Whoosh!

And don't think for one minute that you can escape your fate by "voting for the other guy". That particular scam is our greatest achievement- the illusion of choice. Whoever you vote for, you will never be rid of us for we are the unelected. Whether you vote for the general, the crook, the farmer, the actor, the oil man, the lawyer, the black man, the orange man or the woman - we decide your fate.

Everything that has transpired has done so according to our design. It is unavoidable. It is your destiny. Young fool! Only now, at the end, do you understand.

> After ripping BSD

*facepalm*

That was lucky!
https://techcrunch.com/2012/11...

It's 100% the other way around. Google store your full card details and full transaction details on their servers. All of it. All the time.
It's why they're happy to take a hit. The ongoing value of that data FAR exceeds any per-transaction fee.

It's ironic that you're calling Apple a middle-man when it's actually Google who are inserting themselves as a financial intermediary (were you aware that Google have issued you a virtual credit card?) and knowing every single transaction detail, which of course suits their panopticon business model. There's a reason they're not charging you for that privilege.

Apple are acting as a payment communication medium, keeping no details of your transaction and yes, charging for the privilege. Whether it's worth it is in the eye of the beholder.

This might help explain the differences between the two systems:
http://www.investopedia.com/ar...

I'm sorry but that's just not true.
The two systems are vastly different in implementation. Google are acting as a financial intermediary for every transaction through use of a "virtual credit card" which is what is on your phone and what the vendors see (they never see your actual cards as they are only on Google'a servers). As a result, Google have access and knowledge of every detail of every transaction you make using their system. This aligns with their panopticon business model. By effectively acting as a middleman financial institution they don't need any agreement with banks etc. Every transaction you make actually becomes two 1. Google pays vendor, 2. Google charges your bank.

Apple are not doing this at all, instead they are securely storing your card details on the phone and communicating payment details to and from the vendor and your financial institution. Their system is designed so they don't store your card details nor know about your transactions. However this requires agreement with the financial institutions on the other end.
http://www.investopedia.com/ar...

https://youtu.be/ZDOI0cq6GZM

I suspect, given PM May's well-documented willingness to trample on the privacy rights of her citizens, that the ban has more to do with prevention of any leaks a la Snowden. What is said in cabinet, stays in cabinet.

I'm reminded of that famous quote by Otto von Bismarck, "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made." We don't want the proles learning what we really think of them.

> This approach to propaganda was spelled out explicitly by Adolf Hitler in his book "Mein Kampf."

Who went on to use it with great success in his wildly popular Third Reich, convincing an entire nation of otherwise well-meaning Germans to take part in, or look away from, the extermination of an entire race.

True.
I'm currently working at a big bank that has poured hundreds of millions into Oracle for a flagship project that has way under delivered and is a couple of years overdue. The vast majority of their techs couldn't program their way out of a wet paper bag. I thank my lucky stars I'm not involved in that clusterfuck.
While I'm sure there's culpability in the Oregonian government for this, to hold Oracle blameless would be wrong.
There was once a time when Oracle was the right answer to the question "which database". Now, I'm pretty sure they're not the answer for anything.

I wouldn't mind you redundant, just one dimensional.
MIcrosoft, like many large companies, gets some things right and others wrong. Part of the art to being that kind of company is (a) understanding who exactly you're appealing to (could be more that one group), and (b) ensuring the products targeting (a) are self consistent and sensible.
Personally, I'm appreciating their Office for Mac suite and the recent tilt towards OSS. However I've been Windows free (at home) since before XP.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/johnp...

You must have missed the bit where I said I checked it myself. I shone a light down the socket but for the life of me couldn't see anything untowards. Even if I had, I doubt I have anything narrow enough to get down there and grab it.
I'm a bit nonplussed by some of the vehement reactions here though. If you don't see any value in the ecosystem (and that _is_ what you're buying with Apple), then just don't buy it. Personally I kind of like that there's a vendor that is happy to break with the past and champion design decisions they believe are for the best. May not always work out (though they've had some success with various interfaces) but at least they're happy to strike off in a new direction. I recently bought an iPhone SE and it will do me for another couple of years at least. As will the Jabra Revo phones I'm waiting for (yes, BT audio sucks but tbh on public transport I can't tell the difference, and now there'll be no more snagging of cables - yay).

I'll take a slight exception to the "really solid" descriptor of the headphone jack. I recently had an experience where my earbuds plug wasn't "locking in" properly, resulting in occasional channel loss and/or mic loss. I thought I had damaged it when the wire had recently got caught and the resulting tension caused a slight bend - or Si I thought. After doing my own checking, I gave up and went to the Apple Store. They found a tiny piece of fluff jammed right in to the back of the phone socket. The tech said he had a hard time removing it as the battery lies just beyond that and he didn't want to pierce it with the tool he used. Fluff removed, plug locks in, earbuds working fine.

None of which is to say that the lightning adapter is robust, it isn't. But it's smaller opening makes it less likely that shit will get jammed in it, that's for sure.