Visa/MasterCard is pushing for EMV/Chip & Pin technology. Previously, the liability of fraud is on the payment network. Visa/MasterCard have announced a liability shift from the payment network to the merchant for fraud if the merchant doesn't adopt chip & pin.
The rollout date is supposed to be Oct 2013.
As an end user, you are not able to protect from this type of fraud. That's why the liability doesn't reside with you.
Kozmo definitely still resonates with me. I was a huge fan of them while I was back in college. Where else can you order Ben & Jerry's at 11PM and get a refund because they were late on their delivery?
Line item data is the holy grail for a number of players in the payment space. The merchants are understandably guarded about sharing this information.
The electricity grid is also extremely complicated system that many people don't understand. With any complex system, it grows to beyond the knowledge of the people working in it.
One thing to note is that many of the critical components on the electrical grid is controlled over the network. When I used to build tools for the electricity trading desk, we were handling market bids/asks and scheduling of the power plants.
We had systems that lay out prices that we were willing to turn on and ramp up power plants. If prices hit a certain point, we were committed to delivering that power. We made these decisions based on economics of the power plant (gas plant vs nuclear vs wind) and other factors (such as weather , time of day, whether the Cowboys were playing that day).
Anyways, my point is that all these systems are interconnected and rather complex. It doesn't take much for an error in one place to bring down a major part of the system.
As with any engineering, you're never going to factor away all the breaks. You need to build a system that assume things will break and ensure that it's not catastrophic.
Also, I don't think it's fair to say that Wall Street doesn't understand software. There are some very smart people doing solid engineering there. Neither one of the footnotes that you had in your post support your statement that Wall St doesn't understand software.
If he's looking to hire someone, it would help if he included the name of his company or link from his post.
I ended up finding it in small letters under his profile picture.
Also, saying "hiring a co-founder" is basically like saying "hiring a wife". You don't hire either one of those if you're looking for a partner. If you're not looking for a partner, you hire a contractor that will get the job done.
While it's possible to generate a new wallet to mask who the user is, the transaction flow can be traceable. This seems easier to trace than the flow of money through our banking system.
>>"Students should be warned that doing a paid internship can negatively impact your ability to finish up paying for school."
Students should be warned that crossing the highway blindfolded if unsafe.
Students should be warned that the stove could be hot if you leave it on.
At some point, people need to take personal responsibility for their action. They need to understand how their actions effect them positively or negatively and balance out those decisions. People need to understand that there is nobody that is going to hand hold them through life.
I make annual donations to my university's alumni fund because I would not be where I am without the opportunities given to me by my choice in college. I also want to give that opportunity to the next under privileged kid.
As others pointed out, wealth redistribution in this case is voluntary.
Zurb did a tech talk a while back. They found that the drop off rate for one of their long running processes dropped significantly when they added a red bouncy ball as an interstitial for any process that took more than 400 ms.