You're exactly right. My dad made his teaching career by bringing computers to schools in the 1980s and 90s. What I remember him spending most time on was evaluating software and preparing lesson plans (often for other teachers to use). There was a multimedia CD with a trip to Scotland, it had river geography etc, and probably made for a much more useful geography lesson than "type your homework into the computer". Unfortunately, once IT in schools became more official the was no choice but to teach Word.

Interesting, America being different again ;-)

I found http://krebsonsecurity.com/201... which has some background. I'm not so sure about the security risk, there has been a recent slight increase in lost+stolen fraud in the UK (PDF graph, starting at £120M pre-introduction it reduced to £50M, but has since increased to £60M. (In step with other types too, so maybe it's just more crime in general.) That contradicts the person quoted though.

The other suggestion -- that people will pick the 'easiest' card in a competitive market -- sounds much more likely, especially as it's the reward cards that do use a PIN.

Not having a retailer take a card to check a signature helps -- they can't copy down the details to use online. In restaurants they must bring the machine to you, so you can type a PIN, and the card never leaves your sight (or often possession).

The whole lot is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

The next fleet of trains will cost £16 billion, the lines the trains are for have an annual ridership of about 600 million, and we could assume the trains will last 55 years (same as the ones they're replacing). That's 16G/600M/55 = 48 pence per journey?

I wonder if a boring design would cost less. I suspect it doesn't make much difference in the end -- a custom design is needed to maximise capacity in the old tunnels in any case.

Cloning magstripe cards to use in ATMs. The chips can't be cloned.

http://www.smartcardalliance.o...

I think some American trains just look old. Bare aluminium (sometimes fluted!) and boxy corners.

Compare the newest NYC train with the newest London Underground train: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

(London's oldest trains are from 1972, and will be replaced in 2025. The next oldest are from 1980, and will be replaced this year. How long trains last seems to depend more on how well they were built and maintained, rather than simply age.)

It was similar in the UK, until the law changed to allow Visa and MasterCard to push the liability for non-chip fraud onto merchants. In the months leading up to that, everyone updated their card readers.

The law changes in the USA in October.

Yes, I've found these: http://www.idtprime.com/ http://www.splashplastic.com/ which are available in shops in the UK. (From http://www.mastercard.co.uk/fi... and I said I was 13 and didn't travel.) They can be topped up with cash. (Check thoroughly before relying on these, I don't know anyone with one!)

You could ask your American bank to send an EMV card. Non-EMV cards are often accepted in person for shopping, restaurants etc, but you can get stuck dealing with machines (e.g. buying train tickets, or collecting cinema tickets you've ordered online) or very cheap merchants (trader at a music festival, market stall holder etc).

Here you go, a complete list: https://www.gov.uk/government/... . Much less interesting than I hoped.

I think the prize for best name goes to the Scientific Advisory Committee on the Medical Implications of Less-Lethal Weapons

Here's some of what I had to study when I was approaching 16, in 2002. You'll note the opposite criticism has been made -- "the inclusion of the poems represented an "obsession with multi-culturalism"."

I had trouble writing and analysing fiction, and always received poor grades. A few months before the final exam the teacher set me some work to analyse and write something more factual -- I think it was articles from a popular science magazine. That was easy, I got As. It was a topic most English teachers didn't enjoy teaching, and avoided, but the examination board allowed it as an alternative.

Primary school teachers in the UK are paid a lot less than secondary school teachers, I assume because the job is a good bit easier.

Both my parents were secondary school teachers. They'd both manage a long break in the summer, at least 6 weeks, but made up for it by working well over the official hours in term time. I guess before they had children they might have valued the summer holiday less, and normal weekends / evenings more.

(Legal minimum holiday here is four weeks (20 days), but the actual average is 26 days. In both cases add 8 public holidays (Christmas day etc).)

Actually, yes, but probably against their wishes. (But their alternative is being made redundant, so can you blame them?) My dad started as a woodwork teacher, which was replaced by engineering drawing. He'd failed his A level at that, but his school presumably couldn't find anyone else to teach it, and asked him. Apparently it was a stressful summer learning. That was more gradually replaced by IT, meaning "using software", which I think he did quite well at -- "using software" had the flexibility to mean using art + design + CAD packages. The children he taught got As, but if he hadn't retired a few years ago he'd be one of the teachers stuck trying to teach Hello World to 12 years olds -- I'd passed his level of programming when I was 9 or 10.

He also taught geography for a couple of years, I think covering for a long-term sick colleague, and PE (sport) similarly.

Similarly, I remember seeing teachers at my school change subjects. Sometimes it's fine -- a decent chemistry teacher can teach physics, biology and maths pretty easily, especially to children under 15 or so. But the teachers teaching computer science probably aren't the maths teachers, but the general technology / business teachers who have little choice but to struggle with the new subject.

I'm critical of teachers for a lot of things, but not knowing how to teach Towers of Hanoi isn't one of them. Demanding that someone who knows how to teach Towers of Hanoi get paid the same as the social studies or health teacher IS one of them.

I'm familiar with that one! In the last few months I've run out of patience with the public sector scientific organisation I work for, so I'm looking for a developer job elsewhere. I'm aiming for around double the pay... (Although the situation isn't quite the same. I have highly technical, general, transferrable skills, the scientists have highly technical, extremely specialist, less-transferrable skills, so they're "worth" less.)

That is the issue here: it used to be knowing about software packages, the "idots" have changed it (see here and here, among others) to include some programming. FTA "It seems that switching from an approach that emphasised computer literacy to one that actually wants students to do more difficult things is the reason for the problem."

Like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

The bit of London Underground's District Line that until last year I lived next to was bolted. Possibly because it was a long, raised stretch with alternating bridges over roads and embankments between, but I don't know.

Greenwich wasn't arbitrarily picked. The only options were Paris, Berlin, London and Washington DC -- they had the necessary observatories. London was already in widest common use, and the anti-meridian falls in a convenient place (not crossing anywhere important).

British law states that, "workers have the right to 11 hours rest between working days (eg if you finish work at 8pm, they shouldn’t start work again until 7am the next day)." and "Workers have the right to: (a) an uninterrupted 24 hours without any work each week, or (b) 48 hours each fortnight". source

I set my phone to not check my work email outside working hours, and not at all while I'm on holiday. I don't think it would be a bad thing if the majority of people were normally prevented from accessing email (and other work systems) during these periods.