Y2HH

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Nov 7, 2011 -> 03:30 PM) 4s and Verizon have arrived! Has anyone tried that Gazelle site to sell their old iphones at all? My iphone 4 on ATT is pretty much in flawless condition and they claim to pay 200 for it Ebay it, you can probably get more. The reason they pay so much for these is because they are unsubsidized contract free phones your reselling for a few hundred dollars, when on contract they'd need to spend that much plus the contract they cannot get out of. With these older iPhones, they can unlock them onto networks that don't officially have iPhones, hence their worth. For example, T-Mobile.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 7, 2011 -> 09:47 AM) Again, wait a second...yes, there was a time when banks would pay out 5-10% interest on savings, but at the same time, they were also getting 15% rates on mortgages. The decline in long term interest rates has been an effort of the federal reserve. Has the gap between interest paid out and rates charged significantly? In 1980, mortgage rates sat at around 18%, and savings rates sat at 10%, so I certainly wouldn't say that the gap there has changed. In some ways it hasn't changed, but what it did was take an investment opportunity away from the people that don't not understand stocks, bonds, or markets in general. There is no longer a place for a regular person to put their money and make a decent return on it. If you break down what you just said, here is what we get: The banks continued to make the same amount of money via their normal investment avenues, but the people have been relegated to making almost nothing. In the past, yes, interest rates were higher, but if a person saved/invested in something as simple as savings account, they could make money, too. Keep in mind interest rates on savings/checking accounts are short term, not long term. Also keep in mind, not everyone needs to own a house.

For the record, I'm no fan of what these big banks have become, or even the small ones. There was a time when they actually paid a fair interest rate on the money they "borrowed" from their depositors in order to lend it out for an albeit higher interest rate of their own. Today, they borrow your money for almost nothing (less than nothing in many cases since they charge various fees for using their services), turn around and lend it out at an interest rate of at LEAST 5% on most items. And our government backed them when they screwed it up over greed, and bailed them out because they convinced the world it was "for the peoples sake". Let's not even get into the fact that the government meant to protect us helped create the possibility of the scenario that took place to begin with. I guess I should be more angry than I am, but the banks aren't really doing anything the government or various other institutions aren't doing, which is nickle and diming the people into oblivion. Oh, and if/when they screw up, they'll ask those same people to help them out...and when we do, they'll turn around and thank us by adding more fees (or taxes in the case of the government) and tell us it's for our own good.

QUOTE (JorgeFabregas @ Nov 7, 2011 -> 09:17 AM) I've been a member of a credit union for 15 years. My wife and I have had smaller accounts with commercial banks since getting married 6 years ago. There is no comparison between the experiences. The credit union provides quicker access to your money (so far as I can tell, you can deposit a check of any amount at an ATM and instantly have access to those funds), doesn't have any minimum balance amounts for free checking, has lower overdraft fees, etc. My credit union is based in the Chicago suburbs and we moved to Saint Louis over a year ago. That's still our main account, as there have been ATMs where we can make deposits within walking distance of both places we have lived in Saint Louis thanks to co-op networks. The national bank chain that we have account with (and are closing) has no place to make deposits unless we drive into Illinois. I've thought about it, but frankly, I'm lazy when it comes to that. My "bank" account is nothing more than a "bill pay" account I use to pay bills online...I store absolutely zero savings there.

It's pretty apparent that most of you don't understand how big banks make their big money, so I'll give you a hint: It's not on mom and pop accounts with revolving deposits of a few thousand (or even just mere hundreds of dollars). Actually, if anything, these small revolving accounts tend to cost banks money, because it causes them to have to hire staff to support the account, online, and in person. By law they have to accept and support them, but that doesn't mean they "want" them.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 7, 2011 -> 09:14 AM) BofA is not being done any favors by losing deposits. Actually you are quite wrong on this.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 7, 2011 -> 08:57 AM) Remember when all those people started leaving BoA and then they dropped the fee? Most of those people unwittingly did BOA a favor, unfortunately.

You guys talking about no booze are flat out wrong. Booze doesn't matter. It the kind of booze that matters. And for that matter, this goes for everything from food to booze. It's carbs and fat content that matter most for "getting ripped". Calories in and of themselves aren't super important, since you'll burn those doing cardio anyway. You want to avoid an overload of carbs and fat calories. Saturated fat is the main source of fat calories so avoid it, IE, eat lean meats, etc. Also, protein shakes are mostly unnecessary unless you want a pro "body builders" physique (IE 300lbs of muscle) or are a vegetarian. If you eat meat everyday, you're already getting more than enough protein without having to subsidize it with shakes. Most people who work out intake WAY too many grams of protein per day and it does nothing helpful (it's probably harmful to your kidneys as a matter of fact). Anything more than 1 gram of protein per body pound is too much, and 1 gram is already somewhat excessive. If you want ripped abs, you need to run -- run -- and run some more (as in jog). Your abs already exist, they're just covered by the layer of fat over them which is a leftover genetic trait you can thank your ancestors for. You can do situps or ab-ripper X until the sun burns out -- if you don't jog/do sustained fat burn cardio, it won't matter. Start the day with high carb/mid-to-low protein intake, and swap them throughout the day...toward the evening your carb intake needs to be much lower, protein higher. The problem here is I'd need much more information in order to tell you how much/how little, etc. And you want to do a FAT BURN cardio exercise...nothing that raises your heart rate above 145, and sustain it for a period of time like 30-45 minutes at, probably 5 days a week. Again, this is give or take depending on your attributes. I could get away with doing it 2 times a week, for example, but that doesn't mean other people can. You should only have to do situps or whatever mid section exercise a few times a week for a maximum of 20 minutes per session. And NEVER -- EVER -- use weight machines to do stomach exercises. You want to DEFINE your stomach muscles, *not* make them bigger. The HARDEST part about giving people work out advice (especially on the Internets) is what works for one will most likely not work for another. I try to keep my advice on the generic side (as it is above) if I don't know a persons attributes, body type, etc. Genetics plays an amazing key role in how much effort a person has to put fourth in order to get their desired results. A designed workout/diet (including protein/carb intake) has to be tailored to your specific genetics in order to help you overcome these inherited deficiencies. When talking about working out with people, they will usually tell you what works for them, and expect that because it worked for them, it should work for everyone. Problem is, that's the opposite of truth. While it may take Rock 20 minutes of cardio per week to maintain his desired bodyfat percentage, it might take someone else on this board 50 minutes. After working out for two decades, I recently (last year) had to quit due to some internal medical issues, which I've nearly overcome. Hopefully I'll be able to lift again soon. Until then, enjoy your workouts everyone...and keep in mind, what works for you won't work for anyone else. Get to know your body, and experiment, experiment, experiment! By that I mean with different foods, etc...your body will react differently. For all you know, drinking beer everyday is the key to your success -- and because everyone on here is telling you booze is bad despite knowing nothing about your genetic makeup, you'd never find out.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 7, 2011 -> 08:32 AM) And of course, unless we're in a full and organized monopoly in every industry, a competitor will realize there is market share to be gained with a slight reduction in prices, which will undercut another competitor and cause them to lower their prices slightly, until a new price-equilibrium is established reflecting the new, slightly decreased cost of doing business. While that works in a perfect world, Jewel, Dominick's and Whole Foods say hi. They do the exact opposite, and drive prices up...somehow.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 7, 2011 -> 08:25 AM) Note the difference here. What you've described is much more akin to a sales tax. It is a tax charged, as you describe...on "Every transaction". It is not a subsidy to one type of payment over another. I can't avoid SEC fees by using cash, which you've repeated as a way out of debit card fees repeatedly here. You can avoid them by not trading.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 7, 2011 -> 08:24 AM) By that logic, the prices should have dropped to reflect that change. They didn't. In utopia they did. Just not in reality.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 7, 2011 -> 08:19 AM) Why shouldn't services provided by a financial institution be a way for the financial institution to make money? I have zero problem with the concept. We don't have a nationalized, not-for-profit banking system in this country and I'm pretty sure I don't want one. If a bank is going to offer products and services that allow them to make money...fine. If they introduce a new or better service and expect that they should make more money because of offering a better service, fine. There is nothing unreasonable about being able to do so. What is unreasonable is to have a government mandated fee amount that is not transparent and is not competitive. It's unreasonable, yes, but not illegal. Thankfully we have a free market where competition can choose to do the exact opposite and become a more attractive offer for our/your business.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 7, 2011 -> 07:50 AM) But again Y2HH...ATM fees are competitive. If I want to avoid ATM fees, I keep myself at a bank with broad access where I can avoid that fee (I actually do this). I can choose whether or not to pay that fee. If a bank charges me a fee that I judge to be too high for the service, I can use a different method of payment or move to a different bank. A fee that is hidden and mandated by the government is not competitive. You completely missed my point, as it had *nothing* to do with what you just explained. My point was that these new fees they're backing down on will work out the SAME WAY that ATM fees worked out. Yes, you can avoid them -- just like you could have avoided these newly proposed fees. Point is/was, ATM's went from being free to being a way to make money, and despite the public outrage of the fees increasing despite the technology bringing costs DOWN, they raised them anyway and got away with it. Not to mention the newly proposed fee is also "competitive" in that if their competition is not charging it, you have an added incentive to go to them. The market is the competition in this case. If the bank wants to charge 5$ to use a convenience card, and others do not...well...that's called competition. The reason BOA backed down isn't because of the public outrage -- it's because their competition came forward after said outrage and said, "yea, we won't be doing that". Also note, as reported on the news and finance shows today, people removing their money from these banks yesterday actually saved the banks money since on average, it costs a bank about 400$ a year to administer/maintain an account...and if the account is of low value, they don't end up losing just because they lost a low value customer. I don't know for sure, but I'm betting MOST people that left these banks for credit unions are exactly that.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 6, 2011 -> 08:35 PM) What matters is that it's Dick Durbin's fault that these fees are now nominally transparent and that this is a bad thing (even though the "$5 a month Durbin tax!" idea has already crumbled). The idea didn't crumble, I hope you aren't duped THAT easily. The idea was merely put on hold and/or moved elsewhere, to something more easily hidden from the public eye. People have a short memory span, so let me remind you of something. This SAME EXACT thing happened with ATM fees when they originally came around...at first they were free because they were called a convenience to the bank (after all, now they don't have to hire a teller). Shortly after, it was 25 cents, then 50 cents, then 2$/3$/5$, or free depending on which ATM's you happen to use, or "possibly refunded" up to a certain dollar value, etc. There was temporary outrage when these fees first started hitting 1$+, but this public rage quickly waned when peoples attention was diverted elsewhere and suddenly the fees were *quietly* upwards of 3$. This is far far far from over. In the end, they will find a way to make you pay. Either that, or someone in Springfield will say, "Hey, we just saved people 5$ and various other transaction fees from banks, so they obviously have more money...let's create a new tax since they can afford it now!" After all, someone in Springfield (or elsewhere in the government) *WILL* take credit for forcing the banks to back down!

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 6, 2011 -> 11:56 AM) What an intelligent financial system would realize of course is that having the system be largely cashless is a benefit to both the customer, to the retailer, and to the financial institution. It is much cheaper to do these things electronically at every step than to deal with actual cash. All 3 groups know that. The real difference has been that 1 of those 3 groups had the government on its side, and has used that to enable itself to take advantage of the other 2 by hiding their fees to avoid competition. It's also much MUCH more expensive to deal with the security, both wired and wireless, for POS terminals connected via private leased line (expensive) or internet (also expensive, because they are inherently less secure). It's even more astounding how many of these POS terminals are STILL unsecured, unencrypted, credit/debit card storage devices that are exploited routinely and/or use/store the information improperly. On top of the very expensive security practices required, add in the expansive worldwide fraud that this cashless system has enabled...the fraud on these cashless systems is well clear into the billions. So while it added a LOT of convenience for the regular customer, it also added a lot of convenience for the fraudsters. As cheap as this system should be, it's actually expensive.

QUOTE (God Loves The Infantry @ Nov 6, 2011 -> 11:33 AM) I like how consistently disagreeing with the resident fruit makes me bull-headed and single-minded. If I was instead a steadfast liberal, holding such views with the same consistency that I hold conservative ones, he wouldn't say a word. But God forbid someone be consistently conservative, because refusing to submit to the all-knowing genius known as Big Sqwert is a sure sign of unholy bullheaded-ness. Pathetic. For the record, whether you two agree with each other or not, BS is a really cool person, and he's not a "fruit". And by that, I'm not sure if you were calling him gay or a non-meat eater...but either way, you probably shouldn't need to do either in order to make a point. ...and that's the way it usually works. When people agree with you, they tend to say so, or say nothing at all. It's when they disagree that you'll find a dissenting opinion. In either case, don't get banned with personal attacks like I have plenty of times in the past, it's good to have you here. So stay.

QUOTE (danman31 @ Nov 4, 2011 -> 11:26 PM) I would have reported my issues, but I got my 4S barely more than a week ago and have used Siri just once in the last week. I played with it the first couple days and was impressed with the voice recognition (it's damn near perfect), but I don't have uses for it. Alarm is cool and voice to text is cool, but I don't use it often. Twice it's failed to give me directions to a high school (for work) even though it correctly understood what I said. It said 'Sorry I don't know ## high school, here is a list of high schools near you.' Of course, the ones I was looking for weren't on the list. If I simply typed the name into maps, it would give me directions. So in other words I don't use Siri for directions anymore, which was my most anticipated use of it. I've used it for directions quite a few times without much issue. Of course, like any directions, it can be the app itself that doesn't understand the command the way Siri sent it, versus Siri itself. It's pretty useful once in a while, but it's not something I lean on all the time. It has it's uses, and for those uses it works well. Keep in mind, this is just a pre-release of Siri, it's still in beta by Apples own admission.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Nov 6, 2011 -> 11:22 AM) Both ways? He/she is probably the most bull-headed, single viewpoint poster on this site. That's possible, as mentioned, he/she seems quite angry, and I think that anger can push a persons opinions further than they originally intended. Point was, it's good to have another vocal viewpoint here. It gets tired when only a handful of us have the same conversations. And quiet your face down, M's fan.

QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 6, 2011 -> 10:24 AM) What is so wrong with switching to a bank or credit union with no fees? Funny it was the same banks that promoted the hell out of using the cards. I never said anything was wrong with it. I simply said nobody is FORCED to use ATM's or debit cards, and they aren't. They CHOOSE to do it as to not inconvenience themselves.

And nobody is stopping ANY of you from inconveniencing your lives and going to the f***ing bank -- in person -- and making a cash withdraw so you can carry cash around WITHOUT having to use an ATM or Debit Card and having to pay the fees attached to them. You know, like people used to do before any of this newfangled convenience existed. There are plenty of banks and credit unions that allow you to cash checks/make a withdraw for FREE so long as you have an account with them. The only drawback is you HAVE TO GO THERE, during business hours, in order to do so. Cashless society my ass. It's cashless ONLY out of convenience. A convenience you want to use but by no means are you forced to use.

QUOTE (God Loves The Infantry @ Nov 6, 2011 -> 09:05 AM) You think its a strawman that I look at OWS' issues with sexual assault, hypocrisy , violence, entitlement, greed, drug use, communism/socialism, anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, ignorance and so forth and consider that to be baggage that absolutely ruins any positive influence and message they might have started with? I could provide multiple examples of each of these. It doesn't surprise me that you'd look fondly at a movement overrun with degenerates, but I'm not going to join you. I'm glad you're here, it's nice to see another opposing voice that can see things both ways without having a problem calling people out on either side when they show their lack of logic, hypocrisy, stupidity and/or irrationality. Though as a forewarning, many here will argue that you only see things in a neo-conservative way since they don't agree with you. They'll usually follow up these brilliant opinions/arguments with the words "straw man", "anecdotal" or "lol", without further explanation. This has already happened in this thread a few times. This doesn't apply to all of these people all of the time, however...but I'll warn you now it's hard to have an honest/open discussion here without whacked ideology creeping in that completely ignores reality. Though I have my reservations since you sound quite angry, and while I understand you described that as your "shtick", anger can corrupt an opinion and spin it out of control. Now, I'll recap in case you missed the past around here, because by and large, this is the way it worked out. Many posters, including some of the more liberal minded ones in this thread have at one time or another, posted vast generalizations about how white, religious, stupid and racist the tea party was/is -- often using the very "creative" and demeaning term "teabaggers" -- to both describe and dismiss them. Yet now, they will attempt to apply logic and reason to argue for the OWS movement because they happen to agree with it. They will say OWS isn't all bad just because "some" of them are bad. And while I agree with this new found logic they've decided to conditionally apply to something they agree with, because it IS logical, the issue is they didn't lend that same logic to the "teabagger rallies", as they described them. Because, you know, EVERYONE involved in the tea party was a racist religious zealot that has hijacked congress and held it hostage! Oh, and for the record, I don't agree with the tea party movement OR the OWS movement.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 2, 2011 -> 02:18 PM) That's literally the only reason that company exists. Convincing viewers/listeners of conservative shows to dump money into "Collectible" golden assets that have some value while getting the host to rant on about the importance of gold. It's literally a symbiotic relationship. Conservatives aren't the only people that invest in such things, so...no, it's really not *literally* a symbiotic relationship. All manner of people invest in gold products from places like this, who only get these "endorsements" from Beck and others because they *paid* for them. These are nothing more than advertising campaigns masqueraded as endorsements. That's like saying LeBron James endorses eating bad food because he makes McDonald's commercials. Edit: And I'm no fan of Glenn Beck, either. But this is just advertisement. Dumb people will find a way to lose their money one way or another...and these gold selling schemes are no different. Just another in a long line of such things.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Nov 2, 2011 -> 10:10 AM) S.W.A.T., Lakeview Terrace and Unthinkable are a few of my favorites. Samuel L. is the s***. He doesn't have to be the lead to make an impact. Unbreakable?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 2, 2011 -> 07:45 AM) That's the worst reason I've read yet. I never said it was a good reason, but it IS one of the main reasons they're doing it now.

I have to agree with what someone else said -- this is all based on a technicality. He was, at best, in sub-role bit parts for 20 seconds in most of these movies, and/or NOT the star/main attraction of almost all of them. I don't think this counts as him being a box office sensation. He was in a bunch of movies that made a bunch of money, but they didn't make money because of him, but mostly in spite of him. Aside from a scant few movies, he's better at ruining movies than making them good.