Police get rewarded for arresting people and prosecutors get rewarded for convictions. Because of that, they'll tailor thier processes to that end. The fact that computers and the interenet are not secure, and unfathomable to most people is irrelevant. They can't arrest the interent or convict your computer. But they can arrest and convict some poor sap who has no idea what a root-kit is or how his computer can be made into a zombie. So they will.
Police and prosecutors don't care what really happened because their job is to arrest and convict - that's what we reward them for. We'd be silly to expect anything different.
The whole point of advertising is to scream "OOH! OOH! BUY ME!" louder than the other guy. I don't buy stuff on a whim without any sort of information about it, and I certainly don't trust companies to offer unbiased information on their own products; hence, ads are only a waste of money for them (at least when I view them) and an annoyance for me.
Actually, that's the "old" mode of advertising. Today, it's more about creating a feeling about a product and company - giving a sense of the community you could be a part of. For example, how many advertisements actually tell you anything about the product? There aren't many. Most are about the fun, good-looking, exciting, partying people you will be with when you use the product.
It's also about impresssions. Today you might not be in the mood for some shoes. But, someday you will be, and sadly/strangely/interestingly, there is a correlation between how many impressions of an ad you've seen and which product you actually get. So when you DO want a pair of shoes, the hope is the thought of the company that has the most compelling lifestyle to offer you will pop in your head. When I said "buy a pair of shoes", which brand did you just think of? Nike? Adidas? Asics? Saucony? Whichever one it was "won".
Anyway, look at the ads and you'll see few of them actually describe the product and how you'll use it. Many many more of them are about how cool you'll be, or how much better your life could be because of the product.
No they don't. Votes do. And more specifically, votes in the middle of the country.
Actually, it's the closed-source voting machines that count. Particularly ones provided by a company whose CEO publicly declared that he would do everything in his power to get Bush elected...
If you are in the US military and go to the language school in Monterey, a big portion of your "lab" training is learning how to transcribe groups of numbers read in your target language. It's a big part of your "grade" in your coursework.
Now, it's hard to say if the US transmits numbers, but it's pretty clear that there appears to be some intelligence value in teaching the electronic warfare people how to listen to streams of numbers in other languages.
It's probably a great way to send one-way messages to the field. A simple AM radio can be modified work in different frequencies. With that and a normal-looking one-time-pad code book can go a long way to providing secure communication that is inconspicuous.
So, the CIA might not do it, but other countries and services probably do.
For the price of these laptops they could have sent out complimentary Vista discs to thousands of these so called influential people.
And risk that it would not install and run correctly on most of those thousands of computers? That would be a marketing nightmare. Vista is already how many years late?
It's much better to have their own monkeys install and test the installation on the laptops (prescreened to be hardware compatible) to ensure it will work the best it can.
Riiight. The difference between the Milgram experiment and Nazi Germany is pretty significant I think. Last time I checked, the Milgram experiment didn't involve guys in trenchcoats threatening to kill you and your entire family if you don't do your "duty".
That's what is so ground-breaking/terrifying about Milgram. He showed you don't need all those coercive techniques to get "normal" people to do terrible things. You just need someone who is an apparent authority to guide them and absolve them while they're doing it.
He showed that you don't need a whole lot of evil people to do those evil things. You just need a lot of normal people with a few evil people in authority. There was nothing special about the Nazis - we are all (collectively) capable of attrocities, and it doesn't even take much prompting.
The "record" is not worth much, rally. Most of them start their floor addresses with "I ask unanimous consent to revise and extend..."
This means, barring any objection (which would be rude), that the congressmember can go back after the fact and change the record of what they said and even add new material. You can actually find far more "said" in the record than could physically be spoken during the stated time period of the debate.
A pot roast is done when you heat it to about 140 degrees F. So somewhere around that is where the proteins that are in your tissues would start to take on un-useful shapes.
The espresso might come out of the machine at 90 C, but I'm pretty sure you're not drinking it at 90 C.
And since when is espresso the "real coffee"? I'm sure the original coffee inventors (weren't they in Yemen or Ethiopia?) had espresso machines laying around waiting for invention of roasted coffee beans... "Wa'allah! We can finally use these machines!"
In fact, I have a bag of "corn chips" with exactly that... corn, water, oil, and salt. Funny thing, they're great! They don't need the wildly artificial crap to taste good.
I think that's the shame of American "cuisine"... everything has such overpowering flavor enhancement that after a while things without it just don't taste good. But, once you get used to not having all the crap in the food, you start to notice the wonderful subtle flavors in things.
I'll bet that was an interesting tour. Food processing is fascinating (that's what I've seen the most of), but I imagine most industrial processing could be interesting in some way or another - even something "simple" like a machine that takes a piece of cardboard and folds and glues it into a box around its contents...
I really doubt that chocolate* is the problem behind the waiste-size of Americans. Even if you love chocolate, you can only eat so much of it.
I think, rather, that it's the infusion of the incredible amount of high fructose corn syrup and MSG in the food system of Americans. MSG makes things taste good that probably otherwise wouldn't - and is believed to suppress apetite signals. HFCS as a sweetener delivers tons of calories but doesn't interact with the apetite signalling systems the same way that glucose does. So, you're injesting tons of calories and never feeling full. I'm convinced you could put enough MSG and HFSC on dog shit that it would be "tasty" and indistinguishable from a majority of American processed food - and you still wouldn't feel full..
Then there's the trans-fats... think of the typical high schooler's meal of doritos and a coke... mostly MSG, Transfats, and HFCS, with a bit of corn solids to hold it all together. Yum.
I changed my diet a couple months ago - trying to get rid of those 3 things and the difference is amazing. I'm not tired all the time like I used to be, I feel generally better, I sleep better, and I've lost 10 pounds. I still eat too much crap probably (I love BBQ and Beer), but it was a simple change that's made a world of difference.
* Most Americans don't even know what real chocolate tastes like. They think of Hershey's, which is mostly sugar and vanilla, with a tiny bit of cocoa in it. At least they haven't figured out how to make it out of HFCS...
I have pretty good credit but I hate cellphone contracts. I'm paying the same on Virgin Mobile as I did with Verizon - and my unlimited nights and weekends start at 7:00 pm instead of 9:00.
The phone was only $20 and is great - few frills, makes great calls. If it breaks, I go get another one. With Verizon, as my phone was breaking, I was facing either another $200 up front for a phone or bondage through another stinking 2 year contract. No thanks.
Flat rate cellular is on the way (you know $45/month unlimited) minutes is coming... companies like Cricket and MetroPCS are already doing it. It won't be long until the mainstream companies are forced to do the same.
A lot of plans on prepaids do indeed suck, but if you shop around, you can do pretty well.
I used Virgin Mobile a few years ago and loved it. I swtiched to Verizon when I moved to a place that didn't have Sprint coverage (VM uses Sprint's network).
I'm now back on VM and couldn't be happier. I want a basic phone and I got it for $20 - their Oyster. I do talk a lot, so I opted for their $45/month 400 7:00am-7:00pm minutes unlimited nights & weekends plan. It totals about $46.50 per month with fees. (Verizon had many more "fees" that pushed my $39.99/month closer to $48)
I'm paying about the same as I paid Verizon but actually have a better plan that I can walk away from at any time. And if I lose or break the phone, I'm only out $20 for a new one.
The only caveat on VM is to watch out about changing plans. They don't credit you for unused portions of the existing plan and if you try to do a portability thing to them after you've already established an account, they'll tank your minutes and dollar balance. That's pretty sloppy, but other than that, I love the service.
Oh... Verizon was good enough, but my phone was dying and I was either going to be out $200 for a new one or stuck in another 2 year contract. Flat rate cell service is on the way so why get stuck in a contract now?
Do you know why pain exists? It's so you have some motivation to move away from the source of said pain. When something is causing you extreme pain, you are going to move until it stops, not sit around until it causes you serious harm. (This applies to the above too.)
Yeah... tell that to all the people who die in burning night clubs and chicken processing plants who can't get out. They're stuck there by everyone else wanting out while the hot gasses burn them from the inside out and the radiant heat burns them from the outside in. I'm sure it's painful and motivating. The lucky ones get trampled before they get burned to death.
They did it in Lebanon, too. They count on one of two things happening: 1) The military not responding with overwhelming force, in which case they can effectively take pot shots and disappear. 2) The military will respond with overwhelming force and kill innocent people and get a bum rap from idiots like you.
Like it or not, that's how you fight an insurgency when your military power is dwarfed by the oppressing military power. Hell, it's what the US military taught loads of people in south and central America. What do you think is taught at the School of the Americas?
And do you think the insurgents should make it easy and just stand out in the open, in nicely formed ranks so the US can just mow them down with machine guns? Only the British were that stupid.
They count on one of two things happening: 1) The military not responding with overwhelming force, in which case they can effectively take pot shots and disappear. 2) The military will respond with overwhelming force and kill innocent people and get a bum rap from idiots like you
Well, it's pretty dumb to put your military into a no-win situation.
And do you realize how "no-win" this is? The US is spending Billions every week to fight the insurgency. The insurgency, on the other hand, has mired the US by only spending a few thousand a month. War is all about the econmic ability to sustain it. How long do you think the US can keep spending like that? Even without a dreaded "time table" the insurgents know they just have to wait the US out. The US will finally get tired and broke and give up. They've done it before and they'll do it again.
A bomb disposal unit--trying to make the streets safer Yes, those ungrateful Iraqis. The US has delivered such wonderful gifts to Iraq like lack of clean water, lack of electricity, lack of law and order, lack of a plan for improvement, and general chaos. Why doesn't the US just pack up and leave if they're not going to be appreciated for their noble efforts?
Hell, even Bush's nominee for SECDEF said the war is going badly. FINALLY someone gets a clue. And it's not like this is without precident. The British tried to occupy Iraq too and gave up after many years. The news from back then sounds just like the news now. Only the occupier has changed.
And what has the US gained after spending billions and billions of dollars, thousands of US lives, tens of thousands of US wounded, and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis? A perfect terrorist group recuriting poster, training for those terrorists against "the greatest military on earth", uhappy allies (Turkey is not so thrilled to have a defacto Kurdish state next door), an over-committment of military resources leaving the US impotent to deal with nuclear proliferation in the rest of the of "axis of evil", and a civil war that threatens to spread into neighboring countries.
While in the meantime, Americans at home are scrambling to give up their "God Given" rights, such as Habeas Corpus, 4th amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure, the right to face your accuser and to challenge the evidence presented against you. Even natural born citizens can have their citizenship stripped away by the pen of the president and the be shipped off to a secret CIA prison in some foreign country for indefinite non-torture "harsh interrogation methods".
Yeah, that's a nice victory for freedom and democracy. I'd really hate to see what failure would have looked like.
And no, speaking as a veteran, it's not the Army's fault. They're making the best of a no-win mission while lacking the basic support and equipment to even carry out the idiotic mission they've been given. No, the fault lies squarely on the senior members of the current administration who are either clueless, stupid, or just frankly don't give a shit.
Ironically, such people are called "Open Source Analysts" - as in the source is not classified/closed and is out in the open. Even a few years ago the CIA was still advertising such positions. They typically require a high level of language fluency and cultural literacy.
You're an AC, so this reply probably doesn't matter. But, I am, in fact, trying to help. I volunteer with Junior Achievement to teach Personal Finance to middle-schooler students. What have you done today (besides drool on your keyboard)?
This is very true, and often forgotten. I believe the majority of the public (techies included) do not, and do not really wish to, understand the stock market.
Hell... a majority of the American public doesn't even understand how toxic carrying credit card balances is to their financial health - and that's something really easy to understand.
At the next level, so few Americans invest in their retirement plans - they even give up company matches by not putting in a contribution.
When people cannot even see how vitally important these two things are, how can you expect them to understand more complex things like where the money actually goes when you buy and sell stocks/
I figured it was just a scam - calling it something "special" so stupid people would pay more for them. Is there actually a tax associated with the Music CDRs? Or is it just a marketing gimick?
Plus, the main reason I print a draft copy of something is to have a copy to write on and do mark-up. This won't go far if people have to use special pens - it's harder to get someone switch their pen than it is to switch their religion or stapler.
Slashdot Mirror
So.. vector graphics are more natural? At least they scale better.
You still think it silly to expect something different? That low opinion of people? Or maybe the worst people are attracted to those jobs.
We SHOULD expect something different. The silliness is in rewarding one behavior while expecting another.
Police get rewarded for arresting people and prosecutors get rewarded for convictions. Because of that, they'll tailor thier processes to that end. The fact that computers and the interenet are not secure, and unfathomable to most people is irrelevant. They can't arrest the interent or convict your computer. But they can arrest and convict some poor sap who has no idea what a root-kit is or how his computer can be made into a zombie. So they will.
Police and prosecutors don't care what really happened because their job is to arrest and convict - that's what we reward them for. We'd be silly to expect anything different.
The whole point of advertising is to scream "OOH! OOH! BUY ME!" louder than the other guy. I don't buy stuff on a whim without any sort of information about it, and I certainly don't trust companies to offer unbiased information on their own products; hence, ads are only a waste of money for them (at least when I view them) and an annoyance for me.
Actually, that's the "old" mode of advertising. Today, it's more about creating a feeling about a product and company - giving a sense of the community you could be a part of. For example, how many advertisements actually tell you anything about the product? There aren't many. Most are about the fun, good-looking, exciting, partying people you will be with when you use the product.
It's also about impresssions. Today you might not be in the mood for some shoes. But, someday you will be, and sadly/strangely/interestingly, there is a correlation between how many impressions of an ad you've seen and which product you actually get. So when you DO want a pair of shoes, the hope is the thought of the company that has the most compelling lifestyle to offer you will pop in your head. When I said "buy a pair of shoes", which brand did you just think of? Nike? Adidas? Asics? Saucony? Whichever one it was "won".
Anyway, look at the ads and you'll see few of them actually describe the product and how you'll use it. Many many more of them are about how cool you'll be, or how much better your life could be because of the product.
I've been pretty pleased with this little box:
. html (flash warning)
http://www.vantecusa.com/products/avox/p_avx100tx
It takes any laptop harddrive and plays several popular video and audio formats. It's weak as an mp3 player, but it's great for movies and tv-shows.
I got mine for about $100 and it comes with a decent remote.
It has HD out as well as "regular" TV out. You hook it up via USB to your computer to put content on it.
I think they also make a bigger one takes 3.5" harddrives and has a network port.
Dollars speak louder than anything else.
No they don't. Votes do. And more specifically, votes in the middle of the country.
Actually, it's the closed-source voting machines that count. Particularly ones provided by a company whose CEO publicly declared that he would do everything in his power to get Bush elected...
I vote for the dollars.
If you are in the US military and go to the language school in Monterey, a big portion of your "lab" training is learning how to transcribe groups of numbers read in your target language. It's a big part of your "grade" in your coursework.
Now, it's hard to say if the US transmits numbers, but it's pretty clear that there appears to be some intelligence value in teaching the electronic warfare people how to listen to streams of numbers in other languages.
It's probably a great way to send one-way messages to the field. A simple AM radio can be modified work in different frequencies. With that and a normal-looking one-time-pad code book can go a long way to providing secure communication that is inconspicuous.
So, the CIA might not do it, but other countries and services probably do.
For the price of these laptops they could have sent out complimentary Vista discs to thousands of these so called influential people.
And risk that it would not install and run correctly on most of those thousands of computers? That would be a marketing nightmare. Vista is already how many years late?
It's much better to have their own monkeys install and test the installation on the laptops (prescreened to be hardware compatible) to ensure it will work the best it can.
Riiight. The difference between the Milgram experiment and Nazi Germany is pretty significant I think. Last time I checked, the Milgram experiment didn't involve guys in trenchcoats threatening to kill you and your entire family if you don't do your "duty".
That's what is so ground-breaking/terrifying about Milgram. He showed you don't need all those coercive techniques to get "normal" people to do terrible things. You just need someone who is an apparent authority to guide them and absolve them while they're doing it.
He showed that you don't need a whole lot of evil people to do those evil things. You just need a lot of normal people with a few evil people in authority. There was nothing special about the Nazis - we are all (collectively) capable of attrocities, and it doesn't even take much prompting.
The "record" is not worth much, rally. Most of them start their floor addresses with "I ask unanimous consent to revise and extend..."
This means, barring any objection (which would be rude), that the congressmember can go back after the fact and change the record of what they said and even add new material. You can actually find far more "said" in the record than could physically be spoken during the stated time period of the debate.
I think you're remembering this guy's website:
m l
http://www.amasci.com/amateur/traffic/traffic1.ht
If it's not, I think you'll like it anyway.
We in the English speaking west have some fantasy going that ONLY Nazi Germany or ONLY Russia can invoke vast state abuse.
Thank you! That is one of the wisest things I've seen written here.
A pot roast is done when you heat it to about 140 degrees F. So somewhere around that is where the proteins that are in your tissues would start to take on un-useful shapes.
The espresso might come out of the machine at 90 C, but I'm pretty sure you're not drinking it at 90 C.
And since when is espresso the "real coffee"? I'm sure the original coffee inventors (weren't they in Yemen or Ethiopia?) had espresso machines laying around waiting for invention of roasted coffee beans... "Wa'allah! We can finally use these machines!"
I didn't mean to pick particularly on Doritos...
In fact, I have a bag of "corn chips" with exactly that... corn, water, oil, and salt. Funny thing, they're great! They don't need the wildly artificial crap to taste good.
I think that's the shame of American "cuisine"... everything has such overpowering flavor enhancement that after a while things without it just don't taste good. But, once you get used to not having all the crap in the food, you start to notice the wonderful subtle flavors in things.
I'll bet that was an interesting tour. Food processing is fascinating (that's what I've seen the most of), but I imagine most industrial processing could be interesting in some way or another - even something "simple" like a machine that takes a piece of cardboard and folds and glues it into a box around its contents...
I really doubt that chocolate* is the problem behind the waiste-size of Americans. Even if you love chocolate, you can only eat so much of it.
I think, rather, that it's the infusion of the incredible amount of high fructose corn syrup and MSG in the food system of Americans. MSG makes things taste good that probably otherwise wouldn't - and is believed to suppress apetite signals. HFCS as a sweetener delivers tons of calories but doesn't interact with the apetite signalling systems the same way that glucose does. So, you're injesting tons of calories and never feeling full. I'm convinced you could put enough MSG and HFSC on dog shit that it would be "tasty" and indistinguishable from a majority of American processed food - and you still wouldn't feel full..
Then there's the trans-fats... think of the typical high schooler's meal of doritos and a coke... mostly MSG, Transfats, and HFCS, with a bit of corn solids to hold it all together. Yum.
I changed my diet a couple months ago - trying to get rid of those 3 things and the difference is amazing. I'm not tired all the time like I used to be, I feel generally better, I sleep better, and I've lost 10 pounds. I still eat too much crap probably (I love BBQ and Beer), but it was a simple change that's made a world of difference.
* Most Americans don't even know what real chocolate tastes like. They think of Hershey's, which is mostly sugar and vanilla, with a tiny bit of cocoa in it. At least they haven't figured out how to make it out of HFCS...
Clearly, with a name with "red" in it, he's a Ruski - and every nounski ends in a skiski.
I have pretty good credit but I hate cellphone contracts. I'm paying the same on Virgin Mobile as I did with Verizon - and my unlimited nights and weekends start at 7:00 pm instead of 9:00.
The phone was only $20 and is great - few frills, makes great calls. If it breaks, I go get another one. With Verizon, as my phone was breaking, I was facing either another $200 up front for a phone or bondage through another stinking 2 year contract. No thanks.
Flat rate cellular is on the way (you know $45/month unlimited) minutes is coming... companies like Cricket and MetroPCS are already doing it. It won't be long until the mainstream companies are forced to do the same.
A lot of plans on prepaids do indeed suck, but if you shop around, you can do pretty well.
I used Virgin Mobile a few years ago and loved it. I swtiched to Verizon when I moved to a place that didn't have Sprint coverage (VM uses Sprint's network).
I'm now back on VM and couldn't be happier. I want a basic phone and I got it for $20 - their Oyster. I do talk a lot, so I opted for their $45/month 400 7:00am-7:00pm minutes unlimited nights & weekends plan. It totals about $46.50 per month with fees. (Verizon had many more "fees" that pushed my $39.99/month closer to $48)
I'm paying about the same as I paid Verizon but actually have a better plan that I can walk away from at any time. And if I lose or break the phone, I'm only out $20 for a new one.
The only caveat on VM is to watch out about changing plans. They don't credit you for unused portions of the existing plan and if you try to do a portability thing to them after you've already established an account, they'll tank your minutes and dollar balance. That's pretty sloppy, but other than that, I love the service.
Oh... Verizon was good enough, but my phone was dying and I was either going to be out $200 for a new one or stuck in another 2 year contract. Flat rate cell service is on the way so why get stuck in a contract now?
Do you know why pain exists? It's so you have some motivation to move away from the source of said pain. When something is causing you extreme pain, you are going to move until it stops, not sit around until it causes you serious harm. (This applies to the above too.)
Yeah... tell that to all the people who die in burning night clubs and chicken processing plants who can't get out. They're stuck there by everyone else wanting out while the hot gasses burn them from the inside out and the radiant heat burns them from the outside in. I'm sure it's painful and motivating. The lucky ones get trampled before they get burned to death.
I take it you've never been in crowds much?
They did it in Lebanon, too. They count on one of two things happening: 1) The military not responding with overwhelming force, in which case they can effectively take pot shots and disappear. 2) The military will respond with overwhelming force and kill innocent people and get a bum rap from idiots like you.
Like it or not, that's how you fight an insurgency when your military power is dwarfed by the oppressing military power. Hell, it's what the US military taught loads of people in south and central America. What do you think is taught at the School of the Americas?
And do you think the insurgents should make it easy and just stand out in the open, in nicely formed ranks so the US can just mow them down with machine guns? Only the British were that stupid.
They count on one of two things happening: 1) The military not responding with overwhelming force, in which case they can effectively take pot shots and disappear. 2) The military will respond with overwhelming force and kill innocent people and get a bum rap from idiots like you
Well, it's pretty dumb to put your military into a no-win situation.
And do you realize how "no-win" this is? The US is spending Billions every week to fight the insurgency. The insurgency, on the other hand, has mired the US by only spending a few thousand a month. War is all about the econmic ability to sustain it. How long do you think the US can keep spending like that? Even without a dreaded "time table" the insurgents know they just have to wait the US out. The US will finally get tired and broke and give up. They've done it before and they'll do it again.
A bomb disposal unit--trying to make the streets safer
Yes, those ungrateful Iraqis. The US has delivered such wonderful gifts to Iraq like lack of clean water, lack of electricity, lack of law and order, lack of a plan for improvement, and general chaos. Why doesn't the US just pack up and leave if they're not going to be appreciated for their noble efforts?
Hell, even Bush's nominee for SECDEF said the war is going badly. FINALLY someone gets a clue. And it's not like this is without precident. The British tried to occupy Iraq too and gave up after many years. The news from back then sounds just like the news now. Only the occupier has changed.
And what has the US gained after spending billions and billions of dollars, thousands of US lives, tens of thousands of US wounded, and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis? A perfect terrorist group recuriting poster, training for those terrorists against "the greatest military on earth", uhappy allies (Turkey is not so thrilled to have a defacto Kurdish state next door), an over-committment of military resources leaving the US impotent to deal with nuclear proliferation in the rest of the of "axis of evil", and a civil war that threatens to spread into neighboring countries.
While in the meantime, Americans at home are scrambling to give up their "God Given" rights, such as Habeas Corpus, 4th amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure, the right to face your accuser and to challenge the evidence presented against you. Even natural born citizens can have their citizenship stripped away by the pen of the president and the be shipped off to a secret CIA prison in some foreign country for indefinite non-torture "harsh interrogation methods".
Yeah, that's a nice victory for freedom and democracy. I'd really hate to see what failure would have looked like.
And no, speaking as a veteran, it's not the Army's fault. They're making the best of a no-win mission while lacking the basic support and equipment to even carry out the idiotic mission they've been given. No, the fault lies squarely on the senior members of the current administration who are either clueless, stupid, or just frankly don't give a shit.
Ironically, such people are called "Open Source Analysts" - as in the source is not classified/closed and is out in the open. Even a few years ago the CIA was still advertising such positions. They typically require a high level of language fluency and cultural literacy.
You're an AC, so this reply probably doesn't matter. But, I am, in fact, trying to help. I volunteer with Junior Achievement to teach Personal Finance to middle-schooler students. What have you done today (besides drool on your keyboard)?
This is very true, and often forgotten. I believe the majority of the public (techies included) do not, and do not really wish to, understand the stock market.
Hell... a majority of the American public doesn't even understand how toxic carrying credit card balances is to their financial health - and that's something really easy to understand.
At the next level, so few Americans invest in their retirement plans - they even give up company matches by not putting in a contribution.
When people cannot even see how vitally important these two things are, how can you expect them to understand more complex things like where the money actually goes when you buy and sell stocks/
I figured it was just a scam - calling it something "special" so stupid people would pay more for them. Is there actually a tax associated with the Music CDRs? Or is it just a marketing gimick?
Plus, the main reason I print a draft copy of something is to have a copy to write on and do mark-up. This won't go far if people have to use special pens - it's harder to get someone switch their pen than it is to switch their religion or stapler.