Category: RANTS!

RANT! Tom Daschle on taxes – update

RANT! Tom Daschle on taxes – update

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It is good that Mr. Daschle had the sense to withdraw his nomination as HHS secretary.  He was foolish to pursue the job under the cloud of being a tax cheat.  I see that Nancy Killefer, nominated by President Barack Hussein Obama to be the federal government’s first chief performance officer also has withdrawn her nomination due to tax payment problems.

What is with these major public leaders and their ability to pay their taxes.  Have they ever heard of H&R Block?  Even most of the computerized tax programs would have found Mr. Daschle’s limo driver problem.  These people are either idiots or they are cheats.

MR. PRESIDENT – GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER AND DO A PROPER JOB OF VETTING YOUR NOMINEES AND WHEN YOU FIND A PROBLEM LIKE THIS – DROP THEM LIKE A HOT POTATO!

BHO, now is beginning to look like a fool with three tax evaders as nominees.  I think that his promise for a change is being replaced by a promise of corruption and fools.

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RANT! Be careful buying iPod Touch from BestBuy

RANT! Be careful buying iPod Touch from BestBuy

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My 3 teenagers have all purchased the iPod Touch from BestBuy.  Actually, the youngest one just received his as a birthday gift and that is what is prompting this rant.

There are a variety of gadget sites that talk about the deals available at BestBuy (see here and here). The forums are split as to buying the warranty (here and here) but Apple doesn’t have a great track record on iPods and the BestBuy warranty has replaced 3 separate iPods for my family over the years so we think it is a good deal.

So when my youngest son wanted a new iPod Touch to replace his nano, it was natural for us to go to BestBuy. He was ecstatic when he opened the gift and it was plugged into the family computer within minutes.  Imagine his disappointment when his brand new Touch had pre-2.0 software on it and iTunes wanted him to upgrade for only $9.95!  This OS upgrade was announced almost a year ago.

I wouldn’t have been too upset except for four issues:

  1. this same thing happened when my daughter bought her iPod Touch 9 months ago and we had to fight BestBuy for a resolution
  2. if we had bought the unit from Apple, it would have had the latest software (according to the Apple customer support person when we dealt with this issue on my daughter’s iPod)
  3. because of the experience with my daughter’s iPod, we had asked the BestBuy sales person upon purchase if it had the latest OS and was assured that it did (I am not sure why I trust a young man that still is suffering from teenage acne though)
  4. the rude treatment that I received on the BestBuy support call

I have already written to BestBuy complaining about their support call as well as their shady service.  But they don’t get off that easy.  I am also going to complain here.

I have no quibbles about the software not being up to date for a product that is shrinkwrapped and unopened.  I fully understand that BestBuy is buying their Apple products by the truckload (or container load) and that some of these may sit on the shelf past an upgrade.  However, they should be clearly marked as having the old OS and there should be an automatic coupon printed at the time of purchase to allow the consumer to upgrade the unit. The unsuspecting consumer should not be penalized for BestBuy getting a great deal from Apple because they bought a million iPods at once.

I almost wonder if this is a plan by Apple and BestBuy to lure some unsuspecting consumers to pay for the upgrade to the new OS even though they are legally entitled to that upgrade for free.

So what was the resolution?  The same as it was for my daughter’s iPod.  I called BestBuy, complained, and told them we would be returning the unit if they didn’t make this right.  After a bit of grief that was inexcusable for customer service rep, they promised to send me a $10 BestBuy card to cover the out of pocket cost for the upgrade.

BESTBUY SHOULD AUTOMATICALLY GIVE OUT COUPONS TO COVER THE COST OF UPGRADING TO THE CURRENT VERSION OF OPERATING SYSTEM!

Lesson learned for any readers out there: check the OS on your iPod Touch that was recently purchased from BestBuy. If you need to upgrade to a current OS then call BestBuy for a gift card to cover the cost.  Don’t pay for the upgrade yourself!

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RANT! Apple’s App Store hurts software sales

RANT! Apple’s App Store hurts software sales

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By all accounts, save one, Apple’s iPhone has been an amazing success. When you factor

  • the number of competitors in the marketplace,
  • Apple as a relative newcomer to the cell phone market,
  • the strict relationship with only one carrier

it is amazing that the iPhone has had such a strong impact on the revenue of Apple as well as the sales of other phones.

The one area that Apple really needs to develop is the developer network. While the App Store is the best method yet developed for delivering software to a cell phone, it does not appear that it is a great commercial success for many of its developers.  The vast majority of the apps on the store are priced so cheaply (or free) that it is not likely that they will return a profit to their developers.

While there are more appropriately priced software packages on the store, the comments show that these have a smaller community than many of the free or cheap apps.  Why is this?

My belief is that few people are willing to pay 10 bucks for an app when they don’t know how it will work and screenshots are a poor tradeoff.  Some developers have rigged up “trials” on their website. Solitaire Forever does this quite effectively.  I don’t know what technology the folks at Solitaire Forever used to have the product work in such a multi-platform environment but it is a great model.

Additionally, Apple could help the situation by allowing software to expire after a certain amount of time.  This would allow software developers to time limit the software and adopt the try-before-you-buy (TBYB) model that is so popular in desktop apps.  This is done in a small way by some developers when they offer a less functional “lite” version of their software but that is difficult for the developers to manage and difficult for customers to deal with.

APPLE – PLEASE INCLUDE TIME EXPIRATIONS IN THE IPHONE OS!

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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RANT! Iranian justice is disgusting (still)

RANT! Iranian justice is disgusting (still)

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I wrote about Iranian flogging almost a year ago.  It still is disgusting although I guess it is getting slightly better.  At least now they are “reviewing” the sentences of “death by stoning” and commuted some of the sentences.

According to the BBC, it is rare for someone to be stoned to death – they haven’t done it in a year.  A YEAR?!?!?  For a country the size of California, that seems like fairly recent behavior.

How do you stone someone “Iranian style”?  Here is what the BBC reported:

The country’s penal code stipulates that before carrying out the punishment, men should be buried up to their waists and women up to their chests. The stones used must be large enough to cause the condemned pain, but not sufficient to kill immediately.

So if the stones don’t kill immediately that means it takes several strikes to do the deed.

I suppose that Iran is never going to perfect the atomic bomb. It seems too merciful for their enemies.  I would think that they would instead just create big dirty bombs so that the enemies suffer over a long time from radiation poisoning and die slow miserable deaths.

I repeat my RANT from my original post on this subject:

PEOPLE OF THE WORLD – WE NEED TO CONDEMN IRAN FOR THIS TERRIBLE EXERCISE!

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.  I just hope the judicial system in Iran doesn’t give me reason to ever think about this.

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RANT! The Brickyard 400 race of 2008 was a joke!

RANT! The Brickyard 400 race of 2008 was a joke!

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In case you don’t know, the Brickyard 400 race in Indianapolis, Indiana had severe tire problems for all of the cars. The management instituted “competitive yellow flags” that allowed all of the drivers to pit their cars and get new rubber.  While the cause of this fiasco appears to be multi-faceted, the solution that NASCAR management put in place was terrible.  I am not going to blame the Speedway or Goodyear (although they both should have worked to prevent this problem), I am going to blame NASCAR and the drivers for not dealing with it.

The goal of a race is to win the race by a combination of skill, mechanical design, and luck. Would the tires of the cars shredded if the cars were going around the track at 150 mph? My guess is that they would have been fine.  So rather than forcing a series of 10 lap sprints (essentially what the result was) these highly skilled drivers should have just slowed down and won the race by perseverance.  The drivers that drove too fast would have wrecked or ran out of tires.  The drivers that played it safe with a steady effort that responded to the conditions of the day would have won the race.

You can vote for who you think caused the fiasco here.

NASCAR MANAGEMENT: FIX THE PROBLEMS AT THE INDIANAPOLIS MOTOR SPEEDWAY BUT ABOVE ALL ELSE – STAY OUT OF THE WAY DURING THE RACE!

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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RANT! Obama should use public money

RANT! Obama should use public money

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I am amazed that this is not being made a bigger issue.  I guess Obama is paying everyone off with his millions of dollars so that they don’t talk about his millions of dollars.

Obama promised that if he was nominated, he would use public money for his campaign.  Now he is backing out of that promise and is going to forgo those restrictions so that he can outspend John McCain by what some think will be 5 to 1.

Obama will run the richest campaign ever for the office of the US President!

While I have a hard time saying that people can’t give money to their favorite candidate, I do have problems with massive amounts of money being used to “buy” the campaign.  Never before has the disparity between candidates been so massive.  John McCain will only have 84M from the government to spend on the election and Barack Obama will be able to spend as much as he can raise and estimates say that could be 300-400M!

BARACK OBAMA – YOU NEED TO HONOR YOUR PROMISE TO USE PUBLIC FUNDS! DON’T BE A TYPICAL POLITICIAN AND CHANGE YOUR OPINION WHENEVER IT IS CONVENIENT!

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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