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David Pogue Wants to Take Back the Beep
David Pogue has distilled into useful form a long-standing complaint I have (and one reason I have long had a voice mail greeting that asked people not to leave me voicemail): cell phone companies set up the greeting, caller instructions, and playback system prompts in large part to maximize their revenue per user; by his calculations, the "mandatory 15-second voicmail instructions" from AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and others is earning those companies something near a billion dollars a year in charges. Pogue suggests that users should "take back the beep," and to that end provides contact information for the largest cell carriers in order to register a complaint — and, more helpful in the short run, suggests ways in which to make better use of paid-for phone minutes by alerting callers how to bypass the annoying instructions.
Maybe if we had 3 weeks of mandatory vacation too, we'd have enough time to think of and lobby our lawmakers ourselves. "Two weeks" vacation is just enough to take a couple of 3 day weekends and one or two good "long weekends". If you live anywhere besides the NE on west coast, you have to kill a full day to vacation anywhere. In europe a 45 min drive in any direction from your town will get you to spectacular countryside. Many citizens in US states have to drive 2+ hours to even see a mountain; that time/distance in europe will get you to most any other country.
moox. for a new generation.
"Why can't we stand up to big corporations here in the US?"
The government is not even in the pocket of big business anymore, big business has assimilated the government, Borg-style. It is not that business has undue influence of government, its that they are simply one and the same entity. The Fed is a private bank, the media controls all of our political decisions, election coverage is directed to the lowest common denominator, through the polarized and biased corporate media. Because of the "us vs. them" mentality, the people refuse to see how bad their guy is fscking them, blaming the other side instead. To paraphrase Bill Hicks, '[Guy 1]I think the puppet on the left best represents my views. [Guy 2]Well I find the puppet on the right more to my liking. [Guy 3]Hey there's one guy holding both puppets! [Gov't] Go back to sleep America... your government is in control.' The people just get fat and stupid, caring more about the how the local sports team is performing (most are even stupid enough to think that this team represents them, failing to notice that the sports team in question is simply another monolithic corporate entity that happens to bear the name of the nearest metropolis) than what is really happening to them. They fail to question the fact that our federal income tax is unconstitutional (and not even on the books!) and enforced by an illegal terrorist organization. They fail to question it when the government decides to tell them that they can be locked in a cell for YEARS for possession a PLANT THAT GROWS IN THE GROUND. They continue listening to what is told to them by the TV, to be good little consumers and to keep buying shit they don't need. A long, rambling post that will probably be modded down, but is that a good enough answer as to why Americans don't stand up to big corporations?
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
"Browser choice in operating systems?" You already had a choice, and nobody is stopping you from downloading Firefox. The EU's browser ballot decision is a bizarre decision to prop up products that have floundered in the marketplace (e.g., Opera). They're basically calling you, the consumer, too stupid to type "www.opera.com" into an Internet Explorer box. The EU stepping in to enforce how companies do business (such as telling them how to bill their customers, who are free to choose someone else if they don't like how they're billed) is socialist intervention that should not be happening.
There are plenty of really stupid EU decisions and criticisms from Europeans . You just need to step outside of Slashdot once in a while.