Call me skeptical, but this sounds like 100% bullshit. Hundreds of thousands of companies have, in the past day and a half, switched their entire office infrastructure to a web-based one? Not likely.
That's the whole thing. I seriously doubt that Gates and Jobs hate each other. "Grown ups" just don't think like that. They're competitors, but that's no reason they can't be professional, or even genuinely friendly towards each other. This isn't a fight to the death. It's just business. It's even quite common for people to have serious philosophical differences to still be friendly with each other. It's a maturity thing.
Sounds like Cox and ESR both have the maturity level of pre-pubescent 12 year olds, and I'm terribly embarrassed for both of them, because I'm sure that they don't even realize how ridiculous they look, no matter what their past accomplishments have been.
Eh, it's not so bad. I haven't found anything that doesn't work, as of yet. Of course, everything will work much better when "official" Vista versions come out, especially considering all of the under-the-covers changes (drivers, etc.), but for right now, for home use, I haven't run into any show stoppers. I can tell ya, though... if Sid Meier's Pirates! didn't run on my GF's new Vista laptop, she would've sent that thing back faster than you can say "Vista!".
No, I didn't know that. But, I'll be trying it out tonight. GF has a laptop with 1 GB RAM, which isn't bad, but I've got like 2 or 3 1 GB USB drives laying around, and I'm gonna see what happens. Worst case scenario: it slows things down and I take 'em out!
I don't think it's odd at all. In fact, I think it's a great idea. Lots of people have extra flash thingies hanging around, and most new machines come with ungodly numbers of USB ports (I just got a refurbished Dell Optiplex, and it has *8* USB ports!). When I get home to play with my GF's new Vista laptop, I'm going to throw in the few flash drives I have lying around and see if it makes a difference. If it does, then I'll probably just get some cheap (or free) flash drives, and stick 'em all in, since the things are damn near free promotional items now, and laptop ram is still very expensive.
A few hundred bucks for software is nothing compared with having to hire an admin to take care of the stuff. Unless you have a good sized company with an existing IT staff, outsourcing this stuff is generally the safest and cheapest way to go.
"With no code changes"? And it works? Call me skeptical, but I'll believe it only after I see it. This seems a bit far fetched, considering how tied to Windows Visual Basic is. I use VB6 daily, and it would be great if that ran smoothly under Linux, but this project only works with "VB 8.0", so I'm curious to hear if this thing actually works.
That's nice and all, but the legal structure of a company is one of the LAST considerations that one should worry about when starting a company. It's a simple decision, and it's one best made by your CPA, anyway. Figure out how to turn a profit first. The legal stuff will fall into place later.
The best one I've seen is inc.com. It's got real articles, written by real people with real experience running real companies (as opposed to people whose only "business" is sucking VC's dry).
Every single mechanism with moving parts will fail. It's just a matter of when. In a few years, when everybody is using solid state drives, people will look back and shake their heads, wondering why we were using spinning magnetic platters to hold all of our critical data for such a long time.
The "sweet spot" is as much as you can stick in there. ANY modern computer runs faster with more RAM. I'm just saying that it runs just fine for me with 1 MB RAM (and XP is just fine with 512 MB RAM).
WOW! Where's your store? I know how to get fucks like you fined up to $50,000 for refusing to complete a transaction. And, you do have a contractual obligation to accept my VISA/MC if you are displaying the logo. Stores around here who got "The Letter" know it was because of a complaint that I filed, and ALL of them still do business with me -- just no ID required.
Actually, I'd just trespass you from the store. End of story.
Benchmarks, schmenchmarks. My PC's are loaded up with all kinds of heavy, heavy, heavy business software. I'm saying that 512 MB RAM works fine for me. All benchmarks do is compare apples vs. apples. They can't tell you what a "sweet spot" is because that's an arbitrary basket of applications that are running.
The guy who says that 4 GB is "optimum" for Vista also says that 2 GB is optimum for XP. I don't know where he gets that, because all of my XP machines run just fine on 512 MB RAM. By using that logic, 1 GB should be just fine for Vista (which is what I've seen).
I gotta disagree. I just used Vista last night for the first time on my GF's new laptop with 1 gig RAM, and it was just fine. Even with the souped up interface, it seemed snappy. I was a bit worried from all of this kind of anti-hype hype, but it was just fine. I'd be happy using it with 1 gig RAM. I'd say that it was a smidgen slower than XP would be, but then again, I didn't try turning off the super-slick Apple-esqe "Aero" interface, either (she likes it, I still use Windows Classic on all of my XP boxes).
Even then... security these days is so much more complicated than it was even 5 years ago... I'd be hesitant to bring all of that in house unless I had a hefty IT staff, with one or two people JUST handling the constant security issues as they arrive.
Besides, even if we brought it back in-house, we still don't get much more assurance that the credit cards we take are valid. What do you gain by bringing it in house, anyway?
I work in a bit bigger business than that so we run the cards ourselves
I started doing that, but then security on our end became too hard to deal with (I'm the IT guy, the owner, the accountant, etc.). It made more business sense to offload all of our hosting and our handling of credit cards to the professionals.
Legally? No, of course not. You're not breaking any laws. A card member agreement doesn't make something a crime. But you can sign away your rights to do a lot of things in a contract in exchange for the benefit of accepting cards and that's what you chose to do. You're agreeing not to turn away MasterCard customers specifically for trying to use their MC in a way you may not like at the price of possibly losing your ability to accept cards.
That would be just fine. We check ID's to prevent chargebacks. If MC gets upset at us for checking ID's to prevent chargebacks which we're liable for, then I wouldn't want to accept MC in the first place. I have to imagine that most merchants feel the same.
I would suggest you do, especially as a business owner with a lot to lose. It certainly seems cavalier not to. It's not hard even, I read all the fine print and Privacy Notices and countless little pamphlets I'm sent by banks and investments, etc. I can't generally change onerous terms and conditions, but at least I know what I'm getting into and what written word I can fall back on if I need to.
You're spinning your wheels. You can read whatever you'd like, and they can print whatever they'd like, but none of it holds any water if it's not legal in the first place. The reality is that the life of a small merchant is so hectic, that there's really no point in reading literally hundreds of pages of legal-speak, especially if you have no idea how valid it is. I'd bet a lot of money that most small businesses are in the same boat.
It's interesting that you've built this scenario of me being a jerk and "abusing employees", especially when I've explained multiple times in this thread that I explain it quickly and don't like to make a scene or inconvenience. I guess it's just easier to villify others.
No. We do it to protect us AND the cardholders. Somebody nitpicking based on some tiny legal-ese for no particular reason other than to be an annoyance is well... an annoyance, and in all likelihood, also going to be a PITA about many other things (ie: this dog collar says it goes to 12 inches, and I measured, and it only goes to 11 7/8"). Customers like that are generally not worth doing business with, and we give them directions to our competition and suggest that they shop there. Big box stores don't care... you're just another number, and the poor clerks have no idea what's going on, anyway. But, I *do* care, and I would take that as abuse towards my employees, which I don't allow.
We can refuse service to ANYBODY for ANY REASON unless it's based on racial/religious stuff. No card member agreement trumps that. I've refused service to people just for being assholes (and I will continue to do so). That's completely and totally in my rights as a merchant. If somebody refuses to show ID with their credit card, I will ask them to pay cash or personally escort them out of my store and call the police because I will suspect that they are using a stolen card. I've never had that happen, but that is what I will do if it ever does happen.
And no, I haven't read the 150 page, single spaced 8 point font agreement that my merchant banks have sent me. And no, I haven't paid an attorney many thousands of dollars to do so for me. There's law, and then there's reality. The reality is that Visa/MC isn't going to cut off a merchant for asking to see ID. The reality is that eventually, you won't be able to buy anything in your area with your credit card because you're being a jerk and you're abusing the store and the employees.
If you're selling online, and you're using the merchant bank's gateway software, then in all reality, there's nothing else the merchant can do, other than refuse to ship to countries in Africa and Asia (which I now do). The merchant doesn't get any credit card info, except for the last 4 digits (if that) for tracking down problems later in the payment process. At least online, most merchants only get information from the merchant bank saying, "Yes, we've accepted payment for this order, and we'll pay you". That's supposed to be the job of the merchant bank, anyway.
Therefore, those companies are able to charge less for the same goods, and thrive. Those companies that are sloppy will be hurt, possibly to the point of going out of business.
Not at all true. As has been mentioned many times in this thread, the merchant can do everything *perfectly* and still get fucked. My sis runs a mail order business. The cards go through her merchant gateway (which she pays through the nose for), the security checks go through, and she's STILL stiffed for payments on a regular basis. There's really nothing that merchants can do.
You're 100% wrong. I AM a small merchant, and I haven't had to deal with asshats like you before (we deal with jerks... just not in this way). I would be happy to ask you not to come back to the store if you threw a tizzy about us asking for your ID. It's not worth the risk to us to keep assholes happy.
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Call me skeptical, but this sounds like 100% bullshit. Hundreds of thousands of companies have, in the past day and a half, switched their entire office infrastructure to a web-based one? Not likely.
If you call this "spiraling downward", I can only hope that my company could one day "spiral downward" at a similar pace.
That's the whole thing. I seriously doubt that Gates and Jobs hate each other. "Grown ups" just don't think like that. They're competitors, but that's no reason they can't be professional, or even genuinely friendly towards each other. This isn't a fight to the death. It's just business. It's even quite common for people to have serious philosophical differences to still be friendly with each other. It's a maturity thing.
Sounds like Cox and ESR both have the maturity level of pre-pubescent 12 year olds, and I'm terribly embarrassed for both of them, because I'm sure that they don't even realize how ridiculous they look, no matter what their past accomplishments have been.
Eh, it's not so bad. I haven't found anything that doesn't work, as of yet. Of course, everything will work much better when "official" Vista versions come out, especially considering all of the under-the-covers changes (drivers, etc.), but for right now, for home use, I haven't run into any show stoppers. I can tell ya, though... if Sid Meier's Pirates! didn't run on my GF's new Vista laptop, she would've sent that thing back faster than you can say "Vista!".
No, I didn't know that. But, I'll be trying it out tonight. GF has a laptop with 1 GB RAM, which isn't bad, but I've got like 2 or 3 1 GB USB drives laying around, and I'm gonna see what happens. Worst case scenario: it slows things down and I take 'em out!
I don't think it's odd at all. In fact, I think it's a great idea. Lots of people have extra flash thingies hanging around, and most new machines come with ungodly numbers of USB ports (I just got a refurbished Dell Optiplex, and it has *8* USB ports!). When I get home to play with my GF's new Vista laptop, I'm going to throw in the few flash drives I have lying around and see if it makes a difference. If it does, then I'll probably just get some cheap (or free) flash drives, and stick 'em all in, since the things are damn near free promotional items now, and laptop ram is still very expensive.
I wish that the quote had said "Guantanamo" instead of "Mexico".
A few hundred bucks for software is nothing compared with having to hire an admin to take care of the stuff. Unless you have a good sized company with an existing IT staff, outsourcing this stuff is generally the safest and cheapest way to go.
"With no code changes"? And it works? Call me skeptical, but I'll believe it only after I see it. This seems a bit far fetched, considering how tied to Windows Visual Basic is. I use VB6 daily, and it would be great if that ran smoothly under Linux, but this project only works with "VB 8.0", so I'm curious to hear if this thing actually works.
That's nice and all, but the legal structure of a company is one of the LAST considerations that one should worry about when starting a company. It's a simple decision, and it's one best made by your CPA, anyway. Figure out how to turn a profit first. The legal stuff will fall into place later.
The best one I've seen is inc.com. It's got real articles, written by real people with real experience running real companies (as opposed to people whose only "business" is sucking VC's dry).
Every single mechanism with moving parts will fail. It's just a matter of when. In a few years, when everybody is using solid state drives, people will look back and shake their heads, wondering why we were using spinning magnetic platters to hold all of our critical data for such a long time.
The "sweet spot" is as much as you can stick in there. ANY modern computer runs faster with more RAM. I'm just saying that it runs just fine for me with 1 MB RAM (and XP is just fine with 512 MB RAM).
WOW! Where's your store? I know how to get fucks like you fined up to $50,000 for refusing to complete a transaction. And, you do have a contractual obligation to accept my VISA/MC if you are displaying the logo. Stores around here who got "The Letter" know it was because of a complaint that I filed, and ALL of them still do business with me -- just no ID required.
Actually, I'd just trespass you from the store. End of story.
Benchmarks, schmenchmarks. My PC's are loaded up with all kinds of heavy, heavy, heavy business software. I'm saying that 512 MB RAM works fine for me. All benchmarks do is compare apples vs. apples. They can't tell you what a "sweet spot" is because that's an arbitrary basket of applications that are running.
No, I don't play games on PC's. Just work. Games are what the PS2 and 3 are for.
The guy who says that 4 GB is "optimum" for Vista also says that 2 GB is optimum for XP. I don't know where he gets that, because all of my XP machines run just fine on 512 MB RAM. By using that logic, 1 GB should be just fine for Vista (which is what I've seen).
I gotta disagree. I just used Vista last night for the first time on my GF's new laptop with 1 gig RAM, and it was just fine. Even with the souped up interface, it seemed snappy. I was a bit worried from all of this kind of anti-hype hype, but it was just fine. I'd be happy using it with 1 gig RAM. I'd say that it was a smidgen slower than XP would be, but then again, I didn't try turning off the super-slick Apple-esqe "Aero" interface, either (she likes it, I still use Windows Classic on all of my XP boxes).
Even then... security these days is so much more complicated than it was even 5 years ago... I'd be hesitant to bring all of that in house unless I had a hefty IT staff, with one or two people JUST handling the constant security issues as they arrive.
Besides, even if we brought it back in-house, we still don't get much more assurance that the credit cards we take are valid. What do you gain by bringing it in house, anyway?
I work in a bit bigger business than that so we run the cards ourselves
I started doing that, but then security on our end became too hard to deal with (I'm the IT guy, the owner, the accountant, etc.). It made more business sense to offload all of our hosting and our handling of credit cards to the professionals.
Legally? No, of course not. You're not breaking any laws. A card member agreement doesn't make something a crime. But you can sign away your rights to do a lot of things in a contract in exchange for the benefit of accepting cards and that's what you chose to do. You're agreeing not to turn away MasterCard customers specifically for trying to use their MC in a way you may not like at the price of possibly losing your ability to accept cards.
That would be just fine. We check ID's to prevent chargebacks. If MC gets upset at us for checking ID's to prevent chargebacks which we're liable for, then I wouldn't want to accept MC in the first place. I have to imagine that most merchants feel the same.
I would suggest you do, especially as a business owner with a lot to lose. It certainly seems cavalier not to. It's not hard even, I read all the fine print and Privacy Notices and countless little pamphlets I'm sent by banks and investments, etc. I can't generally change onerous terms and conditions, but at least I know what I'm getting into and what written word I can fall back on if I need to.
You're spinning your wheels. You can read whatever you'd like, and they can print whatever they'd like, but none of it holds any water if it's not legal in the first place. The reality is that the life of a small merchant is so hectic, that there's really no point in reading literally hundreds of pages of legal-speak, especially if you have no idea how valid it is. I'd bet a lot of money that most small businesses are in the same boat.
It's interesting that you've built this scenario of me being a jerk and "abusing employees", especially when I've explained multiple times in this thread that I explain it quickly and don't like to make a scene or inconvenience. I guess it's just easier to villify others.
No. We do it to protect us AND the cardholders. Somebody nitpicking based on some tiny legal-ese for no particular reason other than to be an annoyance is well... an annoyance, and in all likelihood, also going to be a PITA about many other things (ie: this dog collar says it goes to 12 inches, and I measured, and it only goes to 11 7/8"). Customers like that are generally not worth doing business with, and we give them directions to our competition and suggest that they shop there. Big box stores don't care... you're just another number, and the poor clerks have no idea what's going on, anyway. But, I *do* care, and I would take that as abuse towards my employees, which I don't allow.
We can refuse service to ANYBODY for ANY REASON unless it's based on racial/religious stuff. No card member agreement trumps that. I've refused service to people just for being assholes (and I will continue to do so). That's completely and totally in my rights as a merchant. If somebody refuses to show ID with their credit card, I will ask them to pay cash or personally escort them out of my store and call the police because I will suspect that they are using a stolen card. I've never had that happen, but that is what I will do if it ever does happen.
And no, I haven't read the 150 page, single spaced 8 point font agreement that my merchant banks have sent me. And no, I haven't paid an attorney many thousands of dollars to do so for me. There's law, and then there's reality. The reality is that Visa/MC isn't going to cut off a merchant for asking to see ID. The reality is that eventually, you won't be able to buy anything in your area with your credit card because you're being a jerk and you're abusing the store and the employees.
If you're selling online, and you're using the merchant bank's gateway software, then in all reality, there's nothing else the merchant can do, other than refuse to ship to countries in Africa and Asia (which I now do). The merchant doesn't get any credit card info, except for the last 4 digits (if that) for tracking down problems later in the payment process. At least online, most merchants only get information from the merchant bank saying, "Yes, we've accepted payment for this order, and we'll pay you". That's supposed to be the job of the merchant bank, anyway.
Therefore, those companies are able to charge less for the same goods, and thrive. Those companies that are sloppy will be hurt, possibly to the point of going out of business.
Not at all true. As has been mentioned many times in this thread, the merchant can do everything *perfectly* and still get fucked. My sis runs a mail order business. The cards go through her merchant gateway (which she pays through the nose for), the security checks go through, and she's STILL stiffed for payments on a regular basis. There's really nothing that merchants can do.
You're 100% wrong. I AM a small merchant, and I haven't had to deal with asshats like you before (we deal with jerks... just not in this way). I would be happy to ask you not to come back to the store if you threw a tizzy about us asking for your ID. It's not worth the risk to us to keep assholes happy.