I’ve been watching with interest the ongoing power generation problems in California. It looks like the California PUC is going to approve a rate hike that will raise the average family electric bill by about 10%. The problems have come as a result of an ill-conceived deregulation plan which, ironically enough, was supposed to lead to lower prices through competition. Unfortunately, the prices charged to consumer and power plant construction are still heavily regulated, so the anticipated competition was completely stifled, and the guys in the middle (the power companies) got completely pinched after they sold off all their existing power plants. I find it all fascinating.
Steve Levy talks about the next generation of GUIs -- Mac OS X, Microsoft .NET, and Eazel’s Nautilus. In case you didn’t know it, both .NET and Nautilus are being designed by former Apple employees.
Philip Morris spent $60 million on charity in 1999. They spent $108 million advertising about that charity spending. Think about that.
Pyra is looking for donations for new servers to make Blogger more speedy. My first thought when reading that was that if they need donations to buy servers, how are they making their payroll? Hopefully things aren’t as rocky as they seem, and Pyra will see their mission fulfilled.