A 2008 Forest Gump award entrant

Yes Sirreee these guys were on the ball. A team of crack investigators these –

By letter of inquiry dated October 2, 2007, the Spectrum Enforcement Division of the Commission’s Enforcement Bureau (“Division”) initiated an investigation into whether Garden State is marketing in the United States, an unauthorized radio frequency jamming or blocking device listed as the “GPS Blocker.”1 The Division observed an advertisement for the GPS Blocker jammer device on Garden State’s web site, www.gardenstateinvestigations.com, on September 25, 2007.

In Garden State’s October 9, 2007 response,2 you admit that you imported 15 units of the GPS
Blocker jammer device into the United States and began advertising this device on your web site,
www.gardenstateinvestigations.com, in August 2007. You also admit to the sale of eight of the GPS
Blocker jammer devices to clients within the United States. You state that upon receipt of the Division’s October 2, 2007 letter of inquiry, you ceased all advertisement of the GPS Blocker jammer device. You further state that you destroyed your remaining inventory of seven devices.

Section 302(b) of the Act provides that “[n]o person shall manufacture, import, sell, offer for sale, or ship devices or home electronic equipment and systems, or use devices, which fail to comply with regulations promulgated pursuant to this section.” Section 2.803(a)(1) of the commission’s implementing regulations …

Imagine, importing an illegal cell blocker. The irony is the company is in the investigation industry. You would think that they might just pick up a phone a call their attorney. Alas. Snicker, snicker.

FCC order.

Just a reminder for all you users of bag phones, wireless alarms and OnStar. Your access will cease February 18th of this year. Specifically you OnStar users with older model cars might want to contact your dealer to see if there is a digital retrofit for your vehicle. You don’t want to need it and not have it.

Oh and those bag phones? Actually still have one in a closet somewhere but haven’t used it in years. But a saving grace with them is their range due to their higher power. Out on a ranch that could be the difference between a call or not. Sigh….

FCC notice here.

Well return to the scene of the crime — ETF’s. A certification has been issued by the arbitrator that the conditions for a class action suit have been met. And the result? Kaching — about $1B in cash payouts if Verizon Wireless loses. –

An arbitrator has certified a huge class action against Verizon Wireless that potentially could cost the No. 2 mobile phone carrier close to $1 billion in refunds of early termination fees.

“I find the claimants have complied with the criteria for class certification,” wrote Eugene I. Farber, a former federal judge and senior arbitrator-mediator for the American Arbitration Association in White Plains, N.Y. “My decision is also motivated by my conclusion that as a matter of equity and fairness, millions of class members are entitled to adjudication of the central common questions of fact or law in this arbitration related to whether the $175 early termination fee imposed by respondents Cellco Partnership d/b/a Verizon Wireless … is based upon an unenforceable liquidated damage clause.”

A trial date has not been set, but could begin by the middle or latter part of this year.

“This ruling is a tremendous victory for Verizon Wireless subscribers,” said Scott Bursor, counsel for the plaintiffs. “After four years of extremely hard-fought litigation in several courts and in arbitration, this ruling ensures that Verizon customers who have been charged illegal early termination fees will have an opportunity to prove their claims on a class-wide basis and to seek a refund of nearly a billion dollars worth of illegal charges.”

Bursor said Farber’s 35-page ruling to certify the class action has historical significance. “It is the largest class ever certified in arbitration, with approximately 70 million members of the subscriber class,” he said. “It is also the largest class ever certified on a contested motion in any type of forum, litigation or arbitration.”

Not very good for Verizon. Generally a arbitration is in favor of the payor. [dastardly in itself.] The timing could not be worse. In the middle of a auction and the company will now have to file a updated 10Q to reflect a $1B charge off on their books.

But there is another issue. Based on the article there is a move afoot in Congress to push for prorated ETF’s. That might sound fair. But actually it is not fair at all! If someone like a Verizon modifies a contract term, say text rates, then by all accounts the other side of the contract (the customer) has all rights to get out of the contract 100% and avoid the ETF totally. Hence this is not fair, that just another source of income for the carrier.

Linky.

While the UK’s politicians are in a bit of a panic over losing ground against other nations the the world broadband race, many Brits are getting what most Yanks only dream about.

Broadband ISP Virgin Media has announced its plans for upgrading customers’ broadband systems. Beginning late February customers with a 4Mbit/s service on Virgin Media’s ‘L’ tier package will be upgraded free to a 10Mbit/s service. Completion is expected by late summer.

Virgin Media have also said it will be extending its top-of-the-range 50Mbit/s service, offering it to customers who currently have a 20Mbit/s connection. (from NeoWin)

Hey AT&T, Qwest, Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon DSL, Cablevision, Cox and the rest: You should be very ashamed. In the pre-broadband era, you were the envy of the world.

For those in the Open Source movement this might be a very significant event. Nokia is buying TrollTech for ~$150m. Aaaaah, who is TrollTech? If you are a Linux user and use KDE as your desktop GUI then you are using a QT library licensed by TrollTech. –

Nokia is to buy Trolltech, the company whose Linux-based Qt application-development framework is at the core of many PC and mobile applications.

On Monday the companies announced that Nokia was offering 16 Norwegian Kroner per Trolltech share in cash, making the total value of the deal around NOK844m (£78m). The deal has been unanimously approved by Trolltech’s board of directors, and holders representing around two-thirds of Trolltech’s shares and votes have also accepted the offer in advance.

Qt forms the basis of many well-known desktop applications, such as Google Earth, Opera and Skype. Qt is used to develop graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and is the main GUI toolkit for the KDE Linux project, one of the two main desktop environments for the open-source operating system — the other being Gnome. Qt’s derivative, Qtopia — also a Trolltech product — is already used in millions of consumer-level mobile phones, notably in Asia and through the manufacturer Motorola.

Dr Kai Öistämö, the head of Nokia’s devices unit, said in a press conference on Monday that the Finnish manufacturer would allow Trolltech to “continue in its current organisation form with full operational alignment” after the deal closes — a development expected to occur in the second quarter of this year. Nokia already uses Qt in its Nokia PC Suite application to allow mobile handsets to integrate with Windows PCs.

Probably half the OS distros use KDE as a desktop GUI. TrollTech has traditionally not charged $$ for use of the Qt libraries if it is intended for non commercial use. With the buyout the licensing could change. The question is why would a cell phone maker want with TrollTech? the Qt/KDE environment is not lightweight so not very suitable for cell devices. Something else is driving this.

Linky.

Another duopoloy follies special ladies and gentlemen. This time on State charges on a customer who does not reside in the State. But I will let the lawyer-customer tell the tale. –

Every now and again, I get a reminder of why I want to be a plaintiff’s lawyer. This morning, my mother called to let me know she’s canceling our Sprint cell phone plan. We’re on a family plan with 4 lines. We’ve been customers for a little over seven years, and have never had any disputes or late payments. But last month, my parents happened to look through their Sprint bill and discovered something interesting. For the last 3 and a half years, Sprint has been charging us about $6 bucks a month in Texas state and local taxes. The problem is that none of us have lived in Texas for 3 and a half years… and Sprint has also been charging Nevada state and and local taxes. Obviously, that’s about $250.00 that we shouldn’t have paid Sprint.

Needless to say, we disputed that with Sprint and asked for a credit. It’s taken about a week of telephone tag, but we finally heard back from Sprint. They’re only willing to refund the past three month’s worth of illegal taxes because it took so long for my parents to discover their error. That’s just “their policy.”

Why is it that it’s OK for a big corporation to have a policy of ripping off consumers, but it’s horrible for consumers to rip off big corporations? What do you think would happen if we underpaid Sprint $6 bucks a month for three years, and when caught told Sprint that we’d only refund them three month’s worth because it took them so long to catch our error? I imagine they’d use the oppressive credit reporting system to blackmail us into paying.

Now, to be honest the customer should have caught this sooner. But the fact is they are due the refund on the charges. Breaking the law and proper restitution overcomes ‘policy’ every time. Fact Sprint ought to do a data mining exercise very quickly. I did mention this guy is a LAWYER? Class action would be a delicious recourse for this family.

Linky.

Comcast must be taking notes from BoA circa 1985. If you wish to pay your Comcast bill by phone talking to a live operator it will cost you. So, Comcast being rated ‘F’ now wants to charge you more –

Now The Oregonian reports that Comcast, in addition to the yearly rate hike, has started charging customers $3.99 extra to pay their bill over the phone through a live operator. Humans will still help you with other issues for free. You can also, of course, still pay your bill for free if you’re willing to use the company’s automated systems:

Theressa Davis, a Comcast spokeswoman, pointed out there are still several ways folks can pay bills for free. Customers can pay online, visit the company's service centers throughout the city or mail bills. They also can inquire about their bills and -- if they ask -- be transferred to the computerized operator before they're be billed for the call.

Comcast isn’t alone in the practice of charging extra for human contact. We know that Time Warner Cable and Charter also charge extra to pay a live person at a payment center in many markets. Keep in mind that many companies won’t take your payment in person at all. Can we expect a future where you have to pay extra for technical support that doesn’t consist of a robot reading a first level support script?

Great source of income if you can get it I guess. But it baffles me as to why? Oh my bad, they would rather just disconnect you then have you pay the outrageous disconnect fee. So see the $4 is really a feature!

Linky.

My biggest problem with the large proliferation of messaging and VOIP applications is that in order to communicate with everyone on their favorite, I have an ever increasing number of resource hogs running. Ribbit has promised to conquer the communication apps bloat with an new product called Amphibian. Amphibian will come bundled with Ribbit’s VOIP service, but the added utility of communication with anyone via a single program makes it attractive enough to try.

Let’s start with the communications part. Amphibian is a Web-based phone that acts as a command center for all of your incoming and outgoing calls, no matter what number people use. It effectively gives you a universal phone number. Whether someone calls your home, office, or cell phone, or even rings you on Skype, Google Talk, or MSN Messenger, you can answer all the calls on Amphibian or route them to wherever is most convenient for you. “The codename is Amphibian,” explains Crick, “because it lives equally well outside the Web as inside the Web.” During a live demo, Ted called Crick’s cell phone, and Crick answered it on Amphibian. In the middle of the call, he transferred it back to his cell, which rang, and he picked up the conversation where he left off. (from Tech Crunch)

Amphibian is supposed to release in a few months. Assuming that it does, we’ll inform you when it’s up, and maybe even do a review when we’ve tried it.

The Boss points to a very neat way to virutalize your existence in the Cloud in the post below. Let me point you to another way as well. Your choice would probably be personal preference.

The cornerstone of this would be say gOS on a USB fob with two other applications — Firefox with Google Docs Bar and Google Gears. This would give you a similiar experience with one added benefit. The Google Docs Bar encrypts your content on the fly.

Downsides? Well you do have to sync your content some time to assure consistency. And of course your experience is in direct proportion to your bandwidth. Either way though is a perfect fit for these new sub $200 machines that are crawling out of the woodwork. Lightweight OS, apps constrained to webified tools and storage in the Network. With on demand encrypt/decrypt the reason not to shrinks even further.

Here’s an interesting little stack of open source that has been around for a while, but has just been discovered by yours truly. Designed to work on any storage device, it’s right at home on a USB memory dongle. Portable Apps may very well solve a big problem of mine since work at several computers through the course of and am always installing as updating apps and moving data between. It’s also intriguing that I could carry a dongle instead of a laptop when I travel, assuming i can find a library or stay in a hotel with public computers.

The free, open source, dongle friendly, PortableApps.com Suite™ is a collection of portable apps including a web browser, email client, office suite, calendar/scheduler, instant messaging client, antivirus, sudoku game, backup utility and integrated menu, all preconfigured to work portably. Just drop it on your portable device and you’re ready to go.

Currently Portable Apps is a Windows only product, but it’s open source, so versions for other OS’s are likely to evolve.

Where does this fit on the Third Pipe? Making your your work environment as well as data portable and device independent is essential in the Third Pipe world.