Wow, talk about a slow day today… Not only have neither Mark Jen, nor Scoble updated their blogs today, but Fark has been down while rebuilding their Database server… Oh, and Slashdot hasn’t had anything terribly interesting (for me anyway) on it in days… This does not bode well for my Blog / RSS addiction… Do you realize that I spent the entire afternoon working on things that were actually work related? Oh, the humanity!!
Monthly Archive for March, 2005
Welp, spring is most certainly here now. It was iffy for a while there, off and on 70’s, but I think it’s finally made its decision. With a high of 77 degrees, and it being 72 as I lay on the couch writing this at 7:00 pm, I think we’ve definately established the season.
If anyone can beat our expected high of 78 degrees tomorrow, you’ll win your 2.7 seconds of fame, right here on Incoherent Babble!!
As most of you probably know by now, I’ve been spending a lot of time (mostly at work I’ll admit) reading blogs and signing up for various RSS feeds across the net. First off, I love the “Live Bookmarks” feature found in Firefox, I just wish it had some better features, such as the ability to control how frequently the RSS source feed is re-parsed to pick up new data. Perhaps they’ll introduce this in a future version of Firefox, but for now I’d like to make a small request.
If anyone knows of a good web-based aggregator which has these kinds of features (Bloglines SUCKS almost as much as Blogger, so don’t even bother suggesting that one), please let me know. You can leave a comment on this post or email me! I’d really rather not have to write my own aggregator, as I can’t get PHP 5 installed on my server.
Anyway, the real reason I started this post revolves around a recent blog entry I read. As I’ve mentioned, I’m an avid reader of Mark Jen’s blog, and I have followed him since the virtual beginning, through his troubles at Google, and now into his life at Plaxo.
I’d like to point out this post about customer satisfaction (or rather, lack thereof) with Cingular service post-AT&T.
Mark points out that Cingular’s number of complaints per million users is almost 4x that of Verizon users, of which I am one. Now, usually I don’t post about anything unless I have something to complain about, but this post is an exception. I have to say that I have never in the almost 10 years we’ve used Verizon (or Bell Atlantic Mobile, as they were in ye olden times), I have never had a single complaint against them. The one and only service outage I’ve had was experienced while they performed tower maint. to accomodate the growing number of users in the area, approximately 5 years ago. Even on my trip to Hawaii, I was able to get a clear (albeit weak) signal at top of the volcano.
Despite my high praise for Verizon overall, I do agree about unnecessary fees. No matter what you do, even with Verizon, you must sign a new 2 year contract. Well, what if I DON’T WANT A NEW CONTRACT? Well, then you don’t get the service you want. And if you want to cancel before the 2 year contract is up, well, that’ll be another $185… No sir, I want the shirt off your wife’s back…
One gripe I have against the industry as a whole involves overage fees. I mean, come on. I can pay you guys $5 a month extra and get an ungodly number of anytime minutes to use every month, but if I keep my lower plan and happen to go over one month out of the year, I get slapped with $40/min?
No, I don’t have all the answers to the problem. I realize this is a major source of income for the cell service providers, but honestly, there has got to be a less shady method of making a buck. This is just uncalled for, and if nothing else proves that the cell phone industry needs some major reform, this should…
Update - March 30, 2005: Now that I read back over the blog entry and actually look at the Consumer Reports data relating to this blog (and Mark’s), I see that the majority of the Cingular complaints regarded billing, NOT service. I was working under the reverse assumption, so this throws a bit of a spin on things. While Verizon still fares FAR better than Cingular in both Billing and Service-related complaints, my blog entry probably would have taken a bit of a different spin, had I actually examined the data for myself… Ahh well, lesson learned I supposed…
OK, I’m sure by now everyone has heard about Terri Shiavo. She’s the new Iraq, literally. No matter what, the American news media must always have something to focus all their meddling might upon. Whether this something should actually deserve the attention it derives or not is not the point, we as a nation must wake up and take notice of something as a whole for no other reason than to do so.
Ever since the “War on Terror” has started to quiet down and people have come to realize that hey, maybe we really did do something good over there, the media has had to turn its distorting killer eyes upon a new “evil” the American people have to face. The ritual sacrifice was decided for some reason to be this poor woman. No, I don’t know who “broke the story” first, nor do I really care. That’s the entire point of this entry: I DON’T CARE!
In this entry, I would like to, if nothing else, stress the point to foreigners that not all of America consists of self-righteous hypocritical politicians and “do-gooders”.
Not all of us give a rat’s ass. I know I certainly don’t. Sure, if the decision were left up to me, I certainly have my own opinion, but my god, how many millions of people do we really need to get in on this f***ing decision?! The bottom line is: according to the law, her husband has the right to decide her fate. Sure, she probably should have drafted a living will if she felt this strongly about the matter, but the point is she didn’t, and that that decision now falls upon her husband’s shoulders. It doesn’t matter why her husband might want to let her die, the fact is, HE DOES. It’s not the American peoples’ decision, nor is it the government’s decision. It’s not even her parents’ decision for Pete’s sake! The law, as we have drafted, established, and thus far obeyed, allows him the right to decide whether she lives or dies, and I think everyone needs to shut their mouths and accept that.
Simply because you don’t agree with the decision doesn’t give you the right to interfere at all. The law is the law, and it needs to be respected. Even if we decided to change the law, who do we give the power to? The legal power of attorney was given to the spouse (if one exists) for a reason when the law was originally drafted, simply because it’s the best option available. Or perhaps we just shouldn’t give anyone the power to “murder” someone in such a way. If you’re part of this argument, you have to handle the problems that come with it. How long do we let them hold on in a vegetative state if there’s no sign of improvement? Should we just let them lay there until they finally die of some other, possibly unrelated, cause? What if there is some sign of improvement? What then? You can’t just flat out say that no one has the right to disconnect them. You have to set up provisions for all these possible instances. This is yet another reason the spouse was initially given the power of attorney, and therefore the right to disconnect any form of life support.
As we’re slowly getting into my opinion on the matter, and since most of you have probably already figured out how I stand on the subject, why don’t I just go ahead and blurt it out? PULL THE FRIGGIN PLUG! There, I’ve said it. After 15 years, her condition hasn’t significantly improved in any aspect. Even if you accept that there has been some improvement over the years, at this rate her normal lifespan will long since have ended by the time she’s returned to any state considered even remotely near “competence”. The bottom line is, she’s not contributing to society and is instead placing a significant drain thereupon, utilizing our resources and occupying our time to provide care, and she should be removed from the system in the easiest, quickest, least painful manner possible.
While we’re talking about pulling the plug on the old bat, why has there been so little attention on the manner in which it is done? Simply removing the feeding tube and allowing her to lay there and slowly dehydrate into oblivion and eventual agonizing death? I heard on the news the other day that after less than a week, her tongue and eyes had already started to bleed due to dehydration. I know that I sure wouldn’t want to go out in such a painful and humiliating manner. I mean, hell, we give murderers and rapists a lethal injection. According to the State of Texas’ Death Row Facts [www.tdcj.state.tx.us], it takes approximately 7 minutes for a properly administered lethal injection to claim the life of an inmate, and it is totally painless. However, Mrs. Shiavo isn’t entitled to such a right. No, we simply stop feeding her and let her wither away into an agonizing nothingness.
In any case, I’ve drifted away from the primary point I was attempting to make. Not only is it not my business to care, but I’ve done everything I can to keep my opinion to myself thus far. This is the first (and only) time I shall mention anything related to Terri Shiavo, and you can rest assured that, whatever happens, I simply hope everyone shuts the hell up about it, as I’m sure many of you do as well.
Ethical Grounds for Breaking the Law
I was reading this article from The Register, about the students who “hacked” the website containing information about whether their applications to various universities had been accepted.
Part of the article talks about how we judge right vs. wrong in the “real world”, including:
This is the part I found of interest. The rest of the story is really old news that I really didn’t care about, even when it was breaking news.
I’m sure we’ve all probably heard (or at least thought about) someone breaking a car window to get a child out (although now that I think about it, I can’t think of a single instance I remember, nor why the child needed to be retrieved in the first place). I, however, had never considered checking a car to see if it were unlocked when I noticed that the lights had been left on. I generally look to see if there’s someone who might be the owner walking away from the vehicle, and when I don’t see anyone who fits the bill, simply walk right past and don’t think twice about it.
Do people actually do this? In the cruel world we live in today, where everyone fends for themselves, do people actually care enough to (technically) break the law and enter another person’s vehicle, simply to turn their lights off and save their battery?
I’d venture to perform a test, leaving my car unlocked and in the mall parking lot, but I honestly don’t think anyone around here would give a rat’s ass. With my luck, I’d return to my car not only to find the lights on and the battery dead, but also my CD player missing, and the peculiar scent of urine in the air…
Does anyone out there (all 2 of you reading this) actually have experience with this type of thing? Have you ever gone into someone’s car for an ethical reason? Has someone ever gone into yours for one? Leave a comment or drop me an email. I’d love to know…