No, it's not. Unlike "breakfast" and "therefore", what you think is a good word is too close in spelling to an existing word with a completely different meaning, "allot".

To be fair, it *is* slower when paying individually at restaurants, since the server can't take all the bills and cards and run it through a magstripe terminal, then bring them all back for signing. Now, a single wireless POS machine (very rarely two) has to make its way to every person at the table.

Contactless or tap payments, while convenient, ironically seems to contradict the entire point of having chip & PIN by skipping both authentication methods. Though as long as tap payments are limited to a per-transaction amount ($25? $50?), thieves will get get less POS mileage out of stolen cards.

The US hasn't switched to metric system or dollar coins yet. Partly due to cost, partly due to "things works fine the way they are," and I suspect partly because they must be "leaders" in everything and can't be seen as "following the rest of the world."

I predict that the US still won't have fully (or at least 99%) converted to chip&pin credit card terminals (even with magstripe fallback) by 2020.

Or a Nexus 4. Or a Nexus 5. Or an HTC One / One X+. Or a Sony Xperia Z1. Or an LG G2. Or a Nokia Lumia 1020.

The AC is correct. A surprising number of high-end smartphones, including Google's own flagship units, have followed Apple by using non-replaceable batteries.

Canada's health care system is in some trouble and costs are rising due to various issues, but it is not in danger of "collapsing" into the mess that the US had, or is currently working towards. The wealthy often do go to the US and elsewhere for more timely treatment of critical illness, but if anything that relieves pressure on the domestic health care providers (and they still have to pay taxes and subsidies into the healthcare system regardless).

And don't use our wealthy going elsewhere for treatment as proof that our system is flawed and incapable of supporting itself, because many US citizens have been dependent on the cheaper prescription drug orders to the US being filled by Canadian pharmacies, legal or otherwise.

Lack of housing bubble: As much as our current Conservative government loves to trot out our more regulated banking system as the beacon of hope to the world, they actually were trying to follow the US in deregulating banks. The only thing that stopped them was that they had a minority government at the time, so the opposition parties prevented that from happening, saving us from the 2008 housing bubble burst.

If memory serves, Wilson was far more intelligent and savvy to the ways of the world, and solved most of his neighbour's problems.

I'm not sure that was the metaphor you were going for :)

I'd dispute that. Though they're no doubt capable of inflicting massive damage, the Chinese military does not have the overconfidence borne of defeating a major power in war, like the Japanese had against Russia.

(Bold emphasis mine.)

Not the poster you're responding to, but if this fact-based movie you speak of is Tora! Tora! Tora!, you're forgetting key details.

In that movie it's made quite clear that the entire attack would happen whether or not the Japanese ambassador saw the US official. That delay was also secondary to another delay caused by a Japanese security directive that meant the regular typist(s) couldn't type up the last of the 14-part message, and a much slower hunt-and-peck non-typist with enough security clearance had to be used instead.

Whether that part of the movie is accurate is also largely irrelevant, since in reality the 14-part message was neither a declaration of war nor severed diplomatic relations (though combined with intercepted Japanese instruction to their embassy to destroy their decoding gear, it was taken as a strong indicator that either would've happened shortly afterward). Documents revealed in 1999 also strongly suggest the Japanese military convinced the government not to do so before their surprise attack happened.

X-Plane... though some argue that's not a "game." Even on 1080p with the latest, fastest consumer GPUs, you can't max out all the GPU-dependent settings on a scenery-heavy area without fps dropping to single digits.

That's still at the provincial (state) level. GP post already mentioned the stupidity of hundreds if not thousands of city/county/district-level sales and use taxes per state, each of which might have slightly different tax rules like you see in your cafe.

So if your POS software company is already having a hard time working at a provincial level, multiply that by up to the number of municipal areas to see how much worse it is in the US.

Facebook datamining and consumer focus is exactly the opposite of Blackberry's claim to fame of security and enterprise focus.

This isn't to say a FB buyout of BB is or was out of the question, but BB has done very poorly in the consumer space, and being bought by FB would result in many remaining enterprise customers dropping them like a hot potato.

State taxes (or provincial ones in Canada) are bad enough but manageable due to limited numbers, and you usually know if you're in one state/province or another.

But the US goes even further and has county/district sales and use taxes, adding thousands of slightly different tax rates across the country. Check out California's... and that's just for locations starting with "A"! Texas has an an equally ridiculous long list of slightly different rates.

This means that the shop down the street, but in a different county, may charge you slightly more or less for a product that has the same sticker price (which are almost always pre-tax numbers in the US... Canada does too but at least we don't do local sales taxes). I suppose locals know exactly where the county lines are, but what a mess to keep track of.

I get the historical reasons why this is--it's similar to why there's no federal or even in-state standards for election systems. Each county is theoretically independently managed and sets their own rates. This works for property taxes and infrequent purchases, but not online goods and services.

It's no wonder US online retailers and services have resisted sales tax for so long, it's a logistical nightmare to set up the database of thousands of tax rates across the country and keep them up to date.

It's not "merely" driving with a monitor visible to driver. That was my first thought too, but after checking the full text of the Section, it includes a pretty comprehensive list of exceptions including vehicle info display and GPS, under which an integrated HUD system would definitely be covered.

My comment came from a misunderstanding of the phrase "the better part of" (or even "the best part of" which is what 0123456 wrote).

Apparently it means "over half of" instead of "a significant majority of." It doesn't make sense to me, since that means even $501 is the better part of $1000.

Hopefully Cook learned his lesson after hiring some exec from a discount chain, to manage the Apple Retail operations. That was a disaster, and though it took a year to hire a replacement, the new retail exec at least comes from a place that cares about image and quality over penny-pinching.