April 02, 2001, 10:08 AM — TIPS I RECEIVED from readers led to the publication of my Feb. 19 column about an organization called ThePayLine.com. As a result, I'm pleased to report, the U.S. Postal Service recently seized the contents of PayLine's private mailbox in Florida.
This will rescue the checks worth thousands of dollars sent by innocent people for an unbelievably popular Internet financial pyramid.
PayLine made incredible promises through its Web site and a sophisticated e-mail marketing campaign. First, you'd pay $200. Then you'd sign up two other members. After that, you'd get a pro rata share of 50 percent of all the money received from future members, to be divided among older members.
In addition, you'd receive one free "travel mile" for every member who joined after you, whether or not you'd personally enrolled them. PayLine promised thousands of miles of free airline tickets. More than 290,000 Internet users had "preregistered" by e-mail as of the last time I checked a digital counter at the site, which I believe to be accurate.
As I discovered and reported, PayLine actually has its headquarters in St. Kitts and Nevis, Caribbean island havens for money-laundering. And the Web outfit's financial promises were mathematically impossible.
That didn't stop an unknown number of preregistrants from taking the next step and actually sending in their $200. Fortunately, some of those people will get their money back now that postal authorities have impounded the contents of the box.
Linda Walker, public information officer for the Postal Inspection Service, said in an interview that postal authorities had mailed a notice to PayLine officials requesting proper identification. "They have not responded, and we're still holding their mail," Walker said.
Brian Booth, PayLine's director of affiliate relations, confirmed the postal action but said that PayLine was in compliance with all state laws.
I'd like to thank the readers who alerted me to this organization and InfoWorld for printing my opinion of it. I believe that we computer professionals need to look up from our keyboards periodically and evaluate the ethics of things we see happening on the Net.
Create a virtual CD drive
Windows programs sometimes require a particular CD-ROM to be in a specific CD drive. Reader Anthony Cimorelli describes a workaround for this kind of behavior in Windows 2000.
Step 1. Create a hard disk folder with a name such as C:\VirtualCD.
Step 2. Copy your CD (or the portion you need) into this folder.
Step 3. Right-click the folder, then click "Sharing." Share the folder using a name such as VirtualCD.
Step 4. In Windows Explorer, pull down the Tools menu, then click Map Network Drive. Select an unused drive letter, such as V, then browse to the VirtualCD folder and select it.
Step 5. Install the program from drive V or change the software's references so they point to drive V.
Cimorelli says this method works well for programs with a lot of CDs, such as Printmaster (www.printmaster.com). As another example, one mapping program I've used has a huge database of streets on one CD, with bodies of water on a second CD. To include both streets and riveers on the same map, Cimorelli's method allows you to assign one or both CDs to different drive letters, although they are merely different folders.
Here's a use for those AOL disks
Speaking of CDs, I wrote on March 12 that some programs fail to create writeable CDs properly, resulting in a useless disk.
Reader Steve Fleming says these CDs do have a practical use when starting his car. "They make terrific ice scrapers as long as the ice is not too thick," he writes. "They're flexible enough that they fit in the hand comfortably, and if they happen to break, so what, you were going to throw it out anyway."
