Forgive my ignorance, but I've never followed the LCD and/or HDTV market closely, so these may be silly questions with obvious answers. I will assume (correct me if I am wrong) that there's some consolidation in the LCD TV industry and that most "manufacturers" get their panels from only a handful of sources. If that is in fact the case, what variables actually go into determining the quality of a unit? For example, I've read several "rumors" that Samsung once upon a time had a ton of bad caps on some model(s) that gave consumers a lot of grief. Just curious, so thanks for the insight!

"Urine" for a surprise!

I know in our last safety and soundness exam the FDIC looked over our Red Flags program. I'm not saying that is where they spent the majority of their time by any means, though. Right now all the banks are getting hammered on asset quality. The regulatory bodies have written so many MOUs they're having a hard time keeping up.

I work as a network admin for a small community bank, so I have a passing knowledge of these matters. First, fully investigate your rights under Reg E if you are in the US.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/bankinforeg/regecg.htm

There are rules that govern reporting unauthorized transactions and the providing of "provisional credit" by the financial institution. Make sure you read and understand your rights. Hold your institution's feet to the fire, and make sure they act within this framework.

Second, understand that it is difficult to protect your debit card information. It can be stored (and stolen) from so many places. Any online purchase may result in your card info being stored on a server somewhere. Once that server's back end database is compromised, your data is exposed. Or you shop at a store with a POS system that is not well secured. Or your server at the restaurant last night cloned the mag stripe on the card. Ad infinitum.

Now, it's easy to say "make the financial institution liable for all fraud". But keep in mind the sheer volume of ACH payments processed by some of these banks. There's no way in hell that a bank can know for sure, 100%, that you did or did not initiate a particular transaction. However, please know that most banks' core providers have heuristic/behavioral analysis that does in fact look for behaviors that don't match yours. Companies like Fidelity National Information Services (FNIS), for example, actively send out "fraud alerts" that monitor ACH and debit activity on their networks. For example, if your card is used to purchase a product from a country or a domestic location that doesn't match your activity history, your bank can be alerted and the card can be "hot carded". I know it seems like we, as banks, drop the ball a lot, but keep in mind there is a lot going on that customers are not even aware of.

One piece of advice I would give is to just keep enough in the DDA account to which the card is tied to not go into an overdrawn status. Keep the bulk of your funds in a NOW or savings account with nothing electronic tied to it. No debit card, no automatic bill pay, etc.

I realize that you have a relatively insane schedule, but go back and read your comments. They are nearly all self defeating. Working out regularly is like quitting smoking - it's something YOU have to want to do for yourself and your own benefit. You'd be amazed what a simple set of adjustable dumbbells and a weight bench will do when used for only 20 minutes a day 3 to 4 days per week. Throw in some form of cardio on your days off from lifting, and you're doing far better than most of the general public.

Also, if you are truly serious about staying in shape, take a good look at your diet. Years ago I switched my diet from overly processed starches and red meats to include more whole grains, skim milk, water, whole fruits and vegetables, and green tea. My energy levels easily doubled. The amount of time I spent sick dropped.

Seriously, if you truly want to get in shape, you will make time for it. All it takes is making it a habit, which will probably require a 2 month investment on your part, whether you feel like it on a given day or not. There are days when I don't feel 100% like working out, but once I get about 5 minutes into my routine, I am up to the challenge.

This is one of those times where I am reminded that the vast amount of time and distance involved in any event like this make it most difficult to prepare for. Assume for the sake of argument that we know some event like this could truly destroy the human race (or at the very least do something very malicious to the vast majority of us and our environment). Now, how do we, as a species, go about preparing? If the star has already exploded, we'll have no way of knowing until the light has traveled X number of light years. Thus any preparations we might make could very well be in vain and terribly incomplete. Also let us assume we had some way of knowing that the star had not yet exploded. Do we begin the massive (and we'll assume expensive) task of putting some sort of elaborate emergency procedures in place? Assuming we did, who's to say that in 600 years our descendants would be able to take advantage of such countermeasures? Hell, they may have wiped themselves our 200 years earlier because they decided it was finally a good idea to start lobbing nukes at one another! Just another remind (to me) that we're pretty small, insignificant dots floating around at the complete mercy of forces we are just beginning to understand and appreciate.

That's an excellent idea! Though it would be nice if you could use a GPO to make changes "on the fly," so to speak. Our core processor use a certain web based app that simply refuses to work with a couple of GPO settings, and it's nice to be able to turn those on/off without reinstalling any software. But I just don't see MS designing in control for FF.

Part of my day job consists of administering a small Active Directory domain (25 nodes). And of course I can craft all sorts of nifty GPOs to control the behavior of IE on the clients within the domain. So, from that point of view, one might be able to argue that IE is in fact "more secure". Or, more controllable, perhaps.

Now, I'd personally prefer to have FF on all the clients and have FF controlled via a GPO, but to my knowledge that is not possible. If it is, someone please point me in that direction.