MIA, AT&T, and a Horror Story

I know, I know.  I've once again been MIA for quite some time.  I have much better excuses this time, though.  This time it includes more than me just being lazy.

First, my grandmother died a few weeks ago.  Between living at the hospital for a couple days, and then all of the craziness that followed, that put me off the grid for about a week.  Since then, I've just been trying desperately to catch back up with everything.  Before that happened, things at work were going at just the right pace where I could work and not worry about deadlines.  Now, though, I'm still about a week or two behind.  It's amazing how things will snowball like that.  Missing a week suddenly puts you behind three.  So I've been working a ton lately, and that usually means that when I get home it's either late or I have no desire to do anything but vege.  All of that, though, means that not only have I not really had time to write, but I've also not had time to read.  There were a couple of things that would catch my eye, but they're all considerably old news now.  Oh well.

Since most topics I was going to mention have pretty much come and gone, I'll just briefly touch on a couple.  Both about AT&T.  First, if you follow those links in the last sentence, you'll see the story about AT&T's new terms of service that basically said that they could disconnect you as a customer if you said things that were critical of the company.  While that does seem a bit absurd, I honestly would not doubt AT&T to do it.  The second article, though, is where they retracted on that, and said they never meant it to mean that they'd actually disconnect someone for being critical.  Yeah, right. 
The other item about AT&T hits close to home.  I started doing some searching to find out just why telecom companies are allowed to have exclusive deals with apartment and condo communities.  This really pisses me off that they do that (like pisses me off more than you can even imagine).  Well in the course of my searching, I found a fairly recent post about the FCC looking into prohibiting these exclusive deals.  One of the chief proponents of barring such contracts?  AT&T.  I feel a bit dirty, but I am actually rooting for AT&T here.  Ironically, AT&T thinks that if they get these contracts banned that they'll sign up more customers, all the while I'm going to jump ship from them first chance that comes along.  Companies with cheaper, better service provide for my area, but I can't get them because my complex has a contract with AT&T.  Oh, wait, not all of my complex, just half of my complex.  If I were living in the building across from mine, I wouldn't have this problem.

I'll close with a horror story that will make you just angry and saddened at the same time.  Go check out this post on this lady's blog, and then read in order all of the ones after it.  Yes, it's a number of posts.  Yes, it's worth the read.  Here's the gist of it: Concerned parents take baby to doctor, hospital calls CPS, CPS takes away baby from non-abusive parents.  The lady is actually a friend of a friend, so she's vouched for and isn't writing BS.  Check it out, it's just crazy.

You Can't Get Rid of Me That Easily

Hello again, boys and girls. First, some meta stuff. I'm aware I haven't posted in a month, and I'm sorry about that. Things have been crazy in all parts of my life. Work has been really picking up lately, and I moved into a new apartment mid August. I'm finally getting some stuff settled, and will hopefully get myself back on track. There hasn't been near as much news reading because of all of this, but I have been able to read a number or articles in the last couple days, so I'll give some brief thoughts on those.

First, the one that has been making all sorts of news lately is the Apple event from the fifth. The big news includes completely redesigned Nanos, bigger HDDs in the "Classic," and the release of the Touch. As anyone that knows me knows, I'm not really a fan of Apple, for a few reasons. That said, I can always appreciate cool stuff when I see it.
The Nanos, in my mind, are finally worth the money they cost. Up 'til now, I'm not so sure they were. A quick side note, why the heck do people act like Coverflow is so great? Does it do something magical that I just haven't noticed? Isn't it just a navigation method, that when you think about it is really not the most efficient one there is? Sorry, just curious.
The newly dubbed "Classics" are pretty much the same as they were before except for the space and UI, so not much to say about that.
The Touch is where all the cool stuff is. A lot of people had been begging for an iPhone sans the phone, and this is pretty much the answer. Personally, I think this thing looks spiffy, but still has too many shortcomings for my taste. First, the most obvious, is the lack of storage. Jobs has this stupid obsession with things being thin, but when it comes to a device that is supposed to become your primary portable media device, you need to stick more than 16 gigs in there. Especially when you charge that much for it. Aside from AT&T, everything else that's bad about the iPhone is bad about this one too, so I won't rehash it. It is pretty, though.
Speaking of the iPhone, it has now reached a price that resembles something reasonable. Steve's closer of dropping the 4 gig model altogether, and bringing the 8 gig to $400 instead of $600 has generated the most coverage. The reason that so many people are talking about this, in case you've been out of it this week, is that those close to a million people that bought an iPhone in the first two months of its release are feeling pissed. Jobs' answer to this is that technology moves fast and that early adopters pay more. I can tell you from my HDTV purchase that I've felt the early adopter cost first hand. However, it's an entirely different thing when you've been able to experience the device for close to a year before seeing huge price drops happen. In this case, it was a first of its kind. Just two months after release, the price came down 33%. That's just absurd. To me, this says that the people who bought early really got gouged. Now, there are all sorts of arguments that come in response to this and defend Apple. One of them is that the people obviously thought that it was worth $600, or else they wouldn't have paid that. That is absolutely correct. However, does it look like Apple thinks it was worth $600 when they drop is so drastically so soon after launch? Has anything ever dropped that much that quickly before? That's not rhetorical, I really am wondering. While Steve is right that tech prices come down quickly, I think that this is a bit of a stretch. I think that the reason they dropped this much is because Apple doesn't value the device at $600 so it blatant, "We overcharged you," to all of the people that bought one. If there was something you really wanted, and would gladly pay $1k for, would you still do it if you knew that the guy selling it would be charging less than $700 two months later? Most people, no probably not. That's why I think so many people are pissed.

Lets see, what else has been going on...Oh, Facebook announced that they will start having profiles indexed and searchable by search engines. This means that when you type someone's name in Google, that their Facebook profile might come up. This is something that I think is a neat idea, but I'm agreeing with everyone saying that it should be an opt-in, rather than opt-out service. Facebook was built around the principles of privacy, and keeping everyone out except those you let in. Now, though, the default is that everyone can see you, and you have to tell it otherwise if you don't want that. Well, poo on them. I joined Facebook back in 2004, and have loved it ever since. That said, I'm not happy in the direction that they are heading. I feel like each new feature they release is bringing them one step closer to MySpace. I say that only half-jokingly. While I know that they will never (probably) fall into the pit of despair that contains the likes of the ugly as sin site that is MySpace, I do think that they are on the path to pissing a lot of people off. Even moreso than they did with that newsfeed fiasco (I actually defended them on that one, the info was all already available). This time, though, it's not just opening you up to your friends, it's opening you up to the world. Get with it, Facebook, make this an opt-in feature and don't risk having the users complain. It'll be really easy to do. Really.