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  1. Re:What about the online use of these cards? on Credit Card Fraud Could Peak In 2015 As the US Moves To EMV · · Score: 1

    Great question! I had wondered about this myself - How does C&P really make the card more secure if you still basically just need a photocopy of it to use it? Or do they have an entirely different mode of operation when used online (like easy generation of disposable one-use card numbers)?

    If I want to send money from my UK bank account to a destination account that I haven't sent money to recently (using the bank's website), I have a little card reader that reads my card, validates the PIN (offline) and then processes a number from the website into a response that I put back into the web page to validate that I have the physical card and know the PIN.

  2. Re:someone explain for the ignorant on Credit Card Fraud Could Peak In 2015 As the US Moves To EMV · · Score: 1

    On the back of your card is CHECK ID and it looks absolutely nothing like the signature on the piece of paper. What happens then?

    The bank laughs at you and tells you that, because you were using the card without signing it, you are responsible for any losses.

  3. Re:someone explain for the ignorant on Credit Card Fraud Could Peak In 2015 As the US Moves To EMV · · Score: 1

    The thing I don't like about it, is on the signature block on the back of the card I just write check id

    Massive FAIL there, Psyko. If your card is ever stolen, instead of the CC company being responsible for losses you are!

  4. Re:someone explain for the ignorant on Credit Card Fraud Could Peak In 2015 As the US Moves To EMV · · Score: 1

    Your next creditcard (in a couple years) will probably have a chip-and-pin system,

    My Citibank card (issued a year or more ago) has a chip, but it's not a chip-and-pin card: it's chip-and-signature. That's right, push the card into a chip reader (not in the USA, naturally) and the machine prints out a form to sign.

  5. Re:Is This a Pump And Dump Press Release? on Cellphone Start-Ups Handle Calls With Wi-Fi · · Score: 2

    I have a T-Mobile phone with Wi-Fi calling; it keeps turning the feature on by itself; and it sucks with dropped calls continually.

    T-Mobile has had this service for years, and it used to work really well. In-call switching between cellular and WiFi, etc..

    My current phone has the same feature, but I can set it to use the cell network if possible and only make calls over WiFi if the cell network isn't available. Because of this setting, I don't use the WiFi calling very much, but it is great for making and receiving calls while abroad without paying huge roaming fees.

  6. Re:Choice is good. on Removing Libsystemd0 From a Live-running Debian System · · Score: 1

    Because all the "problems" you cite are generally overblown or not problems at all.

    While that may be true, the same could be said for all the claimed advantages of systemd -- that they are overblown or not really advantages.

  7. Re:out of curiosity.....how much? on Report: Samsung Replacing Its Apps With Microsoft's For Galaxy S6 · · Score: 1

    this will not have been done out of charity purposes. my guess is that MS gave something on the order of 2 billion dollars.

    It's probably part of this deal

  8. Re:What do you mean, modern? on Is Modern Linux Becoming Too Complex? · · Score: 1

    You can also do that with the systemd journal. Where's the problem?

    That systemd's journaling log is not required for security, thus removing one more justification for the use of systemd.

  9. Re:What do you mean, modern? on Is Modern Linux Becoming Too Complex? · · Score: 1

    Each entry is digitally signed with the hash of the previous entry. So any attacker that gets root can rewrite an entry, but in order to make the digital signatures pass verification he's got to rewrite the digital signature ....

    Or, I could just send the logs to a remote, hardened log server so that an attacker has no way to modify the logs immediately prior to the compromise.

  10. Re:uh... on Silk Road Drug Dealer Pleads Guilty After Federal Sting · · Score: 1

    i never said I wanted to undo SS. But I do think people should be given an option. I would much rather put my SS money in an IRA or something that is mine, and mine alone. I worked hard for my money, I want to keep it.

    You are so naive. In the UK, many people had final salary pension schemes. The schemes were run by the employers (only fair since they guaranteed certain payouts). The schemes had to be fully funded, so that the benefits would be paid out if the employer went bankrupt. Well, guess what, the laws changed in respect of taxation on these schemes and suddenly the private pensions were under-funded.

    Yes, maybe you could do well investing your own money, but do you really want to bet against a future government making a tax grab on that money? It's not just the present goverment you have to worry about, but every government in power until you die.

  11. Re: RMS' GNU license is a license that gives away on RMS Objects To Support For LLVM's Debugger In GNU Emacs's Gud.el · · Score: 1

    The point is that under GNU your labor will almost certainly be forced to be free as in "not paid"; that's the practical consequences of the license. Under BSD you don't have that problem at all.

    Under the GPL, companies can collaborate in ways that are possible but less likely with BSD. With BSD, there is a strong incentive for an individual company to put out closed-source binaries with some extra "secret sauce" over and above the open-source versions. Think of it as a tragedy of the commons or prisoner's dilemma where there is a strong incentive to defect. Using the GPL, this isn't possible.

    Instead, the GPL promotes collaborative projects. Look at the Linux kernel, which gets contributions from many, many companies.

  12. Re:what about skinny people? on Woman Suffers Significant Weight Gain After Fecal Transplant · · Score: 3

    Can you name a single primarily psychopathic society to provide even anecdotal experimental evidence for your claim? Theory is nice and all, but is notoriously inapplicable to human behavior.

    That's the point, isn't it? There are no primarily psychopathic societies because they are unsuccessful -- they die out too quickly to create records.

  13. Re:Ripple Effect on TurboTax Halts E-filing of State Tax Returns Because of Potential Fraud · · Score: 2

    He's on the opposite side of the political spectrum as the source you have issues with, and is an authority in places ot know such things, *and* he said this stuff under oath to Congress.

    The IRS is *very* clear on this. The children must have SSNs and must have lived in the USA. So, even if they get SSNs for the children, unless the children were actually in the USA for those years, it would still be tax fraud.

    Incidentally, you clearly are concerned about the credibility of your original source, because I did not disagree with you based on the source of the information, instead, I disagreed with you on the *content* and *gasp* I compared it with the advice that the IRS and other organizations give on this topic. But I'll let you into a clue. A publication that quotes someone with "an unindicted co-conspirator in the cover-up ..." makes me suspect that the quote is not accurately portrayed.

    So I looked at the page you referenced and all the commisioner stated was that amnestied aliens would be able to amend prior filings. All that stuff about kids -- that came from the (obviously biased) author of the article.

    But even more, you were not able to accurately read the article, since it gives an example where the credit would be clearly fraudulent -- the claimed-for children were not in the USA.

    The ACTC is a fully refundable credit of up to $1,000 per child to help working families who have children at home.

    Problem is, that home may not be here, but back in Mexico, and the children claimed are often nieces and nephews in what are often rather large extended families. An investigation done in 2012 by NBC affiliate WTHR in Indianapolis found four workers claiming 20 children living in one residence, with the IRS sending these aliens tax refunds totaling $29,608. The children did not in fact reside in the United States.

  14. Re:Ripple Effect on TurboTax Halts E-filing of State Tax Returns Because of Potential Fraud · · Score: 0

    This is over-hyped BS.

    Yes, the amnestied immigrant may get some tax credits, based on his/her newly-aquired SSN. However his/her foreign children won't be able to get a SSN, without which one cannot claim EITC.

    So, yes, there are probably a few cases where these large tax credits will be available, but not the vast numbers breathlessly reported.

  15. UK bank on Why Gmail Has Better Security Than Your Bank · · Score: 1

    Login requires a set of 3 numbers from PIN and a set of 4 letters from password. If the browser is not recognized, it needs more verification.

    Money transfer requires me to insert the debit card into a card reader, give it the correct PIN and then allow the card reader to process a number provided by the website (website gives me the number, I enter it into card reader, which then replies with a new number. I enter that number into the website.

  16. Re:Needs fairly strong justification on Ask Slashdot: Pros and Cons of Homeschooling? · · Score: 1

    Well, you know, when everyone has a problem with you, the problem isn't everyone. The problem is you.

    So you are blaming the GP poster for being bullied? There is a word for people who blame victims like that: bullies.

  17. Re:As a parent, which requires no testing or licen on Ask Slashdot: Pros and Cons of Homeschooling? · · Score: 4, Informative

    I would heartily recommend investigating the choices for charter and non-traditional schools.

    We live in the attendance area for some of the best schools in California, yet educated our kids in a hybrid manner. Our kids "attended" a charter school that supported homeschooling. They had monthly meetings with their teacher and some specialized classes. When they were older, they could take classes at the local community college and get high school credit for this. Utlizing the local networks of homeschoolers, my kids got plenty of social interaction with other kids.

    They all succeeded academically, going on to graduate from excellent universities.

  18. Re:w***e ? on Comcast Employees Change Customer Names To 'Dummy' and Other Insults · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Clearly, you haven't worked in tech support, or known anyone who has, or read any of the blogs or horror stories, or, really, informed yourself in any way about this. Humans have a bell curve of both "crazy" and "mean", and the tail end of either is not something you'd ever want to come into contact with.

    It's the *job* of the people who work in call centers to deal with these people. That's what they are paid for. Do you think that plumbers like dealing with pipes full of human waste? No, but it's their job to do so occasionally.

  19. Re:Naive to say the least. on Proposed Disk Array With 99.999% Availablity For 4 Years, Sans Maintenance · · Score: 1

    Yes, I goofed. However, believing that 11.4 years is what you'll get in practice is also naive,

    Not, it's not your basic conversion error that's the problem.

    A MTBF of 11.4 years does not mean that a typical array will have a lifetime of 11.4 years. From Wikipedia:

    Once the MTBF of a system is known, the probability that any one particular system will be operational at time equal to the MTBF can be calculated. This calculation requires that the system is working within its "useful life period", which is characterized by a relatively constant failure rate (the middle part of the "bathtub curve") when only random failures are occurring.

    You are conflating "useful life period" with MTBF. They measure different things.

  20. Re:Naive to say the least. on Proposed Disk Array With 99.999% Availablity For 4 Years, Sans Maintenance · · Score: 1

    mean time to failure (MTTF) of 100,000 hours.

    100,000 hours = 273 years. Does anyone believe that?

    You don't understand the meaning of MTBF.

  21. Re:I would love to, but that server is a soup Nazi on Proposed Disk Array With 99.999% Availablity For 4 Years, Sans Maintenance · · Score: 1

    So I tried to view the PDF, and it says "can't use the plugin, it causes problems on our server".

    Maybe they have problems with their disk array?

    But seriously, I had no problems downloading the document from the orginal site.

  22. Re:Yeah, that didn't happen in California on Ed Felten: California Must Lead On Cybersecurity · · Score: 1

    Yeah, it was Texas where that happened, not California, right?

    Yeah, it was California where employees were able to sue employers for such collusion. Good luck with that in some other states, where what Apple, Google, etc. did is just business as usual.

  23. Re:california is a joke on Ed Felten: California Must Lead On Cybersecurity · · Score: 1

    They have the stupidest, most intrusive laws that negatively impact every other state.

    You are welcome to your state where a lack of laws allows employers to restrict your opportunities to change jobs. Yeah, welcome to your overlords who use the lack employee protection to push your income down.

  24. Re:california is a joke on Ed Felten: California Must Lead On Cybersecurity · · Score: 1

    NOTHING is going to happen in California. Their budget is a joke. They have a double digit sales tax rate and the biggest deficit out of every state

    Perhaps you should come up to date on California's budget situation. Even if California had the biggest deficit in the past, California has the largest economy of any state, by a wide margin, making everything relating to finances bigger in California than any other state.

    California doesn't even have the highest sales tax rate.

  25. Re:Other than the obligatory security theatre... on Bomb Threats Via Twitter Partly Shut Down Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport · · Score: 1

    I assume that the plane was rerouted on a pretty much direct route from where they were to Atlanta. They'd want to make sure that the airplane stayed over relatively unpopulated areas in the event of an explosion.

    And if it strays off its assigned route? Do you really think they are going to shoot it down?