A terabyte of offline storage? Sounds great, right? Except… 

Downloads per month, even for the premium plans, are limited to 10 percent of your total storage capacity. So if you actually pay $10 a month for the Elite plan and use all of the 250GB of storage they allow you to back up your data, and then your hard disk crashes, you get to restore your backed-up files 25GB at a time over 10 months? Huh? That rattling sound you hear is my brain pan hitting the inside of my skull. (It’s even worse if you use the 25GB free storage space, where you’re limited to 1GB of downloads per month, meraning it will take you more than two years to restore a backup.)

Oh, and the promotional copy says: “AMD LIVE! Media Vault handles all of your online backup needs. Never worry about your files again. … Get safe, secure, and private online backup for all your files. … After you upload files, they are easy-to-access, organized, and automatically backed up.”

But the terms and conditions of use say: “Streamload shall have no responsibility for and does not guarantee the integrity of Private Content or Public Content residing on Streamload’s equipment. You are responsible for independent backup of Private Content and Public Content stored using Streamload’s services.”

And don’t get me started on the parts where these clowns say they’ll rat you out to anyone they damn well feel like if you store something there they don’t like:

Streamload may monitor Your access, use, Public Content, files and/or Private Content to detect signs of misuse. Streamload will not knowingly tolerate the use of its services for illegal or other injurious or damaging activities. If Streamload believes, in its own discretion, that You may be connected with such activities, Streamload may disclose its user files, the Public Content and/or Private Content to the proper authorities.

These guys win my award for Worst Online Service in the World.

It’s a shame I can’t share the full Get Fuzzy cartoon that these panels are from.

It’s annoying that the site only lets you see the most recent 30 days’ worth of comics.

Fortunately, Tapestry Comics has created an RSS feed for GetFuzzy and 198 (as of today)other comics

Why doesn’t Comics.com do this?

A story at InfoWorld’s website last Friday revealed the startling news that Dell and Sony may have covered up the problem with exploding laptop batteries. According to reporter Paul F. Roberts, the two companies “knew about and discussed manufacturing problems with Sony-made Lithium-Ion batteries as long as ten months ago.” [* link at end of post]

It’s a well-written story that can’t possibly do any good for either company’s checkered reputation.

But that’s the last time I’ll knowingly visit Infoworld.com. Here’s just a taste of what I got when I visited this page:

• An interstitial ad, a full page selling a single product that imposes itself as a barrier between the link you click and the story you want to read.
• A pull-down ad in the upper right corner that creates the effect of peeling the current page down and covering the content. It also goes away after a few seconds unless you find the well-hidden Close button first.
• A banner ad along the top of the page and a square ad in the middle of the main story, both of which use code that expands the ad when the mouse pointer crosses it. In the process, the ad covers the content and disrupts the reading experience. If you move the mouse in any direction, you’ll get one of these.
• Flash-animated video playback in a banner ad with audio that came blaring out of my speakers as soon as my mouse pointer accidentally touched the ad.

The overall impression was extraordinarily hostile and disruptive. And not in a good way. It made me want to run screaming from the site. I don’t read InfoWorld regularly, and after this experience, I can’t imagine why anyone would. (Ironically, when I revisited the page a minute ago to verify that the link worked, it locked up my browser window.)

I’m reluctant to link to the original story, as well, because the last thing I want is for you to follow a link I provide and have a similarly terrible experience.

Yes, I know I could use ad-blocking software. The good news is that most sites aren’t this aggressive, and many sites that I visit have advertising I want to see. But if other sites begin following InfoWorld’s lead, I’ll have no choice.

[*] OK, here’s the link. But you’ve been warned.

Dwight’s right:

Many companies now utilize live chat to help with tech support. Sometimes it’s better than phone support, because you can continue to do other things while you wait for the technician to respond to your latest message. And, issues like accented English become non-issues.

I can testify from personal experience that chat is the best way to correspond with Dell, for precisely the same reasons as Dwight notes. In addition, you’re less likely to lose your temper and say, er, type something stupid in a chat window.

A kitten pawing at objects on a computer screen. It doesn’t get any better than this.

Although I’ll put my cat’s obsession with birds on DVD up against it.

(via e-mail from Steve Bass)

The New York Times gets played with a silly story that claims kids have found a new ring tone that is so high-pitched that old farts teachers can’t hear it:

“When I heard about it I didn’t believe it at first,” said Donna Lewis, a technology teacher at the Trinity School in Manhattan. “But one of the kids gave me a copy, and I sent it to a colleague. She played it for her first graders. All of them could hear it, and neither she nor I could.”

The technology, which relies on the fact that most adults gradually lose the ability to hear high-pitched sounds, was developed in Britain but has only recently spread to America — by Internet, of course.

Sure. I’m over 50 and have spent years sitting too close to the PA system at rock ’n’ roll concerts and I can hear this annoying high-pitched noise just fine.

Stick around for the whole desperate performance:

Most times, I just zap up a blank page
and give the old 404 rap,
But you, you’re special, baby.

Surprisingly creepy.

My local newspaper picked up a pair of stories from syndicated services today. This one from the Los Angeles Times was in the center of the Business section:

The Latest Rising Stars in Hollywood: Bookies

Rita Embry of Miami won $100 from an online bookie last week. The 25-year-old graphic designer wasn’t playing the ponies or betting on the NBA playoffs. She cashed in on a wager that “X-Men: The Last Stand” would take in more than $81.5 million its opening weekend.

Ashley Shiffrin, a 25-year-old paralegal who scans the entertainment odds during lunch breaks at the Manhattan law firm where she works, lost $50 at the same website, at betus.com, after she underestimated how many people would buy tickets to “X-Men.” But she figures she’s still ahead: A week earlier she won $132 by backing Taylor Hicks to become this year’s “American Idol.”

Is it really smart to work in a law firm and spend your lunch hour visiting online betting sites?

Ironically, right next to it was this story from the New York Daily News:

More workers axed for E-mails

An increasing number of workers are losing their jobs because of E-mail violations, according to an annual survey of about 300 companies released today.

A third of employers in the study sacked staffers in the past year for violating workplace E-mail policies. That’s up from about one in four last year.

Wonder how many of those firms have policies regulating which sites their employees can visit? Like, say, online casinos?

It’s official: On PC World’s list of the 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time, AOL is #1 and Windows Millennium Edition is #4. Go read the Complete List of Losers and giggle.