Verizon Wireless To Introduce ‘Any Apps, Any Device’ Option For Customers In 2008

Verizon Wireless today announced that it will provide customers the option to use, on its nationwide wireless network, wireless devices, software and applications not offered by the company. Verizon Wireless plans to have this new choice available to customers throughout the country by the end of 2008.

In early 2008, the company will publish the technical standards the development community will need to design products to interface with the Verizon Wireless network. Any device that meets the minimum technical standard will be activated on the network. Devices will be tested and approved in a $20 million state-of-the-art testing lab which received an additional investment this year to gear up for the anticipated new demand. Any application the customer chooses will be allowed on these devices.

This new option goes beyond just a change in the design, delivery, purchase, and provisioning of wireless devices and applications.

“This is a transformation point in the 20-year history of mass market wireless devices – one which we believe will set the table for the next level of innovation and growth,” said Lowell McAdam, Verizon Wireless president and chief executive officer. “Verizon Wireless is not changing our successful retail model, but rather adding an additional retail option for customers looking for a different wireless experience.”

Honestly, Verizon is the last company I would have expected to do this. And of course, equally honestly, they’ve got a year in which to screw it up. I really hope they don’t, because the mobile / cellular / wireless market is just itching to be unleashed.

Via Big Dick Bennett…

A titty-bar classic, fershur…also a teenage-drive-around-boozing-sing-along classic…also a great example of the lameness of MTV back when C-64s were cutting-edge compute appliances.

As much as these dudes sucked, he’s only seven (7) years older than me. Is it silly to feel a…kinship?

Is there anybody out there that thinks there’s a single one of these Presidential candidates worth a plugged nickel?

All the Democrats are more-of-the-same Mommy-Staters. I feel like I’ll have to eat brusell sprouts at every meal, including breakfast, and pay $5 per sprout for the privilege.

Ron Paul is pitching the gold standard.

Romney says most of the right things, but he reminds me too much of a realtor.

Guliani is a gun-grabber.

I had my hopes up for Fred Thompson, but he’s simply disappeared.

I’m really starting to feel like one of those bearded lunatics that moves to the mountains and shits in a coffee can after dark because it’s too cold to go to the outhouse. Politically, that is.

I went to see No Country for Old Men today. I recommend it very highly. The Coens have taken what is probably Cormac McCarthy’s most filmable book and made it into a damn fine movie. They are very true to the book, to what I consider the spirit of the book, and for that I thank them. It’s dark and bloody, and the Coens play it that way, start to finish. There is one Coenish scene that made me laugh out loud, but it was done just right, and it took nothing away from the tone.

As for the actors, I don’t think you could find a better Ed Tom than Tommy Lee Jones. He’s a 20th-century Woodrow Call, and I know that character influenced how he played Ed Tom here. The other two main dudes, Llewellyn Moss and Anton Chigurh are well done, as well. Chigurh is just about note-perfect, in fact. I never pictured him with a Prince Valiant haircut, but it fits into the 1980 time-frame just perfectly. He’s definitely the spooky deadly SOB that McCarthy wrote him as.

Five Shiners for a Texas-based and Texas-filmed movie…Scott Bob says check it out.

So, Rule #1 - don’t forget your laptop’s power supply.

• This year, I smoked a turkey to take to Dallas. By all reports, it turned out just fine. It tasted OK to me, but not as good as my brined and roasted turkey. So, since my kid had an extra turkey in the freezer, next weekend, I plan to brine and smoke it, and see if it comes out better.
• If I-35 is the Texas Backbone, and it might as well be, then Austin is the Texas Checkpoint. I’ve come to detest that city simply because getting through it is a nightmare.
• Anyone who bitches about radio station variety deserves a pimp-slap. I have this little dealio for my truck that broadcasts my iPod into my radio on an FM station. It’s great, except finding a blank space on the dial is next to impossible, and when you do, it doesn’t last 50 miles. So, while the rest of the nation may be suffering from a lack of free terrestrial radio, Texas ain’t. Now it might not be playing your favorite indie emo bands from down at your local, but there’s plenty of people making something work somewhere.
• The Toyota Tundra and Nissan Titan buyer-driver have taken over top spot in my Most Loathed Pickup Drivers (a spot held for many years by Chevy Silverado & Z71 drivers.) You’d think with all that damn chrome, they might go fast.
• It takes a mighty will to drive from San Antonio to Austin with a fresh-smoked turkey and a fresh-smoked ham in the cab of the truck without touching either. Even though they were both wrapped in foil, inside plastic containers, and in an ice-chest, it was torture.
• Lone Star 92.5 needs to be stripped of the name “Lone Star” when they play Traffic, followed by Asia, followed by Bob Seger, followed by the Rolling Stones, followed by Wilco. That last band is the only one that comes close to a Lone Star sensibility. Paying Willie Nelson to do your station IDs and sticking ZZ Top on your billboards is only the start, kiddies. You suck, sirs.
• The highways are full of dumbassery this weekend, so watch out for the podunk po-po out filling up their ticket books. If I saw one, I saw 200, and they inevitably cause more trouble than they could possibly be solving.

What am I most thankful for this year? That my grandson remembered me and called me Granddad when I came in the house on Thursday. Actually, it was more Guhduh, but you know, I know what I heard, heh heh. Only two more months till Nathan Jr. Jr. makes his debut, too.

Eep, two grandkids.

Supreme Court to rule on gun ownership rights

Last time they made constitutional-type news, they decided your house wasn’t really your house.

Just a reminder from Texas, kiddies — my ancestors ran this up the flagpole a few years back:

They might have been talking to Mexican federales, but damn if the sentiment would be any different.

I’d never heard this before till this morning in the truck:

How did Emmylou Harris and Mark Knopfler wind up making an album together? That’s just wacky. But good.

Man, does Emmylou not still have everything, the whole enchilada?

BLACK EYE: CBSNEWS writers authorize strike…

Dumb old me…here I thought the news wrote itself.

But wait — does this mean that someone writes all that inane moronic babble that surrounds the news? It’s naught but over-tanned mouth-breathing haircuts reading off a teleprompter?

I’m not sure that I’ll be able to handle that knowledge. Get me to my fainting couch.

From Banjo, he strides the earth a free man:

[blah, blah, mistrial, blah-blah]

He gave the public a chance to have its say via the jury system (the greatest judicial system in the world! despite the continuing problems with the conviction and sentencing of innocent people who are released after DNA analysis shows various juries and prosecutors made rather shocking mistakes of judgment) and the public, as it were, could not decide if it was cruel or not to shoot and kill a stray cat.

Some people just don’t like cats.

More accurate to say that, in this case, people are apathetic about the stupid things.

And of course people are more sympathetic to dogs, their ineptness at catching birds notwithstanding. Dogs have helped mankind for centuries…millenia, even. No cat ever defended his human companion from depredations. Hell, it was usually a cat trying to eat us that Bowser had to get into it with. I won’t even bring up those fruity Teutons in Vegas with their cat show and how well that turned out. Give me the hound, you can keep the feline.

Now, on the other hand, I’d never shoot a stupid cat just because he was eating birds, endangered or not. Cats eat birds. I learned that watching Saturday morning cartoons. If the bird isn’t smart enough to stay out of the cat’s way, it most definitely is endangered, bird-lover clubs and P&W revenooers notwithstanding. Welcome to evolution.

Baseball star Barry Bonds to face charges over steroid probe

Baseball superstar Barry Bonds has been indicted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice after lying to investigators probing a steroid scandal, justice officials said Thursday.

A statement from the California Department of Justice in San Francisco said Bonds had been indicted for lying to investigators during a grand jury hearing into the notorious BALCO steroid scandal.

As a lifelong baseball fan who has completely and totally soured on the greatest game ever invented, I want to know who was paid off, and how much, to delay this indictment until he broke Hank Aaron’s home run record.

Bud Selig, I detest you with the fury of 10,000 white-hot super-nova suns for allowing this con artist to contemptuously ruin MY game. Everybody knew the indictment was coming, and you wouldn’t step in and put a stop to the sham. You couldn’t fathom endangering yourself in the interests of baseball. I have no doubt that you pussed out over lawyer-talk. I’m just disgusted and heartbroken.

And Hank Aaron still wears the home run crown, forever and always. You always have been and always will be an inspiration to me, sir.

Ray Wylie Hubbard drives to Dallas to get his hair cut at a foofy Highland Park salon. I almost made fun of him for that, but then I realized I bought his first album 30 dang years ago, and never quit buying his albums, so I oughta just shut up.

Damn, that was about 20 lbs. ago.

THE BRAZOSPORT NEWS: A cat killin in Galveston (and wild monkey bidness over in New Delhi)

How big is this story?

Big enough for the mightiest newspaper in the Free World to cover it — the New York Times.

The great thing about Banjo is that I don’t if that’s sarcasm or seriousness or simply an acknowledgment of how those hosers view themselves. Bottom line, it doesn’t matter.

As for me, I prefer the birds to the cats, and I prefer dogs to the birds. Neither a bird nor a cat give a damn whether you live or die, and dogs at least act like they do.

Monkeys, on the other hand, should be on teevee, and stay on teevee, for the amusement of the retards.

Hog On Ice

Suggestions for lowering a 500-pound object from a 4″ pallet without scratching it would be appreciated.

This is the first time I’ve ever been confronted with the possibility whereby scratching the paint on your air compressor is a thing to be studiously avoided.

Hilton tries to help drunken elephants - Yahoo! News

Paris Hilton is being praised by conservationists for highlighting the problem of binge-drinking elephants in northeastern India.

Activists said a celebrity endorsement such as Hilton’s was sure to raise awareness of the plight of the pachyderms that get drunk on farmers’ homemade rice beer and then go on a rampage.

“The elephants get drunk all the time. It is becoming really dangerous. We need to stop making alcohol available to them,” the 26-year-old socialite said in a report posted on World Entertainment News Network’s Web site. Her comments were picked up by other Web sites and newspapers around the globe.

Last month, six wild elephants that broke into a farm in the state of Meghalaya were electrocuted after drinking the potent brew and then uprooting an electricity pole.

“There would have been more casualties if the villagers hadn’t chased them away. And four elephants died in a similar way three years ago. It is just so sad,” Hilton was quoted as saying in Tokyo last week. She was in Tokyo to judge a beauty contest.

Her publicist couldn’t immediately be reached for comment Tuesday.

Hilton promised to improve her bad-girl image after she completed a jail term in June for violating probation in an alcohol-related reckless driving case.

She announced plans to do charity work in Rwanda, but the trip was postponed until next year.

Sangeeta Goswami, head of animal rights group People for Animals, told The Associated Press: “I am indeed happy Hilton has taken note of recent incidents of wild elephants in northeast India going berserk after drinking homemade rice beer and getting killed.”

“As part of her global elephant campaign, Hilton should, in fact, think of visiting this region literally infested with elephants,” Goswami said.

Another conservationist said elephant alcohol abuse was just a symptom of the real problem.

“Elephants appear on human settlements … because they have no habitat left due to wanton destruction of forests,” said Soumyadeep Dutta, who heads Nature’s Beckon, a leading regional conservation group.

“A celebrity like Hilton must focus her attention on this fact,” Dutta said.

I WAS RIGHT UPDATE: AP Kills Paris Hilton Story

Nov 13 06:07 PM US/Eastern

GAUHATI, India _ Kill BC-People-Paris Hilton. Lori Berk, a publicist (AP) - for Hilton, says she never made any comments about helping drunken elephants in India.

The AP

Nonetheless, genius…my hat’s off to whomever for getting through the many layers of careful fact-checking and rigorous journalistic standards employed by the AP.

Best to Use Tools When Loosening Lug Nut

A man trying to loosen a stubborn lug nut blasted the wheel with a 12-gauge shotgun, injuring himself badly in both legs, sheriff’s deputies said.

The 66-year-old man had been repairing a Lincoln Continental for two weeks at his home northwest of Southworth, about 10 miles southwest of Seattle, and had gotten all but one of the lug nuts off the right rear wheel by Saturday afternoon, Kitsap County Deputy Scott Wilson said.

“He’s bound and determined to get that lug nut off,” Wilson said.

From about arm’s length, the man fired the shotgun at the wheel and was “peppered” in both legs with buckshot and debris, with some injuries as high as his chin, according to a sheriff’s office report.

“Nobody else was there and he wasn’t intoxicated,” Wilson said.

Up to that point, the repair job had gone pretty good, too - changed the spark plugs with the shotgun, flushed the radiator with the shotgun, new hoses and belts with the shotgun…

Via Ken…