November 12, 2011

Intuit GoPayment's Invasive Signup Procedure

I started looking into Intuit GoPayment which has a service offering very similar to that of SquareUp.

There are some minor differences in the general fee schedule with GoPayment offering slightly better rates for those who pay a recurring monthly fee but slightly worse rates than SquareUp for those who do not. GoPayment's American Express fee is also higher than that of SquareUp. In terms of fees, I think businesses with more volume that primarily this as their payment method would come out ahead with GoPayment.

However I strongly advise against any business actually signing up with GoPayment.

The GoPayment web site has a signup flow but it only works for individuals. It will ask for your personal social security number. I wanted to open a business account with them using my Federal EIN and business banking accounts. That's when things got ugly.

In order to sign up my business with my EIN there were two primary requirements which were that I own at least 50% of the business and that I am over 18 years of age. I'm not entirely sure how Intuit will handle some businesses where there are multiple owners. Maybe it won't be a problem as long as a majority stake signs some paperwork and they use the business' EIN. However that turned out to only be the tip of the iceberg.

First, even though I was opening a business account, they wanted my personal SSN. To do a credit check. Sorry, that's not okay. I told them I wanted to use my EIN and not my SSN for tax purposes. After the customer rep spoke to someone else he came back and said okay, but instead they would need additional documentation. That additional documentation turned out to be my profit and loss statements and tax returns for the past two years (or how long the business had been operational whichever is shorter). Sorry, that's even more not okay. I am not handing over my private company's P&L statements or tax returns to a merchant processing company.

I should close by saying I am so far very happy with SquareUp and it was extremely easy to sign up with them. I was able to do it from their web site, and I did not have to provide sensitive personal or business financial information to do so. And I have never had to provide that sort of information to any of the other merchant processing companies I have used in the past or for Google Checkout, PayPal, or Amazon Payments.

Posted by josuah at 2:55 AM UTC+00:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

August 28, 2011

Fixing NFS Trash + Keychain on OS X Lion Upgrade

I just upgraded my primary desktop at home to OS X Lion. During this process, a couple of things got messed up. First, after logging back in Keychain Access could not find my login.keychain, and any attempt to add keychains into Keychain Access failed. Second, I have my home directories NFS mounted. The method of mounting NFS directories changed so this did not carry forward between Snow Leopard to Lion. Plus afterwards, the Trash was not working for one of my NFS mounted users but it was for the other. I managed to resolve these problems and thought it would be a good idea to document them.

The first thing to fix was the NFS mounts. Obviously I cannot log in at all if my home directory is missing. I have always had a separate local administrator account, to perform system administration duties. This way, I can manage my computer without having any external dependencies like the network or my NFS server.

In OS X Lion, the way to add NFS mounts is via Disk Utility. There is an NFS Mounts... menu item and I simply added my NFS mount back. No problems and this uses automount whereas before I was using static mounts.

To fix the keychain problem, I simply restarted after my initial login. The file permissions were all correct, so I'm not sure what the original problem was. But it worked.

Now for the Trash. It took me a long time to figure out what was wrong, because my ~/.Trash directory existed and had all the correct permissions. Turns out, in /.Trashes on my Mac there was a directory named with my UID. Deleting this directory using sudo and then restarting restored normal trash behavior for my account. Previously it was always asking to delete files immediately. It may have worked as well without restarting but just logging out and back in.

There are two things to take note of. First, I ran Repair Permissions on Disk Utility and it found a lot of things to change. I'm guessing the directory structure and permissions have changed a lot in OS X Lion. Second, the auto-restore of application state, even for quit applications, can cause problems if your NFS mount is missing or flaky. For example, I had a few Terminal windows open and my shells were in NFS mounted directories. While debugging some stuff with NFS and trash, my mounts changed or were unavailable. Opening Terminal in this state would get stuck. (I probably needed my original NFS mounts to be soft rather than hard.)

Posted by josuah at 6:15 PM UTC+00:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

January 8, 2011

Arizona Rep. Giffords Shot

I'm very disturbed by what just happened today, when a gunman opened fire at an event in Tucson, Arizona. It appears his target was Arizona Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords or Judge John Roll, and possibly both. I'm not disturbed so much by the actual shooting, as there are always going to be people who do things like that. It's bad and unfortunate, but it's also something that we have to live with as human beings&emdash;we're not unselfish, unemotional robots.

The problem is that public figures and people associated with public service (and unfortunately all associating themselves with the Republican party) have been using rhetoric that probably contributed to today's shooting. Saying sorry isn't good enough. I hope they understand that what they say can have serious consequences and will try to change their behavior. I won't condemn someone for saying something in poor taste, that could be misinterpreted, or containing exaggerations. But after saying something like that, one should recognize that might have happened and clarify what was really meant. Because a lot of people aren't that intelligent or capable of in-depth rational thought.

Here's some of what I'm talking about:

• Sarah Palin posted a map with crosshairs targeting Giffords and wrote, "Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!" (Source: San Francisco Chronicle)


• Jesse Kelly, who was running for Congress in Arizona, promoted his campaign with the following words: "Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly." He was advertising an offer to recreationally shoot guns with him for $50. (Source: Arizona Daily Star)


• Judge John Roll (killed at the shooting) had received death threats, spurred on by talk-radio shows, in relation to an civil-rights lawsuit involving illegal immigrants. (Source: The Arizona Republic)

Posted by josuah at 11:38 PM UTC+00:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

December 2, 2010

A Different Form of Life

It turns out a new bacterium was found in California's Mono Lake that does not use phosphorus as one of its building blocks. Instead, it replaces phosphorus with arsenic. Not only is this interesting in and of itself, but it also suggests a separate evolutionary path. Life that uses arsenic instead of phosphorus is likely to have a different "start" and lead to more complex life that thrives in completely different environments.

Posted by josuah at 6:15 PM UTC+00:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

November 23, 2010

Constitutional Rights vs. TSA Procedures Tested

Matt Kernan recently returned to the United States from a business trip to Europe. Flying back in, he decided he did not wish to go through a backscatter X-ray machine or submit to the new TSA enhanced pat-down procedures. It took 2.5 hours, but he managed to leave the airport and go home without going through either. He has documented what happened in his blog post You Don't Need to See His Identification.

This is a pretty interesting situation because of the clear statement he said to the TSA officials:

“I am aware that it is policy, but I disagree with the policy, and I think that it is unconstitutional. As a U.S. citizen, I have the right to move freely within my country as long as I can demonstrate proof of citizenship and have demonstrated no reasonable cause to be detained.”

Posted by josuah at 1:40 AM UTC+00:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

November 14, 2010

TSA Rules in Review?

I'm very interested in following the situation that seems to be unfolding regarding one traveler's incident with the TSA at SAN, where he is potentially facing a civil suit and/or $10,000 fine. Apparently, the current rules regarding flying in the United States allows for legal punishment against any travelers who do not abide with the security regulations once entering the screening line. This makes sense on the surface of things, but it also means deciding to forfeit your flight does not allow you to escape penalty. It also means civil disobedience in protest over the latest security measures carries a stiff penalty.

At the crux of things is a question of whether or not the new backscatter and "enhanced pat-down" procedures are a violation of civil rights. One side argues that these measures are necessary for safety purposes. The other side argues they are a violation of civil rights and the fourth amendment which protects against unreasonable search and seizure. This is the same reason law enforcement officers need to establish reasonable suspicion (which can be used to obtain a warrant) before engaging in searches. Failure to do so allows any evidence obtained through an illegal search to be thrown out of court.

Anyway, apparently local news has picked up this person's story. I am looking forward to how this plays out.

Posted by josuah at 8:00 AM UTC+00:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

November 7, 2010

YouCut

Eric Cantor is running a voting program called YouCut, and is soliciting advice for spending cuts, "to defeat the permissive culture of runaway spending in Congress."

I'm a little suspicious of their weekly "winners" of cuts. Apparently, you only have a few choices each week. You cannot vote to not cut a program. And the voting is by text message. This means, if 1 million people don't want to cut something, but one person does, that suggestion could be the week's winner.

The way the cuts are worded is fairly biased as well. And it doesn't matter what the impact of the cut may have been, voting against it is always used to negatively label that congressman.

Posted by josuah at 12:57 AM UTC+00:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 31, 2010

No Gene or DNA Patents

Looks like the Department of Justice has decided patenting of genes or DNA discoveries is invalid, as these are indeed discoveries of something that already exists in nature. I agree with this but it remains to be seen if the patent office and courts enforce this decision.

Posted by josuah at 12:49 PM UTC+00:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 23, 2010

The Guardian Iraq Report

The Guardian has analyzed the over 390,000 documents leaked via Wikileaks and put together an amazing brief interactive analysis in their Iraq: The war logs report. There is a tremendous amount of information contained in those records, which document in detail the sort of activities happening in Iraq since the removal of Saddam Hussein and his government in 2003.

I strongly recommend everyone take a look through the articles and reports The Guardian has put together. Given the size and depth of the information contained in the leaked documents, only a very small portion can be covered an summarized when presented for general consumption. But I believe it is important to know and understand the situation in Iraq, the activities that are taking place there, and the level of involvement and acceptance or tolerance that the U.S. government is engaging in.

For a quick overview, you can start with their Iraq war logs: An introduction. There are a bunch of jumping off points from that page. The New York Times and SPIEGEL have also put up special sections to cover the newly revealed information.

If you missed the earlier coverage on Afghanistan, also from documents leaked via Wikileaks, check out The Guardian's Afghanistan: The war logs site.

Posted by josuah at 4:47 AM UTC+00:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

October 12, 2010

Big Brother Privatized

As if Blackwater (now Xe Services LLC) wasn't proof enough of how private companies performing federal duties without oversight is a bad thing, an agency called the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITRR) has been caught performing domestic surveillance on behalf of state and federal law enforcement agencies. Even worse, it appears their so-called "intelligence" is mostly complete fabrication or contain extreme conclusions based on innocent fact.

ITRR's activities were exposed in relation to surveillance over civil protest groups in Pennsylvania. The Al Jazeera article focuses on the group Peace of the Action which was founded by Cindy Sheehan. But the leaked documents also explicitly mention the recent UC tuition protests and suggest law enforcement start "coordinated responses" to control this "Anarchist movement."

ITRR states it is "an American and Israeli nonprofit corporation."

Posted by josuah at 6:18 PM UTC+00:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)