Customer service workers at Amazon.com are looking to unionize in order to fight what they consider to be poor working conditions. I have a problem with some unions in particular, but I think that organized labor is a good thing overall. Amazon.com argues that the workers don’t need a union, which pretty much guarantees that they do.
I was looking forward to How the Grinch Stole Christmas, but I think I’ll wait for it to appear on HBO after listening to Tom Shales absolutely savage the movie on NPR this morning. It’s actually gotten a number of good reviews, but I’m willing to bet that Shales is right. I find it very difficult to believe that the original cartoon version could be improved upon.
I absolutely love the Daily Howler.
ICANN has agreeed to allow registrations in 7 new top level domains (out of 44 proposed TLDs). In my opinion, the choices are pretty lame. They put off a tough fight over the .web TLD by not accepting anyone’s bid to open it. In a typical big business versus the little guy fight, a consortium of sleazy companies operating under the moronic name Afilias tried to obtain .web, even though one of the other bidders, Image Online, has been registering domains in .web for the past few years without the support of ICANN, Network Solutions, or really anyone else. The money guys at Afilias did manage to snag .info. They’ll be allowing an early land rush for trademark holders before they open up the domain registry to the public.
Yahoo is considering charging its users for some services (the article doesn’t mention which ones, probably because Yahoo didn’t tell them). This would force me to make a tough decision. I use Yahoo Address Book and Messenger extensively, and Yahoo Calendar to a lesser extent. Would I be willing to pay for them? Probably, if the price were right. I use them because I can easily access my data from home or work or vacation, not because they’re free.
Anyone messed around with OpenCOLA? It’s one of those utopian, pie in the sky concepts that venture capitalists dump money into even though chances are it will never really work at all. I’m not being cynical – when these sorts of projects do work out, they change the world. I find them fascinating.
(Speculation about the outcome of the Presidential election has been removed in light of new developments.)
Jordan K. Hubbard’s review of Mac OS X is the one I’ve been waiting for.