Wow! "Plans" to develop batteries in 2011. Stop the press!! And, I have "plans" to develop a pocket watch-sized nuclear reactor for my home in 2012. It'll be designed with gum drops and built by my own sense of self-promotion. Perhaps they should have mentioned that each home battery will ship with a copy of Duke Nukem Forever and delivered by Saint Nick. Please...

The combination of merchant ID, terminal number, transaction date/time, and approval code seems like a pretty unique transaction ID to me. If the payment processor stores this info as the primary key, then the account number is redundant to specifying the transaction.

Actually I could care less about TFA. It is one of hundreds of breaches that we know about and that will continue to occur. We've got to talk creating an actual solution rather than finding band-aids to the individual problems that crop up. My basic point is that we store far too much information that we actually need. I know it is nearly impossible to get 11K banks to change a well-established protocol, but I'm talking about what "should" be done as opposed to what "will" be done. I am not naive enough to believe that the system will change, but am suggesting that this is how it should be.

Why does the credit card number need to be stored at all? I'm assuming that the merchant sends the credit card number to the credit card company (or whomever authorizes the transaction). That authority sends back an "Ok" plus a unique transaction ID for that purchase. Each purchase has a unique transaction ID. The merchant stores the transaction ID and NOT the credit card number (or any other identifying info). Any disputes or corrections are handled by referring to the transaction ID. In this scenario, the actual credit card number is only stored by the credit card company. It exists in no other database. If the vendor site gets hacked, it doesn't have any usable info.

http://www.flagshipnews.com/archives_2003/oct02200 3_14.shtml

The U.S. Navy does this now for the enlisted ranks through a program called "Assignment Incentive Pay" which is part of the "Perform To Serve" program.

You basically bid for how much extra special pay you are willing to accept for a given duty station. So sailor A may want an extra $100 a month and sailor be may want an extra $200 per month to do the same job. The winner is supposedly a combination of lowest bidder with best skill set (although I'm sure lowest bidder is a little more weighted in the equation).

Personally I don't think these competitive models are a good idea. Like hospitals and schools, the Navy shouldn't be treated as a typical business. They have an essential service to supply first and foremost-- the cost should be secondary.

-Tony