I own a small business and recently switched to VeriSign as my credit card processor.
I've actually had a great experience with them so far. They have excellent filters for blocking fraudulent orders (before switching, almost 10% of our orders were fraudulent), and the customer service has been excellent.
The payment services are basically a middle-man to your merchant bank. The customer is sent to VeriSign, they enter their payment information, VeriSign verifies the address, zip code, and CSC (three numbers on the back of the card). If all is well, they send the transaction through to your merchant bank. Your merchant bank then deposits the funds directly into your personal or business account.
Along the way they each take a small chunk of the transaction, and you also have to pay monthly fees to both VeriSign and to your merchant bank.
Taking credit cards in addition to PayPal definitely increased our sales. I can see why they want to merge this with PayPal, making it a much more versatile payment processing solution.
I run a small software company, and our main customers are webmasters who want to sell their own software. A very niche market (but a lot of fun!).
About a year ago I signed up with Google AdSense to offset advertising costs from Google AdWords and to give some value to traffic that would otherwise visit the site without purchasing anything.
The traffic isn't particularly heavy since it's such a niche market. However, I still manage to make about $60-$100 per month with Adsense.
Obviously, that's not nearly enough to live on. However, I can see how a blog has qualities that would make it very profitable.
For example, a blog has constantly changing content that grows every day. Each time there is a new entry it creates an opportunity for more links in from search engines. Those entries continue to be indexed by search engines long after they're written, so each day the blog has more and more potential.
Because blogs are always changing they have the potential for daily visits from dedicated readers, and those readers have an incentive to support the blog by visiting it's advertisers.
If a blogger were to choose subjects based on high-value keywords (which they could research by signing up for Google AdWords but not actually purchasing advertising) they could expect at least a few dollars per click.
I can definitely see the potential in blogs.
Now, please excuse me, I'm off to start my blog about high quality diamonds.
I'm not convinced that this exploit really exists. If there is an exploit, I'm not sure I believe that the linked instructions are correct.
First of all, people started wondering if something was wrong when they noticed level 30 players in Maraudon, a level 45+ area.
That is suspicious.
Then, they noticed them cycling between locations repeatedly.
Again, suspicious.
But the "instructions" that this article links to say it can be done in The Deadmines, which is a level 20+ instance.
If it can be done in the deadmines, then why bother going to an area like Maraudon at level 30 where you are likely to be killed?
In addition, it is suspicious that this has to be done "early in the morning after a reset" in order for it to work. Convenient to dissuade people from testing it.
A lot of people are treating this as fact this morning, but no one can actually log in to try it for themselves because the servers are down for maintenance.
The supposed source of the exploit is http://www.gamebugs.org. Take a look at their public forums where everyone is writing "please activate my account!!!" messages. A number of messages on the official WoW forums list the gamebugs.org URL in the subject line (very convenient for them, don't you think?).
Here is a link to a more detailed thread on the official forums:
What's with all these open door analogies? Haven't we been over this before?
Think of it this way:
Whenever you connect to a website you are connecting to another person's computer using a common protocol. The only reason you can see this is because you're doing it right now. You don't have explicit permission from the owner of the remote computer to access their website, so how do you know you're allowed to access it?
You know you're allowed because the website doesn't require authentication.
That is the only way to determine the intent of the person hosting the website: whether or not they require authentication.
The same can be said of wireless connections. There are certainly many free wireless access points, and they all use a common protocol. So, how do you infer the intent of the access point's owner? You see whether or not they require authentication.
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I own a small business and recently switched to VeriSign as my credit card processor.
I've actually had a great experience with them so far. They have excellent filters for blocking fraudulent orders (before switching, almost 10% of our orders were fraudulent), and the customer service has been excellent.
The payment services are basically a middle-man to your merchant bank. The customer is sent to VeriSign, they enter their payment information, VeriSign verifies the address, zip code, and CSC (three numbers on the back of the card). If all is well, they send the transaction through to your merchant bank. Your merchant bank then deposits the funds directly into your personal or business account.
Along the way they each take a small chunk of the transaction, and you also have to pay monthly fees to both VeriSign and to your merchant bank.
Taking credit cards in addition to PayPal definitely increased our sales. I can see why they want to merge this with PayPal, making it a much more versatile payment processing solution.
I run a small software company, and our main customers are webmasters who want to sell their own software. A very niche market (but a lot of fun!).
About a year ago I signed up with Google AdSense to offset advertising costs from Google AdWords and to give some value to traffic that would otherwise visit the site without purchasing anything.
The traffic isn't particularly heavy since it's such a niche market. However, I still manage to make about $60-$100 per month with Adsense.
Obviously, that's not nearly enough to live on. However, I can see how a blog has qualities that would make it very profitable.
For example, a blog has constantly changing content that grows every day. Each time there is a new entry it creates an opportunity for more links in from search engines. Those entries continue to be indexed by search engines long after they're written, so each day the blog has more and more potential.
Because blogs are always changing they have the potential for daily visits from dedicated readers, and those readers have an incentive to support the blog by visiting it's advertisers.
If a blogger were to choose subjects based on high-value keywords (which they could research by signing up for Google AdWords but not actually purchasing advertising) they could expect at least a few dollars per click.
I can definitely see the potential in blogs.
Now, please excuse me, I'm off to start my blog about high quality diamonds.
In my (not so) humble opinion the law should treat tail-gaters as harshly as drunk drivers.
:)
Let's not forget about the scourge of my existence: slow people in the fast lane. They're just asking to be tailgated.
Now all we need is a device the searches for slow people and blinds them with a focused ray of light, forcing them off the road.
Imagine there's no countries.
It isn't hard to do.
Nothing to kill or die for.
No religion, too.
Imagine all the people
living life in peace...
You may say I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one.
I hope some day you'll join us.
And the world will live as one.
Sorry, here is a link to the first page of the thread I linked to above:
w ow-dungeons&T=89153&P=1
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?FN=
I'm not convinced that this exploit really exists. If there is an exploit, I'm not sure I believe that the linked instructions are correct.
w ow-dungeons&T=89153&P=7
First of all, people started wondering if something was wrong when they noticed level 30 players in Maraudon, a level 45+ area.
That is suspicious.
Then, they noticed them cycling between locations repeatedly.
Again, suspicious.
But the "instructions" that this article links to say it can be done in The Deadmines, which is a level 20+ instance.
If it can be done in the deadmines, then why bother going to an area like Maraudon at level 30 where you are likely to be killed?
In addition, it is suspicious that this has to be done "early in the morning after a reset" in order for it to work. Convenient to dissuade people from testing it.
A lot of people are treating this as fact this morning, but no one can actually log in to try it for themselves because the servers are down for maintenance.
The supposed source of the exploit is http://www.gamebugs.org. Take a look at their public forums where everyone is writing "please activate my account!!!" messages. A number of messages on the official WoW forums list the gamebugs.org URL in the subject line (very convenient for them, don't you think?).
Here is a link to a more detailed thread on the official forums:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?FN=
What's with all these open door analogies? Haven't we been over this before?
Think of it this way:
Whenever you connect to a website you are connecting to another person's computer using a common protocol. The only reason you can see this is because you're doing it right now. You don't have explicit permission from the owner of the remote computer to access their website, so how do you know you're allowed to access it?
You know you're allowed because the website doesn't require authentication.
That is the only way to determine the intent of the person hosting the website: whether or not they require authentication.
The same can be said of wireless connections. There are certainly many free wireless access points, and they all use a common protocol. So, how do you infer the intent of the access point's owner? You see whether or not they require authentication.