<story><title>Knuth is no longer mailing out checks for $2.56 </title><url>http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/news.html#financial</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>markessien</author><text>I really don&apos;t get how America can be so advanced in so many things, but still use cheques. Why don&apos;t you have a bank transfer system? When I was in Texas last year, we went to a bank and they had these pneumatic tubes that suck in your cheques! Like a gas station. I felt like I had time travelled to some alternate reality.&lt;p&gt;The last time I received a cheque from the U.S in germany, it was one of the most annoying payment methods I&apos;ve ever used. First of all, there was this massive fee, then they froze the cash for 6 weeks while the check was verified. This was back in 2002 or so when I was pretty poor, and I had just done a contract job for a guy for a few thousand US$. So I had all this money on my account, but I could not withdraw it because of the freeze.&lt;p&gt;It was like putting some roast turkey in a sealed glass box in the middle of a famine.</text></comment>
<story><title>Knuth is no longer mailing out checks for $2.56 </title><url>http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/news.html#financial</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>JesseAldridge</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&quot;It turns out that only 9 of the first 275 checks that I&apos;ve sent out since the beginning of 2006 have actually been cashed. The others have apparently been cached.&quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;/facepalm</text></comment>