Nice source, but believe it or not, it doesn't actually address anything that I asked. Everything on that site tells all the benefits that stores and banks obtain in terms of reduced fraud, but tell nothing to compare it against the losses faced by consumers or percent against total sales. Granted, stores & banks saving money would eventually end up saving consumers a portion of it, but without including additional burden on consumers and hit to sales its an invalid leap of logic.

Example, if fraud made up 3% of all transactions, I doubt going from 3% to 1% is worth it if total transactions drop by 10%. Or if consumers are left to foot the bill in even 0.1% more cases.

Citation (thou not as good as yours): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
"...incidence of credit card fraud is limited to about 0.1% of all card transactions..."

To go further, credit cards themselves are a very big dead weight in terms of actual dollars. They add 3-4% in cost (fees, rewards, etc) to everything. Imagine the massive costs when multiplied across all transactions. BUT, businesses world over accept credit cards cause they make up for the 3-4% dead weight via an increase in volume that increases sales and profits. The current fraud in the US in comparison is basically a rounding error.

As the other poster said, I usually swipe well before the cashier finishes scanning or swipe at some point during a lull in my own scanning (ie: weighing of bananas). Usually don't even need to sign and in some locations, my receipt gets emailed to me. The only negative about credit cards is that I am tracked. The transparency afforded to me is also given to the store and card carrier. But I think the security and convenience is well worth it.

Yes, cash would be faster if I knew exactly how much it would be and had that out while waiting in line (which is rare with self-check outs). But that's wait time I can spend thinking about other things... like what am I having for dinner.

Citation needed. What's the fraud vs total sales? And what are the losses faced by the actual consumers in each situation.

If you think that's an issue this discussion is over and really no point in having it. Python defines a coding standard so that all read, write, and understand the same. If you think that is a weakness, well I hope I don't ever need to review your version of what ever language you choose.

In large dev teams, your actual coders and testers better be cogs in a machine. Coding is a commodity service. If they aren't, you are risking too much on too few people. The value is in design and execution. Purely writing out a solution is no longer a unique skill set.

The instances of "bad code" in Python is minuscule compared to other languages. With Perl and Javascript being on the other end of the spectrum. Saying "Python too has bad code so its the same" is misleading. Python programs not only learn a language, they also learn one standard of coding in becoming proficient in the language. With C/Java/C++/Perl/Pascal/COBOL/Ruby, folks learn & develop various standards of coding on their own and at different companies.

Each reviewer now has to learn that new standard to figure out what the coder is doing. I have said "it's a BS design restriction" for one project written in one language multiple times. Cause each developer due to their various backgrounds choose a different design for their coding.

Right... and I have seen this same code written in the following versions:

for (int y=0;yheight;++y) for(int x=0;xwidth;++x) code here

for (int y=0;yheight;++y) {
    for(int x=0;xwidth;++x) code here
}

for (int y=0;yheight;++y) {
    for(int x=0;xwidth;++x) {
        code here
    }
}

for (int y=0;yheight;++y)
{
    for(int x=0;ywidth;++x)
    {
        code here
    }
}

You ask C devs how they would write it, and you will see they spread out across the above. Of course this is an overly simple example.

Python folks will mostly gravitate to reactor451's version. Are there other versions? Yes, especially when you add in iterators and generators, but for even those, developers will gravitate to ONE version of it totally dependent on if they use that feature in their coding.

#Python 3.0+
for y in range(height):
    for x in range(width):
        code here.

And if this is too far in indentation, then the Pythonic way says that your code is already too complicated and this section of the code should really be delegated away in its own method.

OK, you can consider Python as a heavily standardized version of indentation. Python's entire objective is the human reader. It doesn't leave you and 10 other developers from "tweaking the indentation from time to time to make [their own] point toward the human reader". What people don't understand is that one's interpretation of what they write could be different from others. What one finds easier to understand, others find harder.

There have been countless times that I have read really good Java and C code and could start picking out which individual developers developed where. Do you know how much start up time is wasted in learning Dev1, Dev2's... DevXs' version of the C language? And if you touch C++... each dev has "minor versions" as they learn new ways of doing the same thing. And these code reviews are done in highly standardized environments with docs and comments. Still each developer gets their own unique version of a standardized language. And don't get me started on Perl or Ruby. There are no such things, there are just a ton of individual essays that the Perl and Ruby interpreters understand and execute.

With Python, there is still a lot of uniqueness among developers, but you really need to look for it at the higher levels. Like method & class relationships, program execution flows, or logic design. But at the low level of reading & understanding code from a team of developers, it is dead easy. There are slight variations, but not enough to need to learn that style of coding to help in the future. That is the benefit of Python, its a global coding standard that's built into the language itself. Something that development companies spend far too much money [re]implementing every year for their dev teams.

Now, I am not saying this is best or the way it should be done. Its just one standard where none really exist.

Become a president.

OS. You keep using that term, I do not think you know what it means. They are called "distros" for a reason.....

US founding fathers were terrorists. Native Americans were terrorists. Japanese were terrorists. US government in Iraq. So were Northern free slaves. All were basically beyond negotiations per the opposition. To be a terrorist doesn't mean you are inhuman. That is a separate and different step. To think so is oversimplifying the situation and giving yourself a handicap in the fight (like the Brits did :) ). First recognize that they too have goals, are determined, and smart. That will help you fight them better.

ISIS couldn't have gotten as much territory nor stayed in power for so long if there wasn't a significant part of such territory that supports them. People don't need to actively support you; they can just ignore you cause you are no worse than the last guy who "ran" the place. People like Osama can't hide under the noses of the Pakistani military forces without local support (I am not implying the military itself was hiding him). Because without support, some random person will report you to your enemy.

Same with operations and coordinations. You need the environment that you operate in to provide some level of voluntary cooperation and not mess with your plans. Without it, you wonder why your trucks need 2x the gas than normal. You wonder why your soldiers eat 2x the food. You wonder why you need to pay 2x the money to get something.

Sure, you can steal and plunder, but it is short lived. You can't get corn after the first month if the foreign vendor doesn't ship to your region anymore. You can take over an oil refinery but you better have buyers. Else that is a big red target for your enemies to take out. But, if you left it in the owners' hands and bought it from them, they might even give you a deal!

But once you do something inhuman (and sadly more important: people know about it), the whole game changes. You may want to buy something, but your vendors shrink, and the cost goes up. You may want to sell something, but your buyers don't want to be linked to you or you need to sell at a lower price. The locals will fear you, but also be harder to control and cause more trouble. Just from people seeing you as the "enemy" sets up a huge inefficiency in your operations.

In the US, shopping is very non-social. We go, we select, we pay, we take. 90% of our shopping. In foreign places like these, there is a lot of social interaction. A lot of news gets passed around. Prices are negotiated, local events are discussed, etc. In a cooperative/neutral environment, you learn what is happening in that region. In a support environment, you are provided local intelligence to act upon. In an antagonistic environment, you keep falling into traps and your enemies are provided intel on your operations.

Basically if there weren't a lot of people who didn't put ISIS in the "don't care" and "what's the difference" camps (and clearly some put them in the "friend" camp), they would have disbanded a long time ago. Beheading/executions/shootings of soldiers or even foreigners doesn't upset people much (Foreigners=blame the victim or foreign gov. People think it only takes $100k to save that person, why didn't the $100 trillion dollar gov. do that?). That happens everyday, he shoots him, he shoots back, dinner time. "Humans" do that all the time.

But this video changes ISIS' image significantly cause the screaming horror of it. People who were neutral (a lot) and supportive (few) will step back. Enemies will up their game and consider action plans they would never use against a "civilized" enemy.

Normally, I don't agree with much of what the Fox News [Drama] channel does. But in the US, we are too overly protective of the populace in hiding the reality that they live in. We should allow people to see the absolute brutality of these things, IF they choose to. I don't think it should be aired on TV (nor repeated 50 times over the week) but putting it online for opt in was the right call.

This is assuming that we respect the wishes of the family of the pilot and they were ok with this posting. And I would think otherwise if this was propaganda for ISIS. In this case, I do not think it is. This was either real stupidity on someone's part and I hope he got caned/stoned to death for it. Or some conspiracy to put ISIS in horrible light (the video tape & releasing it; not the murder).

Cause this video probably does more PR harm to ISIS than all the bombs and soldiers will ever do. Up to this point, most people considered ISIS to be human. They were someone that could be negotiated with. They may have some "cause" or "ideal" that could be understood and addressed. Like Cuba, Hamas, or North Korea. People would support them on this opinion or choose not to fight or choose the level of brutality to reply with.

Now, with this video, ISIS will be viewed as cruel animals. There maybe civilized, normal ISIS men and women trying to define a stable environment (however we may disagree). But even they will be branded as animals. And the human response to rabid animals is that they need to be put down. Negotiations will be treated differently, offensive measures will change, and your support groups will be disgusted with you.

I would say this single video probably has destroyed the brand called ISIS. They may regroup under a different moniker but that's like starting from ground zero.

I was thinking along the lines of it being in place of Saturn. And looking at the artist's rendering, it is huge. Star light (in remote locations) is actually enough to make your way around at night. Moon light is almost like streetlights.

If this thing was in place of Saturn, and tilted like Uranus. Saturn is huge, at 200x that, that is a pretty big object that is relatively close. I suspect it would be the brightest thing at night and probably visible during the day too.

Thou you are right, being that close, the light is the least of our worry, possibly being a brown dwarf and all.

So how do automated recurring payments work? How do you get your money back for fraud and prevent the vendor(s) from further charging your compromised card?

Looking at the artist's rendering from the other posts. That is huge and would be so cool! If the axis was pointing at us, would the reflected sunlight cause massive temperature changes here? Would we all get a tan every 20 years as we pass through this "laser beam"?