Our POS system steers anything under $25 to credit card and does not prompt for a signature, so the discount rate isn't a killer. We wind up paying 2% plus a couple of cents, which still sucks for a small sale but is better than the debit flat fee of .25 (or whatever it currently is). Thankfully for retailers the debit fees were dropped last fall.

I think a hardware store is the only place you can actually buy something for less than a quarter. In my hardware store we sell loose fasteners, and we'll have customers buy two washers for .07 each. We've considered putting a minimum of .25 for a fastener purchase but I think customers get a kick out of buying something for so little. The standard line the customer gives at the checkout is "Guess you can go home now" after we ring up the .14 sale.

I don't use Hotmail, but I do have a Gmail account that I use as a backup to my primary email. I get three or four emails a week in my Gmail nbox, all spam. Of course your experience and my experience mean nothing in terms of any real analysis.

Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, and Gmail are probably the biggest targets for spammers, especially those using dictionary attacks. If you are going to send spam you certainly will be including those providers in your target list.

Unfortunately for these providers they cannot implement certain restrictions that smaller email providers or businesses might set up. For example, we run our own email server and reject outright email connections from a number of countries. We have the luxury of not needing to exchange email with someone in Russia or China (for example) which allows us to filter out huge blocks of IP ranges (using the country specific RBL's).

So Hotmail users may see spam in high quantity, but it's likely a very small percentage of that actually was targeted to the user. I did not RTFA, perhaps I should do so now, but it makes sense to me that Hotmail may actually have quite a good anti-spam scorecard.

Write code that messes with their technology, perhaps something that might wreak havoc on centrifuges or other industrial machinery?

People who would buy this cable for example. :)

LOL, I think I'd be the same way if I took out the LP's and listened today. I did a lot of college radio, mostly on the engineering and production side, and I collected a lot of albums that had strong production values (clear recording, cool effects, etc). Alan Parsons Project albums were so well recorded and produced, but the actual music probably doesn't stand the test of time. I used to snap up anything recorded or produced by Mutt Lange and Roy Thomas Baker as well, and there are hits and misses in their musical resume as well.

Sorry, I wasn't clear in my narrative.

Me: Did you read that article about Alan Parsons?

Average music listener: Alan who?

Me; Alan Parsons. He was the recording engineer for "Dark Side Of The Moon".

Average music listener: Oh, I know that album, didn't know the name of the engineer.

Probably trolling, but what the heck....

There are certainly are noticeable differences in the sound produced by different speakers, different amplifiers, etc. However, if the source material is compressed and equalized so there is minimal dynamic range then the differences in sound from one setup to another will be less noticeable.

Although I was a fan of Alan Parsons Project albums, I think the vast majority of music listeners would say "Alan Parsons?", with the logical response being "He engineered Dark Side Of The Moon".