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Big Brother's Pizza Delivery
Dusty Rhodes writes: "Lexis/Nexis, providers of massive database information services mostly to media, legal and law enforcement organizations, is hyping their new database service, BatchTrace, to track fugitives and deadbeats.
In addition to cataloging common info such as census records, driver's license records, etc., this database includes pizza delivery records, tech support call records and grocery store discount card records.
Who knew you'd need an alias to order a pizza? Pretty funny/sad stuff in the Land of the Free. What's next, a national pizza delivery ID, complete with thumbprint and DNA sample?
Thanks to Britt Sandusky for pointing us to this story."
When "Big Brother" and "Pizza Delivery" come together, normally some sort of obligatory reference to Snow Crash is required.
But in this case, there's actually something interesting to be questioned. The subject article comes from the credit history angle, for purposes like trying to locate deadbeats. But take the more sinister view and add "financial profiling." How about checking takeout orders, but instead of looking for pizza look for Halaal food? Of course only sleeper-cells would order take-out Halaal. (for Halaal, think Kosher, only for Muslims)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
People give me an odd look when I tell them that I live a mostly cash-only lifestyle. Each paycheck I withdraw all but the small amount which goes on a credit card. No before you call me a hypocrite, I use the CC for transactions that are already recorded, no matter how I pay (savings bonds purchases, paying bills, etc.).
However, I always use cash for gassing up the car, for normal retail purchases (food, hardware supplies, elecetronics/software, etc.). For mail order and some bills I use USPS money orders. At least with money orders, my bank doesn't know I paid $55 for last month's water bill even if the water company does. That's just one less piece of information some company can exploit.
It's getting bad out there. I was alarmed when I bought a DVD player at Wal Mart and they entered the serial # into the register!
It's revelations like this story that make me glad I tolerate the odd looks for my perceived "odd" behavior. Some day, one of you discount card users is gonna get a notice from your health insurance about a premium increase because they know that you buy a gallon of Rocky Road icecream every week. Trust me -- it will happen some day!
Method of processing duck feet
"... and grocery store discount card records."
I stopped going to Safeway, since they use discount cards rather than just giving customers the price at which they want to sell without expecting to track them.
(Discount cards do NOT provide discounts. The grocery store always sells at the price they want to sell. They merely increase the price so that people will get cards, and can then be tracked, especially if they ever use a credit or debit card in connection with a purchase.)
I've started shopping at WinCo Foods instead. They have much lower prices, and they don't do sneaky things. WinCo Foods stores are located in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Nevada.
Did Safeway think that there would be no cost for them in tracking the customer?
I've noticed that abusive companies eventually disappear, or almost disappear. At one time IBM had 90% of the PC market, but they tried to trap customers with a proprietary bus system. At one time Novell had 85% of the PC network market, but they didn't care that their software had a lot of quirks. At one time PC Magazine was a large bi-weekly magazine, but they seemed to favor some companies in their test results. If you believe these examples are representative, then you may begin to think that eventually Microsoft will be a small software company.
You have nothing to hide? The Agency is terribly sorry Mrs. Buttle...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
That's less funny if you replace "back child support" for "estimated movie/music piracy".
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Brazil has had its own strangeness. I was living there when they switched from the Cruzeiro Real to the Real. They didn't correctly anticipate the number of coins that would have to be minted. For six months you couldn't get the 5 cents change from your 45 cent bus fare. You got a "5 cent coupon" instead. So basically the bus fare was 50 cents with your tenth ride free!
ps For being a privacy nut you just told us all where you live. Smith's and Albertson's aren't exactly nationwide chains. :)
Lasers Controlled Games!
ok, here are my complaints:
1. All the things that try to connect to the internet. I run ZoneAlarm, and I have only seen
4. Generic Host Process
11. Media Player, checking for codec
I'm not saying you're lieing, but just that that's all I've run into.
As for your next paragraph--big companies move slowly, it sucks yes, but your hysterical "microsoft ignores bugs and wants people to get hacked" is off the wall.
You also talk about your theory that microsoft makes buggy software so that people will buy upgrades. What are the bugs people typically mention ? IIS, Outlook, IE, hotmail. ALL free, so your theory for those programs can't be right.
Your next paragraph also seems ridiculous, indicating some sort of spying conspiracy.
And your next paragraph is verifiably false--the corporate culture is supposed to be great at microsoft. I've known 2 interns who worked there over summers, both loved it. Motivation != quality.
the DRM stuff all seems ok
Your next paragraph about the government lost me...
Ok, your (your?) registry discussion is where I have the most problems. first you say if the registry becomes corrupted you have to re-format, re-install, etc. This is simply not true. One, Windows makes periodic backups of the registry automatically, from which to restore. You say the registry is a single very vulnerable point of failure? By being a single point, it's also easy to backup and restore. Re-formatting isn't necessary even if for some bizarre reason you had to do a re-install. Rescue install can handle that easily, if again, for some bizarre reason, the registry backups don't work. The registry prevents control by the user? Again, bull, for 99% of what most users would want to change, there is a control panel, or a settings box, or a management console, etc.
Incidentally, user registry settings are stored in a different hive file. Again, you lose me on the next part of your discussion. Under what scenario will a registry become partially corrupted and not recognize this? I've never heard of this happening, do you have any evidence that this happens? Again, you talk about re-formatting and I say bah. Next you talk about how Windows XP prevents you from backing up the registry...again simply not true. Take a look at a) the regedit export command, b) the "reg" command (console) c) I imagine it's taken care of in System Restore as well (I turned it off--never had a need for it).
The next section on backups is even MORE ridiculous. Did you even read that article?? The problem with disk duplication of windows is that the SID (MS Network IP address..a unique identifier in other words) cannot be identical. Nowhere does it say MS forbids backing up (which works fine--it ONLY doesn't work if you are replicating to multiple installs). This is pure proveable FUD.
Ok, the next part is yadda yadda yadda about Passport. I clicked no, it's never come up again, no loss of functionality, I don't see the problem.
Palladium fine, we don't know anything yet, but fine, speculate all you want..
As for the CLI, I don't know about this. I've found sound emulation to be AMAZING under XP--I've been able to run DOS games with sound (Quest for glory to be precise) that I literally haven't been able to run since DOS days.
The extra spaces thing you mention is very deliberate. You can paste as input into a program. If the command prompt arbitrarily decides to stop pasting what you have in the clipboard, you can be in for some problems here. I haven't run into any of the other problems you bemoan.
XP Scheduler inefficiencies? Again, no idea what you're talking about. Never run into it. Your language is unclear, but it seems the blame is to lay on the driver writers, not MS? So there are no buggy drivers for nix/bsd?
I've never run into that ALT+TAB bug either.
The last part again seems part out paranoid xfiles-ish to me, but hey, you can have your opinion--it's the factual errors in this article that bother me.