They probably hid a pattern on the card using visible colors, so a lense tinted with the right color would make the pattern visible to the human eye.

What's so nasty here is the degree of the penalty.... they cheated the Casino out of 21,000 EUR, so they don't get to keep the 21K and each of them has to pay a 100,000 EUR fine, plus two years jail.

Now if instead; the Casino was cheating, the Casino could have to pay a fine or damages that would be some miniscule fraction of the casino's revenue.

On the other hand... if a player cheats; the penalty is astronomically higher, in relative terms.

...to overstate risks, collect high premiums, and end up paying out little in claims. This is true of *any* insurance scheme.

In general no. It is in an insurance company's interest to charge a lower premium, so they then sell more insurance. If they overestimate the risk; more people will go to the competitor, and the competitor will have a better deal.

Overstating the risk basically makes sense, if the entire industry has overstated the risk, AND you have a captive market. For example: Automobile liability insurance is mandated by many states, therefore consumers have to buy it, and thus; the whole market may overstate the risk, with no fear that they are leaving money on the table, that could be their profit.

The captive market, basically means premiums can be 10 to 20 times would that would be otherwise.

If another insurance company thinks climate change is a bunch of bunk, they can lower rates and steal business from the company that has reached the opposite conclusion.

This would be ill-advised, because there probably is indeed a trend the insurance companies are recognizing. However, this is not necessarily "climate change caused by fossil fuels" as argued by some; there are various possible causes or changes that might impact risk to insurance companies ------ such as people becoming even more careless than before about where they build, or unusually high solar activity.

Oh, and now it's "climate change" and "extremes" rather than warming.

Well yes.... when a theory has been disproven, or shown to have a problem; scientists adjust the theory, with the minimum change necessary, so it no longer has a problem.

This iterative process of correcting the theory, when shown to be in error --- is how science works; all important theories have some sort of evolution such as this, and no theory is 100% correct.

AGW can be 10% wrong, and still represent a serious problem.

The anonymous reader is looking for something free. SAP is short for "Send Another Payment"

SAP is decidedly not "free", BUT zero licensing cost is not free either.

Sometimes the most expensive option you can pick will be the free one!

The important thing to remember is software license cost is not your only cost.

Time and energy have to be invested in deploying whichever solution you pick and making it work; in other words, shoehorning the software into the role, customizing as necessary, and forcing the employees to adapt to the requirements imposed by the software.

If you're not familiar with the software then probably you are not up to it yet. Your company should probably be hiring other organizations to assist; Know your limits and seek outside help when appropriate.

Now there are plenty of commercial solutions; some of them may be a more appropriate fit for your organization than any one of the free ones.

They're worth investigation --- because whichever one you pick; your company will be investing and committing significant resources to the choice.

Being so enamored with a certain license cost, or distribution model is not appropriate for most businesses; these are "nice to haves" from a geeky point of view.

But the selection of which CRM application to use is a business decision that should not be constrained by trivialities like "free" --- whichever offering will benefit the company the most, seems the right choice. (It's probably not SAP)

and (if in the United States) lawyer adverts etc...

Why would you need to wait for a natural disaster for that?

Leverage the phone's accelerometer, to detect if the owner has fallen, or experienced a suddenl jolt/rapid stop within their vehicle, and updated the advertisement targeting data accordingly....

doesn't mean he can't take a sheet of paper from a nuclear physicist saying "set energy output to X for period Y or until target reaches maximum temperature Z."

Just because he had used a carbon dioxide laser in his studies, does not make him an expert technician in the operation of all kinds of carbon lasers.

Furthermore, anyone off the street, with a little bit of training could probably due to the "set energy output to X for period Y" bit.

The article implied they wanted him to collaborate with them as a physicist, not some lowly laser technician that Iran would have an ample supply of.

"Iran has been pursuing a kind of uranium enrichment called SILEX which uses carbon dioxide lasers, the same kind of lasers that Kokabee was using in his graduate studies."

This is like saying he was studying computer aided design, and got arrested for refusing to join their computer hacking program, that happened to use similar computer systems.

Just b/c he had used the same kind of lasers, would not of meant he could do anything with uranium enrichment

You don’t even need to disable power off. With the encrypted storage used since the 3GS, you just zero the 128 bit flash device key in the device’s crypto chip & reboot. The rest of the encrypted flash is nothing but entropy at that point.

It's only 128-bit, so it's conceivable; they could download the entropy, and be able to brute force it in 50 years or so.

I think not.... if the vaccine immunizes against a large number of viruses ---- it will create a competitive gap; in viruses affecting humans, so eventually, a strain of some virus will probably emerge that fits that gap.

I am all for a vaccine that offers some protection/mitigation against all known types of flu. But I think implying that it's a universal cure-all against all future strains of flu, is more hope than reality.

But this shows that Apple was less than honest in their claims about pulse detection, and sub-surface tissue detection.

Maybe not In the video; the guy using the plastic strip to trick the device is holding the plastic strip over the same finger that can legitimately unlock the device.

To me... this raises the question; is the phone seeing his live finger through the plastic strip?

Is there anything unique about the tissue being detected; that might actually result in this not working If he had put a non-legitimate finger behind the fake strip instead of a legitimate registered finger?

you mean, besides just holding your hand against the sensor? As, if they have your phone, they probably also have you...

How about you jailbreak the phone, and use a PIN to unlock it normally, BUT you customize the reader, so if certain of your fingers get held against the sensor --- it triggers a "disable power off function" and "start wipe device" command.

If the bomb failed to detonate, why would a wireless signal be able to make it detonate?

Activation of a trigger mechanism controlled by a secondary logic board; only activated via wireless signal.

And sadly most of the time the only people who profit from class-action suits are the lawyers involved...

That makes sense, because the lawyers are selling their labor for profit.

The plaintiff in a lawsuit isn't supposed to profit: they're supposed to be paid the amount required to compensate for their loss; the reasonable cost required to hire a lawyer is part of the loss.

This is one of those problem the free market is meant to solve by itself - people are meant to stop buying iphones in response. Me, I'm perfectly happy with my Samsung Galaxy.

The problem is: people already bought their iphones.

The software update will "brick their device", by making it incapable of being charged, by the power adapter that worked fine before.

This is likely to result in a class action suit against Apple; potentially with a demand to repair/replace hardware that was rendered inoperable.

(E.g. Replace customers' iPhones with new ones, that will work with all their charging cables, or pay the cost of replacement for all the 3rd party charging cables consumers had purchased, PLUS the price difference for any new cables the customer would have purchased from a 3rd party)