Comments on: More convenience, less privacy

By: Moopheus

Moopheus — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 12:39:00 +0000

“But there’s bound to be a privacy cost, somewhere.”

And now you worry about this? You seem to be all for convenience and electronic (easily traceable) payment when it’s to the benefit of the likes of BofA. You poo-poo the use of cash. If you use any form of electronic payment, some piece of that ends up in a database, held by the bank, or the card servicers, or the store you are shopping in, databases that get used for marketing purposes. How is this different?

By: fxtrader7

fxtrader7 — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:19:50 +0000

surely this ought to be owned by the Telcos. They’ve been banging on about how you could buy stuff on your phone and then get billed at the end of the month alongside your phone bill. Yet somehow, it doesn’t seem to have gained traction so far. It is odd bc the telco already knows you, provided you are a contract customer, and thus know whether you are or not a credit risk, and if u pay by say direct debit, which is pretty much the norm, at least in Europe, then they’ll get paid, it’ll be the banks problem, if there’s any issue.
still, why aren’t they doing it? I don’t know, maybe they are stupid, like they were when they offered a wall garden Internet and nobody was interested unless it was the full Internet free for their ‘curation’. A

By: HughLoebner

HughLoebner — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 09:56:45 +0000

“When we order food in a restaurant, we know that we’re going to be paying for it, literally, in the future”

That may be, but in many (most?) restaurants nowadays, the server recites a litany of specials, never mentioning the price. Sticker shock when one receives the tab.

I hate this practice; I have trouble remembering the details, and I want to know the cost. When a restaurant pulls this ploy on me, I always make the server repeat the choices at least three times, and I always ask the price of each option.