Drinking whiskey clear!
My take on news from around the world…
How’s this for grating: US Air, one of the major carriers that readily embraced fees for checked luggage, is now charging a $5 fee for paying the checked luggage fee in person. In other words, if you buy your tickets online, you can go ahead and pay the $15 fee for one bag, or $25 fee for two bags. But if you wait and pay it at the airport, you have to pay a $5 fee. So… it’s a fee for paying a fee!
And airlines wonder why people hate them so much!
(source: consumerist.com)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Jack Kemp, a star football quarterback who became a congressman, U.S. Cabinet secretary and Republican vice presidential nominee, died on Saturday at age 73.
Kemp died of cancer at his home in Bethesda, Maryland, The New York Times said, quoting his son, Jimmy Kemp.
He served 18 years as a congressman from Buffalo, New York, after starring with the Buffalo Bills of the old American Football League. In the House of Representatives, he championed tax cuts, free trade, economic growth and a return to the gold standard.
Jack Kemp was a true American hero. He’ll be greatly missed!
LAS VEGAS – Singer-actor-impressionist Danny Gans, who spent more than a decade as one of the most popular entertainers in Las Vegas, died Friday. He was 52. Gans was pronounced dead in his bed shortly after police and paramedics were summoned to a report of a man not breathing at Gans’ home about 3:45 a.m., said police spokesman Todd Rasmussen.
Foul play was not suspected, Rasmussen said. A Clark County coroner’s spokeswoman said an autopsy was pending, and Rasmussen said police were investigating “according to standard procedure.”
I’d never even heard of Danny Gans before visiting Las Vegas, where posters for his show were plastered everywhere. The man was billed as the “greatest performer that ever existed!!!!”
I dunno – I never saw him. But I suppose this is sad anyway.
Although many made fun of her… manly features, Bea Arthur was a top-notch comedic actress. It’s sad to see her go!
Beatrice Arthur, the tall, deep-voiced actress whose razor-sharp delivery of comedy lines made her a TV star in the hit shows “Maude” and “The Golden Girls” and who won a Tony Award for the musical “Mame,” died Saturday. She was 86.
Arthur died peacefully at her Los Angeles home with her family at her side, family spokesman Dan Watt said. She had cancer, Watt said, declining to give further details.
Faster than you can say, “Tough actin’ Tinactin,” NFL Hall of Famer John Madden, the legendary voice of Monday Night Football and the creator of EA Sports video game Madden NFL Football, has decided to take himself out of the game. Madden’s retiring from broadcasting. He’ll be leaving NBC’s Football Game of the Week as the color commentator; Al Michaels is continuing at the play by play voice.
This is a sad day! Even though people loved making fun of John Madden, it was still reassuring to hear his voice (and his bizarre non sequiturs) during football games. Madden was like that crazy uncle you had that spoke gibberish 90% of time, but you just couldn’t help but love. His voice was kind of like a warm, fuzzy blanket: comforting and reassuring. Even though he often pointed out things that even a novice football fan grasped several minutes before, it was always comforting to hear his booming voice. I, for one, will miss him!
Cool news from Egypt:
Archaeologists are to search three sites in Egypt that they say may contain the tomb of doomed lovers Anthony and Cleopatra.
Excavation at the sites, which are near a temple west of the coastal city of Alexandria, is due to begin next week.
Teams working in the area said the recent discovery of tombs containing 10 mummies suggested that Anthony and Cleopatra might be buried close by.
I find this absolutely fascinating. The story of Anthony and Cleopatra is a tale of doomed love that puts Romeo and Juliet to shame.
Last year, Time Warner Cable’s RoadRunner division began testing “consumption based” Internet service in Beaumont, Texas. In corporate-speak, “consumption based” is a polite euphemism for “capped bandwidth”. In Beaumont, new TWC customers were given a paltry cap of 40GB a month. TWC has since rolled their “test” out to several other markets, and has also played with the caps, in some cases making them as small as 5GB/month.
5GB/month might be fine for older couples that use the Internet mainly for surfing a few web pages and emailing pictures of their grandkids. But for “digital families” that use streaming video services like Hulu or Netflix, that back up their computers using an online service like Mozy, that use a non-cable company telephone service like Vonage, that have kids that use Xbox Live or some other gaming service, that use VPN or RDP to connect to their corporate networks… well, metered bandwidth simply won’t work.
It might be one thing if TWC was offering a reasonable pricing package for these wimpy Internet plans. After all, it is only fair for grandma and grandpa to pay $9.99/month for using a mere 1GB of bandwidth, right? Wrong. From the looks of things, TWC appears to be prepared to offer a super-crippled 5GB/month plan for a tiny discount (say, $29.99/month) while at the same time, they want to jack up the prices for heavy users to $150/month (or more).
Let me also point out that Comcast – perhaps the most reviled company in America – has had bandwidth caps for some time now… and their cap is 250GB/month. TWC hasn’t mentioned what their “final cap” might be, but consider this: if TWC and Comcast both charge $44.95 a month for high speed Internet, and if TWC goes with a 40GB/month cap, Comcast customers will pay 18¢ per GB per month, while TWC customers will pay $1.12 per GB per month… for the exact same product.
So… why is TWC doing this? There are two reasons.
First, Time Warner (and other cable companies) initially “oversold” their broadband capacity. It costs a lot of money to run fiber optic cables and set up an Internet infrastructure. The only way TWC (and the others) could make it cost effective was to have far more customers than the network could support. Back in 1997, when web pages were small and bandwidth-intensive services like YouTube, Hulu and Bittorrent didn’t exist, this was an easy bet. But now that many people use their Internet connections 24\7 for one reason or another, TWC’s networks are groaning under the weight of all that traffic. By putting caps in place, TWC is hoping to coax (or force) people to stop using so much damn bandwidth, thus bringing their network back under control.
Secondly, Time Warner is rolling out a bunch of new services, and they want you to use them instead of a third-party. If you currently have Vonage or VoiceEclipse phone service, TWC wants to put a bandwidth cap in place to scare you into using their service. If you currently use Hulu to watch TV shows you might have missed, TWC wants to put a bandwidth cap in place to scare you into renting one of their DVRs. If you currently use Netflix’s new streaming service, TWC wants to put a bandwidth cap in place to scare you into using their Video On Demand service instead. Like most of life’s big questions, this all comes down to money, and this is as naked a money grab as every there was.
Thankfully, people are starting to take notice. New York Congressman Eric Massa (of Rochester, the site of TWC’s 5GB/month test) is mad as hell about it, and is looking into creating legislation that would ban bandwidth caps. Ars Technica has been on this story for a while, and just today published this piece, taking TWC to task for their half-truths and lies.
For my part, I can only say this: TWC, if you bring such caps to the Gastonia, NC market, here’s one customer that will switch over to AT&T’s U-Verse so fast it will rip a hole in spacetime!
I’ve been knocking the new 3G iPod Shuffle pretty hard lately, and now there’s word that there’s yet another problem with Apple’s diminutive music player.
It appears that the player’s controller (which was moved to the headphone cord) is not water-resistant, so when people workout with it, sweat trickles in and causes all sorts of problems, from the volume maxing itself out to the Shuffle ceasing to operate completely. Word is that simply letting the player dry out completely “fixes” the problem, and at least one user has said that Apple wants to take a look at his player to further investigate the problem. This thread at the Apple support forums has the complete details.
If true, this is a hilarious black eye for Apple, because the Shuffle is supposed to be the “iPod for working out”, right?
Good job, Cupertino!
Talk about your bad luck!
Japan has certified a man aged 93 as the only known survivor of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both hit by atomic bombs towards the end of World War II.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip on 6 August 1945 when a US plane dropped the first atomic bomb.
He suffered serious burns and spent a night there before returning to his home city of Nagasaki just before it was bombed on 9 August.
I would say “only in Gaston County… but you know stuff like this happens elsewhere all the time… right?
Aggressive prostitution apparently led to a first-degree burglary charge Thursday against a 26-year-old Lincolnton woman.
Nicole Mary Scarpone of 122 Star Light Drive reportedly forced her way into an apartment on Pembroke Road, near Cox Road and I-85, and asked the three men inside to give her $10 in exchange for sex.
“Defendant stated that she was dropped off over there and had been there before and performed sexual acts, but stated that she was not invited over there tonight and indicated that she just showed up to make some quick money,” Officer B.H. Carr wrote in his warrant affidavit. “Ms. Scarpone asked all the male subjects in the apartment if they had $10 for sex.“
(Bolding mine)