This is an interesting article that accomplishes two things that I thought were impossible: it gives the straight dope on how the Baby Bells are manipulating the field of competition and it praises Michael Powell as a pro-consumer FCC chairman. Amazing.

I'm now wondering if this article isn't flak from the FCC itself.

The Baby Bells cry foul as the competition intensifies.

[[The Bush administration, under fire for its handling of the economy, has quietly killed off a Labor Department program that tracked mass layoffs by U.S. companies.]]

My theory is still that 'there is no spoon.' Meaning that I don't believe there is a recession (despite being unemployed for nearly 2 years) because the growth rates that we're being compared to are completely out of whack for the last 5 years. But this is an interesting data point.

Shooting the messenger: Report on layoffs killed

This summer, millions of businesspeople will be upgraded against their will. And no, we don't mean their flight plans.

Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT)will officially end technical support for Windows 98 and Windows NT 4 on June 30. The financial implications for Microsoft and others could be significant, even in the short term.

Better than any economic stimulus plan Bush has put forth

Um, where is the crime here? I'm absolutely sure that all of those individual investors, daytraders, pension funds, and mutual funds all made money during the boom too. Stock picking chimps were making money. The market economy's rule is buy low and sell high. No one in 1999 was willing to predict that it was all going to crash, so stop whining about it.

This is different from people like Enron, or WCOM, or Tyco, or Adelphia who LIED to shareholders and cashed out anyways. EXDS didn't lie to shareholders. ATHM didn't lie to shareholders.

``The fact that they left huge amounts of money on the table does not suggest they knew something was coming,'' Crystal said.

This guy obviously has some brains. Had I known what was coming, I would've sold every share I owned in everything I owned and retired to an apple orchard in northern Michigan. But obviously, I didn't.

Some execs scored big as company values plunged

more proof that DSL is alive, thriving, and kicking ass.

Survey: DSL growth hits record high - Tech News - CNET.com

] "CHARLESTON, West Virginia (AP) -- Mike Samples doesn't
] like the new dress code at his state job -- so he wore a
] dress to work.
]
] Instead of his usual jeans, ball cap and T-shirt, the
] 32-year-old claims manager in the Workers' Compensation
] Division wore a polka-dot maternity dress he'd borrowed
] from a friend to protest the new guidelines."

Also from West Virginia...

Man sent home for wearing dress

A comparison between Europe and the US in productivity numbers illustrates the fact that even though unemployment is up in the US, productivity is skyrocketing.

What Recession???

I don't know if anyone else has seen this, but it is a fairly humerous spoof on the series of commercials Apple started running a year or so ago. This one is the 'Apple Gamer.'

You can grab it here: (13.8mb .mov) http://www.drunkgamers.com/archives/000305.shtml

or here: (5.5mb zipped .wmv)
http://www.fileplanet.com/files/110000/110494.shtml

--

This is awesome!!!! :)

Apple/Mac Gamer?

The creative force behind Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk and the X-Men filed a $10 million lawsuit Tuesday, charging his old comic book company is cheating him out of millions of dollars in movie profits. Stan Lee, who crafted a menagerie of superpowered heroes with very human flaws, now claims Marvel Entertainment Inc. has tried to shut him out of the “jackpot” success of this summer’s “Spider-Man” movie.

Spider-Man creator sues Marvel

Consumers could be saving money by selecting their premium channels a la carte, but don't expect to hear it from your cable outfit

of course this article forgets to mention that cable cos holy grail is to get every subscriber into a bundled agreement worth $200/home/month.

Big Cable's Package-Pricing Ploy