I believe the problem is that the interface for this and the way warnings are handled is just horrible and inconsistent between clients.

For example, android requires yout to set a passcode in order to store the public certificate. That's right you need to lock your device so nobody can get access to that PUBLIC key. duh. Clearly you should have a passcode for a private key, but not a public one. I"m not sure if this has been straitened out or not. Also it's often not clear if you can say the equivalent of "trust the current certificate, and warn me if the network tries to give a different one". It typically asks you to manually load the certificate that the server can easily send to the client.

This doesn't even mention that generally the cert will be signed in a way that it can be verified through the same trust chain the web browser uses. While this isn't optimal, it's pretty decent in practice and could easily be implemented as an option.

I agree. Go look at common core, don't assume you know what it is. A lot of the "criticism" of common core has nothing to do with what is actually in common core. I have looked at the teaching of multiplication and it does some things that seem "weird" but are clearly intended to teach students number concepts, not just rote memorization. Now whether the elementary teacher figures that out is a totally different ballgame - since they may not have a firm number concept themselves and therefare they may not even understand what is being taught or know how to explain it to parents.

Sorry, but is it even legal under education privacy laws to require students to use google services in order to use those chromebooks? I love how people just ignore this stuff when it comes to "cloud" services.

Wait whose economy was it that imploded at the end of the cold war? So the "western" (i.e. pro-individual-freedom, multi-party-rule) mindset was supposed to just leave eastern europe to rot because Russia used to be in charge there. Then we just ignore them re-aquiring territory at gunpoint. Last I checked NATO was not invading eastern european countries to integrate them into the EU. Europeans are doing exactly the opposite, trying to help countries get their economies in good shape so that they can move toward closer ties to the EU at their option.

This whole thing in the Ukraine started with the president of Ukraine back-tracking on the parliament's attempts (and the electorate's desire) to have closer ties to the EU. Why did he do this? because he was turning into Russia's puppet. This is not to mention that this guy was elected president under suspicious circumstances. You cannot compare Russia's under-handed meddling with Ukraine to the west trying to help Ukraine get its economy on track as if they are both bad things. One is bad, one is not.

Yep, "most popular smartphone in japan" is a rubbish statistic. Japanese feature phones were so far ahead of those in other parts of the world in features and usage that making a distinction between smartphones and featurephones in the same way one does outside Japan is just nonsense.

It's almost enough to make you wonder if the introduction of the "smartphone" is not what really changed the phone culture in the West. Really Japan had already transitioned to what we think of as the "new" phone-oriented culture, but it was based around high-quality feature phones. So the west might have transitioned even without the introduction of the iphone. The iphone just happened to be the right product in the right place at the right time. I know I was startled to see the speed that Americans transitioned from making fun of asians always poking at their phones to doing the same thing with their own smartphone.

So why is it swipe&sign vs. chip&pin, why not chip&sign? This would make it near impossible to clone cards but still be more secure under audit (i.e. not subject to easily stolen PIN). Even chip and nothing would probably be better in practice than swipe and sign.

That doesn't even seem to make sense. Even with swipe and sign a card doesn't really "work" on two different networks. Does anybody know how this regulation really works?

I think it does always require measuring proficiency at the end. Otherwise how do you know if you are educating?

That being said, it is easy to create a test that will rank students, but extremely difficult to make a test that will measure their proficiency. And making one that is resistant to cheating (e.g. memorizing answers from previous tests) is even harder.

Current grading is generally not even based on level of proficiency, but on level of coverage. You get a good grade if you can demonstrate skill in all the topics covered. The level of proficiency expected on those topics is often not well defined. Also this leads to what the thread root comment is complaining about, where the class is taught as if everybody is going to achieve proficiency in all topics, even when that is known to not be happening. Is it better to teach a set of topics for which it is known the median student can achieve satisfactory proficiency, and then measure proficiency? What does the letter grade mean in such a system? Does in refer to proficiency or coverage?

Nominally this reveals the underlying problem being grappled with in education today. If you get down and honestly measure student proficiency, you realize that only the top 10% of students were actually learning what they were supposedly learning. This makes it really hard to construct a coherent overall sequence of education because you cannot assume that most students have mastered topics covered in previous courses.

So fund the science. Forbidding regulation is just beuracratic stupidity that will get people killed. My impression is that a lot of regulations don't have good science to back them up because the science costs money and hasn't been done yet, and EPA has to make a rule even in the absence of good science. Are you somehow surprised that they would err on the side of public safety when the science is inconclusive? You do realize that this stuff actually maims and kills people right?

they're done professionally

Um, now they can begin professionally. I certainly hope that they were trying to get tenure so that they could educate the next generation and improve the knowledge in their chosen field. Who gives a hoot where you live if somebody is paying you to improve worldwide knowledge?

You do not appear to understand what he is getting at. In the case referred to in the original article, the credit card info stored at one company was used as proof of identity to another company. i.e. your credit card can be used to identify you uniquely if you only use one credit card. On the other hand if you use pre-paid limited-use cards, this doesn't work. This seems like a general benefit to prevent companies from cross-tracking purchasing habits. But the interesting thing here is this case shows that it also provides additional protection against identity theft-type attacks using your credit card info. Basically because you don't have unique credit card info.

But really that godaddy would give control of your account to somebody that has your credit card info is outrageously stupid on their part. Credit cards are a payment method, not an authentication method. The bank will only eat the cost of payment fraud. This was probably some undertrained phone support person thinking there was no other way to get this guy's account access back, which is ludicrous since he probably has ICANN contact information recorded. They could have hung up and called him back using known-good contact info and the whole scheme would have fallen apart.

As others have said, the lesson is don't use godaddy since they are so "customer-friendly" that they are insecure. This just makes me glad that I moved away from godaddy a while ago.

Sorry the Centrifuge Accomodations Module was cancelled. I consider this emblematic of the space program having absolutely no intelligent direction. This module should be at the center of te ISS mission, since the station's primary direct scientific product is study of biology in space. Also one of the most unique aspects of space is microgravity, i.e. low, controlled acceleration in a variable-rate centrifuge module.

or Snowden-Obama: 1 Military-industrial Complex: 0.9. Unlike some other posters you do appear to have some inkling that democrats, including Obama, can't just do anything they please and still get elected. A lot of the things left-leaning independents would like them to do don't get done simply because distortions of those actions could be easily used to whip the ignorant masses into foaming fury with a few deceptive commercials. It turns out keeping power away from the dishonest madmen is pretty tricky with an ignorant electorate. And I totally agree voting reforms would help, but until then...

disaster? Because McCain starting a war with Iran with one hand and letting the country slide into another great depression with the other would have been sooo much better. Amazing how fast people forget reality.

2.4/5/6/7 are more different than you might think. Some of the things that were "added" were already there in a preliminary form and therefore had their names and interfaces changed.