December 2009

Dear Client,

Several years ago Congress passed an anti-spam law called the CAN-SPAM act. While somewhat weak, it does give the ability for prosecutors to go after the worst of the spammers. One of them who calls himself the ‘King of Spam’ has pled guilty to violations of the CAN-SPAM act and will serve 4 to 5 years in prison, along with some of his associates. Yes! What we now need to do is modify the act to include prosecuting those who hire spammers. They don’t do this for free.

Speaking of spam, don’t forget to sign in to the mail server and look at your junk email folder. We keep mail in it only for 30 days. If it accumulates more than 100 megabytes (very unusual), incoming mail will be rejected. I’ve seen some junk email folders that have over 5,000 emails in them.

In the news lately have been reports of the Dell Computer settling lawsuits by numerous states against them for many underhanded and illegal tactics—bait and switch, misrepresentation, and numerous other crimes. They have been ordered—and agreed to—fund a restitution account for those who they took advantage of. Over 26 states sued them. It’s really too bad, as Dell used to be a good company 10-15 years ago.

Speaking of lawsuits, the European Union has sued Intel for illegal monopolistic activity. Frankly they taught Microsoft how to do it and are now having to pay the piper. While it’s still early, this is not going to go well for Intel. It’s unfortunate that the US attorney general has turned a blind eye to what they’ve done over the years. Not unlike what has happened on Wall Street.

We will be out of the office this coming Thursday afternoon and Friday, Dec 3 rd and 4 th to attend the funeral of a good friend who passed away. We should be back Friday night.

We will also be closed Christmas eve & Christmas, and New Year’s eve & day.

The raised beds in the garden are coming along. They are complete and filled with premium planter mix. Had only one small, but irritating issue—I had to do a fair amount of re-plumbing of the irrigation lines, and should have pressure tested all of it before I put the dirt in the boxes. Didn’t even think about it. There were a number of breaks and cracks in the lines, probably due to how I removed the old dirt and boxes (with a tractor and front-end loader). Oops. So, I’ve been having to dig down through the dirt, cut through the chicken wire I placed in the bottom of each of them (gopher protection) and fix the problems. I won’t forget that step again.

At least we won’t be bothered much with rabbits any more. The new pellet rifle has allowed me to knock down the population to below sustainable levels. We may have a rabbit left somewhere, but he’s keeping a very low profile.

Best wishes to you and your families this Christmas season!

Sincerely,

Ben Conner