Dave Baker

Gud poynnt.

Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can. i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! (This was sent to me in an email; I'm not sure if the 55% figure is accurate. I can read the darned thing almost as fast as usual! Wierd. -- Dave Baker)

I hope you'll subscribe to the free BenefitsLink Retirement Plans Newsletter (daily via email). Sign-up form is at http://benefitslink.com/newsletter/ Archived issues are at http://benefitslink.com/2006/ Best regards, Dave Baker BenefitsLink® Publisher

Wow! I see how you were misled! I'll pass this along to the software developers -- it really ought to say "No new replies posted yet" or something similar. Sure sorry you had this trouble.

You mean this particular thread (the original post and its replies) is saying no new posts? Can you tell me exactly what it is you're seeing, and where, that says no new posts?

One, two, three... check one, two

Test reply; please disregard; but would somebody else please post a test reply in this message thread?

Yikes; I upgraded the software for the message boards, to increase its security. I'll have to jump on this today and figger it out! I apologize for this trouble.

vebaguru, Thanks for your response! Please reply to this post and enter the exact text of the overflow message so I can help further.

Hi, gang -- I have a request from our site's sales manager to find more pages on which to display banner ads for advertisers who want to reach employee benefit professionals (you!). These ads on other pages of our site are an important part of our revenue (which goes to cover salaries and benefits for four employees, server costs, etc.). Could you live with seeing a banner ad in the top-right corner of the message board pages? The banners would involve only services or products for employee benefit professionals (no off-topic ads like computer products, etc.). It would be stuff that we think an employee benefit professional would like to know about. The load time would be practically nil for users with high-speed connections; even with dial-up connections they'd cause a delay of only a couple of seconds. The banners would not place a "cookie" on your computer or otherwise track you if you decide to click on one for more information. (Per our strict privacy policy.) Please let me know if this proposal causes stomach-churning for you (post a message in this thread or email me at davebaker <at-sign-here> benefitslink.com). And if you're OK with it, let me know that, too. THANKS! Dave Baker Webmeister

Try the Employee Benefit Research Institute site at http://www.ebri.org

It is my pleasure! Thanks for participating! Remember to use our Jobs board if you're ever in the market ... http://benefitslink.com/jobs/ Best regards, Dave

The attachment isn't working now for some reason-- Glen, could you possibly upload another spreadsheet into a reply message in this thread? Dave Baker

I am sorry to have to report that, after "upgrading" the software again to prevent attacks, the message boards have a new bug-- when a person tries to register as a new user, he or she is told that the username must be between 3 and 24 characters, no matter how many characters are in the username being submitted. So people are effectively prevented from registering, as it now stands. I am working on this and will let you know as soon as it has been fixed! I sincerely apologize for this trouble.

Lori, would you like to moderate the new message board? It gives you the ability to edit or delete messages, if any "bad" ones show up there in your discretion. Let me know if you'd rather not; it's already done! Thanks so much for your interest in the message boards and your active participation.

Haven't had my coffee yet, but wouldn't these discussions all properly fall under the "Nonqualified Deferred Comp" message board?

http://www.christopherhawkins.com/06-13-2005.htm#78 Start the new year bright

Thanks for your email, George. I've reset your password and performed some cookie magic at my end; please let me know if GBurns doesn't work for you now (log in with your email address, though). The reason you and others have had trouble is the new version of the software only allows one username per email address. Don't ask me why. (Why?) So when you create a new username sometimes it causes even more trouble. I'm happy to help anybody individually -- just email me at davebaker_at_benefitslink.com. Thanks!

Yow, couldn't this contribution disqualify the plan? The IRS doesn't want money invested in a tax-free trust any sooner than the Code allows... excessive contributions mean foregone tax revenue on recognized investment earnings. That's why section 415 is such a big deal, and why the 415 regulations are so explicit about the kinds of circumstances that permit the use of a suspense account (unallocated contributions effectively avoid the 415 limit). If you overcontribute because of a reasonable error in estimating someone's compensation for the remainder of the year, for example, you're OK under the 415 regulations -- if the plan document takes advantage of them. (I forget whether an incorporation by reference is permitted or whether the document has to spell out the suspense account procedures for such an overcontribution.) But the burden would be on the plan sponsor to show that the error was a reasonable one... if the plan sponsor knew or should have known that a particular participant's compensation wouldn't justify the funding being made on account of the rest of the plan year, that's taking illegal advantage of the trust as a tax shelter on the recognized investment earnings on the excess contribution and the trust's tax-exempt status goes KA-BOOM. I think.

Robin, have you installed a "utility" program that was designed to cause something to happen when you move your mouse to certain corners of the screen? It sounds like such a program was installed at some point but is crashing when it actually tries to do whatever it is supposed to do (e.g., close the window, or minimize the window to your task bar). See if there's something like that in your list of installed programs using the Windows add/remove programs "control panel."

Are you trying to log in under the penman username using the same computer that you're using to log in under the Partly Cloudy username? I suspect it's a "cookies" issue (the little text files that are stored on your computer to make it convenient to log back in the next time). Try scrolling down to the bottom of the front page of the message boards (http://benefitslink.com/boards/index.php) and click on the "Delete cookies set by this board" link. Then scroll back up and log in using the penman username and password. Let me know if this works for you; thanks! (OK to post a reply onto this message thread.)

Yes, we did have visitors from Bulgaria on Saturday, a little after noon. The vulnerability was my fault; I hadn't upgraded the message board software in quite a while. I had looked at the newest version of the software a couple months back but didn't see that it had enough features to merit the trouble of an upgrade. But I forgot that one very good reason to keep up with the latest versions of software is to take advantage of changes that have been made to patch vulnerabilities. The damage to the boards appears to have been limited to changing the home page on BenefitsLink and the message boards ("You've been hacked, etc."); I don't think they were able to access the database holding the content of the messages. Oh, and the other change was that the characters "lol" (as in "laughing out loud") were added to the start and end of every word ... that one took me a little while to figger out We're now running the latest and greatest version of the software; I need to tweak it to provide some of the graphics we had before, but I'm happy that I don't have to worry about my Bulgarian friends now. The upgrade was difficult in part because the upgrade instructions from the software vendor (Invision Power Services) were flawed; I had to find the flaws and fix 'em. Plus the size of the database (29,000 message threads) meant the conversion process was a couple of hours for each attempt. I wish it hadn't taken so long on Monday and Tuesday to get the new software up and running, but I was working on it full-time. Thanks for lolhanginglol lolinlol loltherelol loleverybodylol !

One user of these boards has suggested to me that a Circular 230 disclaimer ought to be available as a clickable "boilerplate" addition for message posts... I wonder if such a disclaimer raises the risk that somebody would argue the text of a reply message contained "advice" to him or her upon which he or she was able to legally rely (for purposes of suing over negligent advice)?

To scroll down a web page, you can just hit your space bar if you're using the Firefox browser (instead of having to use your mouse).