I know I’m late to post about this, but I do feel people should refrain from making purchases through Amazon. If working for low wages wasn’t bad enough, the Supreme Court ruled in December that employees should not be paid while waiting to go through security before they are allowed to leave work. Seems how workers have had to wait up to 30 minutes before they can leave, it is only fair that they should be paid at least minimum wage while waiting to leave to what now amounts to privatized incarceration. Until Amazon compensates its employes for the time it steals from them, we should boycott Amazon and stand up for workers’ rights! And if you know any other companies that abuse their employees the same way, let me know and I will add them to a list of companies people should not patronize. I will even add non-American companies, because I’m sure it happens in every country.

Millions of people have written politicians, urging them to pass internet neutrality regulations to protect them and their rights online with little to show for their efforts. Does this man have enough clout to finally pass much needed reform? One can only hope given the level or corruption in Washington and how much vile companies like Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, and Time Warner spend to suppress citizens’ voices.

I’ve made a BlackBerry Messenger channel for people to come together and discuss music they love, hate, or anywhere in between. To find the channel either do a search or use the pin, C0045F22E. Or you can use the QR code below. I used the same favicon for the group as I used for the site. I hope to chat with you soon.

Pin for BBM channel

I have been rejected from the Amazon Associates program for “Lack of content which is original and beneficial to your visitors,” so I will no longer be making links to Amazon. I may even go as far as to remove old links to Amazon if I get the time.

I wanted to bring something to everyone’s attention that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued trademark protection for “π.” That means that if you ever want to end a sentence with “π”, and you want it to be a statement, you would have to obtain licensing rights before you could do so. Sure, most of us won’t be affected by this (directly), but text book publishers, particularly in the mathematical fields, would likely need to pay that licensing fee. You might have noticed the qualifier “directly” in the previous sentence. That’s there because we can expect the cost to be pasted onto us by publishers, especially if they overlook the use of “π.” in a book for which they did not obtain a license. We need to speak out against governing bodies from issuing excusive protection for common images, words, and phrases. Write to your senators and representives to reform the law so atrocities like this are unlikely to happen. And speak out publicly. Doing something as simple as tweeting, “You can’t have π. #SavePi” can help spread the word about the trademark trolls. A simple message like that not only raises awareness to the problem, but that we want common images, words, and phrases back for public use.

I have included a simple image you can use. Feel free to use it, or create your own. All I did to make it was opened Paint.NET and created a square image that I typed “You can’t have π.” in Times New Roman. You can use my image or you can create your own custom image.

At the behest of Verizon, a federal appellate court struck down the FCC’s Open Internet Order and internet providers are now free to discriminate – block or slow down – any web site or application they choose.

If this does not sound right to you, please head over to Credo Action’s site to sign a petition to the new FCC chair to reclassify broadband Internet access as a telecommunications service and restore Net Neutrality.

You can CLICK HERE to be redirected to Credo Action’s petition.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 31,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 11 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Now that you can be used on Android and iOS, I created a BBM group you can join and communicate with others. Just download the app and scan the QR code below to find my group. I’ve never used BBM myself, but I am going to give it a try.