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The biggest challenge however is one that both Apple and Google face: Only a small fraction of the 10 million or so retail outlets in the U.S.â"220,000 at last countâ"have checkout readers that can accept payments from either system.

That is definitely true, but most credit card readers in the US that do not support EMV (aka Chip & Pin or Chip & Signature) have to be replaced if the merchant doesn't want to bear the liability for fraudulent transactions.

The liability for compromised cards is shifting in October of this year (aside from some unattended systems like gas pumps which happen later). If a merchant does not support EMV and an EMV card is compromised or used fraudulently, the merchant is liable.

Many of the new EMV capable terminals are also capable of NFC/contactless transactions. It will get a lot more of the physical readers out there. Whether the payment processors/acquirers support it is a different question.

I don't see them as customer-centric as much as self-serving. There is definitely a trend of non-US companies moving or thinking of moving their data off US servers. Moving them off US company/subsidiary servers in other countries is a huge threat to Nadella's cloud-focused Microsoft.

It is a rational self-interested decision that may be good for consumers.

Yes, Time Warner, Inc (what this story is referring to) is a different company from Time Warner Cable (which Comcast is looking to acquire).

Its also different from TW Telecom (formerly Time Warner Telecom, which is being acquired by Level 3.

Its a complicated mess of mergers and spinoffs...

Therein lies the problem. What should it be based on? How many students pass? Standardized test scores? How about teachers that are good but get a job at a school whose students are generally poorer-performing vs teachers that aren't as good but work at a school with a higher caliber of students?

Oh - I completely understand that it is a difficult question. Many of the evaluation options thrown out by people involve more standardize testing (which will favor students, and in turn teachers in better socioeconomic classes and with less English language learners).

I'm not an educator myself, but I think an honest review for tenure purposes would have to consist of a comparison of student results from year-to-year, not just comparisons between students district/state/nation-wide. Then you could possibly see how a teacher has had a negative or positive (or net-zero) effect on student progress in their subject area.

But again, this is my own layman's guess.

There are important reasons for tenure in K-12 education, especially in this era. K-12 schools (and in turn teachers) in many areas receive incredible pressure from parents. It used to be if a child got poor grades the teacher wasn't the one blamed. Now there are many parents who have spoiled brats who they believe can do no wrong.

That being said, tenure's protections should exist but should make teacher's positions far less invincible than they are in many areas now. There should be a process of discipline and removal for poor teachers. It should be as objective as possible so as to avoid undue parental pressure.

Otherwise it creates a perverse incentive for teachers to inflate grades of their students.

All the coverage I saw (from astronomy writers, NASA, etc.) said there was definitely a chance of it burning up.

If the non-science media hyped it up somewhat, well they do that for everything. Yes, I a (and many others watched for ISON). Yes, we were disappointed, but no one should have been surprised.

Assuming Gabe is being truthful when he states that this is a secondary check triggered by some other evidence for cheating, then just visiting these sites wouldn't be enough.

Its suspicious activity (reported by players? detected through other methods? not sure) that triggers the additional check(s).

the point is to take students who's parents care from bad schools and put them in an environment where they can get a decent education.

Its not always about level of care the parents are providing but what they can provide. How much care towards education can a low-income single parent working two full time jobs provide?

What is the parent doesn't have a great education themselves and aren't able to help their child academically (and only motivationally)?

Should that child suffer, not only because of that, but because of dwindling resources in the public school system that are being drained by the charter schools?

The students who are struggling are the ones who need the best resources/teaching/etc. If charter schools are as great as they are made out to be - they should be VOLUNTEERING to take students who are struggling academically, not shunning them like lepers.

If charter schools are allowed to operate, then they shouldn't benefit from special privileges that public schools don't have. They should have to accept any students in the area (regardless of academic level, just like the public schools). They also should be required to have all students take the standardized tests (instead of finding reasons to exclude children who they know won't do as well, so the school looks better ranked in comparison).

If charter schools aren't cheating and they are showing an improvement that is one thing. But too often they are cheating to make themselves look better compared to public schools.

That is an absurd argument. Yes some companies can and should offer bug bounties but if the only method you can rely on is out bidding the black market, then you've already lost.

Not to mention, there are a lot of small companies, small foundations, and open source projects which could never afford such prices.

All three branches are immune from politics, when it comes to national security issues. There's a reason why blatantly illegal practices have near unanimous support amongst our representatives, and it's not because our government is a functioning democracy.

I wouldn't say near unanimous by any means. There are lots on the edges of the right and left who were against this. The Amash amendment, which would have drastically reined in the data the NSA collected (not as much as necessary, but a good start). It failed in the US House by only 217-205. Of those voting for the amendment, it was 111 Democrats, 95 Republicans.

That it failed was disappointing but it shows that we're not that far from having a majority for bills like this. We just need to get more of the establishment folks on both sides out of office.

I always had sympathy for her after her jail sentence. She went to jail for a MINOR insider trading case (where they couldn't even prove that, just obstruction of justice), while those who collapsed the economy got off scot free.

Hope her company drives the patent trolls into the ground. And then she decorates the grave with some potpourri warning signs to other trolls or some such.

No, of course not; there should definitely be a censhorship apparatus put in place.. right? That's what you're implying/suggesting, I assume?

Yes - self-censorship. The internal voice that says, or should say, "This is something that should not be said to another person, since I (ideally) don't want to be a jack ass".

Gaming industry deserves all the abuse it gets. Extreme cases of abuse aside, all criticism is they get is deserved.

But who should be getting the abuse you advocate? The executives of the big publishers or the regular folks working for the industry to actually make games? I've disliked games before but that doesn't mean that I should be justified to spew vitriol at the coders, artists and others working in the industry.