If you followed the 2007 SunRocket debacle, you know that Clark lost money when he pre-paid the company for unlimited local and long-distance calling before they went bust.

Likewise, he next signed up for a Yahoo! Music service where he bought a proprietary music player and paid a monthly fee of $4.50 for unlimited music. That service went bust too and his music player went dead!

And now, Dash. Clark loves his Dash GPS, which interactively feeds real-time traffic info via the web. You can also use Dash to find restaurants (along with user-generated reviews) when you're traveling in unfamiliar places. For more on Clark's Dash obsession, see his recent discussion.

The San Jose Business Journal now reports that Dash is laying off 65% of its staff and exiting the GPS market. Dash will stop selling their own units and instead license their software to other companies. No word yet on what will happen to customers like Clark who pre-paid for the service in advance and shelled out big bucks for the unit itself.

One, two, three strikes and Clark is out. Each time, his misstep has involved promising new technology where you buy a product and a service. As is often the case, the money for the service has to be paid up-front.

If you followed Clark off a cliff all 3 times, he knows he's not very popular with you right now!