You might know that they did it, but not have tangible evidence that would be useful to the police. "He told me last friday in the bar that he did credit card fraud five years ago" won't be enough to get an investigate. After all, it's not like the cops in NYC don't have anything to do.
I'm planning on taking my tax records with me if my GP gets arsy about this: Look, here's how much tax I paid last year. Still think I'm not entitled to the benefits?
For the record, while I live in the UK, I'm actually German, and I clearly remember the uproar that machine readable ID cards caused in Germany in the eighties. They were not popular at all.
>And last but not least, how can be that people are worried about ID cards when living in countries where the government has been given insane powers to detain people without trial and rights, like in Guantanamo? Not to confuse things: Guantanamo is operated by the US, not the UK, even though the UK government is certainly guilty of tacitly accepting it.
As for detention without trial, that too was passed by our glorious leader and his blind friend. Mainly because due to the antiquated and undemocratic system in the UK 36% of the vote give you a big majority in the house of commons. And lots of people complained about it, and were ignored, as usual. I know, I was one of them.
As for access to our personal data: Our glorious leader has effectively dismantled any constraints for government access. Any Tom, Dick and Harry in the police, local council, or random quango can access e.g. your email records without a court order.
Welcome to 1984! Forward, not backwards! We have always been at war with terrorists!
Yes, government agencies in the UK don't have a great record on protecting sensitive personal information. E.g. the case where someone at the DVLA passed on the addresses of medical researchers to his "Animal Rights" Terrorist friends....
You end up paying anyway, whether it's directly when you get it, or indirectly through taxes. Thanks to Tony, you'll actually pay both times, and a hefty sum, too, since they can't seem to manage to do a machine readable ID for the nominal EUR25 or so that Germany charges.
What really gets my goat is that the ID card will cost huge amounts of money, and won't solve any of the problems the government claims it will.
Will it stop benefit fraud? No, because according to the government, 90+% is "misrepresentation of circumstances", an not ID related. No amount of biometrics can prove that your back is good enough to work;)
Will it stop illegal immigration? No, because by definition illegal immigrants don't worry about legal papers - they either sneak across borders (tricky in the UK, but possible), or simply overstay their visa. Or come in on a fake foreign passport.
Will it stop terrorism? Why not ask some people who've had ID cards for a while - like the Germans. They never had a problem with the RAF (the other on, the Red Army Faction, not the Royal Air Force) kidnapping people & holding them to ransom. Or the Spanish: ETA never game them any problems, and the big train bomb in Madrid clearly didn't happen, 'cause they have ID cards in Spain.
Will it reduce crime? Only for buffoon burglars who accidentally drop their ID cards during a breakin.
Will it stop "Identity Theft"? It might make it harder in some cases, but criminials are remarkably creative people.
So, what's the point of blowing 3 billion GBP (by the governments estimate; my estimate would be more like 9, and that's before you take into account private sector costs!) of OUR MONEY?
Is it supposed to make the government LOOK tough on crime? Probably. Is it supposed to give lucrative contracts to Tony's Cronies? I couldn't say, that might be libellous after all, but it's an interesting question. Is it supposed to help the government suck up to GWBush?
Doesn't anyone RTFA? He's not in the U.S., he's in the U.K. K != S. £ != $
Of course, that just means he has fewer rights, since we don't have a proper bill of rights here (The Magna Carta, while impressive, is somewhat out of date), and the government is used to "opting out" of its own Human Right laws whenever it feels like.
I find a lot of the recent legislation in the UK very objectionable, although funnily not the BBC license fee.
>That level of government intrusion is, to an American, pretty goddamned objectionable. As are various Secrecy and Censorship acts that Britons and Canadians are way too comfortable with Isn't that a case of the pot calling the kettle black? The US seems to have more than it's fair share of secrecy, censorship & oppresion acts & agencies domestically, not to mention internationally.
>Americans didn't invent rocket propulsion, the English did. Actually, the Chinese did, ages ago. Or, if you're talking about liquid fuel rockets, the Germans, Russians and English all did at roughly the same time.
>Americans didn't invent the jet engine, the Germans did. And the English, again at roughly the same time. There wasn't much communication between them;) But the Germans had the first Jet-engine fighter plane in use.
>Americans didn't invent the computer, the English did. That's a good one to argue about. It all happened at pretty much the same time. Konrad Zuse also did it in Germany.
>Americans didn't invent the war, the Germans did. Much as vee like to claim inventions, I think we'd have to defer that to the Romans. Or the Greeks. Or the Mesopotamians,..... or cavemen.
>Americans didn't invent the freedom, the French did. Or even the Greek, way before. Of course they limited freedom to a small subset of the population, but then so did the Americans originally.
>Sony still doesn't get it yet. yes, quite poissibly, but not for the reasons you give.
>We don't want something hip and stylish. We want something that works well. Actually, I want something that works, and if it doesn't make me look like a prat, that helps.
>Oh yeah, I've never personally been able to understand the whole hooplah over the Ipod shuffle, or even the Ipod mini? 1 gigabyte? 5 gigabytes? Do you have ANY idea how old the songs get on your mp3 player if you keep hearing stuff over and over again like a radio station? Well, if I was planning a trip round the world where I'll never be near my computer, I'll worry about fitting my 80 gigs of mp3s onto my portable player. In the meantime, I have an hour to work, an hour back - I think 1 gig will do me nicely, thank you.
From the summary: " There are parallels with auto industry and home appliances. It took a little while before prices became a determining factor and shifted growth away from North American vendors."
I thought the problem with American cars in the 70s was quality, not (just) price.
>. I can rearrange paragraphs, *sentances* and the like... maybe rewrite that entire *sentance*
Dude,
>I'll just touch on the benefits of spell check and the ease of passing around a paper for review when it's on the PC. I'm in buffalo, I regularily have my sister in Ithaca, my cousin in Philadelphia and my friends a dorm over do a proofread of my paper. I can't realistically do that with a handwritten paper.
You're clearly someone who *needs* a spell checker;) I hope your proofreaders spell better!
I LIKE callbacks. They make me feel a lot safer. After all, all that happens is that the bank confirms that you really are who you claim to be.
It can be a bit embarassing, and (if you think about it) benefits the merchant more than you, but if there's an unusually large purchase going through on my card, I don't mind them confirming my DOB and Mother's maiden name (even though you could get both through decent public record search, which is scary, it will thwart most criminals).
As an Amex platinum holder, I can assure you that a) signatures do get checked, and occasionally you get callbacks if you buy something expensive enough b) their expert system is crap at flagging fake purchases, IMHO. See other posts.
On the upside, they are very good about liability. If you say you didn't buy it, and the merchant can't provide evidence of a matching signature, you're good and he's screwed. And the thief's laughing, obviously.
And their customer service has got me out of trouble once or twice. And saved a friend of mine from a very unpleasant weekend when his roommate in a youth hostel walked out with all his stuff on friday evening. The US Embassy was closed, but Amex was open, and happy to give him emergency cash.
>The credit card companies have been able to detect fraud at the time of purchase for quite a while now. Err.. no. I don't think so. Maybe some do, but most don't in my experience. Two months after a trip to South Africa I had someone buy 500 quid worth of booze (at the exchange rate at the time, we're talking a pickup truck full), cameras, stereo equipment, and not one, but TWO sets of tires. On my Amex. You'd think tires would be an unusual enough purchase for a tourist to trigger a callback ("So, Mr. Kraut, what *exactly* have you been doing with your rental car?"), but no.
>Ever since they felt comfortable enough to offer everyone "zero liability". That's largely because they can pass on the liability to the store, not because they have fancy fraud detection.
On the other hand, some of them do have sensible security checks; e.g. when I was buying a laptop in Singapore I had a callback because I hadn't used the card there on that trip. "Mr. Kraut, we just wanted to verify it was you, since we had no record of you being in SG". Callbacks are always a bit embarrassing, but worth it for the security.
>You can't call it "Great Britain" - that leaves out Northern Ireland Well, they do have different pounds in Northern Ireland, so GBP does actually work. Then again, the also have different pounds in Scotland. Of course they are all worth the same, in theory, but in practice trying to spend a Scottish note in London can be tricky;)
Slashdot Mirror
You might know that they did it, but not have tangible evidence that would be useful to the police. "He told me last friday in the bar that he did credit card fraud five years ago" won't be enough to get an investigate. After all, it's not like the cops in NYC don't have anything to do.
I'm planning on taking my tax records with me if my GP gets arsy about this: Look, here's how much tax I paid last year. Still think I'm not entitled to the benefits?
For the record, while I live in the UK, I'm actually German, and I clearly remember the uproar that machine readable ID cards caused in Germany in the eighties. They were not popular at all.
>And last but not least, how can be that people are worried about ID cards when living in countries where the government has been given insane powers to detain people without trial and rights, like in Guantanamo?
Not to confuse things: Guantanamo is operated by the US, not the UK, even though the UK government is certainly guilty of tacitly accepting it.
As for detention without trial, that too was passed by our glorious leader and his blind friend. Mainly because due to the antiquated and undemocratic system in the UK 36% of the vote give you a big majority in the house of commons. And lots of people complained about it, and were ignored, as usual. I know, I was one of them.
As for access to our personal data: Our glorious leader has effectively dismantled any constraints for government access. Any Tom, Dick and Harry in the police, local council, or random quango can access e.g. your email records without a court order.
Welcome to 1984! Forward, not backwards! We have always been at war with terrorists!
Yes, government agencies in the UK don't have a great record on protecting sensitive personal information. E.g. the case where someone at the DVLA passed on the addresses of medical researchers to his "Animal Rights" Terrorist friends....
You end up paying anyway, whether it's directly when you get it, or indirectly through taxes. Thanks to Tony, you'll actually pay both times, and a hefty sum, too, since they can't seem to manage to do a machine readable ID for the nominal EUR25 or so that Germany charges.
;)
What really gets my goat is that the ID card will cost huge amounts of money, and won't solve any of the problems the government claims it will.
Will it stop benefit fraud? No, because according to the government, 90+% is "misrepresentation of circumstances", an not ID related. No amount of biometrics can prove that your back is good enough to work
Will it stop illegal immigration? No, because by definition illegal immigrants don't worry about legal papers - they either sneak across borders (tricky in the UK, but possible), or simply overstay their visa. Or come in on a fake foreign passport.
Will it stop terrorism? Why not ask some people who've had ID cards for a while - like the Germans. They never had a problem with the RAF (the other on, the Red Army Faction, not the Royal Air Force) kidnapping people & holding them to ransom. Or the Spanish: ETA never game them any problems, and the big train bomb in Madrid clearly didn't happen, 'cause they have ID cards in Spain.
Will it reduce crime? Only for buffoon burglars who accidentally drop their ID cards during a breakin.
Will it stop "Identity Theft"? It might make it harder in some cases, but criminials are remarkably creative people.
So, what's the point of blowing 3 billion GBP (by the governments estimate; my estimate would be more like 9, and that's before you take into account private sector costs!) of OUR MONEY?
Is it supposed to make the government LOOK tough on crime? Probably.
Is it supposed to give lucrative contracts to Tony's Cronies? I couldn't say, that might be libellous after all, but it's an interesting question.
Is it supposed to help the government suck up to GWBush?
Doesn't anyone RTFA? He's not in the U.S., he's in the U.K. K != S. £ != $
Of course, that just means he has fewer rights, since we don't have a proper bill of rights here (The Magna Carta, while impressive, is somewhat out of date), and the government is used to "opting out" of its own Human Right laws whenever it feels like.
No matter how much lobbying is done, it's hard to see how ripping a DVD can count as a "violent crime against someone".
....RTFA. At least glance at it. He's not based in the US.
;)
Apart from that you actually make some sense, but since you clearly didn't read the article, I have to put that down to blind luck
I find a lot of the recent legislation in the UK very objectionable, although funnily not the BBC license fee.
>That level of government intrusion is, to an American, pretty goddamned objectionable. As are various Secrecy and Censorship acts that Britons and Canadians are way too comfortable with
Isn't that a case of the pot calling the kettle black? The US seems to have more than it's fair share of secrecy, censorship & oppresion acts & agencies domestically, not to mention internationally.
Did Fox ever give you decent, unbiased world news coverage?
I rest my case.
Which is the only sensible political standpoint.
Don't fuck with my money, and don't fuck with my life.
Or maybe his jokes just weren't funny?
>Americans didn't invent rocket propulsion, the English did.
;) But the Germans had the first Jet-engine fighter plane in use.
Actually, the Chinese did, ages ago. Or, if you're talking about liquid fuel rockets, the Germans, Russians and English all did at roughly the same time.
>Americans didn't invent the jet engine, the Germans did.
And the English, again at roughly the same time. There wasn't much communication between them
>Americans didn't invent the computer, the English did.
That's a good one to argue about. It all happened at pretty much the same time. Konrad Zuse also did it in Germany.
>Americans didn't invent the war, the Germans did.
Much as vee like to claim inventions, I think we'd have to defer that to the Romans. Or the Greeks. Or the Mesopotamians,..... or cavemen.
>Americans didn't invent the freedom, the French did.
Or even the Greek, way before. Of course they limited freedom to a small subset of the population, but then so did the Americans originally.
No, in grammatical German it would be:
;)
Why is often a money-rewarded challenge used to a crypto algorithm verify?
Sometimes I think Yoda is German
> Fuel is $6.5 a gal /ducks
Yes, but mainly because the $ is worth bugger all the at moment.
>Sony still doesn't get it yet.
yes, quite poissibly, but not for the reasons you give.
>We don't want something hip and stylish. We want something that works well.
Actually, I want something that works, and if it doesn't make me look like a prat, that helps.
>Oh yeah, I've never personally been able to understand the whole hooplah over the Ipod shuffle, or even the Ipod mini? 1 gigabyte? 5 gigabytes? Do you have ANY idea how old the songs get on your mp3 player if you keep hearing stuff over and over again like a radio station?
Well, if I was planning a trip round the world where I'll never be near my computer, I'll worry about fitting my 80 gigs of mp3s onto my portable player. In the meantime, I have an hour to work, an hour back - I think 1 gig will do me nicely, thank you.
Not everyone has the same priorities.
From the summary: " There are parallels with auto industry and home appliances. It took a little while before prices became a determining factor and shifted growth away from North American vendors."
I thought the problem with American cars in the 70s was quality, not (just) price.
Yes, they're bad at rote memorization. Just like you are, apparently, when it comes to spelling ;)
Personally, I'm always shocked how badly Anglo-Saxons spell. And don't get me started on their grammar.
On a more serious note, mental arithmetic is a very useful ability. As is the ability to use a calculator, but the latter is far easier to pick up.
>. I can rearrange paragraphs, *sentances* and the like... maybe rewrite that entire *sentance*
;) I hope your proofreaders spell better!
Dude,
>I'll just touch on the benefits of spell check and the ease of passing around a paper for review when it's on the PC. I'm in buffalo, I regularily have my sister in Ithaca, my cousin in Philadelphia and my friends a dorm over do a proofread of my paper. I can't realistically do that with a handwritten paper.
You're clearly someone who *needs* a spell checker
Dude, you want to check your German lessons!
I LIKE callbacks. They make me feel a lot safer. After all, all that happens is that the bank confirms that you really are who you claim to be.
It can be a bit embarassing, and (if you think about it) benefits the merchant more than you, but if there's an unusually large purchase going through on my card, I don't mind them confirming my DOB and Mother's maiden name (even though you could get both through decent public record search, which is scary, it will thwart most criminals).
As an Amex platinum holder, I can assure you that
a) signatures do get checked, and occasionally you get callbacks if you buy something expensive enough
b) their expert system is crap at flagging fake purchases, IMHO. See other posts.
On the upside, they are very good about liability. If you say you didn't buy it, and the merchant can't provide evidence of a matching signature, you're good and he's screwed. And the thief's laughing, obviously.
And their customer service has got me out of trouble once or twice. And saved a friend of mine from a very unpleasant weekend when his roommate in a youth hostel walked out with all his stuff on friday evening. The US Embassy was closed, but Amex was open, and happy to give him emergency cash.
>The credit card companies have been able to detect fraud at the time of purchase for quite a while now.
Err.. no. I don't think so. Maybe some do, but most don't in my experience. Two months after a trip to South Africa I had someone buy 500 quid worth of booze (at the exchange rate at the time, we're talking a pickup truck full), cameras, stereo equipment, and not one, but TWO sets of tires. On my Amex. You'd think tires would be an unusual enough purchase for a tourist to trigger a callback ("So, Mr. Kraut, what *exactly* have you been doing with your rental car?"), but no.
>Ever since they felt comfortable enough to offer everyone "zero liability".
That's largely because they can pass on the liability to the store, not because they have fancy fraud detection.
On the other hand, some of them do have sensible security checks; e.g. when I was buying a laptop in Singapore I had a callback because I hadn't used the card there on that trip. "Mr. Kraut, we just wanted to verify it was you, since we had no record of you being in SG". Callbacks are always a bit embarrassing, but worth it for the security.
>You can't call it "Great Britain" - that leaves out Northern Ireland ;)
Well, they do have different pounds in Northern Ireland, so GBP does actually work. Then again, the also have different pounds in Scotland. Of course they are all worth the same, in theory, but in practice trying to spend a Scottish note in London can be tricky
Which is why he'll live & die filthy rich, and you (and I) won't. Life's a bitch.