To which Visa/MC will simply respond that they no longer want to do business with the merchant.

With the localcast app, you can play pretty much any video from your android device. Works great.

In the articles you cite, it's clear, in a face-to-face transaction, unless there's evidence that the merchant failed to observe the security protocols (i.e. the signatures clearly don't match), the bank eats the cost. The article notes that the banks have been tightening up, and not cutting vendors as much slack as to whether they observed the security protocols or not. That said, it's clear from both articles that, in face-to-face transactions, the bank eats the majority of the costs of fraud. Not so in an online transaction.

As for your experience with photo ID, the employee should be in trouble, at least if it was Visa or MC. The merchant agreement prohibits requiring ID. You can ask for it, but if the customer doesn't want to provide it, you can't make it a condition of completing the transaction.

Did you actually read that story?

"Usually, however, it is the banks that get hurt the most."

Bottom line (and there are exceptions), merchants aren't on the hook if it's a face-to-face transaction. If it's an online transaction, the merchant usually does end up liable.

Except that's not how US taxes work - the US says, you pay US tax on ALL your corporate income. If Apple makes a phone in China and sells it in Germany, the US says that the profit on that sale is taxable. That's highly unusual (unique, actually) among major developed economies.

Ever been to an Italian espresso bar?

Actually, in the areas we're talking about, people would be much better off drinking Coke than water - the reduced risk from waterborne disease far outweighs the negatives from the sugar.

Next time the valet's name tag reads "John Locke," make sure you point that out.

Nah, he gets Rupert Murdoch's hand-me-downs. Murdoch long ago gave up on free-range urchin hearts - he now farms them in a huge facility under Slough.

For a few, yes, but look at the averages.

Yes, but you can easily set your device to wipe after 10 incorrect passcode entries. So, what this really means (assuming that Apple's statements are true) is that, in the event the police want access to your iDevice, their only option (unless they're willing to play 1000:1 odds) is to get the passcode from you.

This fundamentally doesn't make any sense. Say current subsidies to rural areas are $X. Those are clearly enough to get people to live there, work in agriculture, mining, etc. If the subsidies went away, then prices for some goods would rise, but they wouldn't rise by, in aggregate, any more than $X, by definition.

Things would, overall, work themselves out, absent the subsidies. Living in rural areas would become more costly, meaning you'd have to pay people more to live there, so food prices would rise.

$60k/home, 24 people, 3 mile radius. So, that's $1.44M to build out. 3 mile radius is about 28 square miles. Even if that minimum commitment was only 10% of the homes in that area, you're talking (at about 2.5 people per home) about only roughly 21 people per square mile. That's very rural. Typical suburban density is more like 2500 people per square mile.

Google Fiber is only building in VERY specific locations, with optimal physical characteristics (either all aerial plant, or ground that's easy to trench through), with optimal density, with optimal income levels. They're cherry-picking aggressively (which is the perfectly reasonable thing to do). Google Fiber certainly isn't talking about overbuilding areas which are rural enough to qualify for USF subsidies.