I used a DUN connectoid, but. Wildcat! was fun.

Trumpet Winsock.

Next question.

It's the return fire your want to suppress, as well as those last few outgoing rounds.

And the possibility that they move just a little bit and continue to fire. Your underestimate the resiliency and determination of good snipers. You had best kill them first shot.

You obviously are neither a commander nor a soldier.

Soldiers want to kill as easily as possible, lest they be killed.

Commanders want killing to be as easy as possible for their troops, to both win and get troops back.

From the movie 'Patton': "I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country."

If only Patton had said that.

"If you wound someone, one of their comrades has to drag them back to cover."

This is not universally true. Sometimes killing is an excellent outcome.

And then there is the problem of roles. You can wound a MRAP driver and cause problems, but you'll want to kill the sniper with the first shot, lest they continue shooting.

Ditto. My phone is handier than my wallet, and I can pull up Softcard, PIN in, and tap faster than you say 'oh, please....'. And you're gonna be fishing for another penny to save time with exact change.

Disclaimer - I work for a Softcard partner, and am sort of sad to see it go to Google. But hopefully it will become the main competitor to Apple Pay, which is for us an interesting problem. All is not bliss in Apple Pay land.

"There is at least a 5 second processing time. Closer to 10 seconds in most cases"

The acquirer takes 2 seconds tops. 60-200 millisecond round trip.

The rest are POS issues, and even small stores have systems that don't take 7 seconds to give the operator the thumbs up...

Major retailers track auth processing on the order of milliseconds. Online retailers track them down to tens of microseconds. Most acquirers commit to no more than a 2 second response. Varying from this regularly by 100 milliseconds is a three-alarm emergency. These retailers call them on the carpet when they see this. It's considered 'friction', and they want 'frictionless' transactions. Once you click 'buy', they want this to happen fast fast fast.

In the old days, sonny, a 10 second auth was the goal when your terminal DIALED UP THE AUTH SYSTEM THROUGH A MODEM. USR made a killing selling Total Control model pools with a special warble that would train the terminal modem in 3 seconds. Every other modem struggled to train up a 110 baud connection in 3-6 seconds. With a TC hub, you could hope for a 6 second auth.

If you're waiting more than 6 seconds to see 'APPROVED' on the terminal screen, something is not working as it should. Most likely the retailer.

If I intend to use my Softcard, I've opened it, entered my PIN, and put it back in my pocket on the way into the store, or while I'm in line.

This is not so hard.

Let them print your check for you and it won't be 2 minutes.

Even well skilled cashiers take time to gather change out of the drawer. I suspect if you studied this as closely as retailers do, you'd be disappointed. Cash is not automatically faster.

I use Softcard at least once a day. Six seconds to complete the transaction. It takes the cashier longer to open the drawer, put the dollar and three dimes in the drawer and close it. And that requires I leave the penny change. More time if I bring her a dollar, a quarter, a nickel, and wait for the penny.

And the POS is truly a real POS. It takes an extra 2 seconds to complete the transaction that it need not. A regular card takes no longer, save that the swipe takes fractionally longer than my tap.

You've not often been behind someone scrambling to find the right card, much less the last penny for exact change.

Or you live on a pension. I wouldn't like to lose even $500.

âMake a provocative comment and be censured from work, friends and future prospects...â

This already happens, you know. One of my family members is an elementary school teacher. Every budget proposal is CRITICAL!, every election is the future of our nation, and any politician that proposes limiting spending to available revenues is killing education and hates our children!!!

I can't talk politics with her. It's literally her pocketbook. No matter the realities, she is only interested in job.

And I understand. I work in an even more arbitrary environment. Business.

Well, legitimate news reports and court cases, but you're welcome to your opinion of journalism and the legal profession.