The report proves the problem is not technical, but rather a result of business decisions.

Is anybody actually surprised by this?

This has always been about maximizing profits, and preventing a competitor from gaining access to your customers.

Because cable companies are ran by assholes.

The Bible is "God approved".

Sorry, but to anybody who isn't a believer in your damned god .. the bible is 100% written by humans who claim to have been spoken to directly by god.

Anybody who made such claims now would be investigated for schizophrenia, and a host of other mental illnesses. So why should we believe these people were any different?

Just because you believe god himself wrote that book, doesn't mean there's any truth to that, or proof of it.

The existence of the bible is not proof of god. Not even a little.

So, if god wants to tell us what is approved, why doesn't he get on his loudspeaker, and tell all of us what he's thinking instead of whispering in the ear of crazy people? Surely he's got the ability to remove any ambiguity and confusion?

Your collective delusion is your problem. Don't offer it as proof to the rest of us. Because we're not buying it.

You can express any opinion you want.

But holding that opinion doesn't mean that any religious entity should have any legal standing to determine what is, and what isn't a valid marriage (or any other law).

A bunch of religious people getting together to decide it should be their right to curtail the rights of others is just horseshit.

My problem with religion is it seems to have some special exemption to be a bigoted douchebag, and have that be a protected status.

So religious people who want to be able to say "I won't serve you because you're gay", and have that be considered a defensible legal position ... would also like to guarantee in law that someone can't say "we're not serving you because you're a Christian moron who says hateful things". It's the same hate and bigotry, but yours somehow has a special legal exemption.

At which point, I think the legal protections for your opinions should carry no more legal weight than who likes which football team more.

So, as long as religion feels they should have exemptions in civil society based on their religious beliefs, and that those beliefs somehow confer an obligation on the rest of us ... I will treat your religion with the contempt it deserves.

It's the very vocal opinion of people who prefer vanilla ice cream to chocolate, which somehow is supposed to have special standing in terms of the law.

Campaigning against the rights of other people which have absolutely no impact on you is moronic. It just makes you a bunch of idiots who think the world is required to listen to your bullshit.

Fuck that.

If the Son of God has nothing to say about homosexuality, it probably doesn't matter as long as sexual relations is kept within a marriage.

Hmmm ... Why must it be kept within a marriage? What did Jesus say on the topic of marriage? and Why should the rest of society give a shit what your religious opinion is about with whom and when we have sex?

You simply do not get a vote on the sex lives of people who aren't members of your religion (or aren't you for that matter) ... and given the hypocrisy we see time and time again of religious people molesting children, cheating on their wives, or grabbing a little sausage in an airport bathroom ... why should we give any credibility to what you think?

Apply your own damn morality to yourselves. And STFU about the rest of the world.

You're free to have your own religion. You're not free to tell the rest of the world how to live.

Now, how soon until we stop giving a shit about people's sexualities when there are more important things in the world.

I guess it depends on how long you're prepared to tolerate people campaigning against the rights of others, and accepting that one's religion is a valid excuse for that.

When people who are unaffected by someone else's sexuality stop having standing to say it should be outlawed, then society can stop caring. Until then, there's a long way to go.

That very loud and vocal segment of the population which uses their religion as a basis to say the rights of others should be curtailed, would be up in arms if the rest of society decided to limit their freedom of religion -- because they hypocritically see it as OK for them to do it, but not for someone to do it to them. Because somehow it's magically different.

And some of these same people would say "wow, a law outlawing blacks from marrying is absurd", while at the same time defending the position that it should be OK for religious groups to oppose the marriage of gays.

Yes, but their "solution" seems to be lobby Congress to preserve their sixty year old business model, not actually innovate.

They didn't get where they are by innovating.

They got there by lobbying Congress in the first place.

The merchant doesn't care about your data. The merchant just wants money.

No, see, that's where you're wrong.

The entire CurrenC system is designed to give merchants more access to your data. This is from TFA:

CurrentC also tracks information about a user's purchase history for merchants. CurrentC users can select what information they want to share with retailers and can opt out of marketing communications, according to the MCX website.

And if you really trust a merchant created system to respect your wishes and not track you, you're hopelessly naive.

The credit card tax is a strong inventive for merchants to turn their focus from selling things people want, to selling data about their customers.

Wait, what?

So which is it? They don't want my data? Or they want my data so they can sell it and make even more money?

And, don't forget the part where (in addition to everything you said), the system is also designed to give merchants access to more information about your purchases and buying history.

So, it's a badly written system, designed to tap directly into your account, with no liability on their behalf, coupled with an added amount of access to your information to violate your privacy.

There's really not a damned single thing about this which is in any way good for the consumer ... I'm sure they'll try very hard to get people to use it (and in some cases might actually try to make it mandatory).

I agree, the entire premise of this system makes one go "WTF are you clowns thinking?" This is an insane amount of terrible ideas which have no net benefit to the consumer -- unless they create artificial benefits like their rewards program.

But losing the security of your bank account to people who are too greedy and incompetent to implement security is a terrible idea.

and develop a system that meets merchant needs while protecting the consumer

I don't believe those two things can be reconciled.

The merchants want all of your data, and want to be able to operate with zero liability.

The consumers want security and privacy.

The people developing CurrenC are pretty much at odds with what consumers actually need. Which means this system can never be fixed or trusted, because it's not designed for that.

It's designed to make them more money, and get them more analytics. They don't give a rats ass about the consumer.

They want to be like PayPal ... act like a bank, with none of the liabilities of being a bank, and none of the responsibilities.

This is sort of like trusting the mob to be your financial advisors ... there's pretty much no win for the consumers here.

This is the problem with a new system like this. Especially one designed to make more money for the retailers, and give them more access to consumer data.

They simply haven't been at this long enough to be trustworthy or competent at it.

And, historically, many of the vendors involved in the creation of this system have been fairly inept at implementing security, and fairly moronic about reporting it when it happens. Or understanding the severity of it when it happens.

So, sorry guys, I'll trust my bank -- because I know they're operating under at least some laws, and I'll trust VISA more than I'll trust you (because they've been at this for a while) ... but I will never use this system if I have a choice.

This is a payment system which is designed to make them more money, and give them more information to consumer information at point of sale. Which means they've primarily focused on those things, and have proven themselves to have done a terrible job at security.

So, what's in it for us consumers? I'd say nothing at all which provides value to us, other than the shiny baubles and discounts they're offering in return for them getting higher profits, and a much more detailed look at how and where you spend your money -- which they don't currently have since the CC processors don't let them have it.

The people making this new system are interested in it for entirely different reasons. Which means everything they do is for their benefit, and not ours.

Heisenberg compensators? Are those parts of the flux capacitor or parts of Mr. Fusion?

Yes. Possibly no.

It depends. I may know more later.

So, does this or does this not give us the basis for the Heisenberg compensators?

Might quantum stuff me less random and unknowable than we've been told?

And, yes, I don't understand Quantum anything, other than knowing it makes your whites whiter, and has a smooth minty taste.

I'm not sure how you couldn't expect it.

If you've decided it's legal for you to do it, you're kind of fair game, are you not?

Unless, of course, someone has the delusion that they're special because they say so. In which case you'll just act like a petulant child and throw a tantrum.

Yup, every time someone does this .. it's the Russians or the Chinese.

I think Western spy agencies have jumped the shark so much in terms of what they do, that you could plausibly say it's really them doing all of this and doing it as a false-flag operation.

I mean, come on, these clowns have been proven to be spying on the people who are meant to oversee them. They don't give a shit about the law, just their own powers.

You can't come up with a conspiracy theory which is paranoid enough these days -- because long-thinkers with massive resources really are doing all of this shit these days.

Hell, breaking into the Whitehouse systems lets you say you need more money for spying to prevent this kind of shit. And then you get the keys to the kingdom.

LOL, no, I do realize it's a valid unit of measure ... but when you start having "scores of hectares" it rapidly devolves into one of those "I have no idea of what this unit of measure is supposed to be telling me".

I suspect the majority of people haven't the slightest idea of what a hectare actually is -- I know I don't. It's some multiple of an acre, but not an integer multiple, because that would be complicated.

And then I'm sure you need some non-integer multiple of hectares to become the next meaningless unit of measure.

And it all comes down to furlongs, rods, and other mysterious units of measure nobody has any idea of what they actually mean.