Big business wants regulation; my light bulb agenda

Wow, things sure have changed. American industries now actually want government regulation! Of course, it's not to protect the consumer or increase fair competition — they want Washington to shield them from outside competition, as many markets grow more global.

See this chart by the NYT (click it):


I would like to note that one of those sought-after regulatory policies — the banning of wasteful incandescent light bulbs — I heavily support. Look for CFLs, the compact, often swirly florescent (don't worry, they come in all brightness levels and colors and don't make the horrible noise many florescent lights do) at your local store. Not only do they last longer than regular bulbs, but they use less energy, saving you money and causing less harm to the environment. In addition, they do not put out the massive amount of heat regular bulbs release, another helper to Mother Nature. Learn more here, here, and here.

Living up to tech hype: not an easy task

I touched and fiddled with the Apple iPhone for the first time the day before yesterday while I was at my local AT&T store to get a new SIM card (if it gets locked, never try to unlock it yourself... lesson learned) for my mobile. It works quite well and, surprisingly, the finger-touch screen works really well, even the keyboard. Browsing the web was fairly easy — fast on WiFi, although I didn't have a chance to try the GSM/EDGE data connection — and navigation was a breeze. However there are a number of reasons outlined in this post I won't get an iPhone anytime soon.

Apple did well this quarter (i.e. the months of April, May, and June) in profits, although it failed to meet the expectations of some over-eager analysts.

Apple sold 270,000 iPhones on the first two days of their US launch.

Net income was $818m (£398m) between April and June, up 73% from the same period of 2006.

Apple shares have risen 62% since the start of the year when chief executive Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone and predicted 10 million sales in 2008.

In the iPhone's frenzied weekend debut, analysts were hoping for half a million units sold — talk about 'raising the bar' (AT&T wireless' tagline). Keep in mind the iPhone was released on 29 June, the day before the quarter ended.

Apple said it shipped 1.76 million Macintosh computers in the quarter, a rise of 33% from a year earlier, while shipments of iPods were 9.82 million, up 21% from the same period of 2006.

A Macworld editor has called this quarter Apple's best ever for its Mac computers. There sure are a lot of people counting on the tech innovator to deliver the goods.

Just in the short time I was at the store a couple of people filled out contracts for the iPhone, that is they purchased it. Let me point out that the store was not very busy nor would I expect it to be busy often, so in my book two phones sold in 15 minutes is pretty good.