Slashdot Mirror
Responsible Handling of Billing Information?
moving on asks: "I've
been asked by a client to build a fee based subscription service using
surepay as the vendor for processing credit
card transactions. Subscribers to the service will be billed X amount per month and
that is the rub. Surepay does not offer recurring billing so I will need to
store credit card numbers and related info. The question is then, how does one
best do this in the most responsible manner?" The trick here is giving
consumers the service they have come to expect from most websites,
without exposing their personal information to would-be thieves. Do you
think such a system is possible?
want to hire me ? ;-)
Ha ha. First post!
Just fork over money to Microsoft, and they will provide you will access to an ultra-secure passport server, so your clients will have nothing to fear.
I was recently hired for an important software engineering position. Unfortunatly, I have my head so far up my ass that I don't have room for lunch. I searched all the common places (google) for the solution to my problem, to no avail. Can someone out there do my job for me while I collect a big fat paycheck I can use to have my head surgically extracted?
That was modded down as a troll? Must've been modded down by the editors.
That was funny.
Hire people to do it all manually. May be more expensive, but paper in a locked filing cabinet can't be hacked. Automation is not always the answer.
Yeah, and when you take a cold shower, you probably turn on the hot water for 20 minutes until it's cold. Don't be silly Inefficiency-man.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
You deserve 'em.
I would like to take steps toward creating an inclusive society free of attitudinal barriers. You see, I indeed believe that Pres. George W Bush's supporters have a tendency to say very similar things about Bush, as if they're quoting from scripture. And because of that belief, I'm going to throw politeness and inoffensiveness to the winds. In this letter, I'm going to be as rude and crude as I know how, to reinforce the point that Bush has two imperatives. The first is to use our weaknesses to his advantage. The second imperative is to ruin my entire day. He is trying to brainwash us. He wants us to believe that it's contentious to give peace a chance; that's boring; that's not cool. You know what I think of that, don't you? I think that I am certain that if I asked the next person I meet if he would want Bush to beat plowshares into swords, he would say no. Yet we all stand idly by while Bush claims that he has mystical powers of divination and prophecy.
Although he would like us to believe that he never engages in invidious, perfidious, or resentful politics, he has given us neither good reason nor credible evidence to believe that. His prank phone calls, on the other hand, give us good reason to believe that if he thinks I'm too hypocritical to rage, rage against the dying of the light, he's sadly mistaken. It is no news that Bush's jibes have merged with quislingism in several interesting ways. Both spring from the same kind of reality-denying mentality. Both promote racial superiority doctrines, ethnic persecution, imperialist expansion, and genocide. And both rob, steal, cheat, and murder.
Accordingly, the pen is a powerful tool. Why don't we use that tool to justify condemnation, constructive criticism, and ridicule of Bush and his flighty, obtuse rodomontades? As a matter of fact, when I say that he is sympathetic to malodorous causes of all stripes, this does not, I repeat, does not mean that the best way to make a point is with foaming-at-the-mouth rhetoric and letters filled primarily with exclamation points. This is a common fallacy held by quixotic junkies. Why don't more people complain when they see Bush condone illegal activities? It's because Bush has mastered the art of tricking people with images and myths. He creates myths about what the world is like and then generates false images to match those myths. This proves to me, at least, that Bush frequently avers his support of democracy and his love of freedom. But one need only look at what Bush is doing -- as opposed to what he is saying -- to understand his true aims.
How can we trust him if he doesn't trust us? We can't. And besides, it's easy enough to hate him any day of the week on general principles. But now I'll tell you about some very specific things that he is up to, things that ought to make a real Bush-hater out of you. First off, he tries to make us think the way he wants us to think, not by showing us evidence and reasoning with us, but by understanding how to push our emotional buttons. You can sum up his equivocations in one word: distasteful.
Let us not sink to Bush's level. Let us combat vandalism by exercising our right to speak out, to denounce Bush's canards as totally unrepresentative of the values of this society. Bush recently stated that his remonstrations are not worth getting outraged about. He said that with a straight face, without even cracking a smile or suppressing a giggle. He said it as if he meant it. That's scary, because there are few certainties in life. I have counted only three: death, taxes, and Bush doing some crotchety thing every few weeks. What he does in private is none of my business. But when Bush tries to insist that our society be infested with Comstockism, pauperism, teetotalism, and an impressive swarm of other "isms", I object.
The interesting point is this: He wants to threaten national security. Who does he think he is? I mean, I cannot promise not to be angry at him. I do promise, however, to try to keep my anger under control, to keep it from leading me -- as it leads Bush -- to maintain social control by eliminating rights and freedoms. Prudence is no vice. Cowardice -- especially his patronizing form of it -- is. What a cunning coup on the part of Bush's thralls, who set out to make bribery legal and part of business as usual and got as far as they did without anyone raising an eyebrow. Don't let Bush delude you into thinking that people are pawns to be used and manipulated. He's just trying to shout obscenities at passers-by. It's because of his willingness to prevaricate and equivocate that I am making an appeal to the intelligence of the reader not to be fooled by Bush's demagoguery. And if that seems like a modest claim, I disagree. It's the most radical claim of all.
For one thing, the agenda that he is attempting to advance is one of antipluralism, repression, and absenteeism. But more important, he likes campaigns that create widespread psychological suffering. Could there be a conflict of interest there? If you were to ask me, I'd say that we were put on this planet to be active, to struggle, and to build an inclusive, nondiscriminatory movement for social and political change. We were not put here to direct social activity toward philanthropic flim-flam rather than toward the elimination of the basic deficiencies in the organization of our economic and cultural life, as Bush might contend. I do not propose a supernatural solution to the problems we're having with him. Instead, I propose a practical, realistic, down-to-earth approach that requires only that I anneal discourse with honesty, clear thinking, and a sense of moral good. There are no two ways about it; if you were to try to tell Bush's apparatchiks that there is no reason to increase society's cycle of hostility and violence and there is every reason not to, they'd close their eyes and put their hands over their ears. They are, as the psychologists say, in denial. They don't want to hear that if Bush has spurred us to view the realms of collectivism and insurrectionism not as two opposing poles, but as two continua, then Bush may have accomplished a useful thing. Take it from me: People tell me that he represents a new breed of mephitic smut peddlers. And the people who tell me this are correct, of course.
Ladies and gentlemen, to believe that Bush's values prevent smallpox is to deceive ourselves. Bush is bad enough when he's alone, but he is even worse when he's joined by shallow spoiled brats. The poisonous wine of plagiarism had been distilled long before he entered the scene. Bush is merely the agent decanting the poisonous fluid from its bottle into the jug that is world humanity. His vicegerents care more about speaking, acting, and even thinking like Bush than they care about what makes sense. So let Bush call me piteous. I call him subhuman.
Disingenuous tricksters may possess a mass of "knowledge", but their brains are unable to organize and register the material they have taken in. Even as I write those words, I can feel Bush cringe. That's okay. Cringe. I don't care, because he will probably respond to this letter just like he responds to all criticism. He will put me down as "loud" or "mendacious". That's his standard answer to everyone who says or writes anything about him except the most fawning praise. I recently overheard a couple of effete champions of deceit, lies, theft, plunder, and rapine say that hooliganism is a viable and vital objective for our nation's educational institutions. Here, again, we encounter the blurred thinking that is characteristic of this Bush-induced era of slogans and propaganda.
But I digress. I, hardheaded cynic that I am, have to wonder where he got the idea that it is my view that the federal government should take more and more of our hard-earned money and more and more of our hard-won rights. This sits hard with me, because it is simply not true, and I've never written anything to imply that it is. Bush's methods are much subtler now than ever before. Bush is more adept at hidden mind control and his techniques of social brainwash are much more appealingly streamlined and homogenized. I hate having to keep reminding everybody of this, but we must learn to celebrate our diversity, not because it is the politically correct thing to do, but because I, for one, unequivocally feel that Bush has insulted everyone with even the slightest moral commitment. He obviously has none, or he wouldn't diminish society's inducements to good behavior. That's our situation today, in very rough outline. Of course, I've left out a thousand details and refinements and qualifications. I've not mentioned that I am morally and ethically opposed to Pres. George W Bush's bons mots. And I've ignored alarmism altogether. I've simply pointed out one key fact: His smear tactics are made of the same spirit that accounts for the majority of the problems we face in this world.
Thank you and have a nice day.
well said! this should be modded up!
just the other day, i got a resume from a "linux engineer" who specializes in "security". this two-bit high school chump couldn't secure the front door of our office if he tried.
jesus h. christ, i love people who put "secured irc servers and eggdrop bots" on their resumes. you linux bastards need to quit being jews and spend a damn dollar or two on developing real networks.