The consume.net mailing list folk have spotted a bargain: British branches of PC World are selling the SMC 2632 PCI WiFi Card for £49.95, which is about half the standard price. And, coincidentally, just two-thirds of the monthly subscription for BT’s new WiFi hotspot service. BT either have no idea about competitive pricing, or no idea about how to roll out a cheap network. Maybe both.
A random mail from a random someone asking for advice.
Dear Sir, Imlooking for advice, & i went onto the net to seek it, please can you help me? my son had an accident, & i was put in touch with a solicitor…
… and it looks like the solicitor might have taken more than their fair share (or at least not explained the process well enough for their client to understand).
I don’t know jack about what to do about this, so I told this man what I would do. I’d find the local Citizens Advice Bureau, and ask them. I googled for a bureau near him, and sent him the URL and phone number.
Mail like this arrives about once every six months. Last time it was a woman in a Pakistani cybercafe asking about her brother. He’d run away to Britain and she hadn’t heard from him since. We tracked him down to a prison in the north of England. I found out the address and phone number for her – again not much, but something.
Cory talks about using spare brain-cycles across the planet to solve problems. I think this is the closest I get. Not that my brain-cycles are that precious anyway. I’m wasting them right now, thinking too much about the strangeness of one word: bureau. We don’t start bureaux enough these days. We need to start the Distributed Bureau of Investigation.