I live in South Africa - over here the transition credit cards being having EMV chips took place during 1999-2007. I haven't seen a non-chipped card issued since then, and most of the card readers I see in shops these days don't even have the ability to read magnetic strips anymore. Since 2006 liability for unauthorised (card present) transactions was shifted to merchant who accept card payments without relying on the chip and PIN, instead of to the card-owner or bank. Basically a credit card without a chip, if you can even find one, is almost useless in South Africa.

The term "Chip and PIN" isn't used in South Africa because that's actually a UK brand name, not the term for the technology itself, but the fact is that it isn't just starting to roll out - it finished rolling out many years ago.

I don't know too much about India, but a quick look through Wikipedia indicates that their liability shift occurred in 2010 so it seems safe to assume that the transition is quite far-along there too.

If only Peace Prizes were giant mecha, and there was a good film crew around to record the ensuing battle...

That's why it was revolutionary!

Why don't the copyright-holders publish lyrics for everything on the web themselves? Then they'd kill demand for other lyrics sites and get ad revenues.

I've heard about the pledge of allegiance. That's just plain creepy.

Funny - I switched on my computer, intending to look up whether Firefox has the audio API implemented so that I can use it for my next project, and the first thing I saw was this update which added exactly that :P

The things I'm hoping to see soon from Firefox are CSS3 grids and support for multiple cookie jars.

Maybe he's trying to start a vigilante honeypot.

What's a "Richard" in Cockney slang?

It's a common nickname for "Richard", and predates the slang by quite a bit. In fact, the whole reason "dick" is used to refer to a boy-part is because it is such a common and well-established boy-name. The names "Willie" and "Fanny" came to be used for "penis" and "vagina" for the exact same reason (although the latter is used slightly differently in the US).

I'm opted out by default. The setting is unchecked without me having to change anything. Presumably it's the same for Peter H.S. too.

*slow clap*

Short answer: no.

Long answer: they've already made most (but not all) of their own Steam games compatible. They have no such control over the rest of the games on Steam but they aim to encourage as many other devs as possible to do the same.

Proof-reading fail. Sorry :(

The missing word was "recommended". They have always recommended alternatives that do not involve trusting them. Here's an example from that same FAQ page:

Neither did Mega. They explain these very risks and others right in the FAQ and since they launched have using alternatives that do not involve trusting them. Providing a interface is a significant convenience, but you can't trust anything truly secret to a script someone else can remotely replace on a whim.

I agree that, since I'm going to get a dedicated graphics card anyway, I'd much prefer some more focus CPU. That being said, an APU could open new possibilities for using OpenCL and the like without bogging down the main CPU cores or competing against graphics for the GPU's precious shader units. Now I'm intrigued - I wonder if this arrangement would actually work...