* Gearhead: Recommended tools for the tool kit * Backspin: If you won’t contribute to OLPC, step aside * The past 7 days on Gibbsblog
Gearhead: Recommended tools for the tool kit
Some time ago we asked for recommendations on tools you thought should be in the Gearhead tool kit. Here are a few reader recommendations that we’ve been able to test.
To read this week’s Gearhead, click here.
Backspin: If you won’t contribute to OLPC, step aside
The much-hyped $100 laptop from the One Laptop Per Child project is considered by most people to be a pretty good idea, despite views from critics.
To read this week’s Backspin, click here.
The past 7 days on Gibbsblog
CBS Fine Would Now be Ten Times Larger! (Or Goodbye Tony).
If you read my last blog entry you will understand that this is my second time writing about the topic of the huge fine that the FCC recently imposed on the CBS network for an scene in an episode of the series “Without a Trace.” The tale doesn’t become any more palatable in writing it again …
If you remember, it was the CBS network that the FCC fined $550,000 for Janet Jackson’s boob flash at the Superbowl back in 2004 which they judged to be “indecent.” According to U.S. regulations profanity or sexually explicit content is only allowed between 10 PM and 6 AM to protect children who it is assumed are less likely to be tuned in (do I need to point out the peculiar inconsistency in this legislation that extreme violence on television isn’t regulated?).
On May 31st this year the FCC refused to reconsider the fine so it looks like the 20 CBS affiliates involved in Nipplegate will have to cough up.
With the new judgment against CBS, the coughing up reaches a new level: The fine CBS and 10 affiliates face for a scene in the “Without a Trace” episode is a staggering $3.6 million!
***
Yesterday I was writing a long and fairly complicated blog entry (on the FCC’s recent amazingly huge fine levied on CBS for “indecency”) using Microsoft Word.
The time got to be 5PM and as the temperature had hit 105°F I figured I deserved a beer.
The Commander and I drove down to Dargan’s in town where the Guinness is first rate. Beer led to dinner and dinner led to drinks with the Commander and his lady wife and thus the evening was used up rather enjoyably …
I returned to the office this morning, bright and early expecting to find my document waiting for me but this was not to be: A Microsoft update had occurred and my document was no more. Gone. Defunct. It is no more …
***
Killing Off Indian Call Centers
I was just reading the UK’s The Register about the British electricity supply company, Powergen, having actually listened to their customers and pulled the plug on outsourcing their call center to India.




