Tag: f4t

Food for Thought, Technology

An estimated 168 million Americans lack broadband access at home!

A Reuters article (via News.com) points out:

An estimated 42 percent of Americans had high-speed Internet access at home in March 2006, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. That was up from 30 percent of Americans with high-speed access one year earlier, it said.

Wow, 168 million people do not have Broadband at home. The funny thing is many (technologists, the technorati, and the like) refer to the network as being ubiquitous. Its not, and given the cost issues ($49.00 for Comcast) and the political BS around the last mile and now net neutrality, its likely that many may never get Broadband. 168 million, in that number lurks the digital divide, and we as a country don’t seem to be doing much about it. Anybody want to guess how many children are deprived the benefit of the information super highway. Dial-up doesn’t count in my book either. Sad very Sad.

Food for Thought, Just The Facts

6 million missing Shopping carts

In the Los Angeles area last year a minimum of 6.2 million shopping carts went missing according to California Shopping Cart Retrieval corp and Hernandez Cart Service Inc. (via Harper’s). I find this number amazing. I wonder if the number of shopping carts that go missing are reflective of the number of homeless. I know scrap steel has gone up but where do these carts go. I also find it funny that there are companies specializing in shopping cart recovery. These companies in my mind are like Dog The Bounty Hunter for shopping carts. It just goes to show that there are niche businesses everywhere. This problem does beg for a technology solution like RFID or something. 6.2 million WOW, I wonder what the recovery cost is to the stores.

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