Centralizing control over analysis of student performance data --- taking the capability away from teachers to evaluate how a program is really working, and placing it in the hands of

You seem to view this as a zero sum game.

Additional central analytics doesn't necessarily take capabilities away from teachers. It could inform and help them.

Anything can be used badly, it seems to me the fight should be to use analytics well, not stop it being used.

For improving quality of the educational materials, all Code.org needs is aggregate summary data

I don't think that's necessarily true, or at least it's not true that more specific detail than aggregate data won't lend itself to additional useful insights.

For instance it's reasonable to imagine that different people learn better in different ways and that by accumulating data on individuals one might be able to determine different groups among them which might in turn lead to more tailored materials for different types of learners.

If you aggregate the data early around one factor (eg a class or school) that will vastly reduce your ability to come up with other ways to view the data or to have things emerge from the data that you didn't already anticipate.

It would be absurd to suggest that more fine-grained data wouldn't allow for more detailed analysis. The only question is where the line needs to be drawn for privacy or other reasons.

You can almost walk from Papua to Australia at low tide (if you have very long legs).

Or a kangaroo to ride, of course.

"I want a Sony plasma television for the house," said Amanda Lisboa, 34, a business administrator who waited seven hours outside a Caracas store ... "It's going to be so cheap!"

Didn't Sony stop making plasma TVs some time ago?

If the system is designed right, forged cards, replay attacks (e.g. add $50 to the card, read its contents, spend the $50, write the old contents to get a free top-up) and other such things can be prevented.

What is the practical gain from that?

The reality is that 99.9% of people are honest and will pay what they should regardless of whether the cards are insecure and could be 'hacked'. As such there isn't much to be gained from designing a system that protects against things almost no one is going to do anyway.

Which doesn't explain why these systems always seem to cost so much and get delivered late. I can only assume the companies that make these things do that so the problem seems harder than it is.

What kind of idiot budgets for a server room with a steel door that takes weeks to break down

That room sounds pretty secure, the perfect place to put the spare keys for safekeeping.

Usually the way this works with a company that spends the time to do it right is that the Payment Gateway/Processor will store the card in perpetuity and give you a token you can reauth against. Since the token itself is useless and can be revoked, it's vastly safer, barring any issues with the Gateway/Processor/Token (Heartland....)

It also means you are somewhat locked in to using that gateway.
If you are doing a lot of volume you will also probably want to use multiple gateways and process through whoever can give you the best rate at any point in time.

Day one server issues for a AAA release??? STOP THE PRESSES!

I think it is newsworthy. While it is inevitable from a technical perspective it seems strange to me that companies (whether Apple or Rockstar) aren't more creative at managing the demand side so that people don't have a bad experience.

How about:
1) Conservatively work out how many people you expect you can serve.
2) Auction off that many "Early Access" entry tokens with the proceeds going to charity.
3) Continue to sell more tokens (again with proceeds going to charity) for the rest of the week as you find you have spare capacity and work out any bottlenecks.
4) Let everyone in.
Everyone wins. Company gets good press rather than bad, people super keen to access the content get a good experience and a charity gets some resources.

Guess that will be next year's model

Next up is the 1000 blade shaver, perfectly moulded to your face. One quick stroke and your whole face is clean shaven.

Either that or you are bleeding to death.

No way to "use dbname" for switching DBs inside psql - must quit and restart with different dbname

/c dbname

These clowns don't have anything more important to work on?

Of course. No doubt right now someone is drafting directions to rename the "Black Russian" to the "Black Freedom" at all congressional events.

Vote with your money

This is the crux of it, however it raises an issue that I haven't seen mentioned yet, the price of games.

It has long been argued (largely unconvincingly admittedly) that piracy "costs" developer money. If the MS DRM is shown to "work" then there is an argument to be made that the games released on both platforms should be cheaper on the Xbox (especially if the opportunity for earning more money on resale is there)? If the publishers buy into that theory and the Xbox One is cheaper to run then I think, for a lot of people, the question will become muddier. Similarly if publishers begin to see better rates of legitimate purchases on Xbox they may favour it with more exclusives (or at least release the Xbox version first).

All theory of course, but as someone who only uses a console to play games and has little time to do anything that would require more freedom than the Xbox allows the practical differences between the Xbox One and PS4 are negligible and other factors are likely to take greater sway.

I think this will be an interesting test. With the consoles releasing more or less side by side and with similar capabilities it will perhaps help show once and for all whether DRM can be done in a way that makes customers prefer it.