Link: Whoops: Airlines And Cable TV Score Lower Than The IRS In Customer Satisfaction – Consumerist

A very impressive achievement, indeed.

Link: Users strike back against corporate customer service

“Power to the people! Creative consumers have found plenty of ways to get some personal attention from faceless corporations. No longer content to sit back and abide by the whims of fate (or customer service), empowered consumers have been on a rampage this month; let’s take a look.”

Are arbitration-only clauses in EULAs unenforceable? That’d be an interesting development…

Link: RechargeIT.org

Google’s getting into philanthropy now. I’ve seen some pessimism that the $11M contribution to plug-in hybrids is pretty small and won’t likely do much, but hell, that’s really quite a lot of cash. It’ll be interesting to see how this moves along.

Link: WebIS: Open Letter to ‘Warez’ Sites – OSNews.com

So is the lesson to take away from this that we should only pirate software from large software houses? :)

Link: The Quest for the Car of the Future

“Where will the car of the future come from? It’s unlikely to come from anywhere you’d expect it to. Wired’s money is on the car of the future coming from NASA. ‘New technology that promises to revolutionize the automobile as we know it is emerging from research institutions and startups — and these innovations won’t set you back $100,000 like a Tesla will… One experiment involves small electric motors located in the wheels of the CityCar, a tiny, nimble and practically silent vehicle with wheels that turn 360 degrees, enabling it to slip neatly into tight urban parking spaces. Others are looking to revolutionize the automobile’s engine, not replace it.’”

Link: Study: Inkjet printers are filthy, lying thieves

“According to a recent study, inkjet printers are woefully wrong when they report they’re out of ink, sometimes by as much as 60 percent in some designs. Even highly-efficient designs aren’t close to perfect.”

Study paid for by Epson, but interesting anyway. 

Link: Rumor: Apple and Mercedes to pair up on in-car system

Will Apple soon make a foray into the automobile industry? An iCar? Not quite, but there are rumors of a new partnership with Mercedes.

Read More…

Link: White House E-mail Scandal Widens

Spamicles alerts us to a report just issued (PDF) by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. At least 88 White House officials used Republican National Committee email accounts for government business. The RNC has destroyed at least some of the emails from 51 of those officials. Law requires emails sent by officials to be stored or recorded. There is evidence that White House lawyers and the (current) Attorney General knew of this but did not act to stop it. From the article: “These e-mail accounts were used by White House officials for official purposes, such as communicating with federal agencies about federal appointments and policies… Given the heavy reliance by White House officials on RNC e-mail accounts, the high rank of the White House officials involved, and the large quantity of missing e-mails, the potential violation of the Presidential Records Act may be extensive.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Link: Eclipse Speed Wizards Can Help

This article demonstrates the art of using powerful Eclipse wizardtry that that automates the creation of classes, interfaces, projects, other resources. Eclipse wizards are a great way to define repeatable templates for file types when the built-in template functionality won’t suffice. After working through the information, you will be able to implement your own speed wizards in Eclipse to create enhanced functionality very quickly.