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In the US, wholesale transactions are corrected to 60 F, but retail transactions are not:

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/resources/DPReportHotFuelUSAJune07.pdf

However, there is a lawsuit pending on the subject:

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/12/hot_fuel.html

No, I was just told a story by someone who can't even take the time to lookup which laws are relevant to the situation. The story was no more reality than your average night of WWE.

Here's some problems with his story:

- $6000 year maximum? Not at any job I've ever had. Think $1500 for deductibles and then you're done paying. Everything beyond that goes on the policy.
- EMTALA is a subsection of COBRA and has nothing to do with continued coverage after termination. It has to do with refusing coverage and transferring patients. Another section of COBRA says is that after you leave your job, you can continue to pay the premium at the rate the company paid. No company pays $700/mo for their normal employees. The number is in the area of $200-$300/mo.
- Employers with medical coverage also offer short term and long term disability coverage. For about $10/mo you're covered in the amount of 70-80% of your salary for varying lengths of time depending on the specific program. You don't need to stop receiving a paycheck because you're sick.
- $2000/mo in expenses (not including a mortgage or rent)? I don't think so. My entire cost of living including rent, car payment, food, utilities, gas, auto insurance, etc. is about $2200/mo. Over half of that is rent. Someone who already owns their home (as posited in his story) will have living expenses in the sub $700 range. Add in his $400/mo meds and you're only at $1100.
- For a home owner you're looking at somewhere around $100,000 (minimum) in equity that can be tapped. More likely in the area of $250,000 and possibly as high as $500,000-$1,000,000 (in the north east/north west metro areas.)

He wanted to tell a story, and I'm fine with that. But don't think that his work of fiction is common. His story churned through $50,000 in 18 months. According to this the average cancer patient runs $36,000 in uncovered medical bills. The average seriously ill patient has $13,000. And these are the people who are declaring bankruptcy. Which is the point I was making. People who are prepared won't have this problem as they have been living prudently and have some savings set aside for a rainy day.

Using the corner cases to determine your health care policy is dumb as they will suck up 100% of your resources.

Hillary Clinton, however, could possibly crash the global economy.

Too late for Clinton to claim that - Bush has prior art with the housing bubble.

Housing prices have fallen every month for the last 11 months. Predictions for the next 3 years are more of the same - with the bottom anywhere from 25% to 50% from their peaks.

That's a lot of people who will be upside-down on their mortgages, with a trillion dollars of bad debt still to work its way through the system.

This isn't news - for more than a year, its been predicted that more than 2 million people will lose their homes.

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2008/01/ntia_broadband.html 99% of zipcodes have at least 200kbs connections from at least one provider!!!!!!!

A) No scientific papers here, or links to papers, so there's no way to evaluate the claims made in this story.

B) Didja notice the 4 links to stories from the same web site saying there's no link to cancer? And that all 4 of them are later than 1998 stroy you linked?
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/12/cell_phones_cancer.html
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/cell_tumors_washu.html
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/cell_phones_cancer_uk.html
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/rf_exposure.html

A) No scientific papers here, or links to papers, so there's no way to evaluate the claims made in this story.

B) Didja notice the 4 links to stories from the same web site saying there's no link to cancer? And that all 4 of them are later than 1998 stroy you linked?
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/12/cell_phones_cancer.html
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/cell_tumors_washu.html
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/cell_phones_cancer_uk.html
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/rf_exposure.html

A) No scientific papers here, or links to papers, so there's no way to evaluate the claims made in this story.

B) Didja notice the 4 links to stories from the same web site saying there's no link to cancer? And that all 4 of them are later than 1998 stroy you linked?
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/12/cell_phones_cancer.html
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/cell_tumors_washu.html
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/cell_phones_cancer_uk.html
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/rf_exposure.html

A) No scientific papers here, or links to papers, so there's no way to evaluate the claims made in this story.

B) Didja notice the 4 links to stories from the same web site saying there's no link to cancer? And that all 4 of them are later than 1998 stroy you linked?
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/12/cell_phones_cancer.html
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/cell_tumors_washu.html
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/cell_phones_cancer_uk.html
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/rf_exposure.html

Here ya go:
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/cell_phone_cancer_link.htm

I've read some of the studies mentioned there, such as the one that correlates the side that brain tumors grow on with handedness, which they (guess) is caused by cell phones held up to that ear over a long period of time.

Nootropics, popularly referred to as "smart drugs", "smart nutrients", "cognitive enhancers" and "brain enhancers", are substances which are claimed to boost human cognitive abilities (the functions and capacities of the brain). ... Typically, nootropics are alleged to work by increasing the brain's supply of neurochemicals (neurotransmitters, enzymes, and hormones), by improving the brain's oxygen supply, or by stimulating nerve growth.

• A kick-ass primary education system that is the envy of the developed world.
• Clean and plentiful domestically produced energy.
• Clean and plentiful domestic water and food supply chains.
• A healthcare system that doesn't cause half of all personal bankruptcy filings in a given year.

Even worse, the majority of the recalls were due to design flaws rather than the paint.

"Chinese manufacturers have taken plenty of heat in the U.S. over recent widespread toy recalls, but U.S. toy maker Mattel says it's mostly to blame. The company says there were flaws in some of the toys' designs."
"A top Mattel executive took the opportunity to apologize to his Chinese colleagues, saying they were being blamed for simply following flawed design plans."
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/09/mattel_recall4.html

The apology from Mattel was too late and too little publicized to change the truthiness of blaming the Chinese.

1. Silent
2. Denied by Comcast
3. Disruptive
4. Trying to cover it up

Fuck you. YOU are the one insisting something cannot be accurate while providing NOT ONE OUNCE of evidence.

-FL

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/03/airl ines_batteries.html
Federal reports indicate at least nine fires involving lithium batteries have happened on airplanes or in cargo destined for planes since 2005.

Oh, well...

The mindset of anyone who has had to sit on a plane for 9 hours...

• People have always had to sit on planes for about 9 hours. Before taking off.

For the sake of brevity I wrote "illegal code". I should perhaps have said "code which was used by Sony to perpetrate a crime" -- note that in many states installing spyware on someone else's computer is illegal.

Yes, I know that code itself isn't illegal, it's how the code is used that leads to the potential commission of a crime. I thought most people would be sharp enough to understand my point and not get bogged down in semantic arguments.

I recall apple having complaints about batteries in another idevice after it came out:
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news03/apple_ipod.h tml

The real question that should be asked is why was the employee allowed to take the laptop with him on vacation. After all, the laptop is government property and belonged to Sandia National Labs. If the employee was going on vacation, he should have taken his personal laptop, not his work computer.

If SNL (and any other government agency for that matter) had stricter rules regarding personal use outside of work, them things like this might not happen as often.

a quick search yields:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/06/29/AR2006062900352.html/ http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/10/govt _id_theft.html/

Constantly. http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news03/vw_coils.htm l http://www.summitlake.com/COMMENTARY/Ford_Ignition s.html?reload_coolmenus http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_go1459/is_20 0307/ai_n8970029

According to a 2004 poll conducted by Boston University's College of Communication, 86 percent of American shoppers use some form of store card or discount card, "and the majority of them say the benefits of the card are worth giving up some privacy." A Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) article in 2004 stated that 76 percent of Canadian consumers belong to at least one loyalty program. A British advertising column boasted that loyalty card programs had achieved "85% consumer penetration" in the U.K. circa March 2005 - Loyalty Cards: Reward or Threat?

The amount of electronics in modern cars is ridiculous, especially when you think about how often electronics break and how easily they're broken. My mom has a ford escape, there have been two wiring recalls and the wiring has failed on two separate occasions.

Fords have had wiring problems since the late 70's. There was a massive recall (which took lots of pounding by the Feds for Ford to actually do something about) that involved ignition switches causing dashboard fires, while the car sat in people's driveways. Seriously: the switches would fail suddenly and the cars would burn to the ground, often setting people's homes on fire. Ford didn't give a shit- they kept producing the same design year after year, knowing it was defective.

I think the Ford focus set a world record for the most number of recalls (sample google result: http://consumeraffairs.com/news02/ford_focus.html)

3 Billion reasons why it will not happen - http://consumeraffairs.com/news03/debit_suit.html

The idea is much much older. Even was a Mk2 high resolution mag stripe reader to detect copies. It can be a chip, wireless, rfid whatever - but the banks will not have a bar of it.

The banks and the clearing systems DO NOT WANT IT. Thay make heaps of merchant charges, pocketing 1% plus of every dollar spent on Credit Card, and the rest.

Gas stations, Bog*mart can almost instantly increase their profits by, 1% tax free, by cutting card colluders out of the equation, when they smell the flowers. that 3 billion is now about worth 6 billion with inflation and all.

mod parent insightful.

IBM's appalling, much malfunctioning Deskstar HDDs ended with IBM quitting the HDD business. Many lost data (including me!) Worse, IBM knew the DeskStar line was faulty, and continued selling them anyway and denied there was a problem. http://consumeraffairs.com/news03/ibm_drives.html IBM quit the business and sold to Hitachi who didn't even think to change the charred brand name. I wouldn't touch anything from that lineage. The Hard Drive is the most important part of your PC to take the chance: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/10/24/deskstar_7 5gxp_the_pain_continues/

Apparently you missed the memo about the Oil companies actually taking pains to HIDE THEIR PROFITS because companies like Exxon made BILLIONS in *profit* not sales, profit. From the linked article : "When the FEO completes its investigation, he says, a "substantial percentage" of the nation's ten or so largest oil firms likely will be socked for at least $150 million in refunds to the public--assuming, of course, that his suspicions are correct and can be proved."
  They knew the people would be pissed because they would know they'd been had, so they announced their quarterly and yearly profits quietly.
Apparently other people think there might be some issues with their profits.

A.A

Why should I really worry about security anyway they've either thrown away my information in a dumpster or were compromised...

Scott Trade
Verizon
Bank of America
Choicepoint
Mastercard
AT&T
Department of Edumacashun
Chase

Why should I really worry about security anyway they've either thrown away my information in a dumpster or were compromised...

Scott Trade
Verizon
Bank of America
Choicepoint
Mastercard
AT&T
Department of Edumacashun
Chase

Why should I really worry about security anyway they've either thrown away my information in a dumpster or were compromised...

Scott Trade
Verizon
Bank of America
Choicepoint
Mastercard
AT&T
Department of Edumacashun
Chase

Why should I really worry about security anyway they've either thrown away my information in a dumpster or were compromised...

Scott Trade
Verizon
Bank of America
Choicepoint
Mastercard
AT&T
Department of Edumacashun
Chase

Why should I really worry about security anyway they've either thrown away my information in a dumpster or were compromised...

Scott Trade
Verizon
Bank of America
Choicepoint
Mastercard
AT&T
Department of Edumacashun
Chase

Why should I really worry about security anyway they've either thrown away my information in a dumpster or were compromised...

Scott Trade
Verizon
Bank of America
Choicepoint
Mastercard
AT&T
Department of Edumacashun
Chase

Why should I really worry about security anyway they've either thrown away my information in a dumpster or were compromised...

Scott Trade
Verizon
Bank of America
Choicepoint
Mastercard
AT&T
Department of Edumacashun
Chase

Why should I really worry about security anyway they've either thrown away my information in a dumpster or were compromised...

Scott Trade
Verizon
Bank of America
Choicepoint
Mastercard
AT&T
Department of Edumacashun
Chase

"They apparently assumed that most consumers would be too embarrassed to contest the charges when they learned they were from an adult-oriented site. [...] And where did the defendants, all of Malibu, CA, get the names and credit card numbers of their victims, many of whom the FTC said do not even own computers? They bought them from a bank."

Cigarette ignition is covered by a separate mandatory standard. That standard has been in place for more than 30 years during which deaths and injuries from mattress fires caused by smoking materials have fallen dramatically.

Obviously the newly imposed mattress fire safety rules just aren't working!

I'm curious how (sustainable) biofuel isn't environmentally friendly? It's carbon neutral, leverages our existing overproduction of food crops, seems all good all round. The only thing I can think of is that it's smelly and bad for your valve seats... obviously logging old growth forest for biomass doesn't count here, just things like maize and grain crops.

Hydro plants are protested against because they flood large areas of wildlife habitats and peoples' homes. That's an 'environmental' issue but not an emissions one.

I agree, though, that jumping on the 'alternative' bandwagon is far too fashionable and often counterconstructive - take, for example, the fact that the Prius uses more fuel than the Golf TDi[1]. Like any other engineering issue (and conservation is one at heart) you have to look at the data and not just follow the emotive hype. For instance, modern nuclear reactor designs are far safer than the old, cold-war era designs, and potentially very fuel efficient. If it weren't for the "nuclear is bad" mindset of the general public, they would be the perfect mid- to long-term energy solution.

[1] Of course, that's not a fair comparison because the TDi runs diesel fuel which has a higher energy density, but I'm pretty sure the total energy cost of a Prius over its lifetime is higher than that of a TDi.

I don't know how some of the taller people find cars in the EU. I spent two weeks going out after work looking for a non SUV to replace my old Honda. The only non SUV's that could handle my height was a VW. After the issues with my Wife's VW (No QC, the lack of parts in the states took the car off the road for almost 3 months http://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/vw_coils .html ) I am not going to purchase another VW.

The newer cars are smaller, thus I am afraid that I now drive a SUV. I couldn't even purchase a diesel as MA made it impossible to purchase at this moment. (THe only legal ones are ultra low sulfur diesel which wasn't available last Oct and might not be available now).

-Jason

Your Escalade, with a curb weight of 5333-5560 lbs (depending on what trim you bought) and a GVWR of 6800 - 7000 lbs (again depending on trim) and your Tahoe were both exempt from the following government-minimum safety standard:

Standard No. 216: Roof Crush Resistance Scope and Purpose: This standard establishes strength requirements for the passenger compartment roof to reduce deaths and injuries due to the crushing of the roof into the occupant compartment in rollover crashes. Application: Passenger cars (except convertibles) and multipurpose passenger vehicles, trucks and buses (except school buses) with a GVWR of 2,722 kg (6,000 lb) or less

And that roof crush standard, which neither of your vehicles even had to meet, is incredibly lax. Thanks in large part to Detroit's automakers, that roof crush standard hasn't been updated since 1971. And it only requires a vehicle to support 1.5 times its weight on the roof - trivial compared to the actual forces exerted in a rollover.

I guess in some ways I've gotten off topic, but in another, this is just a really good example of why companies will *always* find a way to skirt government regs, or better yet, keep them outdated and ineffectual, even when it harms customers.

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/07/veri zon_unlimited.html/

"Unlimited" means 30G per-month.

Sprint, Cingular/AT&T, etc. aren't much different.

Wireless companies in the US play similar games with "unlimited" roaming and, in fact, abusing "unlimited" roaming is said to be one of the sure-fire ways to get out of the contract without an early-termination fee (but good luck trying to take your number with you) because it often prompts *them* to drop *you*.

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/07/28/fat.viru s.ap/index.html
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/health_science/ar ticles/2006/05/22/gut_bugs_studied_as_a_cause_of_o besity/
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/01/obes ity_virus.html
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/02/obes ity_environment.html

There is increasing evidence that obesity is caused by factors other than the willpower of the victims. It is very easy to be moralistic and point the finger at the fat among us but it may be profoundly unjust. It's kind of like shunning lepers or even shunning anyone who doesn't look like us.

My question is this: How is it that we now have an epidemic of obesity in third world countries whose living conditions haven't changed much and where most of the population is chronically undernourished.

If your body wants to make and conserve fat, it will do so at the expense of other functions. Starving yourself to lose fat means that you are also starving all your other systems and that isn't particularly healthy.

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/07/28/fat.viru s.ap/index.html
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/health_science/ar ticles/2006/05/22/gut_bugs_studied_as_a_cause_of_o besity/
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/01/obes ity_virus.html
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/02/obes ity_environment.html

There is increasing evidence that obesity is caused by factors other than the willpower of the victims. It is very easy to be moralistic and point the finger at the fat among us but it may be profoundly unjust. It's kind of like shunning lepers or even shunning anyone who doesn't look like us.

My question is this: How is it that we now have an epidemic of obesity in third world countries whose living conditions haven't changed much and where most of the population is chronically undernourished.

If your body wants to make and conserve fat, it will do so at the expense of other functions. Starving yourself to lose fat means that you are also starving all your other systems and that isn't particularly healthy.

I pulled it out of my...um...

No. Someone else here quoted 30%. I guessed based solely on my personal experience.

A little googling got me:

Here you go:

27% satellite penetration as of 8/2005 - http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/jdpower _satellite.html
59% cable penetration as of 12/2006 - http://www.ncta.com/ContentView.aspx?contentId=54

So that's 86% penetration of satellite and cable, leaving 14% either without TV entirely or relying on OTA.

I'd say my ass was pretty accurate today ;-)

I don't normally post here, but I'm sick of hearing this reactionary argument. While cervical cancer is devastating and I fully support making this vaccine available on the market, I for one would most certainly not have my daughter vaccinated until it has been in WIDE SPREAD USE for at least 5 or more years. And, given that this is a from Merck, one of the companies practically infamous for selling medical technologies that they KNOW aren't safe (See Vioxx and Fosamax) all the while suppressing negative evidence against them, I may well be inclined to wait even longer.

So while you're happy to line your daughters up as consumer testers stage 1, I think I'm going to show a bit more caution and reserve with the most important and irreplaceable thing in the world to me.

Oh, and for the record I'm not particularly religious and I'm very much a political liberal - so yeah, the Christian wingnut thing most certainly doesn't apply.

How Would You Deal With A Global Bandwidth Crisis?

It bugs me that when I buy bandwidth, I don't really get bandwidth. It's like the airlines used to be: oversold, on the assumption there will be no shows. But when there aren't, the people who've paid for a service don't get it.

So I guess you could have a mode where it told you there was a shortage and asked for volunteers to get bumped for a few days, perhaps in exchange for free bandwidth later (or free porn or whatever it is that people want to trade for in order to get them to voluntarily stand down). But that sounds like it still relies on someone to be willing to give up. If they're expecting to die of bird flu tomorrow, you might find a lot of people who want to watch YouTube or some porn site today before it's too late and don't really care to trade it away.

But I think a better solution would be to have selling someone bandwidth really mean selling them bandwidth. Stop all these stupid clauses in access providers saying you can't resell bandwidth (because those are just there to keep you from exposing the overselling of bandwidth they've supposedly promised you anyway and it should be your right to resell what you've legally purchased). Create large monetary penalties for any provider who sells you bandwidth and doesn't really reserve it for you.

No, I'm not anti-capitalism. I don't mind someone selling the notion of gambling on getting bandwidth and getting a cheaper price. I just don't think that should be sold by saying you're getting x bandwidth. It should be like on credit cards where you have to disclose the info in a manner plain for anyone to know, not hidden in terms of service that the gigantically fonted numbers about how fast the connection will be is not necessarily reliably there... and certainly if you're going to be in trouble for trying to use the capacity of what you're given, that should be in big letters, too. Just like the credit cards have the Schumer Box, broadband agreements should expose things like: what's the worst case? how much is it oversold? will it go down if everyone uses it at once? will it go down if more people in your neighborhood buy? under what circumstancse do they commit to increase bandwidth? With proper labeling, I have a lot fewer objections.

But also, if after proper labeling I find there's no one in my area who will sell reliable bandwidth and everyone will only sell me probabilistic bandwidth, that's significant, too. Right now, a lot of places probably figure they have broadband reliably available when really they have it only probabilistically available (that is, oversold).

It seems to me the reason bandwidth might fall short in an event like a bird flu emergency (if it might--and that's hard to know) is that there's no serious recourse to the consumer if it does. And so what's the motivation for vendors to even care?

RCN itemizes the resale of what you've paid for in bandwidth as Theft of Service.

Comcast restricts you from offering the service to others, as well as telling you that even if you use it for yourself, you (not they) are responsible for making sure your use is within the scope of what you were sold (as if the typical Joe Sixpack is going to know how to assure his use of YouTube is within such bounds) and warns you that if you exceed your quota, they can shut you down at their discretion

Time-Warner Cable has similar restrictions.

Verizon is alleged to be quite overly strict in similar ways. They make a point of noting that Verizon advertises itself as offering a service

Yawn.

Here's an easy reader description of the report for you.

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/03/cr_h ybrids.html

(I was wrong, the highest savings is $13,300, not $13,800.)

This is my last response and I only replied this time, in case anybody happens to read your inept keyboard droolings. I feel compelled to point out abject stupidity when I see it. Arguing further with you, when all your stupid ass had to do was do a quick Google to prove or disprove your claims, is certainly pointless.

I don't even own a hybrid, you drooling neanderthal.