Every morning, as I sit down with my coffee and bagel, I pull up Google Reader and the New York Times. I read some news and wade through my subscribed RSS feeds for interesting stuff. Every morning there’s between 200-400 new items in my reader. I’m subscribed to over 220 feeds, in a whole range of topics, but my subscriptions are dominated by sites that enrich my professional knowledge. This can take up an hour or two, depending on my schedule. Sometimes when I think about it, it’s quite remarkable how so much information is available at our fingertips. And it can all be delivered straight to us for immediate consumption.
Year: 2009
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Taliban Slowly Taking Over Pakistan
I mean seriously – what is up. They’re running wild and the Pakistani government is just letting them. What are we going to do next, invade Pakistan? So not only are we making no progress in Afghanistan, the Taliban’s now taking over Pakistan? Let’s not freakin forget Pakistan has nukes.
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Time Warner Cable Bandwidth Caps
Bandwidth caps are bad for consumers, plain and simple. It’s simply a way to squeeze more money out of consumers while the cable company’s costs are largely fixed. Granted, they’re only expanding to a few select markets (including Rochester, NY), but they’ll be crazy to do this in any market where they actually have competition like Verizon FiOS. As for Verizon, they’re not doing bandwidth caps because they need to gain market share against the cable companies, not because they’re the good guy. Verizon is spending a lot of money building out fiber networks and are heavily dependent on subscriber growth. They need to be taking customers away from cable companies and see this is a competitive advantage. Trust me, if Verizon FiOS were very well established, they’d be considering bandwidth caps too.
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Pirates
There’s been lots of news about pirates recently having taken an American ship and now holding a captain hostage. I think they need to learn that at least when they take American ships, they’ll suffer the consequences. I know nothing’s ever simple, but I wish we would just send in commando teams to retake the ships. When you negotiate and pay ransom, pirates will only continue their activity because it works.
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Firefox Plugins in IE 8.1
That’s genius. Many Firefox plugins will work in IE 8.1. Though, that doesn’t mean I’ll switch, considering the pending FF 3.1 with its new Javascript engine. But IE is definitely moving in the right direction (especially with 71/100 on the ACID3 test). See what real competition can do? Produce better products for consumers.
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Study This: TV Commercials Suck
The results of this study is complete bullshit. It concludes that people generally like commercials and that commercial breaks help people enjoy TV shows more. Because you get annoyed by the interruption and are so much happier when the show comes back on. WOW. What a load of crap! I honestly laughed when I read this. I thought I was reading something from The Onion!
No one likes commercials, you don’t need to conduct a study to determine this! It’s common knowledge. There’s a reason DVR’s and Tivo’s are so popular. I absolutely abhor commercials and think they are a waste of my time. There are few things, if any, that I hate more than wasting time. I haven’t watched any of my favorite shows on my actual TV for a very long time. In fact, the only time I even watch TV these days are for sports.
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Federer and Cahill
It seems rumors have been swirling for weeks that Roger Federer may hire Darren Cahill as a coach. Recently, it was confirmed Federer is currently training in Dubai with Cahill. Supposedly, nothing’s definite and they’re testing the waters. But it’s certainly an interesting development since many have suggested The Mighty Fed needs a good coach.
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Legalization of Marijuana?
So I’ve seen a couple articles lately about increasing public approval for marijuana legalization. Fivethirtyeight.com is tracking an upward approval trend. And the New York Times reported that many struggling states are examining legalization of marijuana and taxing it for revenue. Very interesting stuff is all I have to say! ;-)
