Really, I have nothing more to say that Kevin Drum didn’t say already:

A company that doesn’t believe anyone would ever try to steal an election shouldn’t be in the voting machine business. Jeebus.

In early 1997, I signed up for an AT&T Wireless plan that offered unlimited minutes, roaming, and long distance — a rare combination at the time, and it cost an arm and a leg. But it was worth it because it allowed me to shut down my Bell Atlantic landline, a day of freedom that ranks up there with Passover in terms of raw liberative power.

So I might be accused of having a bit of a bias against Verizon, based solely on eleven years of bad experiences as one of their customers. The thing is, cell phone companies are like airlines: everyone has their own “avoid at all costs” businesses, and everyone’s is different. Since I’m asked this question frequently in relation to cell phones, I thought I’d share my thoughts.

Verizon Wireless is a separate division in Verizon, and scuttlebutt is that they have their acts together much more than the mothership. This has certainly been true when I’ve had to deal with them for clients; their tech people are knowledgeable and helpful, and don’t seem at all like the types who were unable to install a DSL line six years after the marketing guys started selling them.

The problem is that Verizon is still managed by the same idiots. I’m looking right now at an article from April describing one way in which Verizon continues their “screw the customer” mantra. The phones they sell are routinely crippled — i.e., you couldn’t use it to get files off your computer as the manufacturer designed, so Verizon could sell you ringtones for $1.99. The terms of service for EVDO basically disallow using it for anything that you might want broadband for. No streaming media, no network servers, and God forbid you should share your connection.

The techies at Verizon have told me, sotto voce, that they’re not monitoring for these uses — so if you don’t mind being out of license you can do what you please. But if you rely on it for anything important, it’s awfully disturbing to know you can be shut down at any time.

I was a very happy customer of AT&T Wireless Cingular AT&T (Wireless?) for many years; call them 60% clueful but frequently able to unleash a bis-meshugah clause on their customers. Two years ago, when I ended my relationship with them, it was their policy of charging $300 a month for an unlimited GPRS data plan, when T-Mobile down the block was charging $20. I also own an AT&T branded GSM phone, which I paid full boat for, which they refused to unlock. It’s now my Bluetooth remote control.

Until recently, I was completely gung-ho about T-Mobile, and I still am… mostly. Hands down, they have the best price/performance plan for unlimited Internet: $30/month for GPRS or EDGE and T-Mobile hotspots. On the East Coast, you can’t spit without interfering with a T-Mobile wifi signal, so it’s not hard to get to a connection which blows the doors off EVDO — which in turn is much faster than EDGE. But EDGE is good enough for most of my purposes, which means it is more than likely good enough for yours.

Unfortunately, T-Mobile has recently made their call center a hell on Earth; if I need to make a call about a Mac and a data service, I’m guaranteed to need to tell five different people that I need to talk to “Tier 3 Data Services” before I actually, maybe, get someone who can help me. I spent 90 minutes on hold trying to troubleshoot a client’s Samsung last week, and I still don’t have an answer. I’m not sure why T-Mobile thinks it’s saving money by forcing four people to waste their time with me in between making me listen to their hold music.

I can’t say anything much about Sprint; I wasn’t too impressed with their ability to help me with a Treo 600 (they had the bad computer industry habit of referring me to Palm, who referred me back to Sprint), but I haven’t dealt with them enough to have a strong opinion one way or the other. That being said, if I find myself in the market for EVDO, I’ll be checking them out so I can continue avoiding Verizon like the plague.

So somehow in the last few weeks it’s transpired that I’ve been writing more for Brian Greenberg’s blog than I have here. So, if you’re interested, some threads we have going over there.

Leaning to the Right?, in which we debate whether Brian has become as much of a neoconservative nutjob on the right as I have admittedly been on the left for years.

By the Way, Is Data Mining Unconstitutional?, self-explanatory. You can guess which side of that debate I’m on.

More News Cataloging – NSA Call Lists, about wiretapping, FISA, and the other joys of living in the Bush era of freedom.

EU to Microsoft: Don’t Build Any New Products Ever Again, which I’m including here just to prove that sometimes snipe at each other about things other than politics. This time we’re debating PDF formatted documents. Be sure to wear seat belts for this kind of excitement.

Expect to see quite a few more of these. Make your own here.

This inflation-adjusted chart of the price of video game consoles makes one thing clear to me: I need to call my Dad and thank him again for that Atari 2600.

George W. Bush, 3/17/03:

The Iraqi regime has used diplomacy as a ploy to gain time and advantage. It has uniformly defied Security Council resolutions demanding full disarmament. Over the years, U.N. weapon inspectors have been threatened by Iraqi officials, electronically bugged, and systematically deceived. Peaceful efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime have failed again and again — because we are not dealing with peaceful men.

UN Committee Against Torture, 5/19/06, as summarized by the BBC:

The US should close any secret “war on terror” detention facilities abroad and the Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba, a United Nations report has said. The UN Committee against Torture urged the US to ensure no one was detained in any secret facility.

Full report here (PDF).

Wow. Check out the time-lapse movie, showing this slab growing at one meter per day.

Courtesy of MyDD, current electoral maps by county and state:

Some bitching and MacGyvering from on the road….

Bitching: it is absolutely stunning how many people, when exiting an Amtrak bathroom, do not close the fracking door behind them. If you happen to be sitting near the bathroom, this is a Very Bad Thing.

MacGyvering: in a pinch, toothpaste can be used to adhere a 3×5 card on a bathroom door when you need a makeshift sign. Plus, it’s minty fresh where minty is very useful.

You too can have a career in the exciting financial services industry.

By way of Daring Fireball, a fascinating story in the New Yorker detailing a 419 scam and the mind of the scammed, a psychotherapist.

I dare you. Read this article about light moving backwards that travels faster than the speed of light, and exits a fiber optic cable before it fully enters it, without actually having your brain turn to oatmeal.