There was a very nice system, including PIN numbers to manage the POS terminals. Way back when stock trade was 49$, it was 25 cent per transaction irrespective of the size of transaction. This should have become zero. But that is not what happened.

The 25 cent transaction fee is charged by the acquiring bank, not Visa and Mastercard - whose fees for debit are typically 1 cent per transaction as they are a volume based business.

The reason that acquirers charge is because they incur costs associated with that transaction (including, but not limited to, interchange fees). If they didn't charge, it would fail as a viable business model.

Pre-paid cards still have to use Visa or MC to get the request for the money from the acquirer (who has the relationship with the merchant and typically provides the terminal) to the card issuer (the bank that supplied the pre-paid card).

Regarding AppStore vs MC+Visa, in order for Apple to be able to accept payments directly they would have to get an e-money licence so they could issue virtual debit or credit cards for use on their phones. By doing so, they'd still need the rails that Visa and MC provide - unless they really want to get into the business of connecting themselves to all the banks worldwide (aka becoming a payment processor).

This is Europe.
There _is_ no unpaid overtime!

I've worked for UK, Spanish and German companies and and sure there is, it's done all the time. Often when you work longer hours in the day and do the odd bit of work at the weekend.

If people check their mail during vacation, they are working, and they have to be paid and their vacation is still due an they can sue the company when they leave (or not) to get payment for the missed holidays or weekends.

IANAL but I believe that only counts if they specifically ask you to check your email. If they don't and you go ahead anyway, then you won't get paid for it.

I always leave my blackberry at home when I go on holiday.

4. EPG being as inaccurate as the ones you get on a flat screen TV one.

This is a good point. Even though DVB-T/T2/S (not sure about C) can provide EPG data, Microsoft get their EPG data from third parties. This is a good thing because you get 14 days worth of data and extra meta-data associated with the program listing which allows them to do some quite nifty functionality.

Unfortunately the data is often wrong and (in the UK at least) the series link data is either not there (so you cannot record the season of a show because it thinks it's a one off) or on every single instance of a show meaning that you end up filling your HD with hundreds of repeats.

There is even a hacky bit of vbscript which is designed to attempt to delete any duplicate recordings, it's that bad.

http://www.fourteenminutes.com...

Whoops misread the article and thought it said DVB-S not DVB-C.

DVB-C is television content through a cable. It's popular in a large number of countries and, for the UK, would be how Virgin Media would deliver their content.

Having said that, I'm not entirely sure whether or not you would be able to use a DVB-C tuner to get Virgin. The majority of people I know use a STB supplied by Virgin (which, in the past couple of years, has been a rebranded TiVo). Someone else with more knowledge than me will probably be able to confirm.

It'll be interesting to see how many tuners you get. If it's only one then you'll only be able to watch one channel and you'll only be able to record another if it is on the same multiplex. So if BBC1 and BBC2 are on the same multiplex then you can record one and watch the other - but you wouldn't be able to record BBC1 and watch ITV since they are on a different multiplex.

If they are serious about providing a good STB experience (and they are part the way there because Windows 7 Media Center and a DVT-T2 tuner blows most of the STBs I've ever used out of the water for experience and, sadly, cost) then they really need to be offering a dual tuner.

DVB-T is OTA SD television content branded as "Freeview". You get over a 100 channels but, to be honest, only about 30 of them are any good. There are all the major stations (BBC 1 and 2, ITV, Channel 4 and 5), their additional channels (BBC 3, ITV 2 etc), some +1 hour channels and some Freeview only channels. Whilst these are all subscription free, there is a small amount of subscription content and it's not essential to subscribe to these. You don't get many of the Sky channels.

DVB-T2 is the same as T but with the inclusion of 10 or so (I can't remember the exact number) HD channels. It's branded "Freeview HD". Again, subscription free for the majority of the channels. It's nice to watch Top Gear in HD.

DVB-S is the same as T2 but, I think, has a few more HD channels. It's branded "Freesat" and requires the installation of a satellite dish on the side of the house - which often fails the WAF test. It arrived before Freeview HD and so was the first way to get HD channels, although I'm not sure whether that really is the case any more.

For those that are wondering, "YouView" is actually a STB with a DVB-T2 tuner and a range of additional catch-up and VOD services bolted on.

The majority of people will probably get DVB-T2.

Seems odd to call them "gaming SSDs" when they sound like just really fast SSDs. I'm actually surprised they are marketing them that way - especially since they'd reach a wider market if the didn't just target gamers.

Plus are games really that much faster? When I bought my Samsung 840 I put everything on there. However as soon as I found out that the load times in HL2 weren't noticeably different (probably because the longest part of the "please wait" wasn't disk access) I quickly shifted the entire "steamapps" folder to my HDD.

The City of London Police Force is not a private police force, its a public body that receives government funding and is the same as any other police force in the UK, bar the fact that it doesn't have an elected police commissioner.

It's far more insidious than just the fact it doesn't have an elected police commissioner and it most definitely is not the "same as any other police force in the UK".

http://www.theguardian.com/com...

The City of London Police is overseen by an elected body and funded through taxes. It is not a private police force. I think that was just a transparent attempt to sensationalize a news story.

It's a police force controlled by private businesses and backed by the government.

http://www.theguardian.com/com...

...but not before the customer service representative pressed him for eight solid minutes (audio) to explain his reasoning for leaving "the number one provider of TV and internet service in the country"...

Slight correction: the customer service representative pressed him for a further eight solid minutes.

He'd already been on the call for ten minutes before they started the recording!

It's always, without exception, a strategic move by the PR department, to encourage public chatter about some product.

As someone who actually had a product (they owned and managed) leak, I can tell you that it is never "always" a strategic move.

This might be orchestrated by the Microsoft PR team, but please don't assume that every leak is.

In iOS, when the factory reset is performed the key is removed so when the phone is reset and tied to a new account a new key is generated which is unable to access the old content. I'd rather the content was erased first, just in case some exploit is uncovered that can get at that key, but it's better than what Android has.

To expect an Android user to know that they must first encrypt the phone then do a factory reset if they want their data actually erased is absurd. Does Google not share the same view as the public on what the phrase "factory reset" actually means?

This (along with the all or nothing approach to app permissions) is something Google's PHDs really need to sort out.

I'd like a very *simple* smart watch...

* Simple caller-ID and memo display, programmable shortcut buttons, nothing else.

* Very long charge life comparatively (2 weeks would be okay) and/or very easy charging (put it on a charging pad).

Closest I can think to those requirements are the Casio G-Shock Bluetooth models. Two year battery life and notifications for most of the common things you'd want. A comparison chart can be found here.

Unfortunately they don't really go so well with a suit - although I don't suspect that will be a problem for the majority of Slashdot readers.

It also features a built-in headphone amplifier, beamforming microphone, a multi-core Sound Core3D audio processor, and various proprietary audio technologies.

If you need that kind of stuff then, sure, it's probably a good investment.

I don't and, as a result, haven't bought soundcard since 1996. The ones that came with my various motherboards have been just fine.

The laptops you mentioned aren't selling well because consumers are repelled by Windows 8, the design of most Windows laptops right now is dreadful, and Apple's marketing is ferocious.

Sales of computers running Windows have been in decline for may years now. In April, IDC reported that world-wide shipments of laptops and desktops fell 14% in the first quarter from a year earlier. That is the sharpest drop since IDC began tracking this data in 1994 and marks the fourth straight quarter of declines.

Even if all the issues you identified were resolved, I don't believe that it would reverse that trend.