You basically don't have any leverage at all with the phone company as an individual. Only in large groups can you get them to pay attention. One individual's subscription is an amount that can't even be found on the telco's balance sheet.
I live in a major metro area. I keep reading about the new DSL plans, I get at least one DSL come-on in the mail every week, and see things like FTTP being rolled out in Podunk, but I'm stuck here with no access to DSL, and as near as I can tell, no plans to provide it here, ever. About once a month, I go online to check the DSL availability in my neighborhood; no joy. They won't explain why; I'm within the distance range, but apparently there is a repeater in the way, or the line guage is too small.
My only economical (?) choice for broadband is Comcast's excuse for cable service. I keep a dialup ISP account as a backup, because dialup is not only more reliable than Comcast, it's occasionally FASTER.
I've even thought about starting a community ISP and getting a T1, but that's way too expensive... Turns out that getting T1 in my neighborhood is about three times as expensive as it would be just five block away!
Try 89% (from the article), but that number is also made up. I see nothing here that reliably demonstrates that this "lie detector" actually works. All this "voice analysis" is basically wishful thinking, and in the hands of a jack-booted thug, it is just another tool to take away what little liberty we might have left.
The only thing worse than a lie detector that doesn't work, is one that does.
When the light bulb was invented, did anyone argue we should abandon it because the candlestick industry would oppose it?
I have been on a tour of homes here in Dallas that were wired for electric light -- but also equipped with gas lights, just in case electricity turned out to be a passing fad...
An LED is less efficient than an incandescent bulb. -- Insurance for H1-Bs: http://www.H1Bins.com Healthcare for the uninsurable: http://www.AFFHC.com Medigap insurance information: http://medigap.supremesite.net
I just wear my New Balance running shoes to those sort of shows. In fact, NB makes a black leather running shoe that I wear for daily work attire, except for the most formal of occasions. -- Insurance for H1-Bs: http://www.H1Bins.com Healthcare for the uninsurable: http://www.AFFHC.com Medigap insurance information: http://medigap.supremesite.net
Once upon a time, the entire internet was shut down for a day or so to switch over to IPV4. We survived. I suspect we would survive the switchover to IPV6, especially since it won't require a complete shutdown. It will be a lot like the current situation for VGA monitors; nobody really worries too much about the folks still running 640x480 anymore. Likewise, when IPV6 starts to take over, people will gradually switch over until a critical mass develops, after which the rest of the world will follow very quickly. Then after a while, most of the world will stop catering to anybody still running V4. That doesn't mean that everybody will switch then, but the ones that don't will simply pay the price in inconvenience.
I didn't really follow the assertion that V6 would be less secure -- I expect that any such problem will be quickly fixed, and probably long before the majority of folks actually make the switch. As for the timing, I don't think it will be as long as Mr. Weekly says. I think that 2005 is a reasonable prediction for V6 reaching critical mass. -- Insurance for H1-Bs: http://www.H1Bins.com Healthcare for the uninsurable: http://www.AFFHC.com Medigap insurance information: http://medigap.supremesite.net
I don't particularly care to hunt around for a 'hotspot', so I'm not terribly interested in the Cringely suggestion. I want internet access -- and it doesn't have to be super-fast -- anywhere in the US (I'd even settle for anywhere in my home state), and I'm willing to pay a reasonable amount for it. I want to be able to easily and quickly connect to the internet while I'm sitting at a client's dining-room table. I was just about to sign on for a Ricochet when that product suddenly disappeared from the market.
I've seen one service that comes pretty close, and once I get some more info, I may buy it. Cingular is now offering a unlimited wireless internet service for $75/month which includes a laptop PCMCIA card, and will connect to the internet anywhere on their cellular network. That's pretty close to what I'm looking for, although I couldn't find any mention of the connect speed in their ad (or a number of other important details).
One can only hope it's a bunch faster than their current connection using the cellphone, which runs about 10Kbaud. I currently use that because I need something to get email with on the road, and I can't afford to limit myself to "hotspots". -- Are you an H1-B needing health insurance? See https://www.worldtrips.com/quotes/default.asp?refe rid=22367
Re:Encryption ain't it all tapped out to be...
on
Feds Want to Tap VoIP
·
· Score: 1
You said it better than I did...
I don't believe that you understand encryption.
on
Feds Want to Tap VoIP
·
· Score: 1
Most of the best encryption algorithms are open, as in open-source. "Reverse engineering" is not even applicable, because they rely on known calculations that are extremely difficult (astronomically computationally expensive) to run backwards. That is the whole theory behind public-key encryption.
If you want to build wealth trading stock in public companies, history says the most successful strategy is to buy a wide, diverse portfolio.
As Don Lancaster pointed out more than two decades ago (in his now out-of-print classic, The Incredible Secret Money Machine), there are no more really good deals. And if it calls you on the phone, it isn't an investment... I still get at least one call a week from some 'broker' wanting to 'share' some news about a "great investment", to which I invariably reply that I would like to have him come and play a competitive game of software development against me for a living -- where I would do to him exactly what he would do to me in the stock market.
I'm of the opinion that the individual investor in the stock market is going to be fleeced more often than not, no matter what strategy s/he uses. I even joined an investment club to discuss various strategies and try some investment by consensus -- over the two years that we played our little game, we did fairly well; we only lost about a third of our money... I am convinced that the only way to invest is to first completely understand the business that you are investing in, and the information available to the typical small investor in the stock market is simply inadequate.
It appears to me that long-term wealth is most often the result of investing in tangible, productive assets and using them to their best advantage, while systematically reinvesting the proceeds back into the same thing. These days, I am approaching my retirement, so I'm more or less past that point (and I didn't really do all that well; sigh) -- so I'm trying to put as much money into indexed annuities as I can. I'm at the point where it is much more important to avoid large losses than it is to go for the large gains.
... only when one of my audiobooks has finished (the 'entertainment' system in my car automatically switches to radio when that happens), and I don't have another one at hand (or I'm waiting for a chance to stop; I don't change tapes or CDs while I'm driving). Between my local public library and the communal audiobook collection that several of my friends have established, I don't expect to run out of audiobooks to listen to in the near future, but just in case, I keep a couple of classical music CDs in the glove box.
The only time I deliberately listen to radio is if I'm curious about the cause of the traffic jam I happen to be already stuck in.
HD radio would be wasted on me. My hearing never was very good (the problem is congenital), and the last time I had it checked, I had no significant hearing above about 6kHz. Which means that I don't really hear much over a good set of headphones that I can distinguish from a telephone transmission.
I have had people express sympathy, but OTOH, since I know my limitations, I can avoid spending the big bucks on quality I know I can't hear.
I sit and look at the picture of the Mars-scape that I downloaded from NASA with the same awe as I had when I downloaded it day before yesterday. Todays' picture of the memorial was a nice touch, and brings back some of the feelings I had last February (I live in the Dallas area, and heard the explosion).
I wonder how long it will be before the wonder wears off.
... where I can go into a small business staffed by complete computer illiterates (that part is actually easy to find), and offer them a complete system that will handle all of their word-processing, spreadsheet, AR, AP, payroll, and CRM without a lick of MS software anywhere in it. Of course, as part of this dream, the total cost and effort of the installation is practically nil, and I get a lucrative maintenance contract to do the stuff that the staff can't or won't figure out how to.
So far, I have been unable to do that, but the solution to this appears to be fairly close at hand. When it is, MS will have competition that it can't effectively deal with in any way except to improve the quality and reliability of its software.
But for now, I keep running into problems where things simply don't work. OpenOffice is great for techies, but when it acts up, it's enough to piss off a saint. Techies put up with that because they can come up with workarounds easily, but little old secretaries with blue hair are going to be utterly confounded when something doesn't work as expected, or an import doesn't quite keep the same formatting, or the margin just won't go where you want it, etc.
Why do I suspect that there is a ripoff in progress?
If you were so inclined, you could try the following experiment: 1) Check your current ranking; 2) Stop your adwords campaign and watch your ranking drop after a few days; 3) Start up the same adwords campaign with no other changes, and watch your ranking climb.
But then, my site's ranking was never very good anyway, so maybe that's all just coincidence. I never did engage in any of the games like keyword spamming or shill linking. Yes, I'm sure that there were folks abusing the previous algorithm, and I'm sure that once the current scheme is decrypted, there will be folks that abuse it again. But the vast majority of us that simply try to go by the rules and earn a living are caught in the crossfire, and I am not convinced that Google is on my side. They have their own agenda, and folks like me are just incidental -- probably beneath notice to giants like Google.
I just hope they get some meaningful competition, that's all -- meaningful competition in the search engine business could only help folks like me.
After the way that Google has been screwing around with their rating algorithm (most probably solely for the purpose of pumping up the IPO value by extorting more ad revenue), I've definitely been hoping that Google will draw some meaningful competition.
So, I'm rooting for Yahoo. For now.
Unfortunately, the way the internet works, whoever is in first place in any category naturally becomes completely dominant. Once any organization becomes dominant, they then become complacecent and abusive, if only slowly at first -- as they test the limits of what they can get away with. Losing a first place position requires a major error.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'" - JRR Tolkien.
Just today, I was listening to tape 11 of the audiobook version of The Fellowship of the Ring, which contains this line. First time I've gone back to 'read' this in about 25 years. Just today, for the first time in over a week, I decide to read Slashdot, and run across this in a sig...
Predictions are a bit like that. Something may happen several times beneath one's notice, then you attention gets called to it for some reason, after which it suddenly pops into your notice. Then you wonder...
Recently, Google changed the way it rates sites in a search, and has kept the new algorithm secret.
Those of us who are cynical suspect that your search position is now heavily weighted by how much you spend on their 'adwords' service. And that in turn is driven by their imminent IPO.
Big companies don't seem to be able to make little mistakes, and I'm wondering if Google is going to screw itself out of the #1 position...
With the new HIPPA rules, your doctor is supposed to jealously guard your personal identifying information. Although that's not the way it works...
If you file for insurance for a doctor visit, then everything on your claim is essentially public information. However, if you *don't* use insurance for regular doctor visits, your information can actually be private. An alternative to insurance is a non-profit association like IAB. Just pay the discounted amount at your doctor's office, and don't bother with insurance if your privacy is worth anything to you.
With that approach, the insurance companies cannot verify pre-existing conditions, which can be very valuable to you. The HIPPA rules forbid your doctor from disclosing anything about you without your permission (which you automatically sign away when you file even a minor claim). Unfortunately, for most people, it's too late, because they've alread been suckered into the insurance system.
... check out what the Herbalife and other MLM scumbags are doing to Monster.com. This phenomenon appears to be spreading over the entire net.
I have used Monster.com on several occasions, and even found a contract there a couple of times, and I was even considering advertising on their site. In just the last week or so, however, I have noticed a new trend that is rapidly rendering Monster.com completely worthless. Seems that my current job search agents (for C++/C#/Java programming) are returning dozens of hits -- but almost all for Multi-Loser-Marketing scams (mostly Herbalife, aka Global Online Systems--this is one of several thousand of their replicated websites) and ads for services that purport to teach me how to "work at home" for a membership fee.
I have complained to Monster, and they have replied that yes, this is a violation of thier TOS, and yes, they would remove the ads that I called to their attention. Just for grins, I checked this morning to see just how many such ads there were on Monster, and found over 5,000 of the Herbalife ads, and about 1,000 of the "work at home" membership ads. This appears to be primarily the output of 3 organizations, with Herbalife 'distributors' responsible for the largest portion. If this is the beginning of a trend, then every MLM and suckerbait outfit on earth is going to be putting their crap there by the end of next week, drowning the legitimate job ads in the noise. For example, my last search produced exactly one legitimate job opening in the last 2 days, and 10 listings for a "work at home" service. (How many legitimate businesses actually use the word 'legitimate' in their names, anyway?)
While tracking down the perpetrators of the most egregious ads, I came across this description of just what Herbalife is, and the damage being done to the Sacramento area by Herbalife 'distributors'. Very interesting read. These scumbags are making spammers look good... OTOH, it sure seems to me that Monster needs to clean up its act, too. They obviously can't remove these fraudulent ads as fast as the MLM victims post them, so they need to start preventing them from getting there in the first place.
I have had wireless internet service from Cingular for nearly a year. Two things you should know before you buy this:
1) It's about 9 kbaud. Barely acceptable for checking a low-volume email account. 2) I have had consistent billing problems with this service for the past 3 months. Seems they think each connect is a "directory assistance" call, for which they want to charge an extra $2 a pop. I have had to call them up to get these charges deleted each of the last 3 months (one month, it was over $150 for this alone).
In addition to these problems, I found that the setup was not straightforward, and the Cingular helpdesk was thoroughly clueless. I currently have what might be a hardware problem -- I can connect via IR port, but not with the cable. Again, getting any help from Cingular has been an exercise in futility.
I am obligated to keep Cingular for another 9 months on my current contract, at which time I may take advantage of WLNP -- and by which time the current shakeout due to WLNP should be settling down. I'll be looking first and formost for whichever mobile service has the best deal on wireless internet.
Slashdot Mirror
You basically don't have any leverage at all with the phone company as an individual. Only in large groups can you get them to pay attention. One individual's subscription is an amount that can't even be found on the telco's balance sheet.
I live in a major metro area. I keep reading about the new DSL plans, I get at least one DSL come-on in the mail every week, and see things like FTTP being rolled out in Podunk, but I'm stuck here with no access to DSL, and as near as I can tell, no plans to provide it here, ever. About once a month, I go online to check the DSL availability in my neighborhood; no joy. They won't explain why; I'm within the distance range, but apparently there is a repeater in the way, or the line guage is too small.
My only economical (?) choice for broadband is Comcast's excuse for cable service. I keep a dialup ISP account as a backup, because dialup is not only more reliable than Comcast, it's occasionally FASTER.
I've even thought about starting a community ISP and getting a T1, but that's way too expensive... Turns out that getting T1 in my neighborhood is about three times as expensive as it would be just five block away!
Try 89% (from the article), but that number is also made up. I see nothing here that reliably demonstrates that this "lie detector" actually works. All this "voice analysis" is basically wishful thinking, and in the hands of a jack-booted thug, it is just another tool to take away what little liberty we might have left.
The only thing worse than a lie detector that doesn't work, is one that does .
Imagine that I'm in an area subject to a prediction of this sort, and I want to *buy* earthquake insurance...
When the light bulb was invented, did anyone argue we should abandon it because the candlestick industry would oppose it?
I have been on a tour of homes here in Dallas that were wired for electric light -- but also equipped with gas lights, just in case electricity turned out to be a passing fad...
An LED is less efficient than an incandescent bulb.
--
Insurance for H1-Bs: http://www.H1Bins.com
Healthcare for the uninsurable: http://www.AFFHC.com
Medigap insurance information: http://medigap.supremesite.net
I just wear my New Balance running shoes to those sort of shows. In fact, NB makes a black leather running shoe that I wear for daily work attire, except for the most formal of occasions.
--
Insurance for H1-Bs: http://www.H1Bins.com
Healthcare for the uninsurable: http://www.AFFHC.com
Medigap insurance information: http://medigap.supremesite.net
Once upon a time, the entire internet was shut down for a day or so to switch over to IPV4. We survived. I suspect we would survive the switchover to IPV6, especially since it won't require a complete shutdown. It will be a lot like the current situation for VGA monitors; nobody really worries too much about the folks still running 640x480 anymore. Likewise, when IPV6 starts to take over, people will gradually switch over until a critical mass develops, after which the rest of the world will follow very quickly. Then after a while, most of the world will stop catering to anybody still running V4. That doesn't mean that everybody will switch then, but the ones that don't will simply pay the price in inconvenience.
I didn't really follow the assertion that V6 would be less secure -- I expect that any such problem will be quickly fixed, and probably long before the majority of folks actually make the switch. As for the timing, I don't think it will be as long as Mr. Weekly says. I think that 2005 is a reasonable prediction for V6 reaching critical mass.
--
Insurance for H1-Bs: http://www.H1Bins.com
Healthcare for the uninsurable: http://www.AFFHC.com
Medigap insurance information: http://medigap.supremesite.net
I don't particularly care to hunt around for a 'hotspot', so I'm not terribly interested in the Cringely suggestion. I want internet access -- and it doesn't have to be super-fast -- anywhere in the US (I'd even settle for anywhere in my home state), and I'm willing to pay a reasonable amount for it. I want to be able to easily and quickly connect to the internet while I'm sitting at a client's dining-room table. I was just about to sign on for a Ricochet when that product suddenly disappeared from the market.
e rid=22367
I've seen one service that comes pretty close, and once I get some more info, I may buy it. Cingular is now offering a unlimited wireless internet service for $75/month which includes a laptop PCMCIA card, and will connect to the internet anywhere on their cellular network. That's pretty close to what I'm looking for, although I couldn't find any mention of the connect speed in their ad (or a number of other important details).
One can only hope it's a bunch faster than their current connection using the cellphone, which runs about 10Kbaud. I currently use that because I need something to get email with on the road, and I can't afford to limit myself to "hotspots".
--
Are you an H1-B needing health insurance?
See https://www.worldtrips.com/quotes/default.asp?ref
You said it better than I did...
Most of the best encryption algorithms are open, as in open-source. "Reverse engineering" is not even applicable, because they rely on known calculations that are extremely difficult (astronomically computationally expensive) to run backwards. That is the whole theory behind public-key encryption.
What if you always have your computer with you? It would be a bit hard for anybody to install something without my knowledge on my laptop.
You are making the erroneous assumption that there is any meaningful feedback mechanism in existence here.
If you want to build wealth trading stock in public companies, history says the most successful strategy is to buy a wide, diverse portfolio.
As Don Lancaster pointed out more than two decades ago (in his now out-of-print classic, The Incredible Secret Money Machine), there are no more really good deals. And if it calls you on the phone, it isn't an investment... I still get at least one call a week from some 'broker' wanting to 'share' some news about a "great investment", to which I invariably reply that I would like to have him come and play a competitive game of software development against me for a living -- where I would do to him exactly what he would do to me in the stock market.
I'm of the opinion that the individual investor in the stock market is going to be fleeced more often than not, no matter what strategy s/he uses. I even joined an investment club to discuss various strategies and try some investment by consensus -- over the two years that we played our little game, we did fairly well; we only lost about a third of our money... I am convinced that the only way to invest is to first completely understand the business that you are investing in, and the information available to the typical small investor in the stock market is simply inadequate.
It appears to me that long-term wealth is most often the result of investing in tangible, productive assets and using them to their best advantage, while systematically reinvesting the proceeds back into the same thing. These days, I am approaching my retirement, so I'm more or less past that point (and I didn't really do all that well; sigh) -- so I'm trying to put as much money into indexed annuities as I can. I'm at the point where it is much more important to avoid large losses than it is to go for the large gains.
... only when one of my audiobooks has finished (the 'entertainment' system in my car automatically switches to radio when that happens), and I don't have another one at hand (or I'm waiting for a chance to stop; I don't change tapes or CDs while I'm driving). Between my local public library and the communal audiobook collection that several of my friends have established, I don't expect to run out of audiobooks to listen to in the near future, but just in case, I keep a couple of classical music CDs in the glove box.
The only time I deliberately listen to radio is if I'm curious about the cause of the traffic jam I happen to be already stuck in.
HD radio would be wasted on me. My hearing never was very good (the problem is congenital), and the last time I had it checked, I had no significant hearing above about 6kHz. Which means that I don't really hear much over a good set of headphones that I can distinguish from a telephone transmission.
I have had people express sympathy, but OTOH, since I know my limitations, I can avoid spending the big bucks on quality I know I can't hear.
I sit and look at the picture of the Mars-scape that I downloaded from NASA with the same awe as I had when I downloaded it day before yesterday. Todays' picture of the memorial was a nice touch, and brings back some of the feelings I had last February (I live in the Dallas area, and heard the explosion).
I wonder how long it will be before the wonder wears off.
... where I can go into a small business staffed by complete computer illiterates (that part is actually easy to find), and offer them a complete system that will handle all of their word-processing, spreadsheet, AR, AP, payroll, and CRM without a lick of MS software anywhere in it. Of course, as part of this dream, the total cost and effort of the installation is practically nil, and I get a lucrative maintenance contract to do the stuff that the staff can't or won't figure out how to.
So far, I have been unable to do that, but the solution to this appears to be fairly close at hand. When it is, MS will have competition that it can't effectively deal with in any way except to improve the quality and reliability of its software.
But for now, I keep running into problems where things simply don't work. OpenOffice is great for techies, but when it acts up, it's enough to piss off a saint. Techies put up with that because they can come up with workarounds easily, but little old secretaries with blue hair are going to be utterly confounded when something doesn't work as expected, or an import doesn't quite keep the same formatting, or the margin just won't go where you want it, etc.
I'm still working on it (suggestions welcome).
Why do I suspect that there is a ripoff in progress?
If you were so inclined, you could try the following experiment: 1) Check your current ranking; 2) Stop your adwords campaign and watch your ranking drop after a few days; 3) Start up the same adwords campaign with no other changes, and watch your ranking climb.
But then, my site's ranking was never very good anyway, so maybe that's all just coincidence. I never did engage in any of the games like keyword spamming or shill linking. Yes, I'm sure that there were folks abusing the previous algorithm, and I'm sure that once the current scheme is decrypted, there will be folks that abuse it again. But the vast majority of us that simply try to go by the rules and earn a living are caught in the crossfire, and I am not convinced that Google is on my side. They have their own agenda, and folks like me are just incidental -- probably beneath notice to giants like Google.
I just hope they get some meaningful competition, that's all -- meaningful competition in the search engine business could only help folks like me.
After the way that Google has been screwing around with their rating algorithm (most probably solely for the purpose of pumping up the IPO value by extorting more ad revenue), I've definitely been hoping that Google will draw some meaningful competition.
So, I'm rooting for Yahoo. For now.
Unfortunately, the way the internet works, whoever is in first place in any category naturally becomes completely dominant. Once any organization becomes dominant, they then become complacecent and abusive, if only slowly at first -- as they test the limits of what they can get away with. Losing a first place position requires a major error.
I have always viewed this business as being divided into three distinct groups:
1) Those who make things happen,
2) Those who observe what's happening, and
3) Those who wonder what the Hell happened.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Just today, I was listening to tape 11 of the audiobook version of The Fellowship of the Ring, which contains this line. First time I've gone back to 'read' this in about 25 years. Just today, for the first time in over a week, I decide to read Slashdot, and run across this in a sig...
Predictions are a bit like that. Something may happen several times beneath one's notice, then you attention gets called to it for some reason, after which it suddenly pops into your notice. Then you wonder...
Recently, Google changed the way it rates sites in a search, and has kept the new algorithm secret.
Those of us who are cynical suspect that your search position is now heavily weighted by how much you spend on their 'adwords' service. And that in turn is driven by their imminent IPO.
Big companies don't seem to be able to make little mistakes, and I'm wondering if Google is going to screw itself out of the #1 position...
With the new HIPPA rules, your doctor is supposed to jealously guard your personal identifying information. Although that's not the way it works...
If you file for insurance for a doctor visit, then everything on your claim is essentially public information. However, if you *don't* use insurance for regular doctor visits, your information can actually be private. An alternative to insurance is a non-profit association like IAB. Just pay the discounted amount at your doctor's office, and don't bother with insurance if your privacy is worth anything to you.
With that approach, the insurance companies cannot verify pre-existing conditions, which can be very valuable to you. The HIPPA rules forbid your doctor from disclosing anything about you without your permission (which you automatically sign away when you file even a minor claim). Unfortunately, for most people, it's too late, because they've alread been suckered into the insurance system.
I have used Monster.com on several occasions, and even found a contract there a couple of times, and I was even considering advertising on their site. In just the last week or so, however, I have noticed a new trend that is rapidly rendering Monster.com completely worthless. Seems that my current job search agents (for C++/C#/Java programming) are returning dozens of hits -- but almost all for Multi-Loser-Marketing scams (mostly Herbalife, aka Global Online Systems--this is one of several thousand of their replicated websites) and ads for services that purport to teach me how to "work at home" for a membership fee.
I have complained to Monster, and they have replied that yes, this is a violation of thier TOS, and yes, they would remove the ads that I called to their attention. Just for grins, I checked this morning to see just how many such ads there were on Monster, and found over 5,000 of the Herbalife ads, and about 1,000 of the "work at home" membership ads. This appears to be primarily the output of 3 organizations, with Herbalife 'distributors' responsible for the largest portion. If this is the beginning of a trend, then every MLM and suckerbait outfit on earth is going to be putting their crap there by the end of next week, drowning the legitimate job ads in the noise. For example, my last search produced exactly one legitimate job opening in the last 2 days, and 10 listings for a "work at home" service. (How many legitimate businesses actually use the word 'legitimate' in their names, anyway?)
While tracking down the perpetrators of the most egregious ads, I came across this description of just what Herbalife is, and the damage being done to the Sacramento area by Herbalife 'distributors'. Very interesting read. These scumbags are making spammers look good... OTOH, it sure seems to me that Monster needs to clean up its act, too. They obviously can't remove these fraudulent ads as fast as the MLM victims post them, so they need to start preventing them from getting there in the first place.
I have had wireless internet service from Cingular for nearly a year. Two things you should know before you buy this:
1) It's about 9 kbaud. Barely acceptable for checking a low-volume email account.
2) I have had consistent billing problems with this service for the past 3 months. Seems they think each connect is a "directory assistance" call, for which they want to charge an extra $2 a pop. I have had to call them up to get these charges deleted each of the last 3 months (one month, it was over $150 for this alone).
In addition to these problems, I found that the setup was not straightforward, and the Cingular helpdesk was thoroughly clueless. I currently have what might be a hardware problem -- I can connect via IR port, but not with the cable. Again, getting any help from Cingular has been an exercise in futility.
I am obligated to keep Cingular for another 9 months on my current contract, at which time I may take advantage of WLNP -- and by which time the current shakeout due to WLNP should be settling down. I'll be looking first and formost for whichever mobile service has the best deal on wireless internet.