Any time interest rates go low, consumers are tempted to jump on taking additional debt, in order to consolidate the debts they already have into a single one, with a lower interest rate and easier to take care of. If you are sure that this will be the final debt you accumulate, this may be a good choice to make it. But if it is only a continuation of your financial habits which caused you to be in the situation of considering this debt consolidation, then it’s nothing but trouble. Browsing the web in search of the “truth”, namely “to consolidate or not to consolidate debt” I run into an interesting article written by Dave Ramsey, named The Truth About Debt Consolidation, which brings into attention the myth that debt consolidation saves interest, and you have one smaller payment. He busts this myth and gives advice of how to get out of trouble by changing your money habits.
I share Dave’s opinion that taking another loan does not make the old ones disappear, it is just an illusion of financial health but in fact it is the same spending virus that’s eating you alive. And what do you do when you get a disease? Cure it or mask the symptoms? I agree, if it is incurable, then you mask the symptoms, but I urge you to give it one more thought: are you an incurable spender?
Romanian police is determined to exterminate the peer-to-peer file sharing networks. This is their first action in the Gramophone Operation, as they called this “large scale intervention”. You’ll see now how large this scale was.
At 10 o’clock in the morning of a sunny summer day, a peaceful old man heard somebody ringing at his door. There were some police officers, with a search warrant. He let them in, they asked him about drugs or weapons, he told them that he has only some cigarettes and coffee. Then the officers wanted to see his computer, they sealed it and took it away, telling him that his crime was that he had a 350Gb share of music. The poor guy is now on court for trial. He admits that not knowing the law is not an excuse and he is ready to take the consequences of his criminal act.
Meanwhile, nothing happened with the file sharing networks owners, all the hubs are functioning just fine, while the users are all asking themselves when will the police ring to their doors to take their computers away.
Does it look like the government really wants to eradicate piracy? It doesn’t seem to me at all, since all the guys who make nice money out of this business are well and healthy, writing and selling millions of copies of pirate CDs and DVDs.
I know this has nothing to do with tips and tricks, but I felt the urge to tell the world what is happening here.