(I can't believe the old linked article mentions my ancient Flying Rat project! That failed, and...) A disclaimer: I'm self-interested (obviously) and I think the media have done a poor job covering it, but...
There are a number of Get Paid To Read email programs which use e-gold for small efficient payments to lots of individuals (*willing* individuals!) all over the world. These explain the huge number of tiny spends at http://stats.e-gold.com and a few of them are quite popular it seems.
It's not a perfect solution, but this does absorb resources which would otherwise almost-certainly go to spammers, IMO. I wish the media would cover this voluntary solution to a tiny part of the problem, but so far they haven't. JMR
slowly, and without anyone in the media noticing, people are using the currency I sell to do get paid to read email stuff. I've tried, desperately, to impart a clue to journalists about this, to no avail. JMR
via tipjars (hopefully not JUST PayPal tipjars, says the self-interested guy posting this comment).
Musicians will probably still split royalties and start splitting tips with their songwriters, to keep the songs coming. All the music industry needs is a less-greedy greedy-middleman that works internationally, and I volunteer to supply it (hell, I coulda saved "Napster" if they'd ever bothered to listen...)
Voluntary tips from fans who prefer to pay actual musicians instead of music-industry-lawyers -- even if they're small, and even if not-everyone gives them -- might be a better income stream for musicians than is currently-offered by the RIAA quintopoly. Musicians will never know until they try... JMR
It's been my experience (continually advocating tipjars and annoying various musicians, etc.) that the "slaves" talk a good game (see Courtney Love's pre-binge-phase Salon article) but they're WAAAAY short on action (see her www.hole.com site, which has turned into a mere forum, and has no way for me to tip/pay the woman in any way). I contacted her back when it was a real website for her band. I was pretty-much ignored by her webmaster, and I'm not sure if Courtney ever even saw the email (probably not).
I don't think Courtney's music is all that great, but I think she's a good actress from the Larry Flynt movie, so I'd be willing to give her (and lots of other musicians who've said they want 'em) a tip, if I had a method -- and a method's what I'm offering along with the tip! The slaves don't seem too eager to escape...
The quintopoly is very strong. The slaves have been slaves for long-enough that they have no concept of the characteristics of free artists. Free artists want money, so that they can keep doing art. I sell (and I GIVE AWAY, fer Chrissakes!!!) Better Money(tm) and these RIAA-slaves either ignore me or else say really-dumb things to me. Actual free artists would ask for money (ok, a few do, but the famous ones are all sheep!) Slavery in this case is entirely-mental, but its chains are still very effective. It's frustrating... JMR
Take the money you'd have spent on a couple of airline tickets in business class, buy 2 PowerBook G4 notebooks with iSight instead, and have a videoconference whenever you want one, WITHOUT the hassle of some overbearing thug groping you if you're an attractive women, or confiscating a tiny pocketknife (as if that makes the plane safer) while letting anyone carry a sharpened pencil (a decent weapon, IMO). Apple's iSight not only works well, it *came* working when I plugged it into the computer, so anyone can videoconference with 0 technical skill.
Of course, nothing will make airplanes completely safe (even absent deliberate terrorist acts) but right now a lot of mismanaged airlines need to go out of business, and that would definitely help. The 9/11 subsidies the worst of them are getting will only make the road to efficiency cost more and take longer. I say let Southwest & Jet Blue win if they're stronger financially, regardless of their lesser political connections in Washington, DC, but for now the best way to starve the major airlines is to iSight around them and boycott the hassle. Airlines will learn with their wallets, or maybe without them... JMR
Well, maybe it's because I run a 12" PowerBook G4 (nickname: "The Ow-Book") but I think my chip has enough heat energy to easily distill something for me...Also, at least in beer, bacteria can be a flavor-problem. Sigh. I wish I still had time to brew my own beer! JMR
I'm still wondering if this variety of battery would have any ethyl alcohol output...
I could use a laptop battery that puts out a nice little shot of vodka for the end of the day. This feature could also motivate users to take very-good care of their bacteria. JMR
If they really get desperate, RIAA-connected artists like Courtney Love might even try tipjars, to "connect directly" with their fans' money, worldwide. (I have a financial interest in making this happen, needless to say!)
If/when widespread tipjar use ever happened, I wonder how many folks would be willing to actually tip the artists they say they'd like to tip; and if so, how much the artists' tips would be compared to what the RIAA lets them keep now? JMR
Apparently, Bitpass merchants pay a transaction fee of 15 percent for items under $5 and 5 percent plus 50 cents for more expensive things. e-gold fees are a 1%/year storage fee and up to 1% of the transaction amount, with a maximum of 50 cents (US$) worth of metal for their fee, no matter how large the transaction.
Of course, the ability to do micropayments (or macropayments, for that matter) is hardly new -- e-gold has been around since 1996 and the e-gold shopping cart has been relatively-easy since http://sci.e-gold.com came along in mid-2000. I just wish more folks would try/use it. (Want to play with a bit? Ask me!) JMR
A method has been devised, it's tipjars (yes, I'm self-interested here). The problem is getting anyone to actually implement it. Courtney Love talks a good game, for example, but until artists even try to break the RIAA's virtual financial "quintopoly" on connections with their fans (as they do with concert t-shirts in person right now, for example, but worldwide) the situation will remain the same...
Ironically, tipjars might even end up helping the RIAA, if they'd only look on microspends as a revenue source. If they'd spent the kind of loot that they've thrown at their lawyers since CFP99 on helping me spread the word instead, there would be an even-bigger cheap, easy, worldwide payment system for them to use now (and probably our copycats would all be better as well). If anyone here wants to play with a bit of e-gold, email me an account number. JMR
Exactly. Same is true of computer-languages (thank GOD I instinctively slacked-off & watched-girls in that "Cobol" class!).
Well-rounded kids will be able to handle non-Windows operating systems in the future even if many of them are likely to use Windows for the next decade. It's just like knowing a bit of Spanish or French, it helps you to better-understand how things work even if you're using other skills at the moment. JMR
There are certificates for both (or were, that is). The gold one I saw was orange. A good book is Money by James Ewart, lots of fun photos of old US money. JMR
e-gold has offered a way, for years, along with several others. For years on slashdot I've offered a bit of free gold to go with (free) accounts. I've seen very few takers. The offer still stands.
I'm in the process of a meta-rant regarding Courtney Love's rant and my experience, which has been mixed, with Love and other artists who SAY "I want to get paid" but refuse to go through even minimal 5-minute efforts to get around the RIAA quintopoly's (yes, I made-up that word) stranglehold on their work. Right now they get a pittance for CDs, probably a better-not-great deal from Apple or that horrid buymusic.com site, and we all know they make their real money at concerts with those $50+ tickets I refuse to buy these days.
I want them all to put out a virtual guitar-case/tipjar with my favorite currency, which is seeing lots of international use. If they ever want ANY money from third-world music lovers with pirated CDs, you'd think they'd listen to me and try to "guilt" music lovers into a contribution -- which (if Courtney's math was right) might be better than the CD-pittance they would have gotten from the quintopoly for a legitimate sale of the same album. IMO. And yes, I have crass capitalistic greedy commercial interests in all this (in addition to wanting to make the world a slightly-better place). JMR
Oh, of course not! But artists' rights is the politically-correct terminology all of us want to associate-with our own preferred ideas in this debate (I explicitly include myself in the above). JMR
PS As usual, if anyone wants to try e-gold create an account and email me the number, and as always I don't speak for e-gold Ltd. itself, I just snagged the nick years ago so nobody-else could.
I agree. And don't think there's no way for us both to pay musicians motivated enough to ask for a tip (see www.radsfans.net for example).
Imagine if the RIAA had spent half the money they've spent on lawyers by now pushing tipjar-advocacy instead. e-gold has been around since 1996 and musicians like Courtney Love sure TALK a good game about going around the RIAA quintopoly, but so far I've seen little action from her (she's in her binge-phase again?). Still, it's possible to get paid directly, with e-gold and a bunch of others by now, whether or not the RIAA or artists like Courtney actually choose to think about the issue or try a better form of money... JMR
You mean this guy was using stolen credit card numbers and identities and he's not in jail already?
That's what I used to say. Apparently, we have more important uses for our jails (peaceful patients like Steve Kubby, who made the mistake of speaking out about the tax-and-spend drugwar, come to mind...) I sure wish that actual crooks (who also happen to be spammers) start getting put in cages. This guy would be a good start. Jail is a judgment we can ALL collect, in his case. JMR
speaking ONLY for myself (which is part of the problem)
...Customs and Excise officials aren't sent to jail when drugs come into the country, the smugglers are, if they can be caught.
If the US government put 1/2 the energy/money they've put into the enforcement of JUST the weed-section of the tax-and-spend war on (some) drugs, spam/UCE would be over in an instant. The problem isn't a lack of enforcement resources -- it's instead a lack of ENFORCEMENT ITSELF. By far the majority of spam I see is either quasi-criminal or blatantly-criminal *besides* being annoying-as-hell. If they can nab boats and Mercedes cars and homes from pot growers (or shoot non-grower Donald Scott!) they can damn sure also steal property from spammers -- IF they actually wanted to that is...
Getting the spammers (even if in another country) should be relatively-easy. Follow the money -- they're not concerned with the planet's penis-size, they're concerned with the size of their bank-accounts. I could, with the powers of the US government, cut WAY down on spam in less than a month. Why would anyone send it if some cop's going to confiscate the profits? And THAT PROFIT, my friends, NOT some damn intrusive & ineffective tax, should/could fund these cops.
The solution is simple, and akin to what happened after alcohol prohibition miserably-failed: the cops can keep their government jobs, but they must now focus on criminals rather than trying to make a weed God designed to help medical patients go extinct.
Suddenly, if they went after spam (even if they mostly failed miserably, as they're doing with weed, right now) and they'd be POPULAR, too. (Unlike now, when every one of the DEA agents I've ever known hasn't been too open about his job...) JMR
Speaking ONLY for myself, no corporation would say all this anyway -- even if everyone knows it's true!
The thing to keep in mind is the same thing all judges, lawyers, and politicians have ignored for the past three decades (much to this nation's detriment, IMO). "The enumeration in the constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others, retained by the people." (That's the Ninth Amendment.)
IOW, "No, the constitution doesn't directly mention things like privacy, encryption, etc. and no, it doesn't matter because we didn't have to list everything we can do." I wish more folks got this... JMR
Speaking ONLY for Jim Ray (all others are usually disgusted with my views!)
Here in Melbourne, FL we're even closer to NASA, etc. and there's Astro Too, http://www.astrotoo.com/ which has all sorts of old stuff Uncle spent a LOT of money for but now does not want. You walk in, and it even SMELLS like old electronics, and the owner's a wheeler-dealer, which makes it more fun than Wal-Mart even if they didn't have the best trash-pickings in town.
I wish I could store all the perfectly-good electronics I've seen him just toss out on their loading dock. I stopped by the other day and grabbed a free "old" IBM keyboard -- the kind you can't get anymore which really-clicks when you press the keys -- along with the small item I was there to purchase. Great store. JMR
Re:The ./ obsession with a cashless society?
on
The Future of Money
·
· Score: 1
Actually, e-gold is just grams of metal, and e-gold Ltd. has no bank accounts, even, much less any government currencies. They try like crazy to take as few risks as possible, so they just pay others to store allocated gold/metal bars, and contract with others to operate the system's computers, etc.
Also, the rates vary much more than that, depending on the exchange service. At OmniPay, for wires, we've charged 4% above spot in the past, and now we straddle the spot gold price (which, BTW, has gone up a hell of a lot more than 7% in the past year, not that the past is indicative of the future, of course). I have seen credit card sellers charge 15%.
The reason that some exchanges charge more is that they experience lots of attempted (and some actual) fraud, and avoiding (or experiencing...) this stuff is costly, but that's usually indicative of settlement problems with using OTHER forms of money, IMNSHO. IOW, plastic sometimes sucks.
I carry around a one ounce gold coin, a US St. Gaudens "No Motto" from 1908. It says "$20" and that's WHY I carry it...e-gold is Better Money(tm) in part because gold itself makes better money. No matter what anyone tells you, it's NOT "just a commodity." e-gold is money because gold is money. JMR
Re:The ./ obsession with a cashless society?
on
The Future of Money
·
· Score: 1
Thanks for mentioning e-gold, but history shows that Slashdot's not all that obsessed with the stuff (they could, at this point, be accepting it for their premium content as a payment option, for example, and save money over the option(s) they're currently using as well as get more subscribers).
Hand to hand cash and e-gold are really two separate things, and are useful for different kinds of things, so I doubt that e-gold will ever replace cash, or even gold coins/nuggets. I've found it necessary to carry around gold bullion coins -- humans are tactile creatures, and the weight of real gold holds their attention better than my voice alone. (I always take the coin/nugget back, though!) JMR
PS Anyone who reads this and sends me an account number saying "I saw it on Slashdot" will get a small spend of e-silver, which is the best testing currency for the shopping cart at sci.e-gold com
Slashdot Mirror
(I can't believe the old linked article mentions my ancient Flying Rat project! That failed, and...) A disclaimer: I'm self-interested (obviously) and I think the media have done a poor job covering it, but...
There are a number of Get Paid To Read email programs which use e-gold for small efficient payments to lots of individuals (*willing* individuals!) all over the world. These explain the huge number of tiny spends at http://stats.e-gold.com and a few of them are quite popular it seems.
It's not a perfect solution, but this does absorb resources which would otherwise almost-certainly go to spammers, IMO. I wish the media would cover this voluntary solution to a tiny part of the problem, but so far they haven't.
JMR
(I speak ONLY for myself!)
slowly, and without anyone in the media noticing, people are using the currency I sell to do get paid to read email stuff. I've tried, desperately, to impart a clue to journalists about this, to no avail.
JMR
via tipjars (hopefully not JUST PayPal tipjars, says the self-interested guy posting this comment).
Musicians will probably still split royalties and start splitting tips with their songwriters, to keep the songs coming. All the music industry needs is a less-greedy greedy-middleman that works internationally, and I volunteer to supply it (hell, I coulda saved "Napster" if they'd ever bothered to listen...)
Voluntary tips from fans who prefer to pay actual musicians instead of music-industry-lawyers -- even if they're small, and even if not-everyone gives them -- might be a better income stream for musicians than is currently-offered by the RIAA quintopoly. Musicians will never know until they try...
JMR
I speak only for Jim Ray (when he's sober!)
It's been my experience (continually advocating tipjars and annoying various musicians, etc.) that the "slaves" talk a good game (see Courtney Love's pre-binge-phase Salon article) but they're WAAAAY short on action (see her www.hole.com site, which has turned into a mere forum, and has no way for me to tip/pay the woman in any way). I contacted her back when it was a real website for her band. I was pretty-much ignored by her webmaster, and I'm not sure if Courtney ever even saw the email (probably not).
I don't think Courtney's music is all that great, but I think she's a good actress from the Larry Flynt movie, so I'd be willing to give her (and lots of other musicians who've said they want 'em) a tip, if I had a method -- and a method's what I'm offering along with the tip! The slaves don't seem too eager to escape...
The quintopoly is very strong. The slaves have been slaves for long-enough that they have no concept of the characteristics of free artists. Free artists want money, so that they can keep doing art. I sell (and I GIVE AWAY, fer Chrissakes!!!) Better Money(tm) and these RIAA-slaves either ignore me or else say really-dumb things to me. Actual free artists would ask for money (ok, a few do, but the famous ones are all sheep!) Slavery in this case is entirely-mental, but its chains are still very effective. It's frustrating...
JMR
Speaking ONLY for me!
Take the money you'd have spent on a couple of airline tickets in business class, buy 2 PowerBook G4 notebooks with iSight instead, and have a videoconference whenever you want one, WITHOUT the hassle of some overbearing thug groping you if you're an attractive women, or confiscating a tiny pocketknife (as if that makes the plane safer) while letting anyone carry a sharpened pencil (a decent weapon, IMO). Apple's iSight not only works well, it *came* working when I plugged it into the computer, so anyone can videoconference with 0 technical skill.
Of course, nothing will make airplanes completely safe (even absent deliberate terrorist acts) but right now a lot of mismanaged airlines need to go out of business, and that would definitely help. The 9/11 subsidies the worst of them are getting will only make the road to efficiency cost more and take longer. I say let Southwest & Jet Blue win if they're stronger financially, regardless of their lesser political connections in Washington, DC, but for now the best way to starve the major airlines is to iSight around them and boycott the hassle. Airlines will learn with their wallets, or maybe without them...
JMR
I'm NOT e-gold Ltd. and I speak only for Jim Ray.
Well, maybe it's because I run a 12" PowerBook G4 (nickname: "The Ow-Book") but I think my chip has enough heat energy to easily distill something for me...Also, at least in beer, bacteria can be a flavor-problem. Sigh. I wish I still had time to brew my own beer!
JMR
I'm still wondering if this variety of battery would have any ethyl alcohol output...
I could use a laptop battery that puts out a nice little shot of vodka for the end of the day. This feature could also motivate users to take very-good care of their bacteria.
JMR
If they really get desperate, RIAA-connected artists like Courtney Love might even try tipjars, to "connect directly" with their fans' money, worldwide. (I have a financial interest in making this happen, needless to say!)
If/when widespread tipjar use ever happened, I wonder how many folks would be willing to actually tip the artists they say they'd like to tip; and if so, how much the artists' tips would be compared to what the RIAA lets them keep now?
JMR
Making money on micropayments isn't easy, by definition. Here's an article from Wired about them.
Apparently, Bitpass merchants pay a transaction fee of 15 percent for items under $5 and 5 percent plus 50 cents for more expensive things. e-gold fees are a 1%/year storage fee and up to 1% of the transaction amount, with a maximum of 50 cents (US$) worth of metal for their fee, no matter how large the transaction.
Of course, the ability to do micropayments (or macropayments, for that matter) is hardly new -- e-gold has been around since 1996 and the e-gold shopping cart has been relatively-easy since http://sci.e-gold.com came along in mid-2000. I just wish more folks would try/use it. (Want to play with a bit? Ask me!)
JMR
A method has been devised, it's tipjars (yes, I'm self-interested here). The problem is getting anyone to actually implement it. Courtney Love talks a good game, for example, but until artists even try to break the RIAA's virtual financial "quintopoly" on connections with their fans (as they do with concert t-shirts in person right now, for example, but worldwide) the situation will remain the same...
Ironically, tipjars might even end up helping the RIAA, if they'd only look on microspends as a revenue source. If they'd spent the kind of loot that they've thrown at their lawyers since CFP99 on helping me spread the word instead, there would be an even-bigger cheap, easy, worldwide payment system for them to use now (and probably our copycats would all be better as well). If anyone here wants to play with a bit of e-gold, email me an account number.
JMR
Whew. I was expecting a "joint-venture to market exo-skeletons" quip.
JMR
This seems to be exactly what some folks fear (not just RIAA types, musicians who might benefit from it, too!).
JMR
Speaking ONLY for myself!!!
Exactly. Same is true of computer-languages (thank GOD I instinctively slacked-off & watched-girls in that "Cobol" class!).
Well-rounded kids will be able to handle non-Windows operating systems in the future even if many of them are likely to use Windows for the next decade. It's just like knowing a bit of Spanish or French, it helps you to better-understand how things work even if you're using other skills at the moment.
JMR
There are certificates for both (or were, that is). The gold one I saw was orange. A good book is Money by James Ewart, lots of fun photos of old US money.
JMR
There ARE ways to do this, too. I wish I were more-effective at spreading the idea.
JMR
e-gold has offered a way, for years, along with several others. For years on slashdot I've offered a bit of free gold to go with (free) accounts. I've seen very few takers. The offer still stands.
I'm in the process of a meta-rant regarding Courtney Love's rant and my experience, which has been mixed, with Love and other artists who SAY "I want to get paid" but refuse to go through even minimal 5-minute efforts to get around the RIAA quintopoly's (yes, I made-up that word) stranglehold on their work. Right now they get a pittance for CDs, probably a better-not-great deal from Apple or that horrid buymusic.com site, and we all know they make their real money at concerts with those $50+ tickets I refuse to buy these days.
I want them all to put out a virtual guitar-case/tipjar with my favorite currency, which is seeing lots of international use. If they ever want ANY money from third-world music lovers with pirated CDs, you'd think they'd listen to me and try to "guilt" music lovers into a contribution -- which (if Courtney's math was right) might be better than the CD-pittance they would have gotten from the quintopoly for a legitimate sale of the same album. IMO. And yes, I have crass capitalistic greedy commercial interests in all this (in addition to wanting to make the world a slightly-better place).
JMR
Oh, of course not! But artists' rights is the politically-correct terminology all of us want to associate-with our own preferred ideas in this debate (I explicitly include myself in the above).
JMR
PS As usual, if anyone wants to try e-gold create an account and email me the number, and as always I don't speak for e-gold Ltd. itself, I just snagged the nick years ago so nobody-else could.
I agree. And don't think there's no way for us both to pay musicians motivated enough to ask for a tip (see www.radsfans.net for example).
Imagine if the RIAA had spent half the money they've spent on lawyers by now pushing tipjar-advocacy instead. e-gold has been around since 1996 and musicians like Courtney Love sure TALK a good game about going around the RIAA quintopoly, but so far I've seen little action from her (she's in her binge-phase again?). Still, it's possible to get paid directly, with e-gold and a bunch of others by now, whether or not the RIAA or artists like Courtney actually choose to think about the issue or try a better form of money...
JMR
You mean this guy was using stolen credit card numbers and identities and he's not in jail already?
That's what I used to say. Apparently, we have more important uses for our jails (peaceful patients like Steve Kubby, who made the mistake of speaking out about the tax-and-spend drugwar, come to mind...) I sure wish that actual crooks (who also happen to be spammers) start getting put in cages. This guy would be a good start. Jail is a judgment we can ALL collect, in his case.
JMR
speaking ONLY for myself (which is part of the problem)
...Customs and Excise officials aren't sent to jail when drugs come into the country, the smugglers are, if they can be caught.
If the US government put 1/2 the energy/money they've put into the enforcement of JUST the weed-section of the tax-and-spend war on (some) drugs, spam/UCE would be over in an instant. The problem isn't a lack of enforcement resources -- it's instead a lack of ENFORCEMENT ITSELF. By far the majority of spam I see is either quasi-criminal or blatantly-criminal *besides* being annoying-as-hell. If they can nab boats and Mercedes cars and homes from pot growers (or shoot non-grower Donald Scott!) they can damn sure also steal property from spammers -- IF they actually wanted to that is...
Getting the spammers (even if in another country) should be relatively-easy. Follow the money -- they're not concerned with the planet's penis-size, they're concerned with the size of their bank-accounts. I could, with the powers of the US government, cut WAY down on spam in less than a month. Why would anyone send it if some cop's going to confiscate the profits? And THAT PROFIT, my friends, NOT some damn intrusive & ineffective tax, should/could fund these cops.
The solution is simple, and akin to what happened after alcohol prohibition miserably-failed: the cops can keep their government jobs, but they must now focus on criminals rather than trying to make a weed God designed to help medical patients go extinct.
Suddenly, if they went after spam (even if they mostly failed miserably, as they're doing with weed, right now) and they'd be POPULAR, too. (Unlike now, when every one of the DEA agents I've ever known hasn't been too open about his job...)
JMR
Speaking ONLY for myself, no corporation would say all this anyway -- even if everyone knows it's true!
The thing to keep in mind is the same thing all judges, lawyers, and politicians have ignored for the past three decades (much to this nation's detriment, IMO). "The enumeration in the constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others, retained by the people." (That's the Ninth Amendment.)
IOW, "No, the constitution doesn't directly mention things like privacy, encryption, etc. and no, it doesn't matter because we didn't have to list everything we can do." I wish more folks got this...
JMR
Speaking ONLY for Jim Ray (all others are usually disgusted with my views!)
Here in Melbourne, FL we're even closer to NASA, etc. and there's Astro Too, http://www.astrotoo.com/ which has all sorts of old stuff Uncle spent a LOT of money for but now does not want. You walk in, and it even SMELLS like old electronics, and the owner's a wheeler-dealer, which makes it more fun than Wal-Mart even if they didn't have the best trash-pickings in town.
I wish I could store all the perfectly-good electronics I've seen him just toss out on their loading dock. I stopped by the other day and grabbed a free "old" IBM keyboard -- the kind you can't get anymore which really-clicks when you press the keys -- along with the small item I was there to purchase. Great store.
JMR
Actually, e-gold is just grams of metal, and e-gold Ltd. has no bank accounts, even, much less any government currencies. They try like crazy to take as few risks as possible, so they just pay others to store allocated gold/metal bars, and contract with others to operate the system's computers, etc.
Also, the rates vary much more than that, depending on the exchange service. At OmniPay, for wires, we've charged 4% above spot in the past, and now we straddle the spot gold price (which, BTW, has gone up a hell of a lot more than 7% in the past year, not that the past is indicative of the future, of course). I have seen credit card sellers charge 15%.
The reason that some exchanges charge more is that they experience lots of attempted (and some actual) fraud, and avoiding (or experiencing...) this stuff is costly, but that's usually indicative of settlement problems with using OTHER forms of money, IMNSHO. IOW, plastic sometimes sucks.
I carry around a one ounce gold coin, a US St. Gaudens "No Motto" from 1908. It says "$20" and that's WHY I carry it...e-gold is Better Money(tm) in part because gold itself makes better money. No matter what anyone tells you, it's NOT "just a commodity." e-gold is money because gold is money.
JMR
Thanks for mentioning e-gold, but history shows that Slashdot's not all that obsessed with the stuff (they could, at this point, be accepting it for their premium content as a payment option, for example, and save money over the option(s) they're currently using as well as get more subscribers).
Hand to hand cash and e-gold are really two separate things, and are useful for different kinds of things, so I doubt that e-gold will ever replace cash, or even gold coins/nuggets. I've found it necessary to carry around gold bullion coins -- humans are tactile creatures, and the weight of real gold holds their attention better than my voice alone. (I always take the coin/nugget back, though!)
JMR
PS Anyone who reads this and sends me an account number saying "I saw it on Slashdot" will get a small spend of e-silver, which is the best testing currency for the shopping cart at sci.e-gold com
Maybe they print a tiny solar cell, too?
JMR
Speaking ONLY for me!!!