I'm surprised that no one has brought up the idea of the moon as an ideal platform for nuclear weapons that can target any location on earth, from a location that is easily defensible.
I'm no conspiracy theorist, but does anyone seriously think the space race was about national pride or mining rights? The funding for NASA came out of military budgets, and had as a (at least peripheral) purpose, ensuring that either the US controlled the moon's strategic spot at the top of our gravity well, or to block the Soviets from same. Interest probably faltered in the moonshot when the technical feasibility of creating a permanent base and sending armaments was determined to be prohibitive for any single nation.
Cripes, has ANYBODY read RAH's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"?
While I find the $3 double-dip at the back for an ATM withdrawl just as frustrating....TANSTAAFL.
You are certainly free to keep cash under your bed, and say to hell with all the banks. Just because we all live in a "monkey on our backs" debt based economy, does not mean we need to participate.
[Sighs as he signs and sends another check of to CapitalOne.]
On the flip-side, I urge you to design, build and deploy a reasonably reliable nationwide financial transaction processing payment system and support it 24/365. I'd guess a few millions lines of code and about half a billion dollars in hardware should do it, oh and employees to maintain it all, etc. Maybe their fees aren't fair, but well, tough nuggies.
Something worth noting regarding micro-payments:
Remember that each internet transaction also has a fixed overhead cost in terms of bandwidth, hardware and support. This is above and beyond any transaction costs from third parties. I believe Visa usually figures this in the 10 - 12 cent range, and they pro-rate that down considerably with their billions (?) of transactions. This is the reason for the 25 cent fixed fee. A smaller company would have a much larger per-transaction cost.
I've always thought that the only the best dynamic for micropayments would be the one that evolved in television. The parallels are striking. TV started by providing free content, generating revenues by forcing people to watch ads. Then cable TV came around, under which a company collects a monthly fee which it then divvies up (as a lump sum) with it's content providers.
I'm frankly surprised that TLDs haven't already evolved into pay-for-use "content-channels".
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I'm surprised that no one has brought up the idea of the moon as an ideal platform for nuclear weapons that can target any location on earth, from a location that is easily defensible.
I'm no conspiracy theorist, but does anyone seriously think the space race was about national pride or mining rights? The funding for NASA came out of military budgets, and had as a (at least peripheral) purpose, ensuring that either the US controlled the moon's strategic spot at the top of our gravity well, or to block the Soviets from same. Interest probably faltered in the moonshot when the technical feasibility of creating a permanent base and sending armaments was determined to be prohibitive for any single nation.
Cripes, has ANYBODY read RAH's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"?
While I find the $3 double-dip at the back for an ATM withdrawl just as frustrating....TANSTAAFL. You are certainly free to keep cash under your bed, and say to hell with all the banks. Just because we all live in a "monkey on our backs" debt based economy, does not mean we need to participate. [Sighs as he signs and sends another check of to CapitalOne.] On the flip-side, I urge you to design, build and deploy a reasonably reliable nationwide financial transaction processing payment system and support it 24/365. I'd guess a few millions lines of code and about half a billion dollars in hardware should do it, oh and employees to maintain it all, etc. Maybe their fees aren't fair, but well, tough nuggies.
Something worth noting regarding micro-payments: Remember that each internet transaction also has a fixed overhead cost in terms of bandwidth, hardware and support. This is above and beyond any transaction costs from third parties. I believe Visa usually figures this in the 10 - 12 cent range, and they pro-rate that down considerably with their billions (?) of transactions. This is the reason for the 25 cent fixed fee. A smaller company would have a much larger per-transaction cost. I've always thought that the only the best dynamic for micropayments would be the one that evolved in television. The parallels are striking. TV started by providing free content, generating revenues by forcing people to watch ads. Then cable TV came around, under which a company collects a monthly fee which it then divvies up (as a lump sum) with it's content providers. I'm frankly surprised that TLDs haven't already evolved into pay-for-use "content-channels".