Internet neutrality, the fun continues

The FCC has begun the process of making 'net neutrality a requirement for Internet providers, something I agree with wholeheartedly. You would think that preserving the established, expected rights of consumers (read: voters and taxpayers) would be something your average elected official would be all over... which means John McCain is something other than average. As soon as the FCC started the gears turning, he's attempting to bring the process to a halt, introducing a bill to prevent the FCC from pursuing the issue (link). My favorite part... he has the gall to call this bill the Internet Freedom Act (that's freedom for the Internet providers, not you, citizen).

Oh well, I can at least find a little glimmer of hope... the various reactions to this act detailed in the article I linked to fall mostly where you would expect (rights groups and Democrats against, corporate executives and "free-market think tanks" against), but there's one Republican senator listed on the consumer-rights side. It's not much, but if one senator can see past the campaign contributions to take the side of the end user, maybe enough will to shut this stupidity down.

Marketing and honesty (as if!)

I've seen a slew of ads on TV lately from various grocery companies, each to the tune of "in these tough times, we're going to be nice guys and lower our prices for you." Funny how none of them are put forth as "sure, we've been gouging you for months/years now, but we decided that we couldn't survive doing that anymore, so we're dropping prices a little to try and suck you back in to our stores." Gotta love spin... why just say "new lower prices" when you can try to sell it as something you're doing out of the goodness of your corporate heart?

The fate of bad pizza

I was driving around town yesterday, and found myself driving north on Division, something to be avoided if you want to get where you're going in a timely fasion, when I saw a sign up ahead for Eatza Pizza. It's a chain (apparently nationwide, scarily) that has Spokane written all over it... an inexpensive, all-you-can-eat pizza buffet. I tried it once myself, at a location out in the Valley... once. Suffice it to say that, in my humble opinion, it was the worst pizza I have ever had the opportunity to eat, bland and bready... heck, the cheapest supermarket freezer pizzas are a step up.

I knew the Valley location had closed some time back, so I was curious as to how this site was holding up... and, since traffic was stop-and-go, I chanced a glance, figuring I'd see an empty storefront or maybe a few cars in the parking lot. What I saw was a lot scraped clean, down to the dirt, with the signpost still in place at the street. I'm sure it was just done for tax purposes by the property owners... but I can't help but imagine the owners deciding that the site was irrevocably tainted by the bad pizza, razing the structure and parking lot to the ground, and leaving the sign behind as a warning to other restaurateurs of the fate awaiting bad food.