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Comment Re:I'm curious to see how many retailers actually (Score 1) 732

If you have a bank branch for your business' bank close by and it's during most of the business' open hours, you just go get more change - takes a few minutes, tops (you notice it's running low, you go get more...)

Most businesses pay their bank a fee for handling coin, both on deposit and on withdrawal.

Comment Re:I'm curious to see how many retailers actually (Score 1) 732

What I'd be most interested in is how merchants who run Debit transactions as a Credit(signature) will fair - will they all switch payment processors to someone who does (cheaper) debit transactions, or will they end up charging more for Debit as well? Only time will tell.

I can't speak for the big chains, but I'm a small businessman who takes card. When the rules for Debit Cards changed (some time in the past year) my rates didn't change. When I asked my Merchant Provider they told me they had no intention of changing their debit-card rate to reflect their new costs. I've looked elsewhere but I can't find anyone else who will either.

I'm wondering a bit about interstate vendors not located in California. Will they be required to not charge me the rate when I buy from them using credit, since I'm in California?

Comment Re:I'm curious to see how many retailers actually (Score 1) 732

AM/PM (Arco) is all over Las Vegas, NV & Phoenix, AZ... Some of them in Phoenix do not charge an extra fee for plastic. Though, those are the exception unfortunately.

Here in California, Arco always charges a surcharge (flat fee) for debit, but never for credit (most, however, don't take credit cards).

On the other hand, swap meet vendors generally charge a percentage charge (often as high as 10%) for taking any card. And they seem to get away with it in spite of California law. Sometimes, if you you walk away, they'll call you back and waive the fee, but they always try to get it.

Comment Re:Occam wanna sell you a razor (Score 1) 510

Pictures are not the only threat that this policy would seek to avoid. Would you allow people to bring a laptop into your datacenter? probably not.

I'm sure our situation is different from that of many others, but in fact we do allow it.

We provide colocation services and many of our clients need to log into their servers from inside the datacenter, but outside our network. So we allow laptops and even supply wifi from both within and without our network. Sure we could provide multiple work stations but to use them effectively many of our clients would need to bring in data (for example passwords), and while you can do that on USB memory, that would multiple encryption/decryption methods on our workstations to handle the USB memory, and could in worst case situations encourage insecurity if clients opt to use easy-to-remember passwords or no encryption at all.

We vet our clients as carefully as possible, we use locking cabinets, escorts, and video monitoring, and I'm not sure what you can with a laptop inside a datacenter that you can't do from your car parked outside, with suitable connectivity.

Comment Gorilla Arms (Score 1) 610

The problem is 'the tingling ache that [comes] from extending my right arm to manipulate that screen for hours, an affliction that has earned the nickname of gorilla arm.

Disclosure: I don't use W8 or any other touch interface on either laptop or desktop, only on my smartphone and tablet. I saw this technology being sold on either QVC or HSN; I don't remember which, but you can likely see it this week at CES in Las Vegas.

Gorilla arms need not be the problem. All we need is hardware with a 3" to 5" multi-touch touchpad and agreement on what to use on screen to represent finger position. It won't be easy at first to know where to touch the pad to match the screen, but it won't be long before our brains figure this out and then we'll be productive again.

Remember the first time you used a mouse? It's not much different, and we learned the mouse.

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