Yeah, well everyone was talking like the NPC was going to be there, and I got carried away.
And they will hold it in some room, I don't evern know if it is the main room that all those great NPC meetings are held in nowadays. Those were the best thing NPR ever did. I took lunch late to hear those.
Give it to me without a hinge. Oh, except for the detachable keyboard.
Wait, it's a Lenovo S10-3t.
No, it's a Lenovo IdeaPad U1.
Wait, I'm so confused...
No I'm not. The U1 is interesting. Just give me an iPad with an attachable keyboard. The S10-3t (doesn't that remind you of the XR4Ti?) is very close. I need a little more screen...
Obama's NPR seems to have differed slightly from Bush's 2002 NPR. How it differs is important. It limits contingency plans for nuclear strikes against other states to Iran and North Korea. Very magnanimous of him. It does however rule out attacks against states that are signatories of the NPT. Much more specific and limited than Bush's NPR.
Having a policy is not the same as exercising every component of it. There's more to this.
To be more specific, the Bush doctrine might permit a nuclear response to other types of WMDs. We may want the felxibility, but Obama is willing to forego that, at least in writing.
For the record, I'm in favor of a concerted effort to eliminate nuclear weapons. We should lead the way, pay for the dismantling and storage of nuclear weapons material, and we should press this to ostracize the few states that will refuse to participate. Will the Russians? Will the Chinese?
The real question is will Israel? They don't really even admit to having any, so this would be fun. But from a position of disarmament, we have a better place to compel states such as Iran and North Korea to abandon their plans. And if they won't, we can make a case for isolation.
Not likely to happen, because verification with states such as Israel and China is pretty much pointless. Russia is transparent compared to China.
You can't so easily put the toothpaste back in the tube.
Back to your point, however, as if Bush was looking forward to exercising a preemptive nuclear strike. You are delusional. I trust you don't use knives in the kitchen, because by your logic, having a knife makes you prone to use it premptively to silence an enemy. You're not like that, are you? No, of course not. But all the rest of us maybe. Maybe.
"If you were a responsible person in a position of power, perhaps in some covert US task force, or some other friendly but worried power, and saw an idiot like bush in control at the whitehouse... wouldn't you take it upon yourself organise a disarmament too?"
Uh, no. For one thing, despite your pandering, our former president was not an idiot, by definition. Second, he did not show nor was described as showing any inclination to use nuclear weapons that I am aware of, and since he was vilified by the press nonstop for 8 years for every imagined manner of atrocity, negligence, idiocy, and megalomania, this would not have escaped our attention.
Look, he's back at his ranch, out of office. You can let up now. No one cares.
The current designs really don't impress me yet. How about:
- Solving the input problem. Virtual keyboards are virtually awful. Maybe integrate a snap-on BT keyboard?
- Easy to use on the couch? Have you tried it? Will someone make Chumby-style beanbag 'covers' for tablets? If only they had a cupholder, perfect!:)
- Screen size is in opposition to portability. Show me the folding or pull-out screen, something like a windowshade. Is this technology anywhweres near production? Well, I guess I'll be waiting a while.
Maybe Google Phone will suffice for now, maybe, but I'm not really looking for a tablet that makes calls over the cell network. It seems people think that having a 3G card in their means it SHOULD make calls. I got a phone. Lugging a tablet around in place of a tablet AND phone will not happen.
"It is possible that even in the late 80s, people might not have legitimately realized what a waste the Shuttle was."
I have this sinking feeling that the Apollo program would be, by similar standards, also a waste. I'm interested in what NASA program you think is not a waste, and why.
"So charitably, the lesson should have been learned by 1990 that the Shuttle would hinder US space development."
Um, I disagree, but we may well have wasted a decade being limited to just the Shuttle program. Was this really a matter of funding?
"No further commercial payloads and military/spy payloads were running out."
I disagree. Commercial payloads were flying a lot, but not Shuttle-worthy. Launching synchronous comm sats is not Shuttle business. LEO payloads also were mostly comm sats. The Shuttle was intended, as I recall, "to provide a much less-expensive means of access to space that would be used by NASA, the Department of Defense, and other commercial and scientific users." It seems to have satisfied 3 of 4 customers at least. The military has, logically, developed its own capability in the interim. I still see STS as a success, and an example of that is the significant effort to develop a follow-on with the Lockheed CEV, Orion, the X-37B, and several commercial projects building on the experience with STS.
"So what was the Shuttle doing flying another two decades? What lessons of failure did we still need to learn, that we hadn't already learned by 1990? I can't think of anything. But continuing the Shuttle gravy train helped the supply chain make money."
Probably, and that's unfortunate. Now we are also learning about the cost of manned space flight, as the current Administration doesn't seem to have the stomach for the cost of Orion, and seems to be hoping some of the commercial (private in current lingo) projects can solve the LEO delivery problems. We used the Russian Progress flights to supply ISS, save for big things.
NASA does not have a heavy-lift replacement for STS, and should have been developing one for at least a decade. Using S1B sounds good, but do we actually want 70s technology? My real question is; do we have anything in heavy-lift that is better than 70s techology? Should we re-invent this, or is it really easier to move along with Ares? From the record of other launnch vehicles, this is NOT so easy to develop, and we need to be prepared for cost overruns and delays. But we've lost a decade at least, so what's the hurry?
I still don't see the Shuttle as a failure, but it's moderate success left us ignoring the problems and ignoring further development.
Like, you haven't owned a toaster, car, or cell phone?
You lead a sheltered life, my friend. Lots of crap doesn't work nearly as well as it might, just because Management said to make it cheaper. The Shuttle works pretty damned well, in spite of Management making insanely stupid decisions.
Orion will, of course, be perfect. Right. Like your cell phone.
Lutero escaped that fate, instead being spirited away by a benvolent benefactor and allowed to translate the New testament into German, another stick in the eye of the Catholic Church.
Today, perhaps, Lutero's fate would be banishment from Internet access, official censorship of his writings, exile to develop even more potent challenges to cryptography, and finally re-emergence and a vocal defiance of the DMCA and its corporate backers.
And probably jail and death in a cell. Not so sure we have truly progressed much since his day.
I had cable service back around 1999 and used a NetWare server as a firewall, mostly to play around with filtering ads. Since I had it on 24x7, when the cable company ran a contest and gave a t-shirt to the user with the most hours online, I won. No problem.
The second month, they gave me another t-shirt, and then asked me if I would mind if they gave a third t-shirt to some other user... Well, I said no problem.
Third month, I'm the #1 user again, and the marketing department said they had to give me the shirt or there would be trouble. That's when they asked me what I was doing online.
I told them. They were quite upset, and tried to cut my service off for some BS terms-of-service violation. I threatened to complain to the city and the state, and called their bluff. They relented, but I asked them to stop sending cheezy t-shirts. They gave up on the contest, since I only won the third time because another player/user had some downtime. I found out he was running NTAS, of course. That explains the downtime.
But despite being 'online' for 720-744 hours a month, I wasn't downloading much at all. They had a contest for that too. I ran a chron job on my firewall just to annoy them. Won that too. Novell's FTP site was also crazy fast, and they didn't notice I was downloading it a few times a day. This would not work today.
All of this to make a point. 'Time' doesn't mean anything for online usage. Many people leave their PC on all the time, and it's talking at least a little bit always. Sounds like this ISP is just weaseling the true cap, bytes, and trying not to tell anyone. Complete and utter crap. They should pay up. Pure corporate weaselry.
"It's not that debit card transactions cost less necessarily, but rather that VISA doesn't get a cut of the debit side at all. Debit card transactions (when used as debit cards) go through a EFT network like Star, Cirrus, PLUS, Interlink, etc. rather than through VISA."
Well, my point was rather generic, that Visa/MasterCard don't get the same cut on PIN transactions that the do with signature.
"Also, many businesses pass on the debit card overhead to you as an additional fee on the transaction total, whereas in general, VISA/MC/Amex won't let them do that. In that case, yeah, it is cheaper for the business, but you get screwed."
I haven't been surcharged for PIN in years. And it's unenforcable on both sides. Merchants already add in transaction fees, so it's the cash customer that is getting screwed. If I want the convenience of a non-cash transaction, I should be an adult and recognize the costs. The cash-payer, they should should be most upset. The market is winning this one, the holdouts are losing. I see no solution other than permitting diversion, and asking for different prices for cash. How about checks? Essentially similar transaction costs. Do merchants charge more for checks?
And fees are so different and complicated that we should not try to figure that out too closely. It doesn't much matter to me as a comsumer.
Cash back cards always cost merchants more. That's the value proposition, more sales but it costs more. It's actually more an enticement for merchants to accept one card over the other, diversion, than it is anything else, and a perfect storm of promotion. Cash back, reward points, whatever you call it, you pay for it somewhere. Let's remember, in the real world, you do in fact pay for it all.
"In the long run, it is best if stores make as close as possible to the minimum amount of money that they can survive on, thus concentrating the least amount of money in the hands of the people at the top of corporate food chains."
What? That's only true within a highly competitive market where price is the differentiator, like supermarkets. Wal-Mart claims they pay that game, but I don't think so. Marketing talk.
"Obviously this is less true when you're talking about sole proprietorships with single-digit employees. On the other hand, most of those sorts of shops are restaurants, and the average transactions at such shops are in a range ($5-10)"
Whoa. $5-$10 restaurants are probably QSRs (quick-service, Mcdonald's/Starbucks, etc), and they love non-cash transactions because they inspire impulse purchases. If you have to think if you have $5 for a Starbucks, some day you will realize you just paid $5+ for coffee, and not very much coffee at that. And if you show up at McD's with $4 in your pocket and realixe you have your debit card with you, well, you buy a $6 meal instead. Yep, you paid $2 more than you might have. Starbucks loves their prepaid and stored value cards because it decouples the purchase from the expense. Consumers often don't realize how much money they piss away each week in trivialities. I take out $x from my account on Fridays, and if it's gone on Monday, I know I just frittered it away. My goal is to reach Friday with some left. I budget that way for my Starbucks, Quik Trip, and such.
"that costs about the same amount of money for CC or PIN-based transactions anyway. Thus, you might as well take the cash back; it is effectively a way to take money out of your CC company's pocket, and it's hard to argue that this is a bad thing."
It's not money out of the CC companies' pockets, or your bank. It was YOUR money to start with. think of it as a discount on purchases. If you buy something you would not ordinarily buy because of the 'cash back', you lost. If you use a card instead of cash, you're making a decision AND enriching the CC companies. It's a choice, so lets be honest.
Overall, you have to think of and treat your debit card like CASH. It is. Don't get too bogged down in fees, promotions, and cash back. It's all your money. You spend it wisely, foolishly, or don't pay attention, your choice. Always.
Um, since the new rules have gone into effect, you have to LET your bank accept a debit transaction you don't have the funds to pay. While this embarassing when they decline the transaction, this avoids paying $37.90 for a latte at Starbucks. So turn off overdraft privilege at the bank and live on the balance you have. No problem. Credit union users, you may have to do this specifically with a rep.
And I have more than $10 in my pocket right now. It's on two debit cards. Work just like cash at stores.
But taking time is not usually a problem with debit cards. Fishing around for bills, counting them out, waiting for the clerk to recount them, waiting for the clerk to make change, this all takes time. If you're moderately competent, you can slam dunk a debit transaction faster than you can count out $37.90.
And while small purchases do hit retailers hard with fees, on the other side, retailers get impulse buying they might not otherwise, settlement is electronic and largely automatic so no carrying money to the bank and either waiting for it to be counted or waiting for the bag to be opened and counted later, and if you are paying attention, you might get competitive info on your customers. Good for retailer, not necessarily good for consumer, but privacy is pretty much gone anyways.
And of you want to be lass of a jerk, consider using it as debit and not as credit. Most signature transactions cost the merchant more than PIN transactions. Don't belive me? Visa is running some promotions along with issuing banks that you get entered into a drawing by signing for your transaction. This is NOT so they can collect less in fees. Trust me, they collect MORE. And this is how they fund the giveaway. Nice.
- EMV cards are actually gadgets. Very limited, no blinky lights and such, but has a CPU, encryption is performed on the card, and it doesn't need a mag stripe. Many don't ever get swiped.
- Mag stripes will be obsolete not long from now. Already, if you travel to Europe, many retailers refuse US cards without a chip, even though the terminal will read the stripe. It's all about risk shifting. Anything the issuers can do to avoid risk is good for them, so they want to shift risk to merchants or card holders. Merchants want to shift risk also. Guess who doesn't have any good ways to shift the risk elsewhere... Yup, customers. So European merchants hate mag stripes, and won't accept signature transactions if they can help it.
"I feel that your admission that your friends left primarily due to real estate prices directly contradicts your earlier implication that they left due to California's "socialism.""
We are going to disagree on this. Speculation and demand have driven up SoCal housing prices. Add to that restrictive land-use and California's taxation issues, and a lot of these people I know do blame Calfornia socialism, in part. But it's not just one thing that's made SoCal virtually unlivable, unless you count the weather, which is probably the root of it. In Maine, my former home, coastal property is being bougt up by out-of-staters a a furious pace, and often because someone can't afford their property taxes. Since communities are required by law to tax on value of highest use, these very desireable beachfront and oceanfront properties get huge assessments, and Gramma has to move out. It's not fair. Some communities are granting easements and collecting forgiven taxes on sale, but some can't.
"While I agree with you that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are doing much to motivate their respective bases, I think that third parties do not have a snowball's chance in hell of making gains this election."
Neither do I.
"In any case, corporate money will ensure that any party able to get significant votes will be prepaid for by our corporatocracy."
As a conservative, I have this outlandish view that corporations already have too many 'personhood' rights. But how do we prevent them from influencing elections? I'm leaning towards refocusing corporate entities to the 'public good' standard that was the law in America some time ago. But will it work today?
"Revolution is not something to be wished for lightly. Looking at history, revolutions have a poor track record and usually end up replicating the worst practices of the regime they replace. We barely managed ours, and times were different then. Mass media and the concentration of wealth would ensure that any revolution we have today would end up installing a corporate run feudal state."
You're telling this to a citizen of the largest nation on earth to have successfully survived such a revolution. It would be perilous, but it need not be as bloody as the last one. But give me 5,000 words, and I'll make a case that we are -already- in the midst of a revolution, a genteel and political one. God help us.
"The only thing that would truly force compromise and coalition would be to do away with our first past the post, winner takes all voting system with one that is a Condorcet method."
Despite the recent problems, I think our Electoral College has served us very well. We are the United STATES of America. A national election for President defeats that. If we want to go to a national election for President, we should carefully consider the protections our Constitution affords the States, from Senate equality to House proportiomnal representation, to Eelectoral College election of the President. Agruments that the founders made these mechanisms to overcome communication and logistical problems overlooks the benefits of statehood and states' rights. We can change that, but imagine a Senate with 19 Californian Senators and 1 from Maine. I'm not ready to give up on our Constitution quite yet, thank you. I want it adhered to and obeyed.
ps - I'm partial to Maine, it has given our nation some excellent leaders, present delegation excused. Arizona is still new to me, so I have more freedom to defy the convention down here.
"You know why Arizona got Californicated? Because Reagan won the cold war, haha! Base closures, my friend, base closures. All the conservative military industrial complex types fled Southern California when the military left. Next time you talk to one of those escapees, ask if they are from the north or the south."
Most, as I alluded to in my post, are from SoCal. Their complaint is making $250K+/yr as a couple and not being able to afford a house. They take 30-60% pay cuts to come here and can afford a very nice home, and could do it in 2006 at the height of the bubble. They are underwater and still very, very happy to have the opportunity at all. A lot came from Aghora Hills, and well, they aren't necessarily very happy, but they aren't going back either.
"Germany has a social safety net. The rich in Germany support social programs. I'm sure they are well managed, and German rich are happy with said management. In America though, when people say they are unhappy with how our Federal government spends money, they mean one of two things. They might mean "We spend far too much on the military industrial complex, incentives for the rich, the drug war, prisons, and agricultural subsidies." or they might mean, "We spend far too much on social services for those kind of people." which oddly enough should include the war on drugs, but doesn't. After all, what is the war on drugs but socialism for addicts, saving them from themselves? Oh yeah, it is also socialism for cops."
I don't doubt many wealthy Germans enjoy the fruits of their socialized medicine program, for one. It absolves employers of the details of healthcare coverage for employees. While I don't want us to do it that way, it is a choice, and we can debate it and come to consensus. The recent healthcare legislation is a slam dunk by the Democratic majority, and debate was severerly limited and uninformed by the facts. The bills themselves are nearly illegible by you and me, and were passed before we could know enough to give informed consent. But we should have that discussion in this country. I'm currently opposed to nationalized healthcare coverage, but I want to see better proposals.
"Clinton did more to cut actual government waste and balance the budget than any conservative in the last fifty years. If you really are a fiscal conservative, don't vote Republican, they are anything but. They are social conservatives and are only after a cheap, desperate labor pool for the rich to exploit."
Well, if you're indicting the Republican Party as failing to live up to its conservative ideals, I agree. I'm not a 'tea partier', but I'm no longer voting on party. Whatever else you have to say about Reagan, he said what he was going to do and he did it. Our current Republican leadership is scared that their most active and loyal members are turning from them and looking for new leadership. They should be. I would predict the same problems for the Democratic Party. The American people are tired of the rhetoric and partisanship being practiced at their expense. Change is in the air. Maybe revolution.
A third party would do real well right now. The Greens aren't it, and the Tea Party isn't yet, either. But it could be. We could end up with four. That alone could force compromise and coalition.
Google, despite our fondest wishes, does not in fact control the OEMs using Android. iOS has Apple, Symbian has Nokia (mostly), WinMo has Microsoft.
Some unpleseantness in an open-sourced phone OS is unavoidable. In some ways, it's preferable to me. When was the last time anyone got a WinMo update for their phone? Ever? WinMo is renown for being so specific that it cannot be updated.
I see the OEMs freedom as a feature. It was not so long ago that nobody got an update to their phone, ever. This is an advance. The iPhone didn't ever have 3G, so hardware changes do impact software capability. Did the iPhone have A2DP capability?
Really, I get that some people expect their Samsung whatever to be able to run Froyo and Gingerbread, but there are likely hard reasons why a lot of Samsungs will not get Froyo, and that has been discussed in the community. As better GPUs come out, I expect Android will become dependent on them, and that's the end of a lot of fairly young phones.
Change is uncomfortable. If you want predictability, buy an iPhone.
Well, from my viewpoint, California has a socialist agenda and can't afford it. You point out the reasons well, and the result. I know many people in Arizona who escaped the SoCal madness and are pleased to be outta there.
And I'm not at all sure rich Americans don't share the attitude of paying their fair share or even more. What I hear is that they don't like how our federal government spends their tax money. Germany is well-managed. Is the U.S. similarly well-managed?
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, well everyone was talking like the NPC was going to be there, and I got carried away.
And they will hold it in some room, I don't evern know if it is the main room that all those great NPC meetings are held in nowadays. Those were the best thing NPR ever did. I took lunch late to hear those.
Sorry, I was about to reply, but that's unworthy of comment.
I do understand. Really.
Give it to me without a hinge. Oh, except for the detachable keyboard.
Wait, it's a Lenovo S10-3t.
No, it's a Lenovo IdeaPad U1.
Wait, I'm so confused...
No I'm not. The U1 is interesting. Just give me an iPad with an attachable keyboard. The S10-3t (doesn't that remind you of the XR4Ti?) is very close. I need a little more screen...
Obama's NPR seems to have differed slightly from Bush's 2002 NPR. How it differs is important. It limits contingency plans for nuclear strikes against other states to Iran and North Korea. Very magnanimous of him. It does however rule out attacks against states that are signatories of the NPT. Much more specific and limited than Bush's NPR.
Having a policy is not the same as exercising every component of it. There's more to this.
To be more specific, the Bush doctrine might permit a nuclear response to other types of WMDs. We may want the felxibility, but Obama is willing to forego that, at least in writing.
For the record, I'm in favor of a concerted effort to eliminate nuclear weapons. We should lead the way, pay for the dismantling and storage of nuclear weapons material, and we should press this to ostracize the few states that will refuse to participate. Will the Russians? Will the Chinese?
The real question is will Israel? They don't really even admit to having any, so this would be fun. But from a position of disarmament, we have a better place to compel states such as Iran and North Korea to abandon their plans. And if they won't, we can make a case for isolation.
Not likely to happen, because verification with states such as Israel and China is pretty much pointless. Russia is transparent compared to China.
You can't so easily put the toothpaste back in the tube.
Back to your point, however, as if Bush was looking forward to exercising a preemptive nuclear strike. You are delusional. I trust you don't use knives in the kitchen, because by your logic, having a knife makes you prone to use it premptively to silence an enemy. You're not like that, are you? No, of course not. But all the rest of us maybe. Maybe.
This was a panel discussion held at the National Press Club.
Not a meeting of the National Press Club.
Big difference. They rented the room...
"If you were a responsible person in a position of power, perhaps in some covert US task force, or some other friendly but worried power, and saw an idiot like bush in control at the whitehouse... wouldn't you take it upon yourself organise a disarmament too?"
Uh, no. For one thing, despite your pandering, our former president was not an idiot, by definition. Second, he did not show nor was described as showing any inclination to use nuclear weapons that I am aware of, and since he was vilified by the press nonstop for 8 years for every imagined manner of atrocity, negligence, idiocy, and megalomania, this would not have escaped our attention.
Look, he's back at his ranch, out of office. You can let up now. No one cares.
The current designs really don't impress me yet. How about:
- Solving the input problem. Virtual keyboards are virtually awful. Maybe integrate a snap-on BT keyboard?
- Easy to use on the couch? Have you tried it? Will someone make Chumby-style beanbag 'covers' for tablets? If only they had a cupholder, perfect! :)
- Screen size is in opposition to portability. Show me the folding or pull-out screen, something like a windowshade. Is this technology anywhweres near production? Well, I guess I'll be waiting a while.
Maybe Google Phone will suffice for now, maybe, but I'm not really looking for a tablet that makes calls over the cell network. It seems people think that having a 3G card in their means it SHOULD make calls. I got a phone. Lugging a tablet around in place of a tablet AND phone will not happen.
"It is possible that even in the late 80s, people might not have legitimately realized what a waste the Shuttle was."
I have this sinking feeling that the Apollo program would be, by similar standards, also a waste. I'm interested in what NASA program you think is not a waste, and why.
"So charitably, the lesson should have been learned by 1990 that the Shuttle would hinder US space development."
Um, I disagree, but we may well have wasted a decade being limited to just the Shuttle program. Was this really a matter of funding?
"No further commercial payloads and military/spy payloads were running out."
I disagree. Commercial payloads were flying a lot, but not Shuttle-worthy. Launching synchronous comm sats is not Shuttle business. LEO payloads also were mostly comm sats. The Shuttle was intended, as I recall, "to provide a much less-expensive means of access to space that would be used by NASA, the Department of Defense, and other commercial and scientific users." It seems to have satisfied 3 of 4 customers at least. The military has, logically, developed its own capability in the interim. I still see STS as a success, and an example of that is the significant effort to develop a follow-on with the Lockheed CEV, Orion, the X-37B, and several commercial projects building on the experience with STS.
"So what was the Shuttle doing flying another two decades? What lessons of failure did we still need to learn, that we hadn't already learned by 1990? I can't think of anything. But continuing the Shuttle gravy train helped the supply chain make money."
Probably, and that's unfortunate. Now we are also learning about the cost of manned space flight, as the current Administration doesn't seem to have the stomach for the cost of Orion, and seems to be hoping some of the commercial (private in current lingo) projects can solve the LEO delivery problems. We used the Russian Progress flights to supply ISS, save for big things.
NASA does not have a heavy-lift replacement for STS, and should have been developing one for at least a decade. Using S1B sounds good, but do we actually want 70s technology? My real question is; do we have anything in heavy-lift that is better than 70s techology? Should we re-invent this, or is it really easier to move along with Ares? From the record of other launnch vehicles, this is NOT so easy to develop, and we need to be prepared for cost overruns and delays. But we've lost a decade at least, so what's the hurry?
I still don't see the Shuttle as a failure, but it's moderate success left us ignoring the problems and ignoring further development.
No Shuttle no Hubble.
Much harder to do the ISS.
The Shuttle is a good deal if it only teaches us what not to do.
Like, you haven't owned a toaster, car, or cell phone?
You lead a sheltered life, my friend. Lots of crap doesn't work nearly as well as it might, just because Management said to make it cheaper. The Shuttle works pretty damned well, in spite of Management making insanely stupid decisions.
Orion will, of course, be perfect. Right. Like your cell phone.
Naw. ACs have a short lifespan. They were made that way. We need not concern ourselves with them unless they become dangerous.
What dangerous is should be obvious.
Lutero escaped that fate, instead being spirited away by a benvolent benefactor and allowed to translate the New testament into German, another stick in the eye of the Catholic Church.
Today, perhaps, Lutero's fate would be banishment from Internet access, official censorship of his writings, exile to develop even more potent challenges to cryptography, and finally re-emergence and a vocal defiance of the DMCA and its corporate backers.
And probably jail and death in a cell. Not so sure we have truly progressed much since his day.
Ah, yes, dialup is constrained by available modems.
I'm thinking more about typical brodband - cable, DSL, wireless.
What's this 'unlimited time' crap?
I had cable service back around 1999 and used a NetWare server as a firewall, mostly to play around with filtering ads. Since I had it on 24x7, when the cable company ran a contest and gave a t-shirt to the user with the most hours online, I won. No problem.
The second month, they gave me another t-shirt, and then asked me if I would mind if they gave a third t-shirt to some other user... Well, I said no problem.
Third month, I'm the #1 user again, and the marketing department said they had to give me the shirt or there would be trouble. That's when they asked me what I was doing online.
I told them. They were quite upset, and tried to cut my service off for some BS terms-of-service violation. I threatened to complain to the city and the state, and called their bluff. They relented, but I asked them to stop sending cheezy t-shirts. They gave up on the contest, since I only won the third time because another player/user had some downtime. I found out he was running NTAS, of course. That explains the downtime.
But despite being 'online' for 720-744 hours a month, I wasn't downloading much at all. They had a contest for that too. I ran a chron job on my firewall just to annoy them. Won that too. Novell's FTP site was also crazy fast, and they didn't notice I was downloading it a few times a day. This would not work today.
All of this to make a point. 'Time' doesn't mean anything for online usage. Many people leave their PC on all the time, and it's talking at least a little bit always. Sounds like this ISP is just weaseling the true cap, bytes, and trying not to tell anyone. Complete and utter crap. They should pay up. Pure corporate weaselry.
The Amex card is contactless, something they called ExpressPay, not EMV which is a contact chip.
If you need to travel to Europe or the UK, your bank can issue you an EMV card for the trip.
"It's not that debit card transactions cost less necessarily, but rather that VISA doesn't get a cut of the debit side at all. Debit card transactions (when used as debit cards) go through a EFT network like Star, Cirrus, PLUS, Interlink, etc. rather than through VISA."
Well, my point was rather generic, that Visa/MasterCard don't get the same cut on PIN transactions that the do with signature.
"Also, many businesses pass on the debit card overhead to you as an additional fee on the transaction total, whereas in general, VISA/MC/Amex won't let them do that. In that case, yeah, it is cheaper for the business, but you get screwed."
I haven't been surcharged for PIN in years. And it's unenforcable on both sides. Merchants already add in transaction fees, so it's the cash customer that is getting screwed. If I want the convenience of a non-cash transaction, I should be an adult and recognize the costs. The cash-payer, they should should be most upset. The market is winning this one, the holdouts are losing. I see no solution other than permitting diversion, and asking for different prices for cash. How about checks? Essentially similar transaction costs. Do merchants charge more for checks?
And fees are so different and complicated that we should not try to figure that out too closely. It doesn't much matter to me as a comsumer.
Cash back cards always cost merchants more. That's the value proposition, more sales but it costs more. It's actually more an enticement for merchants to accept one card over the other, diversion, than it is anything else, and a perfect storm of promotion. Cash back, reward points, whatever you call it, you pay for it somewhere. Let's remember, in the real world, you do in fact pay for it all.
"In the long run, it is best if stores make as close as possible to the minimum amount of money that they can survive on, thus concentrating the least amount of money in the hands of the people at the top of corporate food chains."
What? That's only true within a highly competitive market where price is the differentiator, like supermarkets. Wal-Mart claims they pay that game, but I don't think so. Marketing talk.
"Obviously this is less true when you're talking about sole proprietorships with single-digit employees. On the other hand, most of those sorts of shops are restaurants, and the average transactions at such shops are in a range ($5-10)"
Whoa. $5-$10 restaurants are probably QSRs (quick-service, Mcdonald's/Starbucks, etc), and they love non-cash transactions because they inspire impulse purchases. If you have to think if you have $5 for a Starbucks, some day you will realize you just paid $5+ for coffee, and not very much coffee at that. And if you show up at McD's with $4 in your pocket and realixe you have your debit card with you, well, you buy a $6 meal instead. Yep, you paid $2 more than you might have. Starbucks loves their prepaid and stored value cards because it decouples the purchase from the expense. Consumers often don't realize how much money they piss away each week in trivialities. I take out $x from my account on Fridays, and if it's gone on Monday, I know I just frittered it away. My goal is to reach Friday with some left. I budget that way for my Starbucks, Quik Trip, and such.
"that costs about the same amount of money for CC or PIN-based transactions anyway. Thus, you might as well take the cash back; it is effectively a way to take money out of your CC company's pocket, and it's hard to argue that this is a bad thing."
It's not money out of the CC companies' pockets, or your bank. It was YOUR money to start with. think of it as a discount on purchases. If you buy something you would not ordinarily buy because of the 'cash back', you lost. If you use a card instead of cash, you're making a decision AND enriching the CC companies. It's a choice, so lets be honest.
Overall, you have to think of and treat your debit card like CASH. It is. Don't get too bogged down in fees, promotions, and cash back. It's all your money. You spend it wisely, foolishly, or don't pay attention, your choice. Always.
Um, since the new rules have gone into effect, you have to LET your bank accept a debit transaction you don't have the funds to pay. While this embarassing when they decline the transaction, this avoids paying $37.90 for a latte at Starbucks. So turn off overdraft privilege at the bank and live on the balance you have. No problem. Credit union users, you may have to do this specifically with a rep.
And I have more than $10 in my pocket right now. It's on two debit cards. Work just like cash at stores.
But taking time is not usually a problem with debit cards. Fishing around for bills, counting them out, waiting for the clerk to recount them, waiting for the clerk to make change, this all takes time. If you're moderately competent, you can slam dunk a debit transaction faster than you can count out $37.90.
And while small purchases do hit retailers hard with fees, on the other side, retailers get impulse buying they might not otherwise, settlement is electronic and largely automatic so no carrying money to the bank and either waiting for it to be counted or waiting for the bag to be opened and counted later, and if you are paying attention, you might get competitive info on your customers. Good for retailer, not necessarily good for consumer, but privacy is pretty much gone anyways.
And of you want to be lass of a jerk, consider using it as debit and not as credit. Most signature transactions cost the merchant more than PIN transactions. Don't belive me? Visa is running some promotions along with issuing banks that you get entered into a drawing by signing for your transaction. This is NOT so they can collect less in fees. Trust me, they collect MORE. And this is how they fund the giveaway. Nice.
SecureID I think. Mine is the size of a care remote. The thin ones broke a lot. Old technology, but effective.
- EMV cards are actually gadgets. Very limited, no blinky lights and such, but has a CPU, encryption is performed on the card, and it doesn't need a mag stripe. Many don't ever get swiped.
- Mag stripes will be obsolete not long from now. Already, if you travel to Europe, many retailers refuse US cards without a chip, even though the terminal will read the stripe. It's all about risk shifting. Anything the issuers can do to avoid risk is good for them, so they want to shift risk to merchants or card holders. Merchants want to shift risk also. Guess who doesn't have any good ways to shift the risk elsewhere... Yup, customers. So European merchants hate mag stripes, and won't accept signature transactions if they can help it.
EMV adoption in the US is slow. Costs.
"If you ever find me insulting towards you for your beliefs, please remind me not to be an ass."
What? This is /.
But yes, it is much more useful to have a discussion than trade rants.
If two people disagree on every single issue they confront, one of them, at least, is an ass.
"I feel that your admission that your friends left primarily due to real estate prices directly contradicts your earlier implication that they left due to California's "socialism.""
We are going to disagree on this. Speculation and demand have driven up SoCal housing prices. Add to that restrictive land-use and California's taxation issues, and a lot of these people I know do blame Calfornia socialism, in part. But it's not just one thing that's made SoCal virtually unlivable, unless you count the weather, which is probably the root of it. In Maine, my former home, coastal property is being bougt up by out-of-staters a a furious pace, and often because someone can't afford their property taxes. Since communities are required by law to tax on value of highest use, these very desireable beachfront and oceanfront properties get huge assessments, and Gramma has to move out. It's not fair. Some communities are granting easements and collecting forgiven taxes on sale, but some can't.
"While I agree with you that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are doing much to motivate their respective bases, I think that third parties do not have a snowball's chance in hell of making gains this election."
Neither do I.
"In any case, corporate money will ensure that any party able to get significant votes will be prepaid for by our corporatocracy."
As a conservative, I have this outlandish view that corporations already have too many 'personhood' rights. But how do we prevent them from influencing elections? I'm leaning towards refocusing corporate entities to the 'public good' standard that was the law in America some time ago. But will it work today?
"Revolution is not something to be wished for lightly. Looking at history, revolutions have a poor track record and usually end up replicating the worst practices of the regime they replace. We barely managed ours, and times were different then. Mass media and the concentration of wealth would ensure that any revolution we have today would end up installing a corporate run feudal state."
You're telling this to a citizen of the largest nation on earth to have successfully survived such a revolution. It would be perilous, but it need not be as bloody as the last one. But give me 5,000 words, and I'll make a case that we are -already- in the midst of a revolution, a genteel and political one. God help us.
"The only thing that would truly force compromise and coalition would be to do away with our first past the post, winner takes all voting system with one that is a Condorcet method."
Despite the recent problems, I think our Electoral College has served us very well. We are the United STATES of America. A national election for President defeats that. If we want to go to a national election for President, we should carefully consider the protections our Constitution affords the States, from Senate equality to House proportiomnal representation, to Eelectoral College election of the President. Agruments that the founders made these mechanisms to overcome communication and logistical problems overlooks the benefits of statehood and states' rights. We can change that, but imagine a Senate with 19 Californian Senators and 1 from Maine. I'm not ready to give up on our Constitution quite yet, thank you. I want it adhered to and obeyed.
ps - I'm partial to Maine, it has given our nation some excellent leaders, present delegation excused. Arizona is still new to me, so I have more freedom to defy the convention down here.
"You know why Arizona got Californicated? Because Reagan won the cold war, haha! Base closures, my friend, base closures. All the conservative military industrial complex types fled Southern California when the military left. Next time you talk to one of those escapees, ask if they are from the north or the south."
Most, as I alluded to in my post, are from SoCal. Their complaint is making $250K+/yr as a couple and not being able to afford a house. They take 30-60% pay cuts to come here and can afford a very nice home, and could do it in 2006 at the height of the bubble. They are underwater and still very, very happy to have the opportunity at all. A lot came from Aghora Hills, and well, they aren't necessarily very happy, but they aren't going back either.
"Germany has a social safety net. The rich in Germany support social programs. I'm sure they are well managed, and German rich are happy with said management. In America though, when people say they are unhappy with how our Federal government spends money, they mean one of two things. They might mean "We spend far too much on the military industrial complex, incentives for the rich, the drug war, prisons, and agricultural subsidies." or they might mean, "We spend far too much on social services for those kind of people." which oddly enough should include the war on drugs, but doesn't. After all, what is the war on drugs but socialism for addicts, saving them from themselves? Oh yeah, it is also socialism for cops."
I don't doubt many wealthy Germans enjoy the fruits of their socialized medicine program, for one. It absolves employers of the details of healthcare coverage for employees. While I don't want us to do it that way, it is a choice, and we can debate it and come to consensus. The recent healthcare legislation is a slam dunk by the Democratic majority, and debate was severerly limited and uninformed by the facts. The bills themselves are nearly illegible by you and me, and were passed before we could know enough to give informed consent. But we should have that discussion in this country. I'm currently opposed to nationalized healthcare coverage, but I want to see better proposals.
"Clinton did more to cut actual government waste and balance the budget than any conservative in the last fifty years. If you really are a fiscal conservative, don't vote Republican, they are anything but. They are social conservatives and are only after a cheap, desperate labor pool for the rich to exploit."
Well, if you're indicting the Republican Party as failing to live up to its conservative ideals, I agree. I'm not a 'tea partier', but I'm no longer voting on party. Whatever else you have to say about Reagan, he said what he was going to do and he did it. Our current Republican leadership is scared that their most active and loyal members are turning from them and looking for new leadership. They should be. I would predict the same problems for the Democratic Party. The American people are tired of the rhetoric and partisanship being practiced at their expense. Change is in the air. Maybe revolution.
A third party would do real well right now. The Greens aren't it, and the Tea Party isn't yet, either. But it could be. We could end up with four. That alone could force compromise and coalition.
Google, despite our fondest wishes, does not in fact control the OEMs using Android. iOS has Apple, Symbian has Nokia (mostly), WinMo has Microsoft.
Some unpleseantness in an open-sourced phone OS is unavoidable. In some ways, it's preferable to me. When was the last time anyone got a WinMo update for their phone? Ever? WinMo is renown for being so specific that it cannot be updated.
I see the OEMs freedom as a feature. It was not so long ago that nobody got an update to their phone, ever. This is an advance. The iPhone didn't ever have 3G, so hardware changes do impact software capability. Did the iPhone have A2DP capability?
Really, I get that some people expect their Samsung whatever to be able to run Froyo and Gingerbread, but there are likely hard reasons why a lot of Samsungs will not get Froyo, and that has been discussed in the community. As better GPUs come out, I expect Android will become dependent on them, and that's the end of a lot of fairly young phones.
Change is uncomfortable. If you want predictability, buy an iPhone.
Well, from my viewpoint, California has a socialist agenda and can't afford it. You point out the reasons well, and the result. I know many people in Arizona who escaped the SoCal madness and are pleased to be outta there.
And I'm not at all sure rich Americans don't share the attitude of paying their fair share or even more. What I hear is that they don't like how our federal government spends their tax money. Germany is well-managed. Is the U.S. similarly well-managed?
I live in Arizona now, but came here from Maine 5 years ago. Dunno where we fit.
As it is, California is suffering the response to their socialist government. Sort of working.
I'll have to read the essay, and soon.