Slashdot Mirror

Canadians use cash for only 10% of consumer payments and that figure is falling — August 2014

A recent MasterCard Advisors white paper suggests that non-cash instruments account for 90% of payments in this country, among the highest rates in the world.

Yeah, and 45% of all purchases were made using debit cards, for which the consumer receives no spiff (other than stiffing those shits over at VISA et al.). Only 25% by dollar value for the rapacious credit card industry at this happy moment in time.

More Canadians choosing credit cards, mobile payments over cash, study says — 3 February 2016

Now there's an article bought and paid for. Once upon a time, the Globe and Mail was a respectable rag. Et tu, Grey Lady?

As far as I can tell, the entire article avoids discussing dollar share (in favour of transaction share). What matters for assessing the 2% fee grab is dollar share.

Probably the credit card industry considers Canada's 65% share of plastic transactions conducted on debit (per 2014 data above) to be an unmitigated international catastrophe. They're certainly not going to curate press coverage to brag about this.

I mean, why shiv your neighbourhood grocer with the credit fee? Surely he'll just end up passing the overhead back to the customer. Your average meek Canadian would think the first thought for sure, and possibly continue on with the second thought (but not always).

Turns out, leaving a nickle for the other guy is not such a bad life philosophy after all.

Sadly, there will be a war in Canada against the use of debit cards by the assholes at VISA, but it will a far different war here than elsewhere. (VISA could start by awarding air miles that didn't constantly degenerate into a colossal screw-around. They sometimes even brazenly advertise their "new, improved, less screw-around air miles". But the cat comes back, and the slogan never gets old.)

In Miller's original, the cat finally died when an organ grinder came around one day and:

De cat look'd around awhile an' kinder raised her head
When he played Ta-rah-dah-boom-da-rah, an' de cat dropped dead.

Even then the cat's ghost came back.

89% of all porn made is produced in the USA.
http://www.canadianbusiness.co...

Ahem...

The company I worked at implemented SAP, and had an army of folks writing customizations to make it fit the business. I'm not sure what happened first, completion of the SAP implementation or bankruptcy. This link tells the story of Target Canada's experience: http://www.canadianbusiness.co...

You are right that we have a long history of people crying wolf. As part of a course on the policy and ethical implications of AI, I am teaching the history of Luddite reactions from the printing press to the more recent robotic "revolution". Even recently with ATMs, there was a prediction of fewer branches and tellers which did not happen. So we're good right? Well...

Unfortunately, there is one thing that should stand out as being potentially different this time -- in previous instances of the Chicken Little scenarios, it was those who were worried about being displaced that were sounding the alarm, not those creating the technology. This time, it's the other way around. The vast majority of AI researchers, particularly in the private sector, are bullish on the elimination of most blue-collar and service jobs (even management and hedge fund investors are not safe) in the not too distant future. And if you have doubts, we have ample room to believe that the changes are not 50 years away:

• Manufacturing jobs are finally returning to North America...for robots
• Chinese factory replaces 90% of human workers with robots. Production rises by 250%, defects drop by 80%
• BBC News: Foxconn replaces '60,000 factory workers with robots'
• Attention all humans of Shanghai! Robo chefs will now whip you up a bowl of ramen in 90 seconds flat
• Japanese white-collar workers are already being replaced by artificial intelligence
• Mining 24 Hours a Day with Robots
• China Has Launched the Robocops You Have Been Waiting For
• Robots are already replacing fast-food workers Trump’s pick for labor chief, the CEO of Hardee's and Carl’s Jr., likes the idea.
• Inside Silicon Valley’s Robot Pizzeria
• Fmr. McDonald's USA CEO: $35K Robots Cheaper Than Hiring at $15 Per Hour
• Fast-food CEO says he's investing in machines because the government is making it difficult to afford employees

And other things to think about....

• Dallas Police Used Robot With Bomb to Kill Ambush Suspect
• Microsoft Foresees AR Tracking Your Keys, Milk, Entire Life
• White House: US Needs a Stronger Social Safety Net To Help Workers Displaced by Robots
• McKinsey's 2016 Analy

Larry Ellison is a sociopath http://www.canadianbusiness.co... who has singlehandedly done more damage to the software world https://www.wired.com/2014/05/... than any other man since software became a thing. His self-aggrandizing attention-seeking narcissism https://books.google.com/books... proves that when you have money and you're a dick the media still loves you.

Larry Ellison is a liar.

If he says Amazon's lead is over you can rest assured knowing that three things are true:
1. Amazon's lead is not over
2. Larry is hoping to create a self-fulfilling prophecy so that it will be true
3. He's going for the free PR that he's getting by saying outrageous thing. It's a Trump thing.

E
P.S. The subject line I wrote is "Ellison is a terrorist." Given all the explosives he's set off in Java, APIs, Harmony, etc. the man should be locked up.

I can't keep dollar coins in my wallet

Get a new wallet.
1 2 3

I thought our Canadian Intelligence was busy guarding our Maple Syrup Reserve.

*--jeffk++

Most of that money went for putting up fences and the like around town... oh, and sprucing up a few small towns over 100 miles away that the G8-G20 people will never visit in order to boost tourism somehow. Don't forget the 2 million dollar fake lake and media center next to a real lake which will promote the beauty of the Canadian wilderness... There's the almost 100 million dollar sprucing up of Huntsville for, uh, nothing as it turns out.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/world/americas/25canada.html

I for one enjoy the ~1 million spent for new sidewalks which cover half of the fire hydrants, new gazebos, landscaping and 200k Welcome rock (as in stone, not music). Nobody from the G8 or G20 will be going there by the way.
http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/820390--from-fountains-to-gardens-to-buried-hydrants-it-s-a-new-world-in-the-near-north
http://www.canadianbusiness.com/markets/headline_news/article.jsp?content=b3755778

But that's ok, it's the other host nations which understate what it actually costs them to run a G8-G20 meeting. We're honest here in Canadia!

Flying car. Robot servant. Jacques Cousteau. Nuclear Power (Quote: "The provincial government had decided to see if private managers could do a better job running a major part of the nuclear fleet that supplies almost half of Ontario's electricity [emph. mine]).".

Expecting a perfect match to prediction is a physicist's game at this point. Everyone else has to deal with macroscopic error values.

Some of the big guys did use regular printers: http://www.canadianbusiness.com/features/article.j sp?content=20040830_61496_61496#

Try this.
-xorbe

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/features/article.j sp?content=20040830_61496_61496&page=2#

A full page, printable link for all!

Guess it goes to show what determination and perservance can bring....Weber was incredibly obessive about the counterfeits, and as a result, plenty of people were fooled....

I would say that the reason he's selling the Ursus suits is to raise money for his spruiking of his new 'invention', a type of bakeable heat retardant paste. ( Ingredients include diet Coke. )

More info at Canadian Business Magazine, including a strange article title that recalls the Crazy World of Arthur Brown.

YLFI

Have you ever seen a situation where there were more managers than employees?
Actually, yes. I've worked on several teams where the manager to employee ration was 1 to 1. This situation occurs where you have a very deep hierarchy of managers between the CEO and the employees, and where many managers are also developers. (and yes, it is inefficient).

Coders are typically gotten at college campuses, not through want ads.
Again, I want you to prove this to me. I've been responsible for hiring at the three companies I've worked for so far, first as the co-op student manager, then as a full-time employee manager, and in all three cases, we've hired more experienced developers through referals and our web sites than through colleges.

if your job is so wonderful, why are you so touchy about anyone who would state otherwise
I'm not touchy about someone saying that software development or IT jobs aren't wonderful, I'm touchy about someone spreading false, baseless information. If you can provide proof to what you say, or proof to counter my own, then I'll conceed to your superior knowledge of my own profession.

I'll even show you how to prove a point, and discredit someone else's opinion.

People just can't take being a code monkey, with the insane hours, for longer than that
This month's Canadian Business magazine has an article stating that insane hours are a myth.

But what's even more interesting, is that high-tech companies are actually seeing an aging of the workforce, and if I "use my brain", that tells me that an average of 4 years doesn't quite make sense.

Here's the link to that article.

You sound like you have an anger thing happening. Maybe it's time for you to up the meds. Forget to take your prozac today?
Prozac is an anti-depressive, not a sedative. If you had researched your facts, once again, you would have known to prescribe a sedative like Valium or even Zoloft as an anti-agression medicine.

Phemur

I have read something similar. The idea is that companies are laying fiber, but not lighting it up until bandwidth demands necessitate it. They are merely planning on having the infrastructure in place for when they do need it. I remember reading about it in Canadian Business Magazine, the same issue I first read about FutureWay. I think it was in this article. I particularly love the Gates reference at the end:)
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have read something similar. The idea is that companies are laying fiber, but not lighting it up until bandwidth demands necessitate it. They are merely planning on having the infrastructure in place for when they do need it. I remember reading about it in Canadian Business Magazine, the same issue I first read about FutureWay. I think it was in this article. I particularly love the Gates reference at the end:)
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~