>Could you elaborate on what you mean by this? I don't know how you'd sell them otherwise. How do you do you process a payment without a network connection? The only thing I can think of is offering a catalog in the OS which users could browse and physically order stuff from, but I wouldn't call that a store.

Not GP but, processing payments absolutely does not require a network connection. Doing so is absolutely not nearly as convenient, but in my adult lifetime it was pretty normal for retailers to pick up a phone, give a customer service rep and/or automated call handler CC info and dollar amounts and get appropriate confirmations.

As for a business without an OS interface not being a "store," that's ridiculous on its face. If that were true, we'd have to call 7/11 or any similar place (like those at most gas stations) convenience "locations with items for sale but not a store, because stores are only places with catalogs in my OS," and "places which sell stuff but aren't stores because rimunroe says they can't be a 'store' without a catalog in their OS."

Touch grass, friend.

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rimunroe 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Not GP but, processing payments absolutely does not require a network connection. Doing so is absolutely not nearly as convenient, but in my adult lifetime it was pretty normal for retailers to pick up a phone, give a customer service rep and/or automated call handler CC info and dollar amounts and get appropriate confirmations.

I forgot about phone payments, but that doesn't change my argument. If it's a built in listing of products, it presumably needs to be updated occasionally too, which I'm not sure how you'd do without mailing disks if you didn't have a network connection. I also don't know how you'd make room for the bundled software. My memory of my Windows 3.1 machine involves a lot of wishing I had more space on my HDD.

> As for a business without an OS interface not being a "store," that's ridiculous on its face.

That indeed would be absurd. Fortunately, I never argued this. I argued that without taking payments or distributing the software through the "store", I don't think it would qualify as a store but would qualify as a catalog. I think of a store as somewhere you go to exchange money for goods/services. If it's doing neither of those things is it still a store?

> Touch grass, friend.

I don't know why you felt this hostility was warranted. Did I slight you in some way?

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Gracana 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You can probably bet that the dumbest possible interpretation of someone's argument is not what they had in mind.

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ryandrake 2 days ago | parent [-]

There wasn't an argument. The OP was just asking a (presumably honest) and simple question: How do you do you process a payment without a network connection?

I can understand how someone under, say, 30, might not know how commerce happened before the Internet. My 13 year old can't believe there was even once a world without the Internet.

	▲	rimunroe 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> I can understand how someone under, say, 30, might not know how commerce happened before the Internet. I remember those days, but I think most people would call something where you viewed a list of products and then called or mailed to order and received the product elsewhere a catalog, not a store. As for over-the-phone payments, I forgot about that method for a moment but don't think it meaningfully affects my argument. It's just as out-of-band as the mail order example I included.
	▲	Gracana 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I was referring to ThrowMeAway's response to rimunroe. "That's ridiculous on its face" is a clue that they meant something different.