I dunno, so why do you think the uptake on Google Wallet has been so poor? I think the other fella down there has a good point -- they never properly marketed the thing.

NB. Swillden is either an employee of has an "It's Complicated" relationship status with Google Inc.

The peak of Affirmative Action was in the 90s, when arguments over Affirmative Action were made, when Family Guy was mocking reparations, when fears over quotas of how many black people to hire were coming out of the woodwork, when such quotas or similar systems of selecting X from the black/women pool and the rest from the general pool were actively done so as to avoid potential "you have an awful lot of white guys working here..." EEO litigation, and so on.

I got my liberal Democrats from high school. Had a friend whose mom baked the class Democrat Cookies with asses on them; the kid campaigned in the middle of class for a gubernatorial election, and also told us that one of our classmates got into a good college because she was black. Said black chick had a better SAT score than me, initially, by 20 points; but I retook the test because my statistics teacher scored 1330 on his SATs, and he was similarly fucking head-up-ass politically retarded, and went on 40 minute rants about how gay marriage would lead to people marrying tables and animals, and then was fired after 3 months for gross incompetence. I scored a 1340 on my second round, 10 points higher than black chick who "got into a good college because she's black", so my response to that argument is an enormous middle finger.

Amusingly, the anti-gay-marriage ranting teacher was a firm Democrat, and would rant about bush a lot, too. The guy campaigning for Kathleen Kennedy Townsend also used to comment that Shirley Temple was a bright actress because she was a Democrat, while talking about how fucked up gays are and how they all carry diseases and HIV. Never have I experienced such a confused mixture of politics and social vitriol as I had in the presence of these people. How they managed to hold a firm stance against gay marriage and yet a firm stance against all things conservative politics I will never quite understand, considering the way partisan politics are held as a fashion statement here in the United States.

The more conservatives I was surrounded by did not seem to care much. We had such people as William Donald Schaffer once, a moderate Democrat whose behavior was more becoming, and who speaks to me of what the country should be more like; alas, in my time, he had taken a more minor governmental office and was no longer governor. The modern Conservative has disappeared, as well, in favor of the right-wing radical: some politicians appear as caricatures of Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. These are such sad times, but familiar to me: it is as when the Tori of the English cut down the center of Parliament to bring progressive politics in where there was only the barren wasteland between the Liberal and the Radical politicians, and I hope soon we shall see similar senses brought among the House of Representatives and the Senate of our nation.

5) Police get warrant for health spa's credit records.
6) Police now have a list of hundreds of suspects. And the spa doesn't even know it's happened.

These people don't use credit cards, boss, it's like sticking a big flag on your head saying "arrest me."

I have AdBlock installed, and I still see pre-roll ads sometimes.

I wrote my PIN on the back of the chip-n-pin card. Chip-n-Sign forever!

Remember when retailers wanted people to run debit, and nobody would do it? That was because retailers get charged for credit transactions, and don't want to pay that; while individuals have to enter their PIN for debit, and are too lazy for that. As we can't be strong-armed into using debit over credit, we'd just say, "Credit!" and swipe and sign.

That was, uh, EVERYONE.

Does TFA say how they got the emails? I just read yesterday that someone had discovered that you could enter arbitrary email addresses into CurrenC registration wizard, and if you were snooping the wire, the MCX server would return a completely filled-out user record for each entered email address.

Well then, let me enlighten you about the United States education system. Sit back and enjoy a bit of history.

Back in the early 20th century, it was discovered that faculty education theory does not hold. This is to say: the brain is not a muscle. Faculty education purports to strengthen the brain by flexing, such that repeated memory drilling makes memory work better, and the learning of Latin and Greek make the mind's ability to process language sharper and firmer. Such things are a complete falsehood.

As reaction, John Dewey lead a progressive education renaissance, replacing this with a sort of student-centric education by experience. Rather than studying from biology textbooks, memorizing times tables, and reciting historical events, students would grow plants from seed, perform mathematics from word problems, and read historical stories and enact plays and games. This would replace "I know" with "I have experienced", creating a life of experiences as education.

There are obvious faults in this. From an unstructured and unknowledgeable view, one could easily comment on Latin and Greek providing the basis of English and other European languages, thus providing strength in English. This argument is fluffy and makes no notable contribution; it is, however, correct for other reasons, which I shall expand upon.

To start with, the ideals of John Dewey imply that "experience" is all-important and, directly and explicitly, damn the concept of "memorization". According to this new progressive education method, memorization is wrong, is toxic, and is damaging. Memorization is painful, difficult, detracting, and dull; it distracts the student from the pleasure and enjoyment of learning by his experiences, and provides no real benefit. This view is patently false.

All learning, all knowledge, predicates on memory. A person cannot learn what he cannot remember. Experience forms a type of memory, and forms it more strongly than rote drilling. I will agree that the rote memorization of facts is dull and toxic; but this is not the only form of memorization, and it is not reason to eschew memorization entire as a damaging or even an unimportant aspect of education.

What faculty learning misinterpreted--and what its detractors completely missed--was the improvement of the mind by *technique*. Memory, for example, improves by mnemonics such as acrostics, the method of Loci, rhymes, and visualization. The learning of Latin and Greek provides a familiar base on which to derive English and other European languages, easing the learning and use of such, at least in terms of vocabulary. These are not matters of the brain getting stronger, but rather of it having knowledge of ways to approach these things more effectively--in the same way that a crowbar does not make you stronger, but it does allow you to rip the side of a house clean off.

The many skills we need for a strong education system include mnemonics, study systems, mental mathematics, problem analysis systems, decision making systems, and the like. I will expand on each in brief here; I will trade a strong and complete argument for brevity and structure.

Mnemonics form the foundation: what is not remembered cannot be known, and what is not known cannot be learned. Mnemonics allow for quick, efficient memory of things, at least temporarily, so that they may be recalled in the course of learning or applying without carrying a reference. Such recall allows learning and doing to apply freshly-introduced concepts which may otherwise be promptly forgotten, which allows for understanding of further explanation, and thus allows for more solid learning. These techniques thus increase learning and thinking efficiency.

Study systems closely relate to mnemonics. SQ3R and SQW3R propose a method for examining new material (largely, written material) and preparing to meet it in learning. The general mode of these and other study systems is to Survey the headings, pictures, introductory sentences and paragraphs, summaries, and other topical aids; Question the material, often by turning these glanced-over elements into questions; Write the questions; Read the material, being mindful of what you know and what you have questioned and gleaned from a quick survey; Recite from memory what you have learned; and Review the material and your notes. In modern schools, we are told to "take notes" and to "study", but not told how to do these things in any useful capacity.

Mental mathematics include all techniques for rapid computation, as we do not have such a term as "mathmonics" or such to describe them. The operation of a Japanese Soroban abacus, and the conduction of its processes in mind rather than in machine; Friendly Number systems; lattice multiplication and Napir's bones; the methods of derivative and integral calculus by pull-down, chain rule, or U-substitution. Structured teaching of such things founds our arithmetic education more strongly than modern education methods, which in turn founds algebra, founding geometry, founding such things as adjusting your baking recipes for two round 9 inch pans rather than an 18x24 rectangular pan.

Problem analysis systems structure the analysis of problems. My favored is the Kepner-Tregoe problem analysis system, which specifies a number of questions (eleven in total) for any performance deviation problem. When a thing is not working, the Problem Specification strategy mandates first identifying What is not working, What it's doing wrong, Where it is, Where on it (what part) is the problem, When the problem first occurred, and so on. It specifies answering for what IS having the problem; what IS NOT but COULD BE experiencing the problem (i.e. two 2004 Honda Accords, one doesn't have oil pressure); what is DIFFERENT between them; and what CHANGED when the problem started (or occurs each time the problem occurs). There are several such systems which provide structured ways of attending such problems, providing for rapid and efficient troubleshooting.

Decision Analysis is a similar concept. Decision making frameworks range from Pugh and Weighted Pugh matrix methods up to the related Kepner-Tregoe Decision Analysis framework (effectively a Weighted Pugh matrix with baseline selected per comparison dimension), and move horizontally to unrelated decision frameworks such as analytical hierarchy. Such frameworks provide for structuring and analyzing decisions between similar things, and reduce debates over alternatives to debates over what is important and how well any given alternative satisfies that need relative to others.

I'm sure you can think of other skills we need in education as a foundation. Mnemonics and Study Systems form the basis of studying anything, while the mathematics systems I've described strengthen our ability to learn and use math. Problem and decision analysis systems are things we would learn further down, as they are useful *functional* concepts but not foundational *learning* concepts. You could easily argue for critical thinking skills--the study of logical fallacies, for example--and for risk analysis skills as part of education of primary importance. All of these things are left out of our standard curriculum; some of them would improve our ability to learn the curriculum, and others would simply improve our decisions in everyday life.

It is these things which make an advanced, enlightened society. These were things the ancient Greeks and Romans founded society on--a society without a printing press, without high levels of technology, without the benefits of modern life, of modern communication, transportation infrastructures, and space travel; yet they built great buildings, running water, fire departments, speaking halls, farm lands, and even empires. Imagine those ancients with the technology we have at their disposal--a people who saw a book once in their life, if they weren't simply confined to hearing another man tell at length its contents from one reading, and incorporated that knowledge fully into their own. We are as naive children; they, however, did not have the scientific process, or the firm grasp of the universe which we have derived with it. Who has made best of the resources they had at the time?

You say a school only needs the free market, books, and a handwave; better education systems have been had for less, and worse have been produced with more. In the proposed world, we would have very little, and would be charged to make a lot of it. What greater thing can we bring to that world than the knowledge of how to make all persons geniuses on the level of Einstein, of Hawking, of Socrates and Plato, of Simonides, of Ben Pridmore, of the bards who memorized the epics of Homer? The disciplinary processes of the mind, the mnemonics, the mathematics, the analysis, the scientific process itself, are what allow a man to turn rocks and mud into concrete and steel, into high-rise buildings, into space ships and nuclear power; it is those processes which we would best bring.

I wonder why Apple is seen as a threat more? Their network of friends? Number of potential users can't be it - many more Android phones than iPhone 6s.

My understanding is that even on NFC-equipped Android phones, Google never had a proper deployment strategy; they only partnered with a few card issuers, they didn't really work with any merchants to get them on board, Verizon blocked their app on their phones, it was only limited to the US, etc.

Over that first weekend, we know now that ApplePay adoption was in the millions, and in those first few days CVS probably saw this deluge of NFC transactions and were like, the jig is up, the train is leaving the station, and if we continue to allow NFC transactions through the 2014 Christmas season the Payments War will be over and CurrenC won't have even been a contender.

A credit card isn't cash, credit cards emit a very long paper trail. Imagine how easy the police's job would be if criminals actually used credit cards in the manner you describe.

Doesn't work that way. This is a clear statement:

To break it down to English:

And to break down the Predicate Nominative:

English is quite complex, but you can see how it all lays out. The predicate direct object is one giant noun clause ("anyone wishing...from their lives."), which, being a noun clause, could also become a subject. For example:

This starts with the same noun clause, followed by the copula verb "is", and a predicate of "wholly justified".

I believe the correct verb would have been "evict" rather than "excise", however ("excise" means "tax"). Either case does not imply execution, nor does it fit into a sentence structure suggesting anything be done directly to such a person at all; the sentence structure suggests more nothing than nothing be done with the person. Given that such fault does not lead to an interpretation involving any form of bodily harm, nor would the structure suggest such a thing, it seems you are at fault for reading what you wish to read rather than what is stated.

Sounds like Verizon, but with "religion".

So it makes it better, then makes that better?

Yeah, we see how free trade has solved education in America.

Our education system has tumbled down to the bottom of what a civilized education system can be. It is practically an indoctrination system. It doesn't teach people how to think; it just shoves things on kids, in hopes of keeping them busy.

It appears to produce people like you.

Well, you're wrong. The original Executive Order commanded that GOVERNMENT CONTRACTORS hire without regard to race, religion, or national origin (i.e. you can't refuse to hire foreigners). Nothing about higher education.

That was way back in the 60s. In the 90s, it was fashionable to place college students by non-statutory racial quotas--they were non-statutory because such quotas are, and always have been, illegal--and so it was suggested that more women and blacks would be taken into college on the basis of being women and blacks. There was much argument for this, and much political theater against this. About this time, the term "reparations" begun to appear, with blacks and non-black civil rights advocates demanding cash payment for the suffering of their ancestors, or some such nonsense; these such things are simply the result of political hysteria, and are mirrored by white country singers sparking white Americans to kick the shit out of anyone with a beard and turban shortly after 9/11.

At a point, the social institution of affirmative action had been the leaning toward bringing in at least some candidates for employment and college admissions based on "some of them are black and women, so we should chose some of those specifically to get a good balance". This institution was not formalized by statute--indeed, was illegal--but was engaged in nonetheless, and was talked about openly and argued for as a social institution which many desired to codify into formal statute.

Try thinking from a view of everything, instead of from a narrow view. It helps to understand not just legal statute and origins, but the progression, the implicit social institutions which came and went, the arguments people had made, the media behavior over time, misconceptions of various people, forward-theory, and human psychology in general.