Actually, about one day in Iraq at the peak of the war. Closer to 2 days in Iraq now.

I think AT&T's network issues must be highly localized in the northeast, because I've been an AT&T user since before they were using GSM, and I've never had an unexplainable dropped call anywhere I've traveled. My cell is and has always been my only phone; I don't have a landline. However, I keep hearing about all these dropped calls on AT&T.

Sure, if I'm way out in the woods and I lose signal, it drops. If I go through a deep tunnel and lose signal, it drops. But if I've got signal, the call goes through and the line stays open.

I've never used anything but a free-with-contract handset with the service, either. I HAVE developed a deep loathing for LG handsets, though. My first 3g handset was a free Cu575 that was absolute shit - laggy buggy interface, OS crashes, strange "call failed" messages, etc.. I actually went back to using my old 2g Motorola rather than wait out the 2 year contract with that thing. I could not replace it fast enough when the contract expired. My fiance had similar problems on her Verizon LG handset.

I've primarily used my phone in Seattle.

According to the linked PDF from the FTC, about 2,500 of the 35,000 made enough payments to get a computer.

This form of financing is actually legit, and a common practice. It's been dying out as credit got cheaper and easier to get, but has been starting to make a comeback recently.

The scam part is where they didn't actually send out the computer after the 13th payment. And the part where they charge thousands of dollars for a bottom-of-the-line dell.

Of course, it's foolish to get a computer on layaway - by the time you've made the payments and recieved the computer, it's probably outdated. Not like a vacuum cleaner or something.

Having worked in retail and foodservice industry, I hate checks. I'm flabbergasted that any retail outlets still take them.

The rate of fraudulent checks accepted at retail is astronomical; in foodservice it's even worse. The last check-accepting restaurant I worked at that had nearly a 50% rate of fraud on them; mostly from checks being written against closed accounts. The vast majority of these bad checks we never saw a cent from.

The corporate office required that we accept checks as a form of payment; they were located in some rural ghost town, where debit card use still hasn't caught on, and set national policy based on that. In a modern urban area, Visa/MC logo'd debit cards have all but replaced paper checks, and the only people who still use them are the fraudsters.

Checks are terrible, for both those using them and those accepting them.

Because it would also require them to insure the sick. It would end lifetime benefit caps, too. Go ahead and get cancer right now, then see how fast you hit the lifetime cap on your insurance policy. If you're lucky it might take a few years. If your unlucky, they'll just drop your coverage before you can start racking up the bills.

Insurance companies discovered a long time ago that their product is only profitable to sell if they target the healthy and exclude the sick.

Or one of the unwashed masses who is not a radio enthusiast, and only owns a CB radio for emergency purposes. Many people purchase handheld CB's just so they can call for help on channel 9 in an emergency.

You are assuming that the oil company executives do not believe their own propaganda about how oil will never run out.

Given their recent behavior, and the ultra-slim portion of their R&D budgets that goes into green fuel, I'm starting to fear that they believe their own bullshit.

moot has posted the details on status.4chan.org.

Basically he confirms all the speculation that AT&T blocked 4chan because of ACK bouncebacks from a DDOS. Real /b/tards probably already had off-network proxies at the ready to deal with it.

Also, being on AT&T and unable to access 4chan doesn't necessarily mean that it's been blocked. 4chan is up and down all the time, because they're under constant DDOS attacks, at pretty much all times, from various sources. It seems that DDOSing 4chan is a basic holding pattern for botnets that aren't otherwise occupied.

IIRC, Google doesn't use top-end "server" chips in their servers. They use consumer grade, midrange chips that they can get at cheap commodity prices, and load balance everything across a ton of machines.

He implies the problems are due to Intel and AMD not delivering with their server chips; these are not the chips that Google is using.