Slashdot Mirror
Cell Phone Cost Calculator Killed In Canada
inject_hotmail.com writes "Internet and law genius Michael Geist writes about some shenanigans by the cell phone carriers and the Canadian government in his column in The Star. Canadian taxpayers funded a 'Cell Phone Cost Calculator' so that the average person could theoretically wade through the disjointed and incongruent package offerings. The calculator wound up being yanked a couple weeks before launch. Geist suggests that the major cell carriers lobbied the appropriate public officials to have the program nixed because it would bite into their profit if the general public could make sense out of pricing and fees. Geist continues, 'Sensing that [Tony] Clement (Industry Minister) was facing pressure to block the calculator, Canadian consumer groups wrote to the minister, urging him to stick with it.' Moving forward, Michael makes a novel suggestion, one that would show an immense level of understanding by the government: 'With public dollars having funded the mothballed project, the government should now consider releasing the calculator's source code and enable other groups to pick up where the OCA (Office of Consumer Affairs) left off.'"
Obviously its in my best interest if the Phone Company wants to rape me in the ass with my Phone Bills. That's what it said on the TeeVee anyway.
to have the program nixed because it would bite into their profit if the general public could make sense out of pricing and fees
OMG competition! Think of the shareholders!
This is where you need free press that attack like a pack of pitbulls and demand to know who ordered the cancellation and why. Nothing teaches politicians honest like public humiliation.
When corporations have the ability to use government policy as a tool to protect their private interests the correct term is not capitalism - it's called fascism.
This is absolutely correct and when it's in the early stages like this, very few people recognize the danger. They don't seem to grasp that this is not a situation that can improve on its own. On its own, it can only get progressively worse and by the time it's immediately and outwardly obvious that they are living in a fascist state, it's often too late for the people to do much of anything about it other than cower and curse their lack of foresight.
From the summary:
The attempt by the cell carriers to halt this project is all the more reason to go through with it. If anything, that should result in additional effort to not only produce the calculator but also to fund a media campaign so everyone knows it is available. The failure to understand this is all that you need to know in order to realize what a bunch of spineless, useless excuses for human beings (they are puppets really) our so-called leaders actually are.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini
This sounds like the platform of the Conservative Party of Canada.
Isn't it amazing how "conservative" once meant something like "reluctant to expend governmental resources" and has now come to mean "eager to increase the size and power and involvement of government, but for reasons different from the ones used by those who are called liberals?" Really, that's a neat trick.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein