Compensation

So you would figure that software managers would figure out a sane way to handle compensation for programmers by now. But, of course, they haven’t.

Most of them are your average Econ 101 bean counting weenies. I can hear them now, “We can only afford to give three to five percent raises each year, because if we paid everybody what they deserved, then we would be spending too much. And what is it that these programmers do anyways?”

That’s why an old co worker of mine told me one day over lunch that the difference between not busting your ass and busting your ass is the difference between a three percent raise and a four percent raise. I think that it should be obvious, even to the village idiot, that a system which creates such a sentiment is destined to fail.

So let’s take your classic example. You have a junior to mid level developer who has been with you a year, and he excels. He learns your business quickly. He fits in with the team. He, even at his junior level, brings a new way of thinking into the mix and keeps the senior guys from making bad decisions. It comes down to review time, and you give him an average review and your standard, crappy, average raise.

But here in lies the problem. He’s worth a lot more now on the open market then he was a year ago. You’ve trained him and brought him along, and he kicks ass. He not only has a good amount of experience in your industry now, but he has a good amount of experience at your company. There is nothing that can replace that.

So this poor guy, who has the head hunters pestering him like crack addicts waiting for their next fix, now has to play hardball. He has to threaten to leave in order to get what he clearly deserves, and no matter what happens, it’s all down hill from there.

Let’s say that you are lucky, and he takes his crappy raise and stays. He will resent you for the rest of his life. He will be a lot less productive. In fact, he’s probably spending most of his days day dreaming about architecting the “fuck you button”. They say that, at some point or another, every man thinks about killing his wife.

I don’t know if that’s true, but I can tell you that every programmer who has ever had a regular job has thought about the fuck you button. Thank God that 99.9% of good coders are extremely ethical, because if they weren’t, then we would all be in trouble, but I digress.

A more likely scenario is that this bright young coder will finally break down and take a call from one of the bottom feeders, I mean head hunters, and he will land a job, somewhere else, making what he asked for, and taking all the things that you’ve taught him over to someone else.

Then, of course, you have to replace him, and that takes a few months, and you’ve lost all that good will, in all senses of the word. The good will of your past and current employees who look upon you to treat them right, and the economic good will of a kick ass developer, whose worth far exceeds what you could ever pay him.

And guess what.

In order to replace him, you are going to have to pay the new guy as much money as he was asking for in the first place. Plus that nice 15% fee to the head hunter. And now, because you were trying to be cheap, you have to spend even more than what you should have spent in the first place. And God knows, you’ll probably screw it up with this guy too, and thus the circle of life continues.

The whinny little managers now have their hands up like pre-schoolers. “But Charles,” they say. “What if we really can’t afford to pay him that much?”

Well, if you really can’t afford to pay him that much, and I mean REALLY can’t do it then that’s where some leadership skills comes in. You explain to him what’s going on. You tell him how valuable he is and how you know that he is worth more. You promise to pay him what he’s worth at a later date, like when you land a new client, and you stick to it. Nine times out of ten, you get a happy coder who stays and works even harder for you than if you would have gave him the good raise.

Don’t you wish that they would have taught you that when you got your MBA?

Gossp Columnist freaks out as his Reality Check Bounces

Katies Holmes ran the entire NY City Marathon, and this gossip columnist is totally freaking out.

You can see plenty of photos here documenting the event.

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Remember when Katie Holmes was mysteriously pregnant for 26 months, then the next thing we knew, she and Tom appeared in Vanity Fair for a huge black-and-white spread with really bombastic quotes about parenthood, and we all pretty much gave up on facts?

It felt like some elaborate 9/11 conspiracy was occurring that somehow involved secret baby black markets and after everything went down, none of us believed that Tom simply had sex with Katie and produced a natural offspring, but also couldn’t possibly fathom what kind of conspiracy had to have occurred for them to pull off the event.

My point is, reading that Katie Holmes ran the entire New York City Marathon then posed for photos and attended the premiere of Tom’s movie “Lions For Lambs” strikes me as another one of those moments. How can this story be true?

How could Katie — who in some circles is rumored to be pregnant — have had the time to get into phenominal running shape in “two months” while attending to a one-year-old child, run the entire marathon, then glowingly appear in photos right at the finish line?

On the other hand, though, how can this story be made up? If she didn’t actually run the whole marathon, wouldn’t some gossip reporter immediately uncover photos of her in a cab during the marathon and break the scandal?

What level of Big-Brother, Bush-administration conspiracy theory, post-apocalyptic-sci-fi novel media control must this couple possess to dupe us into believing this story just as we still believe that Suri is an organic human who actually exists?

Have Tom and Katie completely destroyed our ability to skeptically filter gossip news? Or are we just being too cynical about two actual events that had to have truthfully occurred? Or is this indeed some elaborate underground plot, just as 9/11 was secretly the work of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston?

I don’t know what to believe anymore. I’m just gonna go buy Katie some flowers for her second baby shower.

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I can just imagine this guys' head exploding.

Cognitive dissonance indeed.

The Troublesome Student

Origins: The earliest account of the "barometer" legend we've found so far comes from a 1958 Reader's Digest collection, and the tale is usually identified as being the invention of Dr. Alexander Calandra, who included a first-person account of it in a 1961 textbook (The Teaching of Elementary Science of Mathematics) and published it as an article in Saturday Review in 1968. The various responses mentioned in the legend have also been included in lists of supposedly "real" answers given by physics students when confronted by this same question. (One such list was submitted to the periodical Current Science by Dr. Calandra himself.) Whether a real incident was the basis for Dr. Calandra's creation of this parable is unknown.

The obvious moral here is that education should not consist merely of stuffing students' heads full of information and formulae to be memorized by rote and regurgitated upon demand, but of teaching students how to think and solve problems using whatever tools are available. In the mangled words of a familiar phrase, students should be educated in a way that enables them to figure out their own ways of catching fish, not simply taught a specific method of fishing.

True or not, this anecdote incorporates a feature common to academic legends, the notion that an instructor must give credit to a student who provides a technically correct answer to an exam question, even when the it is clearly not the answer the instructor expected although in this case the instructor rejects the initial answer(s) and demands one that at least demonstrates a knowledge of the subject matter at hand.

It's an urban legend / Internet tall tale, but it is still worth reading.

---

Some time ago I received a call from a colleague. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed a perfect score. The instructor and the student agreed to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected.

I read the examination question:

"SHOW HOW IT IS POSSIBLE TO DETERMINE THE HEIGHT OF A TALL BUILDING WITH THE AID OF A BAROMETER."

The student had answered, "Take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it,lower it to the street, and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building."

The student really had a strong case for full credit since he had really answered the question completely and correctly! On the other hand, if full credit were given, it could well contribute to a high grade in his physics course and to certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this.

I suggested that the student have another try. I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning that the answer should show some knowledge of physics. At the end of five minutes, he had not written anything.

I asked if he wished to give up, but he said he had many answers to this problem; he was just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him and asked him to please go on.

In the next minute, he dashed off his answer which read: "Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop the barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch. Then, using the formula x=0.5*a*t^^2, calculate the height of the building."

At this point, I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded, and gave the student almost full credit.

While leaving my colleague's office, I recalled that the student had said that he had other answers to the problem, so I asked him what they were.

"Well," said the student, "there are many ways of getting the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer. For example, you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer, the length of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building, and by the use of simple proportion, determine the height of the building."

"Fine," I said, "and others?"

"Yes," said the student, "there is a very basic measurement method you will like. In this method, you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units."

"A very direct method."

"Of course. If you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of g at the street level and at the top of the building. From the difference between the two values of g, the height of the building, in principle, can be calculated."

"On this same tact, you could take the barometer to the top of the building,attach a long rope to it, lower it to just above the street, and then swing it as a pendulum. You could then calculate the height of the building by the period of the precession".

"Finally," he concluded, "there are many other ways of solving the problem.Probably the best," he said, "is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent's door. When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: 'Mr. Superintendent, here is a fine barometer. If you will tell me the height of the building, I will give you this barometer."

At this point, I asked the student if he really did not know the conventional answer to this question.

He admitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think.

The student was Neils Bohr.

A view from the inside regarding the Minot AFB Nukes

The following email was sent to CLG on 19 September, anonymously.

Hello there,

I’m a Staff Sergeant in the US Air Force. I do network security, so, that’s why I’m emailing anonymously, even though I really don’t feel it’s necessary. I’m just paranoid like that, which is why I’m pretty good at my job. ;) Also, parts of what I’m putting in here are probably classified, which is the primary reason I’m sending this anonymously.

Anyway, I see a lot of people posting about government conspiracies about nukes and things like this. It’s frustrating for me because it’s really very silly. Please, let me explain some background, to help you all understand what’s going on in the background for the Air Force:

Minot AFB is a dead-end base. It’s the abyss of the Air Force, the saying goes “Why not Minot?” They have major retainability problems there – people volunteer to go to Iraq, Korea, anywhere just to get out of there.

Beside its location (middle-of-nowhere North Dakota), the base has very little real mission and spins its wheels forever in drills that all result in the end of the world since it’s a nuke base designed to fight the Cold War.

But, there is no Cold War for them to fight (at least not one that Minot’s golden piece of real estate would be useful in fighting), so its people probably feel pretty worthless and tired of fighting the now non-existent Soviet Union. The base has already been re-aligned (more on that in a moment) and it’s probably going to be BRACed into a regional airport in a few decades. Ellison AFB in South Dakota has already had its closure decided.

One of the biggest problems with killing off Minot is its core mission – all of the nukes it has. Its weapons capability is moving to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana as the AF further consolidates after the Cold War and infrastructure budget cuts because of Iraq et al. Moving weapons capability to Barksdale, in real world terms, means moving the actual missiles that would deliver the nuclear warhead to Barksdale. No big deal, conventional weapons move all the time.

Nuclear warheads, however, when transported for these reasons, are moved by the Department of Energy – a very time consuming, expensive, and burdensome process that someone else will have to figure out much later once they finally decide to close the base.

So, the Air Force’s solution is to move the missiles, and leave the warheads behind, to be dealt with one day when all of us are retired and don't have to worry about it. That’s what SHOULD have happened. So the mission itself was pretty normal otherwise.

(It may actually be intentional to leave things this way, to prevent Congressional involvement, as whatever Senator is from ND is probably desperate to keep Minot around as long as possible; leaving the nukes, but operationally stripping the base serves both sides purposes).

The mistake, and the reason everyone now knows about this, is that the warheads weren’t removed from the missiles being moved to Barksdale. I bet the guys on the ground in Barksdale were sure as shit surprised when they cracked the payload open and saw a warhead. ;)

I know as much as I do because I work with a cross-trainee whose last base was Barksdale as a munitions specialist. He was involved in this process there; along with the various other missions Barksdale has (it’s a pretty critical base in the AF). Anyway, you would think there would be a pretty clear checklist for all of this, but apparently no one even bothered. Doing what they do day-to-day, is pretty standard operating procedure. People get lazy when they do the same thing day after day, and there’s no less than a half dozen teams who would be transferring these weapons around from storage until they’re loaded.

The idea of someone dropping the ball in the AF is not exactly unusual (quite common, actually, heh), especially when 4:30 rolls around and everyone wants to go home. If the next step is to hand it off to the guys who remove the warhead, and it’s 1630 on a Friday, hell, let’s just leave it until Monday, since the mission doesn’t fly until Tuesday anyway. Monday rolls around, someone else takes over, and doesn’t know the job wasn’t finished on Friday.

There SHOULD be some paper trail for that kind of thing, but then, like I said, people are lazy. Oh, and Minot usually fails its nuclear operational readiness inspections. ;) Sorry to kill your confidence in the military.

I’ve seen too much crazy stuff to believe in some massive conspiracy, there’s too many people involved. You’d have to kill like 50 people to “cover up” moving nukes to Barksdale. Plus, what would it achieve? There’s already more than enough nukes at Barksdale to blow the world up 3x over. Who needs 6 more? Seriously? Plus, more accidents occur with conventional than nukes, since nukes are computerized and designed to be super-duper safe. Conventional weapons are built by the lowest bidder. [Yikes!]

I’d be more worried about a fully-loaded F16 flying around NYC after 9/11 sucking up a bird than a B52 with nukes flying around without anyone knowing it was loaded with nukes. The pilots couldn’t "secretly" be in on it and launch them, the interface wouldn’t be installed, the COMSEC material wouldn’t be available, etc. You’d have to kill half the base to hide the paper trail necessary to give the pilots the ability to launch.

Several people dying from Minot is bad, of course, but then, crazy stuff happens.

Motorcycle accidents, mind you, are the #1 non-war cause of dead in the Air Force. The Captain who died wasn’t a pilot (he was Combat Weather, as evidenced by his pewter beret in the photo linked from your site). Captains are a dime a dozen, just like the Security Forces troop who died.

Yes, a part of the Security Forces Squadron mission there would be do defend the nukes, but he’s not at all involved in any of the process. He stands outside the door and checks IDs. Seriously, that’s it.

I have 5 cops (as they're generally called in the Air Force) I deal with every day where I work because I do computer stuff, and they have zero clue what’s happening behind the door. They spend most of the day on the phone chit chatting with friends at other security posts about the latest dorm gossip about who slept with whom.

So, to conclude, just chill out a bit about the conspiracy, it’s kinda silly. Plus, again, what would be the point? It’s not a big deal to authorize a nuke mission. After 9/11 the entire Barksdale arsenal was loaded and on the flightline ready to fly. I wouldn’t sweat 6 who someone forgot to unload.

Feel free to republish, maybe it'll educate a few people.

V/r
SSgt

The Erotic Associations of Lettuce

It has been reported that the ancient Romans considered lettuce an erotic vegetable, and possibly an aphrodisiac. Moderns have often looked at this with amusement and puzzlement, since they can't get there from here. Despite the range of modern pornography, the best explanation for this is a limited erotic imagination.

Simply said, there is more to the erotic associations of lettuce.

And now for the explanation:

Just as there are, in the modern era, "phallic" symbols, the ancients had the female equivalent covered as well. Certain varieties of loose leaf lettuce illustrate this point all too well. The visual similarities to certain features of female anatomy is sufficient to make the point.

And if you you follow the logic well enough, you will never look at a salad the same again.

And you will know why the Romans considered it an erotic plant.

Strange Space Craft - likely hoax

Earthfiles has this note:

Around May 11, 2007, Coast to Coast AM webmaster, Lex, received an email letter with attached May 6, 2007, images of a very odd aerial object from a Central California resident who calls himself "Chad." Chad is worried about his family's safety and health since he has now seen the bizarre aerial object at least eight times from his house windows and on hikes near his home. Neighbors, he said, have also seen the unidentified aerial object. Then on May 15, 2007, I received another similar aerial "drone" image allegedly taken by a person at Lake Tahoe, California, on May 5, 2007 and identifying themselves at UFO Casebook.com as "Lake Tahoe-05-05-07MUFON Submitter 7013."

These pictures were originally posted on Coast to Coast Am, also showed up on the Mufon website, and are owned

A) http://www.mufoncms.com/files/7013_submitter_file3__Craft050607a.jpg
B) http://www.mufoncms.com/files/7013_submitter_file3__Craft050607b.jpg
C) http://www.mufoncms.com/files/7013_submitter_file4__Craft050607c.jpg

Additional similar were posted on the MUFON website, these from Lake Tahoe

2) http://www.mufoncms.com/files/7013_submitter_file1__070505_02.jpg
3) http://www.mufoncms.com/files/7013_submitter_file2__070505_03.jpg

Chad owns the first pictures, but the implication is that the second set is from somebody not connected to Chad. But notice that the close dates on the pictures, and the fact that they were posted by the same user on the Mufon website. If the numbering is correct, Chad IS Mufon submitter 7013

Note the names of the files, and note that the first three files are identical to the ones posted to Coast to Coast AM

More photos have shown up on FLICKR

http://flickr.com/photos/8418528@N06/

There is nothing here that could not be done by one person with multiple email accounts, etc. These web sized pictures are not good enough for analysis. It's pretty obvious that nothing that has been posted has been good enough for actual analysis, which is exactly what a hoaxer would want.

Transplanting Heads when You care not for the Soul

First ee have this story from Time Magazine, Monday, Jan. 17, 1955

In the Soviet Ogonek, Georgi Blok describes a sensational exhibit at a recent meeting of the Moscow Surgical Society. On the platform close to the guests of honor stood a large white dog, wagging its tail. From one side of its neck protruded the head of a small brown puppy. As the surgeons watched, the puppy's head bit the nearest white ear. The white head snarled.

The two-headed dog, no freak of nature, was the latest product of Surgeon Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov, chief of the organ-transplanting laboratory of the Soviet Academy of Medical Sciences. Dr. Demikhov, says Blok, started in a small way by replacing the hearts of dogs with artificial blood pumps. Next, he planted a second heart in a dog's chest, removing part of a lung to make room for it. The extra heart continued its own rhythm, beating independently of the original heart.

After repeating this operation many times, Dr. Demikhov could keep two-hearted dogs alive for as long as 2½ months. Sometimes the original heart stopped beating first. Then the second heart carried the burden until it failed too.

Encouraged by his successes, Dr. Demikhov tried the reverse operation. He removed most of the body of a small puppy and grafted the head and forelegs to the neck of an adult dog. The big dog's heart, as Blok tells the story, pumped blood enough for both heads. When the multiple dog regained consciousness after the operation, the puppy's head woke up and yawned. The big head gave it a puzzled look and tried at first to shake it off.

The puppy's head kept its own personality. Though handicapped by having almost no body of its own, it was as playful as any other puppy. It growled and snarled with mock fierceness or licked the hand that caressed it. The host-dog was bored by all this, but soon became reconciled to the unaccountable puppy that had sprouted out of its neck. When it got thirsty, the puppy got thirsty and lapped milk eagerly. When the laboratory grew hot, both host-dog and puppy put out their tongues and panted to cool off. After six days of life together, both heads and the common body died.

Dr. Demikhov's two-headed dog, Blok points out, was not a mere stunt. It was part of a long-range attempt to learn how damaged organs can be replaced, or how their functions can be performed by mechanical substitutes.

And now we have the Russian TV archives of this event:

Chronicle about experiments of Vladimir Demikhov, a Soviet scientist who made the first transplantation of a dog’s heart in 1952.

The experiment, aimed at finding ways of replacing portions of the human body lost through injury or disease, was pronounced Russia's "most successful".

In 1946 Demikhov replaced the whole heart-lungs complex of a dog without using the apparatus of artificial circulation of blood.

In 1954 he conducted a revolutionary experiment, when created a two-headed dog by grafting a puppy's head to a full-grown pooch. Then scientists even observed the process of rejuvenation of the elder dog. Shown are the two dogs before the operation, Demikhov performing operations, the puppy's head lapping up water, demonstration of the dog on a scientists’ conference…

Yes, the videos are available for download.

Boston's Moonitite Bomb Hoax

Boston police have been investigating reports of suspicious devices at least four (maybe as many as 20) different locations, including under major bridges, throughout the city today. On air reports have confirmed that all devices found were hoaxes.

On air reports has just now noted the similarity of the circuit board designs to the Moonitites from the Adult Teen Hunger Force cartoon show.

Each investigated site has caused roads to be closed, with significant traffic delays.

Officials are sure to be un-amused.

UPDATE: In a press conference held at 4:30pm EST in Boston, nine different locations were indentified. And Officials are NOT happy.
UPDATE 2:CBSNews Story with Video
UPDATE 3: Turner Broadcasting has issued a press release saying that the devices were part of a marketing campaign for the cartoon show in question.
UPDATE 4:And now we have this commentary from Brian Williams of NBC News

Fun with 2012 and the Pleiades

I have recently added this to Wikipedia. Let's see how it survives the editing process.

;-)

Several authors have predicted a special astrological/astronomical alignment between the Galactic center in the constellation (not the sign!) of Sagittarius, the Winter Solstice point, and the constellation of the Pleiades in the year 2012] The predicted alignments are conjuctions (close to 0 degrees separation) and opposition (180 degrees separation)

While of no scientific significance, several details are worth noting for purposes of occasional discussion if scientists are asked about the event.

Factually, the coincidence by conjuction of the Winter Solstice point (due to the precession of the Equinoxes) and the galactic center is basically true. However, the predicted opposition of the Pleiades is not true.

The source of this confusion seems to be in misunderstanding the Precession of the Equinoxes, a phenomena which has resulted in the astrological signs beings out of synch with the corresponding constellations by about 30 degrees.

The Pleiades are located in the constellation (not the sign!) of Taurus, and currently lie at an angle of about 150 degrees to the Galactic Center. The Pleides would have to to be located in the constellation (not the sign) of Gemini to be close to being in opposition (a 180 degree angle). (The angle of 150 degrees is low in astrological significance.)

Further, the proper motion of the stars in the Pleiades Cluster is such that they moving across the sky relative to Earth. This takes place quite slowly as seen on the human time scale. Three million years ago the Pleiades were seen near the constellation of Cassiopeia. Three million years in the future, they will appear near the feet of Orion.

This is easily validated using programs such as the freeware ''Move A Star'' [at http://www.xs4all.nl/~sahjps/astro.html ], which allows one to observe the proper motion of many bright stars over an extended period of time.

The Pleiades have never been, and never will be, in 'opposition' to the galactic center as seen from Earth.

Is Copyright a Human Right?

On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is a very interesting document which many people, unfortunately, are not familiar with.

Of particular interest, for the purposes of this discussion, is Article 27, which deals with the human rights with regard to culture.

Article 27.

(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Essentially, the second right that is voiced in this particular article is the right to Copyright.

As part of this discussion, we should mention the organization Youth for Human Rights, who are dedicated to the education of children in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They have produced, and have available for download a series of PSAs on each of the Human Rights of the Declaration, suitably simplified for Children.

Here is the link to their PSA for Right 27

Given the arguments about downloads and music and movie piracy, the fundamental question has to be asked:

Is Copyright a Human Right?

The Simpsons Beat South Park for Emmy

The Simpsons is television's longest running sitcom in history, but has never won an Emmy for Best Comedy. However, as of last night The Simpsons have won nine Emmy awards for Best Animated Series. Number nine was especially interesting as the show was poised against South Park's controversial Scientology episode that made fun of Tom Cruise.

The episode that earned The Simpsons their Emmy award was The Seemingly Never-Ending Story, an innovative episode that featured flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks. The episode featured the kind of intricate development that you don't get in shows such as Friends, Will & Grace, Ally McBeal or Everybody Loves Raymond. Each of which won a Best Comedy Emmy award the same year that The Simpsons was aired, but was never even nominated.

The $1,700,000 Mercedes Lemon

I guess Mercedes has a new model out: The Mercedes Lemon

LA based car dealer Mark Johnston bought the car of his dreams a Mercedes AMG CLK-GTR Limited Edition Roadster for $ 1.7 million. Only 5 of these speed machines were made and this baby had entered the Guiness book of records as the most expensive production car. Mr Johnston was the proud owner of the only CLK-GTR in North America. The silver AMG Roadster is a product of DaimlerChrysler’s long collaboration with H.W.A. and Mercedes-AMG, two German manufacturers of racing and high-end performance vehicles. But the car proved to be an expensive peice of scrap metal as after crusing in it for the first time after covering 10 city blocks the oil light came up which has not been fixed yet. After this the roadster’s transmission failed to shift properly. Additionally, the hydraulic jack system failed and the windows became unglued, Mercedes sent and engineer from Germany who dismantled the car and took with him a number of parts to Germany to never install them again.

When Los Angeles car dealer Mark Johnston forked over $1.7 million to buy one of only five special Mercedes Benz CLK-GTR roadsters produced in the world, he could not have predicted the long struggle he was about to face. Johnston claims he and his brother couldn’t get it to travel more than ten blocks. Accordingly, he has filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court seeking a full refund from the manufacturer and its affiliates. The defendants named in the suit are DaimlerChrysler and its Mercedes-Benz subsidiary.

Mr. Johnston’s suit, brought by law firm Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P., accuses the defendants of breaching their contractual and warranty obligations to provide a defect-free car, in this case a Mercedes AMG CLK-GTR Limited Edition Roadster, which Mr. Johnston intended to sell through his dealership. The complaint also alleges negligent misrepresentation and breach of the implied warranty of good faith and fair dealing. Mr. Johnston seeks full reimbursement of the vehicle’s purchase price, along with the other costs incurred as a result of attempts to repair it.

The silver AMG Roadster is a product of DaimlerChrysler’s long collaboration with H.W.A. and Mercedes-AMG, two German manufacturers of racing and high-end performance vehicles. Only five of the AMG roadsters were reportedly made; Mr. Johnston owns the only one in North America. The AMG CLK-GTR is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most expensive production car ever made. The two-door sports car is made of carbon fiber monocoque with an integrated steel roll cage and front energy absorbing crash box. The 6.9-liter engine has a 12-cylinder, 60 degree V-motor, enabling the car to go from zero to 124 mph in 9.9 seconds and reach a top speed of 198.4 mph.

Mr. Johnston and his brother Ernest own Grand Prix Motors, a car dealership in the Mar Vista section of Los Angeles. The two former auto mechanics have extensive experience working on Ferraris and other top performing vehicles and are very knowledgeable about collectible cars. Grand Prix contracted to purchase the Mercedes AMG in 2002 for the hefty price tag of $1.7 million. Their intention was to sell the vehicle through their dealership, as they had done with other rare and vintage automobiles.

“The car was absolutely gorgeous and we were excited about offering what we thought was a true gem to our customer base,” Mark Johnston explained. “Unfortunately, the car turned out to be ‘exotic’ in the worst possible way. When we took it off the lot in 2004 for its first customer test drive, Ernie drove the car all of ten blocks with a prospective buyer when the oil light came on. We’ve been trying to get it fixed ever since, but the Mercedes folks have refused to stand behind the car as promised in our contract.”

According to the complaint, the roadster’s transmission failed to shift properly. Additionally, the hydraulic jack system failed and the windows became unglued. In 2005, the defendants dispatched a technician from Germany to examine the car in 2005; after dismantling it, the mechanic returned to Germany with a number of parts that were never reinstalled. Mr. Johnston asserts that the defendants later instructed Grand Prix to transport the non-working car to a Mercedes facility in Lake Park, Florida, which Grand Prix did at an additional cost of $10,000.

Although the Mercedes technicians determined that the car suffered an oil-pressure related engine failure and needed a new engine, the defendants were unwilling to make any repairs. The complaint asserts that the defendants were aware that several of the other Mercedes AMG roadsters in circulation had oil pressure-related problems.

“Mr. Johnston has exhausted himself trying to get Mercedes and the other defendants to recognize their warranty obligations,” said John O’Malley, the Fulbright & Jaworski partner in Los Angeles who is representing Grand Prix Motors. “You’d think you’d be able to drive a $1.7 million car more than 10 blocks.”

“We continue to be dumbfounded by the unwillingness DaimlerChrysler, Mercedes and the other defendants have shown in owning up to the problems of their vehicle — the other manufacturers we deal with would never operate this way,” explained Mr. Johnston. “It’s unfortunate the defendants have forced us to bring a lawsuit in order to have our contract honored. We obviously cannot sell the car in its current condition, which right now represents nearly $2 million of scrap metal.”

Credit-card issuers' problem: People are paying bills

The credit-card industry has a problem:

Although Americans are deeper in debt than ever, they are paying off bigger portions of their monthly credit-card bills. For card issuers, which profit by collecting interest on unpaid balances, that's bad news. In the past, when interest rates crept up, as they are doing now, fewer cardholders could afford to pay down balances.

"Normally at this point in the economic cycle, you start to see payment rates decline. But that's not happening," says Richard Srednicki, who runs the credit-card business at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., the nation's second-largest card issuer. "It is a tougher business if payment rates continue to stay up and consumers continue to pay off more. It's something we've got to understand and work at."