Sure, and apparently Toronto also has trouble with snow and ice and traffic and commuter rail being shutdown.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2...

http://www.cp24.com/weather/cr...

http://www.thestar.com/opinion...

...and what kind of road congestion does Canada have?

The whole nation of Canada has 35m people. Metro Boston has around 5m. Metro NYC has 20m.

In Boston on a good day the roads are jam packed and your commute takes way longer than it should. Throw in an accident along the way and your commute can be a major pain.

Now consider dramatically slower travel speeds, a mere handful of fender benders. That commute is just not worth it. What's the point of having your 1hour commute turn into 2 or 3? each way.

overdraft protection is another loan sharking thing here in the US, outrageously expensive, and why should you incur that expense over a fraudulent transaction?

Debit and Credit are not the same vis-a-vis consumer protection.

Someone racks up a $10K fraudulent charge on your credit card? You call the card company and they can't make any attempt to collect it, it's as if it doesn't exist, until they investigate it.

Someone makes a $10K fraudulent debit on your bank account? Maybe you've been charged for overdrafts (incurring a fee), maybe you've had transactions fail (incurring a fee), sure the bank will investigate. Meanwhile you're out $10K and even if they eventually reverse the transaction, they don't have to do anything about any fees you've incurred while the money was missing.

Consumer risk and cost for debit fraud is much higher than for credit fraud. Which is why all the banks want their customers to use debit. It's better for them, not for you.

Even if you don't use checks, you can't pay an electronic debit / transfer without having a positive balance.

I think its a sad commentary that some of the posters on my comment have basically admitted that they have a debit card / account (that might get cleared out fraudulently) and another different (more secure) account that they keep cash in for their important payments that need to be made.

Might as well have one of those prepaid credit cards if you're going keep your money segregated like that into money you can be defraud of, and money you plan on keeping.

No one in the US uses a credit card at an ATM. You get better rates from your local loan shark.

Anyone who uses a debit card is a fool. Whether or not you are protected from a fraudulent transaction is fairly meaningless while you watch all your checks bounce and you have no cash because your account is empty.

I guess you didn't read the article I linked to. With Chip & Pin the banks claim there is no possibility of fraud (which isn't true), therefore when fraud happens the customer gets the shaft. Chip & Pin shifts the risks onto the customer, even if the overall occurrence of fraud is lower, the risk is higher for the customer with C&P than without.

Chip & pin has never been about security. It's about the ability for CC issuers to eliminate the repudiation of fraudulent transactions by claiming that their authorization system is fraud proof and therefore every transaction is a priori an authorized transaction: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/m...

Reading the codes for all your other two factor authentication accounts. Like your bank account, or your brokerage account.

There, didn't Facebook make life easy?

SMS to your phone isn't such a secure channel for two factor authentication if every other app has access to it.

What? And no one has mentioned the Heechee yet?

Yes they do. Especially when you require people to jump through hoops they do not want to jump through, like register to comment.

At my office there is some complicated password policy, and they expire every 90 days. No one at my location has been able to compose an acceptable password from scratch. The only thing that works is to to subtly modify your existing password.

We suspect that the unique password rule actually compares your new password against all passwords every used by anyone else in the company. Which is about as unfriendly as sites that give you no help in choosing a unique username ("Sorry 'xX_Bob246783_Xx' is not available, try again")

Ah, reminds me when the slashdot had a "bolt" icon for the hardware posts and were blocked by a filter... because any internet image with "hard" in it was obviously porn.

And how do you remember that exactly?

I much prefer "Some Old Horse Caught Another Horse Taking Oats Away"

You're right, it's not nothing. It's a fig leaf.
Because obviously, if they can figure out which of these limited cases are so special, they could give those cases extra thought today, without any changes.

The FISA judges judgement is suspect. Putting anything under their discretion is NOT an improvement.

No, I put in that part specifically because some places do not have trash disposal via taxes. In my town there are at least 4 private haulers that most people have contracts with. I'm sure there are a few people who choose to haul their own trash to a landfill on an as needed basis.
But there is no municipal (or pseudo municipal) trash service.

Good luck getting requirements that are written in law revised or waived.

Ever have a requirement that you could point to and say: "Strike that requirement and I can cut the schedule in half" Yet it is still a challenge getting everyone to agree on changing it. Now imagine the people you are negotiating with is Congress.... and they have to pass a law in order to agree with the changes... and any attempt to re-open the requirements attracts hundreds of lobbyists trying to figure out how to change the requirements in order to get their paymasters a bigger share of the profit.