I may have been unfair in one regard. I mean, yes I was in a bad mood and trolling. But more than that I and a lot of of others simply don't see credit card balance as a loan. Yes, it's right there in the name. That's a very fair point. But...I was raised to never ever carry a balance ever. I do mean I was raised that way. My dad taught me that when I was ten years old. It's outside of my worldview to see it as a loan. And maybe that's unfair of me. I know that I've been fortunate in life, at least economically.
Do you know what kind of specific percentages high risk merchants have to pay payment processors? I didn't even know it was a formal category before just now. Is there a legal reason buyer credit rating isn't used to determine eligibility when purchasing from a high risk merchant, or is it a cultural thing?
Your first point is something which all of us should very much keep in mind when dealing with almost any business. All too often I myself forget it. It is wise to do business solely by selfish numbers. If one wants to do good, find a reputable charity. That said, I think the person you're replying to might have been talking about credit unions.
My credit rating is 800 and all my accounts are on full monthly autopay. They are nothing more than intermediaries that take a cut from every transaction. Even aside from that, only a complete idiot thinks that blanket credit denials for an entire category of spending involves any risk assessment.
My main credit card's bank treats it like a cash advance. It is a pretty sensible way to handle high risk buying without acting like dirtbag thugs. No one in their right mind would ever knowingly use a credit card for cash advances, but the option is there if desired. I despise payment processors who tell people what they can do with their money and act like de facto law enforcement for things that aren't even illegal.
Long ago I watched a video of a guy selling gaming dice. He was an entertaining fellow, talking about how his dice were fairer because he hadn't destroyed the vertices. Most manufacturers erode their dice quite heavily in order to give them round edges and eliminate the blemish where they were clipped from the mold.
I grabbed a micrometer, and sure enough, my dice were measurably oblong. Thing is, I tried to determine the length of time I'd need to prove that his dice were fairer via statistics and actual rolling. I realized I'd have to pass the test along to my heirs. Random number generators are like pizza. When they're bad, they're usually still pretty good.
I still bought some of his dice though. They're quite pretty since they have their original facets.
Oh, and if you just need fair d6's you can readily get ahold of casino dice.
The Z2 Force is not tough by any sane metric. I bought one to try out t-mobile, and the display literally got scratched sitting on a cluttered desk waiting to be sold. My Note 4 was pristine after three years of being shuffled around my desk, bed, and in the same pocket as my wallet and favorite pen.
My opinion on this doesn't even matter much. I am "winning" by default thanks to despicable negligence and selfishness on a global scale. For practical purposes I'm just arguing for people to direct their charity to wiser causes.
The main thing with the video was not that I had never seen a carnivore hunting, but that I never internalized things like failed hunts wounding and infecting prey while leaving predators starving. I never imagined animals forming such pitiful and doomed bonds. I never considered what it must be like to exist with no treatment for any disease, no meaningful safety ever, and perpetual food scarcity. They remain forever in a world where any noise could mean a struggle to the death, food is never certain, and diarrhea kills. Humans have the justified hope of technological advances to remove all but existential suffering, and even that might one day be curable. Wildlife changes solely through evolutionary pressures and has no such hope on a species level, much less an individual level.
If one argues that wildlife should be saved because it is beautiful, I don't have much room for rebuttal. Aesthetic value isn't really a thing to be quantified, and anyway I agree that animals are beautiful. Although saving them for that reason alone is the aesthetic equivalent of saying one loves animals right beside the mashed potatoes. I might ask such people if there is a meaningful difference between enjoying the footage of the elephant struggling to survive and enjoying bear baiting, but I can imagine the predictable ways that kind of discussion would devolve.
If one argues that wildlife should be saved because it useful, well, I haven't seen strong evidence that vertebrate species necessary for our civilization are in any danger of vanishing. I haven't researched this topic much though.
If one argues it's compassionate to save wildlife, that is what I think is flat out wrong. Life in nature is nasty, brutish, short, and has no hope of ever changing. Perhaps most animals feel some kind of transcendent joy when waking up in the morning or drinking water or eating food. Perhaps such emotions might balance out the unending grind of survival. I rather doubt they feel such things though. For most of them even sex is not terribly pleasant.
I am opposed to wildlife conservation. I arrived at this opinion for three reasons.
First was I watched a pro-conservation video on TED called "Life lessons from big cats" which had some of the most miserably fucked up wildlife footage I had ever seen. I realized how sanitized all the nature videos I'd watched growing up were, and that the horror I was seeing probably happened all the time in nature.
Second, I used to be very opposed to hunting, but in a forum thread a hunter basically asked me "Do you think there's such a thing as a good death in nature?" In other words, wildlife can expect to die by being torn apart by predators, starving to death over weeks, or from disease. How is a shotgun worse than that? I agreed, and extended this thinking to all wildlife. Animals don't exactly go to "sleep" one day surrounded by loved ones. Wild animals are terrified of every little noise because every little noise really can be their oncoming death. If one cares about animals, is preserving a species to experience ten million years more of fear and horrible death really a compassionate outcome? Humans at least have hope from the advancement of medicine and technology.
Third, yes biodiversity is shrinking, but all that stuff I got taught about the "web of life" is pretty apparently not coming true. So long as we have photosynthesis going on, it looks to me like it makes no difference how many species of shrew or stick bug there are.
Main thing that makes me sad is my opinion puts me in direct opposition to almost everyone I admire. Most people who agree with me on this are the same kind of people who should go drink bleach.
Can you provide a source on that 3-4% number? My understanding is it averaged out to only 1.5%
My point was that they'll either offer a card no one will use since it would literally cost them money, or have to offer such high rewards they'll lose money. Apple play takes in I think 0.15% my understanding is that it's only from a temporary agreement with card issuers.
I don't know if this is a game Apple can compete in for profit. Amex has a 6% back card with annual fee for groceries. You can get 5% back cards for Amazon, gas, and Lowes. Uber has a 4% card for restaurants, and there are multiple 3% restaurant cards. There are multiple cards that amount to 2% on everything everywhere. Most of these cards have sign up bonuses on top of their rewards. All of these are loss leaders to try and entice customers into a particular set of services.
The paradox Apple may face is that a majority of people interested in Apple Pay will have very good credit ratings, and thus be eligible for all of these "loss leader" 2-6% back rewards cards. Sure, they could offer a good percentage towards itunes stuff, but itunes gift cards can already be had at an enormous discount from their face value.
By the way, the kindles are not back lit. They actually diffuse the light across the surface of the e-ink screen. That's actually why they're so easy on the eyes in the dark, it's as if just the kindle was illuminated by a lamp.
I've had four kindles and even a sony ereader way back when they were in the ebook game. I liked them very much, especially Kindle 3. I was very angry with myself when I knocked it off a shelf.
But the kindle app in 'black mode' on an oled screen is like vanilla ice cream for my eyes. It's just plain better, with smoother transitions, perfect blacks, wonderful contrast, and laser sharp lettering. It's also much better at displaying graphics, for displaying the store, and for popping over to some other task I have to do and then back to reading.
I'll always have fond memories of my kindle though.
3 months. I'll sell it and lose about 200. Although I could look at it as gaining 400 back when I swap to a used V30.
It was my second iphone. They've got some nice features. A nice long update cycle. They're willing to tell carriers to go hang themselves as far as bloatware goes. The 3d touch is superlative for editing text and is in every way superior to the android spacebar swipe method.
But the x has a useless 'home bar' ui element that you can't disable. It breaks my immersion every day in so many ways, most especially if I want to read for a few hours in a quiet room. Tap the screen to turn the page, bright white bar at the bottom of the screen. Every. Single. Page. Turn. It would have been nearly impossible for me to research that. Maybe they'll fix it, but I will not bank on it. I could've lived with the iphone's inferior dial based number entry, walled garden, and lack of true widgets, but I won't put up with the damn thing ruining something I spend twenty hours a week doing.
The incredible was my first smartphone. Changed my life. Pity HTCs general lack of oled has stopped me from becoming a repeat customer. I'm currently in the process of moving from an Iphone x to a v30; the U12 expected specs are not tempting for my usage profile.
Well, I'm not an expert on these things, but I think I'd use https, filter the user input, hash and salt the submitted password, start logging, load and escape the fields from the user database, and compare. Or use a third party login service so I wouldn't have to take the blame if something got gorked up, since as I said I'm not an expert on these things.
Passwords are not my concern per se. This is a symptom of endemic categorical incompetence. Plaintext. Holy hell! Plaintext!
I have to accept that my data can't be protected....scratch that, hasn't been protected and has been completely exposed many times for decades. I have to operate with that as the understanding. Security practices are only an option if I can trust service providers to...FUCKING PLAINTEXT!
Ok, that's it. Can anyone recommend a reputable life lock style service? One that isn't owned by the same incompetents who created this endless fuckstorm?
It's clear I need once, since there's no level of care I can take that will compensate for every single service I use being completely untrustworthy.
It is true he misused trademarks, and it is true that it would have been fair to punish him for that. It is not true that Microsoft had a bug up their ass about those trademarks. Their lawyers and witnesses were specifically going on about the "value" of the software. The software had no value without a licence. It is not true that the discs were pirated in any sane sense of the term.
I sometimes talk about cord cutting with my elderly fixed income customers, but it's not a rewarding experience. They find the alternatives confusing, and I haven't figured out a good way to explain things to them. Even just clarifying that cancelling 'cable' is not the same thing as cancelling all services from their cable company involves more time than one would think. Then I find I have to start getting into:
Bandwidth caps: "I like to have the tv on in the background 16 hours a day" Service confusion: "What channels do I watch? I don't know." Lack of a familiar interface: "How do I surf channels?"
What usually breaks me is when they mention in passing that they have a "VIP" bundle. When I have to get into alternative voip services and devices on top of streaming services and devices, it's time for me to give up. At that point I've been clarifying stuff for fifteen minutes and have to help someone else google the right ink for their printer.
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I may have been unfair in one regard. I mean, yes I was in a bad mood and trolling. But more than that I and a lot of of others simply don't see credit card balance as a loan. Yes, it's right there in the name. That's a very fair point. But...I was raised to never ever carry a balance ever. I do mean I was raised that way. My dad taught me that when I was ten years old. It's outside of my worldview to see it as a loan. And maybe that's unfair of me. I know that I've been fortunate in life, at least economically.
Do you know what kind of specific percentages high risk merchants have to pay payment processors? I didn't even know it was a formal category before just now. Is there a legal reason buyer credit rating isn't used to determine eligibility when purchasing from a high risk merchant, or is it a cultural thing?
Your first point is something which all of us should very much keep in mind when dealing with almost any business. All too often I myself forget it. It is wise to do business solely by selfish numbers. If one wants to do good, find a reputable charity. That said, I think the person you're replying to might have been talking about credit unions.
My credit rating is 800 and all my accounts are on full monthly autopay. They are nothing more than intermediaries that take a cut from every transaction. Even aside from that, only a complete idiot thinks that blanket credit denials for an entire category of spending involves any risk assessment.
My main credit card's bank treats it like a cash advance. It is a pretty sensible way to handle high risk buying without acting like dirtbag thugs. No one in their right mind would ever knowingly use a credit card for cash advances, but the option is there if desired. I despise payment processors who tell people what they can do with their money and act like de facto law enforcement for things that aren't even illegal.
I've found that Libre office can interpret Works files, if you need to help someone move to something more modern and free.
Obviously Microsoft Orifice can't because that would require some level of competence.
Long ago I watched a video of a guy selling gaming dice. He was an entertaining fellow, talking about how his dice were fairer because he hadn't destroyed the vertices. Most manufacturers erode their dice quite heavily in order to give them round edges and eliminate the blemish where they were clipped from the mold.
I grabbed a micrometer, and sure enough, my dice were measurably oblong. Thing is, I tried to determine the length of time I'd need to prove that his dice were fairer via statistics and actual rolling. I realized I'd have to pass the test along to my heirs. Random number generators are like pizza. When they're bad, they're usually still pretty good.
I still bought some of his dice though. They're quite pretty since they have their original facets.
Oh, and if you just need fair d6's you can readily get ahold of casino dice.
Well, so much for my belief that food from China will cause cancer if I so much as touch it.
I'm thinking and praying really hard, so there's no need to slam, duplex, or double dirty chairbang.
The Z2 Force is not tough by any sane metric. I bought one to try out t-mobile, and the display literally got scratched sitting on a cluttered desk waiting to be sold. My Note 4 was pristine after three years of being shuffled around my desk, bed, and in the same pocket as my wallet and favorite pen.
My opinion on this doesn't even matter much. I am "winning" by default thanks to despicable negligence and selfishness on a global scale. For practical purposes I'm just arguing for people to direct their charity to wiser causes.
The main thing with the video was not that I had never seen a carnivore hunting, but that I never internalized things like failed hunts wounding and infecting prey while leaving predators starving. I never imagined animals forming such pitiful and doomed bonds. I never considered what it must be like to exist with no treatment for any disease, no meaningful safety ever, and perpetual food scarcity. They remain forever in a world where any noise could mean a struggle to the death, food is never certain, and diarrhea kills. Humans have the justified hope of technological advances to remove all but existential suffering, and even that might one day be curable. Wildlife changes solely through evolutionary pressures and has no such hope on a species level, much less an individual level.
If one argues that wildlife should be saved because it is beautiful, I don't have much room for rebuttal. Aesthetic value isn't really a thing to be quantified, and anyway I agree that animals are beautiful. Although saving them for that reason alone is the aesthetic equivalent of saying one loves animals right beside the mashed potatoes. I might ask such people if there is a meaningful difference between enjoying the footage of the elephant struggling to survive and enjoying bear baiting, but I can imagine the predictable ways that kind of discussion would devolve.
If one argues that wildlife should be saved because it useful, well, I haven't seen strong evidence that vertebrate species necessary for our civilization are in any danger of vanishing. I haven't researched this topic much though.
If one argues it's compassionate to save wildlife, that is what I think is flat out wrong. Life in nature is nasty, brutish, short, and has no hope of ever changing. Perhaps most animals feel some kind of transcendent joy when waking up in the morning or drinking water or eating food. Perhaps such emotions might balance out the unending grind of survival. I rather doubt they feel such things though. For most of them even sex is not terribly pleasant.
I am opposed to wildlife conservation. I arrived at this opinion for three reasons.
First was I watched a pro-conservation video on TED called "Life lessons from big cats" which had some of the most miserably fucked up wildlife footage I had ever seen. I realized how sanitized all the nature videos I'd watched growing up were, and that the horror I was seeing probably happened all the time in nature.
Second, I used to be very opposed to hunting, but in a forum thread a hunter basically asked me "Do you think there's such a thing as a good death in nature?" In other words, wildlife can expect to die by being torn apart by predators, starving to death over weeks, or from disease. How is a shotgun worse than that? I agreed, and extended this thinking to all wildlife. Animals don't exactly go to "sleep" one day surrounded by loved ones. Wild animals are terrified of every little noise because every little noise really can be their oncoming death. If one cares about animals, is preserving a species to experience ten million years more of fear and horrible death really a compassionate outcome? Humans at least have hope from the advancement of medicine and technology.
Third, yes biodiversity is shrinking, but all that stuff I got taught about the "web of life" is pretty apparently not coming true. So long as we have photosynthesis going on, it looks to me like it makes no difference how many species of shrew or stick bug there are.
Main thing that makes me sad is my opinion puts me in direct opposition to almost everyone I admire. Most people who agree with me on this are the same kind of people who should go drink bleach.
Can you provide a source on that 3-4% number? My understanding is it averaged out to only 1.5%
My point was that they'll either offer a card no one will use since it would literally cost them money, or have to offer such high rewards they'll lose money. Apple play takes in I think 0.15% my understanding is that it's only from a temporary agreement with card issuers.
I don't know if this is a game Apple can compete in for profit. Amex has a 6% back card with annual fee for groceries. You can get 5% back cards for Amazon, gas, and Lowes. Uber has a 4% card for restaurants, and there are multiple 3% restaurant cards. There are multiple cards that amount to 2% on everything everywhere. Most of these cards have sign up bonuses on top of their rewards. All of these are loss leaders to try and entice customers into a particular set of services.
The paradox Apple may face is that a majority of people interested in Apple Pay will have very good credit ratings, and thus be eligible for all of these "loss leader" 2-6% back rewards cards. Sure, they could offer a good percentage towards itunes stuff, but itunes gift cards can already be had at an enormous discount from their face value.
I don't know where the money is here for Apple.
By the way, the kindles are not back lit. They actually diffuse the light across the surface of the e-ink screen. That's actually why they're so easy on the eyes in the dark, it's as if just the kindle was illuminated by a lamp.
I've had four kindles and even a sony ereader way back when they were in the ebook game. I liked them very much, especially Kindle 3. I was very angry with myself when I knocked it off a shelf.
But the kindle app in 'black mode' on an oled screen is like vanilla ice cream for my eyes. It's just plain better, with smoother transitions, perfect blacks, wonderful contrast, and laser sharp lettering. It's also much better at displaying graphics, for displaying the store, and for popping over to some other task I have to do and then back to reading.
I'll always have fond memories of my kindle though.
3 months. I'll sell it and lose about 200. Although I could look at it as gaining 400 back when I swap to a used V30.
It was my second iphone. They've got some nice features. A nice long update cycle. They're willing to tell carriers to go hang themselves as far as bloatware goes. The 3d touch is superlative for editing text and is in every way superior to the android spacebar swipe method.
But the x has a useless 'home bar' ui element that you can't disable. It breaks my immersion every day in so many ways, most especially if I want to read for a few hours in a quiet room. Tap the screen to turn the page, bright white bar at the bottom of the screen. Every. Single. Page. Turn. It would have been nearly impossible for me to research that. Maybe they'll fix it, but I will not bank on it. I could've lived with the iphone's inferior dial based number entry, walled garden, and lack of true widgets, but I won't put up with the damn thing ruining something I spend twenty hours a week doing.
The incredible was my first smartphone. Changed my life. Pity HTCs general lack of oled has stopped me from becoming a repeat customer. I'm currently in the process of moving from an Iphone x to a v30; the U12 expected specs are not tempting for my usage profile.
Well, I'm not an expert on these things, but I think I'd use https, filter the user input, hash and salt the submitted password, start logging, load and escape the fields from the user database, and compare. Or use a third party login service so I wouldn't have to take the blame if something got gorked up, since as I said I'm not an expert on these things.
Passwords are not my concern per se. This is a symptom of endemic categorical incompetence. Plaintext. Holy hell! Plaintext!
I have to accept that my data can't be protected....scratch that, hasn't been protected and has been completely exposed many times for decades. I have to operate with that as the understanding. Security practices are only an option if I can trust service providers to...FUCKING PLAINTEXT!
Ok, that's it. Can anyone recommend a reputable life lock style service? One that isn't owned by the same incompetents who created this endless fuckstorm?
It's clear I need once, since there's no level of care I can take that will compensate for every single service I use being completely untrustworthy.
It is true he misused trademarks, and it is true that it would have been fair to punish him for that. It is not true that Microsoft had a bug up their ass about those trademarks. Their lawyers and witnesses were specifically going on about the "value" of the software. The software had no value without a licence. It is not true that the discs were pirated in any sane sense of the term.
These days I won't go to a film if I don't think I'll want to watch it again.
You know, I just realized I don't remember if I have watched Inception more than once.
Thank you, but yes, it's the phone that's wrong. Unicode is an abomination.
I sometimes talk about cord cutting with my elderly fixed income customers, but it's not a rewarding experience. They find the alternatives confusing, and I haven't figured out a good way to explain things to them. Even just clarifying that cancelling 'cable' is not the same thing as cancelling all services from their cable company involves more time than one would think. Then I find I have to start getting into:
Bandwidth caps: "I like to have the tv on in the background 16 hours a day"
Service confusion: "What channels do I watch? I don't know."
Lack of a familiar interface: "How do I surf channels?"
What usually breaks me is when they mention in passing that they have a "VIP" bundle. When I have to get into alternative voip services and devices on top of streaming services and devices, it's time for me to give up. At that point I've been clarifying stuff for fifteen minutes and have to help someone else google the right ink for their printer.