I previously posted about the latest rash of scandalous photos coming out of Afghanistan showing U.S. military atrocities under Obama’s command, and wondering if the media would pick up on it the way they did when it was Bush’s army… Well, here’s a twist I wasn’t expecting: yes, one of the U.S. media, Rolling Stone, [...]
Jeffrey Goldberg, a correspondent for the Atlantic, cast a spotlight on yet another disgustingly overt example of pure bias in the mainstream media, particularly at the anti-Semitic Reuters newswire. He points to a Reuters news item which contains the following despicable sentences: Police said it was a “terrorist attack” — Israel’s term for a Palestinian [...]
In the [sparse] reporting of the Palestinians’ massacre of the Fogel family, several newspapers stand out with their distorted sense of “balance”, i.e., where they feel overwhelmingly uncomfortable describing the barbarity of the Palestinians without at least taking a swipe or two at the Israelis, no matter how patently irrelevant or disgustingly disrespectful it comes [...]
Take Back The Beep
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Doesn’t it make you crazy when you call someone’s cell phone and get their voicemail, listen to their greeting in anticipation of the beep, only to have to listen to some inane instructions after their greeting, like, “once you are finished leaving a message you may hang up”?
I, for one, absolutely hate this. And the worst part about it is that even though most carriers have a key that allows you to bypass this and just get to the stupid beep already, that magic key is different for every carrier. While it may be asterisk on Verizon Wireless, it’s something different on AT&T, and something else on Sprint, and so on. So, unless you happen to know and can remember what carrier each of your contacts is on, it doesn’t help.
David Pogue, of the NY Times, has launched a campaign to “take back the beep”. On Leo Laporte’s podcast, he explained the obvious reason behind this annoyance: airtime. Every message left now earns the network revenue from those 15 seconds of airtime that it keeps people on the phone. Add up all those seconds across millions of users leaving tens of millions of voicemails daily, and you have some not-insignificant revenue.
(Incidentally, Leo Laporte had what I think is a better name for this campaign: “Where’s The Beep?!?”)
Apparently, Pogue’s campaign has sparked some serious reaction so far from the major carriers. They are apparently getting a lot of people responding to this, and some have actually set up forums on which to complain.
So, if this bothers you as much as it bothers me, go to Pogue’s blog and read the easy instructions on how to complain (and catch up on his latest progress with this campaign)!