I entertained the idea of getting this as a backup internet connection for the home, but they way they auto-charge for blocks of data and the reports of the inconsistencies in data tracking has me shying away. I'm looking for a prepaid data option that lets one buy the allowance upfront, doesn't expire, won't auto-charge for additional data, and either has an ethernet interface or has driver support in FreeBSD 8.3 (pfSense 2.1) since it'll be used as a failover WAN connection.

The only option I've found so far is Internet On The Go from TruConnect & WallyWorld. The down side is they're only selling the MiFi 2200 which requires one to compile a modified driver on FreeBSD and I just don't have the time. On top of that it's on Sprint's slow EV-DO network; the speed could be ok as a backup connection.

It would. Look at how they bill. You have to provide a card upfront. If you reach your allowance, they go ahead and charge for the next block of data. I don't believe that block gets rolled over to the next month either. It would be pretty easy to have a kid or malware burn through a bunch of data and max out the card.

Pretty much yes. Buying a "meal", and I use that term loosely, from a fast food joint includes at least a 20floz cup. Going to a restaurant it's common for people to order a soda. I worked as a waiter a couple of times and over 70% of people order a soda. Though, at least 80% of those didn't get more than one refill.

People wonder why they're fat.

This. It tastes better with real sugar and actually has OJ in the Throwback version as parent mentioned. I'd like to see what the Throwback would taste like without the added sugar or perhaps a little added sugar. Still, I do buy every 12 pack of Throwback on the shelf at the local grocery store since it costs the same as the crappy HFCS version. Once, Costco blessed us with a well priced case of MD Throwback, but they at least stock the Mexican Coke regularly.

If they're under-reporting by a large factor and keep it that way when they reintroduce caps, I may consider switching from their Business service to Residential. The reasons why I got Business are no caps, supposedly better service, supposedly faster incident resolution, and a hint that my traffic would take priority during congestion. I work from home two days a week and can't be concerned about caps. As for the rest of the supposed benefits of their Business service is a load of BS; when I've had a problem, I didn't get any better service or resolution than I would have on Residential.

I hope Comcrap will figure out their caps before my contract auto-renews. I'd like to cut my bill down a little while increasing my speed.

82574L was the Intel NIC.

I'm surprised that Intel NICs are held in such high regard, yet there are some really detrimental bugs.

CSB:
I just bought a three port daughterboard for a Jetway ITX mobo I am planning on using as a pfSense FW. Their Gen2 daughterboard uses this chip, but thankfully I didn't spend the extra $50 on the Gen2 compatible board and went with a Gen1 that uses 82541PI. Hopefully that one doesn't have the same issue.

Thanks. Too many acronyms to keep track of.

This is a little OT, but it's been bugging me for a while. There are a lot of companies out there that don't want to increase a potential worker's pay by a large amount and won't hire a qualified and competent candidate because of this large increase. I've even heard that they would consider this massive increase potentially detrimental to the candidate if they hired them at this larger rate. To me it's ludicrous and can't think of anything reasonable on how their statements could be true.

I don't understand the logic of not hiring someone that's unemployed either. A good portion of a job interview is to vet whether they have the necessary skills or not. If they're capable, then what does it matter? If they're hired and they suck, it's time to review how candidates are interviewed and get better at it.

CSB:
At my last job I got a few promotions in title, responsibility, and work load without any salary increases beyond the yearly 3% if I was lucky. My boss knew I was underpaid and I even put together a well worded case with referenced to DOL statistics in the area to show how far behind my salary was to his boss, the CTO, could try and increase his payroll budget. Obviously that never went through. I saw the signs that they were on the path to bankruptcy so I started looking for better opportunities.

About half of the headhunters wanted my current salary info from me, but I would only let them guess and when they got close to within $15k of my goal salary, I'd say "around that area" or "that's pretty close" and they'd just run with it. They never got close to my actual pay since I was in a senior position getting junior pay. The pay increase didn't ruin me at all. Instead it let me live more comfortably, not have to worry whether I could afford to eat a more nutritious meal, and be able to put money away into savings.

If you RTFA they are given an incentive to provide this information and they even pay Equifax for the privileged! They provide a service for employment history verification. When a potential employer or creditor wants to verify that an individual is actually employed at a company, that company would use this service to handle these verification requests. The HR dept is already overworked and they don't want the liability of a lawsuit in case they accidentally say something negative. To avoid all of this, they just outsource it to Equifax and provide them with all of their HR data; Equifax still retains that data and turns around and sells it.

The funny thing is they tell the HR departments that the information will only be disclosed to the people that you say it can be disclosed to, yet a collections agency could potentially ask for this information to see if it's worth trying to collect or use it as a tool to sue for garnishments.

If enough people raise cane about it, employers will stop using the service. I doubt we can get those jokers to move at all to stop this.

To add to this, most loan applications, especially ones that are in the four digits or more, require proof through pay stubs and/or bank statements that you make what you say you make.

If I want to get a loan or a revolving line of credit and their underwriter needs my salary information, it should be up to me on whether it is disclosed.

She should demand that they provide the original document she signed in order to incur that debt. No one keeps this documentation. If the collections agency violates anything under the FCRA, they can sue for $1k for each infraction in small claims court. I've read about some people that record their conversations with collections agencies, say certain things that get them to violate the FCRA if they haven't already, and then turn around and sue; many times what they win is higher than the alleged debt

Yeah he almost sounds like he looked at prices a year ago. To add to your list, around the pre-BF sales I picked up an Intel 330 240GB for $140. It almost feels like we'll be seeing $0.10/GB or lower in a couple of years; I can't wait.

The point of it is the prices are dropping in the double digits. I picked up a 240GB SSD for $140. That's $0.583/GB and it was an Intel SSD with no rebate nonsense! Granted that's no $0.033/GB for the 3TB HDD ($100) I picked up at the same time, but it's a stark difference to the >$1/GB that was last year.

Personally I'm looking forward to the prices to keep dropping and the density to increase.

I have a few Model M keyboards from 1984 that I still use (banging away on one right now). All of them are older than my wife. The nice thing about the earlier Model Ms is one can change out the cord for PS/2. I still get asked if I'm using an adapter for this tank, but I just point to the one cord going to the docking station without any adapters.HP has yet to drop them from the docking stations for the Elitebooks and Probooks.