I agree with the police and the courts. Police should be protected from recordings from the public. People don't think of the repercussions.
The officers that beat up Rodney King were clearly acting in self defense. There would be no other reason for the many blows with batons. These were upstanding officers. The camera did them injustice because they were clearly in the right. I think Mr. King had a bazooka strung on his back, or maybe it was an M16 under his sock. These are just minor details anyways. These were all things the officers saw and the camera really didn't pick up well anyways.
Tazering teenagers, senior citizens, mentally ill people there's nothing wrong with that.
This video http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4097602514885833865# demonstates that interviews with police officers can easily be taken out of context. They are clearly acting in your best interest. Afterall, in these interviews, they may be able to have you admit to crimes you weren't aware of. This is clearly in your and your neighbor's best interests - it helps keep crime rates down.
Its the consumer psychology that plays the role. Consumers tend to be lazy, want everything right away and shop the same way and at the same places. iTunes deals with all that.
I agree wholehartedly with your statements on the DRM. On the whole, yes, the video media and apps are lock-in DRM style. The music nope. But, most of the retailers sell music next to movies and boxed-TV DVDs. There's probably a few consumers that went into a store to buy that "one" music CD and then turned around a bought a movie. So if you're in the habit of buying your music, movies or TV shows off iTunes, you're pretty much locked in anyways. The answer isn't that the DRM that causes lock-in - it is shopping habits that makes iTunes so convienient there's no reason to go elsewhere.
In this sense, it makes an uphill battle for any other competitor. As you say, $100 isn't going to dissawy most consumers. The only thing that would is iTunes availability on another mobile platform. Its avaiable for Windows desktops and works through Wine, but I don't think any mobile platform is going to iTunes soon (or ever???).
The thing is people get into the habit of buying their music on iTunes. Like they had the habit of buying it in the record store or a big-box like Best Buy or Wal-Mart before it. Habits are just hard to break. There seem to be enough people who like iTunes enough to keep going back.
I prefer getting a physcial CD from the record store or mostly Amazon now. Seems iTunes is having such an effect on the market, coupled probably with piracy and less music interest, that most record shops are cutting back on CDs anyways.
Its not like the supertanker vacuum is going to suck up everything. I think the intention is just to remove some of the contaminants even if it amounts to 1% or 10%. At least its less that would otherwise stay in the water.
I'd like to add to this. Upon first release, the movies are priced (in Canada anyways) at at least $15.99. If they could distribute the movie as you describe, with discount, at $7.99 I think that would be fair. It would probably offer a better margin for the studio and actors than what they make from movie theater sales, and is probably closer to their profit from retail sales. I think the Studios should setup their own shops which would be the distributor of the movie such as buy from paramount.com.
What's wrong with you? Its not about the FBI, CIA, NSA, courts, supoena, eavesdropping, munition or any of that. Look at this list you made up, I think you're paranoid.
Sheesh. I thought this was already obvious.
Its all to protect the good children and to stop the terrorist children.
Jobs probably doesn't care about market share. Well he does, but not to the extent he must have 8% vs 10%.
What Jobs/Apple wants is to try an make themselves a tech hub of a person. Need a cell phone? Buy an Apple. Need a computer? But an Apple. Need an 'ebook' reader? But an iPad. Need an MP3 player..... all the way down to need Music, Movies and TV well since you're already buying Apple everything else, go on iTunes.
It isn't that they are making a considerable profit off everything. But buying Apple everything sure does, especially since for every device they sell you can also buy stuff off iTunes.
I used to work for a cable provider. My satellite office did a damn good job of keeping stellar service customer noticed too. Because it was a large company, some of the other offices didn't try as hard, which kind of let to the company getting a bad rep. Really bad in some respects - because some agents were doing a horrible job in sales and support some didn't care, but most, I'd question their intelligence. I know I spoke with them and I knew why the customer wasn't happy with them.
The problem with the 4 hour time frame is when we'd book an appointment we'd include wether or not the customer wanted additional outlets. Sure enough, because there was a small cost in having it installed, most people didn't choose it at the time of the call. The tech shows up. Instead of one outlet, the customer now wants 3 and two of these outlets are in difficult to install locations. Then again, it could be a new home and they have to find a way to route the cable to the chosen outlet location. The customer wants it NOW or they complain to manager or HQ. This isn't accounted for in the scheduling so they don't have the staffing to get the calls to the other customers. Could they better account for this? Probably.
I've tried to call my local cable provider (different then one I worked for) to get service. The hold time for sales is horrendus. It takes over 2 hours most times to get an agent. A friend had cable hooked up and the terminal wouldn't work properly. He waited on hold about 3 hours each time he called just to speak with an agent. After a few calls, I gave up.
More to this, as an example, some major telcos are providing not only DSL access but *also* provides cell phone service (which most if not now all can access the Internet). And more and more, for arguments' sake, subscriptions for convergence devices like the iPad, Amazon Kindle that are all 'more functional' with Internet.
I wonder if you download MP3s on your PC will your cell be cut off on Internet/data or vice versa. Parents will unfairly have to assume the burden of monitoring their children's Internet access to ensure that they do not download any MP3s (legal or not, to avoid being cut-off). There's also a lot of ISPs that provide unsecured wireless routers with their service. Living in an apartment, its really easy to get free Internet access (yes it constitutes stealing), but that negates that if your router is hacked or improperly secured that anyone can download MP3s from your computer.
There is way too much economic activity (shopping, banking, stock market, personal business, e-mail, applying for jobs, upgrading software) that relies on the Internet. I'd like to think that if a significant amount of Internet users get access cut-off companies like Amazon, Ebay, Dell, Apple and Visa (there are way too many to think of), will see their bottom lines effected. If politicians aren't willing enough to listen to voters, maybe an ass kicking (kissing?) from these companies will far outweigh the schmmozing and political freedoms afforded to the RIAA and MPAA.
Further, about 10 years ago I worked in tech support. The provider at the time, was trying to implement bandwidth caps and had cut off users for high use. There was little in the way of any arbitration or advance notice. It might require something in writing, but if the account were reinstated, it would probably be take over 30 days. They also mentionned that cut-off users names were shared with other ISPs. I'm not sure this is true. Its harder now to find dial-up ISPs and dial up modems. Get cut-off a DSL or Cable only high-speed provider and you only have one of the two to choose from in your neighborhood and you're totally screwed.
I'm all for everyone getting a fair share of the pie (I'm more in favor of Artists getting it), but cutting people of the Internet or threating $100 million lawsuits ain't it.
Its not a solution to the problem, but they should stuff all the BP executives into the leaking pipe. Seriously. At least this is how I feel about the situation.
Someone posted on/. yesterday that engineers from other companies such as Shell and Exxon should be consulting or overseeing the operations. I'd at least like to think that having more engineers experienced in the area would help. If they don't work as a "team" perhaps they can separately draft solution plans.
And, what of the Army/Marine Corps of Engineers. In my mind, these are really smart people that have to think through and implement engineering solutions in battlefields. Surely this mindset would be helpful as well as the fact that this would involve the Government.
There's still a great %age of the American adult population that identifies with a religion, mostly Christian. When you look at "other" religions - Buddhism, Muslim, wikkian and non-religious categories, they are increasing. This of course, doesn't account for teenagers who've made a decision about religion and not able to complete the Census survey. There's no way of telling if these younger people are more or less religious.
To Paraphrase Team America: Bell has been an asshole. We've (Canadians) all been pussys (or beavers;) ). We need to be dicks so we can all fuck Bell. Otherwise we'll all be covered in shit.
Funny, I recall the CRTC saying for many years that they would not regulate the internet. If I recall, they weren't even assigned oversight of the internet so this must be a recent development. Nevertheless, for this to have happened briefcases were probably accidentally left behind over supper and found a new owner.
I'm using TekSavvy. I will remain their customer. Bell will continue to get the smallest possible percentage of my money. I'm going to be screaming bloody murder over this. Not that I care about the $20. I appreciate Bell has a huge network and it ain't easy to administer. I'm starting to think Bell is broken and it can't be fixed. Might a public owned Internet be worth it? There must be a lot of dark fiber across Canada, and if not since the population distribution is mostly symmetrical with the large US cities, it should be easy to get peering or buy US dark fiber for Canadian use.
Technically, don't Canadian Taxpayers own the lines? With all the tax subsidies Bell has been receiving over the years, I think its Bell that owes *us* money.
75 seconds by Apple web-browsing standards sounds like a long time. I seem to recall Mr Jobs pointed out that Flash is the only thing responsible for slowing down the Web on a Mac. Now, I have an iMac G5 and Flash doesn't slow down my experience by 75 seconds. So intstead of changing the TCP/IP stack in OSX, or fixing Safari, I think what would please Apple (in getting faster experience on the Web for the customers) would be to ask Adobe to make a Flash IPV6to4 wrapper for their TCP/IP stack.
I don't even know if this would even be possible, in fact I don't think it is. I leave the challenge to Adobe, and the PR to Apple to explain how Adobe fixed their 'problems'!
I have already accepted I used at least 75 seconds of my web browsing experience to write this post!
This is really pissing me off. This game launches 2 days before Remembrance Day. MW2 launched the day before. I have more than enough respect for veterans and people serving right now, that I'm not going to respect any company that employs such cheap and tasteless marketing tactics. Even if it is the best game ever - they will never see one cent from me for this game nor will I ever play it.
Should they decide to move the release date, I might consider it at some future point. I realize that it is being released Christmas so there is some logical reasoning. It would be welcome to hear from the publisher exactly why this particular date was chosen to launch the game.
I'm kind of inbetween on the issue. I've used 3.1 through to Win7 and OSX. I've found the OS X GUI has some neat features that *Can* help with productivity - file previews of PDFs using coverflow for instance is neat, but it gets cluttered pretty quickly. OS X finder is really nice - I'm hoping someone can clone it as a filemanager for Linux.
I'm using Windows 7 right now which isn't too bad, but I'm getting around to switching to Linux sometime soon. E17 is by-far my favorite GUI out of any OS or shell I've used and I haven't really learned (or spend time) to tweak it as much.
I'm not nor have I been stranded in an airport as a result of this (nor do I know anyone affected) - so I admit I have no appreciation for how much this is costing travelers and how impatient they are getting.
If a plane had crashed this is what would have happened, and since volcano is still active, I hope this doesn't happen:
1) Public total outrage at the airline(s) that had been flying. 2) Even more blame for the airliner that had flow the flight that crashed. The public will blame said airlines' policy and procedures, and probably, the pilot at fault. 3) They will blame the government. 4) The media will surely get involved in the fiasco they'll tear said airline to pieces. 5) Massive lawsuits. 5) And, eventually, the airline will probably have to declare bankruptcy since it won't get enough passengers or will be sued to smithereens.
But all is fair here, if an airliner crashes - regardless of if the ash is the cause (a plane can crash for other reasons), there will be massive litigation, (more unfortunately) people will die, families will be upset, and I argue a few airliners might take too much heat and won't be able to stay in business.
Keep in mind people don't like computers, programs, math or finance. You have to consider that. So I've gone on Wikipedia and did a search on a computer language that produces *minimal* code.
I briefly glanced only at the first sentence from the following page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck) and trimmed the first sentence for length: "The brainfuck programming language is... noted for its extreme minimalism.". See, this is what people want, it keeps things simple.
It think in Canada (where I reside) and the US, there are a large amount of counterfeit 100's floating around in circulation. That's the reason you're having a hard time using them. That and, if you go to buy a $20 book with a $100, with the popularity of debit now, most retailers don't carry that kind of change anymore.
Canada is supposed to go the polymer/plastic bill route since its seen as the higher(st) security bill anywhere.
I would trust the bill as long as it passes the tests. But (my point in making the statement), will a cashier or the store manager? Its all a matter of psychology. Wether or not it appears as though you can't afford to have a bunch of twenties or hundreds in your wallet, which used to be perfectly normal before debit cards, cashiers tend to make extra sure your cash is good.
I think this is brilliant. I try to use cash (withdrawl x amount) and spend that only. The problem is, counterfiting is likely as easy as Visa/Debit fraud. So when you start paying cash for things, you're made to feel like a bloody criminal - they look at you a few times too often, scan the bills under UV light and yadd yada. I'm usually buying stuff in well-dressed attire (not that that matters), but I'm not a homeless guy trying to pass a $100 at a till to buy smokes. This unfortunately are for both large or small purchases (I can certainly understand POV of retailer regardless of amount).
I plan on paying off my VISA soon and once that is done, I'm going to keep a small separate debit account with a different bank, get an ATM only card and use credit for everything else.
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I agree with the police and the courts. Police should be protected from recordings from the public. People don't think of the repercussions.
The officers that beat up Rodney King were clearly acting in self defense. There would be no other reason for the many blows with batons. These were upstanding officers. The camera did them injustice because they were clearly in the right. I think Mr. King had a bazooka strung on his back, or maybe it was an M16 under his sock. These are just minor details anyways. These were all things the officers saw and the camera really didn't pick up well anyways.
Tazering teenagers, senior citizens, mentally ill people there's nothing wrong with that.
This video http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4097602514885833865# demonstates that interviews with police officers can easily be taken out of context. They are clearly acting in your best interest. Afterall, in these interviews, they may be able to have you admit to crimes you weren't aware of. This is clearly in your and your neighbor's best interests - it helps keep crime rates down.
Use this to finally clean your parent's basement.
Its the consumer psychology that plays the role. Consumers tend to be lazy, want everything right away and shop the same way and at the same places. iTunes deals with all that.
I agree wholehartedly with your statements on the DRM. On the whole, yes, the video media and apps are lock-in DRM style. The music nope. But, most of the retailers sell music next to movies and boxed-TV DVDs. There's probably a few consumers that went into a store to buy that "one" music CD and then turned around a bought a movie. So if you're in the habit of buying your music, movies or TV shows off iTunes, you're pretty much locked in anyways. The answer isn't that the DRM that causes lock-in - it is shopping habits that makes iTunes so convienient there's no reason to go elsewhere.
In this sense, it makes an uphill battle for any other competitor. As you say, $100 isn't going to dissawy most consumers. The only thing that would is iTunes availability on another mobile platform. Its avaiable for Windows desktops and works through Wine, but I don't think any mobile platform is going to iTunes soon (or ever???).
The thing is people get into the habit of buying their music on iTunes. Like they had the habit of buying it in the record store or a big-box like Best Buy or Wal-Mart before it. Habits are just hard to break. There seem to be enough people who like iTunes enough to keep going back.
I prefer getting a physcial CD from the record store or mostly Amazon now. Seems iTunes is having such an effect on the market, coupled probably with piracy and less music interest, that most record shops are cutting back on CDs anyways.
Its not like the supertanker vacuum is going to suck up everything. I think the intention is just to remove some of the contaminants even if it amounts to 1% or 10%. At least its less that would otherwise stay in the water.
I'd like to add to this. Upon first release, the movies are priced (in Canada anyways) at at least $15.99. If they could distribute the movie as you describe, with discount, at $7.99 I think that would be fair. It would probably offer a better margin for the studio and actors than what they make from movie theater sales, and is probably closer to their profit from retail sales. I think the Studios should setup their own shops which would be the distributor of the movie such as buy from paramount.com.
What's wrong with you? Its not about the FBI, CIA, NSA, courts, supoena, eavesdropping, munition or any of that. Look at this list you made up, I think you're paranoid.
Sheesh. I thought this was already obvious.
Its all to protect the good children and to stop the terrorist children.
Jobs probably doesn't care about market share. Well he does, but not to the extent he must have 8% vs 10%.
What Jobs/Apple wants is to try an make themselves a tech hub of a person. Need a cell phone? Buy an Apple. Need a computer? But an Apple. Need an 'ebook' reader? But an iPad. Need an MP3 player ..... all the way down to need Music, Movies and TV well since you're already buying Apple everything else, go on iTunes.
It isn't that they are making a considerable profit off everything. But buying Apple everything sure does, especially since for every device they sell you can also buy stuff off iTunes.
I used to work for a cable provider. My satellite office did a damn good job of keeping stellar service customer noticed too. Because it was a large company, some of the other offices didn't try as hard, which kind of let to the company getting a bad rep. Really bad in some respects - because some agents were doing a horrible job in sales and support some didn't care, but most, I'd question their intelligence. I know I spoke with them and I knew why the customer wasn't happy with them.
The problem with the 4 hour time frame is when we'd book an appointment we'd include wether or not the customer wanted additional outlets. Sure enough, because there was a small cost in having it installed, most people didn't choose it at the time of the call. The tech shows up. Instead of one outlet, the customer now wants 3 and two of these outlets are in difficult to install locations. Then again, it could be a new home and they have to find a way to route the cable to the chosen outlet location. The customer wants it NOW or they complain to manager or HQ. This isn't accounted for in the scheduling so they don't have the staffing to get the calls to the other customers. Could they better account for this? Probably.
I've tried to call my local cable provider (different then one I worked for) to get service. The hold time for sales is horrendus. It takes over 2 hours most times to get an agent. A friend had cable hooked up and the terminal wouldn't work properly. He waited on hold about 3 hours each time he called just to speak with an agent. After a few calls, I gave up.
More to this, as an example, some major telcos are providing not only DSL access but *also* provides cell phone service (which most if not now all can access the Internet). And more and more, for arguments' sake, subscriptions for convergence devices like the iPad, Amazon Kindle that are all 'more functional' with Internet.
I wonder if you download MP3s on your PC will your cell be cut off on Internet/data or vice versa. Parents will unfairly have to assume the burden of monitoring their children's Internet access to ensure that they do not download any MP3s (legal or not, to avoid being cut-off). There's also a lot of ISPs that provide unsecured wireless routers with their service. Living in an apartment, its really easy to get free Internet access (yes it constitutes stealing), but that negates that if your router is hacked or improperly secured that anyone can download MP3s from your computer.
There is way too much economic activity (shopping, banking, stock market, personal business, e-mail, applying for jobs, upgrading software) that relies on the Internet. I'd like to think that if a significant amount of Internet users get access cut-off companies like Amazon, Ebay, Dell, Apple and Visa (there are way too many to think of), will see their bottom lines effected. If politicians aren't willing enough to listen to voters, maybe an ass kicking (kissing?) from these companies will far outweigh the schmmozing and political freedoms afforded to the RIAA and MPAA.
Further, about 10 years ago I worked in tech support. The provider at the time, was trying to implement bandwidth caps and had cut off users for high use. There was little in the way of any arbitration or advance notice. It might require something in writing, but if the account were reinstated, it would probably be take over 30 days. They also mentionned that cut-off users names were shared with other ISPs. I'm not sure this is true. Its harder now to find dial-up ISPs and dial up modems. Get cut-off a DSL or Cable only high-speed provider and you only have one of the two to choose from in your neighborhood and you're totally screwed.
I'm all for everyone getting a fair share of the pie (I'm more in favor of Artists getting it), but cutting people of the Internet or threating $100 million lawsuits ain't it.
Its not a solution to the problem, but they should stuff all the BP executives into the leaking pipe. Seriously. At least this is how I feel about the situation.
Someone posted on /. yesterday that engineers from other companies such as Shell and Exxon should be consulting or overseeing the operations. I'd at least like to think that having more engineers experienced in the area would help. If they don't work as a "team" perhaps they can separately draft solution plans.
And, what of the Army/Marine Corps of Engineers. In my mind, these are really smart people that have to think through and implement engineering solutions in battlefields. Surely this mindset would be helpful as well as the fact that this would involve the Government.
I don't know about Texas, but I went to the US census site really quickly http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/population/religion.html.
There's still a great %age of the American adult population that identifies with a religion, mostly Christian. When you look at "other" religions - Buddhism, Muslim, wikkian and non-religious categories, they are increasing. This of course, doesn't account for teenagers who've made a decision about religion and not able to complete the Census survey. There's no way of telling if these younger people are more or less religious.
To Paraphrase Team America: ;) ). We need to be dicks so we can all fuck Bell. Otherwise we'll all be covered in shit.
Bell has been an asshole. We've (Canadians) all been pussys (or beavers
Funny, I recall the CRTC saying for many years that they would not regulate the internet. If I recall, they weren't even assigned oversight of the internet so this must be a recent development. Nevertheless, for this to have happened briefcases were probably accidentally left behind over supper and found a new owner.
I'm using TekSavvy. I will remain their customer. Bell will continue to get the smallest possible percentage of my money. I'm going to be screaming bloody murder over this. Not that I care about the $20. I appreciate Bell has a huge network and it ain't easy to administer. I'm starting to think Bell is broken and it can't be fixed. Might a public owned Internet be worth it? There must be a lot of dark fiber across Canada, and if not since the population distribution is mostly symmetrical with the large US cities, it should be easy to get peering or buy US dark fiber for Canadian use.
Technically, don't Canadian Taxpayers own the lines? With all the tax subsidies Bell has been receiving over the years, I think its Bell that owes *us* money.
75 seconds by Apple web-browsing standards sounds like a long time. I seem to recall Mr Jobs pointed out that Flash is the only thing responsible for slowing down the Web on a Mac. Now, I have an iMac G5 and Flash doesn't slow down my experience by 75 seconds. So intstead of changing the TCP/IP stack in OSX, or fixing Safari, I think what would please Apple (in getting faster experience on the Web for the customers) would be to ask Adobe to make a Flash IPV6to4 wrapper for their TCP/IP stack.
I don't even know if this would even be possible, in fact I don't think it is. I leave the challenge to Adobe, and the PR to Apple to explain how Adobe fixed their 'problems'!
I have already accepted I used at least 75 seconds of my web browsing experience to write this post!
This is really pissing me off. This game launches 2 days before Remembrance Day. MW2 launched the day before. I have more than enough respect for veterans and people serving right now, that I'm not going to respect any company that employs such cheap and tasteless marketing tactics. Even if it is the best game ever - they will never see one cent from me for this game nor will I ever play it.
Should they decide to move the release date, I might consider it at some future point. I realize that it is being released Christmas so there is some logical reasoning. It would be welcome to hear from the publisher exactly why this particular date was chosen to launch the game.
iGanja and iCrack are next on the iApprove list.
Ur post is 742 chars - mine 140 char. If u stopped at "they can ask me" it would have made the point. Please save Slashdot space for Haiku.
I'm kind of inbetween on the issue. I've used 3.1 through to Win7 and OSX. I've found the OS X GUI has some neat features that *Can* help with productivity - file previews of PDFs using coverflow for instance is neat, but it gets cluttered pretty quickly. OS X finder is really nice - I'm hoping someone can clone it as a filemanager for Linux.
I'm using Windows 7 right now which isn't too bad, but I'm getting around to switching to Linux sometime soon. E17 is by-far my favorite GUI out of any OS or shell I've used and I haven't really learned (or spend time) to tweak it as much.
I'm not nor have I been stranded in an airport as a result of this (nor do I know anyone affected) - so I admit I have no appreciation for how much this is costing travelers and how impatient they are getting.
If a plane had crashed this is what would have happened, and since volcano is still active, I hope this doesn't happen:
1) Public total outrage at the airline(s) that had been flying.
2) Even more blame for the airliner that had flow the flight that crashed. The public will blame said airlines' policy and procedures, and probably, the pilot at fault.
3) They will blame the government.
4) The media will surely get involved in the fiasco they'll tear said airline to pieces.
5) Massive lawsuits.
5) And, eventually, the airline will probably have to declare bankruptcy since it won't get enough passengers or will be sued to smithereens.
But all is fair here, if an airliner crashes - regardless of if the ash is the cause (a plane can crash for other reasons), there will be massive litigation, (more unfortunately) people will die, families will be upset, and I argue a few airliners might take too much heat and won't be able to stay in business.
Keep in mind people don't like computers, programs, math or finance. You have to consider that. So I've gone on Wikipedia and did a search on a computer language that produces *minimal* code.
I briefly glanced only at the first sentence from the following page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck) and trimmed the first sentence for length: "The brainfuck programming language is ... noted for its extreme minimalism.". See, this is what people want, it keeps things simple.
It think in Canada (where I reside) and the US, there are a large amount of counterfeit 100's floating around in circulation. That's the reason you're having a hard time using them. That and, if you go to buy a $20 book with a $100, with the popularity of debit now, most retailers don't carry that kind of change anymore.
Canada is supposed to go the polymer/plastic bill route since its seen as the higher(st) security bill anywhere.
I would trust the bill as long as it passes the tests. But (my point in making the statement), will a cashier or the store manager? Its all a matter of psychology. Wether or not it appears as though you can't afford to have a bunch of twenties or hundreds in your wallet, which used to be perfectly normal before debit cards, cashiers tend to make extra sure your cash is good.
I think this is brilliant. I try to use cash (withdrawl x amount) and spend that only. The problem is, counterfiting is likely as easy as Visa/Debit fraud. So when you start paying cash for things, you're made to feel like a bloody criminal - they look at you a few times too often, scan the bills under UV light and yadd yada. I'm usually buying stuff in well-dressed attire (not that that matters), but I'm not a homeless guy trying to pass a $100 at a till to buy smokes. This unfortunately are for both large or small purchases (I can certainly understand POV of retailer regardless of amount).
I plan on paying off my VISA soon and once that is done, I'm going to keep a small separate debit account with a different bank, get an ATM only card and use credit for everything else.
My bad recollection of the local geography. Guess I didn't read the wiki post much huh? ;)