Recently in Rants Category

Everyone is reporting about the silver-headed gentleman who frantically called 911 early in the week stating that his Toyota Prius was accelerating out of control down the San Diego interstate. In my mind, these are some of the salient things he says in his on camera CNN interview:

• The the floor mat was not stuck up under the gas pedal.
• The car reached speeds in excess of 90 miles per hour causing him to narrowly miss hitting other vehicles traveling down the road.
• The accelerator took on a mind of its own and was stuck.
• That his attempts to reach down with his hand and physically pull the gas pedal back up were unsuccessful.
• That, since the vehicle was speeding out of control down the interstate, it was unsafe for him to take both of his hands off of the steering wheel to place the car in neutral.
• That, since the vehicle was speeding out of control down the interstate, it was unsafe for him to take both of his hands off of the steering wheel to turn the car off, fearing the steering would lock up and cause a horrible accident at the speed he was traveling.
• That he was standing on the brake pedal with all of his weight and this did not slow the run away vehicle's speed very much.
• That when the highway patrol pulled up beside him and, using the speaker, told him to stand on the brake and use the emergency brake at the same time, the car slowed down to 50 mph, allowing the patrolman to pull in front of the speeding car, make contact between the the patrolman's trunk and the Prius' hood and use the patrol car to brake the Prius to a stop.

Now, I could be wrong, and forgive me if I am; but, I don't buy this at all! This sounds like total hogwash to me.

Allow me to elaborate...

As a crazy teenager with very little driving experience, I was driving a car, with around 350 horsepower, that got stuck in full throttle, with that huge engine racing at full power down a two lane road, with traffic, at night! Needless to say, I was shocked and dumbfounded. But bringing the car to a full stop was a simple, yet frightening thing.

I put it in neutral.

The frightening part was that the engine then revved to the max and sounded like it was going to explode. I turned it off.

Since I was out in the middle of no where, I then decided to turn it back on and drive it (stupid kid) to the nearest gas station to call my dad. Remember, this was before any kind of portable phones even existed. I could control the car's speed, with this huge engine, by Pressing firmly on the brake and dropping the car into neutral when needed.

But this isn't why I think this man staged this whole event. Aside from the fact that he is an experienced driver, look at what he says. His own words make zero sense to me.

• If you own a Prius (I do.) odds are very high you are fully aware of the media reports about runaway Prius(es?) that have allegedly killed people. (One report said he was aware of this possible problem and had previously asked his dealer if his car was affected.) If you haven't given some serious thought to how you would bring your vehicle, of any make or model, to a full stop should something like this happen to you, in my mind, you are negligent!
• He said it was too dangerous for him to take both hands off of the steering wheel to reach just a few inches over to place his car in neutral. WHAT??!! But it wasn't too dangerous to reach under the dashboard all the way down to the floorboard with his hand to try to pull the gas pedal up, thereby not just taking his hand off the steering wheel but his eyes off the road he reported speeding down at 94 mph?! (I can't see the road and touch the gas pedal at the same time in my Prius.) Please!! Get real, dude!!
• He said it was too dangerous for him to take both hands off of the steering wheel to reach just a few inches over to place his car in neutral. But it wasn't too dangerous to get out his cell phone and place a call to 911? (Did the officer give him a ticket for using his cell phone while driving, which, because it reduces the driver's response time more than driving under the influence of alcohol, is against the law in California?) Even with a USB headset and the phone options package on the Prius, I still have to touch the phone or the dashboard several times to dial 911. Don't tell me you couldn't reach a shorter distance to touch the vehicle's on/off button once or place the car in neutral! No, no, no!!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Toyota Reviewing U.S. Report of Prius With Stuck Gas Pedal (businessweek.com)
• Toyota Driver Spins Out Of Control At 94mph (news.sky.com)
• Runaway Prius halted by Calif. police (cbc.ca)
• Toyota With 'Stuck' Accelerator Hits 94 MPH, Driver Rescued by California Highway Patrol (abcnews.go.com)

I've never been much of a coffee drinker.  I don't like the aftertaste.  However, I love the smell of coffee.  I'll go to Starbucks and order an Earl Grey Tazo Tea just to savor the smell of the coffee while drinking my tea!  I'm crazy, I know.

But, after reading this CNN article, I will no longer give my business to Starbucks.  I don't know if California is one of the 43 states that allow people to tote guns around with them.  But the last thing I want is to be in a Starbucks, which allows their patrons to bring their guns into their stores if state law permits it, with patrons drinking their new 31 ounce coffee!

Now some hair-trigger, gun-toting, chip-on-his-shoulder nitwit with the caffein jitters can pretend he's back in the wild, wild west when he gets in an argument with the barista over the temperature of his grande mocha latte.  No thanks.

If people feel the need to have guns in their homes to protect them, that's their business.  If people feel the need to have guns for the sport of hunting, that's their business.  But I've worked with the public too long to trust most people's spur of the moment judgement.  Put a gun in their hands at the Starbucks?! No, I won't be around to see how this turns out.

Starbucks, you just lost a customer.

Good grief!

[Image via Wikipedia]

I have finished my income taxes.

In sackcloth and ashes, I wail!

So, let me see...  what did my tax money help purchase?  Well, that money continues to fund wars I believe are immoral.  My taxes allow greedy bankers to get millions in bonuses while their banks all but put the economies of the world in collapse.  Umm... no health care reform.  Stupid, evil senators block continued unemployment benefits, because we can't afford that for the millions who have lost their jobs as a result of reckless, unchecked, capitalists' greed.

CNN reported last week that 86% of Americans, and I'm sure those would be the "real Amurrrricans," think our government is broken.  Who the hell are the 14% that think anything about our government works?!  How long can this continue?

Bloomberg reports today that, astoundingly, Iraq is now opening its doors to BP, Exxon Mobile, and Shell for the first time since 1972, when the country, under the leadership of the now executed Saddam Hussein, nationalized all of its oil fields. Astoundingly, this will open the 3rd largest oil reserves in the world directly to western countries.

And, um... why are we complaining about the bank bailouts? How much money did the citizens of this country spend on (and will continue to spend on) making this happen for the oil corporations? (Not to mention the number of people that were killed!)  If there is a hell, unfettered capitalist greed needs to rot in it.

In my earlier post, I mentioned that the surf has been out of control with the storm and earthquake.  The life guard stations had to be moved inland—waaaay inland, and the surf still almost got to them.  Here you can see that the sand was completely eroded away by the surf, creating the sudden drop off that was as tall as me!  (Click to enlarge.)

Normally, along a seashore, one expects to find seashells.  Well, not so here in the South Bay.  Regrettably, the dumping of LA's sewage has long ago killed such sea life.  But what I found even more distressing was the amount of trash the surf brought to the shore line.  It was unbelievable!  Thousands of plastic bottle caps littered the shoreline as if they were the missing seashells! Bits of styrofoam, in various sizes, were everywhere.  This is outrageous!  We have turned the Pacific Ocean into a sewer. Click the image below to see two different pictures.

You may have heard that I don’t do iPhone or iPad development at this time. That said, it’d be silly to not keep track of what Apple is up to with the platform they care for most." ...

• Upgrades to software for laptop and desktop machines hadn't all but died in the last several years.
  • Cases in point:  Where is iLife 2010?  (Apple made a big issue of rewriting iLife 2010 from the ground up, but only for the mobile platform!)
  • Where is iWork 2010?  (Apple made a big issue of rewriting iWork 2010 from the ground up, but only for the mobile platform!)
  • What happened to iMovie on the iPad?  Where did it go?
  • When Apple finally came out with an upgrade to Final Cut Studio, the new feature set was anything but substantive.
  • Now there are rumors all over the net that Apple has laid off over 40 people from the Final Cut Studio software team.  This can not be good as it probably indicates Apple is abandoning one of the most powerful production tools it ever developed!
  • How many years have we suffered with Aperture 2?  Finally, Aperture 3 is released, but many users are reporting huge issues with the program's basic operability and stability.
• What of any significant improvements in laptop and desktop hardware?
  • Cases in point:  The "new" iMacs have been plagued with screen problems and shipping was completely halted for a time while the issue has hopefully been corrected.
  • It blows me away that I bought my 2 x 3.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon computer about 1.5 years ago, and today Apple doesn't even sell a machine as fast as this "old" computer!  The fastest machine on their site is a 2 x 2.93 Quad-Core Intel Xeon computer!  What's with that?!  Their hardware is getting slower?
  • Where's the innovation in hardware?  Apple has been the leader for years!  With many of the new HD DSLR and video cameras sporting HDMI access, why hasn't Apple added this to the hardware line up?  Instead, my computers today have fewer high speed data access ports than they did 2 years ago!
• One company control of my media access?  Increasingly my heart is saying, "Absolutely no!"

Related articles

• Apple's Desktops to Disappear Eventually? (tastyslate.com)
• Is Aperture 3 sucking up memory? (macworld.com)
• Apple Looking to Bring iPhone OS to More Devices (mashable.com)
• Conspicuous by Its Absence (timtyson.us)

Image via Wikipedia

Allow me to introduce Senator Jones (R) from AIG and Senator Smith (D) from United Healthcare and Representative Tung from China... This is so bad. So very, very bad.

The Campaign to Legalize Democracy is circulating a petition in response to yesterday's ruling that legalized unlimited political bribery by corporations in the USA. Signatories include Bill Moyer, Howard Zinn, Jim Hightower, Bill McKibben, and Tom Hayden.

We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United, and move to amend our Constitution to:

* Firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.

* Guarantee the right to vote and to participate, and to have our votes and participation count.

* Protect local communities, their economies, and democracies against illegitimate "preemption" actions by global, national, and state governments."

[Source: Constitutional amendment petition: run government for people, not monied interests.]

... as Republican Justice John Paul Stevens put it:  

"Under today's decision, multinational corporations controlled by foreign governments" would have the same rights as Americans to spend money to tilt U.S. elections ..."

[Source: Our Charming Corporatist State.]

Government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations. Today the Supreme Court (5-4) just handed the Republicans (and a lot of Democrats too) a huge bonus: unfettered access to corporate funding, effectively making a broken political system completely unaccountable the to will of the people.

The legacy of George W. Bush lives on to feast on the soul of democracy for profit.

At least Larry Lessig has a more reasoned view. Me, I'm just disgusted.

we eat genetically modified food?

Three types of Monsanto genetically modified corn are under scrutiny in the wake of a new study published by the International Journal Of Biological Sciences which found that rats ingesting the corn were subject to statistically significant amounts of organ toxicity.

...

The finding that corn produced by one of the world's agricultural giants could cause organ failure has been met with obvious concern by food activists and consumers alike.

"Effects were mostly concentrated in kidney and liver function, the two major diet detoxification organs, but in detail differed with each GM type. In addition, some effects on heart, adrenal, spleen and blood cells were also frequently noted. "

[Source: Monsanto's genetically-modified corn causes organ failure in rats // Current.]

You know what I love the most about the AT&T application that allows you to report a problem with the AT&T network? When there's an actual problem: a dropped call, a call that will not go through, no signal at all, etc., you can't get the network to work properly to use the application to report it. So you wait until you get to a location where you get functional service again. Therefore, when the GPS data is transmitted with your trouble report, it's not the location where the problem actually happens. So, I guess all of the areas around network problem spots get really good service! The problem spots don't improve at all.

At least $5 billion, and perhaps as much as $7 billion. That's what it would cost AT&T to match Verizon's current level of investment in network infrastructure and, presumably, match its performance.

According to TownHall Investment Research, AT&T (T) spent about $21.6 billion on its wireless network from 2006 through September 2009. Meanwhile, Verizon (VZ) spent $25.4 billion. That disparity in investment, says TownHall Investment Research analyst Gerard Hallaren, has caused AT&T's network to perform poorly compared with Verizon's, particularly as it struggles to meet the data demands of devices like Apple's (AAPL) iPhone.

Making matters worse, AT&T invests more in its wired infrastructure than in its wireless network. Though 57 percent of the company's operating income comes from wireless and only 35 percent from wired services, wireless gets only 34 percent of the capital expenditures, while wired receives 65 percent."

[Source: AT&T's Mottoes: "Profit Over Performance" and "We've Got You by the Calls".]

I've actually been thinking more and more about leaving the US. I mean: for good. I find myself so disillusioned with what is happening in my native land.

My country forces education reform that is destroying creativity, problem solving, deep thinking, and analysis of knowledge to inform carefully considered long term solution-making for the immediacy of factionalized curriculum memorization. My country will not move beyond prejudice and discrimination. My country is squandering our national (as well as international) resources. My country is flinging privacy and personal freedom as fast as it escalates fear. My country cares more about greed, money, and possessing things than it does about people and their basic wellbeing. My country is removing the separation of church and state and forcing people to live by tenets of religion in which they may not personally believe. My country allows business, built on greed and outsourcing, to become so large they can not fail and must receive tax payer's money to keep the executes rolling in fat bonuses with shameless abandon. My nation's government is bought and sold by transglobal corporations and makes divisiveness its core ethic.

I can do little of nothing to stop or change any of this.

I wonder if this is a natural part of getting older--seeing the world through more jaded eyes. But I see other nations, not without their faults to be sure, at least maintaining some more moderate and productive sense of balance. I just think the US government is fundamentally broken and inept.

I shared last night at dinner that I actually don't think the US will be able to move to a better place within my lifetime. This saddens me greatly.

I've supported Lawrence Lessig's work for some time. I've had his "Change Congress" link on my site for some time. In this video he sums up things, and, unlike my dismal state of disillusion, offers a ray of hope. He doesn't frame the problem as conservative versus liberal or Republican versus Democrat. He is insightful and brilliant.

Ah, The Heritage Foundation... They share their wise and timely advice on what President Obama should do in response to the suffering in Haiti: call on a senior Republican to lead the Haitian response efforts. And what senior Republican official do they suggest? Yes, the only one with a proven track record in such matters: George W. Bush!

I'm serious. That's who they suggested.

No, really...

That frames the quality of thinking from the Heritage Foundation rather adequately now, doesn't it! Did they forget already, or are they just stupid?!

The Haitian Ambassador, obviously deeply offended by the incredulous, outrageous, and unspeakably insensitive remarks of Pat Robertson, feels immediately compelled to respond to Robertson's offensive comments.

At the end of the ambassador's remarks, Rachel Maddow states that if she could apologize for the "odious" remarks made by Pat Robertson, she would. She expresses that Robertson's despicable remarks do not represent the broad wishes of the American people.

Pat Robertson should hang his head in shame, but his press release did nothing of the kind.

This man isn't just superstitious, I find Pat Robertson to be hateful and evil! He also sounds like he can't breath. This extremist right-wing religious viper is a discredit to the God he claims to serve. My guess: he's about to seize an opportunity to "minister" to these people and make a fortune in the process.

He states that Haiti made a "pact with the devil" and has been cursed by God ever since. Astoundingly, he's actually serious! These are lunatic babblings and moral platitudes of a black-hearted mad man!

The people of Haiti don't need the filth of his religion. They need the kindness and compassion of people of God and the real help of real people motivated by real goodness.

And you know, Christy, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it, they were under the heel of the French, uh, you know, Napoleon the third and whatever, and they got together and swore a pact to the devil, they said, we will serve you, if you get us free from the Prince, true story. And so the devil said, 'OK, it's a deal.' And they kicked the French out, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free, and ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other, desperately poor. . . the Island of Hispaniola is one island cut down the middle. On the one side is Haiti, on the other side is the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic is, is, prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etc. Haiti is in desperate poverty, same Islands, uh, they need to have, and we need to pray for them, a great turning to God. And out of this tragedy, I'm optimistic something good may come, but right now we're helping the suffering people, and the suffering is unimaginable.

We all know Sarah is now an employee of Rupert Murdoch. What we didn't know, until the book and the recent 60 Minutes episode, was the astounding level of her lack of qualification for being being a heartbeat away from the presidency. But that didn't matter to her at all, because "It was God's will" for her to be the Vice President, she said.

This interview is as enlightening as it is frightening. It's worth the attention of the nation.

Well, hopefully she will continue to show how lackluster she is as she stars on FOX not-News. Maybe she will go rogue. But probably, she will just quit--you know, like she did as governor of Alaska.

This causes me grave concerns! Once again I ask, "How much of our privacy and freedom are we willing to surrender?!"

I've kept asking where the ridiculous amount of money I pay in taxes is going. And then we can't balance local, state, and federal budgets?! Is it because those agencies are spending vast sums of money on tools such as these that are never approved by the voters. In fact, it is obvious from this newscast that the police department never wanted voters to know anything about this!

How can this be happening? Government is increasingly becoming less accountable to the people it is to serve.

The title, from the question at the end of the quoted material below, is a sickening wake up call we need to all feel in our national collective stomach. We are flushing our civil liberties down the toilet for an invisible threat that some are speculating was killed several years ago.

You know those airport scanners that can see through your clothes, offering an intimate look at your junk and your love handles and every other part of you that you keep between you, your spouse, your doctor and the bathroom mirror? You know how the TSA swore up and down that these machines didn't store and couldn't transmit the compromising photos of your buck-naked self?

They lied.

The documents, which include technical specifications and vendor contracts, indicate that the TSA requires vendors to provide equipment that can store and send images of screened passengers when in testing mode, according to CNN.

The TSA has stated publicly on its website, in videos and in statements to the press that images cannot be stored on the machines and that images are deleted from the scanners once an airport operator has examined them. The administration has also insisted that the machines are incapable of sending images. Source: Airport Scanners Can Store, Transmit Images via: Digg

Just more US government employees doing Al Qaeda's business: undermining the quality of life in the "free" world. Osama's still free, how about you?"

[Source: TSA lied: naked-scanners can store and transmit images.]

Shouldn't this guy, of all guys, be aware that his statement is beyond simply untrue; it is absurd to the extreme!

I was ambivalent about the former mayor. Now I think Rudy Giuliani is crazy. Or, maybe he's very, very smart: the Republicans are trying to rewrite the history of their unspeakable failures. If you say it enough times, people will believe you!

Click the image to see him say it firsthand and to hear the words come out of his mouth. It's incredulous!

On what planet am I living?!

A year-long trial of "full body scanner" machines at a UK airport (the kind that display clear images the human body, including genitals and breast implants), was only permitted to go into effect after children under 18 years of age were exempted from the scans. Privacy advocates say the "naked images" would violate Britain's child porn laws (Guardian UK)."

[Source: Creepy "naked scanners" violate child porn laws in UK Boing Boing.]

And then these Facebook screen grabs from war-blogger Michael Yon via Boing Boing...

[Source: War-blogger Michael Yon says he was harassed, cuffed, detained in Seattle; via: Boing Boing.]

The terrorists are winning. Because of our reaction to extremists, we are not the nation I grew up in as a child. I don't like what we are becoming.

What sheer decadence! Sort of reminds me of the Tower of Babel. I wonder how many years will pass before the building is fully occupied! Never?

The world's tallest building, rising up to 828 meters to touch the clouds, Burj Dubai, is now open for business!

Burj Dubai was opened today in a ceremony, celebrating the fourth anniversary of Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum becoming Ruler of Dubai.

As Dubai struggles with the economic crisis, the 160-floor-skyscraper is seen as a window of opportunity to pick up things and attract more business.

Construction on Burj Dubai began back in 2004. It was developed by Emaar and constructed by Samsung Engineering & Construction.

The building will house 900 residences on floors 19 through 108. The observation deck is on Floor 124. Sky lobbies on Floors 43, 76 and 123 will have fitness facilities, swimming pools and Jacuzzis. It has a hotel designed by Giorgio Armani."

[Source: Burj Dubai, World's Tallest Building, Now Open.]

I've whined before about my dislike for visual clutter and advertising trying to capture my attention on the web and in the news papers. Well, here's a nice little tool that won the New York Times Pogie Award for the Year's Best Tech Ideas: Readability.

Set your preferences: pick a style, select the font size, and select the width of the margin. Drag their little bookmarklet onto your browser's toolbar. Now, when you arrive at a webpage, click the bookmarklet to strip the page of everything except the text and related photographs in a plain, readable format without Times Square blaring in your face.

Nice.

In my online reading I recently came across a phrase that summarized for me this horrible decade:

the excesses of the boom and the hysteria of the bust"

Source: Current.com -- Dead Men Walking

Turn of the centuries have historically been "bad news." I'm looking forward to a fresh decade. Bring on twenty-ten!

but not for this man whom I consider less than a charlatan. Oral Roberts needs to rest in shame as far as I am concerned. He created an entire generation of religious leaders who cared more about money than they do helping people--the sheer nonsense and evil of "the prosperity gospel": give me enough of your money and God will bless you. His influence, in my humble opinion, has had a deleterious impact on this nation beyond measure, substantially empowering the extremist religious right to have enough cash to wield its divisive and hostile influence. Evil!

He lied to people, millions of them. He took millions of dollars from good people who did without (I happen to have known some of them!) to live life large.

He supposedly healed the sick. Yet, when organizations publicized giving $1,000 to anyone who could provide medical evidence they had truly been healed by Oral Roberts, not a single person in the whole world came forward to receive the money.

He was the patriarch of the "prosperity gospel," a theology that promotes the idea that Christians who pray and donate with sufficient fervency will be rewarded with health, wealth and happiness. Mr. Roberts trained and mentored several generations of younger prosperity gospel preachers who now have television and multimedia empires of their own. Mr. Roberts was as politically conservative as his contemporaries in what became known as the "religious right," but he was known more for his religious style than for his political pronouncements. He was widely lampooned after he proclaimed on his television program in 1987 that God would "call him home" if he did not raise millions.

Source: The New York Times

I can think of nothing worse than to use people in the name of God for your own selfish, greedy gain. Therefore, I find Oral Roberts loathsome and detestable.

May he rest in the shame he deserves!

"Former South Dakota State Rep. Ted Alvin Klaudt -- presently serving time for raping his two foster daughters -- is sending bizarre 'copyright notices' from prison to news agencies and outlets that use his name in print or online, claiming a 'common law copyright' on his name and demanding $500,000 for any unauthorized use."

(Via: Rapist ex-lawmaker claims copyright on his name, threatens legal action against anyone who uses it without permission Boing Boing".)

The Fake Steve Jobs, Dan Lyons, has responded to AT&T's claim that his proposed Operation Chokehold is "an irresponsible and pointless scheme to draw attention to a blog."

Lyons’ responded, noting that the company has made over $10 billion in profit over the last nine months, and has seen wireless data revenues soar 80% over the last eight quarters, while dropping its capital expenditures by 30% over the same period"

(Via: Spat between Lyons, AT&T poses iPhone outage threat | iLounge News".)

Is this true? Are revenues and the user base at AT&T soaring because of their monopoly on the iPhone which is creating greater demands on their network while capitol investment in that same network is substantially dropping as a result of their maximized profit-taking? If so, this is a problem for AT&T--and a big one. It smacks of that whole corporate greed thing again which caused the banking sector to spiral out of control.

When the public perceives a company has a consistent and unfair imbalance between what they charge and what the customer gets for that fee (value), that company has a real problem. Then for the company to threaten to charge even more? AT&T would be better served if they stopped blaming customers who want to get what they are paying a premium to have and provided more customer value with less corporate profit taking.

The Silicon Alley Insider posted an article, 21 Things That Became Obsolete This Decade. These are some of the things from their list that I won't miss:

• Glad to see the stylus go. The finger is so superior!
• Since I lived by Emory University in Decatur, I was able to get rid of dial up in the mid 90's! It's hard to remember those days. The sound alone was so annoying.
• Developing film: I would never, ever have developed the over 35,000 pictures I've shot since 2003! Ever!!
• I can't believe using a paper map inside a moving car was ever even legal!
• I ditched the landline back in the Decatur days as well. Remember paying a premium for all of those "features" just to get caller ID and call waiting. God I hate AT&T. And then there was/is the constant spamming sales/solicitation calling. Pay more to block it. Spammers, you can pay even more to get through the block... Evil!
• VHS tapes! I was always afraid my VCR would eat them, though I don't recall it ever did.
• Phone books, dictionaries, encyclopedias... I'm getting a cold and had 2 prescriptions here at the house: one was a decongestant, the other an antibiotic. But which was which? I don't recall. So just tonight I had to look it up on the internet. I wondered to myself, "How did I live before search engines?!"
• I hated paying for 411! What a ripoff!! And then I would be driving and not be able to remember the stupid number to dial while driving the car!! I don't remember the last time I used 411. God, the iPhone is so awesome! Search, phone numbers, maps, touch to call...
• I hated buying whole CDs (for insane amounts of money: $14.95 - 24.95.and that was 10 - 15 years ago!) when all I wanted was that one track!
• Backing up your data on floppies or CDs? I adore BackBlaze--affordable, automatic, off offsite backups! Never worry. Just click "restore" in any browser, anywhere, anytime.
• Paying paper bills? Does anyone still use a stamp for those?? I hated paying bills!!!

They say the use of paper is on life support. I'm not so sure about that one. I've seen too many printers and copy machines about to burst into flames from over use. Maybe they are referring to newspapers, magazines, books: as a corporate business model, yes, probably. But I suspect we are making up for that decline in paper use on a personal level.

Photo credit: René Elhardt

Recently, the Fake Steve Jobs blog proposed AT&T customers engage in "Operation Chokehold" to attempt to send AT&T a clear message since AT&T is threatening to end the unlimited data plan for iPhone user who actually use it (a lot).

Subject: Operation Chokehold

On Friday, December 18, at noon Pacific time, we will attempt to overwhelm the AT&T data network and bring it to its knees. The goal is to have every iPhone user (or as many as we can) turn on a data intensive app and run that app for one solid hour. Send the message to AT&T that we are sick of their substandard network and sick of their abusive comments. THe idea is we’ll create a digital flash mob. We’re calling it in Operation Chokehold. Join us and speak truth to power!"

(Via The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs : Operation Chokehold.)

AT&T seems to blame their lackluster network performance on these iPHone users who are using what they are paying a premium to have.

Naturally AT&T, in its inimitable style of making bad become worse, responds stupidly.

Cult of Mac reached out to AT&T for comment on the proposed action, and the wireless carrier unsurprisingly noted that it was unimpressed with the tactic, calling it 'totally irresponsible'.

We understand that fakesteve.net is primarily a satirical forum, but there is nothing amusing about advocating that customers attempt to deliberately degrade service on a network that provides critical communications services for more than 80 million customers. We know that the vast majority of customers will see this action for what it is: an irresponsible and pointless scheme to draw attention to a blog."

(Via AT&T Unimpressed With 'Operation Chokehold' Proposal to Strain Cellular Network - Mac Rumors".)

This isn't about a blog. This is about a company with some serious issues.

Apparently, a lot of people despise AT&T. I just don't think they get the whole customer service thing. They only seem to want "reach out, reach out and" (remember that tune from the giant monopoly?) take more money from their customers so they can pay some PR firm to attempt to make everyone thank them for doing it.

In one of life's supreme ironies, AT&T today posted an iPhone app that allows you to report substandard service. That's right folks. Got a dropped call? No reception? AT&T Marks the Spot [iTunes link] is designed to get that info to your favorite cell company so they can act on it.

Let's see... I don't have any reception, so I pull out my new AT&T app to notify them of the problem. Doh! No reception to do that. And the app even nicely brings up a GPS map showing where I am. The GPS signal is much more reliable of course.

(Via: TUAW post--AT&T offers app so you can report crappy service. Huh?

I think I'll pass on this app, unless, of course, they put me on their payroll. I get tired of beta testing apps and now being asked to troubleshoot networks!

I have blogged in the past about how much I hate the AppleTVs here at the house. Let me add to the tirade.

With the latest upgrades, neither AppleTV (upstairs or downstairs) will play the photos from iPhoto on any computer in the house.

Ready to work out, watch photos, listen to music... Well, No. Of course not. I've spent the last 2 hours on the phone with Apple.

The calls were a nightmare, beginning with wasting 20 minutes talking about AppleCare registration issues--AGAIN! I pay money for this hassle! Finally I said, "Let me give you a different computer's serial number. AppleTV doesn't work with any of them. I don't want to spend my time today trying to troubleshoot your AppleCare registration issues." I got disconnected.

Then, on the second call, the automated answering system that "can understand complete sentences" sent me to the Mail group when I clearly said I was having issues with AppleTV. Obviously it can't understand even short phrases.

Then the girl in the Mail group sent me to the Wireless group. She worked on the issue a while before escalating the issue up to a higher level of troubleshooting.

She then sent me an application via email that uploaded system information for the engineers so they can see what the problem is within 3 or 4 days.

The next time I hear anyone tell me that Apple's hardware "just works" or says, "it's just that easy," I'm going to burst out laughing in his/her face.

AppleTV doesn't work. It rarely has ever worked for me without some time consuming, frustrating issue.

Quite frankly, I hate the AppleTV.

Two hours completely wasted. Apple should put me on payroll for beta testing their AppleTV product!