Listics

I booked a flight and a hotel through Travelocity.   I had to cancel the trip.  I’m prepared for the penalty associated with re-booking the ticket for another flight another day.  What I hadn’t counted on was the over twenty minutes on hold (so far) that I would experience trying to cancel the hotel reservation through Travelocity.  “Steve,” a nice enough young man from India I believe, took my information as we battled static on the circuit, my own poor hearing and his distinctive pronunciation.  Eventually we had worked through to the point where Steve had to transfer me to the Package desk.  Since then, I’ve been on hold with the most amazing prattle going on in the background.  It’s as if they think I’ll listen to the twenty-five minutes of information they’ve dispensed so far and obviate my need for an agent.

Not.

I just want to cancel the hotel room and pay their absurd $10 fee for the privilege.

No more Travelocity for anything besides cars and planes.  Buh-bye Travelocity!

Thirty minutes now, and counting…

Technorati Tags: buh-bye, Travelocity sucks

The speculation about a Yahoo/Microsoft merger is delicious. Scott Rosenberg, comparing the deal with the Time Warner/AOL buy-out before the Clinton speculative bubble burst, says:

Acquisitions at this scale virtually never lead to useful combinations, strategic synergies, or anything else of use. They are financial engineering. What’s happening with this one is pretty simple: Microsoft and Yahoo have both found themselves at dead ends, but they both have formidable assets, and their leaderships are acting out of desperation.

I’m sure I’m not the only one to disagree with Scott on this call. First, Yahoo has something that AOL couldn’t hope for, a cozy relationship with AT&T. Second, the association of the top browser maker and the default portal vendor for everyone who buys consumer broadband from Mummy Bell will create a synergy that will assure a continuing upslope on the growth curve for the combination. Individually, each company should be worried about what’s next. Together they can plan what’s next for a huge number of people who access the web. Rosenberg predicts,

If Microsoft acquires Yahoo, the companies’ stock will initially prosper and the media will cheer on a new round of the War on Google. But seven years from now Yahoo will be as much of a shell as AOL is today.

Not a very bold prediction when you look at the seven year horizon… hell, in seven years the Iraq war could even be over. Be that as it may, I predict that if the combination occurs now then in seven years it will be a juggernaut worth twice as much as it is today. It will attract digital-media talent like a magnet, and it will be a countervailing market force to Google in some areas and Google’s best customer in others. And the fiber under Interstate 5 from San Jose through Portland to Seattle with the Yottabyte connector under I84 from the Google server farms on the Columbia will cram so many photons down the pipe that they practically melt the roadways.

My big hope is that Google buys Amazon and then with the good offices of the DRM consortium all of us Internet users can throw away the mice, throw away the keyboards, hang a 60 inch HDTV screen on the walls, crawl into our orange sofas and (equipped perhaps with a drool-cup)  just sit there and let Googlezon, Microhoo, and Rupert Murdoch manage all our retail and information needs.

Procedurally the best hope we have of moving away from all the “common ground” rhetoric and getting on with finding a satisfactory solution.

Sign the Filibuster for Peace petition here.

We the undersigned call on each and every United States Senator to participate in a filibuster to end the war in Iraq. It only takes 41 votes to sustain a filibuster and prevent funding requests from the Bush administration from coming to debate or a vote. The Bush administration would then have to return with a funding request that is satisfactory to the 41. That bill should include funds to bring all U.S. forces home quickly and safely but no money to prosecute the war in Iraq. Pro-war Senators used this tactic twice in February to stop non-binding resolutions condemning the so-called “surge.” If pro-war Senators can use this tactic, then anti-war Senators should use it also. Right now the filibuster is the only way to end the war in a veto-proof fashion. We call upon each and every Senator to join a filibuster effort to end the loss of life and save our country.

What I like about this solution is this: It puts the onus on Bush to come up with a war funding bill that is satisfactory to the minority of peace committed senators. No compromise is necessary. When a satisfactory bill appears, it can be voted up or down.

Technorati Tags: no common ground with neocons, crush imperialism before imperialism crushes you, filibuster for peace