People say that one of the instances wherein a person’s true colors appear is when he is angry. I guess it applies to companies as well, particularly to Verizon Wireless, the second largest telecommunications services provider in the United States.

According to this report, Verizon Wireless just filed a case at the United States Court of Appeals at the District of Columbia Circuit against the Federal Communications Commission in an attempt to make the FCC do a 180-degree turn and take back its ruling that whichever telecommunications company wins the chunk of the 700 MHz spectrum that will be auctioned next year should allow for it to be accessed by any wireless device and applications so long as it is not harmful.

This FCC ruling certainly will not sit well with telecommunications companies seeking to have a share of the 700 MHz spectrum that will be auctioned off, but it is definitely a winner for consumers. After all, with the open access ruling, the consumers will get a wider choice as to what mobile gadget they want to buy, which networks they want to patronize, and what applications they want to download for their use, as long as these are legal and harmless.

Obviously, Verizon Wireless does not think that way. The company claimed that in upholding the open access ruling, the FCC “violates the US Constitution, violates the Administrative Procedures Act, and is arbitrary, capricious, unsupported by the substantial evidence and otherwise contrary to law.”

Okay. So here we go. Unless either Verizon Wireless or the FCC budges in this hullaballoo, we can entertain ourselves with a little courtroom action. It is going to be messy, and we the consumers might end up being the losers.

Way to go, Verizon Wireless. It does not always have to be about profits, you know?

At one point or another, the Internet grapevine has been rife with rumors telling all and sundry that Advanced Micro Devices – AMD to you geeks – has a new surprise up its sleeve. Rumor has it that this surprise has something to do with a tri-core chip. Well, folks, as it turns out, the gossip on the grapevine is well-founded, and AMD is indeed working on a tri-core chip.

If you find it hard to believe what you are reading right now, check out last Sunday’s issue of The Inquirer right here.

The Inquirer story aptly posed the question people have indeed been asking about this move by AMD to work on a tri-core chip. The answer is simple and obvious enough: it is mostly because Intel, AMD’s closest competitor, is practically incapable of doing it. At least, not now.

To quote the Inquirer post:

“AMD is probably doing this for two reasons; the lesser being salvage, the more important one being that Intel can’t do it. Intel would have a far harder time making a tri-core part until Nehalem next September – it is easy to fuse off a core, far harder to MCM disparate cores.”

Is this a bad thing or a good thing? Well, we are not really sure how this will turn out to be, and who knows? Intel might decide to bite the bait and give AMD a run for the money. People who were dissatisfied with the performance of the quad-core might decide to give the tri-core a try. After all, having three cores working in your computer will still leave your computer running faster than just having two. Who knows?

In any case, if AMD does succeed in this endeavor of theirs, they will have greater flexibility, as the Inquirer post put it. That is not so bad at all.

Okay. So, recently, Apple surprised us all by slashing $200 from the selling price of the 8GB iPhone, barely a few months after its release, with accompanying rumors that the 4GB version of that primo gadget will be done away soon. Apparently, the price slash was done so that the iPhone can continue selling despite the release of the iPod Touch in the market.

If you are one of those people who are still grumbling about the price slash, here is another bone to chew on. You can now convert any song you buy from the iTunes store to a ringtone for your iPhone. You do this by using graphical software that lets you pick any segment of the song you want to convert and make it into a ringtone that has a length of 12 to 21 seconds. The catch is that you will have to pay an additional 99¢ for converting that song to a ringtone, on top of the 99¢ you will have to shell out anyhow for the rights to using the song.

Anyone with half a brain in his or her head would know right on that this scheme is one major rip-off. I know I am not alone in saying so, and I find it a little disgusting that Apple is cooking up such unsavory schemes to get some extra cents off of its customers.

Thankfully, a Good Samaritan from the MacRumors forum said that you can actually get away with converting an iTunes song into a ringtone for free. All it takes is a simple switching of file extensions. Just replace the .AAC extension of any song you got from iTunes with the .M4R iPhone ringtone extension, sync your iPhone and you are good to go. The cost of converting your new ringtones: zero.

If you are still planning to grab your very own iPhone unit, this will certainly be great news to you. But if you are one of those poor sods (like me) who half-rushed through buying an iPhone, feel free to tear your hair off your head. Why? Because Apple just slashed $200 off of the regular iPhone price, that’s why!

Yes, barely a few months after the release of the most awaited gadget of the year, Apple chopped 200 bucks off the regular price of the 8GB iPhone, which used to sell for $599. Rumor also has it that Apple will be tossing out the 4GB version, never to be seen again in stores.

Why, do you ask, did Apple just do what it did? Well, Apple is posed to release iPod Touch, a new addition to the iPhone family that is built on the same technology from which iPhone was spawned. Naturally, even with the release of this new baby, Apple would not want the most awaited gadget of the year to fall back in sales in order to give way to its newest sibling. That would be bad, right? Certainly that would be bad.

It is also deduced that poor sales is also the reason why the 4GB version of the iPhone will be phased out. Whether this deduction will prove to be true, we shall only see later.

The iPhone price slash does not have to be entirely bad news to the hapless people who bought their iPhone units only a few days ago. According to the sales and refund policy of the Apple store, people who got their iPhones only within the last ten days are entitled to get some of their money back in light of this price slash. So, if that is you, go contact Apple and get your cash back.

Many people on the techie side of the blogosphere are lauding and celebrating the recent announcement of AMD of their decision to take the next step towards open source. This next step is to provide support for Linux systems for their ATI Radeon HD 2000 series of graphic cards.

In the AMD press release posted on their official website, the company stated that they see this move as “a significant first step in redefining the graphics landscape for Linux consumer users.” More than that, this move is made by AMD as part of their plans to “accelerate efforts to address the needs of the open source community.”

How will this significant first move come to pass? This September, AMD is scheduled to release Catalyst 7.9, the support software for ATI Radeon graphics chips. This software release is supposed to include a chock-full of features and goodies that Linux users can certainly play with. AMD further claims that their new chips will show “major performance improvements across the board,” which the company said will be evident in the 90% improvement in the performance of their chips with such heavy duty games as Quake 4 and Doom 3.

But these are not all the surprises that AMD has in store. In the recently concluded Kernel Summit, AMD made announcements that along with the new Linux support for their ATI Radeon graphics chips, the company will also be releasing documentation that will enable developers to build their own drivers. This is certainly something to be happy about for anyone in the open source community.

Just how serious AMD will be in following through these announcements and promises to the open source community is another matter altogether, however. Just as there are many people in the blogosphere who are rejoicing in these that which they perceive as great news, there is also skepticism in the other quarters. As for us, we are happy that AMD has chosen to take these steps to support the open source community, and we certainly hope that they do indeed follow through.