It would actually be easy enough for Walmart to switch to paper debit cards that had the amount of the card printed on the front. When you used that card, the cashier simply gave you lower-denomination of cards (say, a $5 debit card when you paid for a 5 dollar item with a $10 debit card).

Once this practice became pervasive enough, unfortunately the government would have to step in to create rules and regulations as to how all the printing would appear, and to prevent fraud. I suggest they mandate the use of engraved printing plates; green magnetic ink; and heavy cotton rag for the card. Oh, and to certain security features like holograms, watermarks, embedded plastic strips, etc.

My god, the level of convenience we'd enjoy would blow away any other form of paying for goods and services literally overnight.

Peasant Han: "Honest officer! Our child was sold into slavery over a year ago!"

Officer Zau kicks over the wood stove, lifts open a patch of the tile floor and shines his light into the darkness below. A dozen eyes shine back.

Officer Zau (screaming): Zui cha. Chaqu. Yongyuan!

Officer Zau unholsters her Type 15 pistol, takes aim at Han and puts her finger on the trigger.

(fade to black)

Is there any other kind?</snark>

I recall an old Science Fiction story along the same lines, back in the early 80s.

The protagonist was a young man in a third-world middle-eastern shitehole. He was tired of war, of losing friends and families, when he had a revelation: the "Blue Hats" (UN) were neutral, so if he joined their "army" he'd be relatively safe and wouldn't have to fight any more.

So, he obtains a discarded steel pot and paints it blue. Reveling in his newfound "immunity," he convinces his friends and neighbors to do the same. Even the other side starts doing it until everyone is a Blue Hat -- and peace breaks out for the first time in living memory.

I forget how it ended, but the gist was that the First-World was using the Third-World as a "live culture" of warfare, to keep the former's own troops trained and budgets justified. The old sides were eventually convinced to go back to fighting one another.

You went long on Demand Media stock, didn't you?

That butthurt's gotta burn!

Some of the stupid interviewing criteria that my colleagues and me [sic] had to deal with boggles my mind.

Ahh, reminds me of the Angry Aussie and his response to pointless interview questions:

For instance, there was the putz I had to see this week who thought he was being really clever. It seems as though someone gave him the book of Microsoft interview questions and he was eager to show off his new "knowledge". This style of interviewing gives you abstract questions that have no relationship whatsoever to the work you'll be doing. Or to the real world.

Proponents say they're trying to see how creatively you can think. Normal humans say it's a waste of time.

For the random people that use Orkut like others use Facebook, it really is not a lot of time to figure out what to do with potentially gigabytes of information. That holds particularly true for anyone that is not technically savvy.

How long does it take to slide over to Google Takeout and download all of your data?

A few minutes? An hour?

When Goog crushed Wave, I downloaded all my stuff in a matter of minutes. Couldn't really do much with it, but it lowered my White Hot Rage down to Red.