It's called Gravitational Lensing.

It doesn't matter if it's broken or not. The point is that the banks state that If chip&pin was used and it's fraudulent we'll take the hit, if swipe was used then the merchant takes the hit. It's that simple statement that gives the merchants the incentive to pay up for the POS upgrade.

The point is that if Chip&Pin is used then the bank takes the hit (at least in the UK it does) - swipe and you're f**ked.

Babbage had nothing to do with computers, human or otherwise - n'or did Ada. Babbage invented the "diffrerencing engine". It was Alan Turing who coined the term computer, connecting it initially to a "person who computes" and later to a "machine that computes".

Obligatory - http://xkcd.com/1215/ Maybe before we rush to adopt a malaria vaccine we should stop to consider the consequences of blithely giving this technology such a central position in our lives. Malaria has been a powerful evolutionary force for thousands of years - are we really ready to remove it - have we studied the possible consequences?

Real programmers: http://xkcd.com/974/

But where were you when you posted your holiday snaps? That's the real 'meta'data they are collecting.

Safe. Gun. Pick one!

He's just repeating the old adage - best demonstrated by Gary Larson - that nature abhors a vacuum. :)

Yes! It proves to your new employer that you can listen and think. Sadly it proves little else.

I have exactly the same problem!! I am more in software than support or system build though but there are so many times when I suggest some new technique or pattern that the rest of the team just discard and ignore because they just don't seem to care. Just the other day I was asked to put together a web service using SOAP. I came right back and said we should use JASON because SOAP is so five minutes ago and is both more compact and flexible and they said something about SOAP being a more resilient protocol and I just laughed because they just don't understand and cant be bothered to grok a new protocol. There's one big difference between us though - I'm 52 and have been programming for 35 years.