Info Chat

I’ve decided that A) the topics of my blog were getting outside the scope of what I originally intended them to be, and 2) I wanted a blog that was a little more representative of all of my interests and experience. So, please check out my new blog bstg: http://careerpenguin.com/blog/

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The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has decided you need an auctioneers license (which is apparently hard to get) in order to sell goods on e-bay. Sure. What next? Will I need a doctorate and malpractice insurance from the state if I post a comment on WebMD?

Even better, in an attempt to enforce the inane law, PA has chosen someone to make a spectacle of. A woman who started selling items on e-bay so she could remain at home with her daughter, who has a brain tumor. Wow.

Yet another lame attempt to profit (in the form of auctioneer licenses this time) from something even though you have added zero value to it.

Come to think of it, I wonder if the states will get to charge taxes on top of the bandwidth usage charge that Time Warner wants to institute?

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The cable and telco companies of course. Which is nothing new really. Who does business with comcast or verizon because they want to? The reality is many of us use these providers for broadband, or tv, or voice, because we don’t have a choice, not because of the outstanding service they provide or the quality of their offerings.

So now Time Warner is making a move that can only be intended to a) stifle innovation and growth, b) prove they have perfected time travel by taking us back 12 years, c) ensure new competition will arise and drive them out of business eventually, or d) just plain mock the consumer by flexing their almost monopoly over certain markets. TW has decided that us pesky consumers may actually be getting a fair value out of their service. So they have decided to limit bandwidth and charge for excessive use. Sure.

How about a better idea. Instead of trying to capitalize from the business model of iTunes by getting your cut for movies consumers are going to download - offer a viable service yourself? Then you could get all the profit. Think about it. Why can’t a company like TW, or maybe Verizon give us a great service, with a useable interface and a forward thinking product roadmap for all of our digital needs? $99 gets you voice, internet, TV, 3 movie rentals, and 5 songs per month. Additional movies/songs/programming/voice lines etc are available at an incremental charge. And trust me, if the charge is fair, and the application viable, we will us it all day long…

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Well, a new University of Utah study may have great impact on how we all commute. Among other things, the study showed that:

Hands-free cell phones are no less dangerous while driving than hand-held cell phones because the conversation itself is the major distraction.

So if requiring hands free devices is no safer than not because the real culprit is the fact that most people just can’t plain talk and drive at the same time (something I have long suspected!) it looks like the government is facing a bit of a dilemma. The way I see it there are only two viable options. Mandate that everyone drive a motorcycle (without a passenger of course), or make it illegal to talk while driving.

Better yet, we could require an IQ test in addition to a driver test and save all the trouble…

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