Consumers Union: Public Site for telecomm service issues

hearusnow.org: Share Your Story

It took CU many years to even admit the web existed. Eventually, after much pain, they did put up a quite good web site. Now they're setting up a complaint community focusing on telecommunications issues.

Consumers across the country are dealing with phone bills, cell phone contracts, cable packages and Internet scams. If you are experiencing problems, you are not alone. Choose a section below and search the stories to find one that most closely matches the situation in which you find yourself. We don't have all the answers to every problem consumers may face, but some consumers have shared solutions and suggestions. If you have a story, please share it, consumes across the country are waiting to hear from you!

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Dark days for PBS: Bill Moyers' speech to the National Conference for Media Reform

Free Press News : Bill Moyers' speech to the National Conference for Media Reform

I was naive, I guess. I simply never imagined that any CPB chairman, Democrat or Republican, would cross the line from resisting White House pressure to carrying it out for the White House. But that’s what Kenneth Tomlinson has done.

On Fox News this week he denied that he’s carrying out a White House mandate or that he’s ever had any conversations with any Bush administration official about PBS. But the New York Times reported that he enlisted Karl Rove to help kill a proposal that would have put on the CPB board people with experience in local radio and television. The Times also reported that “on the recommendation of administration officials” Tomlinson hired a White House flack (I know the genre) named Mary Catherine Andrews as a senior CPB staff member. While she was still reporting to Karl Rove at the White House, Andrews set up CPB’s new ombudsman’s office and had a hand in hiring the two people who will fill it, one of whom once worked for … you guessed it … Kenneth Tomlinson.

I would like to give Mr. Tomlinson the benefit of the doubt, but I can’t. According to a book written about the Reader’s Digest when he was its Editor-in-Chief, he surrounded himself with other right-wingers — a pattern he’s now following at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The Propaganda of the Enlightenment

Contrary Brin: The Propaganda of Enlightenment

Tolerance. Suspicion of authority. Acceptance of diversity. Reasoned discussion.

All reinforced by the insidious propaganda of the enlightenment. David Brin, a Guardian of the Englightenment (ok, so that phrase didn't work), points to our sustaining propaganda. A good read.

The cost of computer viruses

Backup speed with Symantec Norton Antivirusbackground scan enabled: 200 Mb/sec.
Backup speed with Norton Antivirus background scan disabled: 300 Mb/sec.

That's one heck of a performance penalty. My Mac doesn't pay this penalty -- that's an enormous real-world performance advantage.

New resolution: when working on PC check latest backup

I've been messing with my XP machine lately, dealing with some drive issues (see link, above). Things were pretty much sorted out, but the machine's been running hot and a fan is noisy, so I did some quick fan swaps. In the process an IDE cable seemed to loosen from one drive, so I pushed it back in.

Then, a few minutes later, I noticed it was popping out a bit again. Darn thing -- it seemed looser than it ought to be. I pushed it in, a little harder.

With airflow reconfigured and fans in place I rebooted... Of course I got the friendly message telling me I needed a boot drive. Darn cable must have popped out. I popped the cover off and looked -- yes, it seemed loose. I went to push it in again, which was when my frontal lobes engaged and I began to sweat. I very carefully and gently pulled the IDE cable out.

I'd flattened one of the IDE pins. Which is when I remembered my last backup for this machine was 5 days old (due to a backup reconfiguration process) and was offsite. If the pin couldn't be fixed I was in trouble.

I turned the cooling fan on me and I very carefully used a variety of old surgical instruments to more or less straighten the pin. It didn't break and I was able to reinsert the cable and restart.

Lesson learned. The next time I pop the case for a non-emergent repair, I'll make sure I have a current backup in place.

The metaverse cometh

Open Source Metaverse Project

It helps if you remember Snow Crash and Neuromancer.

Who are at the Iraqi insurgents, and why are they fighting?

The Mystery of the Insurgency - New York Times

The insurgents in Iraq are showing little interest in winning hearts and minds among the majority of Iraqis, in building international legitimacy, or in articulating a governing program or even a unified ideology or cause beyond expelling the Americans. They have put forward no single charismatic leader, developed no alternative government or political wing, displayed no intention of amassing territory to govern now.

The best guesses seem to be that the anti-occupation and anti-government forces are a mixture of millenialist terrorists, straight out simple criminals, Baathist loyalists, Sunni racists, and, maybe, a nationalist agenda.

Compared to other insurgencies, the nationalist theme seems the weakest.

The 'incoherence' doesn't mean the Iraqi goverment and people, and the US, will win. It may be that the insurgents are quite willing to destroy Iraq in order to further their own agenda. Destroying Iraq seems doable.

A retrospective view of Microsoft's Hailstorm

Markl's Thoughts: Don Box and HailStorm

I never had a good sense of what Microsoft's Hailstorm was, except for the central role for identity management. Here a former Hailstorm developer describes it from an engineering perspective. Stripped of all the Microsoft marketing gibberish it sounds like it was quite interesting. Alas, it also sounds anathema to Microsoft's business model, which is entirely based on controlling key data structures.

Bogus science: television and video games improve IQ

baltimoresun.com - Getting enough TV, video games in your diet?

Steven Johnson wants to do for popular culture what the Atkins diet did for red meat - make it OK to enjoy something that's supposed to be bad for you.

It's the "Don't eat your vegetables" approach to life: Watch The Sopranos and 24 on TV, play video games like "Grand Theft Auto," go see the new Star Wars movie and surf the Internet. Then watch your IQ rise!

Johnson is dead serious, however. His new book, Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter (Riverhead, $23.95), boasts not only a long title but also a provocative premise. Johnson argues that the complexity of modern culture provides a rigorous cognitive workout and develops skills that are useful in personal and professional settings.

This is ridiculous, but it gets so much press that I feel obliged to kvetch.

Even if IQ is indeed rising over the past 50 years in the nations monitored, let me introduce one equation: correction != causation.

If IQ were rising for whatever reason, one would expect a "smarter" audience to expect more sophisticated entertainment and play more complex games.

Grrr.

As to what might cause such an IQ rise (if is real), I can think easily of one far more persuasive explanation. Consider this sequence.

1. Nothing.
2. Mail.
3. Mail + phone.
4. Mail + phone + fax.
5. Mail + phone + fax + email.
6. Mail + phone + fax + email + cell phone.
7. Mail + phone + fax + email + cell phone + multiple email accounts.
8. Mail + phone + fax + email + cell phone + multiple email accounts + instant messaging.
9. 8. Mail + phone + fax + email + cell phone + multiple email accounts + instant messaging + VOIP/media phones.

And that's just person-person communication. Life is getting exponentially more complex for everyone in every way -- all the time. Just to get through the average day we're pushing old brains into overdrive, starting from birth onwards.

We live in a very high intensity environment. If we're looking for an explanation of why IQ is increasing, forget about the tube. Think about all the rest of life.

The Onion takes on Scientology

The Onion | Scientology Losing Ground To New Fictionology

Who dares to bell the Scientology cat? The Onion dares ...

Fictionology's central belief, that any imaginary construct can be incorporated into the church's ever-growing set of official doctrines, continues to gain popularity. Believers in Santa Claus, his elves, or the Tooth Fairy are permitted—even encouraged—to view them as deities. Even corporate mascots like the Kool-Aid Man are valid objects of Fictionological worship.

'My personal savior is Batman,' said Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Greg Jurgenson. 'My wife chooses to follow the teachings of the Gilmore Girls. Of course, we are still beginners. Some advanced-level Fictionologists have total knowledge of every lifetime they have ever lived for the last 80 trillion years.'

"Sure, it's total bullshit," Jurgenson added. "But that's Fictionology. Praise Batman!"

The American National Identity Card

Godwin Overnight Express | MetaFilter

So we have a national identity card now -- at least for people over 16. We have done it in an ingeniously American way -- by the back door and roundabouts and not all at once. For all that it will happen entirely; eventually it will be common for early teenagers to get a version of the 'drivers license' that is purely an identity card. Perhaps the "driver's license number" will move to a national standard, rather than being assigned by a state, and lastly it will be assigned at birth and serve as both email address and phone number.

Or there will be some other typically messy American solution that will achieve much the same end in a less direct fashion.

This was inevitable, even before 9/11. It will also be inevitably abused. We are the kind of nation that does these things covertly, so be necessity we do not put essential legal protections in place.

Chicago: story of the nation in the nation

Encyclopedia of Chicago

Everything about Chicago. Chicago is that odd nation just below Lake Michigan; the one that takes a day to drive around and longer to drive through. People born there seem to never leave, it drains the midwest. It's a world unto itself, and now it has a web encyclopedia.

The Feynman Letters

Guardian Unlimited | Life | 'This is how science is done'

Feyman's daughter has published a book of her father's letters. A few are excerpted here. The last letter in the set was written to his first wife; she died of tuberculosis 3 years after they were married. He knew she was dying when they were wed, there were no effective treatments for tb then.

Humanity has Joseph Kony. It also had, for a time, Richard Feynman. It's a tough call for the intergalactic center for disease control.

I was, very briefly, a student of Richard Feynman. He had a curious effect; he raised the IQ of everyone in the room with him -- at least a 10 point gain. As long as he was nearby I could understand what he was explaining. Once he left, however, my understanding would fade.

Self-replicating robot

news@nature.com: quicktime

Don't worry about the robots. We still have decades of dominion.

Shock - the pre-election color coded alerts were political

USATODAY.com - Ridge reveals clashes on alerts

Ridge confesses the pre-election Homeland security alerts were indeed driven by the White House. Just as the tin hats suspected.

But there was a real threat you see. Worse even then bin Laden. There was John Kerry ...