cryptnoob

We need to tax PC's to incentive people to buy macs. Yes, macs are expensive.

     Attract repeat visitors to your companies website, 

You don't have a sales tax, in that the consumer is not taxed. Instead, you have an excise tax, where the business is taxed. Many businesses will show how much they inflated their prices in order to pay their excise tax, and show this as a line item on the receipt. That's their choice. That doesn't make it a sales tax.

Again, Hawaii is taxing it's own people, instead of it's tourists. In self-defense, many of those businesses pass that tax on to the tourists and itemize it on their receipts, but many don't.

     Meanwhile, Hawaiian taxpayers face a $1.2 billion budget 
     deficit, which is being addressed in part with deferred 
     state tax refunds and deferred Medicaid reimbursements.

For any tourist destination, a sales tax is beautiful, because you get to tax people who don't live there. There is a danger that given two tourist destinations of equal attractiveness, the one without the sales tax may draw more tourists, but this isn't a problem for Hawaii. Where are you going to go, if you want beaches and sun and live on the west coast? Hawaii or Mexico, and there's a lot of people who go to Hawaii that wouldn't be comfortable with Mexico, so it's off the table. For Hawaii to tax their own people but not tourists seems like a strategically poor move.

A homeless program that cost $2M was not nearly as interesting to me as the fact they, of all states, had a budget deficit.

Well, I have to admit, I am certainly not a 6,000,000 transaction per year merchant, which is when I would need a level 1 audit that you and your friend so gleefully salivate over. I wish I was! If I was, I think it very reasonable to audit your processes to insure security.

In fact, I am a level 4 merchant, to my shame, so I have not spent money having an expensive "Certified QSA Security Consultant" audit my systems. I would remind everybody, that, sadly, they are probably level 4 merchants as well, unless they do over 20K transactions a year. Even if you do more than 20K,you're not in the scary big leagues till you get to 6M transactions.

Finally, I'd like to note that we hear a lot about these "possible fines", in theory, but have you heard of any in real life? I assume they must exist, but I invite you to read about the Heartland data breach, which exposed over 130 million credit card numbers. You'll note they still haven't been fined, but they "may be fined over $150K".

Looks like 73 pages... Here's the link https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/security_standards/pci_...

I'm not saying that a lot of consultants aren't out there, making a crap load of money. Hmmmmm.

One in every crowd, isn't there?

I got frightened by all the PCI DSS fear that permeates this board. I assumed you guys had it all figured out, and to a man, you seem to all be of the same mind on this issue. Fear, fear, fear.

When I actual Read the F----ing Manual about this ...., actually read that what was required was peanuts compared to the thousands of posts and comments I've read here pontificating on how to safely store a freaking password to a dating site, I am perplexed. How can a group of people who can talk your arm off for two hours about salts, rainbow tables, hashes, and password entropy, be frightened of PCI? https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/security_standards/pci_...

I store my own credit card info. Exactly how I do it is none of your business, as, while I don't rely on obscurity for my security, I'd be foolish to deny myself it's added protection. I don't just meet PCI standards, which are easy, I greatly, greatly, exceed them. Why anybody would use a third party billing company is not mysterious, but why somebody who reads HN would do so, is strange to me.

I already know the comments I'll get for uttering such blasphemy. I would respectfully request that you actually spend 10 minutes reading actual PCI DSS guidelines before doing so, however.

I'd love to know what happened. $20M is a lot to pay, to then shut the doors.

Clickable: http://upstreamist.com

I hate that google is so "text focused". Obviously, for 90% of the web, that's just fine, but I do web apps that "do things".

For example, if I have a web app that converts numbers between bases (just an example, OK?), Google would ignore me, since my home page is just a couple of text fields and a submit button. (If it's ajax, I don't even have a submit button)

So, I say, "OK, fine, Google, you want text, I'll give you text", and I add a blog, saying some stuff about converting numbers between bases. That works a bit, but really, I don't have that much to say about converting numbers between bases. I have this app, it works well, what's to say? So, I rapidly run out of things to say in this blog I was forced to write. Google sees my site as never having new content, and down I go.

Of course, if I had a bunch of incoming links, no worries, but I won't get them if nobody can find me in the first place.

Woody Norris did this 10 years ago using the same technology. I actually have one sitting beside me at my desk that I got back in 2001.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Technology_Corporation

It's fun for practical jokes or making the neighbors think their house is haunted. I'm not sure how this guy is getting credit for this.

Slaughtered or not, it's an awkward word to say "properly", and awkward words get changed.

I find Kilometer much easier to say the American way "kill-ah-meter", rather than the correct way of "kill-Oh-meter". I suspect people will pronounce these things in a way that isn't painful to the tongue, and memri-stor is that way.

      ... always starts off a request for tech support with  
      the words "tom, you're clever".

1) "Welcome to Matchio! Get started by viewing our intro video!" --- THIS Gives me a video that is too big for the window it's in. (Firefox 3.5.9, 1024 x 768 monitor, browser is maximized)

2) "OR WATCH A 60 SECOND VIDEO TOUR" --- DOESN'T do anything, even though it looks like a play link

3) Why must I have a .edu account if I refuse to use Facebook? Are non students not invited?

4) The slidedown and slideup at top and bottom of screen are cool, but I get confused by the up/down arrows. On the bottom, they are reversed, and on the top, down arrow seems like "minimize" to me.

5) On http://bradley.matchio.com/tos.html , I'm getting some weird characters in place of the apostrophes. "Click your "I’m buying" or "I’m selling"

6) I love the graphics. I wish my sites looked half this good.

What everybody here is forgetting, is that this is a civil suit. Why not charge them criminally?

Bottom line, this has been staged to defang them in front of next weeks house hearings on banking reform. It's theater. That's not to say it might not be true, but if you really think the administration wants to clean things up, ask why this is a civil action.

My contention still stands as to roots and derivations of both terms.

However, I see too many, non-biased sites defining "regressive tax" as you do, to see the point in arguing. This battle was lost 50 years ago. The definition has apparently become an accepted one. I find that very disturbing.

For the record, I personally find the term to be a loaded one, and I disagree with it.

You probably are not aware of this, but when used in this context, "progressive tax", you are referring to a tax system advocated by the progressive movement from the late 19th and very early 20th century. The progressive movement is the father of modern day liberalism, and actually was a tarnished word for awhile, resulting in it's adherents beginning to call themselves liberals. It's interesting the pendulum has swung back, to where "liberal" is considered tarnished, and "progressive" is the preferred term.

My point is that, the opposite of "progressive", in this context is not regressive, it's conservative. Calling it "regressive", obviously sends very clear signals as to which one is "good" and which is "bad", by those who wish to send such signals, which is how this all got started. However, it has now come into use by those who may not mean to imply those values, which may, indeed, be the case with you.

Is the "privacy policy" a legally binding document? If so, how so? If not, why do you think it's important what a tiny start-up's privacy policy is?

The privacy policy is a promise. Broken promises have repercussions in proportion to how well known it is that you break your promises. For Facebook, that might be important. For weekendproject.com, I can't imagine why you're fixated on it.

     all we have is conjecture based on personal experience

"No baby, you can't know that this will hurt. All you have is conjecture based on personal experience. Now come over here."

This is BS.

     Over the past three years, unprecedented photographs of 
     exhausted teenaged workers, toiling and slumping asleep 
     on their assembly line during break time, have been 
     smuggled out of the KYE factory.

"photographs ... smuggled out"? Really? I've taken these photos myself, with factory management standing next to me. To western eyes, seeing a room full of workers sitting in silence with their heads down, in the middle of a work day, is interesting, and I wanted to show my wife. No "smuggling" was necessary.

I just spent, literally, 5 minutes, after reading this article, porting some code from using the typecast plugin to using this one.

I like this one a lot better. It's much cleaner, and doesn't suffer from what you mentioned above.

How about using mouse tracking like the page analytics guys do. What people are hovering their mouse over is what their reading ... and that constitutes a "vote".

I find myself emotionally torn about this.

This is sharecropping, pure and simple. That's bad, since it's not me doing the share cropping. I suspect they can be very successful. Usenet was wonderful .. until it wasn't. A network of sites that can give us high value information instead of the adwords dreck that is polluting the web, should indeed, be a net positive to the world.

Much like an interstate highway is a net positive to society, I suspect this network of sites will be also. It doesn't always work out so well for the little towns the highway goes through, however, and I fear the carnage that might result from this as well. Creative destruction is still destruction, hence my torn emotions.

Hmmm, your prose comes off sarcastic, but your username implies you're serious... Ahh, a 4 minute old account.

Why was it worth it to go to that effort?

That statement alone doesn't negate the article. That statement alone IS the whole article. The rest of the article has no substance. Read it again if you don't believe me.

As for me picking apart those data points, it wouldn't be interesting. Even if you agree that all is golden here in Eden, you hopefully are aware of the argument of those who say it's not. For me to state it again is boring. If you really don't know, get googling!

Looks like officially, it's officially the same as ours. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/biz/international-busines...

As for when/if Armegeddon will hit, everything will be good, until it's not. It will be a non-linear event. Something will happen, somewhere, that will cause a cascade of fast moving events, and then you're in a bread line.

You're standing on the edge of a cliff, in a high wind. Sure, you're still fine now, and you may be fine forever. But when you stand on cliffs in high wind, things can happen. I could throw a rock at you. Greece could get bailed out, leading to me-too bail out demands from other countries, leading to euro devaluation, leading to ... Who knows? It's too early for anybody to be getting cocky that it's all over.

If you strip out all of his rewriting of history, you are left with a single half paragraph that forms the evidence on which the premise of his article rests.

     The Dow Jones industrial average, hovering near 
     11,000, is up 70 percent in the past year, and auto 
     sales in the first quarter were up 16 percent from 
     2009. The economy added 162,000 jobs in March, 
     including 17,000 in manufacturing. The dollar has 
     gained strength ...

He talks about "staged obligation", where you fool them into thinking the registration form is only two or three fields, and then, when they hit "submit", show them more fields. He claims that this gets a higher registration rate than showing them all the fields at once.

This is a great example of a "dollar auction". If you've never heard of them, here's the wikipedia explanation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_auction

Most of us get in a dollar auction whenever we are placed on hold for a long time. If you hang up, you lose your entire "investment" of the minutes you already spent on hold, so you keep holding.

I like this idea of applying dollar auctions to web site design. It had never occurred to me, even though I was very familiar with them.

     We're the outliers and exemplars of thought