I assume you're trollin'. Aggregating purchase data is not the last frontierit was the first target. That battle's lost a looooong time ago.

And second, there are tons of good reasons to want a 3rd party between you and the merchant. If the merchant rips me off I can contest the charges and get my money back. There's the convenience and security of not having to carry wads of cash around to make purchases. If somebody takes your cash, you're boned. If they take your credit cardyou call the CC company and cancel the card. You can also make remote purchases via phone or internet. I can't very well shove a wad of cash into the dvd drive on my computer and have the merchant whose products I want pop back out. Then there's additional services the card companies provide, like automatic insurance on rental cars, default warranties on purchases, airline miles, etc.

Any time you're handing your card to someone you're trusting them not to steal your number. Go to a restaurant and hand your card to the waiter? How do you know they don't have a sophisticated app called a "notepad and pen" they can use to write down your number for use later? Even if they're swiping the card in front of you, a $10 reader can duplicate the numbers. Or they can just take an imprint.

An iDevice card reader is no more or less secure than any other form of card reader in the hands of merchants. However, they're probably not going to steal your card number because 1) they're probably not crooks and 2) the CC companies will notice "gee, everybody who goes to this restaurant winds up having fraudulent charges made!" and bust them.

These issues aren't starting to get traction. "Musicians are getting ripped off by somebody!" Nobody cared when it was the big labels, and nobody cares now when it's Apple or Google or Pandora or whatever, and they won't care when whatever evil empire after Apple/Google/Pandora rips them off. People just want to press buttons and have entertaining sounds happen. They really don't care about how much the artists are getting paid. People have their own problems and don't really care if you don't feel like you're not getting paid enough in your chosen profession.

Wait, are you saying it's SUPPOSED to be hard to be a rock star? Damn, Dire Straits lied to me

I RTFA, andI think he only had one good point. It is kind of ridiculous that Apple is still getting like 30% of sales for the service ofhosting files and processing payments. At least back in The Before Time in the Long, Long Ago the record labels would invest in creating new content. Today Apple just tells you how wonderful they are for distributing it for you. And selling your mp3s direct to the public doesn't work well (unless you already have a massive following from having been signed with a label before) because nobody leaves facebook to go to your website and is too lazy to pull out a credit card when theirs is already on file with iTunes.

Besides that, mostly whining about how "well sure, there are SOME success stories, but what about MOST musicians? They can't even afford their weed!" Wellyeah. It's not easy being a rock star. That's why they're called rock STARS. Because 99.9% of the people trying to be professional musicians aren't good enough at it (or lucky enough. Mainly lucky enough. Talent doesn't matter as much as marketing and luck.)

That's the way it is in any "profession" that's also an awful lot of people's hobby. Pretty much anything that when you tell somebody at a party what you do for a living, they say "I always wanted to do that." Because nobody ever says that about working in accounts receivable. "Oh, you work in accounts receivable? I dabble in receivable accounting myself...ya know. Having accounts. Receiving them. Always wanted to do that...professionally."

'The climate' is a complex system. Of course it's changing. Constantly. And of course there are trends in those changes. We get hung up arguing about how much the numbers are changing, when that's not even the interesting question.

The reason people take this issue so seriously is the idea that the system will run out of control if/when things get 'bad enough'.... That there's some sort of tipping point, after which things will somehow run wildly out of control. This is what we ought to be discussing. Instead we're yelling at one another about how much change we've seen and what it might mean.

We ought to be discussing things like positive vs negative feedback loops.

Instead, we've bickering over the numbers that people have seen on various gauges.

FBI: Guys, we did it, we stopped a terrorist plot and caught the terrorist! Another success in the War on Terror!
Citizens: Great! So what terrorist network is the perp part of?
FBI: Well, none, but the plot is foiled!
Citizens: So, who put him up to it, aided and abetted him?
FBI: Uh, our guys...it was kind of a sting thing.
Citizens: Wait, so...the plot was hatched by...whom, exactly?
FBI: Actually it was Larry right here, come up with the whole "gonna blow up the office building" thing. But hey, we caught the guy who was going to do it!
Citizens: But you made the plot.
FBI: But we foiled the plot! Another victory in the War on Terror!
Citizens: So the mastermind of the terrorist plots that we're fighting the war against is...the FBI? Couldn't you just stop plotting?
FBI: But then we wouldn't be foiling terrorist plots! We'd lose the War on Terror! Is that what you want, the terrorists to win?!
Citizens: No, no of course not!
FBI: All right then! Hey, Larry, make us another plot, and be quick about it! We gots some foilin' to do!

Oh look, a SlashdotBM.

I think you mean Hardcore.

Agreed. If a parent kept their home in squalor, their child bathed in mud and playing with rats because they don't believe in germ theory, CPS would move right in. I don't see how this is different.

Oh, I get the same feeling...but it has far more to do with how the person is dressed, and how they're walking than the color of their skin. I'm equally afraid of a white guy hunched up in baggy clothes with his face hidden and a hand in his jacket pocket walking determinedly (or nervously) behind me as I am a black guy.