Category Archives: Stupid Tricks

More Stupid iPhone Press Coverage: “Disappointing Sales”

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Apple stock took a 4% hit today because their carrier partner, AT&T announced they only activated 146,000 iphones in the last two days of June

Here is a fine friendly clue. The iPhone didn’t go on sale until 6pm eastern, 3/4 of the way through the first of those days two days. Furthermore, the optimistic estimates from various stock analysts were for the whole weekend, which included Sunday, July 1st. Finally, AT&T had trouble servicing iPhone activation requests over the weekend, so some significant number of iPhones probably weren’t activated until JULY, which would put it after the quarter AT&T was reporting earnings on.

In its second-quarter earnings report Tuesday morning, AT&T said it activated about 146,000 customers who bought the iPhone during those two days.

This number would not include buyers who purchased the device with the hopes to re-sell it over venues such as Craig’s List and eBay. However, the figure seemed to worry investors who had been primed to expect much larger numbers.

Before Tuesday, analysts had been projecting opening-weekend sales for the iPhone of between 200,000 and 400,000 units.

A few projections reached as high as 500,000 units, with analysts citing long- lines at stores and initial inventory figures for the device.Watch interview with Piper Jaffray analyst predicting initial iPhone sales of 500,000 units.

I guess “reporters” need something else to do now that they’ve beaten to death the whole “the iPhone really costs $2000,” because they cleverly included the cost of a two year service plan. Never mind that most iPhone buyers probably already have cell phone service, which would probably run them $1000 over two years anyway. That leaves us with $500-600 for the iPhone, and $480 for the incremental cost of the data service.

Incompetent Doctor-Terrorists Obey Hippocratic Oath, Do No Harm

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All eight people involved with a series of pathetically bungled “terrorist attacks” in Brittan and Scotland over the last few days were involved with Brittan’s National Health Service, the Guardian newspaper reports.

All eight people arrested have links with the NHS – seven are doctors or medical students and one worked as a laboratory technician. All entered the UK legally.

At least two were doctors, and two others were trainee doctors.

The attacks came in two waves. One involved two cars loaded with gasoline, propane, and nails left in downtown London. The first smoldered, the second had been towed to an impound lot before anyone realized something was amiss. Neither sounded capable of inflicting more than minor property damage, though they could have killed or injured firemen who might have tried to douse the burning vehicles. The next involved crashing a Jeep Cherokee filled with similarly flammable materials into an entrance of Glasgow’s airport and then running around on fire, screaming.

The sheer incompetence of the plot must have Brittons terrified, not at the prospect of more terrorist attacks, but at the possibility that the rest of the staff of the NHS is as overwhelmingly incompetent at medicine as these eight appeared to be at mayhem.

Relatives of one of the suspects also seemed stunned at the staggering incompetence.

Jamil Abdel Kader Asha, Dr Asha’s father said that he learnt about his son’s arrest through the media and claimed his “son is incapable of such acts”.

Yes, clearly incapable.

Buyer Beware: Consumer Reports

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I subscribed to the Consumer Reports website quite a while ago. I think I signed up for a one month subscription because I had a specific need, and then decided to let it ride another month, because I was planning on making another big purchase.

Skip forward a year or two to today. I’m looking for articles on new autos and I realize that I’m probably still on a month to month subscription. I start digging around and realize I’ve probably been paying 2x as much annually as I have to. Nice of a consumer magazine not to let me know that I might want to change my subscription. Even cell phone companies have been known to do better about letting customers know how to save some money.

Next I try to find a way to change my subscription from monthly to annual. I can’t find any way to do it without jumping through the hoop of canceling and resubscribing, so I look for a way to contact a customer service rep. Can’t find a way to do that either.

It just goes to show, ya can’t trust no one.

Update: After a little more digging, I found a way to contact customer service. After I did, they suggested some help topics that might answer my question. One of them was about upgrading from a monthly to an annual subscription. I clicked, followed the instructions and found myself at a dead end. The option to upgrade my subscription was no where to be found on the page they directed me to.

Technorati breaks Technorati

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Technorati was probably the premier blog-focused search site, but today, they’ve launched a major update. This update ropes in other “user created content” like videos and photos into the search results. In the process of doing so, they seem to have all but abandoned blogsearch, or at the very least, broken it severely. If I do a search on technorati, the results page has absolutely no blog posts.

This is so wrong, it must be a bug, but what a lousy bug to have. The new media types are confusing enough.

Dear President Bush

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I read today that you said:

“I believe strongly that politicians in Washington should not be telling generals how to do their job.”

I believe very strongly that you are dead wrong about that.  Politicians in Washington should be telling generals what their job is, and set constraints on what they may and may not do while doing their job.  Technically, the primary responsibility for that rests on one politician, the president, which, if you don’t remember, would be you.  However, since you strongly believe that isn’t your job, I am very happy to see congress is trying to fill in.

I look forward to the day when we have a president who is both willing and capable of fullfilling the responsibilities of the office.