They changed policies months ago so that charge interest based off average daily balance. (Some have even tried using rolling highest balance for the month)

I canceled my card when in 3 months they changed my rate from 7 to 17 to 21 then to 30% interest. Initially I did not care since I pay the balance off each month electronically. But at around then they also started charging interest using a rolling average of the (highest?) daily balance for the last couple months. I went on a business trip, payed off the entire balance, and the next month had hundreds of dollars in interest from my increased "daily balance" despite no charges all due to the previous months trip. The last dirty trick was they started changing the due date. One month it was the 26th the next it was the 16th. (That caught my one-week-early auto-payment by surprise which resulted in a default rate which took me from 30-36. I canceled my card immediately.

Honestly as far as I can tell Case, Citibank, and Bank of America all took the credit reform legislation and inspected the bill saying, "holy shit you mean we can do these things legally currently?" They then implemented every skanky policy they could before the cutoff date as to be grandfathered on all accounts when the legislation passed and thus have their policy survive the implementation of the new legislation. My credit record was basically spotless.

My family all had our rates go up around 23%. Most didn't notice that paying off the balance no longer prevented interest from being charged until I called them and told them to check out their statements. This is happening to people with credit scores over 800!!!

Lets count the way that credit cards profit here. 1) they charge the merchant the first dollar or two of a transaction. 2) They charge the merchant a percentage of the transaction. 3) They charge you interest on the transaction. 4) They game the system to charge you as much as they can.

I am disgusted at this behavior but at the same time there are a few features I love that only these companies seem to offer. (Virtual credit card numbers for online transactions) It drives me nuts that I haven't been able to ditch them all but am just working with another business entity in the same corporate giant.

Actually it is because of their "cult" that I have a new laptop. 6 months ago a 'fanboi' bought a fully loaded laptop that was the best they had to offer and a month later they released the same laptop with a glossy mouse pad so he sold the computer for 1k and bought a new one to have the glossy pad despite the hardware being otherwise identical.

The phones and iPads are selling to many non-fans, but apple is guaranteed to sell 1 million just due to marketing and followers who will buy it because it was released. Then after getting that much traction it is a somewhat self sustaining marketing effort. I have used products with equivalent polish that did not have the same mindshare despite being better in many ways.

I also know of at least one iPad that was bought by someone who is unlikely to turn it on again after a month. It wasn't needed, it was a new apple product to add to their netbook, laptop, desktop, iPhone, and iPod. (netbook was not an apple)

And "it just works' is a clever rephrasing of "we only got it working one way and other implementation are not supported.

There is a world of complexity between consumer device (turn on, turn off, and play) and enterprise (remote locking, device tracking, central administration, etc) Apple went for the simple tight set of features that lets them sell to the largest market. This is smart, but if you need it to do more there is just nothing to build upon. You quickly realize it is ONLY a consumer device.

The "one apple way" conceals the fact that there just isn't flexibility to do things other ways. It is like they do not have the bandwidth to make a robust system so they make a limited set of features then polish the hell out of them. And that works for consumers. But I don't think they CAN move from where they are to enterprise support as too much is missing and too much under the hood was compromised to improve consumer experience.

If you need better security or to customize something for enterprise usage you find that documented features may not work properly or have serious flaws due to scary kludges in the apple implementation.

You can not DO enterprise apps on iPhone and you can NOT do enterprise support on iMacs without a bit of footwork. The IT staff spends as much time supporting 10 macs as they do a hundred PCs (linux and windows). And what is manageable is because the Linux tools worked for mac. But differences are never documented so it is a lot of trial and error to find what does work.

They make great consumer devices, but supporting them is a headache for IT, enterprise developers, and techies.

If you step out of the walled garden you really have to do a LOT of deep hacking to get basic things to work properly. "It just works" when approached from the right angle but from any other you realize that was a horrible horrible kludge of appalling grandeur. I expect this thin veneer is why so few things update at a time if you go outside what is currently supported they really have to write everything from the ground up.

But with that said if you are needing to make a simple application that fits within the APIs and tools they do have these have good support. iPhone libraries were much better than Blackberry and Windows mobile in many ways. The database was a joy to use, the interface widgets are very polished and the tools are well developed. But any quirks you hit after leaving the beaten path are going to be covered by a random external blog post and not apple. And they usually start with "After losing several days setting up centralized authentication for macs this is what ACTUALLY works and how it is different from what is suggested by apple." I have lived and died by these posts on EVERY apple device I have worked with.

Most of the pregnant teens in my high school wore abstinence promise rings. It was a guarantee that prom sex was going to be unprotected. A bunch of girls in my gifted class got knocked up around homecoming.

Saying abstinence works if you ignore people not using it properly is just wrong. Even if you ignore the fact that less than half of all teens using abstinence use it properly. Overall abstinence has a user-failure rate between 26 and 86 percent. (http://www.sexetc.org/story/2043) Abstinence is a technique 5 times more likely to fail than a condom after proper sexual education.

What we need is REAL sex education with real discussion of complications diseases and how profoundly pregnancies can impact your life. The best pregnancy prevention tool in every nation has always been education. As women get more education the pregnancy rates decline as people decide to wait until it is appropriate to have kids.

Bush saw pregnancy rates climb 3% under his abstinence-only leadership. (http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-01-26-1Ateenpregnancy26_ST_N.htm) Pregnancy and abortion rated ended a decade long decline with the promotion of abstinence. Studies show abstinence is considerably worse than sex education in preventing sex and teenage pregnancy. (http://ari.ucsf.edu/science/reports/abstinence.pdf)

There was a great report I can not find right now that showed how poorly the US fairs. We are right up there with India, Niger, and Indonesia in teenage pregnancy. Compared to Europe, the US promotes abstinence more heavily and yet sex starts earlier and is more likely to be unprotected than other countries. Pregnancy rates are 2 to 8 times higher than most of Western countries. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_pregnancy.)

The problem is you don't want the government to seize assets without cause. China is having some nasty issues around this right now.

If corrupt officials can destroy family fortunes they can seize the wealth of families that oppose them. How would you fight a court case with all your money seized? How could you prove you were targeted for supporting opposition party and that evidence was flimsy or planted?

Right now, If they can prove the money came from illegal activities it can be seized by the court as evidence, but in general you do not want the government to be able to destroy the fortunes of those it considers enemies of state. Someday you may piss off someone in power and a limited government is a good thing.

No no no! It has a faster processor than the iTouch, better resolution that iPhone, and some nifty new features to make up for the lack of keyboard... Iit is more like a Nexus One that won't fit in your pocket!

Any institution will have jerks. And of course you will only see the most salacious emails. Compare it to this one which I found linked from a skeptic site as an example of how they were suppressing skeptics.

Email chain by department head - http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=1065&filename=1256765544.txt Sonja is a former colleague who quit to work for a skeptic organization she is editor for a skeptic magazine and Phil is writing to complain that she keeps usign the university's name on her publications/talks despite working elsewhere.

At 18:45 27/10/2009, Graham F Haughton wrote:
>
>Dear Phil, sorry to hear this. I don't see much
>of her these days, but when I do see Sonja next
>I'll try and have a quiet word with her about
>the way the affiliation to us is used, but at
>the moment in fairness she is entitled to use it
>in the way she does. Fortunately I don't get to
>see many of these email exchanges but I do
>occasionally hear about them or see them and
>frankly am rarely convinced by what I read. But
>as with all academics, I'd want to protect
>another academic's freedom to be contrary and
>critical, even if I personally believe she is
>probably wrong. I agree with you that it'd be
>better for these exchanges to be conducted
>through the peer review process but these forms
>of e-communication are now part of the public
>debate and its difficult to do much about it
>other than to defend your position in this and
>other fora, or just ignore it as being, in your words, malicious.
>
>I can understand your frustration and I am
>pretty sure I'd be feeling exactly the same in
>your shoes, but I am not sure at the moment that
>I can do much more. If you think I can and
>should do more then feel free to ring and I am happy to discuss the matter.
>
>Graham

Sounds like the head of the department is really cracking down on those skeptics. Boy he squelches them every chance he can, doesn't he? Despite having pro-climate stance he respects that she disagrees and feels that people should be able to debate.

It is also worth noting that he organizes conservation activities at the school. If he was part of a large scale climate hoax why would he be hot to reduce the school's environmental impact? Sounds to me he genuinely believes in climate change, is more knowledgeable than anyone posting here, and respects others with different opinion. Yes there will be mean spirited comments in some emails and people who massage data.

I will be happy if the full data becomes public so all researchers can analyze it. But while I see lots of sloppiness in evidence I see no "marching plan" from the "carbon cap industry".

A lot of these organizations represent musicians whether or not they would like. In the US there is no way to opt out of ASCAP and BMI, only sound exchange. The other organizations represent me whether or not I am registered with them and whether or not I would like them to. I have to register with them though to collect the fees they charge on my behalf though. See my earlier post on a club being threatened for letting me play original music there. Mostly these organizations run on are scare tactics. I have heard of them backing down several times when fought in court. Partially because it makes for great print for the local news and most people including judges are completely horrified to hear that local stores are being threatened with thousands of dollars of fees especially when the venue has a good case that the fees are not benefiting any of the musicians playing there.

I am a musician. I have had placed I play threatened with legal action because the club hadn't paid ASCAP & BMI to allow them a performing license to allow me to play original music in that venue. And despite me not being represented by BMI I have the "right" to opt in at a later time so they are "entitled" to collect money until I decide to do so. You can opt out of Sound Exchange but BMI and ASCAP are organizations that act on our behalf whether or not we would like.

The whole situation where all musicians are assumed to opt in and then must jump through hoops to get payments is a joke. As a small musician I am not showing up on the radio charts and since I have been in a dozen bands it would be a pain to collect checks for under a dollar for each group. It is not like the clubs report that I am playing there and that the set is all originals and that the BMI should not collect any fees from them that day. So the associations collect their fees and then figure that some major artist was being played because they base their calculations off of radio play.

It is also annoying as it makes it impossible to may a truly free college or internet radio station. Even if I only played my own tunes I would have to pay a fee to do so and then register to get it back minus administrative overhead.

To scan the rules without buying a copy check out the open gaming reference document.

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/

But let me assure you that the book is well worth 35 dollars on amazon. Hell it is probably worth full price if you want the PDF.

The problem is that each add-on book adds abilities that are just mathematically superior to previous books so if you use only the base books and other player use splat books there are huge imbalances in the characters since a splat feat is many times as effective in combat.

My last campaign was a system test. We ran 3.0 and 3.5 from 1st to 20th level only using official rules and errata to see how the system worked at all power levels. (I also tried 4.0 but quit by 9th level)

WotC released plenty of broken splat books. In 3.0 and 3.5 I had players hit 50 AC at level 10 via combining various core abilities allowed by the rules, I had people find cheaty hax allowing individuals to open with 200 damage on an surprise round killing anything even close to their level. What was scary is I had a low magic campaign with roughly a quarter of the magic and wealth a regular campaign is supposed to have. Be happy my group of munchkins never decided to visit your table. They would have destroyed a lesser GM's mind with their encyclopedic knowledge of the rules. *heh*

I must admit I enjoyed it. They were a group of really brilliant people who optimized as a team. I was excited when 3.5 fixed some of the problems of 3.0 and again when 4.0 fixed some of the core problems in 3.5. But they lost me utterly and forever with Players handbook 2 for 4.0.

Now please understand that I play with a bunch of engineers. They mathematically model every feat and ability and run combinations through simulations to check how they fare against other classes. PHB2 feats and abilities were 2 to 3 times more effective than the base book abilities. I pay WotC to give me a rule system to build a game around. Yet they have proven to be incapable of releasing a balanced system. Even very simple to balance feats require so much work form me that I could just rewrite the rules more easily. (I have done that before) WotC has always had problems balancing abilities but 4.0 just took it to humorous levels.

I know 5 GMs who switched to Pathfinder (often referred to as 3.6 by fans) rather than the official 4.0 release. (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG.)

Paiso released a "fixed" version of 3.5 rules where a lot of the chronic balence issues were addressed. They basically did what I always hoped WotC would manage. Now I have a much tighter system by people who understand rule balance and are not obsessed with selling me the splat book of the month.

  My former players are excited about the new rules where 4.0 was driving them away. I highly suggest fans of DnD to check out the pathfinder system. The book is beautiful and the PDF means I have a personal copy on my key-chain usb-drive for quick reference between games. (Amazon has a $35 version without the PDF) Well worth the money for a system that is very simular to 3.5 for players and DMs.

Last I heard he was blocked in his plans to bring them on US soil by the Kansas representatives who didn't like the idea of them being transferred into Kansas. I thought I read yesterday of him winning a legal battle to at least have them tried on US soil but the paper I read that in has no article search feature so I can't look it up now.

quote> Health Care Reform?

Not an international issue. But the fact that his policy was trying to reduce the disparity of coverage between the ultra rich and the working class is admirable. I am not sure that current plans are far reaching enough to actually improve things. Current medical policy in US is a disaster. Having had a family member work in NIH for several years I am of the strong opinion that socialized care would be a large improvement over the current system. Though malpractice reform is a huge driver of costs in US system and needs to be controlled somehow.

Definitely - http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/FreedomofInformationAct/ The example you gave was bad. It is very hard to remove classification from already classified documents. And honestly he has higher priorities than going through bad decisions of the previous president. I mean he is trying to get something done.

And from what I see he is being fought every step of the way in each of these areas. Woudl I like more disclosure, more progress, more results? Yeah. But he is working on it and even listening to his critics. Something I can not say about certain past presidents.

IBM has long had a tradition of leveraging a small number of competent employees to float a team of cogs that follow written instructions that a competent employee generates. The competent employee is often told that they are paid way more than "others in your job category" and the expert will be paged/called during night/vacation because no one else can solve issues that has not been seen and documented.

My first week there my team lead took me aside and told me "You are too bright to work here, you should go work at a small company in a big city" It took me years to realize that he was spot on. Basically I was exploited to float an entire department. I was underpaid and overworked. I did have an excellent manager and received many awards and recognitions, but I was offered 30% more to work the same job somewhere else with many more benefits.

In general IBM loves replaceable cogs because it gives stability. They are inexpensive and very easy to replace with any recent graduate. You could think of many jobs being very simular to help desk where you have levels of competence which funnel up to one or two people who are generally underpaid and overworked as they support an entire department worth of work.

My best friend and I both had technical expert roles at IBM. Our experience was that most employees have no ability to research new issues. I could send a person to the correct page of the correct manual and they still could not understand the problem from reading the manual. My friend was flown all around and given any project that used any device new to the team. (Which he then wrote the red papers on) But it was a kick in the nuts to find that half the team was paid more than you due to seniority and yet had to follow the instructions you left behind.

I automated a full department's worth of work. When I left I literally had 10 minutes of work each day because if I had automated the scripts so my colleagues would stop screwing them up. The team managed to justify its continued existence for a couple years after I left by making graphs to explain the data my scripts had collected. With that level of "innovation" you can hardly afford not to outsource.

So he was arrested after setting himself as only admin on network devices, and then setting network devices so "they could not be administratively reset". Article I read last week said "booby trapped" but honestly it could have just been that he didn't commit changes to flash memory so that if devices were power cycled they had to be reconfigured from scratch. (It is not like reporters really understand configuring these devices) Another poster commented that locking down against admin reset is a common practice at facilities if you don't want users reconfiguring devices so maybe that was what was happening. *shrug*

I believe that a lot of this boiled down to corporate politics. (group infighting , etc) The following is a fictional account of what happened based on background from Wikipedia and various newspaper articles :

"There was a political fight between a couple of groups. His group was losing headcount and shrinking, admins were getting fired and duties transferred to another group that he didn't feel were capable but who were politically connected and growing in power. Someone junior to him in his group was defecting to other side, Childs catches defector in an unauthorized area carrying a harddrive and claiming to be doing a security audit that Childs had never heard of... A week later defector is promoted above Childs due to having joined the winning side. Childs had anticipated this and locked out other admin and maybe other people in his group that he considered likely to jump sides. Defector used superior position to demand the passwords back. Childs lied as he didn't want other group to take over and finish gutting the technical proficient but politically weak group he was part of.

The politically savvy group used his refusal as opportunity to totally eliminate Childs group and spins Childs actions as a hostile attempt to seize control of the gov't network. They grow in size, his group is eliminated, defector has nice new management job.

Basically once a workplace is big enough to have political infighting it is a race to the bottom.

A simular thing happened with a friend who was a technical expert but not politically connected. He was network architect and got a few people fired for pure incompetence. One fired fellow was politically connected, and seen by my friend taking his college buddy (director at company) to some whorehouses. A month later director is appointed VP, fired fellow is new director. My friend is fired for incompetence while the new director seizes control of my friend the architect's pet project weeks from its completion and got a nice bonus check for completion of a multi-year project with outstanding reviews. Everyone except the technical fellow is happy.

What is this TV thing people talk about? I haven't used my TV (except for video games and DVDs) for over a decade. I know no one outside work who talks about TV. It is much more common to hear about what is new on hulu or netflix. Are my friends just too techie? I always thought this was a growing trend among the younger more tech savvy audience.