> Old way: Swipe takes 1 second, and put back in wallet. > New Way: Insert card for 10 to 15 seconds. Remove card, and insert back in wallet.
Old way - Swipe card, merchant enters value, hands you the terminal, you sign or PIN, return terminal to merchant. Terminal prints receipt, card and reciept go into your wallet.
New way - insert card, merchant enters value, hands you the terminal, you enter PIN, terminal says OK (and maybe remove card) return terminal to merchant. Terminal prints receipt, card removed, card and receipt returned to wallet.
That's how it works in Europe and the time difference is effectively zero.
In the early days of magstripes (used for access control too) there used to be a huge number of readers which were extremely finnicky about stripe speed.
One particular door control unit where I worked usually required 3-4 wipes by experienced users and up to 20 by inexperienced ones. After a lot of complaints got ignored it was reprogrammed one night with the aid of a large hammer.
"The card issuing company's are very nice to do this for customers but don't be confused, they win either way it goes."
Between their fees and the chargebacks, it's pretty clear the CC companies make more money out of fraudulent transactions than they do out of legitimate ones, because the merchant fees for chargebacks are high, but not normally so high it's worth taking the companies to court over (with the implied threat of being blacklisted if you do so - again, personal experience)
That seems to be one of the reasons that USA companies are reluctant to embark on any path which would reduce their profits. in other countries there are laws against unfair contract terms and watchdogs which (eventually) stomped hard on this cash cow.
"A lost or stolen card used illegally doesn't impact payment to the merchant."
Bullshit. I've had it happen, and chargeback fees.
I've also had "problem" customers generate chargebacks on legitimate transactions months later - and the CC company upheld the complaint even when there was video evidence of the customer herself being the one authorising the payment. The police wouldn't take a fraud complaint either as it was "too small to bother with"
"The advantage is that you now have to steal a card, rather than just skimming the magstripe of one."
What's happened in europe is a sharp rise in "card not present" fraud - ie, the digits off the front and back of the card have been skimmed. Responsibility for htis lies with the retailer even when they've gone to the steps of getting a CVV, which is why so many have opted into things like "verified by Visa"
I was surprised _more than 20 years ago_ when on my first visit to the USA, it was swipe and sign everywhere and most merchants seemed to have 4 or 5 card readers depending on the card.
I'd been using swipe and pin for 15 years before that and most transactions in most other countries went through a central clearing house which meant only one terminal to deal with.
The setup struck me as bass-ackwards and prone to fraud then. The fact that it's still like that is hardly confidence inspiring.
The smaller group already exists. It's the NTSB - the ones who've been testing the TSA.
A large part of the problem is that as federal employees, TSA staff can get away with a lot more than they could as private employees and are a LOT harder to fire.
It'd be interesting if the airports themselves started keeping stats and,onitoring thei TSA staff, to see the true scale of the problem (rule of thumb: What's detected and reported is usually less than 1% of what's actually happening)
Crime rates are related to socioeconomic status and the raw fact in the USA is that there is a wildly disproportionate percentage of poor black people thanks to centuries of discrimination and the fact that the Jim Crow laws never really went away.
"all these terror morons have to do is come up with a viable scheme and millions of air traveling passengers have to be subjected extra security for the sake of feeling safe"
They don't even have to come up with a viable scheme. The aim is to cause those in authority to remove our freedoms and those in authority are gleefully using it as an excuse to do so.
There have been viable defences against explosives in passenger baggage for years (thicker, porous container sides which can contain and vent the gas at a controlled rate, backed by extra webbing to hold it all together). Not used because it "costs too much" and adds a small amount of weight - and subsequent to 9/11 NO passenger is going to passively sit there when an aircraft is hijacked. (Even before this, there were a number of cases of irate passengers killing would-be hijackers).
One of the biggest problems with all the security theatre is that they're hiring minimum wage monkeys to do the screening, then letting them get away with various larceny including theft form baggage - if stuff can be smuggled OUT then stuff can be smuggled IN and minimum wage monkeys are easily subverted for money (or the terrorists or the narcogangs can simply put their own people in there)
Yes, you can mix them to make a bomb - under carefully controlled conditions with no vibration.
There aren't a lot of vibration-free spaces on an aircraft. It'd be interesting to create a simulated cabin and lavatory, then challenge the investigators to actually succeed in the quest.
"It's worth noting that when human life is being sustained by such a system there will need to be some mechanism to limit the human population. War will be right out, but plague is a possibility, as is birth control"
_every_single_time_ there's been a plague which affected population levels, that population has not only recovered but shot past the previous one within 2 generations.
The only documented way of encouraging people to reproduce less is to make them richer and you don't do that by limiting their dreams (if you do that they start having more sex instead)
What you think of as "communism" bears little-to-no resemblence to the post-capitalist society that Marx envisaged. The russian revolutionaries may have espoused themselves as such but the reality is that society at that point was not ready to take that step(*) and they were not the people to do so.
Likewise what you think of as "capitalism" - given that the USA (and other) governments have repeatedly stepped in to prevent capitalist monopolist oligarchies forming (the railway and oil robber-barons being one example) or break them up when they've managed to establish a toehold(**). There's a new set emerging which have managed to get further than than the last few times, but the reality is that unfettered capitalism leads to abject misery for most and lack of progress for all.
(*) Communism requires a surplus of production and of labour, such that there isn't enough actual work for people to do. This is close to what we now have in western countries - which without adequate backstops in place leads to large amounts of un(der)employment and the political need for "make work" schemes(***) (In the old days unemployment used to be hidden by hiring people into government service or moving them workseeker to sickness allowances. These options are frequently less available thanks to the breach of the social contract that started with Ronald Reagan's welfare slashing efforts in California in 1970 and gathered pace with California's voting in of proposition 13. That malaise has spread far and wide since then, with the rich getting richer and the poor increasingly being systematically disenfranchised through institutionalised racist and classist policies.)
(**)Standard Oil, AT&T, The Gettys, Railway companies as mentioned above, Boeing (yes really: Look up the history of United Airlines and UATC), various others over the years.
(***) If you start with the notion that a basic allowance will allow creative types to flourish, accept that some people will piss it against the wall and somehow address the raging anti-intellectuallism that's destroying the USA and other countries so that people _want_ to learn, then there's a lot of mileage in it.
The important part is that a just and fair society doesn't let people sleep under bridges or in shelters where there's a high chance of being robbed/beaten/worse. It helps them rather than demonising them.
Interestingly it's pretty clear that violence levels worldwide are at an all-time low, despite what's seen on the news (better media coverage means that stuff that was ignored int he 1970s is big news now) and that tolerance for violence is similarly decreased. Despite rightwing dog whistle calls to the contrary, things _are_ getting better in the long term (as in centuries, not decades) - provided we don't poison ourselves in the next 50 years(****) then there's still hope.
(****) the biggest risk associated with atmospheric CO2 spikes and methane breakouts levels isn't ocean level rises. It's anoxic dieoffs resulting in the extinction of pretty much every land animal larger than 40kg.
"High speed rail in Japan competes directly with domestic air travel. Pricing is very similar and total transit times are roughly the same."
On the east coast of the USA, even Amtrak competes directly with domestic air travel.
The creation of the Boston-Washington rail corridor put a number of shuttle airlines out of business.
In the USA (and canada), your transcontinental railroads are for freight. Everything is geared for freight and that means the lines are unsuitable for passenger use. If you have to build a separate transport system for passenger use the choices between HSR and Hyperloop come with stark cost, energy and speed differences. The problem you have is your mammoth military roading network (the Interstates are first and foremost military transportation corridors) which effectively subsidises trucking operations in a way that entirely-privately-owned USA railroad systems are not (European railway systems are run by governments, not by corporations, with less emphasis on profit and more emphasis on passenger transport. 50-80% subsidies are the norm, which is why rail tickets are so cheap in the EU)
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> Old way: Swipe takes 1 second, and put back in wallet.
> New Way: Insert card for 10 to 15 seconds. Remove card, and insert back in wallet.
Old way - Swipe card, merchant enters value, hands you the terminal, you sign or PIN, return terminal to merchant. Terminal prints receipt, card and reciept go into your wallet.
New way - insert card, merchant enters value, hands you the terminal, you enter PIN, terminal says OK (and maybe remove card) return terminal to merchant. Terminal prints receipt, card removed, card and receipt returned to wallet.
That's how it works in Europe and the time difference is effectively zero.
Did Rube Goldberg start writing USA POS software?
"Apparently ROW queues transactions of relatively small value (offline transactions?)"
Nope, not for years. It's all online and real time.
I paid $22,000 with my credit card (car dealer). They didn't ask for any secondary form of ID.
Chip and PIN - although I did have to warn the bank the transaction was likely to happen that day.
Many UK banks insist it's not possible, right up to the point where you ask to close your account.
In the early days of magstripes (used for access control too) there used to be a huge number of readers which were extremely finnicky about stripe speed.
One particular door control unit where I worked usually required 3-4 wipes by experienced users and up to 20 by inexperienced ones. After a lot of complaints got ignored it was reprogrammed one night with the aid of a large hammer.
The replacement was far more reliable.
"and you need to remove it at a specific time in the process or else the transaction will fail. "
That's just broken - and by design.
Someone is deliberately setting these things up to be hard to use. Come try using chip and pin in europe and let the scales fall off your eyes.
"First the current generation of readers are slow. It takes twice as long for it do its thing as the swipe system does. "
Chip reading is just fast as magstripe. The only reason a terminal would be slower is because it's deliberately programmed to be slower.
"The card issuing company's are very nice to do this for customers but don't be confused, they win either way it goes."
Between their fees and the chargebacks, it's pretty clear the CC companies make more money out of fraudulent transactions than they do out of legitimate ones, because the merchant fees for chargebacks are high, but not normally so high it's worth taking the companies to court over (with the implied threat of being blacklisted if you do so - again, personal experience)
That seems to be one of the reasons that USA companies are reluctant to embark on any path which would reduce their profits. in other countries there are laws against unfair contract terms and watchdogs which (eventually) stomped hard on this cash cow.
"A lost or stolen card used illegally doesn't impact payment to the merchant."
Bullshit. I've had it happen, and chargeback fees.
I've also had "problem" customers generate chargebacks on legitimate transactions months later - and the CC company upheld the complaint even when there was video evidence of the customer herself being the one authorising the payment. The police wouldn't take a fraud complaint either as it was "too small to bother with"
If you leave the signature panel blank then the criminal has a perfect place to put _his_ signature.
Presumably you remembered to deface the panel? (A penis drawing, perhaps?)
A camera behind the counter isn't going to pick up the PIN but it _will_ pick up the customer's face.
"They are incredibly slow compared to NFC"
Not in europe.
And NFC skimming is "a thing" tool
"The advantage is that you now have to steal a card, rather than just skimming the magstripe of one."
What's happened in europe is a sharp rise in "card not present" fraud - ie, the digits off the front and back of the card have been skimmed. Responsibility for htis lies with the retailer even when they've gone to the steps of getting a CVV, which is why so many have opted into things like "verified by Visa"
I was surprised _more than 20 years ago_ when on my first visit to the USA, it was swipe and sign everywhere and most merchants seemed to have 4 or 5 card readers depending on the card.
I'd been using swipe and pin for 15 years before that and most transactions in most other countries went through a central clearing house which meant only one terminal to deal with.
The setup struck me as bass-ackwards and prone to fraud then. The fact that it's still like that is hardly confidence inspiring.
The smaller group already exists. It's the NTSB - the ones who've been testing the TSA.
A large part of the problem is that as federal employees, TSA staff can get away with a lot more than they could as private employees and are a LOT harder to fire.
It'd be interesting if the airports themselves started keeping stats and ,onitoring thei TSA staff, to see the true scale of the problem (rule of thumb: What's detected and reported is usually less than 1% of what's actually happening)
Crime rates are related to socioeconomic status and the raw fact in the USA is that there is a wildly disproportionate percentage of poor black people thanks to centuries of discrimination and the fact that the Jim Crow laws never really went away.
"I prefer driving as well, and even though we have a lot of direct flights from MSP"
I suspect that one of the unintended consequences of better automated vehicles will be the airlines losing custom.
"And in your car, with out of state license plates?"
Dashcams, etc, preferably with a concealed recorder holding a backup flash module.
" There's no need for the scheme to be viable. The liquid limit you mentioned proves that."
The liquid limit is cynically enforced at airports in order to force passengers to pay higher rates on the other side of the security checks.
"all these terror morons have to do is come up with a viable scheme and millions of air traveling passengers have to be subjected extra security for the sake of feeling safe"
They don't even have to come up with a viable scheme. The aim is to cause those in authority to remove our freedoms and those in authority are gleefully using it as an excuse to do so.
There have been viable defences against explosives in passenger baggage for years (thicker, porous container sides which can contain and vent the gas at a controlled rate, backed by extra webbing to hold it all together). Not used because it "costs too much" and adds a small amount of weight - and subsequent to 9/11 NO passenger is going to passively sit there when an aircraft is hijacked. (Even before this, there were a number of cases of irate passengers killing would-be hijackers).
One of the biggest problems with all the security theatre is that they're hiring minimum wage monkeys to do the screening, then letting them get away with various larceny including theft form baggage - if stuff can be smuggled OUT then stuff can be smuggled IN and minimum wage monkeys are easily subverted for money (or the terrorists or the narcogangs can simply put their own people in there)
"My tube of toothpaste isn't the problem."
Nor are any of the supposedly binary liquids.
Yes, you can mix them to make a bomb - under carefully controlled conditions with no vibration.
There aren't a lot of vibration-free spaces on an aircraft. It'd be interesting to create a simulated cabin and lavatory, then challenge the investigators to actually succeed in the quest.
Procedures aren't strict, monitoring isn't tight.
Taking bribes? That should be go straight to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200 material.
"The consumer gets their money back by law (over $50, at least)."
yup, The scammers made a mistake by putting the charge well over the clawback threshold. There's a reason most of them make it $10-20/month.
"It's worth noting that when human life is being sustained by such a system there will need to be some mechanism to limit the human population. War will be right out, but plague is a possibility, as is birth control"
_every_single_time_ there's been a plague which affected population levels, that population has not only recovered but shot past the previous one within 2 generations.
The only documented way of encouraging people to reproduce less is to make them richer and you don't do that by limiting their dreams (if you do that they start having more sex instead)
What you think of as "communism" bears little-to-no resemblence to the post-capitalist society that Marx envisaged. The russian revolutionaries may have espoused themselves as such but the reality is that society at that point was not ready to take that step(*) and they were not the people to do so.
Likewise what you think of as "capitalism" - given that the USA (and other) governments have repeatedly stepped in to prevent capitalist monopolist oligarchies forming (the railway and oil robber-barons being one example) or break them up when they've managed to establish a toehold(**). There's a new set emerging which have managed to get further than than the last few times, but the reality is that unfettered capitalism leads to abject misery for most and lack of progress for all.
(*) Communism requires a surplus of production and of labour, such that there isn't enough actual work for people to do. This is close to what we now have in western countries - which without adequate backstops in place leads to large amounts of un(der)employment and the political need for "make work" schemes(***)
(In the old days unemployment used to be hidden by hiring people into government service or moving them workseeker to sickness allowances. These options are frequently less available thanks to the breach of the social contract that started with Ronald Reagan's welfare slashing efforts in California in 1970 and gathered pace with California's voting in of proposition 13. That malaise has spread far and wide since then, with the rich getting richer and the poor increasingly being systematically disenfranchised through institutionalised racist and classist policies.)
(**)Standard Oil, AT&T, The Gettys, Railway companies as mentioned above, Boeing (yes really: Look up the history of United Airlines and UATC), various others over the years.
(***) If you start with the notion that a basic allowance will allow creative types to flourish, accept that some people will piss it against the wall and somehow address the raging anti-intellectuallism that's destroying the USA and other countries so that people _want_ to learn, then there's a lot of mileage in it.
The important part is that a just and fair society doesn't let people sleep under bridges or in shelters where there's a high chance of being robbed/beaten/worse. It helps them rather than demonising them.
Interestingly it's pretty clear that violence levels worldwide are at an all-time low, despite what's seen on the news (better media coverage means that stuff that was ignored int he 1970s is big news now) and that tolerance for violence is similarly decreased. Despite rightwing dog whistle calls to the contrary, things _are_ getting better in the long term (as in centuries, not decades) - provided we don't poison ourselves in the next 50 years(****) then there's still hope.
(****) the biggest risk associated with atmospheric CO2 spikes and methane breakouts levels isn't ocean level rises. It's anoxic dieoffs resulting in the extinction of pretty much every land animal larger than 40kg.
"High speed rail in Japan competes directly with domestic air travel. Pricing is very similar and total transit times are roughly the same."
On the east coast of the USA, even Amtrak competes directly with domestic air travel.
The creation of the Boston-Washington rail corridor put a number of shuttle airlines out of business.
In the USA (and canada), your transcontinental railroads are for freight. Everything is geared for freight and that means the lines are unsuitable for passenger use. If you have to build a separate transport system for passenger use the choices between HSR and Hyperloop come with stark cost, energy and speed differences. The problem you have is your mammoth military roading network (the Interstates are first and foremost military transportation corridors) which effectively subsidises trucking operations in a way that entirely-privately-owned USA railroad systems are not (European railway systems are run by governments, not by corporations, with less emphasis on profit and more emphasis on passenger transport. 50-80% subsidies are the norm, which is why rail tickets are so cheap in the EU)