Shack Attack

Text Messages are Disgustingly Overpriced

From CNN Money:

The messages are such a tiny piece of data that they cost carriers only about one-third of a cent to deliver, according to computer scientist Srinivasan Keshav, who testified before U.S. senators on the issue last summer.

But on a pay-per-text plan, the 160-character messages typically cost 20 cents outgoing and 10 cents incoming. That's a markup of as much as 6,500%. OMG!

"It's pretty much pure profit," Keshav says. "Carriers would argue they put that money toward investing in new technology."

Even if customers sign up for an unlimited texting plan for, say, $10 a month, carriers are still cashing in considering that their overhead is basically $0. That's a lot to pay for a few LOLs.

I can stream all the video I want on my iPhone, using gigabytes of bandwidth a month, but I have to pay extra if I want to send a few text characters to somebody. This is way backwards. The report covers other ripoffs, too, but unlike brand-name drugs, restaurant wine, and movie popcorn, there's not really a cheaper alternative to texting.

I miss Japan, where MMS was all-you-can-send and voice minutes were hideously expensive. Keeping in touch with people was easy, and public spaces were a lot less irritating.

No One Knows Why Gay Marriage is Bad

Hilarious-if-it-wasn't-so-sad transcript from the Prop 8 court challenge:

THE COURT: All right. Let me throw in a question here. Assume I agree with you that the state's interest in marriage is essentially procreative, as you've put it.
MR. COOPER: Yes, your Honor.
THE COURT: Assume that I agree with that. How does permitting same-sex marriages impair or adversely affect that interest?
...
MR. COOPER: Obviously, my submission here to you is rational-basis standard applies. And so, yes, my here are premised upon -- 
THE COURT: I've given you one assumption. Give me one, for purposes of argument. And that is that this is not rational basis review; this is intermediate scrutiny.
MR. COOPER: Well, then, your Honor, I'm going to be coming back to you with arguments.
THE COURT: Now we're having a dialogue here. Now assume that you have to have established that this is the minimally effective means of imposing this discrimination between same-sex marriages and opposite-sex marriages. So what is the harm to the procreative purpose or function of marriage that you outline of permitting same-sex marriages?
MR. COOPER: Your Honor, even under a compelling-state-interest standard, I would submit to the Court that the state's interests in channeling procreative activity into enduring relationships would be vital, and would satisfy a compelling-interest standard. And I would also submit to the Court that there would be no reasonable available way for -- for that purpose to be fulfilled and advanced, other than the way the state has chosen -- every state has chosen, with five exceptions, and California has chosen through Proposition 8. And, your Honor, that gets to the -- to the fundamental, I think, theoretical disagreement that I mentioned earlier between the Plaintiffs and the Defendant-Intervenors here. They say that it's not enough, as you were suggesting here, for opposite-sex unions to further and advance these vital state interests; that we have to prove, in addition to that, that including same-sex unions into the definition of marriage would actually harm those purposes and interests. That is not the Equal Protection construct, your Honor.
THE COURT: I'm asking you to tell me how it would harm opposite-sex marriages.
MR COOPER: All right.
COURT: All right. Let's play on the same playing field for once. Okay.
MR COOPER: Your Honor, my answer is: I don't know.

(via BoingBoing)

Repealing DADT is a Social Experiment...Like Desegregation Was

The Economist brutally fisks Bill Kristol's attack on the repealing of Don't Ask, Don't Tell:

The advocates of repeal say, it’s a matter of basic rights. No, it’s not. Leave aside the fact that there are difficult and unresolved questions of how our society should deal in various areas of public policy with questions of sexual orientation. There is no basic right to serve in the military. That’s why forms of discrimination we would ban in civilian life are permitted: Women have less opportunity to fight than men. The disabled are discriminated against, as are the short, the near-sighted, and the old.

Except homosexuality is not a disability. In the other categories Mr Kristol mentions, people are discriminated against because they have been deemed physically unfit to perform tasks necessary to be a soldier. Being gay doesn't make one less able to perform as a soldier, unless we assume that everyone around them is disruptively homophobic. Luckily, though, Mr Kristol is not representative of the average military man.

Advocates of repeal will say sexual orientation is irrelevant to military performance in a way these attributes are not. But this is not clearly true given the peculiar characteristics of military service.

What "attributes"? What "peculiar characteristics"? Perhaps military service demands that all sexism be directed towards women?

We’ll hear a lot, as the debate moves forward, about gay Arabic translators being discharged from military service.

What?! Our one Arabic translator may also be gay? Good lord. Maybe God is on their side…

A decision to separate from the military someone who is sitting in an office in Northern Virginia may look silly. But the Obama Defense Department is entirely free to ensure that those men and women continue to use their skills to serve their country in those same offices as civilians.

Wait, so they'd be given separate jobs, but equal ones. Have I got that right?

(Full article)