It used to be that America was the best country to relocate to. It's not that anymore.
That's your opinion. I still meet people fresh off the boat on a regular basis. Millions of people continue to sneak into this country illegally too. I think they'd take issue with your idea that America isn't a good country to relocate to.
But hey, don't let the fact that Einstein was a pacifist and a socialist [monthlyreview.org] get in the way of your selective quoting.
I never claimed he wasn't either of those things. I just said that he decided to come here in spite of all the flaws in our society. I also pointed out that his pacifism was grounded in the reality that sometimes violence is a necessary evil. In that respect he was light years ahead of you.
When Churchill asked you to enter WW2, you stayed back because you did not want to enter. It took Japan to roundhouse-kick your ass at Pearl Harbor and Hitler's declaration of war on the US to get you into the war.
Bullshit. The United States was already engaged in hostilities with Germany months before Pearl Harbor. Once we formally entered the war we adopted the Europe first policy that had previously been agreed upon by FDR and Churchill. We also sent supplies to the Allied countries prior to our entry in the war, in flagrant violation of international law and the duties of neutral nations. Why don't you open a history book and educate yourself?
the Soviets did most of the work against Germany
No, the Soviets carried the burden of fighting most of the ground war. They didn't do "most" of the work against Germany. They contributed nothing to the Battle of the Atlantic or the Strategic Bombing campaign. They would have collapsed in 41-42 if it wasn't for the supplies that the US and UK were sending them. I don't say any of that to diminish the sacrifices that they had to make -- just to point out the stupidity of the claim that they carried "most" of the workload.
you only fought against 14- and 40-year-old that Hitler had placed on the Atlantic Wall.
You seem to have forgotten North Africa, Italy, the Battle of the Atlantic and the Pacific Theater. Find that history book yet?
The US waited to see who was going to win before jumping on the winner's bandwagon.
Curious indeed, "British Isles" actually is a controversial term rooted in colonialism
I'm noticing a trend here -- every single point that disagrees with your world view has a colonialist or imperialist origin.
This is East Germany, the part with least immigrants.
You are from Germany and you are lecturing me on the skeletons in America's closet? That's pretty fucking rich, I gotta say:) Isn't it about time for you guys to try and conquer the world and get smacked down again? Do me a favor and knock France off her pedestal once more before you get your ass spanked by Anglo-American ingenuity and Russian disregard for life;)
But gun legislation does make it damn harder for criminals to get guns too.
No it doesn't. It just shifts them from a somewhat traceable legal market and into a very hard to trace black market. Mind you, I don't think we should allow criminals to buy guns at the local sporting goods store but to pretend that gun control makes it harder for them to obtain guns is to ignore reality.
But then again, I think gun crime might be a more of a cultural problem
Thank you! As you pointed out, there are countries with high rates of gun ownership and low crime. There are also countries with almost no (legal civilian) gun ownership and high rates of crime. Guns do not cause crime. They wind up being used in crime but they are not the cause thereof.
I haven't gotten a single call on my mail line since the day I put it on the Do Not Call List.
Then you are amazingly lucky or keep your phone turned off most of the time. There was at least one outfit that was literally war dialing every single possible valid NANP number. They called police dispatchers, the White House, military bases, Congressional offices, etc, etc. I got at least three or four calls from them per month until the FTC shut them down.
They were a bunch of cocksuckers too. You'd challenge them on ANYTHING and they'd just hang up you. I gave up on trying to get removed from their "list" and tried to pretend to want to do business with them. They wanted a credit card and when I told them I didn't have one and wanted to mail them a check they gave me an "address" of "4321 Main St. Some Random City and Zipcode" and hung up on me.
Eventually I gave up on trying to figure out who they are and just started being incredibly nasty to them. I'd bust out the 'C' word if I wound up with a female caller and various racial epithets for the male callers. Most of them would hang up but a few of them got into shouting matches with me over how horrible it was to use such words. I'm not actually a racist or sexist but I figured it was the best way to piss someone off over the phone with a single word before they could hang up. Since they consumed my cell phone minutes and interrupted multiple dinners I figured it was only fair.
but mostly, they compare a list of all the addresses in the UK with a list of license owners and send people out to look through the windows of houses that don't have a license.
You guys really need to do something about your Government. It's pretty sad that the country that gave us Americans most of the freedoms and traditions that we enjoy has stooped so low as to monitor it's citizens to make sure they aren't operating an illegal television.
Send them a letter and suggest your business model to them. The worst they will do is ignore it or send you a form letter in response. I think you have a pretty good idea there.
Problem is: It's still a loan. With a rate. It's still ethically unacceptable, because there is always at least one of those who get one, who will not be able to pay it back.
Dude, put the bong down and back away slowly;) Or at least share it with the rest of us.
I invest only in real physical things that raise in value. Gold was an excellent thing to invest in, in the last years. Because as in every "recession", it's only a recession, if you are in their game, playing it, and things like gold and silver rise like crazy, giving you huge (relative) profits
I took Mr. Buffets advice to heart (buy when everyone else is selling, sell when everyone else is buying) and started buying stocks as the markets tanked. So far I'm up ~41% overall. Only one of my picks (TIE if you are wondering and I'm only down 6% on it) is in the red. Made my first buys in November of 08. My annual yield works out to ~64% Have your gold investments matched or beaten this performance?
Well, a.357 magnum will stop a grizzly..... if you have good shot placement. That's going to be a little tough when you have a 1,000 pound animal charging you and only seconds to react though. For a handgun I wouldn't want anything smaller than a.44 magnum if I'm going to be backpacking in grizzly country. A rifle would be much better but those are harder to tote around all day and generally can't be brought into action as quickly.
One of these days I'm going to go on a backpacking trip through Alaska. I'll probably invest in a.44 magnum for the occasion. The Model 500 would be a neat toy to have but it's hugely expensive and utterly impractical for any application that I would have besides saving my ass from a grizzly bear.
Bear mace is also a good investment. The majority of bear encounters are just threat displays and end without an attack. Mace is arguably better than a firearm in these scenarios. I'd still want a firearm on the off chance that I run into one that is interested in making me lunch though. I'll either stop him or I'll get him from the grave when the SOB dies a few weeks later from infection;)
I swear if TiVo wants to win, it just needs to come up with the PCI(e) card and software to run the system.
That would be an interesting business model. I don't know if there would be enough people who would buy it to make it worth their while (I can't imagine many non-geeks being interested in going through that) but I'd be on board with it if they gave it a try.
Many credit unions spend a bundle on advertising, including in public schools, and charge numerous fees much like for-profit banks do.
I wouldn't say "many" but there are a few that behave in this manner. Our local large credit union behaves like this. They charge you a fee each time you swipe your debit card and use the pin instead of signing for it. They charge a fee for their billpayer service. They charge you a fee for exceeding a certain number of teller transactions per month. They have a huge advertising budget. TV Commercials, billboards, promotions with local businesses, etc, etc.
By contrast, the credit union from the small town in which I grew up does none of this. Every single service they offer is fee-free. Free billpayer, free debit card regardless of how you use it, free ATM usage, etc, etc. They advertise a little bit but mostly in the small town fashion, i.e: on placemats/coffee mugs at local restaurants, in the town newspaper, at the little league field, etc. They are still my primary financial institution in spite of the fact that I have long since moved out of that town and have to conduct the bulk of my business by mail. I keep a savings account at a local bank so I can cash checks but other than that everything goes through my credit union.
I think like any institution a credit union is more prone to losing sight of it's original mission as it grows. Eventually it becomes more about protecting the institution than it does fulfilling the original mandate. It doesn't happen all the time but the behavior that you describe seems to be more common among the larger credit unions than the smaller ones, at least in my experience. The nice thing with credit unions is that you can still find ones that are committed to serving their members and which haven't lost sight of the reason why they exist.
That really depends on the credit union and how they conduct their business. I just bought a bunch of 10 month CDs from my credit union at 2.75% They run a promotion every year offering a "special" CD rate and it's always been extremely competitive. I couldn't even match this particular offer at the online only banks like ING Direct.
Their standard rates are competitive with the other local brick and mortar institutions. They might get beaten by a few of the big boys and the online-only institutions but the flip side to that is that none of those institutions can even come close to the loan rates offered by my credit union.
It seems Credit Unions are facing hard times and shutting down branches, being that they are too small to be bailed out.
Where are you getting your information from? There's been a handful of credit unions that have failed but taken as a whole they've failed at a significantly lower rate than the banks. This is actually a boom time for credit unions and local community banks because the big boys are cutting back and people are looking for an alternative. The big players are closing accounts, jacking up interest rates and imposing all sorts of new fees. The credit unions are humming along with the same business model they've had for the last few decades: Slow sustained growth backed by proper lending standards and an emphasis on member service
Go through the NCUA/FDIC data some time and compare the percentage of "well capitalized" credit unions to the percentage of similarly capitalized banks. I think you'll find that credit unions are doing just fine.
Umm, do you know what the definition of a credit union is? It's a member-owned cooperative financial institution. It's not a "debt institution". They loan money at extremely competitive rates and have no direct profit incentive other than the goal of paying a competitive dividend (interest) on their members deposits.
Go find one in your local area. Most of them are much more pleasurable to do business with than any bank. Community banks occasionally match them for customer service but no national bank ever will. I've yet to have one of my calls to my credit union answered in India or to have the interest rate on my credit card jacked up just because they can.
The backend software package used by this particular credit union actually runs on Linux and Oracle. All but one of the workstations run Linux too. The holdout is a Windows 2000 machine that they keep around for some legacy software that they haven't been able to replace. The tellers don't even realize it's Linux because they are locked into the interface for the management system and can't navigate out of it. The loan officers can navigate out of it but the only other applications they have access to are Open Office and a handful of white-listed websites (webmail, credit scoring and a few compliance sites).
That's actually how I got the gig -- I was the only local person who responded to the CEOs bid who had a meaningful amount of Linux experience. He inherited the platform from his predecessor and wasn't inclined to spend the money to migrate to something else. AFAIK the vendor for his software doesn't even offer a Windows server option, although they do have a Windows option for the clients. They had previously used this option until I showed them how much they were spending on software licenses.
I wish I had been able to copy the CD and play around with the trojans in a sandbox but we were instructed not to touch it after we called the proper authorities. It would have been interesting to see what they were all about and where they are phoning home.
One of my consulting clients is a small (<$10,000,000 in assets) credit union. The disk was mailed directly to the CEO. According to him the letter contained therein actually resembled the form and structure of NCUA correspondence but had grammatical errors. I find it amusing that someone would go to such lengths to forge US Government correspondence but not bother to run spell check and/or proof read the letter.
Thankfully he knew better than to load random CDs received in the mail and gave me a call. The Secret Service actually came down and collected both the letter and the CD. They are taking this seriously. I hope they catch the bastards. Mail fraud, financial fraud, computer fraud and forgery. What have I missed?
The problem is that it just can't compete against carrier-subsidized hardware.
That really depends on how much your viewing experience is worth to you, doesn't it? The carrier-subsidized hardware that I've seen from Time Warner sucks donkey balls. The interface is slow, the remote is cumbersome and unintuitive and the box needs to be rebooted more times in a month than my TiVo does in a year. I'd go back to a VCR before I'd use one of Time Warner's shitty DVRs.
My TiVo was worth every penny of the money I've spent on the hardware and service. I even kept it when I ditched basic cable (80 channels) and went to a lifeline (7 channels, just the major networks) package. When my old workhorse Series2 finally bites the dust I'll probably wind up buying a newer one, although MythTV will also merit consideration when that time comes.
and only a die-hard TiVO evangelist would spend on the hardware if the carrier's box is free and monthly costs are the same or less.
Why do you have to be a die-hard TiVo evangelist? TiVo is easier to use and offers more features. Recognizing this fact does not make you an evangelist. Whether or not that ease of use and better functionality is worth the cost is entirely up each individual. For me it was money well spent.
Mac address whitelists are a waste of time. Anyone who is competent can just monitor your network long enough to discover the mac address of a trusted device and switch his device to that address. Anyone who isn't competent isn't going to be able to bypass WPA.
If you want to get really paranoid you can back up your encryption with a non-permissive firewall that will only pass traffic for your device after you authenticate with it somehow. I used to do this back in the days when WEP was our only option. I ran my network wide open (since WEP is utterly pointless) but had a Linux box setting in front of it that refused to pass traffic unless I authenticated with it.
If you want to get creative you can program the firewall to redirect all unauthenticated http requests to goatse.cx instead of dropping them. That'll teach em to try and mooch off your network without permission;)
Although DVB-S is an international standard and widely adopted, current laws within the US prohibit using off the shelf hardware to decrypt the video signal. Doing this is considered signal theft.
Yeah, and smoking pot is also illegal, hence why absolutely nobody in the United States ever does it.......
How would they catch you engaged in "signal theft" unless you do something really stupid?
Your ability to read things into my posts that aren't there is astounding. I didn't cast it as "oppressing" the "poor little CEO". I cast it as a way to intimidate people into not speaking out against a particular political platform.
BTW, that company those people are voting against with their wallets has appeared in the list of "Top 100 companies to work for" every year since the inception of that list. They have received accolades from the EPA for their efforts to purchase green energy and reduce the carbon footprint of their business. They donate at least 5% of their annual profits to charity. The CEO pays himself a salary of $1 a year. They provide low interest loans to the producers of their food products that are located in low-income areas.
This company does everything that leftists think a responsible company should do and yet they are going to "vote with their wallets" and boycott it anyway. All because their CEO dared to exercise his right to free speech and voice his personal opinion. You leftists have quite the talent for cutting off your nose to spite your face.
I wish there was a Whole Foods in my area. I'd be happy to give them some of my hard earned dollars to offset the loss of business caused by the raging mob of liberals that can't stand it when someone dares to voice opposition to their designs.
He isn't using any funds from his business to advocate against any particular interest. He certainly never tried to silence people. All he did was write an op-ed with a series of suggestions for health care reform. He wrote it on his own time and was speaking for himself and not his company.
And no, you don't have to "fund it". I also don't have to respect you if you are so prone to knee-jerk reactions that a single op-ed from a private individual is all it takes for you to call for a boycott. The people advocating in favor of the boycott are essentially advocating the punishment of tens of thousands of people who had nothing to do with their CEOs op-ed. You honestly don't think that's just a little bit of an overreaction?
*shrug*, it doesn't have to be a murderer. It could be your average robber or rapist as well. In any case I was only trying to point out the absurdity of his ideas for securing firearms. There's no reason to get carried away. Simply locking the assembled firearm in a safe is enough to keep your kids from getting access to it unless your kids have mad safe-cracking skills or access to teleportation technology.
A better idea is to educate your kids on the safe handling of firearms and what to do if they come across an unsecured one. You could store your firearms off-site in a safety deposit box but that isn't going to protect your kids when they wind up at a friends house whose parents aren't as diligent as you.
To borrow the sentiment from my new favorite sig: If you spend your whole life trying to child-proof the world you won't have anytime left to world-proof your child.
No, I think that trying to drive someone's company in the ground because you disagree with his personal views represents a way to intimidate people into not speaking their minds. I never said that people don't have the right to oppose his ideas. Trying to punish his company and the thousands of people who work for it doesn't contribute much to the political discourse though, does it?
I shudder to think about how long the gun wielding folks in Bush's town hall meetings would last before being sent by Cheney's secret police [nytimes.com] to the secret torture centres [albionmonitor.com] in Europe.
Do you have a single shred of evidence to suggest that an American citizen has ever been subject to extraordinary rendition for a mundane domestic crime (or even terrorism for that matter) or are you just looking to bring up the previous administration again?
BTW, the "gun-wielding" people weren't in Obama's town halls. They were outside his town halls. It's illegal per Federal law to bring a firearm into the protected perimeter around the President. It's doubtful that those people even got close enough to catch a fleeting glimpse of the President. There were a few individuals with carry permits that brought firearms into Congressional town halls but that isn't regarded as particularly unusual in the states in which it occurred.
As for your proof, Wear an anti-Bush T-shirt, get arrested, lose your job [neilrogers.com], and Article: Sheehan arrested before Bush address: Woman was wearing protest T-shirt under clothing that she revealed upon taking her seat [highbeam.com] and further, Woman Arrested at McCain Event for "McCain=Bush" Sign [alternet.org]
That isn't being arrested for carrying a sign or wearing a t-shirt. That's being arrested for trespassing. Bit of a difference there. Those people were asked to leave private property and refused to do so. That's the definition of trespassing. If you come on my property wearing a t-shirt that I don't approve of and I ask you to leave it's not censorship.
Mind you, I don't happen to think our politicians should be banishing non-supporters from their events. It's a disservice to our country when our leaders surround themselves with supporters and never venture outside of the echo chamber. But it's still somewhat disingenuous to imply that the shirts got them arrested. The failure to leave a private event when asked to do so is what got them arrested.
Obama's administration is such a step above what we've seen for the past 8 years, you literally can't compare the two
I just don't see it that way. It's just a different set of freedoms that they are attacking. How does that represent an improvement?
despite such people being a clear and present danger to the well-being of the president
How does someone with a gun outside of a presidential event represent a clear and present danger to the well-being of the President? More to the point, why would you assume that a law-abiding citizen with a gun represents any threat to the President regardless of his or her location?
I wouldn't choose to openly carry a firearm to a protest regardless of where the President happens to be but I don't think that the people who do represent a danger to him. I wouldn't openly carry in such a situation because it's a charged atmosphere and I'd be afraid of some jackass who hates guns and/or the message on my sign trying to do something stupid. Regardless, I just don't see how you can say they represent any threat to the President.
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It used to be that America was the best country to relocate to. It's not that anymore.
That's your opinion. I still meet people fresh off the boat on a regular basis. Millions of people continue to sneak into this country illegally too. I think they'd take issue with your idea that America isn't a good country to relocate to.
But hey, don't let the fact that Einstein was a pacifist and a socialist [monthlyreview.org] get in the way of your selective quoting.
I never claimed he wasn't either of those things. I just said that he decided to come here in spite of all the flaws in our society. I also pointed out that his pacifism was grounded in the reality that sometimes violence is a necessary evil. In that respect he was light years ahead of you.
When Churchill asked you to enter WW2, you stayed back because you did not want to enter. It took Japan to roundhouse-kick your ass at Pearl Harbor and Hitler's declaration of war on the US to get you into the war.
Bullshit. The United States was already engaged in hostilities with Germany months before Pearl Harbor. Once we formally entered the war we adopted the Europe first policy that had previously been agreed upon by FDR and Churchill. We also sent supplies to the Allied countries prior to our entry in the war, in flagrant violation of international law and the duties of neutral nations. Why don't you open a history book and educate yourself?
the Soviets did most of the work against Germany
No, the Soviets carried the burden of fighting most of the ground war. They didn't do "most" of the work against Germany. They contributed nothing to the Battle of the Atlantic or the Strategic Bombing campaign. They would have collapsed in 41-42 if it wasn't for the supplies that the US and UK were sending them. I don't say any of that to diminish the sacrifices that they had to make -- just to point out the stupidity of the claim that they carried "most" of the workload.
you only fought against 14- and 40-year-old that Hitler had placed on the Atlantic Wall.
You seem to have forgotten North Africa, Italy, the Battle of the Atlantic and the Pacific Theater. Find that history book yet?
The US waited to see who was going to win before jumping on the winner's bandwagon.
Wrong again. The murder of 128 American citizens and German attempt to bribe Mexico into attacking the United States decided which "bandwagon" we'd jump on.
Curious indeed, "British Isles" actually is a controversial term rooted in colonialism
I'm noticing a trend here -- every single point that disagrees with your world view has a colonialist or imperialist origin.
This is East Germany, the part with least immigrants.
You are from Germany and you are lecturing me on the skeletons in America's closet? That's pretty fucking rich, I gotta say :) Isn't it about time for you guys to try and conquer the world and get smacked down again? Do me a favor and knock France off her pedestal once more before you get your ass spanked by Anglo-American ingenuity and Russian disregard for life ;)
But gun legislation does make it damn harder for criminals to get guns too.
No it doesn't. It just shifts them from a somewhat traceable legal market and into a very hard to trace black market. Mind you, I don't think we should allow criminals to buy guns at the local sporting goods store but to pretend that gun control makes it harder for them to obtain guns is to ignore reality.
But then again, I think gun crime might be a more of a cultural problem
Thank you! As you pointed out, there are countries with high rates of gun ownership and low crime. There are also countries with almost no (legal civilian) gun ownership and high rates of crime. Guns do not cause crime. They wind up being used in crime but they are not the cause thereof.
I haven't gotten a single call on my mail line since the day I put it on the Do Not Call List.
Then you are amazingly lucky or keep your phone turned off most of the time. There was at least one outfit that was literally war dialing every single possible valid NANP number. They called police dispatchers, the White House, military bases, Congressional offices, etc, etc. I got at least three or four calls from them per month until the FTC shut them down.
They were a bunch of cocksuckers too. You'd challenge them on ANYTHING and they'd just hang up you. I gave up on trying to get removed from their "list" and tried to pretend to want to do business with them. They wanted a credit card and when I told them I didn't have one and wanted to mail them a check they gave me an "address" of "4321 Main St. Some Random City and Zipcode" and hung up on me.
Eventually I gave up on trying to figure out who they are and just started being incredibly nasty to them. I'd bust out the 'C' word if I wound up with a female caller and various racial epithets for the male callers. Most of them would hang up but a few of them got into shouting matches with me over how horrible it was to use such words. I'm not actually a racist or sexist but I figured it was the best way to piss someone off over the phone with a single word before they could hang up. Since they consumed my cell phone minutes and interrupted multiple dinners I figured it was only fair.
but mostly, they compare a list of all the addresses in the UK with a list of license owners and send people out to look through the windows of houses that don't have a license.
You guys really need to do something about your Government. It's pretty sad that the country that gave us Americans most of the freedoms and traditions that we enjoy has stooped so low as to monitor it's citizens to make sure they aren't operating an illegal television.
Send them a letter and suggest your business model to them. The worst they will do is ignore it or send you a form letter in response. I think you have a pretty good idea there.
Problem is: It's still a loan. With a rate. It's still ethically unacceptable, because there is always at least one of those who get one, who will not be able to pay it back.
Dude, put the bong down and back away slowly ;) Or at least share it with the rest of us.
I invest only in real physical things that raise in value. Gold was an excellent thing to invest in, in the last years. Because as in every "recession", it's only a recession, if you are in their game, playing it, and things like gold and silver rise like crazy, giving you huge (relative) profits
I took Mr. Buffets advice to heart (buy when everyone else is selling, sell when everyone else is buying) and started buying stocks as the markets tanked. So far I'm up ~41% overall. Only one of my picks (TIE if you are wondering and I'm only down 6% on it) is in the red. Made my first buys in November of 08. My annual yield works out to ~64% Have your gold investments matched or beaten this performance?
Well, a .357 magnum will stop a grizzly..... if you have good shot placement. That's going to be a little tough when you have a 1,000 pound animal charging you and only seconds to react though. For a handgun I wouldn't want anything smaller than a .44 magnum if I'm going to be backpacking in grizzly country. A rifle would be much better but those are harder to tote around all day and generally can't be brought into action as quickly.
One of these days I'm going to go on a backpacking trip through Alaska. I'll probably invest in a .44 magnum for the occasion. The Model 500 would be a neat toy to have but it's hugely expensive and utterly impractical for any application that I would have besides saving my ass from a grizzly bear.
Bear mace is also a good investment. The majority of bear encounters are just threat displays and end without an attack. Mace is arguably better than a firearm in these scenarios. I'd still want a firearm on the off chance that I run into one that is interested in making me lunch though. I'll either stop him or I'll get him from the grave when the SOB dies a few weeks later from infection ;)
I swear if TiVo wants to win, it just needs to come up with the PCI(e) card and software to run the system.
That would be an interesting business model. I don't know if there would be enough people who would buy it to make it worth their while (I can't imagine many non-geeks being interested in going through that) but I'd be on board with it if they gave it a try.
Go fuck yourself
Many credit unions spend a bundle on advertising, including in public schools, and charge numerous fees much like for-profit banks do.
I wouldn't say "many" but there are a few that behave in this manner. Our local large credit union behaves like this. They charge you a fee each time you swipe your debit card and use the pin instead of signing for it. They charge a fee for their billpayer service. They charge you a fee for exceeding a certain number of teller transactions per month. They have a huge advertising budget. TV Commercials, billboards, promotions with local businesses, etc, etc.
By contrast, the credit union from the small town in which I grew up does none of this. Every single service they offer is fee-free. Free billpayer, free debit card regardless of how you use it, free ATM usage, etc, etc. They advertise a little bit but mostly in the small town fashion, i.e: on placemats/coffee mugs at local restaurants, in the town newspaper, at the little league field, etc. They are still my primary financial institution in spite of the fact that I have long since moved out of that town and have to conduct the bulk of my business by mail. I keep a savings account at a local bank so I can cash checks but other than that everything goes through my credit union.
I think like any institution a credit union is more prone to losing sight of it's original mission as it grows. Eventually it becomes more about protecting the institution than it does fulfilling the original mandate. It doesn't happen all the time but the behavior that you describe seems to be more common among the larger credit unions than the smaller ones, at least in my experience. The nice thing with credit unions is that you can still find ones that are committed to serving their members and which haven't lost sight of the reason why they exist.
That really depends on the credit union and how they conduct their business. I just bought a bunch of 10 month CDs from my credit union at 2.75% They run a promotion every year offering a "special" CD rate and it's always been extremely competitive. I couldn't even match this particular offer at the online only banks like ING Direct.
Their standard rates are competitive with the other local brick and mortar institutions. They might get beaten by a few of the big boys and the online-only institutions but the flip side to that is that none of those institutions can even come close to the loan rates offered by my credit union.
It seems Credit Unions are facing hard times and shutting down branches, being that they are too small to be bailed out.
Where are you getting your information from? There's been a handful of credit unions that have failed but taken as a whole they've failed at a significantly lower rate than the banks. This is actually a boom time for credit unions and local community banks because the big boys are cutting back and people are looking for an alternative. The big players are closing accounts, jacking up interest rates and imposing all sorts of new fees. The credit unions are humming along with the same business model they've had for the last few decades: Slow sustained growth backed by proper lending standards and an emphasis on member service
Go through the NCUA/FDIC data some time and compare the percentage of "well capitalized" credit unions to the percentage of similarly capitalized banks. I think you'll find that credit unions are doing just fine.
Umm, do you know what the definition of a credit union is? It's a member-owned cooperative financial institution. It's not a "debt institution". They loan money at extremely competitive rates and have no direct profit incentive other than the goal of paying a competitive dividend (interest) on their members deposits.
Go find one in your local area. Most of them are much more pleasurable to do business with than any bank. Community banks occasionally match them for customer service but no national bank ever will. I've yet to have one of my calls to my credit union answered in India or to have the interest rate on my credit card jacked up just because they can.
The backend software package used by this particular credit union actually runs on Linux and Oracle. All but one of the workstations run Linux too. The holdout is a Windows 2000 machine that they keep around for some legacy software that they haven't been able to replace. The tellers don't even realize it's Linux because they are locked into the interface for the management system and can't navigate out of it. The loan officers can navigate out of it but the only other applications they have access to are Open Office and a handful of white-listed websites (webmail, credit scoring and a few compliance sites).
That's actually how I got the gig -- I was the only local person who responded to the CEOs bid who had a meaningful amount of Linux experience. He inherited the platform from his predecessor and wasn't inclined to spend the money to migrate to something else. AFAIK the vendor for his software doesn't even offer a Windows server option, although they do have a Windows option for the clients. They had previously used this option until I showed them how much they were spending on software licenses.
I wish I had been able to copy the CD and play around with the trojans in a sandbox but we were instructed not to touch it after we called the proper authorities. It would have been interesting to see what they were all about and where they are phoning home.
One of my consulting clients is a small (<$10,000,000 in assets) credit union. The disk was mailed directly to the CEO. According to him the letter contained therein actually resembled the form and structure of NCUA correspondence but had grammatical errors. I find it amusing that someone would go to such lengths to forge US Government correspondence but not bother to run spell check and/or proof read the letter.
Thankfully he knew better than to load random CDs received in the mail and gave me a call. The Secret Service actually came down and collected both the letter and the CD. They are taking this seriously. I hope they catch the bastards. Mail fraud, financial fraud, computer fraud and forgery. What have I missed?
The problem is that it just can't compete against carrier-subsidized hardware.
That really depends on how much your viewing experience is worth to you, doesn't it? The carrier-subsidized hardware that I've seen from Time Warner sucks donkey balls. The interface is slow, the remote is cumbersome and unintuitive and the box needs to be rebooted more times in a month than my TiVo does in a year. I'd go back to a VCR before I'd use one of Time Warner's shitty DVRs.
My TiVo was worth every penny of the money I've spent on the hardware and service. I even kept it when I ditched basic cable (80 channels) and went to a lifeline (7 channels, just the major networks) package. When my old workhorse Series2 finally bites the dust I'll probably wind up buying a newer one, although MythTV will also merit consideration when that time comes.
and only a die-hard TiVO evangelist would spend on the hardware if the carrier's box is free and monthly costs are the same or less.
Why do you have to be a die-hard TiVo evangelist? TiVo is easier to use and offers more features. Recognizing this fact does not make you an evangelist. Whether or not that ease of use and better functionality is worth the cost is entirely up each individual. For me it was money well spent.
You don't have to outrun it if you've got one of these.
Firearms. Much more useful than a camera.
Mac address whitelists are a waste of time. Anyone who is competent can just monitor your network long enough to discover the mac address of a trusted device and switch his device to that address. Anyone who isn't competent isn't going to be able to bypass WPA.
If you want to get really paranoid you can back up your encryption with a non-permissive firewall that will only pass traffic for your device after you authenticate with it somehow. I used to do this back in the days when WEP was our only option. I ran my network wide open (since WEP is utterly pointless) but had a Linux box setting in front of it that refused to pass traffic unless I authenticated with it.
If you want to get creative you can program the firewall to redirect all unauthenticated http requests to goatse.cx instead of dropping them. That'll teach em to try and mooch off your network without permission ;)
Then that someone gets directly to Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison without passing go or collecting $200.
Although DVB-S is an international standard and widely adopted, current laws within the US prohibit using off the shelf hardware to decrypt the video signal. Doing this is considered signal theft.
Yeah, and smoking pot is also illegal, hence why absolutely nobody in the United States ever does it.......
How would they catch you engaged in "signal theft" unless you do something really stupid?
Your ability to read things into my posts that aren't there is astounding. I didn't cast it as "oppressing" the "poor little CEO". I cast it as a way to intimidate people into not speaking out against a particular political platform.
BTW, that company those people are voting against with their wallets has appeared in the list of "Top 100 companies to work for" every year since the inception of that list. They have received accolades from the EPA for their efforts to purchase green energy and reduce the carbon footprint of their business. They donate at least 5% of their annual profits to charity. The CEO pays himself a salary of $1 a year. They provide low interest loans to the producers of their food products that are located in low-income areas.
This company does everything that leftists think a responsible company should do and yet they are going to "vote with their wallets" and boycott it anyway. All because their CEO dared to exercise his right to free speech and voice his personal opinion. You leftists have quite the talent for cutting off your nose to spite your face.
I wish there was a Whole Foods in my area. I'd be happy to give them some of my hard earned dollars to offset the loss of business caused by the raging mob of liberals that can't stand it when someone dares to voice opposition to their designs.
He isn't using any funds from his business to advocate against any particular interest. He certainly never tried to silence people. All he did was write an op-ed with a series of suggestions for health care reform. He wrote it on his own time and was speaking for himself and not his company.
And no, you don't have to "fund it". I also don't have to respect you if you are so prone to knee-jerk reactions that a single op-ed from a private individual is all it takes for you to call for a boycott. The people advocating in favor of the boycott are essentially advocating the punishment of tens of thousands of people who had nothing to do with their CEOs op-ed. You honestly don't think that's just a little bit of an overreaction?
*shrug*, it doesn't have to be a murderer. It could be your average robber or rapist as well. In any case I was only trying to point out the absurdity of his ideas for securing firearms. There's no reason to get carried away. Simply locking the assembled firearm in a safe is enough to keep your kids from getting access to it unless your kids have mad safe-cracking skills or access to teleportation technology.
A better idea is to educate your kids on the safe handling of firearms and what to do if they come across an unsecured one. You could store your firearms off-site in a safety deposit box but that isn't going to protect your kids when they wind up at a friends house whose parents aren't as diligent as you.
To borrow the sentiment from my new favorite sig: If you spend your whole life trying to child-proof the world you won't have anytime left to world-proof your child.
No, I think that trying to drive someone's company in the ground because you disagree with his personal views represents a way to intimidate people into not speaking their minds. I never said that people don't have the right to oppose his ideas. Trying to punish his company and the thousands of people who work for it doesn't contribute much to the political discourse though, does it?
I shudder to think about how long the gun wielding folks in Bush's town hall meetings would last before being sent by Cheney's secret police [nytimes.com] to the secret torture centres [albionmonitor.com] in Europe.
Do you have a single shred of evidence to suggest that an American citizen has ever been subject to extraordinary rendition for a mundane domestic crime (or even terrorism for that matter) or are you just looking to bring up the previous administration again?
BTW, the "gun-wielding" people weren't in Obama's town halls. They were outside his town halls. It's illegal per Federal law to bring a firearm into the protected perimeter around the President. It's doubtful that those people even got close enough to catch a fleeting glimpse of the President. There were a few individuals with carry permits that brought firearms into Congressional town halls but that isn't regarded as particularly unusual in the states in which it occurred.
As for your proof, Wear an anti-Bush T-shirt, get arrested, lose your job [neilrogers.com], and Article: Sheehan arrested before Bush address: Woman was wearing protest T-shirt under clothing that she revealed upon taking her seat [highbeam.com] and further, Woman Arrested at McCain Event for "McCain=Bush" Sign [alternet.org]
That isn't being arrested for carrying a sign or wearing a t-shirt. That's being arrested for trespassing. Bit of a difference there. Those people were asked to leave private property and refused to do so. That's the definition of trespassing. If you come on my property wearing a t-shirt that I don't approve of and I ask you to leave it's not censorship.
Mind you, I don't happen to think our politicians should be banishing non-supporters from their events. It's a disservice to our country when our leaders surround themselves with supporters and never venture outside of the echo chamber. But it's still somewhat disingenuous to imply that the shirts got them arrested. The failure to leave a private event when asked to do so is what got them arrested.
Obama's administration is such a step above what we've seen for the past 8 years, you literally can't compare the two
I just don't see it that way. It's just a different set of freedoms that they are attacking. How does that represent an improvement?
despite such people being a clear and present danger to the well-being of the president
How does someone with a gun outside of a presidential event represent a clear and present danger to the well-being of the President? More to the point, why would you assume that a law-abiding citizen with a gun represents any threat to the President regardless of his or her location?
I wouldn't choose to openly carry a firearm to a protest regardless of where the President happens to be but I don't think that the people who do represent a danger to him. I wouldn't openly carry in such a situation because it's a charged atmosphere and I'd be afraid of some jackass who hates guns and/or the message on my sign trying to do something stupid. Regardless, I just don't see how you can say they represent any threat to the President.
Are you sure you are a Libertarian?