Edsger W. Dijkstra was stupid?

You can do computer science just with paper and pen. That is entirely feasible and totally common in any computer science curriculum at any halfway decent university. Oh, you thought that computer science = programming. Well, yeah, no... it isn't and technically you can program without a computer too. You just can't run your programs.

While keeping those two groups separate, I suggest your reread (or review) "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest".

Sorry. I missed it the first time.

The two times I've had in-store card referrals (high value transactions: the first time was buying a P3 laptop, which was quite high end in those days; the second was furnishing a new apartment after moving to Houston), I'm pretty sure it was the issuing bank ultimately handling the call - I can't imagine the bank would have transferred the personal information they were asking for as a security check to the merchant services provider: past unlisted contact details, previous transactions etc. I suspect the call may have been transferred to them, though, rather than called directly.

I had a similar issue this year with British Telecom working on a broadband fault. The service manager wanted to speak directly to the field engineer working on the fault (different divisions: the engineer's BT Openreach, the manager was BT Wholesale) - but the Openreach guy said he couldn't call the Wholesale one directly. So, the Wholesale one called my number and asked to speak to him ...

it is the retailer who is supposed to make the call to the financial institution on the retailer's own phone line

To be fair, the Apple Store staff tried phoning on their own iPhones first, but none of them could figure out how to hold it to get a signal, so they had to borrow the customer's phone instead...

FTFY

And I bet if he had said something along the lines of "Apple came from behind in the smartphone market and knocked the heretofore industry leaders on their asses", you'd have an equally useless and snarky rejoinder.

Sometimes the inverse RDF is just as strong as the RDF itself...

Why? It's a temporary promotion that expires 31th July. After that they're most likely going to ask money for it again. Their game, their rules.

Don't feed the troll.

Perhaps, but your drama llama response justifies animal torture on a scale that Frank Perdue couldn't dream of. Grow up.

The promotion also ends 31st July, from what I read. After that they'll charge money again, I must presume.

Look to play it, you must run Windows, to run Windows means that you almost certainly have malware already. To me that makes it a non issue. Want to game? Have a Windows partition for that specifically and consider it "nukable-from-orbit". Do important stuff on sane platforms. That's how I see it, and as such, SecuROM is no big deal, even with the rather overblown claims of it being malware. It might be, and if it is, it's still no big deal as you isolate it from important things. At least slashdotters should, and normal people have malware regardless.

In a way, but don't forget the contempt that the left holds for large swaths of average slobs: those working just hard enough to not 'earn' public assistance.

They love the union. They don't love the union members.