The user could log into the bank account and transfer funds to AppStore account. From there Apple could handle micro payments to the vendors. Vendors cash out from the bank. Completely skipping MC/Visa infrastructure, if the NFC terminals are iPad or iPhone based. Ideally I would like something like this emerge in Android and in iOS so that there is some real viable competition to Visa/MC duopoly.

But looks like Apple is also talking to MC/Visa. So Apple does not seem to be competing with them, rather it is also looking to get a cut like the issuing banks are doing now.

Some POS terminals will offer PIN pad and a menu "Authorize by signature or authorize by PIN". If the buyer picks "signature" it is treated as credit card transaction. Further, these changes came after lots of protest from merchants and some law suits. When banks started giving out ATM cards with VISA/MC logo, all the transactions went through credit card channel. But it was not clear if the debit cards carried the 50$ liability limit for fraudulent use. Further, since the attached checking account is drained by the fraudulent use, it was not clear how soon the money will be credited back. When this program was rolled in, it was very heavy handed, abusive and one sided.

I am really glad something like this is long over due. But I wish we are not jumping from duopoly to a monopoly.

The cost of handling transactions is steadily diminishing. There was a time it would cost you something between 49$ and 149$ to place a single trade. It dropped to well below 10$ when I was still trading. Would not be surprised if they give you money to place a trade or something now. Compare it to the debit card transaction.

When it comes to creditcard I would not begrudge the 2% to 5% fee charged to the merchants. The credit card companies are essentially advancing an unsecured loan, and it would cost the individual merchants much more to check and advance credit to their customers. (Of course it there is some real competition the percentage might come down). But it is the debit card transaction that is atrocious. Money comes from the bank, there is no risk involved. 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 Visa and Mastecard combined to discourage ATM cards and the POS terminals and undermined the system. They made debit and credit card to go through the same system. And the merchants were forced to pay 2% transaction fees on risk free money transfer from one bank to another.

The time is ripe, with prepaid cards and stored value cards for really cheap and free micro transactions. It took the clout of Apple to hit the music executives on their head and make them wake up, smell the coffee and realize the days of selling single track with 10 more useless tracks for 19$ per CD are gone. It might take such a juggernaut like Apple to make the bankers come around the bend and give up their 2% commission on risk free transactions.

But I wish we are not going from the duopoly of MC + Visa to a monopoly of AppStore. Well one thing at a time. Once the bankers get used to lower fees commensurate with the cost of transactions, may be alternatives to AppStore might emerge, and the system might become more open.

Both you and grandparent are wrong.

Randal Munroe is evidence that if you draw stick figures for long enough you will eventually gain recognition.

I checked and it is EEPROM. And there are two EEPROM:s, I presume those are for redundancy in case one gets zapped.

Android Central lists their favorite games and apps every week: http://www.androidcentral.com/...
iMore's favorite iOS apps: http://www.imore.com/ios/edito...

Happy hunting.

I would imagine that the system probably boots itself off of a ROM chip that has a routine for receiving data from Earth and storing it in RAM and then flashing that data onto the flash chip.

If the rover does not boot from ROM then it is a miracle that it hasn't bricked itself yet.

Reciting around the camp fire.

Cars wouldn't be much of a problem. Within hours of all cars breaking down there would be small businesses offering to transport goods from stores to your door with makeshift bicycle drawn carriages. The distances are also small enough that a lot of people could go get supplies on foot.

Highway trucks and freight trains on the other hand. Yeah, that would be bad. If someone hacked all highway trucks and freight train locomotives, starvation would set in within a couple of days, since there is no other way to effectively transport resources over long distances and stores only last a day or two at most. Ships rely on trains and trucks for the last 100-500 miles to the consumer.

Modern civilization is still very much in beta.

I just wish I could take a nap instantly. For some reason, my brain would not shut down and go to sleep on command.

The most extreme scenario that I have heard serious analysts mention would be a Polish rush into Ukraine to secure the crossings of the Dnieper River. There's your proxy war: Poland v.s. the the Russian-aligned "freedom fighters" of Eastern Ukraine.

Yes, that would probably be the case, but the host universe would still be greater than the guest universe in some sense. The host universe would, over time, have a greater number of interactions between things than the simulation would have.

Well, these sort of arguments depends on the assumption that we exist as so-called observer-moments and that your current experience is a randomly selected observer-moment out of all the observer-moments in all of time and space in all of the universes in the cosmos. This may be total BS, but several real philosophers seem to take it seriously.

When people say "maybe we're living in a simulation" they mean a simulation created by sentient beings. If we live in a simulation then the host universe has sentient beings in it by definition. So that's a given.

If it is a simulation you could argue that it is almost certainly optimized for sentient beings.

Based on what we know about simulators, they are inherently slower and smaller in scope than the system they run on. You're never going to have a virtual machine that is more powerful than the metal that it runs on. Similarly, you're probably not going to have a simulated universe be more powerful than the universe that is hosting the simulated universe.

Think about it this way: if you're going to build models of 2x4 Lego bricks using 2x4 Lego bricks, the models will be much fewer in number than the actual Lego bricks. If you find yourself being a Lego brick, odds are you are an actual Lego brick and not a model Lego brick.

Also, tightly packed systems where the components of the systems are small and close to one another in space are faster than systems where the components are large and far from one another in space, because communication happens at the speed of light, which is constant (as far as we know).

On the other hand, if we build a model that focuses on modelling one particular thing and neglects a bunch of other stuff then the probabilities change. Perhaps we live in a simulator hosted by a much larger universe where there is virtually no life except for the being that built the simulator, whereas our simulation is optimized to be relatively packed with life.