I’M READING AS FAST AS I CAN (OCTOBER 2011 EDITION)

I read books. I will prove it now.

JUST FINISHED

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

I’m generally not that enthralled with steampunk as a sub-genre, but the word-of-mouth on Boneshaker – it’s steampunk with zombies set in 1880s Seattle! – was enough to convince me to try it. The premise is intriguing – an inventor creates a large drill that goes amok, wrecks downtown Seattle and releases a gas that turns people into the walking dead, forcing the city to be evacuated and walled off. That’s the background for the search-and-rescue tale that follows, with Briar Wilkes forced to enter the city to find her wayward teenage son. It’s slow in places, but overall it’s a good tale, and Priest tells it reasonably well. And Briar Wilkes is one of the better heroines I’ve read for awhile (great name, too). If nothing else, I’m impressed enough that I’ll likely be reading Priest again.

JUST STARTED

The Great Crash 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith

The classic account of the 1929 stock market crash, which isn’t something I’d normally read, but given current events, it just seems like some historical perspective is in order. Granted, that’s true regardless of current events. Still …

( RECENTLY: Heinlein! Bradbury! Stark! Keene! )

Hello sailor,

This is dF

THIS IS NOT A TELEMARKETING CALL (MOBILE EDITION)

ITEM: Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE) and 
Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY) introduce the Mobile Informational Call Act of 2011, which would legalize robo-calls to mobile phones.

And like a lot of people, my first thought was: Are you f***ing kidding me?

After digging around a little for details, my informed opinion is: Are you f***ing kidding me?

If yr wondering how even a Congressman could think this would be even remotely a good or beneficial idea, the official rationale is that companies like financial institutions, air transporters, utility companies, loan servicing organizations and debt collection agencies (all of which support the bill [PDF]) can have an easier way to convey “critical information” to their customers, such as flight cancellations, data breaches, account changes, or fraud alerts.

Or, presumably, inform you about cheap insurance or urge you to support Michele Bachmann for president.

Under the current law, they can only do in that an automated fashion via fixed-line phones. If they want to reach you by mobile, they have to dial manually, as the FTC banned robo-calls to mobiles two years ago. The new law would basically put mobile under the same relaxed rules as fixed-line phones, since the main reason for banning robo-calls to mobiles was that mobile operators charged people for every incoming call. Now that most people have flat-rate plans – and less people have fixed-line phones – that’s less of an issue.

So, to sum up, the benefit to businesses is that they can autodial you at all hours.

The benefit to consumers is that they get to field lots of telemarketing robo-calls no matter where they are.

Who could possibly object to that?

It’s only fair to mention that mobile phones will still be covered under telemarketing regulations like the Do Not Call registry. Which is good because it’s not like telemarketers haven’t found any loopholes to get around that and call you anyway.

Cheers for that, Congressmen.

Do not call,

This is dF