Opionion: Bank of America Rejection of Default Pricing Ammendment

Banks have to be held accountable to some degree for their tenacity in quitely changing credit card terms right underneath consumer's feet, and then tacking on impossibly high default rates and fees associated with "services". Further, the fox has to stop guarding the hen house and an impartial third part that does not appeal to credit grantors in how credit scores are calculated. For example, if my credit card agreement is ammended to unfavorable terms and I close the account with a 0 balance, no late payments, and no over-the-limit occurances, my credit score should not be damaged in any way, shape or form. Catching consumer credit card companies when they make ammendments can offer consumers little hope but to begrudgingly accept the terms becase they are carrying a high balance and cannot pay it off in order to close the account, or they do not want to pay a 5% charge for a balance transfer to another card. Recently Bank of America sent me an ammendment with terms that were so insane, I felt that a letter of rejection was the least that I could do in response. Here's what I had to say:

September 19, 2007
FIA Card Services, NA
P.O. Box 17151
Wilmington, DE 19850


To Whom It May Concern:
The purpose of this letter is to reject the proposed amendment of the Default Pricing portion of my credit card agreement for card number #### #### #### ####.

Specifically, I find the proposed changes to be outright offensive in that the amendment gives carte blanche to adjust my APR to a default rate with NO FURTHER NOTICE. Worse yet, is the ludicrous default rate currently set at 32.24% , which can only be lowered at 2% intervals over consecutive 6 month spans of on-time payments. This is not consumer credit, it is highway robbery, and I will have no part of it.

This kind of surreptitious act is what will ultimately result in the demise of the US economy if the banking institutions’ insidious offers of sub-prime loans and credit offers to illegal aliens doesn’t deal the ultimate deathblow first.

Opinion: Sun "Jumps the Shark" by Reselling Windows and Branding it's Stock Ticker After a Non-Profitable Product Line

I have long surmised that Sun would not suffer the same fate as the once high flying Silicon Graphics. That hope beyond hopes has become quite a bit more uncertain with Sun's recent announcement that they would become a Windows reseller, along with what can only be a marketing move gone horribly awry to change the company's stock ticker from SUNW to Java. That's not even mentioning the clever 5-to-1 reverse stock split no doubt intended to make the company appear to be more valued than it actually is.
The latest round of layoffs it would seem, did not ensnare the same marketing baffoons that coined Sun as the DOT in DOT COM, a statement which suredly caused the stock to tumble at an accelerated pace when the DOT COM boon became the DOT COM bust. Now, the term Java has been so overused by the company that invented it, that it is certain to have the same catastrophic effect when the next great programming language rolls around, or Service Oriented Architecture takes a firmer hold allowing for a language agnostic metaverse.
Instead of continuing to innovate at the frenetic pace it once had, Sun has now made countless lapses of judgement that could have otherwise spelled a comeback for the struggling tech giant. Consider just these few examples:

• Reverse stock split - will it remain above 20 or plummet back down to 5?
  
• SUNW changes to Java - a programming language now identifies what was supposed to be an innovative systems company on the cutting edge of Internet technology. This is as stupid a move as if Apple were to instead change their name to iPod
  
• Sun mucks up opportunity to use Solaris as the underlying operating system in Apple's OSX by demanding that Apple use Sun's Sparc processors, something Sun itself can't decide whether or not it wants to continue to use. Apple goes on to make a bajillion dollars and turn OSX in to quite possibly the best Unix derived operating system ever.
  
• Sun churns out cross-platform hairball called Java System; Microsoft can't help but to snicker after Sun themselves referred to Windows as a hairball for years only to turn around and start selling it themselve--much like Silicon Graphics back in the day.
  
• Sun gets SUSE Linux distribution purchased out from under them by Novell with the help of IBM - Java Desktop System gets spanked as a result
  
• Sun buys Cobalt and refuses to open it to developers; product line quashed by the now countless resurrection of a half hearted endeavor to legitimize Solaris on X86 architecture
  

So, the question is, has Sun officially "Jumped the Shark" or will the next Bill Joy save the company by actually thinking about something other than Java for once?