and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

Broadband usage in U.S. up 42% in 2003 over 2002

No real surprise there as DSL has been coming down in price like crazy and $29.95 seems like the standard lately - which is about what we used to pay for services such as AOL dial-up back in the early and mid 90's.. The proof is in the pudding. There are the superusers, there are the regularusers and there are the dinosaurs. Superusers will either pay the cost to be the forerunners of technology or they will DIY homebake their own versions of new technology. Regularusers are not early-adopters but they do want their technology.. it just takes time. Dinosaurs are out of the picture, essentially your younger cousins waiting for hand-me-downs that are 5 years out of style.. It's just too bad that technology doesn't work like fashion, it never comes back in style.

Regularusers are the bulk of the population and they have their price point.. apparently it's about $30 a month for internet service. Or about $50 a month for cellphone service.. It's no surprise that everyone is hoping on the broad-band-wagon now that it is "affordable".

Realistic Human Graphics Look Creepy

@ Slate: When an android, such as R2-D2 or C-3PO, barely looks human, we cut it a lot of slack. It seems cute. We don't care that it's only 50 percent humanlike. But when a robot becomes 99 percent lifelike—so close that it's almost real—we focus on the missing 1 percent. We notice the slightly slack skin, the absence of a truly human glitter in the eyes. The once-cute robot now looks like an animated corpse.

Is this news? Is this surprising? Sometimes research seems to ignore the obvious just so they can go ahead and prove it anyway. This is exactly what Kubrick was playing with in the movie A.I. which, if you haven't seen it, is about a family who gets a small "boy" robot whose likeness to a real boy is uncanny, yet not quite right.

Cell Phone Customer Service Ranked Next to Last

@ Slashdot: A recent report shows that cell phone companies are the second lowest ranked industry in terms of customer service, just above cable companies. Also, they are second only to car dealers in number complaints to Better Business Bureaus

Ahhh the very reason I do not own a cell phone.. or pay for my cable.. or buy cars from dealerships. It's not through any concious choice to avoid these things, I just look and I do not see quality service. I do not see a benefit/cost ratio greater than one. In fact, I'm not sure it's greater than 1/2. Here in Maine cellphone reception is decent in Portland, our most populated city (at ~65,000) but wander as little as 10 minutes north and you'll find a dead zone. Farther north towards the state's capitol Augusta you can find decent reception but don't count on much if you wander outside the Interstate-95 corridor... and they want me to pay the same amount of money as someone in L.A. for my service? What the? Who? They should be cutting me some slack while I put up with their mediocre networks. They should be susidizing my plan with money from strong markets so that they can truly build a "nation-wide network". And as far as cable companies go, back when I paid for cable I had service problems somewhere in the range of once a month - always after hours when you couldn't reach tech support if your life depended on it (and sometimes, when you're home alone, bored, on a Sunday evening and you're missing "Curb Your Enthusiasm", your life really does depend on it). When my old roommate moved out and cancelled the service (since it was in his name) the cable company forgot to turn it off. Ever since then, I have not had one single problem with my cable reception.. it's been almost 1.5 years. Thanks, Time-Warner!