Captain's Quarters -

Omea Bleg: Why Do Entries Get Scrambled?

A few months ago, I asked CapQ readers to suggest a replacement feedreader to Sharpreader, which I had used for a couple of years. Several suggested Omea, which I have used ever since. I limit it to just RSS feeds and the Notes function, but it has served me very well.

One problem appears with some regularity, however. The content of the entries get scrambled, as though the Omea database has indexing issues. Has anyone else experienced the same issue, and is there a fix available for it?

Microsoft Looking For New Vistas

MIcrosoft apparently wants to bring all of the expertise they've displayed in their Vista operating system to the portal/search business on the Internet. They have launched a bid to buy Yahoo!, the original indispensable search engine and now multilayered service provider. It marks the most significant expansion attempt in years for Microsoft, and maybe their most aggressive bid ever:

Microsoft Corp. offered to buy search engine operator Yahoo Inc. for $44.6 billion in cash and stock in a move to boost its competitive edge in the online services market.

Microsoft bid $31 per share for Yahoo, representing a 62 percent premium to Yahoo's closing stock price Thursday.

It looks like Microsoft may have given up on MSN. Microsoft launched their own search/portal site years ago, and tied their Windows Messenger IM product to it. It didn't exactly catch on with web surfers, who preferred the sleeker search engines of first Yahoo and then Google. Never one to abide a market-share failure, the Redmond juggernaut now wants to buy its way to the top, or in this case, almost to the top. Even Microsoft probably can't afford Google.

Vista users around the world probably all have the same thought -- why not use that money to fix their latest operating system? From the annoying User Account Control functions to their buggy DNS system, users have begun migrating backwards in frustration. An important industry voice, Info World, has launched a petition drive demanding that Microsoft make XP available indefinitely, or at least until they have updated Vista to work with a wider range of existing peripherals and to function at a much higher competency level than users currently experience.

Of course, Microsoft could always claim that they can multitask and both fix Vista and integrate Yahoo into their organization. However, when any company spends $45 billion on an acquisition, their attention will rightly be spent on ensuring the cash flows that will legitimize the risk taken for the investment, and scant resources will go elsewhere in the short run. Vista users will get taken for granted, as they obviously were when the product got released.

Tech Notes

A few technical notes from behind the scenes at CapQ ...

Yesterday, I gave the First Mate an unusual gift: a digital voice recorder. I have used the Sony ICD-P520 for recording interviews both in person and over the telephone, and it has proven handy and reliable. It has 256 MB of flash memory, and most importantly, allows for easy transfer to my computer. It also allows me to load MP3 files onto the device, which it converts to its native (and better compressed) format.

So why does this make a great gift for the FM? Being blind, she has to rely on recorded books for her reading. Normally this means tapes, but publishers have begun switching to CDs. CD players create headaches for blind users, as they rely on electronic displays and small buttons for operation. Also, unlike tapes, when the device gets turned off, the reader loses her place and has to restart the disk. The Sony ICD-P520 has an easier interface for the FM, and she can easily find her place after halting. All I do is rip the CDs and load the device -- which takes a not insubstantial amount of time, but it does mean she can access the books repeatedly on her own terms. ...

I received a gift from Vayapaso (Mom) of a new webcam, the Logitech QuickCam Orbit AF I've been using my Sony camcorder to do my webcam applications, but this looks much more suited to the task. It has a solid base for better stability, and computer-controlled pan-and-tilt operation. I'll be using it today on my Heading Right Radio show, which you can see if you get into the webchat ....

Speaking of which, I'll be using a dual-monitor set-up today. I put both of my older 19" monitors to use with a new video display card I picked up last weekend. When I got the new desktop, I lost the ability to add the monitor to the laptop when I used it as my main system. It's been working pretty well with Vista, which has also improved ever since I shut off every last bit of animation. It looks more like Win98, but at least it also responds as well as Win98.

Why Does Vista Suck? (Update: Yes, I Use Firefox, But ....)

I have to ask this question, because for the dozenth time in two days, I have to restart Internet Explorer after it locked up, on a brand-new Compaq desktop system. I dutifully have Vista check for a solution before restarting the program, and when it restarts, it locks up again when I try to maximize it for display.

Nor is this the only problem Vista has. Its DNS tables have a weird habit of suddenly getting very stupid. It forgets how to connect to various blogger sites, sometimes for quite a while, then just as suddenly rediscovers them. Occasionally, when I lose my patience, I flush the DNS -- a process that involves several steps, including opening a command window in a special manner that requires me to answer a useless Vista prompt as to whether I really want to do this. About half of the time, the DNS flush solves the problem, while the other half, I just have to wait for Vista to get over its bout of Alzheimers.

Bear in mind that my XP system remains connected to all of these sites without fail, running on the same network. And my other Vista system -- my spare laptop -- has all of these same issues as well.

I'd write more, but unfortunately, IE just locked up for the third time since I started writing this post. I have to reboot the computer in order to correct the problem. Those Apple commercials start to sound like a good description of Microsoft's competence these days. One would think that a flagship product like Vista might have been subjected to a little more quality testing than obviously went into it.

ADDENDUM: I should also point out that their Outlook 2003 doesn't work very well with the system, either. I added the Microsoft Exchange Server account in the initial set-up wizard when I installed my copy of Office 2003, and it won't connect properly to the account. Thanks to that issue, it won't run at all now, and even de-installing it and re-installing it won't eliminate the problem. The de-installation doesn't remove the account information, as it turns out.

Just FYI, I have been using Microsoft systems since CPM DOS on the Apple IIe, and used to build my own computers from scratch until it got so cheap to buy pre-constructed systems about ten years ago. I worked as a net admin for a Fortune 100 company for a few years as a second hat during my call-center days. I'm not exactly a novice at this. I'm figuring that this will be my last Microsoft based system ever. The low price simply isn't worth the hassle any longer.

UPDATE: I should also mention that I do use Firefox, but Vista won't easily allow Firefox to become the default browser in the system. When I click links from my Omea or Sharpreader feedreaders, they invariably open an IE window rather than a tab in my Firefox browser, regardless of the settings in my Internet options in Vista. I manage my blog screens and management functions in Firefox and browse in IE as a result. And no, that doesn't happen on my XP laptop, where I use Firefox exclusively.

The Handy Little Camcorder, And More

I blame McQ. He and I met for the first time on our tour of Chevron and the Blind Faith facility in Texas, courtesy of the API. McQ brought a nifty little camcorder, which miraculously survived a beating on the rig, and it looked intriguing enough to investigate once I returned home.

The Aiptek IS-DV2+ will not have anyone dumping their more substantial video cameras any time soon. However, its low cost and flexibility makes a nice addition to the blogger toolbox. It combines several key functions into a package no bigger than a fist, and only takes two AA batteries to run it.

The IS-DV2+ (the model shown below is the IS-DV2) takes 8-megapixel digital photographs, as well as digital video. The quality of the latter is not quite as good as one might want for treasured family events, but for blog videos, it does just fine. It has an adequate stabilization feature, which given its size is a necessity. It includes a strobe flash and most of the basic functions of any digital camera, including a selection of densities from one megapixel to eight.

It also functions as a digital voice recorder and an MP3 player. It uses SD memory cards; I bought a 2 GB card, and that will hold 25 hours of voice recordings. I'm not certain of how much video it would hold, but based on the charts in the book, it appears that one can store more than 2 hours of video on a card of that size in DV format -- and more in other formats, of course.

I bought the IS-DV2+ at Walgreens, which is where McQ bought his as well, for $99. For the traveling blogger, this looks like a great tool at a reasonable price, allowing a single, small unit for most of needs. Just be sure to have rechargeable batteries, because I suspect that this will grind alkalines down in a hurry.

Feed Readers: Which Makes The Most Sense?

Most bloggers use some sort of RSS feed reader to make their operations more efficient. For almost the entire four years I have been blogging, I have used Sharpreader, which has done a serviceable job in keeping me current with the day's news and blogger views. However, the free feedreader has caused some problems, and does not have all of the flexibility that I would like to see in this utility.

After Allahpundit at Hot Air asked for suggestions on the best reader to use, I decided to start looking around at some fresh choices. First I tried just using the embedded RSS functionality of Thunderbird, which I use for my e-mail, but I couldn't get that to work at all, and it seemed to slow its overall functionality somewhat. After that, I installed NewsFox as an extension to Firefox. This actually worked reasonably well, except for two issues. One, it wouldn't display the Author field, so on newspapers and group blogs, I had no idea who had written the articles. Second, it would only update one feed at a time, where Sharpreader would update several simultaneously. It made updates slow to a crawl over a file of over 100 feeds.

Later, I tried Omea, which looks wonderful but turned out to be a huge resource hog. Like all of the others I mentioned, Omea is free, and it handles an extraordinary amount of tasks. That's the problem; it wants to handle almost all of my Internet activities, and it slows up my fairly robust laptop in doing so. I really liked the interface but wound up too frustrated with it.

Lastly, I installed Feed Demon by NewsGator. It costs $30, but the 30-day trial version is free, and I've grown to like it. It addresses most of the shortcomings of the other systems without bogging down the computer, or throwing bugs like Sharpreader does -- but then again, it ain't free, either. It has plenty of features, including all sorts of organizational options, as well as offering an HTML access from NewsGator when one is at another computer, synchronized for all feeds if desired. I de-synched my feeds because it won't allow me to customize feed updates on synched feeds. It also has a nasty habit of re-marking feed items as unread when I repeatedly mark them as read, which happens on only a few of the feeds, for some odd reason.

I may purchase FeedDemon, but I'm curious to see what Captain's Quarters readers use and like in feed readers. Any hints, suggestions, or critiques?

Is AOL Mail Failing?

I'd like to find out if an e-mail problem I'm seeing is a widespread issue. Most e-mail I send out to AOL customers has been bouncing back for the last several weeks. It comes back with a message from the AOL server that states:

Delay reason: SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data: host mailin-01.mx.aol.com [64.12.137.249]: 421-: (DNS:NR) http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/421dnsnr.html 421 SERVICE NOT AVAILABLE

My e-mail service tells me it will retry, and the failure messages continue for 72 hours until the system gives up entirely. Is this happening across the Internet and is AOL's mail service failing, or is this something more localized? I'd like to hear from CQ readers if they have had any of these difficulties.

And if you use AOL and have been expecting replies from me, you may not get them until the problem gets resolved one way or another.

UPDATE: The problem appears to have been partly resolved with a DNS refresh by my hosting service. I'll update this if more problems appear.

HP Responds To QUT Laser Printer Study

On Tuesday, I linked to a report from Australian researchers that found laser-printer particulates in high amounts in offices. The report suggested that laser printers could present a health hazard with such high levels in areas where people work long hours. I suggested that it sounded more like a great new market for personal-injury litigation.

Hewlett-Packard contacted me late yesterday and asked to respond publicly to the study here at Captain's Quarters. The statement comes from Tuan Tran, HP's Vice President of marketing for supplies:

After a preliminary review of the Queensland University of Technology research on particle emission characteristics of office printers, HP does not agree with its conclusion or some of the bold claims the authors have made recently in press reports.

HP stands behind the safety of its products. Testing of ultrafine particles is a very new scientific discipline. There are no indications that ultrafine particle (UFP) emissions from laser printing systems are associated with special health risks. Currently, the nature and chemical composition of such particles – whether from a laser printer or from a toaster – cannot be accurately characterized by analytical technology. However, many experts believe that many of the UFPs found in common household and office products are not discrete solid particles, but may be condensation products or small droplets created during thermal processes.

HP agrees more testing in this area is needed, which is why we’ve been active with two of the world’s leading independent authorities on this subject: Air Quality Sciences in the United States and the Wilhelm-Klauditz Institute in Germany.

Vigorous tests are an integral part of HP’s research and development and its strict quality-control procedures. HP LaserJet printing systems, original HP print cartridges and papers are tested for dust release and possible material emissions and are compliant with all applicable international health and safety requirements. In addition to meeting or exceeding these guidelines, HP’s design criteria for its laser printing systems incorporate guidelines from both the Blue Angel program in Germany and the Greenguard program in the United States.

Based on our own testing, HP knows that many variables can affect the outcome of tests for ultrafine particle emissions. Although HP is not aware of all of the specific methodologies used in the Queensland study, based on what we’ve seen in the report – as well as our own work in this area – we do not believe there is a link between printer emissions and any public health risk. Specifically, HP does not see an association between printer use by customers and negative health effects for volatile organic compounds, ozone or dust. While we recognize ultrafine, fine, and coarse particles are emitted from printing systems, these levels are consistently below recognized occupational exposure limits.

HP hopes to learn more from the study authors about how products were chosen for the study, how ranges were determined given no standards exist, and many other factors that could have influenced the results.

The Gateway Saga Continues

This morning, I received the replacement Gateway laptop from the Corporate team -- who, by the way, has been very responsive -- and after lunch, I began to test it. As we had planned, I took the hard drive from the original laptop and swapped it into the new laptop, which had received a full day of testing by the Corporate team. Since the two systems were identical, the hard-drive swap made no difference at all to the system, and it immediately connected me to the wireless network.

And, 30 minutes later, it failed again in the exact same way.

I decided to take advantage of having both systems on hand, and I powered up my original Gateway with the other hard drive. After wading through the pop-up screens for the newly-imaged drive, I loaded my network key and connected into the wireless system.

And it's still working.

This is not necessarily dispositive; I've had entire days where the wireless adapter did not fail, but usually I get a failure within the first half-hour or so. This seems to indicate that the problem resides not in the hardware, but in the driver for the adapter. I had reloaded the Gateway drivers repeatedly through the Recovery system and it never fixed the problem, and even once downloaded a 2006 driver from Realtek's website, but that hadn't made a difference. Today, I used the driver interface to download the latest files, and this one is a March 2007 driver set. So far, it seems to be working.

I just got off the phone with my contact at Gateway, and they're happy to let me test both systems for a couple of days. If both stay up, I'm going to send back the new laptop and keep my original system. They are going to alert tech support of the potential driver problem if all my tests are successful. We'll see.

UNRELATED BLEG: Can anyone tell me if they've used Pair Networks as a hosting service, and if so, how they performed?

Gateway Strikes Out

Pardon the slow start today, but CQ has had a number of technical difficulties last night and this morning. And one of them is unfortunately an old story.

As I wrote last night, I got my Gateway laptop back from Gateway's service team yesterday afternoon. As expected, the hard drive had been re-imaged, so I had to spend several hours reloading the software. As I finished doing that, the wireless network connection failed -- again. It did the same thing twice more in a half hour, following reboots after the previous failures.

This morning, my Sony Vaio started acting up (it was a problem with my anti-virus program that I eventually solved), and I could have used a reliable backup laptop. Unfortunately, I have a Gateway. The network connection failed twice in rapid succession, forcing me to install the external adapter again -- but by that time, the Sony was up and running smoothly.

So what did Gateway do with my laptop? I'd guess it was one of two possibilities. Either they stopped at wiping out my hard drive and re-imaging it, or they replaced the motherboard. Either way, they obviously never tested it at any length with secure wireless networks. If they did the latter, then the laptop has some serious hardware design or sourcing issues.

In any event, I'm now more unhappy than I was before. I've wasted several hours of my time last night and this morning getting this Gateway laptop to work, and now I'll probably have to ship it off again for another round of posturing from Gateway corporate.

Don't buy Gateway.

Return Of The Living Gateway

Those who have noticed a quiet over CQ this evening might wonder what has kept me from my regular blogging into the evening. Keeping me from my keybord is no mean feat; in fact, one might presume that some kind of monster had taken me away! And, in a way, you would be right -- in fact, two distractions developed this afternoon.

First, the Gateway laptop returned from the Dark Lagoon, or Gateway tech support, whichever you prefer. I had only sent it back on Tuesday afternoon, and didn't expect it until a week or two had passed. However, my blog posts on this subject did get the attention of Gateway's corporate public relations people, and I have had a couple of conversations with them this week. Their Corporate Escalation department promised to keep an eye on the progress of my complaint, and perhaps that moved things along.

Now, however, I have to reload all of my software all over again. I expected this, as several people warned me that the hard drive would get wiped and re-imaged, and that's exactly what happened. I backed it all up to my network storage system and thankful I don't have to redo a lot, or at least at the moment it looks that way. Right now I'm restoring my profiles from Firefox and Thunderbird, and I've still got to reboot before I can reload Microsoft Office.

Before I started all that, though, I skipped the dancing around at the Democratic debate and went to see the Little Admiral start Irish-dancing lessons. The Twin Cities has an excellent dance school for Irish dancing called Scoil na Trí, which I have known since I studied Irish locally. In the 3-5 age group, there was a lot less dancing and a lot more cat-herding going on, but she loved it. She's been asking to do this since she saw Irish dancers at a fair almost three years ago, so Grandma & Grandpa decided to get her started.

So, I'm going to be doing configuration changes until late in the night; expect a slow start in the morning, but a refreshed and hopefully stable infrastructure for tomorrow. In the meantime, keep checking Heading Right for more great conversation from your favorite conservative BTR hosts!

My Weekend With Gateway

Many thanks to those who commented and e-mailed after my post detailing my frustrations with Gateway support. Some were even kind enough to offer free technical support from other companies, but I wanted to see how Gateway would respond to the issue. I'm a certified masochist in that regard, but as a former customer service professional, I wanted to see how long they would try to string me along before acknowledging the hardware problem.

First, I should note that I left the external wireless adapter attached all weekend long -- and it never failed. Actually, the adapter is specifically not Vista compliant, but it worked anyway. In fact, I'm writing this post on the Gateway system now. That shows pretty conclusively that my router works just fine, as if the other two computers using it wasn't proof enough.

Over the weekend, I received a series of four e-mails from the "Advance [sic] Technical Support" group. The first e-mail instructed me to make a series of changes to my TCP/IP protocols, which their Tier 1 group had already performed when I allowed them to take remote control of the laptop. I sent an e-mail reminding them of this, and their next reply instructed me to reload my drivers from the Recovery program. I replied that if they would have bothered to read the chat dialogues from my earlier contacts with Gateway support, they would know that I had done that several times already. The next e-mail instructed me to change my router, and my reply instructed them to quit wasting my time and read the damned dialogues.

Finally, this morning, they acknowledged what CQ readers and I knew all along: the hardware is faulty. They told me that "based on the troubleshooting, we have determined that parts of your notebook need to be replaced." No kidding! I wonder which part of "troubleshooting" determined that -- my input to them on all of the ways I had already isolated the problem, or the fact that I wouldn't go away? I'm suspicious that it's the latter and not the former.

Gateway will send me a box and an RMA to get the work done, which they say will take 7-10 business days after delivery. I expect it to be gone three weeks. I'd take it back to the store, but I'd wind up with the same hardware, and I think the problem is in the Realtek chipset. I can't believe it took Gateway this long to reach this conclusion, and I'm left unsatisfied as a result.

My Breakfast With Gateway (Updated - Still Not Working!)

As I mentioned earlier, I have had an ongoing issue with connectivity that has put me behind schedule last night and this morning. The issue involves my new Gateway laptop, the one I purchased six weeks ago as a business-contingency plan after I started considering working from home on a full-time basis.

The Gateway MT3705 has developed a nasty habit of dropping my wireless connection to the D-Link DIR-625 router, forcing me to reboot it, sometimes several times a day. Three weeks ago, I spent an hour with Gateway's tech-support chat service, which recommended that I reload the drivers for the Realtek wireless adapter to resolve the issue. That worked -- for a while, perhaps a day or two. Despite reloading it several times over the last couple of weeks, it continues to drop the network and stop recognizing it, even though I have two other computers connected to the wireless network that have no issues whatsoever.

Today, after losing two posts, I finally dug out an external USB wireless adapter and reconnected with Gateway's chat support to get them to fix the problem. What I was told was that Vista somehow interferes with the 802.11 wireless standard, and that I needed to replace my router. Somehow, Gateway wants me to verify that I'm connecting to a Vista-compatible router everywhere I travel with this laptop, rather than provide me with an adapter that connects to any 802.11-b or -g router. Seriously -- here's the transcript:

Brady_GWER9395 says: If this do not work, you should contact the router manufacturer for any update so that it will be compatible with Windows Vista,.

Edward Morrissey says: the router isn't connected to the computer -- why would there be a compatibility problem?

Brady_GWER9395 says: Yes, for some router is not compatible with Windows Vista.

Brady_GWER9395 says: And this cause the connection issue,

Edward Morrissey says: why?? they use a standard 802 communication program. why is vista having a problem with that?

Brady_GWER9395 says: Because there are firmware that is not compatible with Windows Vista.

Now, the router in question isn't attached to the laptop. It's wireless. The communication protocol is standard on routers and adapters -- the 802.11-b or -g standard. As a standard, it means it should be platform independent -- which I tried to explain to the tech:

Edward Morrissey says: look, the router shouldn't make any difference at all -- it's not being exposed to Vista, and that's my point. Either the Gateway uses the 802 standard or it doesn't. If it does, it should connect to routers that support it. If not, it's not because of Vista, it's because of the hardware being flaky. that's what "standard" is supposed to mean.

Brady_GWER9395 says: Windows Vista is the new operating system launched with Microsoft, And it's file format is different from XP.

After this, I asked to speak to a supervisor. Same story:

May_GWER2387 says: Edward, Brady already provided you steps on how to correct the issue. ...

Edward Morrissey says: are you telling me that when i travel with this laptop, i won't be able to connect to 802.11 wireless routers unless EVERYONE upgrades to Vista-compatible routers?

May_GWER2387 says: Yes, Edward

So Gateway wants me to verify everywhere I go with my new MT laptop that wireless providers have upgraded their routers to be Vista compatible. Is this correct? Does the 802.11 standard change for Vista? Perhaps I'm not clear on this, but when I'm told that the system supports the 802.11 standard, I figure that it wouldn't make any difference whether the routers likes Vista, XP, OS-X, or anything else. Otherwise, as I told Gateway, this laptop just ceased being useful at all to me. If I can't rely on it to maintain a connection to other 802.11 routers, it's useless on the road.

Besides, I've got an external on it that seems to be working just fine. How does that compute with their explanation?

They have forwarded the issue to their Advanced Technical Group -- which won't get back to me until Tuesday of next week. In the meantime, I guess I have to use my external adapter and write off the hour it took for them to escalate it to a technical expert. It's been a complete waste of time dealing with their first and second tier support, and I am either going to have to install XP or try to get my money back on the laptop. You can be sure that I will not be buying another Gateway.

UPDATE: CQ reader James sent me a link to the updated Realtek driver, which I have loaded. I've also rebooted the computer, and we'll see if the connection stays up. I've also confirmed that the D-Link router is on the latest firmware. We'll see if that solves the problem.

UPDATE II, 5:09 PM CT: Well, it failed again, and in the exact same manner. The driver does not appear to be the problem; it looks like a flaky adapter. I want to see what Gateway does about this.

Are These The People To Trust With Truth?

Google has made itself into the essential tool for Internet research, a success that all free-market fans applaud. Now one of its executives wants to expand its use into "truth predictor" functions that would assess the honesty of politicians:

Imagine being able to check instantly whether or not statements made by politicians were correct. That is the sort of service Google Inc. boss Eric Schmidt believes the Internet will offer within five years.

Politicians have yet to appreciate the impact of the online world, which will also affect the outcome of elections, Schmidt said in an interview with the Financial Times published on Wednesday.

He predicted that "truth predictor" software would, within five years, "hold politicians to account." People would be able to use programs to check seemingly factual statements against historical data to see to see if they were correct.

"One of my messages to them (politicians) is to think about having every one of your voters online all the time, then inputting 'is this true or false.' We (at Google) are not in charge of truth but we might be able to give a probability," he told the newspaper.

Truth in political statements? That should set records for smallest hit lists on Google searches.

Schmidt's new effort will likely find many fans, especially in the blogosphere. However, as Daniel Freedman notes at the New York Sun's It Shines For All blog, Google seems a poor choice for a partner in the search for political truth. This is the same company that cooperates with China's government in suppressing political truth in exchange for access to China's burgeoning Internet business. Google gave the Chinese information that allowed them to track down dissidents who posted criticisms of Beijing on line.

Is that the company we want in charge of Internet "truth"? I know I won't trust them with a search for truth prediction until they stop collaborating with tyrants.

You've Got Pink Slips

Radio Shack laid off 400 workers from its labor force yesterday. Perhaps taking their role as a technology company too seriously, they notified the workers of their termination by e-mail:

RadioShack Corp. notified about 400 workers by e-mail that they were being dismissed immediately as part of planned job cuts.

Employees at the Fort Worth headquarters got messages Tuesday morning saying: “The work force reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately your position is one that has been eliminated.” ...

Derrick D'Souza, a management professor at the University of North Texas, said he had never heard of such a large number of terminated employees being notified electronically. He said it could be seen as dehumanizing to employees. “If I put myself in their shoes, I'd say, 'Didn't they have a few minutes to tell me?”' Prof. D'Souza said.

Consumers may want to rethink their loyalty to Radio Shack after this decision. If this is how they treat their employees, imagine what Radio Shack thinks of their customers.

It's an inexcusable business decision. Managers who lack the fortitude to communicate terminations directly should not serve in that capacity. I can tell you from long experience how upsetting a termination can be for the manager involved, but in well over a decade of management, I have never once been tempted to do it by mail, e-mail, or semaphore. Even the worst employees deserve to have their manager take the time to sit down with them and explain the decision to terminate employment.

I doubt this will get very wide press coverage, or even generate much comment or criticism in today's business climate. The professionals I know as my peers would be embarrassed to be associated with such a heartless and cruel method of downsizing for any reason, but shame appears to be waning as a quality in direct proportion to the waxing of mindless impersonality.