Chilly

Apparently one girl = trend now.

Best of luck! Sorry to hear about the surgery. ~Chris

The iPhone was AT&T's only real smart phone? I guess all those Blackberries and Winmo phones don't count, huh. And the iPhone was pretty much the only real "exclusive" platform. Blackberry & Windows Mobile worked with every provider.

I've got to admit, I don't really see what the big deal is teaching young kids the anatomical terms. Hell, they don't even say *how* they are going to do it. I know when I was in elementary school they separated the boys & girls and taught you about your own bodies. Is that really that big of a deal? They're just body parts. I can understand wanting anal & oral sex to wait until after elementary school, same with same-sex relationships (it can bring up "if they can't have kids what do they do?") type of questions. Middle-school seems more appropriate for that. I also have no problem teaching erotic art to high schoolers. Really though, I don't think its a big deal, especially when the article doesn't say anything about how they're teaching a lot of it. Sounds more like a "OMG THEY SAID SEX" type of article to me. And yeah, count me on the side that *doesn't* think homosexuality is unhealthy or unnatural.

Butt Hash! lmao

I might have ever seen.

Yeah. So do we.

It's open source. You can go look at the code yourself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome#Usage_tracking That's what Google does.

The best add-on isn't something you can install in your browser, but your own common sense. WOT is a flawed add-on. It's based upon community reviews, asking people to rate websites. This might work great at first, but as those types of things get more users and more mainstream, the quality of information you receive from it declines. There's also things like "NoSript" and "Flashblock" which blocks pretty much any Javascript, Java, or Flash element. Sure, it blocks malicious stuff, but it blocks all stuff - quite the sledgehammer for a tiny nail. IMO, here's the importance of security: 1.) User behavior/knowledge 2.) Browser Design 3.) Everything else The most important thing is for the user to know what's legitimate and what's not. No amount of add-ons, fancy technology, or anything else is going to protect a dumb user, while it will generally get in the way and cause false positives. Next is browser design and architecture (which is where IE failed so hard). If you really want to be secure, switch from Mozilla Firefox to Google Chrome. AFAIK, Chrome is the only one of the main browsers that's setup to run from a true sandbox by default. Currently, Sandboxing isn't even available in Firefox outside of running some add-ons in an add-ons only sandbox. IE7 & IE8 runs in "protected mode" which doesn't allow write access to files, but still allows read access (unlike Chrome's setup). It also only works in Vista or later, whereas Chrome's even works in XP. Here's an article from when Google Chrome for Windows launched about this security model, if you're interested: http://blog.chromium.org/2008/10/new-appro...ity-google.html If the browser is engineered correctly, and the user has common sense, you shouldn't have to worry about security add-ons.

You have to dive much deeper than those numbers to see what's really going on. AT&T has by far the most data devices of any carrier, even if they have less total subscribers after the Alltell-Verizon merger. From the numbers I've seen, AT&T has about 50% of all US Smartphones on its network. AT&T's problems are multifaceted: - They built their network to be flexible, at the cost of needing significantly more equipment. To give you an idea, AT&T needs 2/3rds more equipment to hit the same capacity levels that Verizon does. It allows AT&T to push more services through (voice and data at the same time, for example, which you can't do on other networks), but it hurts capacity. Verizon can stuff way more capacity into the same places. - In cities like San Fransisco and New York City, there's only so many places that can be used for cell towers. There's all sorts of government/economic/etc restrictions in place that keep AT&T from simply building more cell towers, which would be the quick and easy answer. This is one of the reasons why AT&T is having to get creative with GSM bands in NYC - they recently enabled 850 GSM to augment the normal 1900, and the recent introduction of Microcells. It's much less of a problem in other places (like Texas) where land is cheap, there's plenty of it, and there are hardly any restrictions on building cell towers. It's one of the reasons why I don't have any probs with AT&T. - iPhone's really do use a ton more capacity than a regular phone (5x-10x more than other smartphones depending on who you ask). In some of the cities really experiencing problems, the iPhone ownership rate is enormous. - AT&T has more smartphones than any other carrier. Combine all that together, and you have the recipe for problems in certain areas. It's a ****ty situation in many areas, and one that AT&T has undoubtedly brought upon themselves by the way they designed their network, the phones they chose, and how they've oversold their capacity. However, it's not nearly as simple as "Just go build a better network! Verizon has one and they have even more subscribers!"

Whose fault is it that they make only one type? That's their whole business strategy, you can't play "what ifs" with that. It's their choice. And I don't agree with the argument that the iPhone 4 caused a huge jump in their global market share. 77% of all iPhone 4 buyers were upgraders. BTW, that 77% number is *way* lower for new customers than the previous iPhone launches, which were at 56% in 2009 and 38% in 2008.

The real answer is: I'd bring Sirius along with me. But, I'm currently addicted to this song:

Take a look at the numbers again. Apple's stagnant, RIM & Android are growing at the price of Symbian.

Not really. My roommates back in Austin had Verzion and had spotty coverage, whereas I was fine with AT&T. It's all about where you are located.

It all depends where you live. Here in San Antonio, I have no problems with AT&T.

You need to take a look at the worldwide market. In April, RIM just replaced Motorola as the #5 Worldwide Phone Manufacturer. Apple is also experiencing ups-and-downs in it's worldwide growth. In Q4 2009, it's share of the worldwide phone market slipped 1.5%. The world market is a LOT different from the US market. In the world, Symbian is the most popular OS for a smartphone, by far. At the end of 2009, Symbian had 47% of the global market. You'll be hard-pressed to find a Symbian-wielding smartphone here in the US. RIM ended with 19.9% global market share, up from 16.6% in 2008. The iPhone made a nice jump (8.2% to 14.4%), and so did Android (.5% to 3.5%). These jumps came at the cost of Symbian (52% to 47%) and Windows Mobile (11.8% to 8.7%). Numbers for Q1 2010: Symbian - 44.3% RIM - 19.4% iPhone - 15.4% Android - 9.6% Windows Mobile - 6.8% BTW, sales numbers for Q1 2010 in the US according to NPD Group: RIM - 36% Android - 28% iPhone - 21%

I have to say, I'm really enjoying this mac so far. When I want some power under the hood, I can use the terminal. It even has my favorite scripting language, PHP, built in. However, for day-to-day stuff, Mac OS X works great.

My favorite style of wine is Shiraz, but a lot of people don't like it. That being said, next time you want to try a couple wins, here's a couple of my favorites (and cheap - 10-15 bucks): D'Arenberg The Stump Jump Grenache/Shiraz/Mouvedre 2008 (42% Grenache, 36% Shiraz, and 22% Mourvedre): http://www.whwc.com/p/306389?utm_source=Vi...2314_f0704_0116 Casillero del Diablo Reserva Privada (85% Cabernet Sauvignon from Pirque in the Maipo Valley and 15% Syrah from the hillsides of Peumo in the Rapel Valley): http://www.chileanlegend.com/our-wines/reserva-privada/

Codeine. Also, this aint the first time he's been caught with purple drank, just the first time by the cops: http://forums.kffl.com/showthread.php?t=261642

Cool, glad it's getting better. It should as technology improves. It should be expected that large accounts get better customer service from the big corps. My point was more along the lines of the personal touch being nice, but not necessary. I don't need a phone call to tell me there's a problem with my account (I'd most likely just send it to voicemail anyway). An email is quick, effective, and cheap (and something I personally prefer, as it allows me to take care of it on my own time - but I can understand why someone would prefer getting a phone call). And I once overdrafted my account in college. When I asked Bank of America if they would refund the fee, they did immediately. Same type of thing - the difference is you got a pro-active call, whereas I had to call them. Not a big deal to me. Which, again, was largely my point: They are differentiating themselves not by having better products, but by having more personal service. I'm fine by just having my bank send me forms or notices in the mail - I have a habit of reading them. For me, not a big deal. Again, I can see how it would be nice, but to me it's a personal touch that's not necessary. To me, not having 24/7 access to talk to someone at my bank and not having all the same access when traveling outside of my bank's areas, and not having the same type of online banking experience at Credit Unions (including smartphone banking) that I receive at BoA are big downsides. I know that you've experienced good online banking, but I'm a member of two different credit unions, and they both suck. I'm not sure there's really a way to try out online banking before you join, either, so I'm not willing to take the risk. CUs are great if you're willing to give up the advantages of being at a nationwide bank with lots of resources. You're willing to, I'm not. I think it really is that simple. That being said, I think the days of free checking accounts at Credit Unions OR big banks are coming to a close. Credit Unions aren't making near as much money on loans anymore, and the big banks aren't making as much money on fees anymore. The national bank reform legislation right now is going to force both big banks and credit unions into charging for checking accounts: http://www.bakersfield.com/news/business/e...s-credit-unions http://money.blogs.time.com/2010/06/17/ban...-free-checking/

The ATM withdrawls aren't always useful. One scenario that my girlfriend ran into was I wrote her a $1500 check. She wanted to take out $700, and put the rest in her checking account. As you said, they limited her to $500. She didn't want to pull the other $200 out of her checking account, as it can take a while for checks cached at affiliated credit unions to clear. She had no choice, though, because of the low teller limits. Yep, there's the 24-hour emergency number, but they wouldn't have been able to give me a replacement card within 30 minutes of me calling. Best scenario was I would have had to drive to my Credit Union to pick it up (a 3+ hour drive and they would have been closed), or go without it for the weekend. That's because "Online Billpay" is just a fancy word for "fill out a form to send someone a check". I was more referring to the accounting procedures - if I make a transaction with my debit card, at the ATM, or teller services, I can immediately see the transaction online. The personal touch is nice, for sure, but I don't think that's all that different from Bank of America sending me an email when my credit card bill with them is due. I find the "treated like a real customer" comment intriguing. I'd argue that "personal service" doesn't define whether they treat you as a customer or not. I also wanted to mention that I haven't encountered a fee from Bank of America in a good 5+ years. They don't charge me for anything. In my experience, companies that try to differentiate themselves on service do it one of two ways: 1.) Charge significantly more then their competitors, allowing them to have a similar quality product and much better service. 2.) Have products and services that meet most of their customers needs, but lack overall compared to other companies; try to overcome this with top notch personal care. With the CUs that I've encountered, they fall into that 2nd category. They provide better prices (interest rates primarily) and personal customer care, but lack in overall features and services when compared to the national banks. For me, that's great for loans. It's not like I need or want to access my loan 24/7/365 from anywhere in the country by any means I want. However, with a checking account, it's a different story. I don't really care that I'm not getting personal service - I have no complaints about Bank of America's debit/checking customer care - but I do want all the positives that come along by being with one of the big national banks. It sounds like for you, the credit unions are what you are after, and that's awesome. There's lots of downsides to using CUs for checking accounts, though, and I'd heavily caution anyone used to a big bank to fully understand all of what they are giving up when they switch.

Yeah, same at Bank of America. It's pretty sweet - they even print the images of the checks you deposit on the receipts. They have handwriting recognition in the ATMs that automatically reads the amounts so you don't have to type it in, and Cash in the ATM is essentially an instant deposit into your account.

Yep, that's what CU's are good for: great rates. Do they have phone support after those hours? If you're traveling and something happens after that time, can you call them? I know with a couple CUs I've dealt with, I can't. Me too, but those teller services are heavily limited. They can only provide limited amounts of cash when cashing checks, for example. My girlfriend's ran into this more than I have, as she uses the credit union as her primary checking account, but it's been pretty inconvenient for her (she uses a CU based out of Austin, but lives in San Antonio). Lots of restrictions on that network. Last year, over 4th of July weekend, we decided to spend the weekend at South Padre Island, TX at the beach. We were leaving, and I swung by the ATM on the way to pull out some cash. As I was wrapping up, an elderly lady asked me the time, and I left my debit card in the ATM. Once we got to Corpus Christi (a few hours away), we stopped for lunch. I went to pay, saw my card was missing from my wallet, and realized immediately what happened. I looked up the nearest Bank of America branch on the phone, saw it was only a few miles away, and drove over there. Unfortunately, all the big bank's computer networks have problems talking to each other (it's a complicated history of mergers and acquisitions that pretty much every large bank has). So, they couldn't just give me a temporary debit card. However, instead, they opened up a brand new checking account for me right then and there (with nice Longhorns themed checks & card). She then spent the time looking through my account history to make sure we knew all my recurring payments, added some buffer money to that, and transferred the remaining of my cash to the new account. They issued me a new temporary debit card that worked with the new account until my real debit card arrived, immediately canceled my old card, and give me a hotdog, cookies, and soda for my trouble. They also left my old account open until my first direct deposit went through on the new account, so I wouldn't have to worry about my paychecks bouncing. Credit Unions don't have the resources to do something like that. When I was 3 hours out of my trip, my options would have been to drive back to San Antonio (at which point all the credit unions would have been closed anyhow) or not be able to use my debit/ATM card for the rest of the trip. Neither would have been very good options. Another example: I was in Vegas in April, and pulled out a bunch of money from an ATM late at night. BoA flagged this as suspicious (which is correct - I'm far from home, pulling out a significant amount of cash - something I never do, and it's at a god-awful hour). Within a minute after the ATM transaction, they sent me an email saying they locked my account for suspicious activity, which I got on my Blackberry. I immediately called them up, and within 2 minutes they had re-activated my card and put a trip notice on my account for the rest of the trip so it wouldn't get flagged again. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to get in contact with a credit union at midnight, if they even had taken the precaution to turn off the card. My experience with my credit union's online banking is that the interface is confusing, it's not very polished, the numbers aren't exactly "real-time" like Bank of America's is, it takes several days to process anything you submit (instead of it being instant like Bank of America), and other small convenience problems.

In my experience, CU's are a pain in the ass for checking. Online banking sucks, customer service can be limited (not 24/7) because of the lack of resources, annoying policies, can't use all of the teller services except at their branches, etc. That's one big reason why I like Bank of America for my checking. That being said, I love my credit union for my loan.