overthere

No, I'm not. They are VISA chipped cards. The POS pad notes that. Simply runnin g them through Interac does not mean the low Interac transaction fee is the end of it. Far from it. "Fees for accepting a debit card are substantially lower. In order to accept debit cards, a merchant must be a member of the Interac Association, currently a not-for-profit organization. It manages the network that links members together in order to deliver direct payment services across the country. Merchants pay an annual membership fee based on the number of transactions they process. The current fee per transaction is $0.008253 — or $82.53 for 10,000 transactions. There's also a fee that goes to the acquirer. You can tell which company that is by checking the top of the pad the cashier hands you when you make a debit card purchase — the pad you use to enter your PIN. The merchant normally pays a flat fee, negotiated with the acquirer." And there is the rub.... Merchants have no leverage with the CC companies and are more or less at their mercy: if they want a CC/debit card terminal, they obey and pay the specified fees or their customers cannot pay with debit or credit. Consumers are unaware of what is coming, they don't see any fees at the terminal, but sure as shit they will see them in the prices.

" I said the reason the sentiment is around in the first place is an unequivocal nod to political foreign policy" and I say you are wrong in stating that reason.

That is ridiculous. The Taliban still have control and influence in provinces like Helmand. Anything that generates cash- and the poppy is far and away the greatest cash generator- of course will be controlled and taxed by Taliban, warlords, govt officials, police, army etc. All have their finger in that pie, because it is becoming the only pie in that poor poor place. Just because the Taliban do not directly control the govt does not mean they have vanished or are impotent in the villages and fields.

The best years of Law and Order were the Sam Waterston era. They had a tried and true formula, and one reason it ran for so very long was that they could -ann frequently did- plug new characters into ongoing roles without losing their audience. That is unusual in TV dramas. Often the reason they did it was more mundane: money. When actors get exposed in a successful series like Law and Order, they soon want more money. Sometimes everybody wants lots more. It had killed quite a few, the producers cannot keep a cast together and it crumbles from within. L and O avoided all that while remaining profitable and spinning off a few other moneymakers.

In reference to Keystone, the Tories have expended a lot of time, money and political capital on trying to get all of Keystone approved and built. The jobs program it serves is oil extraction in Canada. That program is and will be central to the economic and therefore social wellbeing of all Canadians for the foreseeable future. You may not like that reality, but... your feelings won't change any of it .

Yeah, the Oilers have been there done that with other goalie auditions: Dubnyk, Khabibulin, Gerber and others. They can't afford several more years of maybe goalies, they can't afford tryputs of castoffs like Scrivens, they can't afford to develop a kid like Brossoit and hope somehting works out. They need to buy one, now. Scrivens got shelled his first game, played great for one, played OK in another....... It tells you just how immnesely shitty the Oilers D is that FRaser can play for them. The Oilers only have perhaps two guys on D who would even play at all on other teams. Blame Lowe, it's his responsibility. Buchberger and Steve Smith must have set NHL records for having survived five (5) coaches while compiling horrific won/loss records. I'm getting some bumper stickers together. " LOwe Must GO" won't work, but I know what will work" Boycott Rexall" The worst part is that there is no reason at all to think any of this will change for a few years. There may be a much worse part coming: how long until the young core gets sick of losing, can see that nothing is going to change and says 'trade me'. Lowe has made the playoffs three times in 13 years and only once in the last 8. It's beyond pathetic.

Saw 'Her', which stars Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams and the voice of Scarlett Johanssen. It's a near-future romance whereby a lonely guy hooks up- with an aritfical intelligence operating system who becomes a serious love relationship.. I was prepared to hate this movie and went under protest with she who must be obeyed. It was in the end pretty good, a decent date movie. The premise leaves me a bit cold, maybe it would appeal more to metrosexuals urbanites who live and die with their smartphones. They do abound, and not in the future but right now. The cinematography is pretty damned good, it is shot in downtown Los Angeles, which is rarely seen in movies. The soundtrack is interesting too. I had a little trouble fathoming how a guy with a pretty ordinary job at ordinary pay afforded that lifetsyle, but that's a minor quibble.

I used to think that, but now have concluded that their most pressing need by far is a decent goalie. A starter. They have more or less nothing in the system, another massive fail by Kevin Lowe. I pray they do not take smiling Jimmy Reimer this summer.

Yes, the merchants will have to pay higher fees on CC branded debit cards. Not as high as credit card fees, but percentage wise far more than on Interac. Oh, and of course merchants will not have any choice in what cards they accept, just as they MUST accept premium credit cards now, because of their agreements with CC compmanies. Soon enough, they'll be obliged only to take CC branded cards, reject bank branded cards and the screwing of every Canadian will be consumated. Since we as a nation are absoluytely addicted to debit card use, they can crank up the fees after that to wherever they please. And they will. I am aware that it is not the same as the fees that banks charge to customers, but the early part of this thread made it apparent that others were confused.

Yes, the fees are much higher on MC/VISA debit cards than on Interac. The fees are shared between MC/VISA and the isuuing bank. They aren't charged directly to you though, they are charged to the merchants. The merchants- of course- pass on all their costs to you, or they won't be merchants for long. With Interac, the fees are only enough to cover the operation of the system and are miniscule. The banks have been quiet about this switcheroo, they do not want the sheep to look up. Oh no. I confronted a bank manager about this with the direct question of 'how are you serving your bank customers with this change(I was getting a new debit card and had been offered a VISA branded card)?". He tried lamely to tell me it was better for travelling, more conveneinet, then gave up and fled in shame when I let him know their actual motive. For now you can get either a bank branded card on Interac or an MC/VISA card. You can bet your ass on which one the banks are pushing.

People get confused by our system, which used to be the cheapest debit system in the world - but that will be temporary.....until the greedheads at all the banks and VISA/Mastercard get their way. There are two fees, or possible fees: 1. The iNterac system is essentially a very low cost clearinghouse for Interac purchases. It costs consumers very little, costs the banks more or less nothing, and the merchants who do pay fees wich are tiny pass those on to consumers. The Interac system is why Canada is a global leader in debit card usage: it is cheap here. But not for long. 2. The bank fees are those banks charge their sutomers under sundry service plans. They are plainly stated on statements or individual transactions, so there should not be any consumer surprises. The nasty bastards at the banks/CC companies are introducing VISA/Mastercard debit cards, which of course have much higher fees. They are used everyhwere in the USA, many retail businesses there MUST take only CC branded debit cards, which is why your Canadian bank branded cards often don't work there- the retailers are bound by the same horrible terms they have for their credit cards. And its coming to Canada! And of course our banks are all for VISA/MC debit cards, becuase they will get a slice. Merchants pay much higher fees, consumers pay the merchants. Prices go up. It's going to be ugly.

Wow, that is generally wretched advice. Equating 'savings' with 'involved with the stock market' might be right for fund managers and investment pros but for a room full of civil servants? Civil servants put a whack of their incomes into mandatory pensions-their own and CPP- and usually don't have much left in contribution ceilings for RRSP contributions. They also are unlikely - like the vast majority of people- have any clue about how to make money on equities. It's almost a given that management fees will make whatever little they can squeeze into mutuals will make very little, if anything. So I guess this 'teacher' will be telling them to invest aftertax savings into an area where they know squat. Did he or she work for a brokerage by any chance?

A little early for that... but it is very good indeed so far. I heard somewhere that this is an eight episode arc. If they do another or more of the series , it will have different actors. Have you seen The Killing? The first story line is a bit overlong, but it is also quite dark and unvarnished. Recommended. Oh, and let us not forget The Wire in any 'best ever' contest.

There is no doubt that the interests of unions have coincided with the interests of society in general on more than one occasion. But- in no uncertain terms- the actual purpose of labour unions is totally to promote the interests of its members. To suggest otherwise is self serving and simply false. I'm not served when boilermakers get large raises and increased benefits because there is a temporary local shortage of labour. I don't begrudge them their leverage, but I also don't tolerate the relentless whining when they don't have it. It's simply business, and it goes both ways. The days when unions were a big push behind social change are gone.

Have you ever been to to a very poor country? I've been to many at the very bottom of every economic metric. Chad, Mauritania, Afghanistan, Mali, Senegal, Niger and many others. The comaprison of the poor in Canada and the poor in these places is an insulting joke to both. Here is the difference. In very poor places, there is no social safety net. That means your children don't attend school. It means that if you get sick, you die. It means if you have no money for food, you die. There is very little work for pay. If the weather is bad and crops are poor, many will die. It means there is no rule of law, no personal security, and nobody who gives a single shit about you except family. And they are very likely to be in the very same leaking boat. Life is brutal beyond words in those places. i don't mean to diminish the difficulty and hardship suffered by the poor in Canada, but sincerely it is not the same at all.

The Taliban banned production briefly, and the objectives were a) to reduce stiockpiles of both opium and heroin that had built up from bumper crops and b. thereby increase export prices for both and profits for themselves. The Taliban are still heavily in the drug business and never left it. The revenue is substantial and crucial.

Well yeah... of course. I can't be arsed with all this Godbothering and churchifying so I'm taking the old fashioned route to Heaven: buying indulgences. Here's the 2014 question: can I use BitCoin to grease the skids?

Does the possibility of former Liberal Senator malfeasance frighten you Waldo? Is there any way at all we can link Chuck Guite into this buntoss?

Even better, he had pre-excavated a hidey hole if(is it even possible?) if it turns out that the upcoming audit reveals some more Liberal Senators have been naughty with public money. Sorry, I didn't mean Liberal Senators, I meant Those Bad Men Who Sit In The Senate As Independents.

Sad day indeed. I occasionally posted there, and recently posted there. Sorry to see Warman get any positive press, if indeed this is positive.

Reality.http://business.financialpost.com/2013/02/25/netflix-not-a-cable-killer-in-canada-according-to-user-study/

I say 'Hell Yeah' to the quality of the writing, acting and direction. Good vs Evil is at the heart of the evangelical Christianity that is the center of this story, so good on them for having the spine to produce something that makes us think a bit. I'm sure there is some splatter coming , and soon, to satisfy everybody.

Bingo. I do like that:a few short paragraphs that are funnier than about 98% of his career. And didn't cost me any money and hardly any time. Win-win

True Detective has a couple of fine actors that just power through a sleepy, surreal setting. I'd watch both McConaughey and Harrelson read the phone book at this point. Harrelson started out(in my world anyway) as the ultimate lightweight in Cheers. He has shaken that persona long ago and has proven to be a fine actor. I saw him recently in an underated movie called Out Of The Furnace, a chilling role. McConaughey has somehow gone from prettboy without a shirt roles to some very good stuff in just a short time, a few years. And of course Boardwalk Empire is terrific, and just as certainly it must end soon. In all these high quality endeavours it becomes harder every season to keep a stellar and expensive group of actors writers and support people together. I found the first couple of episodes of BE to be borderline material, mostly because I had a hard time seeing Steve Buscemi as a hardass gangster. No problem with that now!

"I hated Gravity. Why? The science is all wrong. It has no plot. Gravity is all CGI, and PR for NASA-types - more bureaucrats. " It took me a while to realize why I didn't like this movie so much. It wasn't plot or science or cinematography. It was the role of Sandra Bullock. I have bnothing against her as an actress. She is the only winner of both the Best Actress (Oscar) and Golden Raspberry- both in the same week. She is self aware enough to laugh at herself, something few of the ego monsters in Hollywood can manage. The problem with Gravity is how she presents as the lead role. Maybe it is just me, but I reckon pretty much anybody in a command role in a spacecraft is going to manage themselves better than she did. She came apart in a crisis, and did not seem to have much awareness of crisis management, something every crew member would do in their sleep after long, hard training. I know the human element, the frailty in a harsh enironment, is part of the drama but for me it just was not credible.