Slashdot Mirror


User: taustin

taustin's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
2,322
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 2,322

  1. Re:Well... no. on Flaw in New Visa Cards Would Let Hackers Steal $1M Per Card · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sounds like if you can find a store that is currently offline (which is rare) you can rip off the store for goods purchased, and that's about it.

    It's useless for the thief to directly charge a card unless the thief also has a merchant account, which are not exactly trivial to sign up for, what with credit checks and all.

    And these people obviously have no clue how offline transactions actually work. They're held in the POS station until they get uploaded, where they get all the normal verifications before they are processed and the money deposited in the merchant's account.

    Other than ripping off a merchant in some way (and that would require a coordinated effort on the part of someone with a portable card reader and someone else at the cash register), there is no risk here whatsoever. Nothing but FUD, deliberately fostering hysteria to sell advertising. In other words, in the world of "journalism", it's a day that ends in "y".

  2. Re:Yeah, good luck ... on Apple Pay Competitor CurrentC Breached · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'll trust Visa more not because they've been at it a while, but because the law gives me a good deal of protection against fraud. CurrentC does not use credit cards, it requires direct access to your checking account. That means none of the legal protections against fraud that apply to credit cards. It also means that if their servers get breached, and that bank account information is stolen, the thieves aren't stealing money from the bank, and the bank responsible for getting it back, but rather, they're stealing my money from my bank account, and it's up to me to get it back. And my bank isn't responsible, and the merchant probably isn't either, according to their terms of service, and the people behind CurrentC are likely a shell corporation with nothing to sue them for.

    CurrentC looks, to me, like the biggest bucket of bad ideas in the history of electronic payment.

  3. Why CurrentC will fail miserably on Why CurrentC Will Beat Out Apple Pay · · Score: 5, Informative

    1. One of the terms of service is exclusivity - if you use CurrentC, you can't use any other kind of mobile wallet system.

    2. It is more like a debit card than a credit card - the money comes directly out of your bank account.

    3. As such, it has none of the legal protections that a credit card has. With a debit card, pretty much all banks offer the same protection on debit cards anyway, because it's good for their business. CurrentC won't be run by banks, it will be run by some of the largest retailers in the country - Walmart, etc. None of the political pressures that keep banks on the straight and narrow apply.

    4. CurrentC requires - cannot possibly work without - that you give the retailer all the information needed to take as much money as they choose directly from your bank account. These are the same retailers who have had hundreds of millions of credit card numbers stolen from their servers in the last couple of years. They have proven, conclusively, that they cannot be trusted.

    5. CurrentC is about more than just transaction fees. It is also about turning the customer into a product - they require a lot of personal information that is completely irrelevant to the transaction - like health information (which they are also incapable of protecting) - to set up the account.

    6. CurrentC is based on QR Codes, which is just stupid.

    I'll go back to carrying cash before I use a mess like that. Or barter. Or growing my own food on a mountain top somewhere.

  4. Re:Why not? When you have kids.. on Court Rules Parents May Be Liable For What Their Kids Post On Facebook · · Score: 1

    Did Twitter kick you out again?

  5. Re:Why not? When you have kids.. on Court Rules Parents May Be Liable For What Their Kids Post On Facebook · · Score: 1, Insightful

    You are, in fact, saying libel and slander laws (which specifically sanction the person who speaks or writes them) are bullshit.

    Which is to say, you're go stupid you have no idea what you're saying.

  6. Re:Stay in perspectve... on A Critical Look At Walter "Scorpion" O'Brien · · Score: 1

    Would you rather have another reality show about an ugly woman and her abusive husband who both have an IQ of 98?

    Or Sex Box. Because "Naked Dating" was such a smash hit.

  7. Re:Mediocre? How about godawful? Terrible? on A Critical Look At Walter "Scorpion" O'Brien · · Score: 1

    Dude, you missed the best part, at the end, when they're driving a Ferrari under the jet liner that's flying eight feet off the runway, with the copilot sitting on the lowered landing gear dangling an Ethernet cable down to the car so they could grab a copy of the magic software off the plane's flight systems.

    It was so ridiculous, I kept looking for Bruce Campbell with a chainsaw for a hand. What made it funny was how earnest they were about it all. How anyone could keep a straight face long enough to finish a single scene, I don't know. Funniest new show of the season. Far funnier than any of the comedies, like Two and a Half Years Past When It Should Have Been Canceled And The Entire Cast Put in a Home. Or Mysteries of Laura, which is based on the premise that using police powers to blackmail your children (who had been kicked out of preschool for peeing on each other) in to a new preschool, then drugging the children to keep them quiet while interviewing with the headmistress, well, that's the funniest shit on television.

  8. Re:Then, he's the writer of the series? on A Critical Look At Walter "Scorpion" O'Brien · · Score: 1

    From the sounds of it ... he's making some pretty deluded statements about his life, passing them off as if they're true, and then selling it to people who are making it into TV which says 'based on a true story'. In many places, that's called fraud when you financially gain from it.

    In Hollywood, however, it's called "a day that ends in 'y'."

    "Based on a true story" means "based on the title of a book that you might recognize." If you don't know that, you should be kept in a home for the mentally insufficient, for your own safety.

    It sounds like this guy has been going around making extraordinary claims, and nobody has had the slightest inclination to challenge him on it.

    Why would they? It doesn't make any difference whatsoever if the producers (or network) believe him in any way. It doesn't matter how credible he is.. All that matters is if they think they can sell more advertising during the show than they think they could during a different show. They thought they could.

    I expect they're wrong on that, But that's hardly unusual, either.

  9. Re:'Inquiring minds want to know' on Adobe Spies On Users' eBook Libraries · · Score: 1

    I think you have mistaken me for someone of your own species, living in your own world. I'd tell you to smoke less dope, but I suspect the real problem is not enough drugs, rather than too much.

    In any event, dude, have fun.

  10. Re:Outrage burnout on Adobe Spies On Users' eBook Libraries · · Score: 1

    There's no point in submitting them for publication in a format that nobody is going to bother to read. PDFs are nice for stuff that's going to be printed. They're marginal on a desktop sized screen. They're utterly useless on a bookreader sized screen.

    And PDFs can't be converted to other formats worth a damn, DRM or not.

  11. Re:Outrage burnout on Adobe Spies On Users' eBook Libraries · · Score: 2

    You've clearly never tried to read a PDF on a book reader with a small screen.

  12. Re:What an asshole on The Single Vigilante Behind Facebook's 'Real Name' Crackdown · · Score: 1

    "Think" is not the word I would use to describe what they do. But yeah, that's how they believe.

  13. Re:quit interpreting statements on Study: Multimedia Multitasking May Be Shrinking Human Brains · · Score: 2

    Nor does brain size particularly correlate with intelligence, or we wouldn't have the big, stupid oaf stereotype.

    I do find it entirely plausible, however, the idiots have short attention spans, and flit from distraction to distraction constantly.

  14. Re:CDC "Estimates" on CDC: Ebola Cases Could Reach 1.4 Million In 4 Months · · Score: 1

    From my experience, CDC estimates should be taken with a grain of salt, as they often seem dubious at best.

    They're not the least bit dubious, or hard to understand. CDC estimates, like all their actions, are designed o get them more tax dollars to play with. They're reasonably good at it, and never ones to miss an opportunity to profit from public hysteria.

    More people die in Africa every month from dysentery than have died from ebola ever. But there's no public hysteria, and thus no tax dollars, in that.

  15. Re:eyebrows raised. on CDC: Ebola Cases Could Reach 1.4 Million In 4 Months · · Score: 0

    They're assuming cases are underreported by a factor of "give us more money."

  16. Re:Meanwhile on CDC: Ebola Cases Could Reach 1.4 Million In 4 Months · · Score: 1

    As you note, the US has some experience with corrupt government embezzling aid money. Once bitten, twice shy, and all.

  17. Re:Meanwhile on CDC: Ebola Cases Could Reach 1.4 Million In 4 Months · · Score: 1

    p>I don't care how justified you think you are, but right now you're getting up there with "voting national socialist in 1935" levels of awful.

    And I don't care how you think Americans should spend their money, especially when you resort to namecalling and are too ignorant to recognize Godwin's Law, even when it's humping your pantleg.

    Maybe we should contact the government of Nigeria and offer them millions in aid, but we need a little seed money to free it up from the bank account it's currently in.

  18. Re:Only cost them 25 percent of customer bills? on Small Restaurant Out-Maneuvers Yelp In Reviews War · · Score: 1

    The distinction, as I recall, was privately owned, not size. Hobby Lobby is not publicly traded.

  19. Re:Only cost them 25 percent of customer bills? on Small Restaurant Out-Maneuvers Yelp In Reviews War · · Score: 1

    Believe it or not, Italian food is actually served in other countries.

  20. Re:Only cost them 25 percent of customer bills? on Small Restaurant Out-Maneuvers Yelp In Reviews War · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I believe their plan is to deliberately violate Yelp's terms of service - by paying for reviews - to force Yelp to enforce said terms by removing the listing entirely. Which is what the restaurant wants - to not be listed at all.

    It's a very clever plan. At best, they get everything they want, and at worst, "real" bad reviews get buried in amongst the snarky ones.

  21. Re:why does the CRTC need this list? on Canadian Regulator Threatens To Impose New Netflix Regulation · · Score: 2

    That sounds great until there is a conflict between the laws of different countries, like the Microsoft/Irish data center case. When a company can't obey the laws of one country without breaking the laws of the other, it's not a legal issue involving the company, it's a political issue between two governments.

    And if it comes to One World Government taking precedence over all others, it won't be Canada deciding what international law is.

    Canada only has jurisdiction over what is can enforce its orders on. If Netflix has no employees or assets in Canada, Canada has no jurisdiction over Netflix.

  22. Re:why does the CRTC need this list? on Canadian Regulator Threatens To Impose New Netflix Regulation · · Score: 1

    And Canada doesn't?

  23. Re:I can't see this happening on Verizon Working On a La Carte Internet TV Service · · Score: 1

    a lot of niche content will no longer get funded, so choice might actually be lessened

    If not enough people are watching it to get it funded in an al a carte environment, then it's not worth funding in the first place.

  24. Re:Seems reasonable on CBC Warns Canadians of "US Law Enforcement Money Extortion Program" · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Supreme Court has ruled that civil forfeiture laws are, in fact, subject to the restrictions on excessive fines. Very specifically, and as I recall, on a case that involved seizure of money at the border.

    Nobody knows about this, and a foreign tourist won't have any inclination to come back to the US - in a year or two, when it comes to trial - and spend more on legal fees than what was stolen.

    The only way to stop this is to criminally prosecute corrupt cops. Which happens from time to time, but not nearly enough.

  25. Re:Re; on California Tells Businesses: Stop Trying To Ban Consumer Reviews · · Score: 1

    If you've got the resources to pursue a class action suit at all, such a restriction can already be challenged as unconscionable.