The Money Machines The humble ATM revolutionized the way we deal with money and turned global commerce into a 24/7 affair. You can thank a Texan named Don Wetzel--and the blizzard of 1978.
Chemical Bank's ad campaign announced the start of the revolution in 1969: "On Sept. 2, our bank will open at 9:00 and never close again!" On that day at the Rockville Centre branch at 10 North Village Avenue on Long Island, customers who possessed plastic cards with magnetic stripes no longer had to wait in line for a teller to cash their checks. They could access their money 24 hours a day, seven days a week, through a machine built into a wall on the street.
Three hundred seventy-one thousand automated teller machines later, it's fair to say the revolution has been won. These days you can find ATMs not only in malls and airports but also in McDonald's and tiny bodegas. There's one on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. There are some above the Arctic Circle. If Queen Elizabeth needs some pocket change to tip the royal ushers, there's an ATM at Buckingham Palace. There is even one, for some reason, at the McMurdo Station on Antarctica. Apparently, says Robert Mahoney, chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and former CEO of Diebold, one of the largest American firms that make the machines, "even the penguins use ATMs." In short, there's one ATM for every 284 American households.
Cheapskates beware: You no longer have an excuse for not having cash in your pocket. For spendthrifts, likewise, ATMs have become a ubiquitous temptation--and one we give in to all the time, if you believe the numbers. Nearly 11 billion transactions are conducted via ATM each year, dispensing some $670 billion. That's up from $165 billion in 1985, according to Tremont Capital Group.
For all the talk about soaring credit card debt, clearly we love the feel of cold hard cash in our hands as much as plastic. So much so that we're willing to pay for those quickie stops at the ATM with often usurious fees--usually about $1.50 each time we grudgingly press the "I Accept" button on a cash machine outside our bank's network. Such surcharges and other fees add up to a $4-billion-a-year business, according to Dove Consulting, which has kept tabs on the industry for the past 20 years. That's a nice chunk of change to pay for the privilege of accessing our own money.
What you might find truly surprising, however, is that as a rule, large banks actually lose money on these moneymakers--at a rate of about $250 a month per machine. They are, ironically, loss leaders, since banks don't generally charge their own customers if they use the banks' machines. At Bank of America, for example, whose collection of some 16,000 machines is the largest among the nation's financial institutions, 85% of all ATM transactions are conducted by BofA's customers--about half of whom keep their business with the bank, they say, for just that reason. Wells Fargo has come to much the same conclusion. "If you're looking at it from a pure accounting perspective, it looks like you're losing money," says Jonathan Velline, who heads up ATM banking for the San Francisco-based bank. "But the truth is, if I didn't have ATMs, I wouldn't have customers."
That's essentially what a Visa survey last fall concluded when it showed that 92% of respondents considered convenient ATM access a critical factor in choosing a bank. Or take the Harris Interactive survey, which found that a healthy majority of respondents considered ATM access more essential than e-mail access. U.S. Bancorp is so convinced of the "come hither" lure of the cash machine that it drives its mobile ATMs in parades and dresses up employees as cash dispensers to mingle at local fairs.
It is easy, in the modern era of easy money, to forget just how strange it was three-plus decades ago for Americans to interact this way with machines. People were used to asking for their hard-earned bucks from a human being behind a bank window. They wanted to see, with their very own eyes, eac
Here is the babelfish translation for the lazy one.
SCO must pay order money
SCO Germany must pay 10,000 euro order money. Basis for the decision of the regional court Munich I is a provisional order of the enterprise Tarent and the LinuxTags against SCO. Afterwards the enterprise may not state, of Linux contains illegitimately acquired mental property of SCO. On the other hand SCO is to have offended on its homepage, why Tarent had requested an order procedure in June.
The court accuses negligent behavior "according to a report of the Tarent GmbH SCO" with the enterprise of its firm homepage . There the statement is to have read be also after the provisional order that "final users, who use the software Linux for protection injuries of the mental property can be made liable by SCO".
Tarent lawyer Till hunter sees itself confirmed in the decision of the court that the statements of SCO as "substantial business-damaging expressions" are to be regarded, which concern a "extremely sensitive range". With unproven statements at expense third a business with the fear one make. With SCO Germany to time anybody for a statement cannot be attained; _ to request on a procedure stress Hans Bavarian, Managing director of SCO Germany, already beginning June opposite c't: "our intention was to hold back us conformal." The offence against the provisional order did not happen deliberately (anw/c't)
Over the past few months, the SCO (Santa Cruz Operation) Corporation (formerly Caldera International, Inc. a Linux distribution vendor) has been complaining about violations of its Copyright works by the Linux kernel code.
Recently, Darl McBride, the Chief Executive Officer of SCO has been making pejorative statements regarding the license used by the Linux kernel, the GNU GPL. In a keynote speech he recently said:
"At the end of the day, the GPL is not about making software free; it's about destroying value."
In light of this it is the depths of hypocrisy that at the same event SCO also announced the incorporation of the Samba3 release into their latest OpenServer product. Samba is an Open Source/Free Software project that allows Linux and UNIX servers to interoperate with Microsoft Windows clients. The reason for this is clear; Samba3 allows Linux and UNIX servers to replace Microsoft Windows NT Domain Controllers and will add great value to any Operating System which includes it. However, Samba is also developed and distributed under the GNU GPL license, in exactly the same manner as the Linux kernel code that SCO has been criticizing for its lack of care in ownership attribution.
e observe that SCO is both attacking the GPL on the one hand and benefiting from the GPL on the other hand. SCO can't have it both ways. SCO has a clear choice: either pledge not to use any Open Source/Free Software in any of their products, or actively participate in the Open Source/Free Software movement and reap the benefits. For SCO to continue to use Open Source/Free Software while attacking others for using it is the epitome of hypocrisy.
The strength of Open Source/Free Software is that it is available to all without restrictions on fields of endeavor, as the Samba Team believes the ability to freely use, modify and learn from software code is one of the grounding principles of computer science, and a basic freedom for all.
Because of this, we believe that the Samba must remain true to our principles and be freely available to use even in ways we personally disapprove of.
Even when used by rank hypocrites like SCO.
Jeremy Allison, Marc Kaplan, Andrew Bartlett, Christopher R. Hertel, Jerry Carter, Jean Francois Micouleau, Paul Green, Rafal Szczesniak.
It would be great to see usa work the same way and supporting their own OS makers. Instead of supporting them, usa sues them and tries to split em up...
No matter how much they gonna try to prove, I never trust a US govt anyway.
"It sounded far better than a cell phone"
on
VoIP at $15 a Pop
·
· Score: 3, Informative
What kind of cell phones do you got in the US? VoIP phone sounds better than a cell phone? Atleast in Europe, the GSM-900 and GSM1800 (G3 UMTS - under testing) the quality rocks. Either its good quality or no connection.
Maybe the people in the US need to switch from the old, now defunct smoke signals to digital cell phones?
Europe, Asia and Australia have had it for quite a time already.
Well, have just been waiting for it. Corel stocks dropping like flies, and M$ have now figured out, that they lost enough on it.
Pure and simple economy.
Slashdot Mirror
Big Mac Price in USA in USD: 3.07$
o ry.cfm?story_id=4065603
Big Mac Price in China in USD: 1.27$
reference: The Economist's Big Mac Index June 2005, at: http://www.economist.com/markets/bigmac/displaySt
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/18/ 227225&tid=113
Then browse at 5 - higly rated comments copy/paste in here...
Isnt this just plain capitalism. If they can earn money of buying names and put up ads on them, then why not?
Dont sse any news here, move along.
Mozilla seems slow.
f 0e51b160eb930a6/index.html and http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/1eea7971a3b590087 b03f4903d25b4ee/index.html
http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/c2eda5fbe68be2a3
Germans started WWII (and occupied my country for 5 years), and now 70% of all viruses. Blame it on Germany!
The Money Machines
The humble ATM revolutionized the way we deal with money and turned global commerce into a 24/7 affair. You can thank a Texan named Don Wetzel--and the blizzard of 1978.
Chemical Bank's ad campaign announced the start of the revolution in 1969: "On Sept. 2, our bank will open at 9:00 and never close again!" On that day at the Rockville Centre branch at 10 North Village Avenue on Long Island, customers who possessed plastic cards with magnetic stripes no longer had to wait in line for a teller to cash their checks. They could access their money 24 hours a day, seven days a week, through a machine built into a wall on the street.
Three hundred seventy-one thousand automated teller machines later, it's fair to say the revolution has been won. These days you can find ATMs not only in malls and airports but also in McDonald's and tiny bodegas. There's one on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. There are some above the Arctic Circle. If Queen Elizabeth needs some pocket change to tip the royal ushers, there's an ATM at Buckingham Palace. There is even one, for some reason, at the McMurdo Station on Antarctica. Apparently, says Robert Mahoney, chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and former CEO of Diebold, one of the largest American firms that make the machines, "even the penguins use ATMs." In short, there's one ATM for every 284 American households.
Cheapskates beware: You no longer have an excuse for not having cash in your pocket. For spendthrifts, likewise, ATMs have become a ubiquitous temptation--and one we give in to all the time, if you believe the numbers. Nearly 11 billion transactions are conducted via ATM each year, dispensing some $670 billion. That's up from $165 billion in 1985, according to Tremont Capital Group.
For all the talk about soaring credit card debt, clearly we love the feel of cold hard cash in our hands as much as plastic. So much so that we're willing to pay for those quickie stops at the ATM with often usurious fees--usually about $1.50 each time we grudgingly press the "I Accept" button on a cash machine outside our bank's network. Such surcharges and other fees add up to a $4-billion-a-year business, according to Dove Consulting, which has kept tabs on the industry for the past 20 years. That's a nice chunk of change to pay for the privilege of accessing our own money.
What you might find truly surprising, however, is that as a rule, large banks actually lose money on these moneymakers--at a rate of about $250 a month per machine. They are, ironically, loss leaders, since banks don't generally charge their own customers if they use the banks' machines. At Bank of America, for example, whose collection of some 16,000 machines is the largest among the nation's financial institutions, 85% of all ATM transactions are conducted by BofA's customers--about half of whom keep their business with the bank, they say, for just that reason. Wells Fargo has come to much the same conclusion. "If you're looking at it from a pure accounting perspective, it looks like you're losing money," says Jonathan Velline, who heads up ATM banking for the San Francisco-based bank. "But the truth is, if I didn't have ATMs, I wouldn't have customers."
That's essentially what a Visa survey last fall concluded when it showed that 92% of respondents considered convenient ATM access a critical factor in choosing a bank. Or take the Harris Interactive survey, which found that a healthy majority of respondents considered ATM access more essential than e-mail access. U.S. Bancorp is so convinced of the "come hither" lure of the cash machine that it drives its mobile ATMs in parades and dresses up employees as cash dispensers to mingle at local fairs.
It is easy, in the modern era of easy money, to forget just how strange it was three-plus decades ago for Americans to interact this way with machines. People were used to asking for their hard-earned bucks from a human being behind a bank window. They wanted to see, with their very own eyes, eac
Maybe i get first post this time?
I think its more interesting to see wheter the GPL actually held up in court as a binding agreement/contract.
The EULA on Microsoft products dont hold up in court, because they are presented to you after you made the purchase.
So if the GPL can't be upheld in court, LINKSYS can do whatever they want to the kernel and or samba.
Probably going to get modded down anyway, jut my $ 0.02
Here is the babelfish translation for the lazy one.
.
SCO must pay order money
SCO Germany must pay 10,000 euro order money. Basis for the decision of the regional court Munich I is a provisional order of the enterprise Tarent and the LinuxTags against SCO. Afterwards the enterprise may not state, of Linux contains illegitimately acquired mental property of SCO. On the other hand SCO is to have offended on its homepage, why Tarent had requested an order procedure in June
The court accuses negligent behavior "according to a report of the Tarent GmbH SCO" with the enterprise of its firm homepage . There the statement is to have read be also after the provisional order that "final users, who use the software Linux for protection injuries of the mental property can be made liable by SCO".
Tarent lawyer Till hunter sees itself confirmed in the decision of the court that the statements of SCO as "substantial business-damaging expressions" are to be regarded, which concern a "extremely sensitive range". With unproven statements at expense third a business with the fear one make. With SCO Germany to time anybody for a statement cannot be attained; _ to request on a procedure stress Hans Bavarian, Managing director of SCO Germany, already beginning June opposite c't: "our intention was to hold back us conformal." The offence against the provisional order did not happen deliberately (anw/c't)
Over the past few months, the SCO (Santa Cruz Operation) Corporation (formerly Caldera International, Inc. a Linux distribution vendor) has been complaining about violations of its Copyright works by the Linux kernel code.
:
Recently, Darl McBride, the Chief Executive Officer of SCO has been making pejorative statements regarding the license used by the Linux kernel, the GNU GPL. In a keynote speech he recently said
"At the end of the day, the GPL is not about making software free; it's about destroying value."
In light of this it is the depths of hypocrisy that at the same event SCO also announced the incorporation of the Samba3 release into their latest OpenServer product. Samba is an Open Source/Free Software project that allows Linux and UNIX servers to interoperate with Microsoft Windows clients. The reason for this is clear; Samba3 allows Linux and UNIX servers to replace Microsoft Windows NT Domain Controllers and will add great value to any Operating System which includes it. However, Samba is also developed and distributed under the GNU GPL license, in exactly the same manner as the Linux kernel code that SCO has been criticizing for its lack of care in ownership attribution.
e observe that SCO is both attacking the GPL on the one hand and benefiting from the GPL on the other hand. SCO can't have it both ways. SCO has a clear choice: either pledge not to use any Open Source/Free Software in any of their products, or actively participate in the Open Source/Free Software movement and reap the benefits. For SCO to continue to use Open Source/Free Software while attacking others for using it is the epitome of hypocrisy.
The strength of Open Source/Free Software is that it is available to all without restrictions on fields of endeavor, as the Samba Team believes the ability to freely use, modify and learn from software code is one of the grounding principles of computer science, and a basic freedom for all.
Because of this, we believe that the Samba must remain true to our principles and be freely available to use even in ways we personally disapprove of.
Even when used by rank hypocrites like SCO.
Jeremy Allison,
Marc Kaplan,
Andrew Bartlett,
Christopher R. Hertel,
Jerry Carter,
Jean Francois Micouleau,
Paul Green,
Rafal Szczesniak.
Samba Team.
It would be great to see usa work the same way and supporting their own OS makers. Instead of supporting them, usa sues them and tries to split em up...
Logic: No.
The ISP dont have to comply to the letter at all.
Here's Zdnet's story about the case.
No matter how much they gonna try to prove, I never trust a US govt anyway.
What kind of cell phones do you got in the US? VoIP phone sounds better than a cell phone? Atleast in Europe, the GSM-900 and GSM1800 (G3 UMTS - under testing) the quality rocks. Either its good quality or no connection.
Maybe the people in the US need to switch from the old, now defunct smoke signals to digital cell phones?
Europe, Asia and Australia have had it for quite a time already.
Do I get the opportunity to see it ? Nope, because Australia doesnt air something like that
Lets hope the TV-Rippers of the Warez world can rip it and release it.
Well, since both of the mod-chip companies is in the UK, the .us DMCA doesnt matter for them.
.uk laws.
So all the DMCA stuff doesnt matter at all. Whats matter for the mod-chip companies is the
Havent toshiba done this a while ago, with their Toshiba Equium series ? www.toshiba-tro.de was the best link i could find atm.
Get me Great Giana Sisters on 5,25" for C64, and ill buy it from you ;)
Just to get you a good start.
Well, have just been waiting for it. Corel stocks dropping like flies, and M$ have now figured out, that they lost enough on it. Pure and simple economy.