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Comment Re:Good luck with that. (Score 1) 558

by tenverras (#48235119) Attached to: Rite Aid and CVS Block Apple Pay and Google Wallet

The partnership to be supported by Google Wallet and Apple Pay has nothing to do with payments at the store. Stores sign contracts with processing companies; the store seldom owns the payment terminal. The store is free to negotiate or decide what type of machine they will use, which types of cards to accept, and if they will accept conveniences like MC Paypass, Interac Flash, or NFC methods. The retailer is well within their rights to say they won't accept NFC.

The only thing they are not allowed to do is to decline to accept legal tender. I.e. they legally aren't allowed to reject a $100 if it is a genuine bill, regardless of what store policy is.

Comment I don't blame the retailers (Score 2) 558

by tenverras (#48235073) Attached to: Rite Aid and CVS Block Apple Pay and Google Wallet

There are a lot of hidden costs associated with using cards and other technologies with payment terminals. When you pay $6.00 for your purchase, the retailer doesn't get all that money.The processing company that processes all the transactions paid for with cards at a retailer gets a cut of every transaction. If it is a credit card, like Visa or MC, then the credit card company also takes a small percentage.

While Google Wallet and Apply Pay may be free to the end-user, I highly doubt that it is free for the retailer. Google and Apple are likely taking another slice of the pie. So... percentage for the processing company, percentage for the credit card company and a percentage for Google or Apple. It's not beyond belief that this could easily exceed 5% of the purchase price, which could be about 10% of the profit margin. That's a huge number, even if it only amounts to $0.30 on a $6.00 purchase.

It's an annoying hassle for CVS customers to have to wait and deal with another mobile payment system, but it easily means millions in savings each year, nationwide.

Comment Neuro-Interfacing Patent API (Score 1) 262

by tenverras (#43946235) Attached to: What Features Does iOS 7 Need?

It should be able to read your thoughts and transmit them to Apple every time you have a new idea, so that Apple can instantly create a new patent application and claim that they invented the idea. This would solve the problem of people being able to steal Apple's inventions before they have a chance to secure a patent on it. The API should be called something like 6. (Not sure if those will show properly, but there should be a superscript th and the c used for cents. Obvious play on 6th sense)
Earth

Losing the Public Debate On Global Warming 1181

Posted by Soulskill from the running-out-the-clock dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Dr. James Hansen, director of the NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who first made warnings about climate change in the 1980s, says that public skepticism about the threat of man-made climate change has increased despite the growing scientific consensus. He says that without public support, it will be impossible to make the changes he and his colleagues believe need to occur to protect future generations from the effects of climate change. 'The science has become stronger and stronger over the past five years while the public perception is has gone in completely the other direction. That is not an accident,' says Hansen. 'There is a very concerted effort by people who would prefer to see business to continue as usual. They have been winning the public debate with the help of tremendous resources.' Hansen's comments come as recent surveys have revealed that public support for tackling climate change has declined dramatically in recent years. A recent BBC poll found that 25% of British adults did not think global warming is happening and over a third said many claims about environmental threats are 'exaggerated,' compared to 24 per cent in 2000. Dr. Benny Peiser, director of skeptical think tank The Global Warming Policy Foundation, says it's time to stop exaggerating the impact of global warming and accept the uncertainty of predictions about the rate of climate change. 'James Hensen has been making predictions about climate change since the 1980s. When people are comparing what is happening now to those predictions, they can see they fail to match up.'"

Comment For all (Score 2) 382

by tenverras (#39684741) Attached to: Banned From Kickstarter For Being Cyberstalked

I know kickstarter is going to get a lot of negative feelings about this, but I can't blame them for their decision. Look at all the crazy lawsuits that happen and succeed... such as a person suing the owner of the house they are robbing, after they injure themselves during the crime... there is a chance that if they allowed a project to go forward, knowing that it could provide a new forum for cyberstalking against someone with a long history or it, then kickstarter risks a liability lawsuit.

This isn't discrimination, it's just declining to serve a customer (which a businesses has every right to do) for a reason that has some merit to it. They don't want to be part of a bad situation and don't want to risk involvement or any form of responsibility for it. It sucks, but it's not unreasonable

Comment While we're at it... (Score 2) 315

by tenverras (#38546416) Attached to: Is Twitter Aiding and Abetting Terrorism?

Let's also sue...

1) The postal service, because they help letter bombs and the like reach their destinations
2) Banks, since they store money and are responsible for the creation of new money, which might be used by a terrorist
3) Cellphone makes and service providers, because they help terrorists communicate
4) TV makes and news companies, since they report on terrorist attacks, which other terrorist can get ideas from
5) The TSA, FBI, CIA, and so forth, because they are aiding terrorists by not catching all of them before they attack
6) The parents of terrorists, for giving birth to them

Need I continue...?
Google

Belgian Newspapers Delisted On Google 385

Posted by timothy from the you-will-not-be-assimilated dept.
D H NG writes "After being ordered by the Belgian courts to 'remove from its Google.be and Google.com sites, and in particular, cached links visible on Google Web and the Google News service, all articles, photographs and graphics of daily newspapers published in French and German by Belgian publishers,' Google had removed all traces of the newspapers in question from all its search services. The newspapers, however, are crying foul, and alleged that it was done in retaliation for being sued for copyright violations."
Japan

TEPCO Confirms Partial Meltdown of No.2 and No.3 Reactors 209

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the that's-not-very-good dept.
blau writes with an article in NHK World. From the article "The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant says findings show that fuel meltdowns may have occurred at the No.2 and No.3 reactors within days of the March 11th earthquake. But it says both reactors are now stable at relatively low temperatures." TEPCO is also now blaming the tsunami for most of the damage rather than the earthquake.
Biotech

First 'Malaria-Proof' Mosquito Created 261

Posted by timothy from the what-about-a-really-good-egg-cream dept.
Gisg writes "The University of Arizona team reported that their genetically modified mosquitoes are immune to the malaria-causing parasite, a single-cell organism called Plasmodium. Riehle and his colleagues tested their genetically-altered mosquitoes by feeding them malaria-infested blood. Not even one mosquito became infected with the malaria parasite."
Math

Deformable Liquid Mirrors For Adaptive Optics 196

Posted by timothy from the mirror-mirror-on-the-magnet dept.
eldavojohn writes "Want to make a great concave mirror for your telescope? Put a drop of mercury in a bowl and spin the bowl. The mercury will spread out to a concave reflective surface smoother than anything we can make with plain old glass right now. The key problem in this situation is that the bowl will always have to point straight up. MIT's Technology Review is analyzing a team's success in combating problems with bringing liquid mirrors into the practical applications of astronomy. To fight the gravity requirement, the team used a ferromagnetic liquid coated with a metal-like film and very strong magnetic fields to distort the surface of that liquid as they needed. But this introduces new non-linear problems of control when trying to sync up several of these mirrors similar to how traditional glass telescopes use multiple hexagonal mirrors mounted on actuators. The team has fought past so many of these problems plaguing liquid mirrors that they produced a proof of concept liquid mirror just five centimeters across with 91 actuators cycling at one kilohertz and the ability to linearize the response of the liquid. And with that, liquid mirrors take a giant leap closer to practicality."
Security

The Men Who Stare At Airline Passengers, Coming To the UK 468

Posted by timothy from the setting-aside-american-senators dept.
An anonymous reader writes, "The Economist's Gulliver reports on a story in Nature that questions the current airport security regimen," excerpting: "Over the past four years, some 3,000 officers in America's Transportation Security Administration (TSA) have been specially trained to spot potential terrorists at airports. The programme, known as SPOT, for Screening Passengers by Observation Technique, is intended to allow airport security officers to use tiny facial cues to identify people who are acting suspiciously. The British government is currently launching a new screening regime modelled on the Americans' SPOT. There's just one problem with all this: there's no evidence that SPOT is actually effective. The whole thing is mostly based on pseudoscience, Sharon Weinberger reports in Nature." Happily, Nature's original article is available in full, rather than paywalled.
Image

Scientists Implant Biofuel Cells Into Rats 164

Posted by samzenpus from the welcome-to-the-matrix dept.
RedmondChris writes "A team of scientists from Joseph Fourier University in France have successfully implanted biofuel cells into rats, generating 6.5 microwatts by harnessing the power of glucose. From the article: 'The device uses enzymes to harvest energy from glucose and oxygen found naturally in the body. Past attempts at using such a device in animals have failed because the enzymes have required acidic conditions or were inhibited by charged particles in the fluid surrounding cells. But Philippe Cinquin and his team from Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, overcame these obstacles by confining selected enzymes inside graphite discs that were placed into dialysis bags. Glucose and oxygen flowed into the device, but enzymes stayed in place and catalyzed the oxidation of glucose to generate electrical energy.'"

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