Blackberry vs Treo

Lately I've been thinking about trading in my Treo for a Blackberry. I've been trying to do some research on the two of them and stumbled across this article today, which isn't about Treos but about iPhone vs Blackberry.

The feedback I've gotten from people who have used both phones is that the Blackberry user interface is nicer, but it has some drawbacks - namely the lack of a touch screen and the lack of threaded SMS.

I haven't been able to find much about the threaded SMS online. I get the impression that Blackberry user's don't know how the Treo handles SMS because the reply is usually, "it does do it." But while they have come up with a way to sort of do it, it defeats the whole purpose of keeping things clean and simple. I am shocked that someone has not written a Blackberry app to do that.

Anyway I will be sticking with my Treo for now. Hopefully soon Blackberry will add this feature. I could live without the touch screen, although I love my Palm touch screen, but the threaded SMS I can not do.

Vinyl Making a Comeback?

Don't call it a comeback, I've been here for years.

NY Times Article on the topic. I never abandoned vinyl other than for a few dark years in the early 90s.

MasterCard Sucks

I like Citibank, where I have been a customer pretty much my whole life, but they only provide Mastercard credit cards, which just became a problem for me today.

A few months ago I ordered something from a telemarketer. They charged my credit card $300 and I received an unmarked bag from India with some pieces of paper and cloth in it. The bag had no return address, there was no receipt in it or anything with writing, and absolutely no way to contact the merchant.

The 800 number they had given me and which showed up on my bill was out of service. So I filed a dispute with my bank. Somehow the bank was able to contact the merchant because the merchant disputed my dispute and said that they had proof I had signed for the package (I had signed for it). The bank was not able to give me any method of contacting these people, other than the 800 number which was out of service.

So then a few days ago $250 of the $300 is recharged to my card. I called the bank and they told me that Mastercard's policy is that since the merchant has a "return policy" that says that no opened items may be returned I had to pay for it since I had opened it.

This is so ridiculous for quite a few reasons:

• I got a package with no return address - how do I know where to return it? How do I even know what it is without opening it?
• The merchant never told me anything about a return policy.
• I had no means of contacting the merchant.

So I'm stuck paying $250 for a bag of god knows what. These people certainly have a good scam going. And there is nothing I can do about it since I have no way of contacting the merchant. I can't even report them to the FBI since I have no name, nothing.

I am going to put in a complaint to Mastercard, however.

Dirty Water

This is scary but true...

Hadoop and Twitter

The Register has an article on Hadoop and compares it favorably to Twitter. This is actually some very funny stuff, and they really blast Twitter. I have never really understood Twitter. It just seems stupid to me. Apparently some people really like it, but I just don't get the point.

Ennio Marchetto

Some Italian comedian type guy. Very funny stuff:

Paris Hilton Campaign Ad

I haven't seen the John McCain ad referenced but this is still pretty funny:

See more funny videos at Funny or Die