Earlier this year I went to Mammoth Mountain with my girlfriend and her family. Her birthday is January 1, so it was part New Year celebration and part birthday celebration. I’ve always been poking fun at her because of the lack of AT&T coverage compared to my Verizon coverage, but it become abundantly obvious when we were driving up to Mammoth.
It started once we passed Mojave. I had several bars on my Droid while she had nothing. As we continued to drive, my service started to diminish. After all, we’re driving through the middle of the desert. I’d get spotty service here and there as we continued along the 395, she only had usable service when we were in the towns along the way (if even that).
However, you can’t really fault AT&T for not having service in the middle of nowhere, right? It’s not a very big market, right? This is true.
Still, as we were in Mammoth, my Droid had service everywhere. Several bars. Now, Mammoth might be in the middle of nowhere, but it certainly isn’t a tiny market. It is the largest ski resort in the largest state in America. Couple that with the fact that most people who ski are middle to upper class, and Mammoth should be a market covered by a cell phone service provider.
Verizon had me covered, and AT&T had coverage here and there. However, the funniest thing about my girlfriend’s service is when she looked at the time on her iPhone… It was off by two hours LOL AT&T Fail
Few people have one of the December 2007 editions of Gadget Universe with Reggie Bush on the cover. There weren’t that many printed, and after The Saints’ 2007 season, most of them were probably thrown away… But I kept mine!
With a possible Saints win on Super Bowl Sunday, Reggie Bush has a very good change of being the Super Bowl MVP. The President just might be smiling in a couple Sundays. I think I’ll keep mine rather than selling it on eBay even if the Saints do win.
All I have left of this once great image of a cheeto that looks like a man member is a small thumbnail available through Google when you search for Phallic Cheetos. Apparently, a piece of corn and rice that puffs into the shape of a male unit violates photobucket’s terms of use policy. No wonder their traffic has nose dived faster than myspace!
I thought this image was funny. I think anyone who thinks a Cheeto that looks like a penis is anything other than funny is deeply disturbed and needs serious psychological help. It’s a friggin Cheeto!
Mashable posted a rumor about Google working on streaming network TV shows via YouTube at $1.99 an episode. The price comes from Apple fixing the price of TV shows at $1.99 on iTunes.
At first glance, this might see too expensive, but let’s examine the real economics. The average cable bill is roughly $50/month. At $2/episode, you’d get 25 shows per month. That’s roughly 6 weekly shows… Now, some shows have double episodes (American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, etc.) So, that goes to 3 of those shows per month. That’s if you are paying basic cable. One can easily get up to $80+/month in cable bills w/o even counting their cable modem.
For people who are stuck with Time Warner Cable (like me), I’m paying $60/month for cable + all the ridiculous taxes on that junk. I don’t watch that much TV. In fact, the NFL is pretty much the only thing I’ll watch regularly. Everything else is here and there. I could save a fair amount of money every month using this pay-per-view model. Of course, the government will need to find some other way to get taxes on these purchase…
A couple days ago I posted a blog about a twittersation with my buddy Jim about the Gold Standard. One of the great things about blog debates is that it gives you time to really think about your response and fully absorb the feedback from the other person. Had Jim and I tweetbated (I’m just making up twitterisms here…) about this, we probably would have not realized that we are pretty much on the same page. Well, I don’t know if Jim realizes it, but I realize it…
Jim can correct me if I’m wrong, but he is NOT arguing *for* a gold standard (or any commodity standard for that matter). Rather he is arguing for a standard other the debt security. The argument for a debt backed currency is pretty simple. If you can borrow more money, you should have a stronger currency (because people have more faith in your ability to pay that money back), right? Not quite, and this is where Jim and I agree.
It can be argued that economic cycles have been smoothed out by the current system we have in place. However, one can also just as easily argue that a higher level of public education and access to information at a faster pace are the real causes of smoother economic cycles. I digress.
What could be a better system? Certainly a commodity system is antiquated and a debt system has its fair share of issues. With the technology that is available today, a hybrid system is certainly feasible. A large database could be created to compile the commodity quantities for the most relevant commodities (gold should be on the list amongst many other raw goods). The value of those materials is set on a mostly free market, making the valuation of this portion of the economy pretty simple. The import/export ration would certainly play a role in determining the value of an exchange rate and the over all value of a currency. Then you have your money circulation. How much money your national and local banks are circulating must play a pivotal role in determining the over all value of a currency along with the exchange rate with another nation. This would cover the debt model we have now and then some.
With the technology available today, this type of system would make it much easier to spot potential banking and other economic issues that may surface in the future across multiple countries. I’ll even argue that this database should be a semi-open system, allowing virtually anyone to have access to the data to build models against it. This open system would provide considerable leaps forward in the development of economic and business systems, particularly for third world countries. It could also provide governments with the ability to spot opportunities in their economies and with their trading partners so that they can provide incentives in budding industries.
I’m just brainstorming at this point, and these ideas are very raw inside my head… But now they are down on paper, err, cyber paper?
This blog is for my buddy Jim.
When I switched my major from business to economics, I had no idea the change it would bring to my life. Perhaps I was naive. I thought economists were a bit more progressive. I thought that economists were legitimate “thinking outside the box” folks. So, when I received a B on a paper about how a sustained rise in energy prices would lead to unchecked inflation because this idea was “completely ridiculous”, I was a bit disheartened. I wrote this paper circa 2003, long before the effects of rising energy prices were felt a couple years ago. But I digress.
Getting back to the gold standard… This caveman style of money fits right up there with having king rule. It is practically the same principle. He with the most gold rules. The gold standard comes from the innate human desire for shiny objects. A piece of shiny yellow metal that has relatively little utility compared with other natural resources, should not dictate the value of a country’s currency.
Now, back in the day (when the world was obsessed with shiny yellow metals), a gold standard would make sense. During those times, it was important. Today, gold has limited economic use. The high price of gold today is merely because of speculation about the USD and belief that the antiquated gold standard has merit.
The reality is that a country with little gold but an abundant supply of other natural resources and production and consumption of goods and services or advancements in science is far more valuable than a country that has tons of gold and little to no production.
Back in the day, kings didn’t have vast computer systems and economic tracking abilities. So, they did things the easy way. I’ve got gold. I’ve procured more gold. I am a better king. Today, we could smart bomb the king and take all his gold. The gold wouldn’t make our currency more valuable, but the smart bomb would.
Economic, political, social, medical, banking, and other infrastructure systems should (and arguably MUST) evolve with technology. Currency values can and should be defined by the value of a country’s output and consumption. Awaiting Jim’s Austrian theory of economics response 
Yesterday was Droid Day. The Verizon stores were not prepared with accessories, so I had to wait to get vital phone accessories like a case and screen protector. I had a little bit of a Twitter rant last night after having to wait 10 minutes to talk to a “sales associate” at the VZ store just to buy the accessories for the Droid I purchased earlier in the day. The worst part is that they VZW guy sold me a privacy protector, not the screen protector.
I figured out how this privacy protector works! It has nothing to do with polarization. In fact, it only blanks your screen side peepers when you are in landscape. The real privacy protection comes from the fact that it makes your touchscreen unusable! The Droid privacy protector nearly makes it impossible to unlock you Droid with the touch and slide feature. I can only imagine what it would do if you set a custom unlock pattern.
Avoid the Droid privacy protector if you actually want to use your Droid!
I’m posting this from my new Droid!
My plan was up with Verizon in March. I wasn’t going to renew. After years of watching everyone else’s phone get better and more social, Verizon had nothing. Couple that with the fact that Verizon is practically useless internationally, and it was time for me to jump ship.
Then the news arrived that VZ had setup a sweet deal for Motorola to develop and Android phone! I could believe it, but I held off on canning my Verizon service. Droid day is here. I’ve switched from hard keys to soft portrait to soft landscape. This phone rocks! I know a lot of people with iPhones. This is a legit contender on a real network. Verizon is vastly superior network than at&t. Now they have a comparable (arguably better) phone!
When it comes to Magento, I feel somewhat bipolar. I am so incredibly frustrated with the fact that Web Services just don’t work with Magento. It’s not like there is some complex issue here. All I’m doing is making a login attempt using a SoapClient in php. Pretty simple, but it just doesn’t work in Magento 1.3.2.4 (latest version at the time of this posting).
I’m not the only person with this problem either. It is clearly a problem for several other people on the various Magento message boards. There are no answers that I can find to this problem at all, and it has now put an integration with an important fulfillment system at risk for my business. Magento just might be migrated away from because of this serious problem.
Hangin out with my Droid on the plane back home to Los Angeles. Just crossed the international date line. There are only 5 hours left for this flight. It’s moments like this that really make me appreciate technology more than ever before.
I can’t help but wonder what traveling across the Pacific was like just 30 years ago, let alone 100. They even have power outlets on the back of the chairs in the plane. I was able to charge my Droid after having used it heavily this morning to Google Talk with my girlfriend.
I really can’t wait to see where technology is 30 years from now. With applications like Layar around today, augmented reality could easily become commonplace. I’m even thinking we could have glasses we wear that have the ability to see what we are looking at and then pull up augmented reality information about what we are looking at. It would be like the barcode app+Layar on steroids.
I can even imagine something where we could have our own augmented reality profiles available with facial recognition. We could look at someone and get their latest blogs, Facebook (or whatever the social network is of the future) profile info/related friends, latest travel info, and whatever someone wants to make public.
For someone like me that would be mostly everything. Some people wouldn’t want to share anything just like they don’t want to now. That’s always good to know and give people the option to not share everything with potential stalkers…
Augmented reality with personal recognition could actually make stalkers a thing of the past. We could have a public creeper database that people could contribute to in realtime. Tag creepers in realtime to help others. Maybe I’m just being ridiculous.
If the mytouch gps works on a plane… http://maps.google.com/maps?q=31.14709,121.7980 that link should be somewhere over the middle of the Pacific. Guess I’ll find out when I am back on the ground.
Mmmm… I have no idea what they just handed me on the plane but it sure tastes good… some sort of tortilla goodness. In fact, I’d say it is the best airline food I’ve ever had!
Words Cause: Our World- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- Busted Daily
- Gadget Panel
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
-
-
Recent Comments
noactive on Facebook as a Platform Damian on Droid Privacy Protector Protec… linda on Magic Jack = Cool Tech: Phone … tommy on Custom Built PS3 The Phallic Cheeto i… on Phallic Cheetos
