MyJottingz

I was fortunate enough to catch this great program on PBS Frontline (link)

Some of the interesting facts brought out are why your credit card payments go to South Dakota or Delware of all places. What's in that small booklet called the "Terms" of your card. Why the credit card companies are free to charge whatever interest rate they like?
Here are some gems:

Ed Yingling, incoming president of the American Bankers Association, tells FRONTLINE that revolvers are "the sweet spot" of the banking industry. This "sweet spot" continues to grow as the average credit card debt among American households has more than doubled over the past decade. Today, the average family owes roughly $8,000 on their credit cards. This debt has helped generate record profits for the credit card industry -- last year, more than $30 billion before taxes.
Some experts say the profitability of credit cards really began
twenty-five years ago, when the banking industry successfully eliminated a critical restriction: the limit on the interest rate a lender can charge a borrower. Deregulation, coupled with a revolution in technology that enables the almost real-time tracking of personal financial information and the emergence of nationwide banking, has facilitated the widening availability of credit cards across the economic spectrum. But for some, the cost of credit is often far greater than it appears.
According to Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren, the credit card companies are misleading consumers and making up their own rules. "These guys have figured out the best way to compete is to put a smiley face in your commercials, a low introductory rate, and hire a team of MBAs to lay traps in the fine print," Warren tells FRONTLINE.
Warren and other critics say that a growing share of the industry's revenues come from what they call deceptive tactics, such as "default" terms spelled out in the fine print of cardholder agreements -- the terms and conditions of which can be
changed at any time for any reason with 15 days' notice.
Penalty fees and rates are sometimes triggered by just a single lapse -- a payment that arrives a couple of days or even hours late, a charge that exceeds the credit line by a few dollars, or a loan from another creditor which renders the cardholder "overextended" as defined by the nation's three all-powerful credit bureaus. This flurry of unexpected fees and rate hikes come just when consumers can least afford them.
"[Banks are] raising interest rates, adding new fees, making the due date for your payment a holiday or a Sunday on the hopes that maybe you'll trip up and get a payment in late," says Robert McKinley, founder and chairman of Cardweb.com and Ram Research, a payment card research firm. "It's become a very anti-consumer marketplace."

Lifehacker has a list of the top 10 open source windows apps
They are :

1. Mozilla Firefox (Web browser)
   
   Open source web browser.
   


2. Mozilla Thunderbird (Email client)
   Mozilla's free email client.
   



3. Open Office (Office suite)
   
   Open Office is a free alternative to M$ Office for students, freelancers and poor people just wanting to save their spreadsheet as an .xls.



4. Gaim (Instant messenger)
   
   Chat on any service you'd like - AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN, Jabber, ICQ - with this multi-platform, tabbed IM client.
   


5. ClamWin (Antivirus)
   
   ClamWin is free anti-virus software with automatic updates and scheduled scans, no credit card required.
   


6. VLC Media Player (Audio/video player)
   
   VLC the alternative to Windows Media Player or Quicktime.
   


7. KeePass (Password manager)
   
   Keeps track of all of your passwords.
   


8. Cygwin (Unix command line emulator)
   
   That DOS command line just doesn't cut it. Wanna turn into a CLI ninja on your PC? You need Cygwin.
   


9. Eraser (Data deletion utility)
   
   Helps your erase the data on your hard drive before you trash/sell/donate it.
   


10. TrueCrypt (File encryption utility)



Tags : open source, windows, downloads

With the dismal performance of the Indian cricket team in South Africa, is it time for the guys to look for alternative professions?
It's funny as long as you are winning (no matter even if it was plain luck things are hunky dory) but when you lose all hell breaks loose. Let's see.. they are baying for Pawar's blood now, of course Chappell and Dravid is a given, so who is next?

Well Sakshi Juneja from Desicritics has these suggestions :

Sachin Tendulkar - Can give medical seminars on Tennis Elbow and how to emerge from such a dreaded physical disability. Plus he could also start a consulting firm dealing with matters regarding importing of expensive cars and how to avoid paying taxes on them.

Rahul Dravid - The Indian captain is most suited for the Finance and Banking field thanks to his dependable personality. Since he is already a brand ambassador for Baroda Bank, maybe they will offer him a full-time job.

Mahindra Singh Dhoni - No guessing here, this fella is most likely to succeed in the Hairstyle modeling industry. Maybe a profession as a permanent barber would work well for him. He could probably join Harbhajan Singh's hair salon in Punjab.

Virendra Sehwag - I say, he should offer his balding head to companies experimenting with 'hair extensions', 'hair weaving' and the like. Maybe not too much money but a tleast there are chances of him getting some hair back.

Harbhajan Singh - Well Bhaji baby already has his future set with his up-coming chain of hair-salons. But he could also try his hand at Punjabi movies, since he has the expertise of ad modeling.

SK Raina - This guy needs to go back to school and complete his education.

Mohammad Kaif - He should consider a profession as a masseur. With his pair of firm and safe hands, this is an ideal field for him.

Zaheer Khan - He would do well by joining a firm which caters to people with Long Term Disability. With his history of cricket-related injuries, he could become their highest-selling agent.

Ajit Agarkar - Now this dude can earn millions with his cricket formula. He could teach up-coming players how to stay within the national team even when not deserving a place.

"Indians were denied entry to Sports Bar in Colaba, Mumbai, India on Thursday night "

Wait stop, this is not pre 1947 but a headline in Mumbai Mirror in the year 2006.

That's right the 'Raj' hangover still exists in whatever form it be. When India is supposed to be one of the "hottest economies" to invest it still has its shares of Mir Jaffers.

Check this out " the bar was closed because of dry day rules that allowed the bar to only serve liquor to foreigners. But oddly, while there is no rule restricting entry to Indians who were not planning to buy liquor, bouncers outside the bar stopped all people who looked like natives".

First of all, if Indians can't be served liquor, how is that foreigners can?

The Infosys and TCS chieftains speak of world domination in the new global economy but the subservient mentality never seems to go away.

Imagine this :
An Indian is standing in a line for something, it could be anything under the sun, and after/before him is what the 'natives' call a "Gora" and the the person at the counter is an Indian.
Guess who gets preferrential treatment? Sorry even if its the 25th century for all I care, the state of affairs remains the same.

Like one Indian who was denied entry to the bar commented " They might as well put up a notice saying "No entry for Indians and dogs"

We need some patriots to shut down places like these, any volunteers? or has everyone sold their souls to the mighty dollar?

Tags : India, discrimination, colonial

Farhan Akhtar's DON is not really what you expected of a remake,definitely not a tribute he said it was. First of all you want everyone to stay away from remaking something which was good in the first place. Yea sure they always re-make something which is a hit, like remaking a south indian film in hindi (boney kapoor style) or remaking Munna Bhai in all the south indian languages or lately Casino Royale (Come on does he look like a Bond- but let's leave that for a new post)

But Amitabh is something which cannot be copied easily infact almost "namumkin hai" said one ardent fan. And SRK (although I did like Swades and do respect the fact that he is the only megastar to rise from TV) and Farhan(Dil Chatha hai fame) should have stayed away from this one.

You can't replace the Bachchan baritone when he sits in a sauna but looks like a 'Don' with arguably not a base voice SRK.

Slick it is but you walk into the movie knowing the whole story and if he made D'souza instead of Malik the mole you can tell he is taking the director's license.

And as has already been said a million times Priya 'beauty queen' Chopra is no Zeenat Aman much less a clothes horse Arjun Rampal is Pran. Come one gimee a break if you are going to change the story why make poor Rampal lug the kid on his back on a steel tower (what's the rationale Akhtar?)

Hey but in all its faults there is this review which is totally positive- link

We already know the fate of the much touted 'Sholay' by RGV which is not really a Sholay becoz the Sippy's sued his pants off.

Stop the lousy remakes please let us live with our memories and the VCR.



Tags : remakes, don, bollywood, srk, amitabh

My brother sent this to me and it is definitely some food for thought:

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor.Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen andreturned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups -porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive,some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to hot coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: "If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up,leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups and were eyeing each other's cups.

Now if life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society arethe cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, but the qualityof Life doesn't change. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, wefail to enjoy the coffee in it."

So, don't let the cups drive you..... enjoy the coffee instead.

Tags : life's lessons, health

Microsoft on Friday launched what it bills as a social networking site for IT professionals, called Aggreg8. The company aims for the site to become a MySpace-like forum for developers to share scripts, tools, or best practices, or even to just connect with others within the profession.

"Aggreg8 is a site for IT Pros to mix-n-mingle," Kevin Remde, an IT Pro evangelist for Microsoft, wrote in a blog post announcing the service. "You can setup a profile, join groups, enter posts, add favorites, share content, mix, mingle, and learn."(via)

We have all heard the advice given to us by our Moms ranging from "Do not sit too close to the TV, it will spoil your eyes" to "Starve a cold and feed a fever"

The Health Magazine Your Health Now separates facts from fiction in this article.



Tags : myths, health