What do you call someone who goes around saying things that they know are untrue?

A politician.

It wasn't a bad episode, though in retrospect, it kind of felt like a ripoff of Enemy Mine in a lot of ways (the book, that is).

... all of them? Seriously the inclusion of a trained Shakespearian actor (Stewart) was the only saving grace of that branch-off of TOS.

come on... it's not like the series didn't have any redeeming qualities at all... is it?

I can think of one really good episode. It involved the captain getting his brain rewired and living an entire lifetime on another planed in a dream induced by an alien probe. Why was it good? Because it focused on one character (played by Patrick Stewart) and really developed him.

The one with Picard leading the kids up the lift shaft was also good.

And I enjoyed the whole "Sometimes a cake is just a cake" episode. I mean, it was absurd, but it was amusing.

Worst episode? Anything with Wesley Crusher. They were almost all painfully written. How many times can a single kid put everybody in mortal danger and then somehow manage to save the day in some contrived fashion?

Why would they need to compromise your CAs? They can compromise any CA, because unless the client uses a tighter-than-normal designated requirement, it will trust any cert for your domain as long as it is signed by any of dozens of CAs. That's what makes TLS so flawed.

The boss doesn't ask employees to leave. The employee just gets to work one day and find their desk on the front lawn.

You mean we get to keep the desk? If I had known that, I'd have gotten myself fired a long time ago!

Self checkout is just making the customer do the cashiers job for free before realizing that customers suck at doing these things correctly because it's not their job.

So what's the cashiers' excuse for not doing it correctly? :-D

No, seriously. I tend to order things with various customizations (e.g. no [insert ingredient]). I haven't done the math, but I suspect that I have at least a 10% return rate at many businesses. How hard is it to push "Only" followed by the ingredients that the customer specifies? Point-of-sales systems suck, but at least if I'm in control of it, I can see that the order is right, and if it is wrong, it's my fault.

You're on the right track, but that implementation is way more complicated than it needs to be. Any PIN should be handled by the device itself, and should be easy to change to any arbitrary PIN. Or you might even use a fingerprint reader.

You should be able to basically eliminate any additional risk from a modified device or payment terminal (except perhaps the risk of someone physically stealing the device and using it) by doing the crypto as follows:

• The business generates the transaction receipt and signs it with its public key.
• The user pushes the button on the card to initiate the payment handshake. This causes the device to broadcast a Bluetooth Low Energy beacon.
• The payment terminal (computer, POS terminal, cell phone) detects the beacon and sends the transaction receipt to the card.
• The device shows the business info, dollar amount, etc. on its screen.
• The user presses a button to authorize the transaction.
• The device signs the transaction using its private key and sends its response back to the payment terminal.
• The payment terminal sends the doubly signed receipt back to a payment processor.
• The payment processor verifies the signatures using public keys stored in the business's account and the user's account and verifies whether funds are available.
• The payment processor sends back a signed response containing the transaction receipt and a status field that indicates whether the transaction was authorized or not.
• The payment terminal provides the signed response to the device so that the user can verify that the payment was accepted or rejected. (This prevents double charging fraud.)
• If the signatures are valid and funds are available, the payment processor automatically transfers the funds to the business.

In an ideal world, the transaction would then be applied to the default credit card in your online account profile, but you should have the ability (up to a few days after the transaction) to redirect the transaction to a different card by logging in to your online payments account and saying "Bill it to X". Alternatively, you could have multiple PK pairs, one for each account, and you could choose the account on the device itself.

The way you handle offline sales with this model is also pretty straightforward. You use either a mobile app on your phone or a website on your computer (requires browser support), as follows:

• Enter the name of the business.
• The payment app provides a list of matching businesses. Choose the right one.
• Enter the amount of the payment.
• The payment app generates a transaction.
• You push a button on the device, and the payment app does the BTLE handshake.
• You push another button to authorize the transaction, and the payment app sends it to the payment processor.
• The payment app issues a funds hold against your account and gives you a unique transaction ID for that hold. You give that transaction ID to the store.
• The store, upon accepting the order, uses that transaction ID to convert the hold into an actual charge.

The existence of that transaction ID in the merchant's account is proof that the payment occurred. At most, the only thing the merchant would have to do to prevent fraud would be to ensure that nobody uses the same transaction ID to pay for more than one purchase. This is, of course, a trivial local database lookup.

You would also need an app (mobile or desktop) that can download the public key from the device (if the device gets stolen, you'll need to associate the new device's public key with your payment account) and occasionally update its firmware to fix any bugs in the crypto code.

ATT's customers should be able to leave, because ATT sucks.

AT&T's customers would need a viable alternative first.

Err... steeenking.

The ones with the skunk glands?

Badgers? We don't need no steeeking badgers.

Way to take the high road. You could just as easily have said, "Keep on living," or "Breathe."

... to the obligatory Far Side Eggs and baby cartoon.

You can easily put the gun somewhere safe.

Ah, but if the gun is somewhere safe, you're unlikely to be able to get to it quickly. For a gun to be viable for self defense, you need to be able to get it and load it in a very short period of time. Otherwise, you might as well invest in a squirt gun. If you put the gun somewhere that's actually safe from a child, you're also making it considerably harder for you to get access to the weapon quickly. Those critical seconds could mean the difference between life and death.

In any case, if I was going to use an electronic lock, I would much rather use a RFID lock over a fingerprint lock. There would be a much smaller chance for error.

That seems like a perfectly reasonable alternative. I certainly don't think laws need to mandate a specific technology, just a minimum certification level or some such, which different weapons could achieve in different ways.

Also, if you have children in the house, they should be taught gun safety and that if they even touch any gun without your permission, there will be hell to pay.

I completely agree with you about teaching your kids gun safety, and even though I don't intend to have guns in my house, when I eventually have kids, they will learn how to properly unload a firearm. The problem with having guns in houses with kids comes when they invite other kids over. Chances are, your kids' friends haven't been taught about guns, and they may not know not to touch them, or worse, might think that they're toy guns. That's why particularly in households with kids, having some form of electronic safety is a really, really good idea.

Now put that same firearm in a household with kids. Do you really want a gun that might fire because somebody got curious? You shouldn't be required to use the digital lock, but it should be required to be present on the firearm as a mandatory safety feature, just like you can disable the air bags in your car, but by default, they come enabled.

Given her low approval ratings, the only reason Feinstein is in office at all is because the Republicans keep miraculously finding people even more unelectable.