So how do online merchants know you agreed? For that matter, the fact that the bank GAVE you your card (after signing papers in bank band) in the first place should be proof enough!
YES, it's a convoluted and out-dated system, but that's how it's been for decades... since long before e-commerce, and they still haven't updated their ways. I'm not saying it's the best way to do things, but it's the way you're supposed to do things, and if you don't do it that way then your card is not valid.
Well, it was the choice of voting for a party that had already shown what it would do with responsibility and one that made vague promises. Not much of a choice, but still a clear one.
There's more choice than Republican and Democrat, first of all. Secondly, both Republicans and Democrats and every other political leader that has ever existed in this world have all shown what they will do when given sufficient power, and they're all the fucking same. Some to greater degrees than others, of course, but lots of people were literally revering Barack Obama as the one Savior that can rescue this country from utter destruction, and look what he goes and does: absolutely nothing any different from anybody before him.
Um... if there's a law against something, then you, by very definition, do not have the unalienable right to do that thing, regardless of what your contradictory social ideals claim.
So MLK should have just shut up and sat down at the back of the bus then because, hey, it's a law and there's no inalienable rights. Right?
That's not at all what I said. Jim Crow laws were enacted and enforced, meaning that whatever rights Africans had (which were actually approximately none) were alienated. Rosa Parks (not, MLK, mind you) stood up for what she thought was right, but which she did not have the right to do.
It's mostly semantics, I know, but you do not have the inalienable right to violate copyright and intellectual property laws. I'm not saying it's wrong to do that, but nothing gives you the right to do it.
To summarise the article: indie cafes bad, but on the First of Some Month Starbucks will give you free internet for as long as you want. Not "a major chain of coffee houses" but STARBUCKS.
How much was this person being paid to plug a company's offerings?
Let's just stop putting the name of ANY corporation in Slashdot comments. We can talk about a fruit distributor's smartphone offering and how it is now available on a CDMA network. Hell, we might as well go all the way and stop using names altogether... like how a large North American country's national law enforcement bureau is requesting telephone records of its citizens, and how the aforementioned country has proposed budgetary cuts to their space program, weather programs, nuclear energy research, and their disease monitoring agency.
In 2008, they said if I voted for John McCain my civil liberties would be further eroded for sake of the safety of the State. My freedoms would be restricted without legislation with the complicity of the courts....
And they were right!
That's amazing. I will be borrowing that in the future.
I have the unalienable right to download, store and copy the leaked copy using my physical property, regardless of what the copyright or anti-circumvention laws claim.
Um... if there's a law against something, then you, by very definition, do not have the unalienable right to do that thing, regardless of what your contradictory social ideals claim.
Honestly, unless there is something huge that I don't know about, I just don't get how the information gained this way could be worth the cost of our freedom. This is just so sad!
The promise of "Hope" and "Change" is not a very good reason to vote for somebody. How could you not see through that fucking facade?
That was in the mid-90's... since then I have only had a problem at one Best Buy store -- they wanted me to sign the back of the card and I walked out without purchasing the items. (Never mind how stupid it would have been to sign the back of the card in front of them, then turn around and also sign the receipt).
Signing the card isn't for fraud prevention. They don't compare the signature on the card to the signature on the paper or anything. It's an acknowledgement that you have read and agree to the cardholder's agreement. Merchants cannot (by their contract with the card networks) accept a credit card that has not been signed by your signature, and they can have you sign it on the spot because that means you've agreed to the contract and that's all it's for.
"Photo ID Req'd" is not your signature, so your card is not supposed to be accepted anywhere. What I do is sign my card and write "CHECK ID" under the signature. It covers both bases, and everybody who actually looks at the signature panel like they're supposed to asks for my ID.
Do they? Why should they? The transaction is between the merchant and the credit card company.
You are exactly wrong. If a fraudulent purchase is made with a credit card and it is recognized and reversed, it is the merchant that takes the hit. Not the bank, not the customer, the merchant. They charge back the merchant the full amount of the purchase and then it is primarily up to the merchant to identify the suspect and prosecute the theft.
Every time someone asks me for this kind of information at the register it just makes me mad... with so many other ways to validate my identity there is zero excuse for exposing this kind of data to retailers.
A ZIP Code is hardly personal information. Who cares what city you live in? You're already giving them your name and fucking credit card info of all things... what makes a ZIP code so threatening?
No. Many third-world countries gave up on the majority of their landline systems because thieves were always digging them up to steal the copper. Everybody uses cell phones nowadays.
I'd like to add to my above comment that I am not a smoker. I think smoking is disgusting and don't like being around it, and if I didn't value freedom more than I value my personal sense of comfort, I would definitely be in favor of an outright ban of cigarettes.
But the alleged health risks of exposure to second-hand smoke are blown way out of proportion by the media and the anti-smoking groups that fund studies designed to find such nonsense. You're not going to get cancer by inhaling a little environmental cigarette smoke. The people that get cancer from smoking are people who inhale heavy amounts of smoke from tens of cigarettes day every day for decades.
Not having your children vaccinated not only leaves your child open to disease, but then they can pass the disease onto others.
Not vaccinating seriously harms you and others around you.
Therefore, not vaccinating is equivalent to giving your child ciggarettes.
QED.
Except smoking doesn't seriously harm others around you and the people that came up with that crock are no better than Dr Wakefield.
1. Commuting from Sac to SF is absurd. If that is seriously you're commute, I feel sorry for you.
2. I remember the Carquinez Bridge having the toll booth on the northbound side of the bridge, so I'm assuming this is now changed and people can loop the Benecia bridge one way and the Carquinez the other and avoid tolls entirely.
In the construction industry, you pretty much have to go wherever your company wants you. If you were living and working in Sac and that job is over and now they want you in SF, that's where you have to commute until you can find a place (or forever if you like your place in Sac). And the Benicia and Carquinez Bridges are both Northbound tolls, so there's no getting around it.
Well, you can take a bus, or a ferry. So there are two reasons. Revenue, and the fact that San Francisco totally hates cars.
(Some of it is justified concern about overloading the place with traffic, but some of it is definitely philosophical. If they had a choice between making things easier for traffic and a punch in the face, I'd expect the government to take the punch in the face every time.)
You have a solid point, and I would absolutely love to take public transportation to work. Unfortunately, even with as much environment-friendly bullshit as we spew around here, the public transportation SUCKS, and people refuse to make it better. Our bus networks have no money to improve the way they work because people don't use them because they're horrible. I would have to get on a bus at 4:21AM to get to work at 6:11 -- 50 minutes early. Twice have the citizens of Marin County struck down legislation that would utilize the existing railroad tracks that run all up and down every North Bay city on the 101 for a light rail system because they're concerned about the NOISE. It's the typical Marin mentality of "I want things that will help the environment but I don't want to have to LOOK at it."
They may be crossing two bridges to get there, but unless they're lost, they aren't going to be paying two tolls. Or do people commute from the Richmond area by going over the GG? Otherwise, I fail to see how you can pay two tolls going into SF.
Sacramento, CA to San Francisco, CA - Google Maps There is a toll on the Carquinez Bridge and a toll on the Bay Bridge. They could get around the Carquinez Bridge by going down through Stockton, but we have to be at work by around 6AM to get free parking and I don't think they want to leave home at 3:30.
You misunderstand the reason for toll booths on the golden gate bridge. It's about reducing demand.
By having a toll on the bridge, a certain percentage of the population is going to decide that it's not worth it to cross the bridge, and will plan their trip using an alternate route. This reduces the number of cars crossing and reduces congestion. By implementing a toll, you help insure that there is at least one non-congested (or relatively quick) path by car into the city, so that those who need to get there in a hurry can. If you need to get into the city 15 to 20 minutes faster, the toll is worth it.
With the toll, the bridge is useful to some people (or all people some of the time). Without the toll, the bridge becomes just as congested as any other road, because people choosing between the bridge and the alternative will favor the bridge until congestion makes them indifferent between the two.
You misunderstand the reason for toll booths on the Golden Gate Bridge. It's about revenue.
There ARE no alternate toll-free paths into San Francisco unless you want to add nearly three hours to your drive. They also strategically planned the toll booths so that most people cannot avoid paying a toll by picking and choosing different paths to take and running the toll-free side of a bridge in the morning and the toll-free side of another bridge on their way home. You must not be from the Bay Area, so I'll forgive you, but there simply is no feasible way to bypass the Golden Gate Bridge to get into the city.
Try driving to/from NYC - the bridge tolls are ridiculous. There's at least one route without a toll, but all the most commonly-used bridges have tolls as high as $8 (one way). Gold Gate Bridge is similar, not sure what the price on that one is right now though.
The Golden Gate is $6 right now, $5 if you pay with FasTrak. The Bay Bridge is $6 during rush hour, $5 on the weekends, and $4 on off-peak. All the other bridges in the Bay Area are $5. Cars with those douchey "Clean Air Vehicle" decals are $2.50 everywhere.
Anyway, my point is it costs me $100 to get to work every month, and some people even have to cross TWO bridges to get to San Francisco in less than 2 hours.
They're going to *mail* bills? Seriously? So, those that haven't got a FasTrac basically get across the bridge for free... A lot of the time anyway.
No, because if you don't pay your bill you will have bigger problems than the $6 charge to get across the bridge. Also, FasTrak is still $1 cheaper on the GGB, so there's some incentive there to get it.
You can legally drive on the road without plates?.......
I know a lot of states give you temporary license plates bearing your number, but California just makes you keep your registration application folded up and taped inside the windshield and that is valid for 60 days I believe so you have time for your permanent plates to arrive.
I see previewing still takes several seconds the first time.
Because the Slashdot servers run a portscan on your IP address to prevent the use of proxy servers. Those things take a few seconds and it won't let you see your preview until you pass. The proxy test lasts 24 hours before a given IP address needs to be tested again.
Slashdot Mirror
So how do online merchants know you agreed? For that matter, the fact that the bank GAVE you your card (after signing papers in bank band) in the first place should be proof enough!
YES, it's a convoluted and out-dated system, but that's how it's been for decades... since long before e-commerce, and they still haven't updated their ways. I'm not saying it's the best way to do things, but it's the way you're supposed to do things, and if you don't do it that way then your card is not valid.
Well, it was the choice of voting for a party that had already shown what it would do with responsibility and one that made vague promises. Not much of a choice, but still a clear one.
There's more choice than Republican and Democrat, first of all. Secondly, both Republicans and Democrats and every other political leader that has ever existed in this world have all shown what they will do when given sufficient power, and they're all the fucking same. Some to greater degrees than others, of course, but lots of people were literally revering Barack Obama as the one Savior that can rescue this country from utter destruction, and look what he goes and does: absolutely nothing any different from anybody before him.
Um... if there's a law against something, then you, by very definition, do not have the unalienable right to do that thing, regardless of what your contradictory social ideals claim.
So MLK should have just shut up and sat down at the back of the bus then because, hey, it's a law and there's no inalienable rights. Right?
That's not at all what I said. Jim Crow laws were enacted and enforced, meaning that whatever rights Africans had (which were actually approximately none) were alienated. Rosa Parks (not, MLK, mind you) stood up for what she thought was right, but which she did not have the right to do.
It's mostly semantics, I know, but you do not have the inalienable right to violate copyright and intellectual property laws. I'm not saying it's wrong to do that, but nothing gives you the right to do it.
To summarise the article: indie cafes bad, but on the First of Some Month Starbucks will give you free internet for as long as you want. Not "a major chain of coffee houses" but STARBUCKS.
How much was this person being paid to plug a company's offerings?
Let's just stop putting the name of ANY corporation in Slashdot comments. We can talk about a fruit distributor's smartphone offering and how it is now available on a CDMA network. Hell, we might as well go all the way and stop using names altogether... like how a large North American country's national law enforcement bureau is requesting telephone records of its citizens, and how the aforementioned country has proposed budgetary cuts to their space program, weather programs, nuclear energy research, and their disease monitoring agency.
stfu
In 2008, they said if I voted for John McCain my civil liberties would be further eroded for sake of the safety of the State. My freedoms would be restricted without legislation with the complicity of the courts....
And they were right!
That's amazing. I will be borrowing that in the future.
I have the unalienable right to download, store and copy the leaked copy using my physical property, regardless of what the copyright or anti-circumvention laws claim.
Um... if there's a law against something, then you, by very definition, do not have the unalienable right to do that thing, regardless of what your contradictory social ideals claim.
I wish I knew this before I voted for Obama!
Honestly, unless there is something huge that I don't know about, I just don't get how the information gained this way could be worth the cost of our freedom. This is just so sad!
The promise of "Hope" and "Change" is not a very good reason to vote for somebody. How could you not see through that fucking facade?
It's to show the merchant that you have agreed to your contract and they are legally able to accept the card as payment.
That was in the mid-90's... since then I have only had a problem at one Best Buy store -- they wanted me to sign the back of the card and I walked out without purchasing the items. (Never mind how stupid it would have been to sign the back of the card in front of them, then turn around and also sign the receipt).
Signing the card isn't for fraud prevention. They don't compare the signature on the card to the signature on the paper or anything. It's an acknowledgement that you have read and agree to the cardholder's agreement. Merchants cannot (by their contract with the card networks) accept a credit card that has not been signed by your signature, and they can have you sign it on the spot because that means you've agreed to the contract and that's all it's for.
"Photo ID Req'd" is not your signature, so your card is not supposed to be accepted anywhere. What I do is sign my card and write "CHECK ID" under the signature. It covers both bases, and everybody who actually looks at the signature panel like they're supposed to asks for my ID.
Do they? Why should they? The transaction is between the merchant and the credit card company.
You are exactly wrong. If a fraudulent purchase is made with a credit card and it is recognized and reversed, it is the merchant that takes the hit. Not the bank, not the customer, the merchant. They charge back the merchant the full amount of the purchase and then it is primarily up to the merchant to identify the suspect and prosecute the theft.
Every time someone asks me for this kind of information at the register it just makes me mad... with so many other ways to validate my identity there is zero excuse for exposing this kind of data to retailers.
A ZIP Code is hardly personal information. Who cares what city you live in? You're already giving them your name and fucking credit card info of all things... what makes a ZIP code so threatening?
Don't nearly all places have phonelines?
No. Many third-world countries gave up on the majority of their landline systems because thieves were always digging them up to steal the copper. Everybody uses cell phones nowadays.
I'd like to add to my above comment that I am not a smoker. I think smoking is disgusting and don't like being around it, and if I didn't value freedom more than I value my personal sense of comfort, I would definitely be in favor of an outright ban of cigarettes.
But the alleged health risks of exposure to second-hand smoke are blown way out of proportion by the media and the anti-smoking groups that fund studies designed to find such nonsense. You're not going to get cancer by inhaling a little environmental cigarette smoke. The people that get cancer from smoking are people who inhale heavy amounts of smoke from tens of cigarettes day every day for decades.
Not having your children vaccinated not only leaves your child open to disease, but then they can pass the disease onto others. Not vaccinating seriously harms you and others around you. Therefore, not vaccinating is equivalent to giving your child ciggarettes. QED.
Except smoking doesn't seriously harm others around you and the people that came up with that crock are no better than Dr Wakefield.
It can be.
You appear to be implying that eating bacon is not ethical.
What are hotmails?
The opposite of ComicCon attendees.
1. Commuting from Sac to SF is absurd. If that is seriously you're commute, I feel sorry for you.
2. I remember the Carquinez Bridge having the toll booth on the northbound side of the bridge, so I'm assuming this is now changed and people can loop the Benecia bridge one way and the Carquinez the other and avoid tolls entirely.
In the construction industry, you pretty much have to go wherever your company wants you. If you were living and working in Sac and that job is over and now they want you in SF, that's where you have to commute until you can find a place (or forever if you like your place in Sac). And the Benicia and Carquinez Bridges are both Northbound tolls, so there's no getting around it.
Well, you can take a bus, or a ferry. So there are two reasons. Revenue, and the fact that San Francisco totally hates cars.
(Some of it is justified concern about overloading the place with traffic, but some of it is definitely philosophical. If they had a choice between making things easier for traffic and a punch in the face, I'd expect the government to take the punch in the face every time.)
You have a solid point, and I would absolutely love to take public transportation to work. Unfortunately, even with as much environment-friendly bullshit as we spew around here, the public transportation SUCKS, and people refuse to make it better. Our bus networks have no money to improve the way they work because people don't use them because they're horrible. I would have to get on a bus at 4:21AM to get to work at 6:11 -- 50 minutes early. Twice have the citizens of Marin County struck down legislation that would utilize the existing railroad tracks that run all up and down every North Bay city on the 101 for a light rail system because they're concerned about the NOISE. It's the typical Marin mentality of "I want things that will help the environment but I don't want to have to LOOK at it."
Oh well. That's my rant for the day.
They may be crossing two bridges to get there, but unless they're lost, they aren't going to be paying two tolls. Or do people commute from the Richmond area by going over the GG? Otherwise, I fail to see how you can pay two tolls going into SF.
Sacramento, CA to San Francisco, CA - Google Maps There is a toll on the Carquinez Bridge and a toll on the Bay Bridge. They could get around the Carquinez Bridge by going down through Stockton, but we have to be at work by around 6AM to get free parking and I don't think they want to leave home at 3:30.
They wouldn't make eye contact if you rolled through the booth in an Abrams tank....
Shit, I wouldn't either. Who would want to risk looking at a crazy person in a tank the wrong way?
You misunderstand the reason for toll booths on the golden gate bridge. It's about reducing demand.
By having a toll on the bridge, a certain percentage of the population is going to decide that it's not worth it to cross the bridge, and will plan their trip using an alternate route. This reduces the number of cars crossing and reduces congestion. By implementing a toll, you help insure that there is at least one non-congested (or relatively quick) path by car into the city, so that those who need to get there in a hurry can. If you need to get into the city 15 to 20 minutes faster, the toll is worth it.
With the toll, the bridge is useful to some people (or all people some of the time). Without the toll, the bridge becomes just as congested as any other road, because people choosing between the bridge and the alternative will favor the bridge until congestion makes them indifferent between the two.
You misunderstand the reason for toll booths on the Golden Gate Bridge. It's about revenue.
There ARE no alternate toll-free paths into San Francisco unless you want to add nearly three hours to your drive. They also strategically planned the toll booths so that most people cannot avoid paying a toll by picking and choosing different paths to take and running the toll-free side of a bridge in the morning and the toll-free side of another bridge on their way home. You must not be from the Bay Area, so I'll forgive you, but there simply is no feasible way to bypass the Golden Gate Bridge to get into the city.
Try driving to/from NYC - the bridge tolls are ridiculous. There's at least one route without a toll, but all the most commonly-used bridges have tolls as high as $8 (one way). Gold Gate Bridge is similar, not sure what the price on that one is right now though.
The Golden Gate is $6 right now, $5 if you pay with FasTrak. The Bay Bridge is $6 during rush hour, $5 on the weekends, and $4 on off-peak. All the other bridges in the Bay Area are $5. Cars with those douchey "Clean Air Vehicle" decals are $2.50 everywhere.
Anyway, my point is it costs me $100 to get to work every month, and some people even have to cross TWO bridges to get to San Francisco in less than 2 hours.
They're going to *mail* bills? Seriously? So, those that haven't got a FasTrac basically get across the bridge for free... A lot of the time anyway.
No, because if you don't pay your bill you will have bigger problems than the $6 charge to get across the bridge. Also, FasTrak is still $1 cheaper on the GGB, so there's some incentive there to get it.
You can legally drive on the road without plates?.......
I know a lot of states give you temporary license plates bearing your number, but California just makes you keep your registration application folded up and taped inside the windshield and that is valid for 60 days I believe so you have time for your permanent plates to arrive.
I see previewing still takes several seconds the first time.
Because the Slashdot servers run a portscan on your IP address to prevent the use of proxy servers. Those things take a few seconds and it won't let you see your preview until you pass. The proxy test lasts 24 hours before a given IP address needs to be tested again.