From the Wall Street Journal:

Earlier this month, Apple rejected an application for the iPhone called Google Voice. The uproar set off a chain of events—Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt resigning from Apple’s board, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) investigating wireless open access and handset exclusivity—that may finally end the 135-year-old Alexander Graham Bell era. It’s about time.

With Google Voice, you have one Google phone number that callers use to reach you, and you pick up whichever phone—office, home or cellular—rings. You can screen calls, listen in before answering, record calls, read transcripts of your voicemails, and do free conference calls. Domestic calls and texting are free, and international calls to Europe are two cents a minute. In other words, a unified voice system, something a real phone company should have offered years ago.

Apple has an exclusive deal with AT&T in the U.S., stirring up rumors that AT&T was the one behind Apple rejecting Google Voice. How could AT&T not object? AT&T clings to the old business of charging for voice calls in minutes. It takes not much more than 10 kilobits per second of data to handle voice. In a world of megabit per-second connections, that’s nothing—hence Google’s proposal to offer voice calls for no cost and heap on features galore.

What this episode really uncovers is that AT&T is dying. AT&T is dragging down the rest of us by overcharging us for voice calls and stifling innovation in a mobile data market critical to the U.S. economy.

Continue reading…

Also note that Schiff was Ron Paul’s economic advisor during the 2008 election.

Amen.

Link

Examples:

Causes of Global Warming

• God
• Polar Bears
• Fire

Nicknames I’ve Had

• Sarah Barracuda
• Sarah Failin’
• VPILF
• Bush in a Dress
• Caribou Barbie
• Footnote of History
• Pitbull with Lipstick
• Moose Momma
• Moosilini
• Tina Fey’s Sister
• Barack’s Bane
• Pig

Microsoft took a bunch of “regular folks” XP users who were afraid of Vista, and told them Microsoft was going to show them a secret new operating system — which was actually Vista.

UNSURPRISINGLY, these people mostly said they liked Vista.

I hate bad science. Hate it. Hate. So let’s look at not one, not two, but FOUR, yes FOUR (ah-ah-ah!) key flaws in this experiment, any single one of which would render its results meaningless:

* The Placebo Effect
* The Pepsi Challenge Effect
* The Perfectly Controlled Environment Effect
* The Personal Tutor Effect

Microsoft has managed to prove that if you have a friendly expert on a controlled machine (with Vista pre-installed) showing a carefully selected subset of Vista features to an ignorant XP user for a few minutes, the XP user will often say he finds Vista acceptable. Wow.

This so-called experiment of Microsoft’s is an insult to science, and to our intelligence. And I am dying to see the out-takes from their shoot. I mean, how many people do you suppose like being told, “Hey, this giant, unpopular monopolistic software company just made an ass out of you! Ha ha! Our leading scienticians just PROVED that you LOVE VISTA and WANT TO MARRY IT. You are TOTALLY GAY for Vista! Haaaaaaa HAAAAAAA!”

Read the whole article.

“And I hear from time to time people say, hey, wait a second. We have civil liberties we have to worry about. But don’t forget, the most important civil liberty I expect from my government is my right to be kept alive, and that’s what we’re going to have to do.”
– Mitt Romney

P.S. Ron Paul in 2008!

This sort of thing is why I stopped watching TV news years ago.

P.S. Go Ron!