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User: Ooblek

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  1. Re:Privacy implications on Europe Adding RFID Tags to Euro Currency · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I don't know if there is any metric on how much illegal commerce adds to a country's GDP, but I'm guessing they will find that it is significant if they can track illegal transactions. Of course, the definition of "illegal" may be pretty broad. If I give my brother a bill for a gift or I buy a jacket at a garage sale, someone should be counting the money I give them as income. Now that all those transactions can be tracked, I wonder if they would be considered "illegal" if they weren't reported as taxable income.

  2. Re:Cart before the horse on Responsible Handling of Billing Information? · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I have to also say that rolling your own recurring billing program is deceptively easy. I just inherited maintenance of a recurring billing program that works in an accounting package. In the several years it has been in the public, it has been plauged with a lot of problems because no one sat down and wrote algorithms for how billings were to be handled. Checks, validations, and scoping mods were added over time without using any particular analysis of where conflicts may happen. The result was it went through at least 4 people's hands before it came to me, and it is only now starting to work when all documented failure cases have been tested with the new set of algorithms I made.

    I will say that the algorithms are fairly easy once all the requirements are known (the designer just hacked it - no requirement spec exists). The big problem is that you will probably find that there are tons of other things you want it to do as your requirements for recurring billing change over time.

  3. Re:an interesting site on Has Free Software Saved Any Schools? · · Score: 1

    I hate to say it, but a lot of schools (at least the ones I've encountered in my dealings) want some sort of "title" as assurance of work quality. What this means is that, however wrong it may or may not be, they may want to use something that they can hire someone with an MCSE or CNE title to setup and maintain.

  4. Re:Doesn't seem likely on al Qaeda Hacks XP? · · Score: 1

    I showed this article to my wife and told her I could be home more often if we sold the house and moved into a cave in Afghanistan with DSL. I don't think she's going to go for it. My guess is that whole parachute jump to work every morning for her isn't her ideal method of commuting to work.