"Actually, the browser identification settings... [are] not an attempt to emulate MSIE.
Well, I've said this before, but you're not quite right there. Certain "features" are added/removed depending on the setting of the "Identify as..." feature. For example if you choose "Identify as MSIE 5.0", calls to the JavaScript object document.all will be successful. If you choose "Identify as Opera", the same calls will fail. It's explained in detail here.
Actually, it's not quite true that Opera renders the same way regardless of the "identify as" setting. Certain "features" are added/removed depending on the setting.
Nothing too vicious, but for example if you choose "Identify as MSIE 5.0", calls to the JavaScript object document.all will be successful. If you choose "Identify as Opera", the same calls will fail. It's explained in detail here.
This is the system that the French have been using for some time. At the checkout the cashier places the customer's credit or debit card in a machine (they have chips rather than / as well as magnetic strips) and hands the customer a keypad. The customer types in their PIN rather than sign.
It seems to work fairly well. I don't have any details about whether it lowers fraud or anything like that, but they've been doing it for many years now and anything's got to be better than scrawling a random shape on a bit of paper... surely?
(And on a more annoyingly pedantic note: "PIN number" is a tautology.)
It's designed to inform the police if there is a known criminal nearby. Isn't it effectively the same as having a policeman walk past and recognise that you are a crook he's looking for, except that he doesn't have to memorise all the "wanted" posters any more, the ARGUS system does it for him?
So I don't see how the phone and database impinge on your privacy any more than the wanted poster and the policeman with a good memory for faces.
Referring to the attack on the WTC as "the events of September 11th" bothers me. I mean, it's not as if it's any quicker than calling it "the attack on the WTC", but it seems to be a euphemism which attempts to avoid mentioning what actually happened, as if people are scared of calling a spade a spade. I don't really know why "September 11th" is less in-your-face, but it is.
That, and the fact that even the British newsreaders seem intent on calling the event "September 11th" in spite of the fact that the correct UK English term is "the 11th of September". Blow the cobwebs off those old grammar books, BBC!
The flights out of Paris used to go supersonic above the Channel Islands. You didn't hear the planes before or after the sonic boom; it was just amusing to watch all the rich inhabitants getting angry as their expensive houses shook.
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Well, I've said this before, but you're not quite right there. Certain "features" are added/removed depending on the setting of the "Identify as..." feature. For example if you choose "Identify as MSIE 5.0", calls to the JavaScript object document.all will be successful. If you choose "Identify as Opera", the same calls will fail. It's explained in detail here.
Actually, it's not quite true that Opera renders the same way regardless of the "identify as" setting. Certain "features" are added/removed depending on the setting.
Nothing too vicious, but for example if you choose "Identify as MSIE 5.0", calls to the JavaScript object document.all will be successful. If you choose "Identify as Opera", the same calls will fail. It's explained in detail here.
This is the system that the French have been using for some time. At the checkout the cashier places the customer's credit or debit card in a machine (they have chips rather than / as well as magnetic strips) and hands the customer a keypad. The customer types in their PIN rather than sign.
It seems to work fairly well. I don't have any details about whether it lowers fraud or anything like that, but they've been doing it for many years now and anything's got to be better than scrawling a random shape on a bit of paper ... surely?
(And on a more annoyingly pedantic note: "PIN number" is a tautology.)
It's designed to inform the police if there is a known criminal nearby. Isn't it effectively the same as having a policeman walk past and recognise that you are a crook he's looking for, except that he doesn't have to memorise all the "wanted" posters any more, the ARGUS system does it for him? So I don't see how the phone and database impinge on your privacy any more than the wanted poster and the policeman with a good memory for faces.
Referring to the attack on the WTC as "the events of September 11th" bothers me. I mean, it's not as if it's any quicker than calling it "the attack on the WTC", but it seems to be a euphemism which attempts to avoid mentioning what actually happened, as if people are scared of calling a spade a spade. I don't really know why "September 11th" is less in-your-face, but it is.
That, and the fact that even the British newsreaders seem intent on calling the event "September 11th" in spite of the fact that the correct UK English term is "the 11th of September". Blow the cobwebs off those old grammar books, BBC!
The flights out of Paris used to go supersonic above the Channel Islands. You didn't hear the planes before or after the sonic boom; it was just amusing to watch all the rich inhabitants getting angry as their expensive houses shook.