Category: Bad Companies (Page 3 of 4)

I get a lot of spam (probably over a hundred pieces a day), but I was pretty surprise to get a spam message for Black Hat. Black Hat is an annual computer security conference in Las Vegas. Mike has gone to it in the past, but it’s pretty expensive, so he usually rather just go to Defcon instead. In any case, I was quite surprised when I received a spam from Black Hat today (sent by TechWeb). I got it at my work address – and while that address is all over the net, I do wonder how & why they got it.

The following is an e-mail I’ve received a couple of times already. I figured I’d share it with my readers (or google searchers) who may receive similar letters. These letters are complete scams.
The company in question scares you into believing someone is going to register your domain name with the China suffix – they make money by having you register it instead with their company. Their prices are exorbitant – I think starting over $100! If you want your domain with the .cn suffix you probably can register cheap it elsewhere.
Bear in mind, however, that there are hundreds of suffixes – I think there is one for every country in the world, as well as others like .info and .net and .gov. They are also creating new ones all the time. This means that unless you are a huge company, it neither makes sense to register your name with every suffix out there nor is it financially viable.
Can it be a problem? Well yes. For example PROVEA, a human rights organization in Venezuela, has the domain derechos.org.ve. We have the domain derechos.org – and over the years we’ve gotten e-mail that was meant for them. Similarly, I expect that some of our e-mail has gone to derechos.com – but c’est la vie.

I have to say, that I have only had one bad experience at my local supermarket, Safeway (once, when I was 37 years old, one of the cashiers asked for my ID when I tried to buy some wine – I don’t carry it with me, so I made a small fuzz about it, and they finally let me buy it. I’m sorry, I may look a couple of years younger than my age, but I have no hope in hell of looking 20).
Kathy, my sister, however, has been having the worst luck at Ralph’s in Chatsworth (in the San Fernando Valley) – where they are making huge fuzzes about ID’s. It seems more a matter of trying to annoy customers than of legitimately wanting to make sure the customer is not underage. Don’t these stores realize that that’s how they lose customers?
Anyway, here is her story

Walmart is known in the US for its inhumane practices against its workers: they paid them next to nothing, stop them from organizing and lock them up at night in closed stores. In Argentina, they have recently been accused of firing workers (or rather, “associates”, nobody is actually an employee at Walmart) who talked about organizing. But they may be getting some outside help on techniques on how to treat workers. Their head of security is Alfredo Oscar Saint Jean hijo, nephew of General Iberico Saint Jean, the appointed governor of the province of Buenos Aires during the military dictatorship, famous for saying: “First we’ll kill all the subversives. Then we’ll kill the collaborators. Then the sympathizers. Then the undecided. finally, we’ll kill the indifferent” . Saint Jean Hijo’s father was minister of interior during the dictatorship and was indicted on 32 charges of crimes against humanity before his death.
Sain Jean Hijo is himself a retired military man, and while he has not been charged with any crimes against humanity, he worked under the orders of the notorious repressor Bussi in 1975, during Operation Independence, a “rehearsal” for the dirty war that took place in the small province of Tucuman. He also worked in Bahía Blanca, the hob of Navy Activity, during the dirty war. Now he works for Walmart.