Category Archives: Consumer Activism

How We Fail: Middle America’s Inability to Gauge Wealth

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We’re taught to think of wealth in absolute terms. But doing so prevents us from understanding the relative difference in the costs of living between ourselves and the fantastically over compensated.

Instead, we’ve got to think of wealth in relative terms.

You know what stuff costs you relative to your salary. What you don’t know is what stuff would cost you if you earned double (half), triple (1/3), ten times (10%), one hundred times (1%) your current salary.

So, I did the math for you.

If you earn $50,000 a year, gas costs you $4 a gallon. If you earn $5 million a year, gas costs just 4 cents a gallon. Relatively speaking, why would the rich care if it goes up a dollar a gallon. To the wealthy, that’s only a penny more.

That Harley you want? $20k. A $5M man pays just $200.

That $400,000 dream house you’re looking at? Super affordable at $40,000.

Why’d I pick $5M to compare? Because the CEOs of 171 publicly traded companies all earn at least $5M a year in 2010.

The best-compensated CEO earned $84.5M. Relative to someone earning $50,000 a year, he pays 2/10ths of one cent per gallon of gas. This guy will only start to feel your pain when gas reaches $2000/gallon! But of course, he’s an insider sitting on boards of directors and leveraging his obscene salary to build more, so his wealth has ballooned beyond imagination long before that’s happened. Meanwhile, you’re still waiting on that cost of living adjustment that adds $85/month to your takehome.

PS. You’re what we refer to as the middle class.

Google flagging all search results as “harmful”

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Searching for GarageBand ’09 topics this morning, I noticed a pattern — one that’s virtually impossible to notice given Google’s new self-appointed role of protector of digital humanity.

Every link is flagged as “This site may harm your computer” — even trusted pages on the topic, such as pages on Apple.com. Any attempt to visit the resulting links are intercepted by Google, in effect preventing me from visiting the site. Sounds like a good idea, except it isn’t, because Google can’t seem to get it right, and Google isn’t interested in fixing sites that are incorrectly flagged.

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Apple bug breaks 3rd party USB web cams; no fix from Cupertino

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Since the release of Apple’s 10.4.10 update, users (including me) have been complaining to Apple that their third-party USB web cams have lost audio capabilities. Although a bug report was issued and acknowledged (ID #5285354) by Apple, no fix has been forthcoming. In fact, Apple has stranded a large number of users in a void where iChat AV no longer has audio and video chat functionality. Continue reading →

Apple’s .Mac service: Promising features marred by spotty performance

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Apple offers a suite of subscription services, collectively called .Mac (dot-mac), which offers subscribers an excellent list of features not found anywhere else [edit: Yes, most if not all features can be cobbled together on your own, but we’re talking about a cohesive suite here]. Alas, these great features come at a hefty price ($99/year from Apple, as low as $69/yr. from Amazon), and service is spotty.
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Apple .Mac Service Interruption List

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This is a list of .Mac outtages, compiled directly from Apple’s System Status, which is reported to .Mac subscribers. This list has been created by GIGOBlog’s editors in order to highlight the ongoing number of interruptions of Apple’s .Mac service.

4/12/2007
Due to scheduled maintenance, some members might not have been able to access .Mac Mail for 20 minutes or less between 10PM and 12AM PST on 04/12/2007.

04/12/2007
5% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 2 hours. Normal service has been restored.

4/11/2007
8% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 4.5 hours. Normal service has been restored.

4/7/2007
2% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 40 minutes. Normal service has been restored.

4/3/2007
3% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 10 minutes. Normal service has been restored.

03/25/2007
1.5% of members were unable to access mail using an IMAP client. Normal service has been restored.

03/19/2007
2% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 10 minutes. Normal service has been restored.

03/15/2007
2% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 1.25 hours. Normal service has been restored.

3/14/2007
0.5% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 3.5 hours. Normal service has been restored.

DATA COLLECTION ERROR: Oops, I failed to update between 2/15 and 3/14. My bad!

2/15/2007
2% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 45 minutes. Normal service has been restored.

2/10/2007
1% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 1 hour. Normal service has been restored.

2/8/2007
.Mac members were unable to access any services. Duration: 1.5 hours. Some .Mac members were unable to access mail on the web. Duration: 1.5 hours. Normal services have been restored.

2/5/2007
1% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 2 hours. Normal service has been restored.

2/5/2007
2% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 1 hour. Normal service has been restored.

2/4/2007
2% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 1 hour. Normal service has been restored.

2/4/07
Due to scheduled maintenance, some members might not have been able to access .Mac Mail for 20 minutes or less between 10pm PST on 2/3/07 and 1am PST on 2/4/07.

1/22/2007
4% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 3.5 hours. Normal service has been restored.

01/21/2007
4% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 30 minutes. Normal service has been restored.

01/16/2007
3% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 10 hours. Normal service has been restored.

01/15/2007
3% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 45 minutes.

01/11/2007
2% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 2 hours.

01/10/2007
3% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 1 hour.

01/08/2007
Email was slow for 5 hours for some .Mac Members.

01/07/2007
2% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 4 hours.

01/05/2007
4% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 48 hours.

12/25/2006
3% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 30 minutes.

12/21/2006
3% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 30 minutes.

12/20/2006
3% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 40 minutes.

12/09/2006
email was slow for 1 hour to some .Mac Members.

12/07/06
4% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 12 hours.

12/03/2006
All Services were unavailable for 2 hours to all .Mac Members.

12/01/06
4% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 1 hour.

11/22/2006
4% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 2 hours.

11/21/2006
4% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 1.5 hours.

11/18/2006
4% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 30 minutes.

11/13/2006
1% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for one hour.

11/10/2006
1% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for 2 hours.

11/09/06
1% of members experienced difficulties with .Mac Mail for one hour.

10/25/06
Some members were unable to send messages via .Mac Mail on the Web for 3 hours.