No, its extremely useful. The fraud rate using stolen physical cards is fairly low. What the CC companies and issuers were really worried about were the data breaches at major retailers that were exposing 100's of thousands or millions of credit card numbers at a time. Once the numbers were stolen, generating fake cards and going shopping was very easy. Chip cards prevent that type of fraud. For consumers, the lack of a PIN means that the issuer covers you for losses if you loose your card. With Chip + PIN, if you are unfortunate enough to loose both your Chip and your PIN, as unlikely as that might be, then you are f*ck'd.
I am afraid that you are absolutely wrong. Chip cards without signature most definitely prevent skimming. The card number is not read from the cards mag stripe. Data including the card number is encrypted using the chips and sent to the issuer to verify fully encrypted. Chip cards without PIN's allow physical cards to be stolen and used fraudulently. The CC issuers have decided to continue paying to cover this type of fraud instead of forcing PIN's on Americans.
It is a very slow process because while those young people are waiting around the old people to die, they have to live their lives, and by the time those old folks are finally dead, the young people aren't so young anymore and their opinions have changed so as to be not so different from the old folks of their youth. Life is funny that way.
If the customer of a US bank sends a payment instruction to their bank (most likely for a wire only as most US banks don't OFAC scan ACH payments) and the payment includes text that triggers an OFAC hit, the bank will debit their account and seize the funds. That is what they are required by law to do.
If a bank outside the United State sends a payment instruction to their USD correspondent (a US bank), the US bank will scan the instruction for an OFAC hit. If a a hit occurs, the US bank will debit the account of the non-US bank and seize the funds. The non-US bank has probably already debited the account of their non-US customer, and won't give the money back.
Non-US may or may not scan payments against the US OFAC list. There is not guarantee that they will, and if your money ends up in a US bank where it triggers an OFAC hit, you are unlikely to get it back easily.
The OFAC restrictions apply to non US companies and individuals as well. Any payment sent through a US bank will be checked against an OFAC list, this will probably include most payments in USD between non-US banks. When a payment triggers an OFAC hit, the funds are seized and impounded by the US Bank and turned over to the Feds. Folks outside the US really hate this.
What about equipping all meeting participants with a wireless headset (headphone with mic). A base station in the room would connect to each headset, and transmit audio to remote participants. I also work for a company with many remote employees. When all meeting participants are at their desk using headsets, people are easy to understand, but as soon as some of the meeting participants are in a conference room with a speaker phone it becomes very difficult to hear people. As a result we do a lot of meetings from our desks even though many of us are in the same building and could benefit from a face to face meeting.
Might just be nit-picking, but in the United States, a private individual or corporation cannot criminally charge anyone with anything. Only the government (state or federal) can bring criminal charges. Now anyone can go to the government and try to convince a prosecutor that someone has committed a crime, but it up to the prosecutor to actually bring criminal charges on behalf of the state. This is what Goldman actually did, and it sounds like they found a prosecutor who was easy to convince, but to say that Goldman criminally charged someone is either being intentionally misleading or demonstrates a very poor understanding of the US legal system.
The company is Intersystems and the OODBMS is Cache.
The relational database is still the money maker. We get "relational refugees" from Oracle and Sybase.
I have had some experience with Cache's JDBC driver and I would argue that it isn't very usefull as a relational database either. The locking support in Cache almost not existent. The JDBC drivers only supported isolation level is read uncommited. I don't understand what they are thinking.
It seems to me that as an open source project, trademark law does not really apply to you. An open source project is not using a mark as part of commercial activity. It is simply a group of people getting together to work on a peice of software for their own pleasure and enjoyment. You can call your software whatever you like. Call it Microsoft, Sun or Bob Dylan. Companies have rights to the use of their trademarks in commercial activity, not a blanket prohibition on anyone using their mark for any purpose.
Now of course if you have ambitions for your open source project that may take you into commercial endeveaurs, it is probably wise to establish a name and trademark it. However it certainly does not seem a requirement.
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No, its extremely useful. The fraud rate using stolen physical cards is fairly low. What the CC companies and issuers were really worried about were the data breaches at major retailers that were exposing 100's of thousands or millions of credit card numbers at a time. Once the numbers were stolen, generating fake cards and going shopping was very easy. Chip cards prevent that type of fraud. For consumers, the lack of a PIN means that the issuer covers you for losses if you loose your card. With Chip + PIN, if you are unfortunate enough to loose both your Chip and your PIN, as unlikely as that might be, then you are f*ck'd.
I am afraid that you are absolutely wrong. Chip cards without signature most definitely prevent skimming. The card number is not read from the cards mag stripe. Data including the card number is encrypted using the chips and sent to the issuer to verify fully encrypted. Chip cards without PIN's allow physical cards to be stolen and used fraudulently. The CC issuers have decided to continue paying to cover this type of fraud instead of forcing PIN's on Americans.
It is a very slow process because while those young people are waiting around the old people to die, they have to live their lives, and by the time those old folks are finally dead, the young people aren't so young anymore and their opinions have changed so as to be not so different from the old folks of their youth. Life is funny that way.
If the customer of a US bank sends a payment instruction to their bank (most likely for a wire only as most US banks don't OFAC scan ACH payments) and the payment includes text that triggers an OFAC hit, the bank will debit their account and seize the funds. That is what they are required by law to do.
If a bank outside the United State sends a payment instruction to their USD correspondent (a US bank), the US bank will scan the instruction for an OFAC hit. If a a hit occurs, the US bank will debit the account of the non-US bank and seize the funds. The non-US bank has probably already debited the account of their non-US customer, and won't give the money back.
Non-US may or may not scan payments against the US OFAC list. There is not guarantee that they will, and if your money ends up in a US bank where it triggers an OFAC hit, you are unlikely to get it back easily.
The OFAC restrictions apply to non US companies and individuals as well. Any payment sent through a US bank will be checked against an OFAC list, this will probably include most payments in USD between non-US banks. When a payment triggers an OFAC hit, the funds are seized and impounded by the US Bank and turned over to the Feds. Folks outside the US really hate this.
What about equipping all meeting participants with a wireless headset (headphone with mic). A base station in the room would connect to each headset, and transmit audio to remote participants. I also work for a company with many remote employees. When all meeting participants are at their desk using headsets, people are easy to understand, but as soon as some of the meeting participants are in a conference room with a speaker phone it becomes very difficult to hear people. As a result we do a lot of meetings from our desks even though many of us are in the same building and could benefit from a face to face meeting.
Does any device like this exist at any price?
Might just be nit-picking, but in the United States, a private individual or corporation cannot criminally charge anyone with anything. Only the government (state or federal) can bring criminal charges. Now anyone can go to the government and try to convince a prosecutor that someone has committed a crime, but it up to the prosecutor to actually bring criminal charges on behalf of the state. This is what Goldman actually did, and it sounds like they found a prosecutor who was easy to convince, but to say that Goldman criminally charged someone is either being intentionally misleading or demonstrates a very poor understanding of the US legal system.
I think Billy just checked himself into rehab. Not that it has much to do with the point that you're making.
The company is Intersystems and the OODBMS is Cache.
The relational database is still the money maker. We get "relational refugees" from Oracle and Sybase.
I have had some experience with Cache's JDBC driver and I would argue that it isn't very usefull as a relational database either. The locking support in Cache almost not existent. The JDBC drivers only supported isolation level is read uncommited. I don't understand what they are thinking.
It seems to me that as an open source project, trademark law does not really apply to you. An open source project is not using a mark as part of commercial activity. It is simply a group of people getting together to work on a peice of software for their own pleasure and enjoyment. You can call your software whatever you like. Call it Microsoft, Sun or Bob Dylan. Companies have rights to the use of their trademarks in commercial activity, not a blanket prohibition on anyone using their mark for any purpose.
Now of course if you have ambitions for your open source project that may take you into commercial endeveaurs, it is probably wise to establish a name and trademark it. However it certainly does not seem a requirement.