- Verizon Wireless rants, raves, and whines about how the FCC regulation for wireless local number portability–letting you keep your same phone number, even when you change providers–is going to cost billions and billions of dollars. Despite the fact that the FCC regulation has been in place for years and wireless providers have chosen to ignore it, since the FCC has failed to enforce it.
- Take the FCC to court over the issue!
- After the court rules against you, give in and announce that you’re going to lead the industry and everyone should copy you, because by Zeus, you’re doing what’s best for the customer. (But only after being forced to…)
Tag: rant
Marc Marshall brings up the excellent point that Microsoft has come full circle with regard to Internet Explorer. His is the last post in Macintouch’s Browser Future report for today:
The bottom line in this situation is this: For the past several years, Microsoft gave away a free browser to kill the competition, and succeeded. Now, they have stopped development of their standalone product, and are giving people exactly three choices to get their “standard” product: 1) Buy Windows. 2) Use MSN for Internet access. 3) Pay them $10/month or $80 per year. No free options, no free upgrades.
The price is higher than Opera or Omni’s paid competition, and you don’t have a free option, and you have an ongoing fee. In fact, if MS starts charging annual licensing for Windows, there will be no lifetime-licence-purchasable version of IE. This sounds like exactly the sort of consumer hostile situation that monopolies create, and governments are supposed to protect us from.
Now that they’ve pretty much saturated the market, Microsoft has been scrambling on how to consistently generate revenue. They have long discussed subscription software licensing, and this situation with IE appears to be the first shot across the bow. Unfortunately, I do not forsee the mass sheep of Windows and IE/Mac users torpedoing the Microsoft Bismarck any time soon.
As to the truths contained in Hillary’s ghost-written tome, consider this:
On April 29, 1997, Hillary told CNN’s Larry King that she would never run for public office. Two years later…
So my lovely bride and I have this relatively new tradition (3 years old now) of going for a 4-day weekend the week of our anniversary. This year, our trip took us to San Diego.
We took in Seaworld, saw Shamu. My favorite had to be the dolphin show (with a couple of pilot whales). What can I say, I’m partial to dolphins. Kel really enjoyed the sea lion show, which was an outstanding comedy.
The next day was spent at the world-famous San Diego Zoo. While we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, there were many times when we wondered, what’s the big deal? There are other zoos with better exhibits/enclosures, and far better layouts (Audubon Zoo in New Orleans springs to mind). SDZ does deserve its reputation, however, because of its fantastic research programs; it outspends and outperforms any other zoo in the country; pretty much the world.
Our last full day was spent driving up the 101, aka SH 21, alongside the coastline. Let me say, this was a profound disappointment. While lunch in La Jolla (say La Hoya) was nice, overlooking Scripps Park and the Cove, we only saw the ocean three or four other times, and only briefly as we drove past. Much different than the drive south from San Francisco to Carmel, where you’re hugging the ocean–albeit a few dozen feet up a cliff–nearly every mile. And California road signage sucks. Sucks. I’m talking enormous, Oreck/Kirby/Hoover suckage. We ended up at the south gate of Camp Pendleton, turned back through the Oceanside Marina, then popped over to I-5 back to downtown San Diego.
We roomed at Prava, a three year-old hotel and spa, converted from a time-share property. (They still maintain a relationship with time-share companies, which is how we stayed there.) Located in the heart of San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter, we had plenty of great places to eat within walking distance. Prava makes the Retrophisch Recommends(tm) list of places to stay.
One of my favorite sports-talk hosts is moving from WBAP, 820 AM, to the station’s ESPN radio affiliate. This stinks, since I never listen to ESPN radio, keeping the radio–when I listen to the radio–on either WBAP or KWRD 100.7 FM (Christian talk radio). This is all in the D/FW metro area, by the way.
One problem I have with ESPN radio, or, at least, the affiliate here in town: when I’m watching the freaking Stanley Cup Finals on your company’s main network, it sure would be nice to have the game on the radio, if I have to leave the house, as I did this weekend. I wonder if the same would be true if ESPN was carrying the NBA Finals, or the World Series?
You certainly can’t blame the Israelis for decimating the Palestinian female ranks:
Each year, dozens and probably hundreds of brutal “honor killings” of Palestinian women and girls–most of whom are virtually blameless–go unreported, according to an anthropologist’s recent study.
The story is scheduled for an issue of The World & I magazine.
“I’m getting more famouser by the day.” –Avril Lavigne
“I quit flying five years ago. Personally, I don’t want to die with tourists.” –Billy Bob Thornton
As reported in the 5 May 2003 issue of Us Weekly.
A couple of days ago I was talking to my little sister on the phone (okay, she’s 27, but she’ll always be my “little” sister), and she stated that I was picking up a Texas accent.
Seeing how I have long confounded people as to my origins by being pretty much accent-less, this is a trifle upsetting…
There is a story from the NY Times talking about a growing segment of the American population doing exactly that. Of note:
“People use the unemployment rate as some kind of gauge of the health of the economy,” said Robert H. Topel, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. But because of the number of people now outside of the labor force, he said, “the unemployment rate does not give you the same kind of information it did in the 1970’s or 1960’s.”
(A little disappointed in the Times–you do not put an apostrophe-s after a year to state a decade; just put the s after the year, as in, 1970s.)
The real gem, though, has to be this:
“I’ve been trying to find a conventional job for two years,” Ms. Leftridge said. “Finally, I’m thinking about doing a home-based business. I don’t see it as giving up. I see it as expanding my search. I ought to be able to make some money this way, and start building back my savings, in a situation where I’m not hostage to any company’s budget, to any budget.”
Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking if I get laid off. Better to be the hostage-taker than the hostage. Or something like that.
So I just found out that the attorney in the office next to my wife’s is worth, combined with his mother, nearly US $4 billion. The Schaefflers are in a 5-way tie for the 83rd spot on Forbes’ World’s Richest People 2003 list.
We’re both stumped as to why he would waste time pretending to work at a law firm in Dallas.
Me? I’d be planted on a beach on Kaua’i.