• Angel or Devil?

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    Brad Anderson, CEO of Best Buy doesn’t want you shopping in his stores if you’re one of the 20% of his customers he refers to as “devils”

    Best Buy’s angels are customers who boost profits at the consumer-electronics giant by snapping up high-definition televisions, portable electronics, and newly released DVDs without waiting for markdowns or rebates.

    Devils are its worst customers. They buy products, apply for rebates, return the purchases, then buy them back at returned-merchandise discounts. They load up on “loss leaders,” severely discounted merchandise designed to boost store traffic, then flip the goods at a profit on eBay. They slap down rock-bottom price quotes from Web sites and demand that Best Buy make good on its lowest-price pledge.”

    I don’t know… I just think it’s dangerous to be publicly referring to 20% of your customer base as “devils” … some folks just might start taking that shit personal.

  • Happy 1.0!!

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    Mozilla Firefox 1.0 is here! If you haven’t done it yet, get your ass over to mozilla and download the shit out of that browser!

  • Redrawing America

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    Since the election, many people have been suggesting a redrawing of the American-Canadian border where blue states would be annexed by Canada. Some favourites:

    United States of Canada and Jesusland

    Canada 2.0

    I could get behind a plan like this. The Toronto Sun thinks so too:

    …if a signifcant number of Americans should choose to go a different route — a northern route — we’d be hard pressed to say no.

    And if such great states as New York, California, Washington, Pennsylvania and Hawaii actually wanted to become Canadian provinces, well, who are we to argue?

    Yesterday, Howard Gensler of the Philadelphia Daily News brilliantly argued exactly that, in an eloquent call for the so-called “blue states” — i.e., all those that backed Democrat John Kerry — to join Canada.

    Yes, join Canada — not annex us. We’d annex them. The blue states are all contiguous to our border and/or to one another, so the new border could be smoothly drawn.

    The blue-staters would gain acceptance for their more liberal views here in the land of free health care and soon-to-be-legal gay marriage and marijuana. And we’d get New York City, Los Angeles, California wine country, a host of world-class cultural institutions and a raft of great sports teams (the Grey Cup would never be the same).

    Again, to be clear, this is not an anti-American thing. This idea comes from an American, from Philadelphia, the birthplace of America, for crying out loud.

    We would remind the would-be immigrants, though, that they’d also better be prepared to live with higher taxes, gun control, bilingualism and no Fox News.

    Then again, as Kerry supporters, they probably think those are all good things. And hey, with an additional 50-odd million people, our economy can only get better. Not to mention our military and our business sector.

    We’d have freer movement of softwood lumber and cattle, and Toronto could trash in Michigan without worrying about the border closing. And we’d be a superpower!

    We’d miss our friends in the American South, of course, and Florida — but we’d still visit as always.

    After our vacation in the province of Hawaii, of course.

    Honestly, with an offer like that, how could we refuse?

    Indeed, how could we?

  • Be a Geek

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    Mozilla is getting ready for its Firefox 1.0 release, and as they have done in the past for 1.0 releases, they’ve put out a call to organize a worldwide party. I’ve thrown my name in to organize the Ottawa party, tentatively scheduled for November 20th at Patty Bolands. The Firefox team is expecting a release that weekend, but if it gets delayed, the party will too. Come on out and indulge your geekiness and help spread the good word!

  • The Register: Music sales rise despite RIAA’s best efforts

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    While most companies would brag about a rise in profits, the music labels seem to agonize over the recent upturn. One thing is for sure, suing more teenagers and grandmothers won’t help their cause.

    “The upshot of this is that consumers are meant to ignore higher sales of cheap CDs, a sour overall economy for the last three years, lawsuits against consumers, a price-fixing scandal, a Harvard study that shows no line between file-trading and lower sales and believe that piracy is driving a slowdown in overall music sales. Makes perfect sense. No wonder the RIAA is agonizing over increased recent revenue.”

  • Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004

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    Hunter S. Thompson is the greatest: Four more years of George Bush will be like four more years of syphilis. Only a fool or a sucker would vote for a dangerous loser like bush. He hates everything we stand for, and he knows we will vote against him in November.

    and, “Did you see Bush on TV, trying to debate? Jesus, he talked like a donkey with no brains at all. The tide turned early, in Coral Gables, when Bush went belly up less than halfway through his first bout with Kerry, who hammered poor George into jelly. It was pitiful. . . . I almost felt sorry for him, until I heard someone call him “Mister President,” and then I felt ashamed.”

    Hunter has lots to say in this long but fun, funny, poignant article.