This will hurt Amazon. Once it goes into effect, and Amazon are charging me sales tax then I will stop buying from Amazon.
Fair point, but I have to disagree - Even with tax, the large online merchants still consistently beat local stores for price, and often by a good margin. And that, only for "general merchandise" type crap. For anything specialized - Including computer equipment - Stores like Newegg blow the likes of Best Buy clean out of the water (though if you have the good fortune of having a Frye's nearby, that might not apply quite so much).
Of course before it goes into efect I will max out my credit card and buy stuff in advance of it happening, since I won't be buying stuff after it is in effect I will be able to pay off my credit card
Good idea, but I can suggest a much easier solution, under this new, "fair" sales tax structure - Find the nearest state with no sales tax, and save up your big purchases for a once- or twice-a-year trip to it. "Level playing field" indeed!
Can we easily identify them to make ejection procedures?
Yep. Charge a $5 "cover" fee to enter the building, applicable to the first $5 of your purchase - And watch the riff-raff completely vanish instantly (and watch me - And plenty of others like me - Become your newest most loyal customer).
Or perhaps you would prefer to filter by skin tone?
Ooooh, I see what you did there! Clever, setting up that particular straw-man - Or should I say tar-baby?
Funny, how the social dynamics here work. We all know exactly who the GP meant, and that it has nothing to do with race or gender or really even economic class. I would tend to say that age plays a role, but even then, I see plenty of grannies capable of quickly swiping plastic rather than counting pennies, so I'd call age more of a "predisposing factor" than a direct causative agent. And yet - Someone suggests stores do something about the "Margin Eaters"* walking their aisles and generally making the whole shopping experience less pleasant for everyone, and suddenly accusations of racism become the norm.
* Can't get the idea of "Harry Potter and the Order from Amazon" out of my head now, damn you!:)
Mod parent up! It disgusts me to hear US Senators not "get" that point.
The customermay owe use tax in their state. The merchant has (or "had", if this turd of a bill passes the house) an obligation only to the states in which they have a physical presence.
And this whole "level playing field" BS? Seriously? How many mom-n'-pops (and don't give me any lip about the $1M threshold, your corner convenience store easily has gross receipts 2-3x that) have to deal with the individual sales tax structures of every US state, countless counties, and even individual towns? And as if that doesn't get messy enough, figuring out which products fall into which tax categories in each of those jurisdictions?
This won't hurt Amazon. This will merely annoy Amazon. It will destroy smaller online merchants, however - If not up front, then when the owner goes to prison for screwing up some obscure detail of NYC taxes on imported llama-hair socks.
So what you're saying is that they should reduce marketing, spend more on training and staffing, and shrink the clientele, while at the same time lowering prices? Interesting strategy, but I don't think "reduce revenue and increase operational overhead" would have the desired result.
The sooner stores realize who actually spends money at them, the better. The vast majority of businesses would do far, far better if they could shed the bottom 10-20% of their customers - The coupon cutters who tie up lines for half an hour and end up paying $6.99 for 30x that value in groceries and then count out pennies one... by... one... to pay (and then end up $0.04 short); the medicaid customers who "can't afford" that $2 copay but buy smokes in a separate transaction; the "window shoppers" who just use the physical store as a gallery.
On the flip side, when I walk into a store, I know beforehand what I want, I walk immediately to it, I take it to the register, and I have some appropriate form of payment ready before the cashier wants it. And while the necessity annoys me, I even have a "No!" handy to each BS upcharge and bit of personal info your marketing department has forced the poor cashiers to beg for this week. Bam, in and out in a minute and a half, and quite likely one of your most profitable customers of the day in terms of what you had to do to get my money.
If you kick out the former so I don't find every visit to your brick-and-mortar an entirely loathsome experience... Y'know, I'd honestly rather not wait a week for shipping. But, as long as I can get a better experience online - Well, don't complain that the online stores have killed you, when in reality, you've pulled the equivalent of a slow suicide by eating nothing but crappy fast food.
and you can be fined for having your guns out of your safe and not in your immediate possession (and no, under your pillow is not possession
I don't think we fundamentally disagree, but you may want to rethink that one "pillow" detail.
Gun safes absolutely make sense to protect your guns from theft, when not home (aside from the many pieces of crap on the market, good guns cost money and frequently appreciate in value if properly taken care of). When home, though, having one reliable pistol in easy reach of your bed counts as a no-brainer.
"Excuse me, Mr. Rapist / home invader, I need to use the, um, bathroom. In the basement. And ignore the sound of a large metal door swinging open, just the, um, medicine cabinet. I also have a headache".
Aww, poor widdle ol' Israel doesn't like it when the world talks about human rights abuses other the atrocities of the holocaust?
Good for Google! Though, I hope Sergei has learned how to sleep with his eyes open... Scientists who stand in the way of Israel's goals have this nasty habit of attracting squads of well-equipped and tactically-trained muggers waiting for them in their hotel rooms.
It depends- for example, my wife bought me a Nook Color a couple years ago from Staples, and bought the protection plan. About 3 months ago, it wouldn't start. I called Staples and within 2 hours my wife had an email from Staples with a electronic gift certificate for the original purchase price.
So basically, you paid extra to get someone to make you whole for a product that failed well within its original 1 year warranty period. And then you paid them more for the privilege? Friend, I have some Florida swamp land for sale - But I like you, so I'll give you a special deal on it!;)
Granted, the fast turnaround may have made you consider that worthwhile, but you've pretty much just made my own argument against extended warranties for me - The vast majority of products that fail will do so out of the box. Of those that turn on the first time, the vast majority will fail within a few days. Of those, the vast majority will fail within a few months.
Buying an extended warranty effectively means - "Hassle factor" of actually getting a manufacturer to honor its warranty aside - That you have bet against yourself that you will fall into three* separate "vast minorities". It made it out of the box, it survived break-in, and it didn't have any less critical slowly acting flaws.
* Not intended as in any way mathematically rigorous.
The Matrix was a full sensory experience, not just a movie.
Right, but how would we know which senses our reality lacks vs the "real" reality, if inside something like the matrix?
I mean, as a trivial example, obviously our world left out any input to our hard-to-reproduce sense of squorple. Hell, most people's brains have probably atrophied as a result, and wouldn't even know it if The Programmers did add squorp to the simulation.
If you had never smelled anything, would you know you had never smelled anything? Hell, deaf people actually form communities around not considering it a disability, and (disgustingly, IMO) consider cochlear implants for their kids a "betrayal" of that ethos.
I think I speak for most gaming enthusiasts when I say "focus on hardware that will be more robust for a better part of this next generation and the games that will be on it and skip the gimmicks".
No. Just... No. That demo absolutely rocked, and I would buy that in a frickin' heartbeat if it actually works as shown there.
And I say that as someone who already uses a projector as my "TV" screen - But while it works well for field of vision, it fails in that you can either sit close and have low resolution at the center of your vision, or further away and you effectively get a similar angular size as a TV up close except you don't need to sit on top of the screen. Something that combines both - A bright, high-res macular view, combined with an immersive peripheral field? Awesome. Simple awesome.
Hate all you want, but as a long-time Nintendo fan, that would count as my first XBox.
This is why the Gaming Commission is required to test/inspect the machines (to include deposits and payouts) on a regular basis. Until you have evidence that this is happening you're just trying to justify theft. If the machine were found to be faulty, the individual would have their provable losses returned to them, probably up to a few hundred dollars.
That sounds just peachy - Except that the machines in question had the exact same tests done to them, and still contained a bug that no one had caught for who knows how long.
It counts as pure hubris to claim that bugs in the opposite direction (opposed to the player) don't exist and remain uncaught.
That said, the definition of "fraud" here has a lot of flexibility. I recall a case from my youth (when I worked for a competitor of IGT, for whatever credibility that gives me) where someone cracked our RNG algorithm on a "pick 3" type game. After they had won a few hundred grand, the jurisdiction asked us to look into it, and we changed the RNG, the player stopped winning game after game after game. No charges ever followed, because it shouldn't count as fraud if you figure out how to win the fucking game, even though an entire state government lost a noticeable amount of money.
Malfunction voids all games. That works BOTH directions. That means neither side whens in the case of an error in the machine. You agreed to that by playing.
Yeah, sure - Try taking the casino to court for losing more than 51% of the time (or whatever the local gaming commission defines as the worst possible odds) over a statistically significant number of plays. Let me know how you do in that one.
Then you never sat cross-legged in shorts on a warm day while playing. Like frickin' clockwork, as soon as you got sweaty enough, zap!
But not a big zap - Not enough that you would even recognize it as a shock, at first. More like:
"hmm, something pinched me" [looks around]
"No, nothing to pinch me, something pointy on it stabbing me?" [thoroughly inspects the bottom of the Advantage]
"DAMNIT, I still don't see anything, did a bee get me?" [tears the neighboring three square yards of floor apart searching]
"Oh! Right, this damned thing zaps me every time I wear shorts on a warm day. Fucking cheap-ass Jap crap!" [gets a large book to put between my lap and the torture device, which solves the problem entirely]
Ah... I see TFA's authors never owned an NES Advantage joystick. Suffice it to say, it administered small electric shocks as well - albeit not intentionally.
I never really found that aspect of it to add much to the gaming experience.
if the people advertising ASIC hardware actually ship working product in quantity, even that will be obsolete.
Big "if" there. So far, BFL looks like the greatest vaporware scam since DNF; Even what they offer, without really shipping, has doubled in price over the past few months. Pity, I would have picked up a Jalapeno, if they ever started shipping. Their new model at twice the price for the same performance, probably not.
Like most Bitcoin-related businesses, the people selling ASIC mining hardware are flakes.
Aaaaand, your credibility on this topic just evaporated.
Yes, fraudsters exist in any market. But the vast majority of merchants accepting BTC, just like the vast majority of merchants accepting USD, provide an honest product or service for an honest price.
In over $1500 (equivalent) of purchases via BTC - And I mean back in the days of $10 to $30 per BTC, not at $270 each - I got scammed... never. Not once. Nada. Zilch. I had one "questionable" experience with making a small private bet with someone who proved annoying to settle with, but in dealing with actual merchants, every single one sent me what I paid for in a timely manner.
That said, does Bitcoin still look viable? TFA's numbers put it at about a 5:1 return, so I'd have to say "hell yes!". If you buy a high-end GPU today for mining, you'll realistically make your money back. How long it will keep making money, however, depends almost exclusively on, as you point out, how long it takes BFL to create an actual product.:)
Why the hell would they start with a Brassica? The entire genus sucks for this purpose, with scraggly stems having few, small leaves - aka "low surface area" for emitting light.
You want a good plant to turn into a night-light? Go for something like a Chlorophytum, aka the Spider Plant. Lots of surface area, grows fast, impossible to kill (My cats chew one of mine back to the dirt every few weeks, and for three years that thing still keeps trying to come back)...
Instead, they want to modify something slow growing, annual, and "sparse" in the foliage sense? Why bother?
and why the employee was naive enough to hand it over.
For the same reason I'd do the same, in a frickin' heartbeat - $2500 in rewards dollars (and AmEx gives "real" dollars creditable to your account; not "miles", not "bux", not "flooz"). And in general, legit companies not on the brink of bankruptcy don't usually flake on their bills. Though sometimes... They do.
It does surprise me that AmEx wouldn't reverse the charge, though - They have one of the most consumer-friendly (and practically merchant-hostile) dispute policies out there. You ask, they reverse it and ask questions later, with the burden of proof on the merchant.
WTF? Are you so blinded by terminology that you don't understand that you can't "cancel" a card? You can only cancel the line of credit. There aren't two things here, you cancel the line of credit obviously all credits are due.
Wha? Calm down, step away from the keyboard, and take a look around before tilting at windmills.
Correct, a card doesn't equal a line of credit. You can have either without the other. But no one - And I do mean no one, ever refers to the one without the other outside a courtroom. A good example of a "service" you can't really decouple from the device in any meaningful way.
Now, if you meant that you don't have any obligation to use that line of credit, rather than spouting off obscenities about suffering all the idiots around, I would agree with you. You can get your appliance interest free for however many months, and then "close your line of credit" ( which the rest of humanity would call "cancelling the card"). The distinction comes up, and indeed, I mentioned it because, some people do not like having credit cards in their name - For example, strict Muslims consider any non-prepaid card a violation of their religion's prohibition against lending money for interest. It therefore matters to some people that their "18 months interest free washing machine" actually comes with a Discover card - and yes, also with an associated line of credit, Mr. Pedant.
Jesus fucking christ you people are idiots. All this confusion about how loans work only proves that the AG was correct to make T-mobile spell it out.
Perhaps some of that confusion comes about from treating "loans" as a monolithic entity. The revolving credit of a credit card functions radically differently than, say, a mortgage, which functions differently than a student loan, which differs from a subsidized purchase under contract.
And none of that has the least bearing on the fact that T Mobile has the most consumer-friendly options available (of the major US carriers, not including the likes of Tracphone here) by far, yet this AG has decided to polish his resume by going after them instead of, for example, the shady backroom deals that limit who you can get an iPhone from.
See, some people want something for nothing. And they've so deluded themselves into believing that such a deal exists (what with all the free money those taxpaying suckers keep sending them via the government), that when it turns out the whole world doesn't work that way, they go crying about unfairness to anyone who will listen.
On the other side of the spit-proof plexiglass window, Attorneys general will whore themselves out to whatever cause will get them the most votes when they run for a "real" office in a few more years. And the world has a hell of a lot of poor people whining about the unfairness of having to pay for products and services actually provided.
Can't pay the phone, can't get out of your phone contract.
Can't pay for the phone - Don't fucking buy it
Oh, sorry, I forgot that Slashdot had gone full-Liberal in the past few years. Carry on ranting about the evilness of someone forcing you to honor terms you agreed to.
With Verizon, AT&T, or any other carrier you can sign up without a contract, its just that you'll be paying the same price as the guys who took the free/cheap phones.
I, uh, think you might have missed the point of BYOP.
Hint: I don't have much interest in saving Verizon the cost of a phone.
What does that have to do with canceling an unrelated service? There is no loss or damage to the phone, there is no change in the phone owner's financial status.
It takes quite a stretch to call phone service, on a phone, as an "unrelated service". Kudos!
But for the record, those 0% "loans" from Sears on appliances now take the form of a one-time interest free charge on a Discover card. Cancel the card, and yes, it most certainly does come due instantly.
Anything "diplomatically damaging" can only mean "good for the rest of us mere humans".
So...TFB! I don't use Facebook, but I'll support them on this issue until my blood runs down the street and into the gutter at the point of government bullets.
Well I can certainly tell that you're not a physician, as a physician I can tell you that you have no idea how many limitations, restrictions, and compliance requirements exist in medical software.
Well I can certainly tell that you have no idea what HIPAA actually requires, because Excel on an offline PC in a reasonably secured area massively exceeds any legal requirements imposed on you.
Aww, that doesn't let you easily and transparently blast patient data in a compliant manner to your colleagues (and marketing partners)? Then pay up, cheapskate. But if, by chance, you run a "free" clinic out of the generosity of your bleedin' liberal heart, and you sincerely can't afford 10k in software upgrades every decade, make no mistake, "totally offline" still more-than-satisfies your legal obligations.
Chiropractic care isn't bogus when used for what it was designed to do—correcting posture and forcing tight muscles to release so that they don't cause strain in further muscles, resulting in a chain reaction of back pain that leaves people in serious pain.
Define "subluxation", in an objective and measurable way.
When you make your living treating the scientific equivalent of Bad Spine Spirits(tm), you just might be a quack.
Slashdot Mirror
This will hurt Amazon. Once it goes into effect, and Amazon are charging me sales tax then I will stop buying from Amazon.
Fair point, but I have to disagree - Even with tax, the large online merchants still consistently beat local stores for price, and often by a good margin. And that, only for "general merchandise" type crap. For anything specialized - Including computer equipment - Stores like Newegg blow the likes of Best Buy clean out of the water (though if you have the good fortune of having a Frye's nearby, that might not apply quite so much).
Of course before it goes into efect I will max out my credit card and buy stuff in advance of it happening, since I won't be buying stuff after it is in effect I will be able to pay off my credit card
Good idea, but I can suggest a much easier solution, under this new, "fair" sales tax structure - Find the nearest state with no sales tax, and save up your big purchases for a once- or twice-a-year trip to it. "Level playing field" indeed!
Can we easily identify them to make ejection procedures?
:)
Yep. Charge a $5 "cover" fee to enter the building, applicable to the first $5 of your purchase - And watch the riff-raff completely vanish instantly (and watch me - And plenty of others like me - Become your newest most loyal customer).
Or perhaps you would prefer to filter by skin tone?
Ooooh, I see what you did there! Clever, setting up that particular straw-man - Or should I say tar-baby?
Funny, how the social dynamics here work. We all know exactly who the GP meant, and that it has nothing to do with race or gender or really even economic class. I would tend to say that age plays a role, but even then, I see plenty of grannies capable of quickly swiping plastic rather than counting pennies, so I'd call age more of a "predisposing factor" than a direct causative agent. And yet - Someone suggests stores do something about the "Margin Eaters"* walking their aisles and generally making the whole shopping experience less pleasant for everyone, and suddenly accusations of racism become the norm.
* Can't get the idea of "Harry Potter and the Order from Amazon" out of my head now, damn you!
Mod parent up! It disgusts me to hear US Senators not "get" that point.
The customer may owe use tax in their state. The merchant has (or "had", if this turd of a bill passes the house) an obligation only to the states in which they have a physical presence.
And this whole "level playing field" BS? Seriously? How many mom-n'-pops (and don't give me any lip about the $1M threshold, your corner convenience store easily has gross receipts 2-3x that) have to deal with the individual sales tax structures of every US state, countless counties, and even individual towns? And as if that doesn't get messy enough, figuring out which products fall into which tax categories in each of those jurisdictions?
This won't hurt Amazon. This will merely annoy Amazon. It will destroy smaller online merchants, however - If not up front, then when the owner goes to prison for screwing up some obscure detail of NYC taxes on imported llama-hair socks.
So what you're saying is that they should reduce marketing, spend more on training and staffing, and shrink the clientele, while at the same time lowering prices? Interesting strategy, but I don't think "reduce revenue and increase operational overhead" would have the desired result.
The sooner stores realize who actually spends money at them, the better. The vast majority of businesses would do far, far better if they could shed the bottom 10-20% of their customers - The coupon cutters who tie up lines for half an hour and end up paying $6.99 for 30x that value in groceries and then count out pennies one... by... one... to pay (and then end up $0.04 short); the medicaid customers who "can't afford" that $2 copay but buy smokes in a separate transaction; the "window shoppers" who just use the physical store as a gallery.
On the flip side, when I walk into a store, I know beforehand what I want, I walk immediately to it, I take it to the register, and I have some appropriate form of payment ready before the cashier wants it. And while the necessity annoys me, I even have a "No!" handy to each BS upcharge and bit of personal info your marketing department has forced the poor cashiers to beg for this week. Bam, in and out in a minute and a half, and quite likely one of your most profitable customers of the day in terms of what you had to do to get my money.
If you kick out the former so I don't find every visit to your brick-and-mortar an entirely loathsome experience... Y'know, I'd honestly rather not wait a week for shipping. But, as long as I can get a better experience online - Well, don't complain that the online stores have killed you, when in reality, you've pulled the equivalent of a slow suicide by eating nothing but crappy fast food.
and you can be fined for having your guns out of your safe and not in your immediate possession (and no, under your pillow is not possession
I don't think we fundamentally disagree, but you may want to rethink that one "pillow" detail.
Gun safes absolutely make sense to protect your guns from theft, when not home (aside from the many pieces of crap on the market, good guns cost money and frequently appreciate in value if properly taken care of). When home, though, having one reliable pistol in easy reach of your bed counts as a no-brainer.
"Excuse me, Mr. Rapist / home invader, I need to use the, um, bathroom. In the basement. And ignore the sound of a large metal door swinging open, just the, um, medicine cabinet. I also have a headache".
Aww, poor widdle ol' Israel doesn't like it when the world talks about human rights abuses other the atrocities of the holocaust?
Good for Google! Though, I hope Sergei has learned how to sleep with his eyes open... Scientists who stand in the way of Israel's goals have this nasty habit of attracting squads of well-equipped and tactically-trained muggers waiting for them in their hotel rooms.
Ah, quite right. I can haz reading fail.
:)
I still stand by my larger point, but yeah, excuse me while I go get some mustard for this plate of steaming crow.
It depends- for example, my wife bought me a Nook Color a couple years ago from Staples, and bought the protection plan. About 3 months ago, it wouldn't start. I called Staples and within 2 hours my wife had an email from Staples with a electronic gift certificate for the original purchase price.
So basically, you paid extra to get someone to make you whole for a product that failed well within its original 1 year warranty period. And then you paid them more for the privilege? Friend, I have some Florida swamp land for sale - But I like you, so I'll give you a special deal on it! ;)
Granted, the fast turnaround may have made you consider that worthwhile, but you've pretty much just made my own argument against extended warranties for me - The vast majority of products that fail will do so out of the box. Of those that turn on the first time, the vast majority will fail within a few days. Of those, the vast majority will fail within a few months.
Buying an extended warranty effectively means - "Hassle factor" of actually getting a manufacturer to honor its warranty aside - That you have bet against yourself that you will fall into three* separate "vast minorities". It made it out of the box, it survived break-in, and it didn't have any less critical slowly acting flaws.
* Not intended as in any way mathematically rigorous.
The Matrix was a full sensory experience, not just a movie.
Right, but how would we know which senses our reality lacks vs the "real" reality, if inside something like the matrix?
I mean, as a trivial example, obviously our world left out any input to our hard-to-reproduce sense of squorple. Hell, most people's brains have probably atrophied as a result, and wouldn't even know it if The Programmers did add squorp to the simulation.
If you had never smelled anything, would you know you had never smelled anything? Hell, deaf people actually form communities around not considering it a disability, and (disgustingly, IMO) consider cochlear implants for their kids a "betrayal" of that ethos.
I think I speak for most gaming enthusiasts when I say "focus on hardware that will be more robust for a better part of this next generation and the games that will be on it and skip the gimmicks".
No. Just... No. That demo absolutely rocked, and I would buy that in a frickin' heartbeat if it actually works as shown there.
And I say that as someone who already uses a projector as my "TV" screen - But while it works well for field of vision, it fails in that you can either sit close and have low resolution at the center of your vision, or further away and you effectively get a similar angular size as a TV up close except you don't need to sit on top of the screen. Something that combines both - A bright, high-res macular view, combined with an immersive peripheral field? Awesome. Simple awesome.
Hate all you want, but as a long-time Nintendo fan, that would count as my first XBox.
This is why the Gaming Commission is required to test/inspect the machines (to include deposits and payouts) on a regular basis. Until you have evidence that this is happening you're just trying to justify theft. If the machine were found to be faulty, the individual would have their provable losses returned to them, probably up to a few hundred dollars.
That sounds just peachy - Except that the machines in question had the exact same tests done to them, and still contained a bug that no one had caught for who knows how long.
It counts as pure hubris to claim that bugs in the opposite direction (opposed to the player) don't exist and remain uncaught.
That said, the definition of "fraud" here has a lot of flexibility. I recall a case from my youth (when I worked for a competitor of IGT, for whatever credibility that gives me) where someone cracked our RNG algorithm on a "pick 3" type game. After they had won a few hundred grand, the jurisdiction asked us to look into it, and we changed the RNG, the player stopped winning game after game after game. No charges ever followed, because it shouldn't count as fraud if you figure out how to win the fucking game, even though an entire state government lost a noticeable amount of money.
Malfunction voids all games. That works BOTH directions. That means neither side whens in the case of an error in the machine. You agreed to that by playing.
Yeah, sure - Try taking the casino to court for losing more than 51% of the time (or whatever the local gaming commission defines as the worst possible odds) over a statistically significant number of plays. Let me know how you do in that one.
Then you never sat cross-legged in shorts on a warm day while playing. Like frickin' clockwork, as soon as you got sweaty enough, zap!
But not a big zap - Not enough that you would even recognize it as a shock, at first. More like:
"hmm, something pinched me" [looks around]
"No, nothing to pinch me, something pointy on it stabbing me?" [thoroughly inspects the bottom of the Advantage]
"DAMNIT, I still don't see anything, did a bee get me?" [tears the neighboring three square yards of floor apart searching]
"Oh! Right, this damned thing zaps me every time I wear shorts on a warm day. Fucking cheap-ass Jap crap!" [gets a large book to put between my lap and the torture device, which solves the problem entirely]
Ah... I see TFA's authors never owned an NES Advantage joystick. Suffice it to say, it administered small electric shocks as well - albeit not intentionally.
I never really found that aspect of it to add much to the gaming experience.
if the people advertising ASIC hardware actually ship working product in quantity, even that will be obsolete.
:)
Big "if" there. So far, BFL looks like the greatest vaporware scam since DNF; Even what they offer, without really shipping, has doubled in price over the past few months. Pity, I would have picked up a Jalapeno, if they ever started shipping. Their new model at twice the price for the same performance, probably not.
Like most Bitcoin-related businesses, the people selling ASIC mining hardware are flakes.
Aaaaand, your credibility on this topic just evaporated.
Yes, fraudsters exist in any market. But the vast majority of merchants accepting BTC, just like the vast majority of merchants accepting USD, provide an honest product or service for an honest price.
In over $1500 (equivalent) of purchases via BTC - And I mean back in the days of $10 to $30 per BTC, not at $270 each - I got scammed... never. Not once. Nada. Zilch. I had one "questionable" experience with making a small private bet with someone who proved annoying to settle with, but in dealing with actual merchants, every single one sent me what I paid for in a timely manner.
That said, does Bitcoin still look viable? TFA's numbers put it at about a 5:1 return, so I'd have to say "hell yes!". If you buy a high-end GPU today for mining, you'll realistically make your money back. How long it will keep making money, however, depends almost exclusively on, as you point out, how long it takes BFL to create an actual product.
Why the hell would they start with a Brassica? The entire genus sucks for this purpose, with scraggly stems having few, small leaves - aka "low surface area" for emitting light.
You want a good plant to turn into a night-light? Go for something like a Chlorophytum, aka the Spider Plant. Lots of surface area, grows fast, impossible to kill (My cats chew one of mine back to the dirt every few weeks, and for three years that thing still keeps trying to come back)...
Instead, they want to modify something slow growing, annual, and "sparse" in the foliage sense? Why bother?
and why the employee was naive enough to hand it over.
For the same reason I'd do the same, in a frickin' heartbeat - $2500 in rewards dollars (and AmEx gives "real" dollars creditable to your account; not "miles", not "bux", not "flooz"). And in general, legit companies not on the brink of bankruptcy don't usually flake on their bills. Though sometimes... They do.
It does surprise me that AmEx wouldn't reverse the charge, though - They have one of the most consumer-friendly (and practically merchant-hostile) dispute policies out there. You ask, they reverse it and ask questions later, with the burden of proof on the merchant.
WTF? Are you so blinded by terminology that you don't understand that you can't "cancel" a card? You can only cancel the line of credit. There aren't two things here, you cancel the line of credit obviously all credits are due.
Wha? Calm down, step away from the keyboard, and take a look around before tilting at windmills.
Correct, a card doesn't equal a line of credit. You can have either without the other. But no one - And I do mean no one, ever refers to the one without the other outside a courtroom. A good example of a "service" you can't really decouple from the device in any meaningful way.
Now, if you meant that you don't have any obligation to use that line of credit, rather than spouting off obscenities about suffering all the idiots around, I would agree with you. You can get your appliance interest free for however many months, and then "close your line of credit" ( which the rest of humanity would call "cancelling the card"). The distinction comes up, and indeed, I mentioned it because, some people do not like having credit cards in their name - For example, strict Muslims consider any non-prepaid card a violation of their religion's prohibition against lending money for interest. It therefore matters to some people that their "18 months interest free washing machine" actually comes with a Discover card - and yes, also with an associated line of credit, Mr. Pedant.
Jesus fucking christ you people are idiots. All this confusion about how loans work only proves that the AG was correct to make T-mobile spell it out.
Perhaps some of that confusion comes about from treating "loans" as a monolithic entity. The revolving credit of a credit card functions radically differently than, say, a mortgage, which functions differently than a student loan, which differs from a subsidized purchase under contract.
And none of that has the least bearing on the fact that T Mobile has the most consumer-friendly options available (of the major US carriers, not including the likes of Tracphone here) by far, yet this AG has decided to polish his resume by going after them instead of, for example, the shady backroom deals that limit who you can get an iPhone from.
I don't see how they are being deceptive.
See, some people want something for nothing. And they've so deluded themselves into believing that such a deal exists (what with all the free money those taxpaying suckers keep sending them via the government), that when it turns out the whole world doesn't work that way, they go crying about unfairness to anyone who will listen.
On the other side of the spit-proof plexiglass window, Attorneys general will whore themselves out to whatever cause will get them the most votes when they run for a "real" office in a few more years. And the world has a hell of a lot of poor people whining about the unfairness of having to pay for products and services actually provided.
Sounds like a match made in heaven, eh?
Upshot: Always get cash up-front.
Can't pay the phone, can't get out of your phone contract.
Can't pay for the phone - Don't fucking buy it
Oh, sorry, I forgot that Slashdot had gone full-Liberal in the past few years. Carry on ranting about the evilness of someone forcing you to honor terms you agreed to.
With Verizon, AT&T, or any other carrier you can sign up without a contract, its just that you'll be paying the same price as the guys who took the free/cheap phones.
I, uh, think you might have missed the point of BYOP.
Hint: I don't have much interest in saving Verizon the cost of a phone.
Jus' sayin'.
What does that have to do with canceling an unrelated service? There is no loss or damage to the phone, there is no change in the phone owner's financial status.
It takes quite a stretch to call phone service, on a phone, as an "unrelated service". Kudos!
But for the record, those 0% "loans" from Sears on appliances now take the form of a one-time interest free charge on a Discover card. Cancel the card, and yes, it most certainly does come due instantly.
Anything "diplomatically damaging" can only mean "good for the rest of us mere humans".
So...TFB! I don't use Facebook, but I'll support them on this issue until my blood runs down the street and into the gutter at the point of government bullets.
Well I can certainly tell that you're not a physician, as a physician I can tell you that you have no idea how many limitations, restrictions, and compliance requirements exist in medical software.
Well I can certainly tell that you have no idea what HIPAA actually requires, because Excel on an offline PC in a reasonably secured area massively exceeds any legal requirements imposed on you.
Aww, that doesn't let you easily and transparently blast patient data in a compliant manner to your colleagues (and marketing partners)? Then pay up, cheapskate. But if, by chance, you run a "free" clinic out of the generosity of your bleedin' liberal heart, and you sincerely can't afford 10k in software upgrades every decade, make no mistake, "totally offline" still more-than-satisfies your legal obligations.
You're welcome.
Chiropractic care isn't bogus when used for what it was designed to do—correcting posture and forcing tight muscles to release so that they don't cause strain in further muscles, resulting in a chain reaction of back pain that leaves people in serious pain.
Define "subluxation", in an objective and measurable way.
When you make your living treating the scientific equivalent of Bad Spine Spirits(tm), you just might be a quack.