Toll collection has proven itself practical for highways but not for city streets.

Where might these happen to be if the public library closes by the time the bus from work gets there?

Slashdot used to offer HTTPS to subscribers, at a price of half a cent per page view (source: FAQ). But the subscription page is not only well hidden but also unavailable: "Buying or gifting of a new subscription is not available at the moment." The reason it was for subscribers only was that most advertising networks were HTTP-only, and browsers would block HTTP ads in HTTPS pages as "mixed content". Only in the past couple years did ad networks start to offer HTTPS.

Web advertising networks have been providing the service of breaking into viewers' PCs for years.

StartSSL issues individual S/MIME certificates without charge.

Perhaps it's uncommon because its proponents have failed to give a clear answer to this question: If someone doesn't regularly fly to key signing parties, how should he get his PGP key signed into the strongly connected subset of the web of trust?

You still have to trust DigiCert, the CA that signed the facebook.com certificate. That's on top of trusting Facebook, as you pointed out.

The cable company charges the subscriber to rent a CableCARD module even if the subscriber is not renting a set-top box.

So how should someone who gets off work at 5:00 catch a bus there and have time to do any substantial self-education or search for a better job? Using the Internet only on Tuesday evenings and Thursday evenings isn't very helpful because potential employers who send a message on Friday morning usually expect a reply before Tuesday night.

The county library branch near me is closed on Saturdays from late May through the end of August. (Source: acpl.info)

But does the U.S. government provide a means-tested subsidy for relocation using Greyhound buses, as a means of promoting interstate commerce when the supply and demand for labor happen to be in different states? That would be closer to "Obamacars".

Checks have a "PAY TO THE ORDER OF" field naming the addressee. The bank matches the name against the ID presented by the person presenting the check or against the name of the owner of the account associated with the deposit slip or ATM card.

That's fine when you're at home. But checks work even where there is no Wi-Fi, and even if you aren't carrying a tablet or laptop.

U.S. banks take check deposits the same way.

Agreed 100 percent. Checks happen to be the most convenient payment method in certain circumstances in the United States. It's just that there's a perception among certain experienced Internet users that the U.S. culture is inherently "backward" in this respect.

I guess my experience is colored by the Catholic, evangelical, and JW groups I grew up in at various parts of my life. Substitute any other charity that takes donations in person.

Thanks for the link.

I seem to remember reading speculation that Hulu would have to charge $20 or more per month for ad-free service in order to pay for its infrastructure and royalties.

Attaching a gift of money to a birthday card, for one. And major banks in the United States have deployed ATMs that use handwriting recognition to allow depositing a check by inserting it into the ATM.

The bank doesn't charge anything to process a check. Here in the United States, "wire transfer" refers to services like Western Union, which charges a hefty percentage to process a wire transfer. Even if a bank offers a wire transfer for no fee, you still have to know your recipient's bank account number, and you still have to either "go to the bank IN PERSON" or subscribe to cellular Internet service to set one up.

To obtain this, you "have to go to the bank IN PERSON".

Yes. Some have a donation box near each of the auditorium's exits; this is the common practice for Jehovah's Witnesses. Others pass around a bag or tray into which members of the congregation drop cash or checks.

A check is a paper bank-to-bank transfer instrument. You write an order for a bank-to-bank transfer on a piece of paper, you give the order to someone, and she takes that order to her bank and executes the transfer.

You are correct that I misremembered the behavior of LibreOffice Calc. But both Gnumeric and Excel failed to treat an exported CSV as having been "saved". Gnumeric's alert after I exported CSV and closed a worksheet was as follows:

Save changes to workbook 'test.csv' before closing?

If you close without saving, changes will be discarded.

Excel's was as follows when I exported:

test.csv may contain features that are not compatible with CSV (Comma delimited). Do you want to keep the workbook in this format?

*To keep this format, which leaves out any incompatible features, click Yes.
*To preserve the features, click No. Then save a copy in the latest Excel format.
*To see what might be lost, click Help.

Followed by this when I closed:

Do you want to save the changes you made to 'test.csv'?

LibreOffice Calc's was as follows when I exported:

This document may contain formatting or content that cannot be saved in the currently selected file format "Text CSV".

Use the default ODF file format to be sure that the document is saved correctly.
[X] Ask when not saving in ODF format

I assume these programs are referring to changes to column widths, formulas, and other things not typically represented in CSV.

Any of the morons who reported "What happened to my layers?" through support channels.

The same morons who pass around PSD files made in Photoshop. At least XCF has a reference implementation distributed under a free software license. Has Adobe released a spec or free library for manipulating PSD files? Which interoperable multilayer raster format were you recommending?

If the names of the "Export" items on the File menu were changed to "Flatten and Save", would that satisfy you?

Then you must have edited your keyboard shortcuts. My copy of GIMP 2.8.10 has keyboard shortcuts for export:

Export (Ctrl+E)
Export As... (Ctrl+Shift+E)
Create Template...