It wasn’t the cell phone theory–it seems to have been a virus. I never bought that one, anyway.
Though it would be a good deal for a bee. I mean, a twelve-month plan is like a lifetime.
Fraud
Here’s evidence that my skepticism about rebates is warranted:
I am staring at more than 1,300 rebate requests sent to Vastech on Bonaventura Drive in San Jose. The envelopes were tossed – unopened – into a garbage dumpster near Vastech. I have two boxes of envelopes that were thrown out without being processed. In all of my years of reporting, I have never encountered such outrageous behavior against consumers.
An employee of nearby Dominion Enterprises found the letters, along with hundreds of others addressed to Vastech, at his company’s dumpster. He turned them over to his boss, Joel Schwartz, who gave them to me. All of the letters were addressed to UR-04 Rebate or some variation of the product name at the Vastech address.
The problem is that it’s no skin off Fry’s or Best Buy’s nose if people don’t get their rebates. They just claim that it’s up to the manufacturer. So the fraud will continue. And I’ll continue to ignore the rebates.
One Hour To Europe?
I wonder what this prize will be for? Guess we’ll find out next week.
Runaround Hsu
Some thoughts from Eric Scheie:
I was immediately reminded of the unresolved Peter Paul case, but if we think back further, there’s Johnny Huang, Charlie Trie, Moktar Riaddy. The Craig scandal is pathetically simple, even sad by comparison, does not involve the presidential election, nor money corruption, and probably wouldn’t be much of a scandal if it involved the Democrats. That the public perception would be that “both parties have scandals” shows only how easily manipulated the public can be.
…I think the Hsu case is bigger than Vick and Craig combined. It has a creepy, tip-of-the-iceberg feel to it, and it’s a perfect reminder (as if anyone needed a reminder) of the deep, hard-core corruption which has long characterized Bill and Hillary Clinton. (I don’t believe they have changed at all.) What sickens me more than seeing this corruption resurface is to see so many naive people behaving as if they’re shocked and surprised. (And what will sicken me more than that, I’m sure, is the speed at which they’ll forget.)
Yes. That people still don’t understand the depth of corruption of the Clintons is a failure–no–a criminal unwillingness to inform the public, or even an ongoing effort to deliberately misinform them–by the press in the nineties. It was journalistic malpractice.
And it continues, as long as they remain Democrats, and Bill maintains his (always unnoticeable to me) charisma level. Who has been reporting on the upcoming Peter Paul trial? Very few.
And Eric implicitly offers a challenge to the poetically gifted among us–come up with new lyrics for “Runaround Sue.”
A Better Slogan?
Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides thinks that the on-line community can help NASA come up with one.
<VOICE=”Alice“>Must…stop…fingers…of satire…</VOICE>>
Hey, there’s always the comments section.
And yes, I have emerged, blinking and confused, from SBIR proposal hell. Thanks for asking.
A Virtual Space Blog
Live from Second Life, it’s the Frontier Spaceport. Robin Snelson reports that Colonel Smith is going to report to the Pentagon that SPS is viable.
We’ll see.
[Update about mid morning.]
Colonel Smith (aka “Coyote”) explains why the DoD is interested in power from space.
The Miracle Of The Internet
Want to take a ride through a Cat 5 hurricane? Here you go.
A(nother) Reason To Like Fred Thompson
At least for me. He seems to be interested in, and understand technology.
War Is Too Important
…to be left to the lawyers.
We’d probably have lost World War II if it had been fought under these kinds of constraints. And even if not, it would have taken longer, and cost many more lives.
“ELVs Suck”
Almost half a century after the first orbital launch by the Soviets, and in the wake of another failure of a supposedly “reliable” Russian launcher, Clark Lindsey has a brief, but appropriate rant about our national failure to develop reliable and low-cost access to space, a goal that NASA is not only doing very little about, but, by building yet another horrifically expensive throwaway, actually spending billions to delay.