East of the Sun, West of the Moon

2005/8/15

See you in 5 years, then

Filed under: Family — Erwin @ 2:21 pm

I thought it might be worth a shot to try this site (optoutprescreen.com):

Thank you. Your 5 Year Opt-Out Request has been received. Your request will be completed within 5 days. However, because your name has been provided to businesses that have not yet mailed their pre-approved offer to you, you may continue to receive certain pre-approved offers for several months.

While your name will be removed from the pre-approved credit or insurance offer lists that Equifax, Experian, Innovis and TransUnion provide to businesses, you may continue to receive mail from sources that do not use credit reporting companies to compile their lists.

Emphasis mine, by the way.

The only reasons I picked 5 years and not permanent are that:

  • I’m cynical enough to assume that permanent does not work in practice and that my name will eventually end up on their lists again.
  • I’m happy with the creditcards that I have right now but may want to see what they’re offering me in a few years, because I assume that the kind of offers I get is vaguely (!) related to my creditscore which, compared to US citizens is very young and as a result not as good as it could be.

The next few weeks/months will tell if the flood will turn into a trickle, at least.

Catching up

Filed under: Software,Technology — Erwin @ 12:21 pm

I would be interested in a hybrid that can do 250 Mpg:

University of California, Davis engineering professor Andy Frank built a plug-in hybrid from the ground up in 1972 and has since built seven others, one of which gets up to 250 mpg. They were converted from non-hybrids, including a Ford Taurus and Chevrolet Suburban.

Frank has spent $150,000 to $250,000 in research costs on each car, but believes automakers could mass-produce them by adding just $6,000 to each vehicle’s price tag.

Unfortunately I’m not willing to invest in a new car when we’re still paying for the previous one and don’t really need a second vehicle. So I hope that by the time we are actually looking for one, their performance has improved even more. 🙂

It’s an indication of why patents can be a pain, although it’s also an indication of how Apple dropped the ball in protecting its own technolog and products:

In a ruling issued last month, a patent examiner rejected Apple’s attempt to patent some of the user interface concepts behind the popular digital music player, noting that Microsoft developer John Platt filed for similar claims five months before Apple did.

John Platt filed it in May 2002 while Apple released the iPod in October 2001. You figure out if that makes sense, hm?

That’ll have to do for now, work called a long time ago. 😉

Now playing: Björk – The Modern Things (from Post)

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