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I'm in the process of moving everything here as they have the best security I've seen of any bank. Their customers laugh at this article.

these guys?

Then why is it that "Africian Americans" refer to "European Americans" as "white"?

The short answer to that question is that Europeans made up the term "white" to describe themselves, and non-Europeans have gone along with it.

I think what irritates people the most about the term "Africian American" is not that it is not particularly accurate, but that it conveys some special social standing that is not equally applied to all other racial groups.

Of course it is applied to other groups. Italian-American, Haitian-American, Asian-American, Arab American, Greek-American, Nigerian-American, Jewish American, etc. In fact, I used to belong to a bank called "European American Bank" before it was bought out by Citigroup.

Not always though...I've got a good friend who works in the collections department for A Big City(i) credit card company, what she's see happen over and over is someone who has never been late on their payment will pay their card off but keep it open for future use, because they have a $0 balance when the statement comes they'll just throw it away without looking at it (yes, a mistake on the customer's part). So what happens is, the Big City(i) credit card company sometimes adds on an "opt-out card protection" plan that costs a few dollars a month and the customer thinking they have a $0 balance because they haven't made any purchases lately doesn't look at the statement. When the few dollar cost of the protection plan doesn't get paid the customer is hit with a $30+ late fee and their interest rate shoots up. Now, here is where it gets really good. Because the customer has never been late before, the Big City(i) credit card company won't call them about the late payment until the third month the account is behind. So the for each of the next two months the customer gets another card protection charge and a $30+ late fee, plus interest (at the new higher rate) on the previous balance. When the customer finally does get a call, they owe $150+ to the Big City(i) credit card company and are on the verge of having their credit score affected. If you complain about it or try to have it resolved, the person doing the collecting doesn't have the authority to credit the charges, so they have to contact the crediting department, who will almost always either flat refuse it, or pass you on to another person (or back to collections). Reminds me a bit about the insurance company in The Rain Maker, no one has the power(or desire) to fix anything, and even someone who may want to fix the problem, AND works for the Big City(i) credit card company (such as my friend in collections) is at a loss as to how resolve the situation. Now, you can always try and contact the BBB or your attorney general (which some people rightly do) but really, for $150 who wants to spend all that time So yes, the customer made a mistake by not looking at their statements, but it's just an example of how credit cards (even unused) can spin out of control in a hurry.

Just as an addendum, you'd be surprised to see how many people are working at the Big City(i) credit card company and putting a huge portion of their paycheck towards paying off credit card debt. Now, that's really living under the Umbrella. (http://www.citigroup.com/citigroup/domain/image/h _cg.gif)

You do realize that was UPS, not USPS that lost the tapes, don't you?

I'd sure like to know exactly who it is that is fighting Vermont's new privacy rules. I just want to identify the enemy.
If I read it correctly, the businesses affected are those regulated by Vermont's Banking, Insurance, Securities and Health Care Administration, and there are five "industry trade groups" fighting it.
The American Council of Life Insurers was identified as one of the groups. Unfortunately, the page on their site that lists the member companies isn't working (may be slashdotted).
The article also quotes a spokesman from Citigroup, Inc., which consists of Citibank, Travelers, Smith Barney, Primerica, Citigroup Private Bank, Diners Club International, Banamex, Citi Insurance, Citi Financial, Citi Capital, Citigroup Corporate & Investment Bank, Citiroup Asset Management and Citi Mortgage.
Anybody know who the rest are?

It seems to me you have a pretty simple and clear case to keep the system you already have. It's obvious that the only reason anyone in
your company wants to have an Exchange Server on the network is "ease of management." I'll bet dollars to donuts that your "polical
movement" is primarily comprised of users or unknowledged, dare I say "techninal," advisors/systems analysts. Your company already has a _Huge_ investment in the Solaris-base mail system. Excluding Sun contracts, the money has already (and in my opinion) been well spent.
Let me recount my personal experience with M$ Exchange..
I worked for 2 years for Citicorp Insurance Group, now obliterated, due to the Citi-Travelers merger. During my time there I was an
adminstrator of a heterogenous computing environment, including Sun E4000's with Solaris and Oracle, and an assorment of Compaq
hardware running M$ and Novell. Our M$ server worked well enough but often times were a bitch to deal with, considering all the changes that were going on with the company, ie moving users around and deleting/adding new users. NT _can_ be stable given extremely expensive hardware and _NO_CHANGE_. Don't mess around with a server when you get it running. As part of our closing, my
counterpart took it upon herself to "migrate," if you will, our exchange server from one working machine to a different one so that the
original could be sent away. Sounds simple enough, except that Echange doesn't like to have any of its services restarted (unless its a full
NT/server restart). All in all, she lost all the mailboxes and was unable to retreive them even with "backups." But thats another story. I
wouldn't bet my Disaster/Recovery strategy on any M$-based products due to my own experiences.
Also keep in mind that with M$ comes the ever popular licensing agreements. When you purchase your server, you will buy NT Server and the necessary components (Exchange, et al). You will need BackOffice clients for _every_machine_ that connects to it, including those non-M$ desktops that use the SMTP or HTTP connectivity. When you start adding it up, it can be _QUITE_ expensive. Once again I remind you, you've already made an investment in a great and well-functioning mail system. You know the saying, "if it ain't broke, don't 'fix' it."
These are just my experiences and opinions, but I beleive that after you have reviewed all the posts here today, you'll have one hell of an arguement for
keeping your system the way it is. It's my opinion that the only reason that companies choose M$ products over other, better-qualified products is based entirely on ease-of-use/managemtn. As such, they can hire less-competant "administrator and analysts" at less pay to work with the stuff. If you still have a problem, let your managers and CxO's know that I am available for a fee to conduct an independant technival review of your entire computing environment!
mrBoB