Anonymous Best Buy employee
I worked inside Best Buy, on the bestbuy.com Web site, and I can shed some light on this supposed "secret intranet" site.

It may come as a shock, but all brick-and-mortar retailers price things differently in different parts of the country. Sometimes, they even price things differently depending on whether a store is downtown or in the burbs. Best Buy is no different.

Now, when you have a Web site, it shows the same prices to everyone across the country.

Best Buy wanted to put kiosks in their stores, so if a customer wants something that's not in stock at the store, the associate is supposed to walk them over to a kiosk and help them place an order online.

What happens if that kiosk shows the Web site price, and the Web site (global, remember?) is like 15 percent less than the price sticker on the shelf? Customer gets mad. So, Best Buy, like most other bricks-and-clicks retailers, has a second Web site application that the kiosks in the store access. It's not an intranet, it's really just a separate URL for the main Web application. The kiosk sends a cookie to the site that identifies which price list the kiosk is supposed to use. (If we didn't tell Akamai to only allow access to kiosk.bestbuy.com from store networks, you'd be able to hit it from your desktop.)

This "issue" came up because the customer already knew the global price when walking into the store. The kiosk in the store showed the regional price, which is the same as the price tag on the shelf in the store.

Once in a while, the promotions on the main Web site and the ones on the kiosk get out of sync (they're maintained by humans). That's a mistake. The prices are always different, though. That's deliberate.

So, there's nothing secret or nefarious. It's a standard retailer practice of segmenting prices in different regions.

If anything, this is an example of how the 'Net makes all information global. Price segmentation depends on the locality of atoms and a person's inability to compare prices across different parts of the country. You can't be in enough places to gather all the price information yourself. The Web site just hands it to you!

Xbox 360 DRM sadness
So, between myself and a friend, we have Premo editions of the Xbox 360, so we have the HDDs and all that jazz. Well anyway, he spent the weekend over, but wanted to get some Live! time in, so he brings his HDD along with him. Mine easily snaps off, his easily snaps on, it was amazing, I've not been too let down by this whole Xbox 360 thing, maybe the best console I've ever dealt with. At least that's what I was thinking until we got bored of playing, and wanted to watch one of the many South Park episodes he downloaded to the drive, of course after purchasing them. Sadly but surely, as it's loading, we get a message that is long and involved, but basically says because it was DRM'd, we couldn't watch it on my Xbox 360... Curses! I was really disappointed, but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Dr. M attacks again... ~sigh~

Andrew!

About those free Rockstar games
Hey guys, just wanted you to know that those three Rockstar games have been available for download from Rockstar for free, for at least two years. I downloaded them when I was in college, and I just dated myself.

Love the show
Brooklyn Geoff

New unreported Leopard treats
After setting up a test unit for Mac OS X 10.5 this weekend, I noticed a couple of new features which haven't yet been reported on by the press. One such feature is the new Shared section in Finder. In addition to allowing you to connect to shared drives and computer, which used to be done through the Network section in Finder, you are now able to share screens, without the use of ARD (Apple Remote Desktop). You cannot take control of the screen, but built-in screen sharing through Finder is pretty hot. I have also noticed that when configuring your sharing preferences in the Sharing section of System Preferences, you are now able to make any folder public, instead of just your Public Folder/Drop Box. And finally: Aiport 802.11B card will not work! Love the show.

Jonathan of Florida

Leopard availability
The Wall Street Journal is reporting (from a Prudential upgrade) that Leopard will be released in late March. We'll see whether it or Tom is right.

Mike (in D.C.)

Free non-DRM music
Check this out.
Alea Iacta Est - For the horde!
Joe the programmer from Boston (aka Relapse)