zhasper.com

Dear Stilgherrian Sir[1],

What is your take on Vodafone's new prepay plans, with The Interwebs Included? Start of a Jesus-phone-induced mobile internet revolution, or just a marketing ploy?

I'm going to call them tomorrow to clarify if when they say "Surf the real Internet on Your Mobile", they mean the 12c/Mb "real Internet" or the 2.2c/kb "real Internet", as it's not clear. If the former, this makes their caps similar in value to Optus Turbo Cap plans - which, I note are expiring on 30th September - although, that doesn't mean they won't be replaced with identical plans..

[1] I'm optimistic enough to believe you subscribe here already, realistic enough to know that you don't, and enough of a company shill to be certain that either way you'll get a nice email from my employer notifying you that someone took your name in vain.

Bugger all.

Cab drivers got nothing except a slow week.

The Sydney Chamber of Commerce and Industry claims 231m was injected into the Sydney economy - but does not explain where, or who benefited - the same story has convenience store owners saying the week was "absolutely dead. As bad as Apec, even worse", cafe owners saying the only people who came into their cafe "were kids who asked for their water bottles to be filled up".

The article does mention that "cheap trinket" stores saw a significant boost, but I doubt that's going to inject $231m into the economy.

The only other beneficiaries I can think of:

- They had to have eaten something, somewhere. I saw a lot of them standing outside McDonalds, but few going in. In the whole week, I didn't see a single pilgrim eating - you'd think that with 250k+ in town, a few would randomly happen to be eating somewhere near me. I vaguely recall hearing that the State Government was coughing up for catering for at least some parts of the event - possibly just the final show at the racetrack, so presumably some caterer, somewhere, got a bit of money.

- The horseracing industry. Taking all the fluff out of the article, we're left with a huge in jection of cash turning Warwick Farm into a training facility on par with Randwick, and with sufficient cash floating around that they start giving free breakfast to employees. Great use of taxpayer money!

It wasn't shop owners in randwick who benefited - I was there last week and it was a ghost town. It certainly wasn't my doctor, who had to close on Friday - and it certainly wasn't his accountant, whose office was on a street only registered pilgrims were allowed to get onto, so he had to shut down for a few days too.

It wasn't shop owners in the city. It wasn't cafe owners, convienience store owners, or even fast food store owners.

Who the hell got this fabled $231m injection of money? QANTAS and the other airlines who ferried pilgrims in?

Dear Mr Palmer,

A) Either your blog's comment feature is broken, or navigation links to it have been misplaced. Please fix, so that I don't have to continue commenting here.

B) You are a spammer. You admit that you merrily sent spam on its way into around five user's inboxes - spam that you know appears to come from you, spam that you know is definitely unsolicited and unwanted. This makes you a spammer. The fact that you seem to think that sending this spam to users was somehow getting back at either the authors of the spam, or the writers of the spam blocking tools, only makes this worse.

C) You complain that "but the people whose job it is to write, maintain, and run spam software don't [know that source addresses are forged and there's no point replying to them]". If you'd take two seconds to think instead of sending spam and then blogging while enraged, you'd realise that this is patently false. The authors of these tools are trying to ensure that, in the case they've blocked legitimate email, it can be allowed through. This *requires* that they assume the From: address is not forged.

Please stop and think next time before you angry-blog.

Dear SMH,

Please, please stop employing monkeys and start employing people who understand basic rules of English grammar.

No. "Three year olds" is simply plural, there's no possesion being described here - therefore no apostrophe.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised - this is the same publication that talks about "cop cars" on the front page.

Actually, a cluster thereof.

grum: wondering if there is any way i can poop without leaving my desk
trib:@grum too much info, Chris
grum: @trib too much info? no way! this office chair toilet combo could make me rich!
grum: I could sell it to @jasoncalacanis to increase productivity at mahalo!