I know, you are probably thinking…no more Slap Chop!!! (Slap Chop con Facenar!) This I couldn’t resist though. Someone with way too much time on their hands remixed the Slap Chop commercial to an old rap song. I saw this on the Consumerist today, and couldn’t stop laughing…
Watch This…You Are Going To Love My Nuts
I’ve leased a car a few times in my life, and have never understood how the car dealer came up with the monthly payment for a lease. The only thing truly know is that while on a lease you are paying for the depreciation of the vehicle, you are paying interest, and you are paying sales tax. The rest of it has been a lot of hocus pocus to me. If the payment seems reasonable, I usually am OK with it. Well next time I go to lease a car, I can now figure out if I am getting screwed or not. Edmunds.com has a great write up on how to determine your monthly lease payment. By asking for a few numbers from the dealer you can make sure you aren’t being taken to town, and not realizing it. Getting a 299 month payment might sound great, but what if you could do better? Many people do not realize that the cost of the car means a lot in the lease calculation. The dealer could be packing on 1000’s of dollars in profit because they they start with a high price on the car (sometimes higher than MSRP), but since the payment looks good you don’t notice. Click on the link below to learn what makes up a lease payment, and how with a little knowledge, you can get a better deal next time.
Australia has begun to detail their plans for a national roll out of broadband. They plan on bringing fiber to all that want it with speeds starting at 100Mbps. They plan on treating broadband the same as they treat electricity: a required utility.
My question is: why can’t the US figure this out? The answer is too much politics, too many lobbyists, and as far as I am concerned too much capitalism (related to broadband). Broadband in the U.S. is treated as a profit maker, not a necessity. If the ROI doesn’t come back positive for a certain area, then the companies don’t feel the necessity to support that area. So bigger cities get the newest technology…sometimes two steps past the newest technology, while the more rural areas are laid to waste. My house has limited options for connections to the Internet, and speed that doesn’t come close to what is available. I have to deal with traffic caps that are as far as I am concerned unreasonable. The reason my local cable company doesn’t need to fight for their customers? Because there is no where else to go. Local franchise agreements have caused a monopoly in towns such as mine. I expect to be old and grey before I see fiber or its equivalent. My hopes for having a national roll out of broadband when the new President came into power has been dashed seeing that the money in the stimulus package for supporting broadband kept shrinking, and is small in comparison to other projects. Additionally, as more time goes on it appears that the big companies such as Verizion have the opportunity to get some of the stimulus money. Why on earth does Verizon need that money? The answer: The lobbyists worked it that way.
Not until broadband is treated like a utility will we see progress in the rural areas. The politicians even seem to get in the way of other politicians. A town in North Carolina has decided to do just what I propose: Create a fiber network in town, with availability to everyone. After getting wind of this, the state legislature has two proposed rules in place to force the “utility” to charge more because their prices were too low compared to the competition. I thought the whole reason of competition was to bring more innovation, and lower prices? It doesn’t appear that the U.S. will ever get this right…let’s hope I am wrong.
I just wrote last week that the COO of Verizon stated that a CDMA iPhone was not in the works, but an article posted by USA Today has said the groundwork has been worked on since before Steve took his leave of absence. Which is the truth? Unfortunately somewhere in the middle. I think the article by USA Today was to get more eyes on their paper, and not based on actual fact. I think they knew that people would jump on the article, which they have, and didn’t have to worry about backing up the story with anything more than “unidentified sources within the company.” I think at some point that Apple will release an iPhone on Verizon’s 4G network since it is more similar to what AT&T uses, instead of CDMA technology. Verizon expects trials of 4G (LTE) to begin in 2010 in “limited markets”…which means most of the US won’t see it for years. Apple’s excuse for not releasing a CDMA iPhone was that there isn’t a big market for that…the 125+ million people on Verizon/Alltel, and Sprint would beg to differ…
I won’t be posting the link to the USA today article because I don’t want to support their grab at ad buys for the day, but if you really want to read it it isn’t hard to find.
In what will come as no surprise except for a few people people in the Yankee’s organization, the Yankees high priced seats near the field have not been selling as they expected. The seats going from the 1st base dugout over to the 3rd base dugout range from 500 dollars a seat all the way to $2,625 a game have yet to be even half full outside of Opening Day. What are the reasons behind it? Economic downturn, or stupidity thinking that someone would pay an ‘average joe’s’ monthly paycheck for one ticket to a baseball game? Though the Yanks are at the extreme, other baseball teams that have tried making the tickets close to the field extremely expensive (the Washington Nationals are another example) and are seeing ticket sales languish for those seats. What makes it even worse is that those are typically the seats seen on tv, which makes it appear that the fan bases of these teams have abandoned them…in the cast of the Nats this might be the truth. I think some teams are going to find out the hard way that there is a limit to what a person will pay for a good time. Yeah the uber-rich will pay for some of these tickets, but not everyone else.
When teams such as the Yanks start losing bags of money due to people not paying outrageour ticket prices, maybe they will begin to rethink spending nearly 500 million on 3 players next time…
Well all us Verizon customers can return to the land of disappointment. Both Apple and Verizon have come out and stated there will be no Verizon based iPhone…until the earliest of when Verizon’s next generation network (LTE) gets deployed. Apple states that since CDMA is really only used in the US, that it was not worth the investment to create a version of the iPhone for Verizon. I was hoping that wasn’t the case…Verizon is strong in my area, and AT&T is anything but, so I guess I will still be outside looking in. Apple also stated they were happy with their agreement with AT&T and don’t see that changing in the near future, so the rumors that AT&T might get their exclusive agreement extended through 2010 might be true. It makes sense though, if there are no plans for a CDMA version, then the only one that would benefit from breaking the agreement would be T-Mobile (since they are GSM based), and that wouldn’t really help Apple’s profits all that much.
If you would like to read more about what has come to light Click Here.
I’ll be away for a few days, so I’ll apologize in advance for the lack of posts. I’ll be back later in the week with some new posts, and I am hoping some new pictures (We’ll see about the last part).
Have a good week!
It seems every time this comes up in the news that a different date has been thrown around. Back when the iPhone was introduced, Steve Jobs stated that Apple made a 5 year agreement with AT&T to sell the iPhone. So everyone figured that meant that AT&T would be the only one to have it until 2011/2012. Well if Cnet’s article is correct, they are saying that the exclusivity agreement only went till the end of 2008, and later on they came to an agreement to extend it one more year through 2009. That would lead me to believe the rumors that Apple and AT&T made the agreement back when development of the iPhone started in 2003. Now it’s come out that AT&T wants to extend the agreement through 2011. They are well aware of how many customers they have gained since they are the only one with the treasured Apple phone, and would be smart to stretch out the agreement as long as possible. The question remains if Apple wants to play ball. I am sure that AT&T would have to make some serious concessions to continue their agreement for it to be worth Apple’s while. I am sure Apple is aware that if they were to create a CDMA version that they have over 100 million cell phone users at Verizon and Sprint that are chomping at the bit to get their hands on the phone. Personally I would love to get my hands on the phone, but with AT&Ts service less than decent in my area, I have not made the switch from Verizon.
So will June come with news of a longer agreement, or will be begin to hear whispers that AT&T’s reign with the phone will come to an end. I hope it’s the latter, but after hearing so many rumors I am not getting my hopes up. If you would like to read the full Cnet article, click the link below:
Yesterday was what was called “Tax Freedom Day”. This day represents the day you actually start making money instead of giving it to the government. Really what it means if you took your income over the entire year, until yesterday you’d be giving every earned penny to the government for taxes. The rest of the year it’s all yours. So for 103 out of 365.25 days of the year, you are doing nothing but working for the man. Coincidentally, April 13th was the shortest amount of time since 1967. This is because tax collections overall are down due to the recession, and the stimulus package that Obama passed put a few extra bucks in your pocket by temporary lowering your taxes. So rejoice…you are free from the man…until January 1st, 2010
