Yeesh, just sortin' through the topics discussed.

-Journalists: The amount off ink a product receives is directly proportional to the amount of revenue received from the advertisement of that product. Simple azat.

-Cars: I am hard pressed to come up with any modern automobile produced within the past 5 years that can be accurately identified as a product of one particular country... Buick's made in China, Volkswagens made in Brazil?

-Lucas Electrics: Are you referring to Lord Lucas, Prince of Darkness or the famous three position Lucas switch - Dim, Flicker and Off?

-FCC, Politics, free market, yada yada yada: The dirty little secret regarding cell phones in the US is the amount of unchecked, new revenue that taxes have generated for local, state, and federal governments. For the past 15 years if a budget couldn't be balanced the simple fix was to assess a new tax on cell phone use. The only thing that seems to be slowing this down is their ability to dream up new names for these taxes. Politicians do not want to kill the goose that lays this golden egg. I believe this is also ******ing the development and adoption of 3G VOIP in the US.
Data only SIMS are not subject to these "cellular communication" taxes. H'mmm.

-Drag racing: You haven't lived until you've gone through the traps @ 154 MPH in under 10 seconds... on a freakin' motorcycle.

-Nokia doesn't understand the free market in the US: What Nokia pro'ly doesn't understand is why we call it a dang free market in the first place. The fix is in. By design, it is the farthest thing from what most would call a "Free Market".

25 years ago no one had a monthly cell phone bill. Now everybody does, even your kids do. The cell phone and services market was the first truly new market that all those "B" School MBA's we churned out in the 70's and 80's could practice their "cradle to the grave" consumerism theories on... And the greed shows.




BTW all: Thanks for keeping this thread by OrangeBox going...
He is apparently a lonely boy and this threads level of interaction has reduced somewhat his tendency to pepper our boards with obnoxious, one line threads designed to provoke a negative response. I realize we can't do this every night so we might have to all chip in and get him one of those blow up dolls or something. You know, just to keep him busy.