Sprint DSL sucks, but mainly only because nearly all DSL services suck.

Shipping sucks.

The Gap’s website debacle continues

Circuit city gets the big 382-5968 from me.

Going to the movies generally sucks these days, and the movie and exhibition businesses don’t seem to notice, much less care.

Airline crews need silence to do their work safely, it seems. Uh-oh.

Newspaper vending machines have almost completely disappeared from Front Royal. They’re hardly ever found outside major urban areas now: it’s likely that the increasing difficulty of purchasing their product is part of the newspaper industry’s slide into irrelevance.

Annoying, crude anti-male sexism still appears to be a growing trend. This time, it's courtesy of Victoria's Secret.

The terms of Western Digital's rebate require the customer to send in a UPC barcode. Trouble is, there's no UPC barcode on the box. This is, of course, the customer's problem.

Superstars often behave like spoiled children.

Sears has rejiggered its 119-year-old customer satisfaction guarantee, to the at least nominal disadvantage of the customer. This does not bode particularly well.

DRM is a giant well of inefficiency-by-unpredictability

Tino tries to spend $2,000 and fails. How do these companies expect to stay in business?
UPDATE: Tino eventually succeeds, but only by jumping through yet more hoops.
UPDATE 2: Sometimes things get better if you complain.

Panera's wireless network blocks Tinotopia. Apparently this site is 'adult' or 'mature'.

DirecTV thinks that C-SPAN is pay-per-view this morning.

T-Mobile pisses off someone with a soapbox.

Advertisers are turning to video-game product placement in an effort to offset declining interest in their TV ads. That they don’t understand what the problem is with their existing TV ads suggests that they’re not going to be able to pull off any new types of product placement, either.

TV is lousy, and so are movies. A book review in The Atlantic hints at one reason this might be so, for movies at least.

The Tinotopia Rules For Retailers, or Customer Service Rules. If you are in any public-facing business, you should be aware of these.

Another retail rule: you are in competition with everyone selling the same thing.

Advertisers might soon start to pay attention

Wal-Mart shows what they think of towns they are considering moving into, in the Washington Post.

Flight-attendant attitudes are dangerous in the War On Terrorism

There's an opportunity cost to keeping your intellectual property locked up, something that Time-Life illustrates with the handling of their photographic archive.

A US Airways spokesman is caught in an undeniable, if inconsequential, lie in the Washington Post.

A sparking example of what's wrong with the AOL-Time Warner combination.

Universal Pictures forces buyers of some of its DVDs to sit through ads before being able to use the product they've paid for. This practice has cost them much of Tino's business for the foreseeable future.

Yahoo's recent purchase of Overture shows that their minds are still in 1995.

Ted Turner appears to be a nut, but the Washington Post doesn't care because he's their kind of nut -- the kind who hates AOL Time Warner.

TV networks cut product placement from movies they broadcast, while at the same time hoping to make money from product placement themselves.

Airline cabin crews are now actually attacking passengers. Proposed solution: sock it to the passengers, again.

TV networks as we know them are doomed, as viewers take on the role of programming themselves.

The media conglomerate's troubles are the result of them not knowing what they've got.

TV's current plans for fighting an erosion of their ability to advertise is to annoy viewers. It won't work.

Resorting to raw deceit in your customer relations is a sign that you should really just throw in the towel.

On the same day, Tino got two catalogues from different companies with the exact same picture on the cover.

Once you're a CEO of anything, you are assumed to be all-capable, and not responsible for disasters that happen on your watch.

A number of rules for people and companies in direct and frequent contact with their customers.

The airline industry sees such hostility from its customers because it shows them so little respect.

In an article in the New York Times, Jack Valenti is quoted as saying, on behalf of the MPAA, that “We’re fighting our own terrorist war” against people who would pirate movies online.

Lawrence Lessig suggests that corporate power-wrangling is one cause of the slow adoption of consumer broadband Internet access in the USA.

Everyone seems to be missing the real story of the Secret Service agent being thrown off an American Airlines flight in December.

Book publishing doesn't make money, because the book publishers are swinging for the fences, rather than seeking steady income and growth.

An article in the New York Times shows a frightening lack of basic economic knowledge in the publishing industry.

The New York Times reports that the FTC has found problems with the music industry. What’s do they say the industry is up to? Price-fixing? Payola? Anti-competitive practices?

Vintage Tino!

Vintage Tino! Sugar prices in the U.S.