P. S.: Post Scriptum

I am just back from the airoport.
I bought some time ago a return ticket with Rayanair to Rome, going on the 4th August, and return on the 19th of August. Well, long story short I needed to change my going there ticket. I am no longer going with Ryanair to Rome, but to Athens, passing some time in Greece and coming back still with Ryanair on the 19th.

So I tried to move my first flight to another date. I know for sure I will go to Rome for Christmas, so moving it to the 21st of December seemed the best thing. You can’t actually do it online because the system would not accept a going ticket (21st of December) later than the return part of the ticket. I thought, fine, it sounds like something that really needs an operator.

And the operator just confirmed me the same thing. We can’t move a going part of a flight later. We can’t twist a flight around making what was the coming back the going, and adding a flight after while deleting the first.

Those things make me boil, it sounds like machines are in charge.

The crazy thing is that if I had bought the ticket as two separated flights I would have paid the same and had the possibility to change them. Crazy, eh! And ths limit is a total nonsense imposed by some wanker programmer, who imposes on other useless limitations.

So the first take away message is: when you buy a ticket alway buy each separate flight as a stand alone flight, and never buy two tickets as a return ticket. You never know when you might need to change the ticket.

As I was discussing the issue with my collegues, I was further told that when you buy a return ticket you still pay double taxes on each credit card transaction, so you are really paying the same. And then I was told other stories of how Ryanair handled everybody much worse. From mother who are required to submit the babies trolley as a “outsized” package. While in all other companies they can go with the trolley up to the plane and are then uploaded in a place where they can easily taken back. How then they have to walk with baby, handluggage and baby carseat to the plane (which in Dublin is about 1 km, sweet). And so on.

So generally the agreed wisdom from the office is:
never fly with Ryanair when you have a choise, and if you don’t have a choise wonder if your flight is really necessary.

My dear friends, I bring you bad news. The IMF offered to help the countries affected by the Tsunami.

Good! Will say most of you (naive!).

Bad, sais I. Because the IMF is not just giving money… It is lending it:

For our part, the IMF stands ready to provide financial assistance to affected countries, in the first instance through our Emergency Natural Disaster Assistance facility. This financing, which could be on the order of US$1 billion for the most affected countries, could be made available quickly and without an IMF program.

In other words: It is not a gift, it is a loan.

Emergency assistance loans are subject to the basic rate of charge, and should be repaid within 3¼ to 5 years. Since May 2001, for post-conflict cases which are eligible for the IMF’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF), the interest rate on loans has been subsidized down to 0.5 percent per year, with the interest subsidies financed by grant contributions from bilateral donors, Recently, the Executive Board agreed to consider a similar subsidization of emergency assistance for natural disasters.

And they also want interests on it. How generous!

Looking at the press. I noticed that the story had been taken by various news, yet only one clarified that it was not a gift.

You know, yesterday evening I was speaking with a friend who told me of a new book “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”(english review here). It is the story of John Perkins…

…John Perkins, a former respected member of the international banking community. In his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man he describes how as a highly paid professional, he helped the U.S. cheat poor countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then take over their economies

Also note how the order of magnitude of the loan that is being offered right now:

This financing, which could be on the order of US$1 billion for the most affected countries, could be made available quickly and without an IMF program.”

Is of the same order of magnitude of the one that John Perkins was offering:

my real job was deal-making. It was giving loans to other countries, huge loans, much bigger than they could possibly repay. One of the conditions of the loan–let’s say a $1 billion to a country like Indonesia or Ecuador–and this country would then have to give ninety percent of that loan back to a U.S. company, or U.S. companies, to build the infrastructure–a Halliburton or a Bechtel.

So, the IMF has offered a loan.
“Thanks, but no thanks” should those country answer.

While the rest of the world collects the money (this really as a gift) to help.
Will those countries be strong enough to refuse it.

We must be stupid. I am being serious, we must be REALLY stupid.

It is possible that after many years of people blowing the whistle against people collecting personal information we still fall for it. Who am I refering to? But to Furl, of course. Because, you see, we are often in good faith, and when someone says:

Privacy
Privacy is probably a top priority for you. It certainly is for us at Furl. When you mark an item “private,” we respect your expectation that no one else will be able to see its contents. Other members cannot see your private items when they view your archive, and Furl Search (search all archives) is restricted to public items only. We have designed the Furl system to ensure that your private items and topics are secure. We will not sell your email address or privately-stored information, nor share it except in very specific cases described in our Privacy Policy.

Access to the servers that house your archive is restricted to a very small number of employees. Procedures strictly prohibit accessing a member’s information, except when necessary to diagnose a problem or as specified in our Privacy Policy (such as when ordered by a court of law).

We’re members of Furl, too, and demand the utmost respect for privacy.

We kind of believe we are safe, right? Wrong! Let’s re read it:

We will not sell your email address or privately-stored information, nor share it except in very specific cases described in our Privacy Policy.

Again:

except in very specific cases described in our Privacy Policy.

We can put it in music:
except, except, except…
except, except, except in very specific cases described in our Privacy Policy.
And you should thank that this is no podcast.

But more, at the end of the same page:

Important Note
The contents of this page do not replace, modify or supercede Furl’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Please read them carefully before using Furl.

Let’s go and look at the privacy policy. After all those people at furl have our privacy as a top priority. Guess why?
And we don’t need to look very far to understand the true nature of the service:

Who is collecting my information?

Furl usually collects the requested information. However, Furl has chosen select partners in order to provide certain services. In order to use certain services on the Site, it may be necessary to enter information that then goes to our partner and is not kept by Furl.

We contract with Coremetrics, a service partner, to provide us with a data collection and reporting service for our Site. If you access the Site, Coremetrics may collect information about you on our behalf. For further information, including how to opt out of such data gathering, please see: http://www.coremetrics.com/info_eluminate2.html.

In other words: We don’t gather data, we let Coremetrics do it for us. And guess who is Coremetrics:

The company’s flagship product, Coremetrics Online Analytics 2004, is the industry’s only online marketing analytics platform that captures and stores all customer and visitor clickstream activity to build LIVE (Lifetime Individual Visitor Experience) profiles that serve as the foundation for all successful e-business initiatives. Through a patent-pending browser-based data collection technology, the Coremetrics Online Analytics 2004 Data Warehouse gathers and stores behavioral information directly from the visitor’s browser and records interactions in real-time to build LIVE Profiles.

It can hardly get worse than that.

But let’s keep on reading Furl Privacy Policy. After all our privacy is their first thought in the morning. Or so.

How does Furl use my information?

Furl’s primary goal in collecting personal information is to provide you, the user, with a customized experience on our service. This includes, or may include in the future, personalization services, interactive communications, online shopping, and many other types of services. In order to provide services free of charge, we will serve ads using content-targeting technologies, based on the content of your archived items.

But this is not all:

The following describes some of the ways that your information may be disclosed. Please note that this is not a complete list. The ways your information may be disclosed will change from time to time.

So even the privacy policy is not complete.

Or read this:

Coremetrics: Coremetrics may store certain data that we received from visitors to Furl (which may include email addresses), so that we may access this information via their reporting service. Furl will only use information shared with Coremetrics for proprietary Furl purposes. Coremetrics does not have the right to transfer your information to any party other than LookSmart.

Business Partners: LookSmart may disclose your personal information to our business partners in order to provide you with the services on the Site. If you have questions regarding the privacy policy or data-collection practices of one of our business partners, please contact that partner directly.

We are told the information is disclosed to business partners, but we are not told to whom. Yet we are asked to look at their privacy policy to understand what use do they do of this information.

They also spy when are you reading their e-mails:

We may also collect information through the use of “pixel tags” included in email messages we may send to you. Pixel tags are tiny graphic files, not visible to the human eye, that are included in HTML-encoded email messages. When such a message is opened in an HTML-capable email program, the recipient’s computer will access our server to retrieve the pixel tag file, allowing us to record and store, along with the recipient’s email address, the date and time the recipient viewed the email message, that the recipient’s email program is capable of receiving HTML-encoded email, and other standard logging information. The pixel tag also may see or read cookies.

The policy goes on, and forgive me for not analysing it all. I just didn’t have the guts. I understoo what I wanted, and here are my conclusions:

Conclusions
Furl collects personal information, gives this personal information to online partners for commercial purpose, including your e-mail address. Thus I don’t want to use furl and probably neither do you.

In short: Furl Sucks.
Amen.