Fabbrication

I wish I'd known Fidelity's online brokerage was unreliable before I moved my assets there.


Update: June 27: Site Errors Persist
A month since my original story, I am still experiencing site errors on Fidelity when using their option evaluator tool. I really don't believe they're doing anything about this.


Three Weeks of Site Errors
Today is May 30th, 2007. Over the last three weeks, I have experienced intermittent errors when researching option trades on fidelity.com. I've called Fidelity's trading support three times now. I have walked their people through reproducing the error, and they confirmed that it does exist. Each time I call, they tell me that they will pass on the message, and that they are unable to contact me when it is fixed. Basically, I have to trust that they will not drop the ball.

The Hypocrisy of Microsoft's Patent Threats

Microsoft today claimed that open source software violates 238 patents. Despite widespread calls to name such patents, no details have been given. Microsoft suggested that companies selling the popular open source software Linux should sign agreements to pay Microsoft, or face litigation. Basically, they issued a vague threat.

Wait, isn't Windows based on Open Source technology?

Microsoft must want us to forget that Windows is based on a number of open source technologies. Their networking code, the logic that lets you surf the Internet or access a file server, is a blatant copy of the open-source Berkeley (BSD) Sockets API. Sure, they renamed a few things, but the lineage is obvious.