Humans are, in many respects, unique among the animal kingdom.  We can actually metabolize a great many toxins, and are likely the most diverse animal in this respect.  A great example of this is chocolate, which can kill most predators if consumed in any quantity considered normal to above normal for an adult human.  Basicly the quantity required to give a child a stomach ache is likely to kill a dog without a vet's intervention.  Some things that we sometimes put into a salad are also toxic to carnivores, such as some mushrooms.  Coffee beans are mildly toxic, also.  Other less dramatic examples of commonly consumed foods that are toxic to other animals (and to some degree, humans also) include, but are not limited to, avocados, many nuts and partcularly macadamia nuts, peanuts (which, technically, are not nuts), raisins, onions, garlic, several common spices such as chives, and artifical sweeteners such as xylitol; although it's also arguable that all artifical sweeteners are also toxic to humans, by their very nature.

So the argument that humans shouldn't be drinking milk because it's not natural to drink another species' milk or beyond the age of four is, at best, lacking in scientific support.

Food safety is relative.  For example, nearly all salt for human consumption in the industrilized world contains iodine, because lack of iodine goitre in adults, and some types of mental retardation in infants.  Is the sale of tablesalt without added iodine illegal in the US?  No, it's not.  It simply has to be marked so that it cannot be confused with "regular" tablesalt.  I can buy it at Kroger or Wal-Mart under the names "Sea Salt", "Kosher Salt" or "Pickling Salt"; but it just never says just "Salt"unless it contains iodine.  Which is more dangerous, consuming raw milk (quickly enough to be reasonable) or consuming Kosher Salt?  Almost certainly the latter, but that point is moot.  Unpasterized milk should not be illegal in the United States, the idea is as Un-American as the table salt ban in NY city.

EDIT:  Additionally, consuming raw milk is as safe as pasturized, if the milk is consumed within a 24 hour period.  This was the economic motivation of the daily "milk man" deliveries of yesteryear.  They didn't even bother to refigerate it even after refrigerators were common.  To additionally reduce risk and impede bacterial growth, the milk man would usually add a silver dime to each bottle.  The silver in the dime would give off silver ions into the milk, which would not harm people but was toxic to bacteria.

This is generally not true in the United States.  Since the consumption of raw milk isn't actually something that can be banned under US law, for a variety of historical reasons, it's actually the act of engaging in commerce that is prohibited with raw milk.  It's actually a law that exists to favor major dairy producers & grocery stores, since raw milk wouldn't safely survive the lengthy trip from factory farm to the grocery store to the average home refrigerator reliablely enough to compete with the small farmer who simply offers the day's raw milk for purchase.  Raw milk, kept refrigerated and consumed quickly, isn't dangerous.  It's the delay that the modern food industry adds to the mix that is risky.  Bear in mind, milk was designed to be consumed immediately; yet well before the age of refrigeration, the early production of cheese was a process that took days.

First of all, bathing in milk is very uncommon in the US, and usually only happens in spas.  But the answer to your question is no, not legally.

Fine, you guys all suck, and you all seem to have more experience with modern CC transaction than I do.  I'm too old, etc.

I still stand by my opinion that 7% isn't unrealistic.  Good luck disproving my opinion, which is what it always was, and it still is.

High?  Yes.  Excessively high?  No, it's not.  Who gets to decide?  I do, because it's my opinion.

So bite me, children.

I've had positive experiences with Coinbase, but I have to admit that I've never trusted anyone with so much bitcoin value at once.  If this is a hack or a white turned black node fraud, I'm truly sorry for your loss. 

Go right ahead, but I can't see the value myself.  Most of the bitcoin related apps I've seen are both free to download as well as host on most of the app sites for android, and you're all around screwed if you depend upon Iphones, since the Apple App Store doesn't permit anything related to bitcoins on iOS and 'failbreaking' is required to run any app not permitted by Apple.  Thus, only Android apps are likely to survive and all of them can be found on the Google Play Store.

Well, technically you are correct on this point.  I just checked the TOS.  No, they wouldn't prevent you from setting up Square in a normal storefront as your primary POS system.  Instead, the CC companies can compell Square to require you to engage into a pass-through agreement with the CC companies directly, which acheives the same end goal....


And there is an enforcement clause that you agreed to that could be used towards this end...



So while you can set up anything that you like, if your business starts processing enough transactions that the CC companies feel that you should be paying them directly, I'm sure that they will let you know when it's time to "upgrade" your contracts.

https://squareup.com/legal/cea

Dude, you've had some seriously poor luck.  Of the set, I've only experienced #2, for a personal cost of about $7 due to one of the early online wallet websites being hacked.  Of course, since most of my coins I bought for under a dime, the trade value of bitcoin would have to lose half it value over night, every night for a week straight before I actually lost anything at all!

Economicly speaking, they are exactly the same.


Note the highlighted parts of your post.  It would be trivial for those fixed fees to add up for a small vendor, and through the total for the merchant to about 7%, and you aren't even metioning all the fees that are common.  Also, does your business do enough volume to justify a storefront?  Square was never intended for POS processing with regard to fixed sale points. 
If you are using your Iphone as a cash register inside of an actual store, you're likely violating the TOS that Square had to agree to in order to get the CC compaines to sign on.
 Whether or not it's actually legal or proper for the kayak company to charge 7% was never my point, or my concern.  I was simply pointing out that, IMHO, it's not an unrealistic number.  You have failed to contradict that claim; in fact, you have managed to provide supporting evidence for my point.

I'm fine with you paying up in just doughnuts, since it was such an easy win.

The biggest legal hurdle is the idea that you have to be a business legally in order to do legitimate & honest business.  Divest yourself of this modern corporate fiction & mind your manners and you should do fine.

Coinbase uses the exact same bank account funding methods that Paypal does, and it's about as annoying to "verify".  Mt. Gox can't do it the same way because they're out of country.  Once set up, however, Coinbase seems easier to me.

Why on Earth would you do that?  There are other ways to get bitcoins, they might just take more effort.

That's as good a reason as any, so long as you're not operating under any 'get rich quick' fantasy.

It matters not at all what you need, but only what you can offer.  If paypal is all that you can offer, then don't expect much.

If you believe that it's a bubble, and you still buy more in the hopes that you can sell to the next sucker for more, you deserve whatever outcome that you get.

The Samsung Intercept was one of the first android phones to include an On-the-go USB chip, even though the official specs don't mention that it exists.  With 4.0, I can use it, but have never really done anything with it, other than to verify that it's possible.  It never seemed to be accessible with 2.3, even rooted.  However, the Samsung Intercept does not support power supply from the phone, so you'd need a power injector in order to use OTG-USB for anything that I can imagine that you'd likely use it for, otherwise all I'd need to connect my phone to a huge USB drive is a male-micro-usb to female-standard-usb cable.

EDIT:  Keep in mind, that on any android cell phone, even making normal phone calls is an 'app' that has little in the way of hardware acceleration.  My wife's cell phone, which is just a regular cell phone that can also text, makes a much better phone; but smartphones are pocket computers that can also make cell calls.  The act of actually making a phone call is relatively demanding for the Samsung Intercept, but many other things that my wife's phone can't do are trivial for it (mp3's, youtube videos, photos, capturing video, etc.)  The Samsung Intercept also isn't up to the demand of a lot of android games, as the original Angry Birds was barely playable, and Fruit Ninja had a perceptable touch lag.  This is one reason that I'm still looking for one for my daughter, as she can use it with wifi as a combo mp3 player, camera, ICQ text device, etc. without costing a great deal, and there are some games that it can play without much lag.

Amen to that.  If the algos used in bitcoin are ever broken, it's highly likely that just about every algo in common use on the Internet is at risk, including those that secure your connection to your bank's secure website.

You would would be contractually prohibited from actually advertising the cash discount, but everyone does it.  You could go into any major electronics store right now, pick out some high dollar widescreen tv, and even if it's on sale, you could ask for the 2.x% that the company pays the CC company as an additional discount if you paid in cash, and you can expect to get it.  I've done this a dozen times over the past decade alone.  It's just not worth the effort for low value items, although I have done it at Wal-mart for a microwave that was listed for only $80 on sale at the time.  The only time that I can't expect to get it, is when the manager is busy and would consider the discount to not be worth *his* time.

You also can't expect to do this with anything in groceries.  Their margins are so tight, that the 'grocery side' of department stores don't make *anything* from there unless the customer is paying cash anyway.

BTW, this is a great way to get a new refrigerator if you've got the cash, but you would literally have to have the cash in your hands.  The managers are usually empowered to offer this cash discount, but are trained to deny the request unless they can see the cash; because so many people have been known to only have half the cash and then offer the rest as a personal check.  The big chains have been stung many times, and regard this as a kind of 'bait and switch' game.

Is advertising something as $107 and then offering a $7 discount to cash customers any different?  Because that's basiclyhow it's been done for the past 30 years.  Yes, 7% is on the high end, but not unrealistic for a small vendor that does not frequently need to use the CC network.  7% would be very high for a volume user, such as a brick & morter retail chain of any size; in such a case the 2.x% charged by Square (due to the volume that Square can accumulate) is much more realistic.  WAl-mart can negotiate for better terms from Visa, but a small kayacking store probably can't.  I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that any business with a building of their own can't use Square due to the TOS, or Visa would have a fit.