You're a complete moron, in no country will the police not shoot someone who has raised a gun at them.

They don't have to shoot to kill. Here's a concrete example from England - a soldier had been beheaded in the street (my emphasis):

"The two men made no attempt to escape and charged a police car carrying an armed response team when it arrived at the scene about 15 minutes after the killing, according to a witness.

"'The black guy ran at them with a meat cleaver before it stopped and he was right by the car when they shot him,' said Julia Wilders, 51, who lives close by. The second man, who had a gun, was also shot, she said.

"The men were taken to separate hospitals by air ambulance and they were expected to survive despite their injuries, according to police last night."

exactly how do they charge the card then?

The vendor takes the customer's name, postal address and card number, and sends a message to their card processor (bank) saying "I want to charge this customer this amount for this transaction"; the bank sends back a url and the customer is redirected to that page.

The (secure) page (which displays a shared secret known only by you and the bank) asks for your online banking password; the bank processes the payment, and redirects you back to the vendor's thank-you page.

This has nothing to do with chip and pin.

But UK banks also hand out free one-time pad terminals which use your chip and pin card for online identitification.

People need to stop distracting themselves while driving. Better yet, make sure that anyone who causes damage, injury, or deaths due to their negligence while driving is fully prosecuted under the law.

You mean something like this ?

It's illegal to ride a motorcycle or drive using hand-held phones or similar devices. The rules are the same if you're stopped at traffic lights or queuing in traffic.

You can get an automatic fixed penalty notice if you're caught using a hand-held phone while driving or riding. You'll get 3 penalty points on your licence and a fine of £100.

Your case could also go to court and you could be disqualified from driving or riding and get a maximum fine of £1,000. Drivers of buses or goods vehicles could get a maximum fine of £2,500.

They never thought of ending roaming charges as a way to _make_ money

Except for Three UK who have already ended call roaming charges in eleven foreign countries - including the USA.

And for certain packages they've removed data roaming charges too (subject to limits.)

Incidentally 97 percent of their network traffic is data.

Online transactions don't use the pin; you indicate you have the physical card by keying in a three-digit number printed on the back of the card; but you also have to give the billing address for the card, which if you've just picked it up in the street you're not going to have. And if you have got it, it doesn't help since anything you buy will be shipped to the cardholder instead of you.

Online transactions for virtual goods are verified by transitioning to a bank https page which asks for selected characters from a password; it then sends a go or no-go status to the merchant. To prevent spoofing, the bank's page might also include an indentification phrase - 'the cuckoos are loud tonight' or whatever - which you created when you first registered with the bank.

And to log into your bank account, you can use a small handheld identification thingy which takes your pin number and uses it to create a one-time pad passphrase.

The waiter brings you a handheld point-of-sale terminal and asks you to insert your card, which the waiter never touches. Typically (in a restaurant) the terminal show the question 'do you want to offer a gratuity' (which in the UK at least, there's no stigma against selecting 'no' - and indeed, if you're a regular customer, they may well select 'no' before passing you the terminal); the terminal then asks you to enter your (normally four-digit) pin (which since you're holding the terminal, you can do covertly if you wish); and the machine then prints you a recipt, and you retrieve your card.

For online transactions, you need to provide the billing address and a three-digit number printed on the back of the card, which is entirely unrelated to your pin number.

And for low-value transactions it's increasingly common to use a near-field chip in the card, which you just tap on the terminal.

So if they find I'm a good driver, never getting in any accidents, maintain a good distance between myself and other vehicles, don't get any tickets, they'll give me a huge discount, at least 50%, from what I'm paying now, right?

Yes, that's true for me (in England-land.) But conversely when I had a minor claim my premium doubled the following year.

It's called a No claim bonus (or discount). Look it up.

Insurance companies are NOT interested in reducing premiums.

True

Lowered health insurance premiums(ACA) is a lie

Only true while insurance companies are sticking their fingers in the health pie.

A true universal health scheme has no need for insurance companies.

the worst person can't be charged more than X times the best person

and this is the US problem because the worst (least healthy) person probably has the lowest income through all kinds of demographics; but if they weren't unwell they could earn rather than costing (and hence benefit everybody). So in the interest of the Nation's health, why not charge a flat health-directed tax rate on income and take the insurance companies completely out of the loop (thus saving all their administration costs and bypassing their obdurate policies.)

The hope/goal - which is entirely untested -

apart from in most other countries in the world.

Why is it okay to preach universal health-care and group insurance where low-risk cover the bill for high-risk, but the same isn't true for auto insurance?

Because once you've factored out the health-insurance related costs from an auto-insurance claim, what's left is negligible.

In fact, once everyone is paying for their actual risk, you no longer have insurance. You have a savings account with a middle man taking a huge cut.

So get rid of the middle man, and make huge savings - enough that virtually everyone's flat rate is less than their middle-man's risk-adjusted rate. A health scheme doesn't need an insurance company, it only needs doctors and nurses.

I should perhaps point out that the British National Health Service is just that - a scheme to maintain the Nation's health. And a very efficient way of doing that is to make it straightforward (and free) to see a doctor, so people generally start receiving treatment earlier, while they're still only mildly ill.

This is one of the reasons the UK's cancer survival rate is lower than the USA - almost everybody's diagnosed, while (presumably) many Americans without insurance simply die and are uncounted.

The nearest US equivalents to the NHS that I can think of are US Military Hospitals which may not have the swishest of decor, but the treatment is world class.

The researcher did not actually investigate what it is that dolphins do, he thought of what they could possibly do. I would be more interested in finding out if this is actually the technique dolphins use or do they do something different?

Following links to here we find:

"As for the dolphin: while acting as an inspiration for the technology, Leighton and his team later discovered this was not how the animals' sonar worked. Dolphins also send out twin pulses, but theirs vary in amplitude, not polarity, he said."