Sarcasm, Honesty, Objectivity

Taken from newyorktimes.com

Just last week, Dell talked about turning conservative with its cash and financing programs because of the uncertain economy. Then on Wednesday, Dell began touting a zero percent financing program for large business customers. Go figure.

After, a week of conservative talk and cutting back mass spending it seems kind of silly to start offering credit and zero percent financing during a time when credit problems and debt ratio’s are off the chart. Dell is hoping that by offering this rate that people may look past the current market and financial problems and buy a computer anyway.

But Dell, even with $9 billion in cash, had been warning that it was going to be more conservative in granting credit. “We tightened our credit in general, and it has affected our ability to provide financing,” said Brian Gladden, Dell’s chief financial officer, last week.

They plan to screen better than they had before in order to offer this plan to its buisness… but honestly those who have great credit most likely are in debt in the first place… and probably aren’t hurting for a zero percent financing anyway.

Along with the financing programs, Dell said Wednesday that it was slashing prices by as much as 20 percent on products like servers and laptops.

This statement also amuses me, because slashing prices 20% when you look at othe rcompetition only makes them slightly more expensive instead of vastly.

www.aeoncraft.com

www.cyberpowerpc.com

www.xoticpc.com

Advertising should be watch with closer attention. A company that uses a lot of its money to advertise and create a huge name for itself, often falls below the line of the cutting edge and are often overpriced… reminds of certain car companies.

So every company is looking for a new way to enter your lives and get you to buy their products. Some of the pasts best ways to get peoples attention are dying fast. The radio is loosing its hold to Satellite Radio and digital media players that allow people to store hundreds thousands of songs all on one player. The biggest most influential one being the TV commercial is also taking a hit.

With Internet TV, people are forced to watch a small segment of the program and can rewind and replay that segment all they want until they come to the commercial break. At that point you lose control and are forced to watch the commercial. Right now, many commercial companies are trying to create a law that forces DVR viewers to watch commercials or not allow them to fastforward through them by creating a system that bookmarks shows and their commercials.

DVR and the like are now creating the ability for people to simply fast forward straight through the commercials. This is now leading to several new alternatives… the newest one creates banners across the bottom of your screen making adds during whatever TV show you are watching… not just planned placement but entire screen spanning logo’s and messages… talk about irritating.

Other ways are now becoming more prominent such as texting… this is the bane of cell phones… imagine your personal cell phone becoming much like your in box of your spam filter in your email. I think this should be 100% illegal since most people pay for a plan that has a limit in the number of texts your recieve and has extreme overages if you go over the plan limit.

I also play quite a few video games… and now they are becoming inundated with ads. At first when you played a game it created fake ads in the city you were placed in but now companies are paying to advertise in a digital realm. In games such as Grand Theft Auto and City of Heroes/City of Villains companies are paying hefty sums to have their products represent in a digital realm.

With more and more intrusive attempts to get people to see their products I wonder when the government will step in a regulate what is allowed when it comes to advertising.

I have been a long standing customer of Citi bank as well as the rest of my family. I have had a credit card through them since I turned 18 years of age several years ago. I have three cards with them, all of which I have perfect credite with… never been late 2 of which that are zeroed out every month and one that has a relativly low balance.

I got a letter in the mail the other day with a notice that all of my credit cards interest rates have been increased 8% from their orignal rate. I was terrified that something had gone wrong, I quickly rushed to the phone and called. The lady was polite but informed me that they needed to raise their interest rates in order to cover their costs. I asked the lady if going from 11.99% APR to 19.99% was anywhere near right. She told me that she thought it was crazy and I had to agree.

Now, I was asked if I agree to those terms and if not I would have my card cancelled once the new rate went into place 2 months later. I challenged her to the best of my abilities… and she lowered it down to 14%… she told me that she was told that everyone is required to raise their card rates by 2% but to try and get customers to agree to their new rates and only if they threaten to cancel to offer lower rates. I don’t know about you but thats a pretty terrible way to treat your customers.

People wonder why credit is killing America when credit card companies can just hike your rates 8% and give you a couple month warning if that before they increase your rates… what if you had a balance you were paying off… but that is where they get you… variable rates.

CAIRO — Over the summer, the OPEC cartel could not prevent oil prices from surging to record levels even as its members pumped as much oil as possible. Now, oil producers seem equally unable to stop prices from collapsing as economies around the world slow rapidly.

After topping $145 a barrel in July, prices have slipped more than $90 because of slower global growth. Prices could keep falling next year, analysts say, with some predicting new lows of around $30 a barrel.

On Friday, oil futures in New York settled at $54.43 a barrel, after dropping below $50 the previous week, their lowest in more than three years. The cartel said Saturday that it would consider reducing production when it met next month in Algeria.

Is it just me or is it rather ironic… OPEC couldn’t keep the prices from going to high and now can’t keep it from falling to low. The fact that the prices can flux that much to me shows how much gouging seems to be going on. I great website shows how much fuel America uses (and energy in general) is this site. America although smaller than countries such as China uses almost twice as much energy. America relies on oil so much that companies that have oil can price as they will. The fact that a inelastic good can jump between 145 dollars and 90 dollars in a few months scares me. An inelastic good is something that everyone has to buy because American life requires it. (Gas, Food, Toothpaste).

OPEC members need prices of $60 to $90 a barrel to balance their budgets, and the prospect of lower prices and revenue is daunting to many. Even Saudi Arabia, the biggest exporter, indicated that it considered $75 a barrel to be a “fair price,” a far higher figure than most analysts had expected from the kingdom.

When a Country such as Saudi Arabia says that it considers a certain price fair and the rest of the world doesn’t agree… that causes problems. A country that has a huge supply of oil trying to keep prices high while the rest of the world is falling into a semi-depression. Supposedly this is the lowest price barrels have been in two years. It’s amazing how quick oil companies want to erase the past to try and make it seem like higher oil prices are normal.

In my last article I had mention new tobacco products (relatively) is called Snus. Gaining popularity because it doesn’t have many of the drawbacks usually associated with smoking and chewing habits. No smoke to enhale and no spitting black stuff into botles or on the ground. Many of the things that make smoking and tobacco so repulsing to people is all of the spitting and smoke filled air… however these new products requires neither. This makes a big issue to todays usual commercials in making smoking look bad… filthy and generally nasty.

Snus are a little pack that you put in your mouth and let the nicotine sink into your blood stream. This ability to just carry a pouch in your mouth without chewing or spitting makes it much more socially acceptable. They orginated in Norway and continue to be sold their under their orginal formula. Orginal formula was highly unstable and had a high tendency to create Nitrosamine which is the basic break down of nitrites induced by heat. However, Snus tend to break down over time and harbor more and more nitrosamine as they age.

The new forumla is better however over time the increase of nicotine is creating a stronger and stronger addiction level per use. This recent trend in increasing the amount of nicotine in their products seems to be a last gasp in order to hang onto the declining smokers. In all honesty how far are these companies going to be allowed to go before society reacts and says… enough is enough.

Sources

(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/27/health/27nicotine.html?ref=health)

(http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5542a1.htm)

Facebook Connect is representative of some surprising new thinking in Silicon Valley. Instead of trying to hoard information about their users, the Internet giants have all announced plans to share at least some of that data so people do not have to enter the same identifying information again and again on different sites.

Earlier I had talked about how the Internet and our privacy is seemingly going out like yesterdays newspaper. Facebook and several other companies are planning on sharing your information. Now the claims are to help you so you don’t have to enter the same information to different sites every time you go to them. However, if one person gets a hold of your password… he/she could have almost anything about you and access to almost anything you can access.

In fact today, I recieved a text message from a company that I never have ever purchased something from advertising web goods. I was furious… what gives them the right to use my text messages to sell me things. I pay per use of each text message and they send me messages without my consent? When I got a hold of them I asked where they got my information. The woman named Aileen said.

“Sir I understand your concern. We acquire information from other merchants, of which I can not disclose to you at this time. We simply wish to offer you a greater selection of goods you might be interested in. All information remains confidential.”

Is it just me or is this contradictory…. your information remains confidential but we got your information from outside sources… meaning that it is obviously not confidential. This is infuriating, would you like to have a toilet bowl cleaner company contact you because you bought toilet paper? Most likely not. We need to be careful about making all of societies information completely global… expansion to fast leads to problem… mass expansion leads to big problems.

I am pretty sure everyone has been to a resturaunt or bar that has allowed smoking. Those of us who don’t smoke, this habit makes most of us repulsed. Very few if anyone can say they like ciggerette smoke… its just something you deal with if you go to a place that allows it.

Most recently the government has taken back its testing that allowed tabacco companies to claim tar and nicotine levels because it was flawed. (Newyorktimes.com) The reason for this flaw is the new design of cigarettes that made the way the old system tested cigarettes not work as intended. The system was put in place help smokers judge the amount of nicotine and tar put in their system. The system failed also because the fact that when the regulatory measure were put in to regulate nicitine… smokers usually just responded by smoking more to maintain certain levels of nicitine in their bodies.

http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/other/articles/2006/08/30/cigarettes_pack_more_nicotine/

Here is an articles that talks about how much nicotine levels have risen in the last 6 years alone.

With rise of some of the newer tobacco products over the years the rise in nicitine has slowly been increased. Some options such as filters and thinner cigarettes have been added… all of which usually are by passed by the additional cigarette. The problem isn’t the cigerretes, its the nicitine. People smoke more to get more nicitine and worse yet… there are new products “snu’s” that are even worse.

So now that the Black Friday craze is over with. I wanted to check in with some analysts to see how the spending went this time around. With all the doom and gloom that has been spreading through the headlines this most recent finding brings some light to the end of the year.

Despite forecasts that economic fears would prompt consumers to sit on their wallets this holiday season, “Black Friday” sales at the nation’s retailers rose three percent over 2007, according to ShopperTrak, a provider of retail information.

The company’s Retail Traffic Index estimates cash registers nationwide rang up $10.6 billion in sales Friday.

This is a great sign that maybe the holiday shopping this year won’t be entirely abysmal. This is most likely due to the beginning of what looks like the start of stabilizing markets and the recent mass reduction of gas prices. With gas sitting around 1.60 in Texas, making transportation much easier. Though these numbers are good, history has told us you can’t rely on statistics to prove our future. However, with this knowledge maybe we will have a good return this holiday season.

In my last article I talked about how GPS and other collection type industries need to be more concerned with their users privacy. The problem being is how much data collection should be allowed. Right now, if you google yourself, if you have a unique name, you will find somethings about yourself.

Here is something for your thoughts. This is me. Everything basically i think you could want to know. This is one page of tons.

1. Colton Weingarden | Facebook

   This is Colton Weingarden’s public search listing on Facebook. Colton’s friends can view photos, videos and more. Everyone can join Facebook.
   www.facebook.com/people/Colton_Weingarden/8371774 – 20k – Cached – Similar pages –

2. Colton Weingarden | Facebook

   Colton Weingarden is on Facebook. Facebook gives people the power to share and makes the world more open and connected. Millions of people use Facebook …
   www.facebook.com/p/Colton_Weingarden/8371774 – 21k – Cached – Similar pages –
   More results from www.facebook.com »

3. Whisper by Colton Weingarden – Poetry.com

   Whisper by Colton Weingarden – The most comprehensive poetry website, poetry resources: Poetry.com.
   www.poetry.com/dotnet/P7114032/999/1/display.aspx – 18k – Cached – Similar pages –

4. Amazon.com: Customer Discussions: Price drop on ln46a650 disapeared

   Colton J. Weingarden says:. Hey everyone I got them to change the price because I felt everyone was being cheated because the fact that their supposed …
   www.amazon.com/Price-drop-on-ln46a650-disapeared/forum/Fx1IZ0XKRCV14H9/Tx3GQZJO3VYMV5U/1?_… – 327k – Cached – Similar pages –

5. Amazon.com: Difference B/W Samsung LN52A750 and LN52A650? Worth …

   Colton J. Weingarden says:. Hey mate, the differences are very few, other than what you said. … Your reply to Colton J. Weingarden’s post: …
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   More results from www.amazon.com »

6. [PDF]
   

   May 1, 2006 Staff RISD’s 2006 STARS Winners were announced last …

   File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – View as HTML
   Students on the team include:. Hannah Jones, Bharathi Rajendren, Mohsin Sultan and Colton Weingarden. They are coached by RHS teacher Sean Falloure.
   www.risd.org/Board/BR050106.pdf – Similar pages –

7. The Test, the idea… « Sarcasm, Honesty, Objectivity

   My name is Colton Weingarden, I am a College Student at Texas A&M, I am a bit of an oddball here but I like it. I am a Junior and going for a BS (You know …
   asilentrage.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/the-test-the-idea/ – 9k – Cached – Similar pages –

8. [PDF]
   

   RHS Golden Eagle Band Newsletter

   File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – View as HTML
   Colton Weingarden. Wylee Wooldridge. Zachary Zielke. * Denotes students that. started the year as Juniors. and became Seniors at. semester break …
   www.richardsonband.org/newsletters/may06newsletter.pdf – Similar pages –

9. guide to GEM LAB reports: REPORT card Colton CA – Colton CA …

   While Weingarten uses certain labs exclusively for certain branded cuts—GCAL, for example, …. GIA Launches Synthetic Grading Report Colton CA …
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10. Alison Galantay | Facebook

    Chance McCoy · Colton Weingarden Colton Weingarden · Andrew Vo Andrew Vo · Brooke Fielden Brooke Fielden · DJ Crawford DJ Crawford …
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I think thats says a lot. What exactly is enough data. I think that makes things quite creepy. The fact that it also includes my friends as well.. things I have one… and things I have been awarded before.

Google and several other companies use algorythms that use a PageIndex system which index everything into a number=name. So basically everything you are and do in this world that is ever put into a computer is most likely known by this system… and information has a price.

Smart phones, PDA’s, Laptops and Search Engines. What really is private anymore, really? I can’t think of the last time I searched for something on Google that didn’t return a result… (unless misspelled). The scariest thing is look at all the ads! Next time you are on your computer check it out. If you search for something, it will automatically know where you live and generally things you like. Want to talk about something creepy… so you bought yourself a dog toy the other day online… on some random pet store. All of your ads will be geared towards you… the dog lover. The other crazy thing is they also know generally whats around you, maybe who you know… and talk to.

Companies like facebook as well. Think of all the things they happen to know about you… your date of birth, where you are from, what you like, your friends and what you do for a living. The next thing is you take a company such as Google. Now they use a index system that stores million and millions of data all based upon the links of data to links of data. The next craze is GPS. Now, here is something that is quite interesting. It has many uses to us, find where you are going, find out what place is where and now with a program called Loopt you can know where your friends are.

This is where I become concerned with privacy. More and more things are becoming accessible to just about anyone, all the way down to your exact location. Now a lot of these programs have ways to supposedly stop others from spying on your information… but everyday things get hacked such as your email… I would think just a name and password would be just a small step. More on this later.

Here is a great article to read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/business/30privacy.html?pagewanted=2&ref=technology