Re: Coins vs. bills: La Cicciolina
quite an unappealing trollop. however, the photos did give me quite a chuckle http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_505510.html or better yet in italian! http://www.cybercore.com/cicciolina/
Re: Coins vs. bills
Ken Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: For some reason the mention of a Susan B Anthony dollar stuck in my brain as an Alice B Sheldon dollar. Susan Anthony is a person who I've never heard of. I'm almost tempted not to find out who she is or was to preserve a nugget of delicious cognitive dissonance. A world in which governments put Alice Sheldon on the currency would be an interestingly different world from the one we seem to be inhabiting. Not being from the US I have no idea who either of those two are, but that does raise an interesting point: Maybe the reason no-one wants the coin is because of who's on it. Solution: Mint a coin with La Cicciolina (or whoever the US equivalent would be) on it. They'd be able to get rid of at least 140M of them. Peter.
Re: Coins vs. bills
Ken Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: For some reason the mention of a Susan B Anthony dollar stuck in my brain as an Alice B Sheldon dollar. Susan Anthony is a person who I've never heard of. I'm almost tempted not to find out who she is or was to preserve a nugget of delicious cognitive dissonance. A world in which governments put Alice Sheldon on the currency would be an interestingly different world from the one we seem to be inhabiting. Oh, you can still keep all the cognitive dissonance you'd like. Susan B. Anthony was one of the early US anti-abortion activists, along with Victoria Woodhull and most of the other major feminists of the time. Abortion let men escape from the responsibility for their actions
Re: Coins vs. bills
At 09:00 PM 04/11/2002 +0100, Ken Brown wrote: Trei, Peter wrote: Mea culpa. It's been a long time since I read 'Dangerous Visions'. Must be, seeing as Harlequin was published in Galaxy magazine, then reprinted in Ellison's Paingod and other Delusions, not in DV which was an original-story-only anthology that came out a year or two later :-) I haven't read Paingod, but it was in one of the Ellison anthologies. If not Dangerous Visions, then perhaps Again Dangerous Visions... Or perhaps the anthologies were titled differently in the UK?
Re: Coins vs. bills: La Cicciolina
At 10:10 AM +0200 on 4/12/02, Anonymous wrote: quite an unappealing trollop. however, the photos did give me quite a chuckle http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_505510.html or better yet in italian! http://www.cybercore.com/cicciolina/ ...and here I thought we were talking about Madonna Ciccone... Cheers, RAH Who does see a resemblance to Madge in the first picture... -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: Coins vs. bills
Tim May [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Thursday, April 11, 2002, at 10:05 PM, Peter Gutmann wrote: (And bear in mind that a one dollar coin is worth about what a quarter ($0.25) was worth in 1970, and about what a dime ($0.10) was worth when silver dollars were still common. Maybe we need a $10 coin.) --Tim May US $10 coinage. They're really pretty. In non-proof grade they're USD100. Not really a circulation coin, more of a gift item. http://catalog.usmint.gov/wcs/wcs_command/0,,cginame_a=ProductDisplayquerystring=prnbr;Z13+prmenbr;1000+cgnbr;1100,00.html The Silver Eagles ( $1 ) are really pretty too. I'd hate to carry around very many silver dollars considering the price of Ag today ( ~USD4.55 ). 1 pound would be worth about $50. Although modern US silver dollars carry a hefty premium over their metal content so really 1 lb would be about $75. No wonder paper money became popular. Is Howard Ruff still recommending preparing for the upcoming hyperinflation by buying metals? Mike
Re: Coins vs. bills
For some reason the mention of a Susan B Anthony dollar stuck in my brain as an Alice B Sheldon dollar. Susan Anthony is a person who I've never heard of. I'm almost tempted not to find out who she is or was to preserve a nugget of delicious cognitive dissonance. A world in which governments put Alice Sheldon on the currency would be an interestingly different world from the one we seem to be inhabiting. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 10 Apr 2002 at 13:43, Sunder wrote: I've had several dozen of these (stamp and other vending machines provided them as change here in NYC), and kept only one. You're not supposed to keep currency, you're supposed to spend it. I generally prefer the bills to coins, because the coins make an annoying jjingle jangle and also wear out my pockets. They're horrible. Sure, they look like gold when you get them but they oxidize quickly when handled and look worse than old pennies. Serves the mint right for trying to pass what clearly is a slap in the face of anyone who remembers that the US currency was at one time tethered to actual gold. Now that everyone knows that even coins are only of symbolic value, I don't see why they don't make them out of plastic. Because symbols work better when they bear certain kinds of resemblance to what they are symbolising? Human brains are hard-wired that way. Plastic money doesn't twang the right neural circuits. Who would care for non-alcoholic communion wine? [...] Anyway, no-one has yet come up with a convincing reason for me to want to carry any kind of electronic wallet for small transactions. Anything under, say, 50 dollars American, is more easily done in physical cash money. If nothing else the irritation that you'd go through when you lose one and have to get another makes it not worth it. If I lose coins I lose the value of the coin and nothing else. If I lose a bank card it ruins my day. Even if the card was only good for 50 quid I still have to jump through hoops to get a new one. Obviously smart cash might make sense as public transport tickets, or as a prepaid hotel bill (to hotel owners at any rate), and smart-card applications for these things have been developing for decades. (We certainly were issued with something like them at the hotel for the 1989 Eastercon in UK - which I only remember because it was the last I went to for some years, they might have been around much earlier) But in general street use - why bother? Even if these putative electronic wallets were as easy to get hold of as cash (walk up to a machine any time of day or night, stick in some id, type in PIN, walk off) you might as well just use cash. I suppose they could be of benefit to the operators of ATMs. The one at the all-night filling station round the corner from me seems to be have someone using it every ten minutes or so in the late evening. So, at a wild guess, the stock level might be between 5 and 10 thousand pounds. That's getting towards where it might pay someone to use heavy machinery to get it out of the wall. Even if it splurts itself with ink (there are a lot of stupid criminals out there) that is still very inconvenient for the building owners. But there's nothing in it for the user. An initially valueless smart wallet might be less attractive to muggers, but they just have to wait for you to activate it. Or point a knife at you till you do. And the more faffing about you need to do (PIN, setting authorisation limits, pointing the thing at the reader) the more old-fashioned cash would seem simpler. Now, using a mobile phone as money might sell. People seem determined to use them for everything else. If there was a way of transferring prepay directly between SIMs it would be used by teenagers (and drug dealers) to settle small debts. Maybe they already are and I haven't noticed. Ken Brown And her smoke goes up for ever: http://www.mtsu.edu/~dlavery/Tiptree/clute.htm
RE: Coins vs. bills
Ken Brown[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Anyway, no-one has yet come up with a convincing reason for me to want to carry any kind of electronic wallet for small transactions. Anything under, say, 50 dollars American, is more easily done in physical cash money. If nothing else the irritation that you'd go through when you lose one and have to get another makes it not worth it. If I lose coins I lose the value of the coin and nothing else. If I lose a bank card it ruins my day. Even if the card was only good for 50 quid I still have to jump through hoops to get a new one. Obviously smart cash might make sense as public transport tickets, or as a prepaid hotel bill (to hotel owners at any rate), and smart-card applications for these things have been developing for decades. (We certainly were issued with something like them at the hotel for the 1989 Eastercon in UK - which I only remember because it was the last I went to for some years, they might have been around much earlier) But in general street use - why bother? Even if these putative electronic wallets were as easy to get hold of as cash (walk up to a machine any time of day or night, stick in some id, type in PIN, walk off) you might as well just use cash. Ken, when was the last time you paid for a call from a UK public phone with coins? Iirc, most British public phones no longer accept coins (unlike in the US, where you have to search for one with a card slot). As the saying goes, 'follow the money'. Handling cash is expensive. It's usually dependent on hand counting and manual change making. These are error prone operations. There is also, in retail situations, the problem of the help pocketing part of the take, not to mention that cash presents a security problem not present with electronic book transactions. The presence of cash means that you have to buy/maintain/use safes, security services, video systems, etc, as well as pay higher insurance premiums. Vending machines have to be heavily engineered to be resistant to theft. Night clerk at a convenience store or gas station is one of the most hazardous jobs available in America. I've heard that security for cash is a major expense item at the retail level - over 10% of it's value in some cases. A system which does not place acculmalate stealable cash has clear advantages to everyone (but at the cost of privacy and anonymity!). Going to a cashless system would save the vendor money - perhaps several percent. If they passed on part of this in the form of lower prices, the consumer could be motivated to accept a 'smart wallet' of some kind. I suppose they could be of benefit to the operators of ATMs. The one at the all-night filling station round the corner from me seems to be have someone using it every ten minutes or so in the late evening. So, at a wild guess, the stock level might be between 5 and 10 thousand pounds. That's getting towards where it might pay someone to use heavy machinery to get it out of the wall. Even if it splurts itself with ink (there are a lot of stupid criminals out there) that is still very inconvenient for the building owners. This actually *is* one of the ways ATMs get attacked, and the newer ones have quite impressive engineering to hold them in place. A smart card based system would actually eliminate ATMs - without the physical security required for cash, you could as easily fill up at any terminal. But there's nothing in it for the user. An initially valueless smart wallet might be less attractive to muggers, but they just have to wait for you to activate it. Or point a knife at you till you do. And the more faffing about you need to do (PIN, setting authorisation limits, pointing the thing at the reader) the more old-fashioned cash would seem simpler. There's nothing in it for the consumer until (1) some vendors go cashless, and (2), they pass along part of the cost savings. Now, using a mobile phone as money might sell. People seem determined to use them for everything else. If there was a way of transferring prepay directly between SIMs it would be used by teenagers (and drug dealers) to settle small debts. Maybe they already are and I haven't noticed. Ken Brown Peter Trei
Re: Coins vs. bills
Trei, Peter wrote: [...snip...] what you said is all true but the benefit (as you pointed out) is primarily to the retailer, not the shopper. All this doesn't apply to higher-value transactions of course. Ken, when was the last time you paid for a call from a UK public phone with coins? Iirc, most British public phones no longer accept coins (unlike in the US, where you have to search for one with a card slot). I think I stopped putting coins in phone booths on the street about when I started carrying a mobile, which was late 1999 IIRC :-) Later than most. These days, just about wherever I am, even if I don't have a mobile, someone else does. Phone booths are on their way out for anyone who has either a job or friends. As you say, they are mostly card-only now - used to be specialised phonecards (I've used UK ones in Greece and Germany so they aren't *that* specialised) now they accept normal bank-issued credit and debit cards. I guess the changeover began in the 1980s was more or less finished by mid-1990s. Some shops and bars have coin-operated ones. I get more trouble with buying train bus tickets. The machines try to accept notes but almost all fail. They are the main reason I like the new higher-value coins (though of course they are nothing like the value of the pre-C20-inflation guineas and sovereigns my great-grand-parents probably weren't wealthy enough to see many of) This fits in with the thread about deployment problems. For these low-price transactions buyers prefer cash. Monopoly retailers (as phone booths were 20 years ago and railway trains of course almost always are) can dictate how they wish to be paid. If a PTT wanted you to use their own cards, you had to. Competitive retailers have to get the buyers on board. Even more off-topic Trei, Peter also wrote: From: [EMAIL PROTECTED][SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Go and read 'Repent Harlequin! Cried the Tick-Tock Man' by PK Dick for a particularly slackless society with this technology. Might be easier to find if you substitute Harlan Ellison as the author, though. - Sten Mea culpa. It's been a long time since I read 'Dangerous Visions'. Must be, seeing as Harlequin was published in Galaxy magazine, then reprinted in Ellison's Paingod and other Delusions, not in DV which was an original-story-only anthology that came out a year or two later :-) Ken Brown
