Posts by PAW

Bah

Nobody wants the bleedin chips except the credit card companies. They are the only ones that benefit. It's purpose is to send fraudulent charges back to the merchant that accepted the card. The card companies are not interested in PINs as that might cause them to take liability.

The chip readers take much more time to process than magnetic swipers and they cost the retailer about $400 apiece. It's a win (credit card merchant) - lose (retailer) - loss (customer) situation. The only possible benefit for the user was that we'd finally have cards we could use at ATMs in Europe. But then they didn't give us PINs.

BTW every time I use a gas pump that asks for a zip code I feel massive empathy for foreign drivers that likely have no idea why the pump has stalled and can't read the f*ing screen in the bright sun even if they did know english.

like how president trump did it

A young man asked an old rich man how he made his money. The old guy fingered his worsted wool vest and said, "Well, son, it was 1932. The depth of the Great Depression. I was down to my last nickel. I invested that nickel in an apple. I spent the entire day polishing the apple and, at the end of the day, I sold the apple for ten cents. The next morning, I invested those ten cents in two apples. I spent the entire day polishing them and sold them at 5 pm for 20 cents. I continued this system for a month, by the end of which I'd accumulated a fortune of $1.37. Then my wife's father died and left us two million dollars."

from materialism by Philip Greenspun:

judged by the company you keep

Mississippi public officials are ranked by reporters to be 7th most corrupt in the US. Mississippi ranks 2nd in convictions of public officials per capita (fivethirtyeight.com). If there's specific evidence that the Miss. Attorney General is being bribed by MPAA, I'm likely to consider it possible. In what way have the citizens of Mississippi been financially damaged by Google that their AG would get involved to this degree? In the case of Microsoft, damage was easy to answer - the cost of a Windows license added to a pc. That's what the states sued for.

amplify negative Google news

An alternative view, backed by leaked Sony email, is that MPAA and major Hollywood studios have directly funded some State Attorney Generals (esp Jim Hood) to investigate and disparage Google.

According to Techdirt.com, The Verge summarized a key email as:

May 8, 2014: Fabrizio to group. "We’ve had success to date in motivating the AGs; however as they approach the CID phase, the AGs will need greater levels of legal support." He outlines two options, ranging from $585,000 to $1.175 million, which includes legal support for AGs (through Jenner) and optional investigation and analysis of ("ammunition / evidence against") Goliath. Both options include at least $85,000 for communication (e.g. "Respond to / rebut Goliath's public advocacy, amplify negative Goliath news, [and] seed media stories based on investigation and AG actions.").

Fabrizio is MPAA's General Counsel. CID stands for civil investigative demand. Goliath is code for Google.

what's a warrant?

One evening I opened my front door to find three police who said they were responding to a 911 hangup call. 'Not from here' I said, 'my wife and I have been preparing dinner and neither of us have touched the phone.' Nonetheless said the policeman, we must enter and examine the premise. I asked what would happen if they noticed a small pile of drugs while they were searching for a victim. The policeman said they would ignore it as that wasn't the purpose of the visit. 'Right', I thought, as I stepped aside. They entered, searched, and left.

It's what needs to be done

The Old IBM had a no layoff policy and the resulting top heaviness contributed mightily to the company's near extinction in the early 1990s. In 1986 IBM had 407,000 employees worldwide. By 1994, Gerstner had reduced this to 215,000.

In context...

Putin looks for reasons to poke Obama in the eye. He openly despises Obama. See their June meeting in Ireland. Snowden (folk hero or not) is just the latest opportunity. Obama worked well with Putin's 2008 successor, Dmitry Medvedev, but Putin seems to want the U.S. positioned as an enemy.

As a U.S. citizen I'd much prefer Obama spending his time dealing with the forthcoming threatened shutdown of the US government by the GOP. This summit flap will hopefully have no more gravity than Putin's cancellation of a meeting with Obama at Camp David in 2012.

TechSoup

If you are a nonprofit in the US with a 501(3)(c) check out techsoup.org for charitable pricing of software and some hardware. Techsoup partners with some 57 technology companies that provide greatly reduced pricing for those that are eligible. Microsoft, Citrix, and Cisco are among the partners.

FWIW, I am the volunteer IT dept of a small nonprofit (25 desktops, a NAS, and a point of sale system) and I whole heartedly agree with those above that eschew complexity.

name calling

Sorry to tell you, but it's Siri that looks stupid in public when it fails to understand natural language.

follow the money

Well on CNBC (U.S. financial news) yesterday, they attributed the drop in Apple share price to Apple's product announcements. They further suggested Apple's drop led the entire market south. How's that for leadership?

why is this happeneing?

Why has a price fixing charge against an oligarchy of Publishers turned into an Amazon bash fest?

People seem afraid that Amazon will either drive out content with low prices or use predatory pricing now only to raise prices later. Instead of future fantasy, what about the present reality where the price of electronic books is already too high and paper is out of reach (for a middle class guy like me). Libraries are being defunded across the country.

What's the reality that Amazon is a monopsony ( Publishers must sell to Amazon) in the age of the Internet? Publishers can't create their own retail websites?

And this article - implying that anti-competition prosecution is ineffectual because the Microsoft breakup order was reversed on appeal. Com' on. Apples and oranges.

Why Apple?

Because Apple has high relative prices, huge profit margins, and $98 Billion in cash that no one seems to be benefiting from. This story will stick like it did for Nike.

Barry Shitpeas ?

It seems to be an accepted assumption that Amazon is selling the Fire at or below cost. Then along comes a company (Ainovo) shipping a decent looking 7" Android 4 (dual camera, 1080p, capacitive screen) for $100 less. Sold out the first day. If it's mostly about price, then it's too early to call the game.

You say, "Verifone, the industry leader ... long ago stopped selling anything without NFC hardware, so proximity payments will come though the usual equipment cycle even if retailers aren't particularly interested."

And that "millions of credit cards already have the technology embedded"

So it sounds like the competition has more than a foothold. T