“You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two-year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone. Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later. Think about it–If you bought the first iPhone, you bought it because you wanted the coolest product on the market. Your two-year contract has just expired. Look around. Tell me what they’re going to buy.”

– Elevation Partners founder Roger McNamee

Roger McNamee’s hyperbolic predictions about iPhone-to-Pre conversion rates didn’t go over too well at Palm. Appalled by McNamee’s inflated, indecorous claims about its forthcoming smartphone, the handset maker on Monday filed a Free Writing Prospectus with the SEC that distances the company from McNamee’s claims and categorically refutes his your-next-iPhone-will-be-a-Pre foolishness. There are 10 “clarifications and corrections” in the prospectus, among them these two little gems:

5. With respect to the statements in the tenth paragraph of the transcript that the Palm Pre is “going to be a million times–well, not a million times–several times faster” than Apple, Inc.’s iPhone products and is “going to run rings around them on the web,” the Palm Pre is still under development and it is premature to state the speed at which the device accesses the web or the relative speed of the Palm Pre compared to the smartphone products of competitors.
 
8. The statement in the second paragraph of the article that “not one” person who bought an Apple, Inc. iPhone on the first shipment date “will still be using an iPhone a month” after the two-year anniversary of that day is an exaggerated prediction of consumer behavior pattern and is withdrawn.

Ouch. That was CRAZY talk, Roger.

An embarrassing retraction for McNamee and for Palm (PALM), which was understandably uncomfortable with the silly levels to which the investor raised expectations for the Pre. The next time McNamee appears on Bloomberg TV, he’ll be accompanied by two Pinkerton guys with tranq guns….

The U.S. Senate voted unanimously Monday to delay the nation’s transition to all-digital television. Arguing that a major economic crisis might not be the best time for a congressionally-mandated switch, legislators pushed the mandatory conversion date from Feb. 17 to June 12.

But the U.S. House of Representatives didn’t buy that argument. Today, it torpedoed the legislation, saying a delay like the one proposed would confuse consumers and be a burden to wireless companies and public safety agencies waiting to use the spectrum the transition will free up. “In my opinion, we could do nothing worse than to delay this transition date,” said Joe Barton of Texas, the top Republican on the House Commerce Committee. “The bill is a solution looking for a problem that exists mostly in the mind of the Obama administration.”