I was referring to T-Mobile's Terms and Conditions: "17. * Misuse of Service or Device. You agree not to misuse the Service or Device, including but not limited to: ... (e) "spamming" or engaging in other abusive or unsolicited communications, or any other mass, automated voice or data communication for commercial or marketing purposes; ..."

I'm sure T-Mobile could have worked out who EZ Texting was, if only through their use of the 313131 code.

In that case, T-Mobile should have notified EZ Texting that the shutdown was because of complaints about unsolicited texts, which are a violation of their terms of service and of Federal law. I'm sure there have been complaints about EZ Texting - I'm a T-Mobile customer and have called them to complain about unsolicited texts. I've also filed 1088's with the FCC.

Blocking a spammer wouldn't create this lawsuit or publicity.

EZ Marketing's brief assets they do only "opt-in" marketing, with strict controls on who gets their offers. If that's true - and they're asserting it under penalty of perjury - then T-Mobile is censoring essentially private messages between consenting parties based on message content.

PV panels don't work so well at temperate latitudes (where people live), and their output follows the diurnal pattern of solar radiation cycles. Throw in the solar constant and PV makes sense only for special applications off a power grid.

Thanks for the correction. T-Mobile gives you unlimited T-Mobile calling, which is worthless. But (like many others) I rarely make voice calls, so even vs Sprint I save $120/year.

Also, world-wide GSM coverage is a big plus for me. I was a Sprint customer for ten years, and wasted too many hours of European and Asian trips because I didn't have a phone that worked.

I bought my Nexus One outright for $529 plus tax, and pay T-Mobile $60/month (plus $4 tax) for unlimited data, unlimited texts, unlimited night and weekend talk, and 500 prime time talk minutes/month. If I'd taken the subsidy and bought the phone for $179, then I'd have to pay $80/month for the same deal. Similar plans are at least $100/month on Verizon or ATT, and $80 on Sprint.

By foregoing the subsidy, I paid an extra $350 for the phone. But over 24 months, I save $20/month or $480, so (at 0% interest) I come out ahead by $130. Also, the phone is unlocked so I can pop in an ATT or European or Asian SIM card, and talk economically on the phone anywhere. And if I was unhappy, I could sell it on eBay.

But I'm not unhappy - it's a terrific phone at a great price.

I posted a bad review of some $25 men's travel briefs at a clothing web site, saying that the construction and quality were excellent but the design was bad. The site didn't publish that review - instead I got an e-mail from customer service offering me a free new version of the product, and an offer to exchange any old ones that I had. They had indeed fixed the design problem and they posted my new rave review.

The whole exercise is a political manipulation anyway. The largest government outlays - the so-called entitlements - are omitted from the chart. Medicare, Social Security, and reimbursements to states for social services are not shown on these charts. Those items constitute more than half of Federal spending - that's where your tax dollars go - but they're completely omitted in this analysis.

http://bash.org/?835030

One way to make easy-to-remember very strong passwords is to scramble an address, viz. Ukiah2035Elm.

If you must use a public computer, you can protect yourself from keyloggers by jumping from box to box: type part of your userid in one box, click elsewhere and type other stuff, click the password box and type part, back to the userid to finish, back to the password, etc.

There are so many naive users that even very simple precautions make you an unattractive target.

What would happen to human discourse if we banned bibliographic references and footnotes, which are, after all, links to copyrighted materials?

And banning paraphrases? This could be used to squelch nearly all creative or derivative work.

How can anyone take this idea seriously?

Your story is puzzling for several reasons. Paxil (paroxetine) is off-patent and now costs $15/month. For many patients, it is the best choice - really a lifesaver. Might it be possible that your physician decided it was the best choice for you after examining you carefully and knowing something about your history, and not because of a free lunch? Maybe he took your complaints seriously, rather than just suggesting a change in work environment and sleep habits?

Typically, patients ramp up to a therapeutic dose of SSRIs over several weeks. These drugs require considerable time to achieve any effect. It's unlikely that one or two pills would have had the effects you describe.

Nonsense. A friend with rheumatoid arthritis was overcome with severe abdominal pain one Saturday. She needed a CT scan, but to save money National Health has shut down its Lancashire imaging centre on weekends. For a while they allowed people to pay for veterinary imaging but the newspaper headlines forced an end to the practice ("My cat could get scanned, but I couldn't!"). NICE decides what drugs people get, and how long they have to wait for surgery (another friend has waited three years so far for a bunion repair).

The Medicare statistic is misleading. Medicare mostly pays huge hospital bills so its overhead inevitably will be less than an insurer that covers well-patient care and small claims. Also, in my area it's getting very difficult to find a doctor who accepts Medicare for payment. Medicare sets reimbursement and coverage by bureaucratic fiat. If you want something more, or to see a physician outside Medicare, you're out of luck.

Holman Jenkins pointed out that "We already bribe, through supremely asinine tax policy, the most affluent, capable consumers on the planet not to use their smarts to make sure the system returns value for money."