This week on #thepete #podcast: how #society is #failing us

This week in #thepetepodcast I go into how American #society is failing to do what it is there to do. It is breaking its #Social contract with #WeThePeople. #HealthCare, #housing, #innovation, #war are all ways it fails us. Listen to find out how!

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How Ma Bell Shelved the Future for 60 Years

How Ma Bell Shelved the Future for 60 Years

Gizmodo’s Tim Wu blogs about how innovation was stopped in its tracks, effectively, due to capitalist interests.  Funny how we’re all told capitalism is great for innovation. Too bad that’s only true until innovation might damage the current business model.  Take the example of the answering machine that existed in the office of a Bell Labs engineer… in 1934.

It’s Website666.com’s 666cast: episode 14—how capitalism is breaking it’s promise to innovate. It’s the “Capitalism Doesn’t Innovate” rant. You know it had to happen—look around you—do you see any jet packs? Any flying cars (OK, so that’s ONE.) No, of course, you don’t—because capitalism doesn’t innovate like we were all promised it would. Have a listen to the latest episode of the 666cast and find out why I think this is so. Please subscribe to the feed.

It’s Website666.com’s 666cast: episode 14—how capitalism is breaking it’s promise to innovate.

It’s the “Capitalism Doesn’t Innovate” rant. You know it had to happen—look around you—do you see any jet packs? Any flying cars (OK, so that’s ONE.) No, of course, you don’t—because capitalism doesn’t innovate like we were all promised it would.  Have a listen to the latest episode of the 666cast and find out why I think this is so.

Please subscribe to the feed.

Were AT&T’s overtures to current iPhone users a precursor to a Verizon iPhone?

newsweek:

“The truth is, Apple needs to get on Verizon, and fast, or it risks losing customers to Android. If Verizon gets the iPhone, I’d expect a huge exodus from AT&T. Which probably explains some of AT&T’s recent behavior. With the release of iPhone 4, AT&T made an unusual offer to current owners of iPhones, telling them that even if their contracts weren’t close to being over, they could still push up their expiration date and upgrade to the iPhone 4—as long as they signed a new two-year contract. Many people jumped on that offer, and some even viewed it as a case of AT&T being generous. Um, not likely. More likely it’s that AT&T knows its exclusive lock on iPhone is coming to an end, and so it sought to lock in as many iPhone users before the deal with Verizon happens. To those folks who waited in line for hours and hours to take advantage of AT&T’s “generous” offer, I can only offer my condolences and point out that, given AT&T’s past behavior, you should have known better.”

—

Lyons, on the latest Verizon iPhone rumors

Oooor they might just want to stay with a carrier (and a phone) that they can use on other SIM-based networks.  When I heard the Verizon rumor, I thought: “Do I want to switch to Verizon? And get stuck with Verizon forever? Not really…”

Just my ¥2, of course.

via life.thepete.com

Meant to post this here first, but Tumblr was tweaking on the bookmarklet. Ah well.

Personally, I’m getting sick of this contract shit. It’s just a con-game. I’m sick of letting myself become a slave to a wireless plan. Just let me pay as I go—some months I don’t need wireless, some months I do. We’re all being taken advantage of by a bunch of white guys in suits.

Why do we put up with this crap? It’s like we’re only worthy of experiencing innovation if we’re rich enough.  I’m fine with paying for things, but it seems to me that the profit margin is so crazy high. I get that they should make money, don’t get me wrong.  The thing is, the whole system could be a lot more fair than it is.  The big communication companies could be making a less money per person from way more people if they’d give people more the freedom to choose who they want to be with.  I want to ask each big telecom one question: Do you want the industry to be healthy? Or just YOU?

And they can’t answer “just me” since that is anti-American, anti-competition and flies in the face of basic concepts that we built our economy on (that competition fuels innovation).  If anything tells us that innovation isn’t being fueled, it’s Apple’s mobile industry business plan.

Let’s release a phone with 10x the design of most other phones, but with 1/5th the features.  The phone is capable of doing the same things [as hackers have proven] but we’ll make sure the software won’t allow it.  This way, we can offer a better phone a year later that will cost us next to nothing to develop but we’ll get rich giving people what pure innovation would have allowed us to give them in the first place.

Aka: release a hobbled phone, then partially unhobble it and pretend it’s a whole new product, then repeat!

It took four iterations of the iPhone for Apple to actually give us something we can’t get anywhere else—their new retina display thingy.  Of course, the iPhone 4 is NOT a 4G phone.  So, it’s still a hobbled phone. Where can you get a 4G phone? Sprint—or any number of countries that aren’t in America.

OK, I could keep this rant going for a while, so I’ll just stop it there on the assumption you get my point.

OLPC--the non-profit that inspired the world to innovate, has given up on innovation. A sad thing, indeed.

New XO-3 Announced: Just a Marvel Moby Tablet, Re-branded (Yawn)

Posted by Wayan Vota on May 27, 2010


Marvel’s $100 Moby tablet

Back in the day, One Laptop Per Child was innovative with its technology. It came up with a low-cost, durable, Open Source laptop for education when no one else would. And in bringing the XO-1 to market, it changed the technology industry.

That OLPC is now long gone.

In its place, we have a shell of a company. They don’t do software anymore - that’s spun off to Sugar Labs. They don’t do deployments anymore - that’s the country’s responsibility or OLPC Foundation (whatever that is). And now OLPC has just given up on hardware innovation.

via olpcnews.com

Hit up that link for more info about the “new” XO-3.

Back in November of 2005 I blogged for the first time about OLPC and their proposed “$100 laptop” that they wanted to sell to developing nations. Two years later I was among the first in the world to order my own XO-1 laptop, which sadly had doubled in price, but hey, who thought they could really do $100? The point is, I’ve been a fan of the OLPC effort from day 1. However, after getting my XO-1, I discovered a few hardware flaws and found myself underwhelmed by the choices made by the guys behind OLPC and came to the conclusion that they’d lost their way.

The good news is that untold numbers of kids in developing nations have benefited from having access to these computers. The bad news is that all that made OLPC different from any other charity organization (innovation, vision and the belief that technology can make a positive difference) is gone—not because any of those differences didn’t serve them, but because they chose not to embrace those differences.

As Wayan Vota, the guy behind OLPCNews.com, said in the above quoted post: “It is sad news for all of us that remember that original OLPC. The OLPC that could push an industry create a whole new form factor overnight - the netbook.”

It’s true, back in 2005, all that we had that was vaguely netbook-like was the UMPC—which was just a really small laptop with current specs. OLPC had the balls to suggest that computers didn’t need all the bells and whistles to be tools of learning (or even perfectly reasonable tools for any number of things). They were right—so right that an entire new genre of laptop came into being.

Hell, I wonder if we’d even have the iPad if it weren’t for OLPC and their XO-1.

Email Spam Just Isn't Going to Last

Like it or not, every industry has a cycle--a series of stages it goes through before it does one of two things:

1) Starts over and performs the cycle again

2) Dies forever

I've been online since 1995. I've seen all manner of email spam. I won't even bore you with those deets since I know you know what I mean. One thing I have NOT seen is innovation from email spam. I mean, "evolve or die," right? Well, check out the email I got earlier today:

FINAL NOTIFICATION

from DELL PROMOTION
reply-to dell.headquarter@btinternet.com
to dell@winners.com
date Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 12:36 PM
subject FINAL NOTIFICATION
12:36 PM (3 hours ago)

You have just been awarded,the sum of £750,000GBP in the DELL Award 2009, Anniversary Bonanza. held on March. For Claims email your details to: dell.headquarter@btinternet.com

Names:............
Address:..............
Country:................
Age:..........
Sex:..............
Phone/cellphone........

regard
Mrs. Rose Wood

Now, I'm sure some people out there would still fall for this and I understand how cheap it is to send millions of emails in a heartbeat. But is this REALLY worth their time?

In order for this scam to work, the sucker would have to give all the personal data (but no SSN??), answer the phone when the spammer called back and THEN be dumb enough to give up their bank account number when the spammer says "the only way to get your money is if we wire it to you."

Uh-huh.

Now, don't get me wrong--I'm as cynical as the next guy--I'm sure a few people still fall for this stupidity, but, really spammers? Is this the BEST you can come up with after nearly fifteen years of scamming people via email?

What has happened to American innovation?!?!

And it's not like it takes any effort to suss you fools out. I Googled the first sentence from that email and found this:

http://candyinn.blogspot.com/

It's a blog featuring nothing but email spam that includes many similar emails in its content stream.

You spammers are so predictable there's someone blogging about you.

Pitiful.