Hostile systems
Life, lately, is difficult. My car was fixed yesterday. Or rather, fixed enough to make it home before dying again. So now, fruitless dispute with the deceptive garage, and I will be taking the car to another place. These confused mechanics probably replaced a perfectly fine distributor, but now they claim that since I was able to drive it home, and since I had them install a used distributor, they own me nothing. (they are wrong, surely?)
I think the problem, actually, probably *is* the computer; however I — with by big torso and forearms, and hands, — am simply too large to curl up under the dashboard and get my hands up where they need to go to replace the computer myself. Trying to do this I broke a stupid bolt that for some reason you needed to turn *right* to loosen (wtf?). The new mechanic I plan to take my car to won’t be available til Tuesday. So today I took the bus to get a haircut and some groceries, because I’ve been looking like kaspar hauser lately, while living off Jimmy John’s sandwich delivery, and food I could scavenge from the gas stations here on North Prospect Avenue. Truly, I have become a feral grading creature.
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Two days ago, attentive readers will recall, I signed up with Lingo’s voice over IP service. (Even now my new phone box is hurtling towards me through space, somewhere between New Stanton, PA and Champaign, in the Brown belly of UPS).
The day after I signed-up, and after tdq noted that with services like Skipe you no longer really need a phone company, Michael Powell (who was pretty much breathless after discovering Skype) has diverted his attention from relaxing media ownership rules (and punishing CBS for Janet Jackson’s nipple) long enough to propose a set of new federal regulations (and taxes?) on voip. And then yesterday, the predicable outcome of the FCC’s proposed regulations.
What’s funny is the Google News headlines about the Powell’s FCC proposals. They range from “FCC Chair Advocates Hands-Off Approach to VoIP” and “Powell: Let’s Start a Revolution” to “FCC chairman to seek federal oversight of VoIP” and, of course, it”s the latter characterization that’s more accurate. And from the subsequent announcements by Microsoft and SBC, you can guess who all these new regulations will favor.
As the commentators on Slashdot aptly noted, a centrally regulated voip industry will be more subject to lobbying efforts by the likes of SBC and Microsoft. What’s particularly galling is how rhetorically successful Powell was in selling his new set of regulations, while praising the “revolutionary” character of voip, and declaring himself disgusted by the prospect of cumbersome regulations instituted by indivudual States, rather than a few sleek little regulations mandated and enforced by the Federal Government. Clear the trees to save the trees.
There’s always a trick bolt in there somewhere.