You agree that you will not upload music and content, and will not request that any music or content be uploaded to your account maintained on the Site, that infringes the copyright or other intellectual property rights of any third party.
And so on. Sounds like their big change from the "other" service they originally ran is that they're offloading the legal burden on the users -- planning to throw up their hands and say "hey, we TOLD them not to do that!" when the RIAA comes knocking.
Of COURSE XSS scripting attacks can go away, if programmers would take the most basic of precautions. All you need to do is make sure that ANY input you accept from a user ONLY has allowed characters.
This is a problem of ignorance ("I didn't think of that!") and laziness ("oh, nobody would bother figuring that out"), not of technical problems.
Funny, I don't have this problem. Do you have thunderbird configured to recognize the server-side folders correctly? For instance, with my mail server I need to manually type "INBOX." in as the mail server prefix; if I don't, I get all sorts of strange behavior, such as folders that appear but can't be accessed.
Just remember that going with an external provider means you get the level of service they offer, and nothing more.
With twin babies on the way, I migrated my own email off of a box I operated myself and onto a hosting provider -- the idea was that, with the newborns coming, my time would be better spent tending to them than tending to email problems. Four months later, there had been so many outages, issues and nonsense -- including the loss of webmail twice for many days in a row -- that I realized I'd spend less time managing my own again. So I migrated the email back during lunchbreaks at work, and now it's back to low maintenance for me.
This is what always aggravates me about people that say "I -need- an SUV, because I need to carry seven people." A minivan carries the same number of people, arguably in more comfort, with better gas mileage and lower cost. Best part though is that it's safer in accidents, both for those in the car (lower center of gravity means fewer rollovers than an SUV, and many now come with ceiling air bags) and those in other cars/pedestrians (lower frame rails and often unibody construction keeps the front end from punching through the side of other cars like SUVs do, and the gentle slope of the hood/windshield combination is much better for pedestrians than a blunt nose with a huge SUV grille).
SUVs are about two things: driving off-road and style. If you must drive off-road, I'll let it slide, but if you're just buying it for style, it speaks volumes about the kind of person you are (aka one I don't want to spend time with generally).
Yeah, this is a teeny little example, but I find it compelling.
There was a little convenience shop operated in the lobby of a building I worked in a few years ago, operated by a nice older woman who appeared to be from India. The first time I went in, it was with someone who shopped there regularly, and she gave me a certain candy bar for a certain price (none of the merchandise was marked.) Every so often I came in and picked up a few trinkets, and she always gave me that candy bar for that price.
Then, one morning, I went in and a nice older man (I assumed her husband) was at the register. I grabbed my usual candy bar, and when he rung it up, he did so at an approximately 30% premium. It ticked me off; I said so, and walked out. As I walked out, he shouted after me that he'd give it to me cheaper.
The thing is, if you're from India, this is how retail is done; regular and known customers get better deals, all prices are negotiable, and in some circles it's considered insulting if you offer a fair price the first time (as it is similarly insulting to request the product at a reasonable price the first time.) Unfortunately, if you're from the US, you except to receive the same price as everyone else in the interest of fairness, and you get insulted if someone jacks with the price (upwards, at least) -- which clashes with the eastern viewpoint on such things.
I took this lesson to heart, and now when I go to any retail shop run by someone who appears to be from India, I always make a lowball offer on something I want. I never get it for that price, but they always seem surprised that an American is opening the negotiation in that fashion, and it's fun. Once and a while we get to a price that makes me happy, too, and actually buy the thing. Learning to do this was quite liberating.
...and it has become an indispensible appliance in my living room. I simply cannot stress enough how wonderful internet radio streams are when they're coming in through your stereo via a remote controlled appliance instead of through your desktop speakers and computer.
I wouldn't say that it transforms the internet radio/mp3 listening experience as significantly as, say, TiVo transforms the television watching experience, but it's still pretty significant.
Original poster suggests that saving files isn't a hit on system resources, but of course it is under many circumstances. For my day-to-day activities, here are file types that, when saved, slow my machine down and/or make me wait:
Photoshop files -- they get quite large, after all; Flash source files -- they get quite large, after all; Premiere and other video/DVD editing software -- the biggest files of all; Reason/Sonar (music) files -- they get large, and they also negatively impact system performance when you're playing back complex compositions in real time.
It's even worse if I'm saving to a network share.
So, that may be the case for large files, but what about text files?
Well, I'm a web developer by trade, and when I'm troubleshooting broken code, I often use this convenient and pain-free system to narrow down the bug location:
Step one: cut a chunk of code out of my source document; Step two: save the file (without the chunk of code); Step three: paste the chunk of code back into the source document; Step four: refresh the browser to see if the bug is still present; Step five: save the file (with the chunk of code restored).
Automatic saves would interfere with what I find to be a very convenient workflow.
So they can charge the users, or charge the corps.
Say they charge the users...you have to tell them at some point in order to charge them (probably after they sign a contract) and you'll have angry users and lawsuits and nonsense -- or people will just sign up with other ISPs who advertise unlimited full speed access to all sites.
So that's a non-starter.
Say they charge the corporations...the users don't have to know, so the corporations with the big bucks may very well pony up the cash, because they'll suffer if they don't. This will only work if the corps being extorted run advertising campaigns making users aware of the issue, and recommending they switch to other ISPs (and perhaps offer some cash or other prize to do so).
Well, this is terrific. Let me know when there's an automated system that watches the people watching THIS automated system, to ensure that it is not being abused by any government or civil service employee, and I'll be on board.
Er, or at least I will be provided someone is watching the people watching the automated system that watches the people that watch the automated system.
And so on.
Oh, and criminals never swap their plates, or cover them up.
Coming up next: devices that automatically read and report the info on the RFID chips in our drivers' licenses (once they're there) so that criminals can be spotted by the automated system rather than a policeman having to spot them. And no criminal could thwart THAT, could they?
Also coming up: criminals purchasing vanity plates with a lot of Os, 0s, Is, 1s and ls.
I'm at a loss to understand why t-shirts are considered bad corporate dress. Consider:
- They are comfortable - They are hip (for instance, I'm wearing a green t-shirt with the "sabretooth lime" from Kingdom of Loathing right now) - They are inexpensive and easy to clean
Plus, the work we do isn't client-facing, so why would our dress matter?
Oh! Wait! I remember now -- IT has become a mature industry, and so it is becoming populated with higher-ups who came from other industries where how you looked actually mattered, and they can't get with the times. Makes sense now.
Some people are saying "the people in the game paying for space on the island are incredibly stupid", but I say bravo to all of them; he paid a lot of money for the opportunity to create something other people would enjoy, and in so doing added enough value to make his money back (and presumably a profit).
It makes sense, in a certain way: if you don't have proof that someone is guilty, but you believe the encrypted data contains the proof, you simply pass a law allowing people to be held until the encryption is cracked. The better the encryption, the longer people will be held, and if the encryption is uncrackable, they'll be held for a lifetime. The only way to get out? Unlock your encryption voluntarily. If you're innocent, you get to walk away, and if you're guilty...well, presumably you wouldn't unlock your encryption, on the off-chance they'll give up. So now a reasonable case can be made that anyone who won't voluntarily turn over their encryption key MUST be guilty, as if they weren't, why would they submit to being held until/unless the encryption was cracked?
Bottom line: as a customer, I pay for the ability to push and pull content through SBC's pipes (if I have SBC); if you want the providers to pay as well, that would pretty much be like charging both ends of a phone call, yes? Which I'm sure the phone companies would do if they could get away with it, but imagine how much overhead would be involved to handle people contacting SBC for refunds when they get unsolicited calls...
> Why not hook him up with a VPN and have him work out of his current home?
Because Jon wanted to come to the united states, and Michael gave him a job that allowed him to do so; what you suggest only makes if he wanted Michael's job, and Michael insisted he come to the US in order to get it.
Massive is definitely the right word; I thought I'd help out and fill out the survey, but it is HUGE and takes so long to fill out I gave up halfway through. Bah.
You have to remember, the main purpose of the registry is to obscure information, not to make it easy to find and edit. Software makers want to be able to put autostart hooks, serial numbers and other such nonsense on the computers, and Microsoft gives them what they want. If you put everything in an.ini file, users would be able to find it and control it, which is exactly what software manufacturers don't want (in most cases).
They can get rid of the registry once they have "Trusted Computing" in place, as they'll easily be able to drop application information into encrypted files that the user has no way of breaking into.
With this crowd, you can provide perspective by asking "how would you feel if the original storyboards from the three original star wars movies were destroyed by fire, along with the original models of the millenium falcon, et al?"
If it's not playing I'm unlikely to go looking for it. It's not that I think the top X lists are at all worthy of paying attention to, but my time is precious and spending it filtering the out the 10k possible artists that I might like down to something that I could resonably listen to doesn't seem to be worthwhile. By the time I get it narrowed down, I'm dead.
If it's not in my bookmarks I'm unlikely to go looking for it. It's not that I think the top X sites are at all worthy of paying attention to, but my time is precious and spending it filtering the out the 10k possible web sites that I might like down to something that I could resonably visit doesn't seem to be worthwhile. By the time I get it narrowed down, I'm dead.
Just sayin'. There are linkfilters for music, just like there are for web pages. For example, 3hive and a whole pile of others, from the ultra-corporate to the ultra-personal. There are even tools that look at what you're listening, and recommend artists that other people who listen to the same artist also like.
And the economic incentive for every cog in the system to keep a permanent record of every single individual item is...?
An excellent question! Why would these companies be so gung-ho about developing and/or paying for systems that track all of this information?
Well, we know that grocery stores use loyalty card data to track your purchasing habits so that they can (a) get an easier picture of what groups of products get purchased together, and (b) charge companies to throw coupons at you when you buy a competitor's product, or (and here's the genius part of the loyalty card) if you stopped buying their product after consistently buying it before. So there's a good reason: financial gain.
Now that we know why a company would track your information (profit), why would they track it permanently? I would posit that they would do so because:
1. They can (see Google);
2. There's no profit in aging live data unless you need to pay for more storage;
3. There's no profit in aging backup data unless you need to pay for more storage.
The funny thing is, they don't need to track it -forever-, just long enough for it to make a profit (or potentially make a profit in the future). Why? Here's why:
1. There's no profit in keeping this data secure.
If you knew how insecure credit card transactions really were (I do), you wouldn't use credit cards -- and credit card companies actually have a profit motive for keeping it secure, because scanned card purchases that turn out to be fraudulent cost the credit card companies money. Do you really think the grocery store, say, has any interest in keeping your information secure if there's no profit motive?
Unless each one were individually tagged. Next morning out goes the garbage with a couple of condoms in it. But never mind that. Purchasing records show Tom Jones picking up a 10-pack of Trojans on the way home from work on Monday. Friday night he purchases another. That alone tells us a hell of a lot about Tom's sex life, even if we don't know exactly when each condom did duty.
Even better, Tom is married, and never buys condoms -- except when he travels for business once a month. That tells us a LOT, eh? And you can already find that out if he buys with a credit card. Presumably Tom is smarter than that, but you never know. I personally always buy my extramarital-affair condoms in cash, and discard the receipt immedia-- what, honey? Oh, no, just typing on the computer, nothing speciNO DON'T LOOK WAI~=$#
I'll be really surprised if your prediction comes true, because credit card/bank card transactions cost merchants a certain amount of money, and that money (plus people who float charges to the next month) are how credit card companies/banks make a good portion of their money.
Thus, for your prediction to come true, here's what would need to happen:
[a] the cost of handling cash, including the risk and handling fees charged by banks on deposit, would have to exceed the cost of credit card/bank card transactions.
It is unlikely that the cost of handling cash would rise, given that the risk of handling cash is quite stable and has been for a long time, and in recent decades banks have set up machines that handle cash much more efficiently and readily than in the past.
That means that, rather than the cost of cash going up, the cost of card transactions would need to go down. This would require that...
[b1] credit card companies/banks significantly reduce or eliminate the merchant fees for transactions, presumably because they're raking in enough money from consumer credit to cover the loss of merchant fees.
If you know how much money they make on merchant fees, you'll understand why this is highly unlikely. Plus, they're already making record levels of profit from consumer credit, so no potential windfall is on the horizon in that department, and so eliminating or reducing the merchant fees would be a reduction in profit, nothing more.
Finally, even with I were wrong on the above and the cost structure flipped, merchants still have a vested interest in doing as much business as possible in cash. Why? Fraud, of course. Defrauding the government out of taxes, defrauding business partners out of dividends, paying people under the table, cash laundering -- such things can only happen with cash.
For example, when running a restaurant was almost exclusively a cash-only business, it was both a very convenient tool for the mafia to launder money and a terrific way for a "legitimate" businessman to have a business that performed poorly on paper (low taxes) but was raking in the dough.
Heck, I know a tax accountant who has been in the business his whole life, and still is (he's in his 70s) and he still pines for the days he could hide huge piles of money in the books. Nowadays, his restaurant work consists solely of totalling up electronic transactions and calculating taxes due -- and of course hiding a portion of that tiny little smidge of cash business they still do these days.
Similarly, vegas is slowly adding ticket-based slots to their casinos, to reduce theft by employees and con artists, and to increase slots traffic (ie "with the tickets, I won't have to carry a bucket or get my fingers dirty in the coin slots"). However, uptake is VERY slow, and on the tables where *real* money is spent, it is a cash business all the way and always will be, not just for the customer's thrills, but for the flexibility it gives the casinos in reporting and managing the income.
So, all in all, I think in 20 years I'll still be able to make a cash transaction without paying a premium, *with the exception* of automated repeating payments, which are an equal-opportunity profit generator for everyone.
Slashdot Mirror
I worked for a consultancy where the CEOs capped their salaries at $55,000. The place I work now has a similar deal going.
Of course, all the CEOs are wealthy from stock sales.
From the terms of service:
You agree that you will not upload music and content, and will not request that any music or content be uploaded to your account maintained on the Site, that infringes the copyright or other intellectual property rights of any third party.
And so on. Sounds like their big change from the "other" service they originally ran is that they're offloading the legal burden on the users -- planning to throw up their hands and say "hey, we TOLD them not to do that!" when the RIAA comes knocking.
Of COURSE XSS scripting attacks can go away, if programmers would take the most basic of precautions. All you need to do is make sure that ANY input you accept from a user ONLY has allowed characters.
This is a problem of ignorance ("I didn't think of that!") and laziness ("oh, nobody would bother figuring that out"), not of technical problems.
But wasn't NASA responsible for a great deal of the space junk in the first place?
This is very much like saying "Teenager warns of cluttered room".
Funny, I don't have this problem. Do you have thunderbird configured to recognize the server-side folders correctly? For instance, with my mail server I need to manually type "INBOX." in as the mail server prefix; if I don't, I get all sorts of strange behavior, such as folders that appear but can't be accessed.
Just remember that going with an external provider means you get the level of service they offer, and nothing more.
With twin babies on the way, I migrated my own email off of a box I operated myself and onto a hosting provider -- the idea was that, with the newborns coming, my time would be better spent tending to them than tending to email problems. Four months later, there had been so many outages, issues and nonsense -- including the loss of webmail twice for many days in a row -- that I realized I'd spend less time managing my own again. So I migrated the email back during lunchbreaks at work, and now it's back to low maintenance for me.
This is what always aggravates me about people that say "I -need- an SUV, because I need to carry seven people." A minivan carries the same number of people, arguably in more comfort, with better gas mileage and lower cost. Best part though is that it's safer in accidents, both for those in the car (lower center of gravity means fewer rollovers than an SUV, and many now come with ceiling air bags) and those in other cars/pedestrians (lower frame rails and often unibody construction keeps the front end from punching through the side of other cars like SUVs do, and the gentle slope of the hood/windshield combination is much better for pedestrians than a blunt nose with a huge SUV grille).
SUVs are about two things: driving off-road and style. If you must drive off-road, I'll let it slide, but if you're just buying it for style, it speaks volumes about the kind of person you are (aka one I don't want to spend time with generally).
Yeah, this is a teeny little example, but I find it compelling.
There was a little convenience shop operated in the lobby of a building I worked in a few years ago, operated by a nice older woman who appeared to be from India. The first time I went in, it was with someone who shopped there regularly, and she gave me a certain candy bar for a certain price (none of the merchandise was marked.) Every so often I came in and picked up a few trinkets, and she always gave me that candy bar for that price.
Then, one morning, I went in and a nice older man (I assumed her husband) was at the register. I grabbed my usual candy bar, and when he rung it up, he did so at an approximately 30% premium. It ticked me off; I said so, and walked out. As I walked out, he shouted after me that he'd give it to me cheaper.
The thing is, if you're from India, this is how retail is done; regular and known customers get better deals, all prices are negotiable, and in some circles it's considered insulting if you offer a fair price the first time (as it is similarly insulting to request the product at a reasonable price the first time.) Unfortunately, if you're from the US, you except to receive the same price as everyone else in the interest of fairness, and you get insulted if someone jacks with the price (upwards, at least) -- which clashes with the eastern viewpoint on such things.
I took this lesson to heart, and now when I go to any retail shop run by someone who appears to be from India, I always make a lowball offer on something I want. I never get it for that price, but they always seem surprised that an American is opening the negotiation in that fashion, and it's fun. Once and a while we get to a price that makes me happy, too, and actually buy the thing. Learning to do this was quite liberating.
...and it has become an indispensible appliance in my living room. I simply cannot stress enough how wonderful internet radio streams are when they're coming in through your stereo via a remote controlled appliance instead of through your desktop speakers and computer.
I wouldn't say that it transforms the internet radio/mp3 listening experience as significantly as, say, TiVo transforms the television watching experience, but it's still pretty significant.
Original poster suggests that saving files isn't a hit on system resources, but of course it is under many circumstances. For my day-to-day activities, here are file types that, when saved, slow my machine down and/or make me wait:
Photoshop files -- they get quite large, after all;
Flash source files -- they get quite large, after all;
Premiere and other video/DVD editing software -- the biggest files of all;
Reason/Sonar (music) files -- they get large, and they also negatively impact system performance when you're playing back complex compositions in real time.
It's even worse if I'm saving to a network share.
So, that may be the case for large files, but what about text files?
Well, I'm a web developer by trade, and when I'm troubleshooting broken code, I often use this convenient and pain-free system to narrow down the bug location:
Step one: cut a chunk of code out of my source document;
Step two: save the file (without the chunk of code);
Step three: paste the chunk of code back into the source document;
Step four: refresh the browser to see if the bug is still present;
Step five: save the file (with the chunk of code restored).
Automatic saves would interfere with what I find to be a very convenient workflow.
So they can charge the users, or charge the corps.
Say they charge the users...you have to tell them at some point in order to charge them (probably after they sign a contract) and you'll have angry users and lawsuits and nonsense -- or people will just sign up with other ISPs who advertise unlimited full speed access to all sites.
So that's a non-starter.
Say they charge the corporations...the users don't have to know, so the corporations with the big bucks may very well pony up the cash, because they'll suffer if they don't. This will only work if the corps being extorted run advertising campaigns making users aware of the issue, and recommending they switch to other ISPs (and perhaps offer some cash or other prize to do so).
So that might happen.
Grr.
Well, this is terrific. Let me know when there's an automated system that watches the people watching THIS automated system, to ensure that it is not being abused by any government or civil service employee, and I'll be on board.
Er, or at least I will be provided someone is watching the people watching the automated system that watches the people that watch the automated system.
And so on.
Oh, and criminals never swap their plates, or cover them up.
Coming up next: devices that automatically read and report the info on the RFID chips in our drivers' licenses (once they're there) so that criminals can be spotted by the automated system rather than a policeman having to spot them. And no criminal could thwart THAT, could they?
Also coming up: criminals purchasing vanity plates with a lot of Os, 0s, Is, 1s and ls.
I'm at a loss to understand why t-shirts are considered bad corporate dress. Consider:
- They are comfortable
- They are hip (for instance, I'm wearing a green t-shirt with the "sabretooth lime" from Kingdom of Loathing right now)
- They are inexpensive and easy to clean
Plus, the work we do isn't client-facing, so why would our dress matter?
Oh! Wait! I remember now -- IT has become a mature industry, and so it is becoming populated with higher-ups who came from other industries where how you looked actually mattered, and they can't get with the times. Makes sense now.
Some people are saying "the people in the game paying for space on the island are incredibly stupid", but I say bravo to all of them; he paid a lot of money for the opportunity to create something other people would enjoy, and in so doing added enough value to make his money back (and presumably a profit).
So if I were homeless, could I sit at the library computers and do this all day to buy my dinner?
It makes sense, in a certain way: if you don't have proof that someone is guilty, but you believe the encrypted data contains the proof, you simply pass a law allowing people to be held until the encryption is cracked. The better the encryption, the longer people will be held, and if the encryption is uncrackable, they'll be held for a lifetime. The only way to get out? Unlock your encryption voluntarily. If you're innocent, you get to walk away, and if you're guilty...well, presumably you wouldn't unlock your encryption, on the off-chance they'll give up. So now a reasonable case can be made that anyone who won't voluntarily turn over their encryption key MUST be guilty, as if they weren't, why would they submit to being held until/unless the encryption was cracked?
Bottom line: as a customer, I pay for the ability to push and pull content through SBC's pipes (if I have SBC); if you want the providers to pay as well, that would pretty much be like charging both ends of a phone call, yes? Which I'm sure the phone companies would do if they could get away with it, but imagine how much overhead would be involved to handle people contacting SBC for refunds when they get unsolicited calls...
> Why not hook him up with a VPN and have him work out of his current home?
Because Jon wanted to come to the united states, and Michael gave him a job that allowed him to do so; what you suggest only makes if he wanted Michael's job, and Michael insisted he come to the US in order to get it.
Massive is definitely the right word; I thought I'd help out and fill out the survey, but it is HUGE and takes so long to fill out I gave up halfway through. Bah.
You have to remember, the main purpose of the registry is to obscure information, not to make it easy to find and edit. Software makers want to be able to put autostart hooks, serial numbers and other such nonsense on the computers, and Microsoft gives them what they want. If you put everything in an .ini file, users would be able to find it and control it, which is exactly what software manufacturers don't want (in most cases).
They can get rid of the registry once they have "Trusted Computing" in place, as they'll easily be able to drop application information into encrypted files that the user has no way of breaking into.
With this crowd, you can provide perspective by asking "how would you feel if the original storyboards from the three original star wars movies were destroyed by fire, along with the original models of the millenium falcon, et al?"
If it's not playing I'm unlikely to go looking for it. It's not that I think the top X lists are at all worthy of paying attention to, but my time is precious and spending it filtering the out the 10k possible artists that I might like down to something that I could resonably listen to doesn't seem to be worthwhile. By the time I get it narrowed down, I'm dead.
If it's not in my bookmarks I'm unlikely to go looking for it. It's not that I think the top X sites are at all worthy of paying attention to, but my time is precious and spending it filtering the out the 10k possible web sites that I might like down to something that I could resonably visit doesn't seem to be worthwhile. By the time I get it narrowed down, I'm dead.
Just sayin'. There are linkfilters for music, just like there are for web pages. For example, 3hive and a whole pile of others, from the ultra-corporate to the ultra-personal. There are even tools that look at what you're listening, and recommend artists that other people who listen to the same artist also like.
And the economic incentive for every cog in the system to keep a permanent record of every single individual item is...?
:)
An excellent question! Why would these companies be so gung-ho about developing and/or paying for systems that track all of this information?
Well, we know that grocery stores use loyalty card data to track your purchasing habits so that they can (a) get an easier picture of what groups of products get purchased together, and (b) charge companies to throw coupons at you when you buy a competitor's product, or (and here's the genius part of the loyalty card) if you stopped buying their product after consistently buying it before. So there's a good reason: financial gain.
Now that we know why a company would track your information (profit), why would they track it permanently? I would posit that they would do so because:
1. They can (see Google);
2. There's no profit in aging live data unless you need to pay for more storage;
3. There's no profit in aging backup data unless you need to pay for more storage.
The funny thing is, they don't need to track it -forever-, just long enough for it to make a profit (or potentially make a profit in the future). Why? Here's why:
1. There's no profit in keeping this data secure.
If you knew how insecure credit card transactions really were (I do), you wouldn't use credit cards -- and credit card companies actually have a profit motive for keeping it secure, because scanned card purchases that turn out to be fraudulent cost the credit card companies money. Do you really think the grocery store, say, has any interest in keeping your information secure if there's no profit motive?
Anyway, excellent question. Thanks for asking.
There's no way to know WHEN you used a condom....
Unless each one were individually tagged. Next morning out goes the garbage with a couple of condoms in it. But never mind that. Purchasing records show Tom Jones picking up a 10-pack of Trojans on the way home from work on Monday. Friday night he purchases another. That alone tells us a hell of a lot about Tom's sex life, even if we don't know exactly when each condom did duty.
Even better, Tom is married, and never buys condoms -- except when he travels for business once a month. That tells us a LOT, eh? And you can already find that out if he buys with a credit card. Presumably Tom is smarter than that, but you never know. I personally always buy my extramarital-affair condoms in cash, and discard the receipt immedia-- what, honey? Oh, no, just typing on the computer, nothing speciNO DON'T LOOK WAI~=$#
I'll be really surprised if your prediction comes true, because credit card/bank card transactions cost merchants a certain amount of money, and that money (plus people who float charges to the next month) are how credit card companies/banks make a good portion of their money.
Thus, for your prediction to come true, here's what would need to happen:
[a] the cost of handling cash, including the risk and handling fees charged by banks on deposit, would have to exceed the cost of credit card/bank card transactions.
It is unlikely that the cost of handling cash would rise, given that the risk of handling cash is quite stable and has been for a long time, and in recent decades banks have set up machines that handle cash much more efficiently and readily than in the past.
That means that, rather than the cost of cash going up, the cost of card transactions would need to go down. This would require that...
[b1] credit card companies/banks significantly reduce or eliminate the merchant fees for transactions, presumably because they're raking in enough money from consumer credit to cover the loss of merchant fees.
If you know how much money they make on merchant fees, you'll understand why this is highly unlikely. Plus, they're already making record levels of profit from consumer credit, so no potential windfall is on the horizon in that department, and so eliminating or reducing the merchant fees would be a reduction in profit, nothing more.
Finally, even with I were wrong on the above and the cost structure flipped, merchants still have a vested interest in doing as much business as possible in cash. Why? Fraud, of course. Defrauding the government out of taxes, defrauding business partners out of dividends, paying people under the table, cash laundering -- such things can only happen with cash.
For example, when running a restaurant was almost exclusively a cash-only business, it was both a very convenient tool for the mafia to launder money and a terrific way for a "legitimate" businessman to have a business that performed poorly on paper (low taxes) but was raking in the dough.
Heck, I know a tax accountant who has been in the business his whole life, and still is (he's in his 70s) and he still pines for the days he could hide huge piles of money in the books. Nowadays, his restaurant work consists solely of totalling up electronic transactions and calculating taxes due -- and of course hiding a portion of that tiny little smidge of cash business they still do these days.
Similarly, vegas is slowly adding ticket-based slots to their casinos, to reduce theft by employees and con artists, and to increase slots traffic (ie "with the tickets, I won't have to carry a bucket or get my fingers dirty in the coin slots"). However, uptake is VERY slow, and on the tables where *real* money is spent, it is a cash business all the way and always will be, not just for the customer's thrills, but for the flexibility it gives the casinos in reporting and managing the income.
So, all in all, I think in 20 years I'll still be able to make a cash transaction without paying a premium, *with the exception* of automated repeating payments, which are an equal-opportunity profit generator for everyone.