Topics on businesses, good and bad.
After having a cell phone with the same company for nearly five years, I called last month to shut it down. We don’t use it enough to justify the cost. I was told that it would have to remain active for the remainder of my billing period, which was nearly at the end of the …
Does no company understand how to create a usable user interface? I just tried to order new checks. Since this is the first reorder I’ve ever done with this company, I decided to do it by phone, instead of by fax or mail (the other two options). I called up, thinking that someone would talk …
Continue reading ‘Ordering Checks, a User Interface Gripe’ »
…which just goes to show that you can turn anything mildly interesting into a cash cow. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to believe that Earth has been visited by extraterrestrial intelligences in the recent past, and I like a good conspiracy theory as much as anyone. But the preponderance of evidence suggests that this …
Near-daily credit card offers by junk mail apparently aren’t enough. Now these credit-card pushers are having people cold-call us to try to get us hooked on debt. And they’re apparently off-shoring that too, because I could barely understand a word this woman mumbled through the extremely heavy accent. At least this one didn’t try to …
A long time ago, I bought a license for the ZoneAlarm Pro software firewall. I don’t use it anymore (no reflection on ZoneAlarm, which was excellent the last time I used it, I just don’t see sufficient need for it any longer to justify installing it), but I still sometimes get e-mails from Zone Labs, …
Continue reading ‘“Network Magic: Printer and File Sharing Made Easy!”’ »
As predicted here, Google’s shareholders have voted down the anti-censorship proposal, and others.
In a bid to save money on electrical bills, we’ve been switching all of the commonly-used lights in our house to compact florescent (CF) bulbs. We started about a year ago, and just finished yesterday, after I discovered a kind of 60W-equivalent CF bulb I hadn’t seen before that is no taller than a standard …
Continue reading ‘“Will the feds phase out traditional lightbulbs?”’ »
Great Britain has apparently decided not to switch over to the metric system, or at least not just yet, saying that it would be harder to sell things to the US if they did. As my friend Don tells it, there’s only one reason why the US isn’t solely using the metric system like almost …
I stand in awe and amazement at the announcement that CNN will release all of their Presidential debate coverage “without restrictions at the conclusion of each live debate.” As far as I can tell, that means that anyone is allowed to post pieces of it on the ‘net, cut and remix it, publicly broadcast it… …
Continue reading ‘“CNN: No restrictions on presidential debate footage”’ »
What is it with Bev Oda, the Canadian minister in charge of copyright? Does she really think that people are so stupid that they don’t know that she’s taking cash from the entertainment companies she’s supposed to be regulating, even after it has been trumpeted all over Canadian radio and TV? On the other hand, …