SillyDog701

[Ron Williams]

I was wondering if the items advertised in the link below are possibly real or if it is really a scam

http://www.clearoutclub.com

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[profman]

I was wondering if the items advertised in the link below are possibly real or if it is really a scam

http://www.clearoutclub.com

I usually pass when the deal sounds too good to be true like this one. I would only consider such an offer if there was solid, positive feedback on it.

A Google search on this name only gave a few hits (a sure danger sign, I think). A poster an another Internet Forum states:

Anyway, as far as I can tell, you don't actually buy anything directly from them. They give listings of sites that have these products really cheap. As far as the whole get a free iPod, 17" LCD monitor, or 27" Sony Wega TV...it just takes you to FreeiPods.com, where you will still have to complete one of their offers and refer five people.

I don't recommend joining the site.

Another Forum site noted that they take only electronic checks (not credit cards) and ask for your banking routing number on a less than fully secure web page.

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[Petey]

I was wondering if the items advertised in the link below are possibly real or if it is really a scam

http://www.clearoutclub.com

I usually pass when the deal sounds too good to be true like this one. I would only consider such an offer if there was solid, positive feedback on it.

A Google search on this name only gave a few hits (a sure danger sign, I think). A poster an another Internrt Forun states:

Anyway, as far as I can tell, you don't actually buy anything directly from them. They give listings of sites that have these products really cheap. As far as the whole get a free iPod, 17" LCD monitor, or 27" Sony Wega TV...it just takes you to FreeiPods.com, where you will still have to complete one of their offers and refer five people.

I don't recommend joining the site.

Another Forum site noted that they take only electronic checks (not credit cards) and ask for your banking routing number on a less than fully secure web page.

A checking account routing number would let them withdraw anything from your checking account at any time, NEVER give this to ANY company, legitimate or not, even if they don't intentionally steal from you, a mistake on their end could throw off your checkbook balance or send you into an overdraft, and just try getting out of that mess without screwing up your credit rating and having to talk to every uncaring customer service rep at your bank and the company that ripped you off, getting nowhere, just NEVER give out your routing numbers to ANYONE AT ALL.

The electric company here will let you do an automatic checking account debit, but they make you go through a 3rd party company that is wholly owned by them, why do you think that is?

When they screw up and get a customer that sues them, they can just shut the checkpay company down and wash their hands of the lawsuit.

As for encryption, I always check and if it's anything less than 128-bit I will not do any transactions there.

Free Ipod offers are legit, the problem is what you have to do to get them, you have to sign your friends up for spam, then do things like sign up for AOHELL or a credit card, or whatever, this website appears to be using a referral ID in the links it gives you, that means this dude is getting tons of free Ipods and TV's and thousands of morons are getting ripped off cause of it.

Newegg.com Overstock.com and tigerdirect.com are some of the better deals you'll find, Walmart.com usually has most items for less than the MSRP as well, as for computers I usually buy Systemax products, they're made in the USA, so none of that chitzy stuff made by school children in Vietnam and imported here

I made that mistake with the last Compaq I bought, the motherboard failed and I ended up talking to someone at their support call center that "no speaka de ingles"

So it's not just who you're buying from, it's what you're getting from them.

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[Antony]

A checking account routing number would let them withdraw anything from your checking account at any time, NEVER give this to ANY company, legitimate or not, even if they don't intentionally steal from you, a mistake on their end could throw off your checkbook balance or send you into an overdraft, and just try getting out of that mess without screwing up your credit rating and having to talk to every uncaring customer service rep at your bank and the company that ripped you off, getting nowhere, just NEVER give out your routing numbers to ANYONE AT ALL.

That's a very good point.

I would like to add, don't give out your date of birth, driver's license number etc. There are identity thieves all around.

Free Ipod offers are legit, the problem is what you have to do to get them, you have to sign your friends up for spam, then do things like sign up for AOHELL or a credit card, or whatever, this website appears to be using a referral ID in the links it gives you, that means this dude is getting tons of free Ipods and TV's and thousands of morons are getting ripped off cause of it.

Now, the freeipod thing is interesting.
Since the scheme has been covered in a recent article by Wired.com, and a number of people reported that they do received the “freeâ€

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[Petey]

Yeah, I understand if someone says "While you're here, please click this link and help our site out".

But what the website this person listed, and quite a few others are doing, is acting like they're the ones giving out the Ipods or TV's or whatever and instead giving you a link to freeipods.com with their own referral ID, I think thats somewhat unethical.

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[Petey]

As for a Spread Firefox link, I wouldn't see a problem with that.

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[Antony]

But what the website this person listed, and quite a few others are doing, is acting like they're the ones giving out the Ipods or TV's or whatever and instead giving you a link to freeipods.com with their own referral ID, I think thats somewhat unethical.

yes, very unethical.

As for GetFirefox affiliated links, well, we don't need those links. We are going to great job on spreading Netscape, Mozilla, Camino, Firefox... etc. Just a bit ironic on the Firefox affiliated thing. How? A huge number of Mozilla (and Firefox in particular) block every type of ads, and they are asking other people to click "affiliated" links. (Ref: Firefox users ignore online ads, report says, C|net News.com)

Spreading the action of downloading legal music is something we need to do.

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[Petey]

But what the website this person listed, and quite a few others are doing, is acting like they're the ones giving out the Ipods or TV's or whatever and instead giving you a link to freeipods.com with their own referral ID, I think thats somewhat unethical.

yes, very unethical.

As for GetFirefox affiliated links, well, we don't need those links. We are going to great job on spreading Netscape, Mozilla, Camino, Firefox... etc. Just a bit ironic on the Firefox affiliated thing. How? A huge number of Mozilla (and Firefox in particular) block every type of ads, and they are asking other people to click "affiliated" links. (Ref: Firefox users ignore online ads, report says, C|net News.com)

Spreading the action of downloading legal music is something we need to do.

They're not trying to market Firefox to Firefox users.

They're trying to win over IE users, and IE users are used to seeing and responding to a lot of ads anyway.

As for legal music, I'm not opposed to it, but I think it needs to be in a more open format, not one where it's one company calling all the shots, MP3's will play on just about anything, but stuff you get from Itunes will only work with Itunes and Ipod, likewise WMA's only work on Windows and players where the company pays a royalty to Microsoft, but at least WMA's can be converted if you wish.

Thats why I won't buy from Itunes, maybe when they get rid of the Not Invented Here mentality, but I'll do my business elsewhere until then.

It just really left a bad taste in my mouth when I saw how proprietary the format was and how you couldn't really do anything with the files you downloaded from them, I tried out Itunes during Pepsi's promotion, I won a few songs, but once I saw what it was and how they treat their customers, I'm just all the more glad I didn't actually pay them anything.

Many of Apples customers and loyal fans here in the US tend to be burnout ex hippies, the same crowd that buys Volkswagons, thats why Apple is losing their market share here, businesses do not take them seriously, nor do most individuals.

The last time Apple was really a buzzword or made any consequential decisions in the personal computing market here was circa 1988.

Even back then, I remember deciding between an Apple 2 and a Commodore 128, I got the C128, it was Commodore which finally started the price wars, even though the IBM PC eventually won, I think the Commodore is why more people use the PC today.


(Original image resized by Admin, please do not post inline images wider than 550 pixel.)

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[Antony]

They're not trying to market Firefox to Firefox users.

They're trying to win over IE users, and IE users are used to seeing and responding to a lot of ads anyway.

Using the things they hate to get IE users? Moral?

As for legal music, I'm not opposed to it, but I think it needs to be in a more open format, not one where it's one company calling all the shots, MP3's will play on just about anything, but stuff you get from Itunes will only work with Itunes and Ipod, likewise WMA's only work on Windows and players where the company pays a royalty to Microsoft, but at least WMA's can be converted if you wish.

It just really left a bad taste in my mouth when I saw how proprietary the format was and how you couldn't really do anything with the files you downloaded from them,

Music from iTunes Music Store (iTMS) is very open. You own it. You own the (music) file you bought.

With the music you bought from iTMS, you can copy it out, you can store in other computers, and you can burn CDs in unlimited times. (Yes, read careful, you can burn to unlimited numbers of CDs. The only limitation is a playlist can be burnt up to seven (7) times.) You can also transfer it to unlimited numbers of iPods you own.

When compare with WMA? You need two files, one is the music you paid for the world's biggest software company, and the other one is your license file. What if you lost your license file or the license file's got damages? Your money paid for WMA are all gone.

Converting WMA to other formats? only with unprotected WMAs.
And guess what? protected WMA is not available for Mac.
iTunes gives you more, both Mac and PC.

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[Petey]

It's easy enough to record your sound cards audio out and then re-encode that into whatever you want, even if it is protected.

I do that with whatever music I buy that is protected, just because I don't feel like having to back up my licenses

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[Antony]

I do that with whatever music I buy that is protected, just because I don't feel like having to back up my licenses

Good. So back up the music file you bought from iTunes Music Store, no license files to backup.

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[Al]

If you want privacy... Don't click on things that give you free things, even thought the ads might be fun to play with

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[Ron Williams]

I made that mistake with the last Compaq I bought, the motherboard failed and I ended up talking to someone at their support call center that "no speaka de ingles"

I was LOL when I read your statement. I bought a Compaq SR1103WM computer from walmart but when the Plus! Digital Media Edition was not registered when it was supposed to I called Compaq. After three months of calling Compaq and Microsoft, Microsoft gave me the activation key for free.

And just so you know here is the whois information for clearout club

Registrar Name....: Register.com
Registrar Whois...: whois.register.com
Registrar Homepage: http://www.register.com

Domain Name: clearoutclub.com

Created on..............: 07 Nov 2004 12:48:41
Expires on..............: 07 Nov 2005 12:48:41

Registrant Info:
Virtual Technologies
John Wilson
3540 N Southport Ave
Chicago, 60657
US
Phone: +1.7736659844
Fax..: +1.7736659867
Email: vtech@email.com

Administrative Info:
Virtual Technologies
John Wilson
3540 N Southport Ave
Chicago, 60657
US
Phone: +1.7736659844
Fax..: +1.7736659867
Email: vtech@email.com

Technical Info:
Virtual Technologies
John Wilson
3540 N Southport Ave
Chicago, 60657
US
Phone: +1.7736659844
Fax..: +1.7736659867
Email: vtech@email.com

Billing Info:
Virtual Technologies
John Wilson
3540 N Southport Ave
Chicago, 60657
US
Phone: +1.7736659844
Fax..: +1.7736659867
Email: vtech@email.com

Status: Locked

Domain servers in listed order:

ns1.novadns.com
ns2.novadns.com

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[Ron Williams]

Well, Well, Well I called the numbers listed in the whois database. Its interesting that both the telephone and fax numbers are deactivated. Thats the final straw for this company. I will not get a year subscription.

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[Petey]

I made that mistake with the last Compaq I bought, the motherboard failed and I ended up talking to someone at their support call center that "no speaka de ingles"

I was LOL when I read your statement. I bought a Compaq SR1103WM computer from walmart but when the Plus! Digital Media Edition was not registered when it was supposed to I called Compaq. After three months of calling Compaq and Microsoft, Microsoft gave me the activation key for free.

Same model computer I bought, it came with a bunch of stuff like Office and Plus, but you had to buy and activate them, and a whole bunch of other kludge.

Then the system started freezing up, then it got to where it wouldn't even try to boot, I sent it in, they sent it back and refused to honor the warranty because I had added a RAM module, bastards.

So I go back to Walmart and buy a HP Pavilion A705WM, this isn't a bad system actually.

I did have a few extra licenses for Windows XP Pro from the place I work, and my boss said I could have one, so I wiped the hard drive then hunted down some generic drivers for the hardware, it works great.

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