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Regulators have begun granting telecommunications companies the go-ahead to stop mass-printing residential phone books, a musty fixture of Americans' kitchen counters, refrigerator tops and junk drawers.
In the past month alone, New York, Florida and Pennsylvania approved Verizon Communications Inc.'s request to quit distributing residential white pages. Residents in Virginia have until Nov. 19 to provide comments on a similar request pending with state regulators.
Telephone companies argue that most consumers now check the Internet rather than flip through pages when they want to reach out and touch someone.
Phone companies note that eliminating residential white pages would reduce environmental impact by using less paper and ink. It also can't hurt their bottom lines to cut out the cost of a service that rarely gets used and generates little beyond nostalgia.
The first telephone directory was issued in February 1878 — a single page that covered 50 customers in New Haven, Conn. That sheet grew into a book that became virtually a household appliance, listing numbers for neighbors, friends and colleagues, not to mention countless potential victims of prank calls.
Fewer people rely on paper directories for a variety of reasons: more people rely solely on cell phones, whose numbers typically aren't included in the listings; more listings are available online; and mobile phones and caller ID systems on land lines can store a large number of frequently called numbers
well goodbye phone books, now what am I going to do with all that paper.
-AL
Bank of America has fired a debt collection agency after several of its operators were caught using racist and obscene phone calls to collect debts from bank customers.
"What's up, you f---ing n---r?" said one of the collection agents in a message to 32-year old Allen Jones of Dallas, who owed $81 on his Bank of America credit card
Jones said the calls continued even after he told the debt collection company he had paid his credit card bill.
The calls came from the Harlingen, Texas office of Advanced Call Center Technologies. ACT is a Philadelphia-based company that provides collection services for a number of major corporations.
Jones saved the taped messages and hired lawyers to sue ACT. A jury in Texas found the both the debt collectors and the corporation responsible and awarded Jones more than $l.5 million.
Good for him. Companies have to realize any kind of racism or sexism or discrimination canot be tolerated. It could be you next time.
-AL
I would never buy an Iphone. Why would you buy a phone that you have to hold a certain way? Buy the way, didn' t Apple start off as a computer company, I guess now it's turning into a phone company.
-AL
In an attempt once again to save the music industry and profits, Universal Music Group (UMG) is embarking on one of the most ambitious efforts yet to boost U.S. CD sales, with the test of a new pricing structure designed to sell most new releases by current artists at $10 or less at retail. The major's "Velocity" pricing program responds to the continuing plunge in CD sales, taking aim at brick-and-mortar retail stores that have scaled back on floor space dedicated to music. The pricing adjustments will also bring CD prices more in line with what consumers pay for digital albums at online retailers like iTunes and Amazon.
-AL
An oil boom on American Indian land has brought jobs, millions of dollars and hope to long-impoverished tribal members who have struggled for more than a century on the million-acre Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.
In little more than a year, oil companies have put dozens of money-producing rigs on remote rolling prairie and sprawling badlands that are home to small cattle ranches and scattered settlements of modular housing. Although other tribes around the nation have oil interests, industry officials said none has likely experienced a recent windfall of this scale.
The reservation is occupied by the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara tribes, known as the Three Affiliated
Tribes, who were placed in west-central North Dakota by the federal government in the 1800s - long before anyone knew of the oil.
"If they knew there was billions of barrels of oil here, they would never have put us here," said Spencer Wilkinson Jr., general manager of the Four Bears Casino on the reservation. Click the jump to read the rest.
via: ap
-AL
During these cold winter days I started seeing this logo all over the place. I have never heard of this company before. With that being said I did what I do and hit the internet and went to the companies website. Now I see why I never heard of this clothing and apparel company. They specialize in extreme cold weather gear and sports like rock and mountain climbing. Two things I pretty much stay away from. But if your interested click here for a history of the company. Also this is the company founder US billionaire Douglas Tompkins at his house near Carlos Pellegrini in Corrientes Province, Argentina. The US tycoon, who made a fortune through his North Face and Esprit clothing brands, has become a self-styled eco-warrior having purchased of a vast section of Argentina's northern sweet-water marshes in Corrientes province which he aims to turn into a vast national park
-AL
