Yes, my fellow Coca-Cola drinkers. The Coca-Cola Company is in the process of retiring yet another Coca-Cola CLASSIC (Damnit, why do they still use that term) can/bottle design. Introduced around 2003 (if I’m wrong don’t correct me), I had heard about the change from The BevNet “BevBoards” about a month ago, and sure enough, today while picking up a 12-pack of Coke, the cans were new. Nice and retro, though… I like the cleaness off them. No bubbles, no fifty million and one ribbons, just on ribbon and a clean red background, oh, and “CLASSIC” is now “classic”
So, I have two old cans full left and thise will be gone by the time the blog is updated, so goodbye oh can, but I must put you with all the other failed Coke ideas from 2002-now…
We hardly knew ye…
From Digg:
Gun Owners of America wants crazy people to get firearmsThe NRA is supporting a bill to ensure that mental-health records are entered into a FBI database that is used for background checks of gun buyers. Virginia-based Gun Owners of America warns that the proposal could “block millions of additional, honest gun owners from buying firearms.”
OK, so, lets not give guns to crazy folks, right. Well, it’s not that easy. If you said, “Lets not let convicted
felons buy guns” a lot of people would agree with you. But, what if you were exonerated from your charges years down the road? What then? And how would you feel about not letting someone buy a firearm for protection because they maybe had a breakdown twenty or so years ago, and then that person was killed. They could have protected themselves if thy had that firearm. What if we turn it around, and right after that someone comes in, passes a background check with not as much as a parking ticket or a fight in school, and commits a mass-murder with that weapon?
I know that it will come as a shock to many kids, teens, and young police officers, but a computer can’t catch everything. Sometimes, ya gotta use your gut.
Damn patents. Two wierd things in the news this week around patents. One was that Verizon sued Vonage for patent infringement, and won. Now Vonage was told they couldn’t sign up new customers. Luckily a judge gave Vonage a stay on the judgment until an appeal is decided.
The next I just saw on Digg,
Epson wants to making those cheaper generic ink cartridges, you know, the cheap ones, illegal. Great. Kodak, the camera people, said that black ink costs about $3,000 per gallon! That’s almost as much as gas! Of course, then Kodak goes on selling their ink still too high, but whatever. But Digg member BESTenemy (if he/she had a blog I’d plug it here) put it best, better than I could without a Coke BlaK…
This is yet another reason to abolish patent laws. They are of no benefit to consumer. Those that can produce the product at competitive rates should. If the main corporation suffers - it should be the one going out of business, not the little guy. Information in form of original blueprints or reverse-engineered designs such as that of an ink cartridge should be allowed to circulate freely. If you can make the same thing for less, I’ll buy it. If I can make it for less, I’ll make it and sell it. If someone beats me, he deserves the market control. I’ll step aside and count my losses.Good point has been brought up last time we had a copyright discussion. Japan has one of the weakest legal systems in the world and it is by far one of the most technologically developed nations. Lack of legal inhibition might very well be one of the contributing factors.
Patent laws don’t benefit the small producer that cannot afford to file for patent. Instead it is a backbone of monopoly - ability to solely control production and distribution of a certain item.
I totally agree, and folks, why dontcha buy a non-EPSON printer? HP? They have the HP Linux Printing Project. That sounds good.
Ya know what’s great about radio? It’s free. Ya know what’s bad about radio? Hold on, we’ll be right back…
THIS WEEKEND, VARIOUS FLOOD DAMAGED CARS WILL BE SOLD AS NEW AT A CERTAIN MAZDA DEALER!
If you didn’t get it, I was talking about ads. So when I heard about Slacker Radio, which is free with little to no advertising, it seemed good. Then I used it. It was excellent! I love it. Here’s how it works (and I’m getting a clarification about a couple of things from Slacker, Inc.’s PR guy):
You choose an artist, or a genre. (In this case Evanescence)
There is probably a radio stream with them. You click play. Not only do you get MP3 quality music from the artist, but you also get music from similar artists (You can skip music tracks up to six times in one hour on one station).
But the coolest thing is custom stations. If you sign up for a free account, you can choose artists and songs to add to a custom radio station. You can see my station here in this screenshot of the service. (It changed a little bit later on) But, if you don’t like certain artists, or a song or two from a station artist, you can block them. It’s really cool. I just wish I could share my station with anybody, so I could put a link on this blog and you would be transferred to Slacker and listen to the music I like. Then again, I don’t want to be responsible if anyone dies, so maybe not…
Anyway, it’s really cool and someone is going to sell this to some Web 2.5 company and get rich. Well, they deserve it!
By the way, if you noticed I said “Web 2.5″ not “Web 2.0″. I’ll explain that tomorrow.
…The Carmel Group, the research firm whose analysis helped kill the 2003 merger of [DISH Network's parent company] EchoStar and DirecTV, will release a new report today that outlines the strongest arguments yet against merging satellite radio companies Sirius and XM. Read the full thing here.
Read the last line: With all due respect, this proposed merger [of XM and Sirius Radio] should not be approved - under any conditions - by the U.S. government.”
With all due respect, the US government needs to realize that this is a free and open market… and companies should be able to merge and buy each other out as much as they want and any legislation against that is stifling freedom.
And if you’re going to bring up the 1980’s AT&T breakup, may I remind you how well that went?
Yes, my fellow Coca-Cola drinkers. The Coca-Cola Company is in the process of retiring yet another Coca-Cola CLASSIC (Damnit, why do they still use that term) can/bottle design. Introduced around 2003 (if I’m wrong don’t correct me), I had heard about the change from The BevNet “BevBoards” about a month ago, and sure enough, today while picking up a 12-pack of Coke, the cans were new. Nice and retro, though… I like the cleaness off them. No bubbles, no fifty million and one ribbons, just on ribbon and a clean red background, oh, and “CLASSIC” is now “classic”
