Mind savers

Mind savers
Originally uploaded by xeeliz.

a friend on Flickr posted this picture from her recent transcontinental flight. "Can't fly without these now" she commented and tagged the photo "quiet". A recent NYT article about noise-cancelling headphones talks about a similar idea - there is too much external noise in our environments and it hurts to think. Sometimes, we need to technology to stop "alerting" or "entertaining" us, we need it to MAKE THINGS QUIET! Quiet is a privelege, a commodity. It has always been something difficult to achieve in many spaces and is becoming a rarity nearly everywhere. With the FCC trying so hard to permit cell phone use on planes, travellers look on in horror and reach for $200 noise-cancelling headphones if they can afford those. What I find curious, is the amount of push-back from the very consumers on behalf of which, supposedly, FCC is trying to remove the ban. Most want the ban in place, the LIKE the relative quiet of an airplane flight. It is unclear why the FCC thinks is to necessary to allow cell-phones in flight (even with Cingular suggesting it is not necessary and the CTIA being of two minds about it). It was rarely a burning issues, few people ever really pushed for it. Does FCC simply want to look like it's doing something important? This one seems at the expense of consumers, not to help them. Ah well... where are those noise-cancelling hedaphones? I gotta get myself a pair.

Russia’s Biggest Spammer Brutally Murdered in Apartment

Russia’s Biggest Spammer Brutally Murdered in Apartment - NEWS - MOSNEWS.COM - certainly spamming is annoying and in some countries it is illegal under certain conditions. Most of us have experienced waves of large amounts of spam attacking our inboxes and we may have had a thought or two on "what we would like to do to the person that did this to my inbox..." Well, in Russia unknown individuals seem to have taken matters into their own hands in a fashion that is fittingly violent. I wonder whether they really were irate spam-victims... somehow that does not seem so far-fetched.

Degrees of separation | Economist.com

Degrees of separation | Economist.com - This survey of American mobility starts out with discussions of residential (geographic) mobility and goes on to explore social, economic and political mobilities as they have transformed and changed. There are a lot of things in this survey - some are true, some a partially true, some may be a little on the wronger side. Overall, this is a pretty good summary of what's been happening and what is happening, with a few ideas on what might happen. Complete with nods to Bob Putman, meetup.org and No Child Left Behind. I want to argue, dissect, put this in perspective, but it's 1:30am and I still have a paper to write - on... well... effects of residential mobility and the pathways to adjustment to a new location, no less. This work has been slow slow slow, partially because I suddenly had to sit up and understand why is it that women tend to have different patterns of adjustment than men. I've finally dug up some answers that satisfy me more than the overused and largely wrong "learned helplessness" or "heightened vulnerability" hypotheses, but it took too much time. So, in time, I will analyze this piece (hopefully it will be available for a few more days... I might just try to save the whole thing). In the meantime, I better link Ann Galloway's note about America as a perpetual-motion machine. I'd heard about the Economist article before, but this note provided both the much needed link and a few entertaining reflections.

Wireless operators charging consumers for unsolicitied messages?

From the CTIA NewsWire: "San Diego based consumer group The Utility Consumers Action Network has filed a complaint with the California Public Utilities Commission that Sprint and Cingular Wireless are improperly charging consumers for wireless messages they don't want. The group claims it has received complaints from consumers that have been billed by the wireless companies for unwanted text messages, ringtones and advertisements. Sprint and Cingular Wireless have not seen a copy of the complaint and therefore cannot comment on the allegations. However, both companies provide subscribers with safeguards to help them understand downloads and methods to opt-out of further text messages. (Source: Wall Street Journal, New York Times)"

What I find odd in both of these reports, is that Verizon wireless is conspicuously missing. Yet it is Verizon that still charges it's consumers for incoming text messages, unlike other companies. I have been waiting for a wide-scale complaint or a class-action suit regarding this (after all, you do not have a choice whether you want to receive a message or not - text messages and media messages arrive in your inbox and you are charged the appropriate amount regardless of whether they are read). Wireless operators have somehow gotten away with charging for incoming calls (on a technicality, really - they claimed that you know who is calling by the number that your phone recognizes and should be able to make the decision whether you want to pay for the call or not based on this information... yeah right) in the US (this is not the case in Europe for example). However, only Verizon Wireless has been charging for incoming text messages (at least as far as I am aware). At $.02 per message, the price is not high, yet I think it's the principle of the matter that really means something.