Ah, but I have NO credit cards and likely will never have one. No credit card debt means I don't work for money grubbing credit card companies (a serious problem for many Americans).
Paypal is way too dangerous to trust with your debit card (and almost too bad to trust with a credit card), which you will find out if you ever have a problem with a bogus transaction. The reason? Paypal is NOT a bank and consequently has much fewer regulations and controls. If Paypal wants to, they can declare any transaction valid and YOU would have to sue them to prove otherwise.
I had a bogus $400 charge show up on my checking account debit card. I saw the charge almost immediately (about two days after it happened) because I routinely monitor my checking account from online daily. I contacted the bank and the police. The police told me that they couldn't take the report unless the bank initiated it. The bank said they would start an investigation, which they did. In the meantime, they put $400 back in my account.
My statement to the bank was as follows:
My debit card has never been missing
My debit card has never been used by anyone other than myself
No one else knows my pin number (not even my wife)
I had never used the ATM where the charge was recorded (the bank sent me a statement from some third party bank showing the address of the ATM and the transactions that had been attempted. There were 8 tries late at night for different amounts, starting at $1100 and going down until the $400 transaction worked).
About 4 months later (after bugging them about once a week to find out what was going on), the bank came back and said the transaction was valid because a debit card had been used to make the transaction and so they were taking their $400 back. This is actually what they said, even after I had told them that I had not used my card for the transaction and the pattern of transactions obviously showed that someone was fishing for an amount that would be accepted.
As far as the bank was concerned, case closed. Fortunately for me, I had the foresight to marry a lawyer. Being a personal injury attorney, my wife was somewhat familiar with the rules the bank had to follow in a situation like this and luckily for us one of their duties was to perform a timely investigation, which had been defined in our area of the world as within 45 days. So, only because they took so long we were able to make them hand us back the $400.
However, in the course of our investigation, we learned a number of things I found quite fascinating. First, we found out many (if not most) ATM cameras are no longer maintained. So, a lot of the time there is no visual record of who is using the ATM machine. Second, the bank didn't consider the pattern of tries to be significant, as they felt it was only an attempt by me to fool them into thinking it was someone else(and obviously ignoring the fact that by the same logic if I was trying to defraud them, I would have also said my card had been stolen or lost). Third, the only place I had EVER used my pin prior to this transaction was at the local grocery store. I mean EVER. I am very careful about where I use my pin and up to that point I had only ever used it at the local grocery store (I had never even used it at the bank's ATMs). This probably means someone at the store saw me enter the pin (probably using the store's surveillance cameras) and had enough access to my bank's debit card information to create a new card using my account number and pin. This last part is speculation but I don't know of any other way they could have used a real debit card to make the withdrawal. Unless, of course the bank was lying to us and their computers had been hacked (but in that case, why the multiple tries?). In any case, we concluded something out of our control was wrong at the grocery store and/or the bank, so we stopped using the store and changed banks.
Since then, we keep two checking accounts at our current bank: One for the money and one for the debit card. We keep a minimum balance for day-to-day purchases (gas, food, etc.) in the debit card account and we plan big purchases and ALL online purchases in advance by transferring the money from the money account to cover the purchase right before we make it. At least that way the debit card has a lowered risk because the balance is always very low and the other account is only accessed through the bank's computer. Yes, I know it isn't perfect, but it is better than having all of our cash exposed.
Yeah but try doing that on 500 machines. Then, to make matters worse, finding one has to deal with machines set up exactly the same no longer acting the same after an upgrade had been applied...
There's no such thing as "first post" on Slashdot...the posts are routinely reordered depending on how much pixie dust has infiltrated the Slashdot servers...
Multiple properly configured firewalls do help. When one has a major compromise (as was the case in this article) the other still does the job. Keep in mind they are working in serial fashion, not in parallel.
Just because I run two separate software based firewalls that have no relationship to each other on my XP machine (and I'm NOT talking about the lame-o one that comes with the system, so there)...
OSX core is open source Darwin, which already runs on Intel processors. I would bet that deep inside Apple, they maintain a fully functional OSX on typical Wintel hardware (speculation only but why wouldn't Apple make the effort? Sort of a hedge against CPU lock-in).
I think a more interesting line of speculation is: Is Apple developing, or thinking of developing, an OSX version for the new CELL processor? After all, IBM surely thinks that CELL will eventually replace conventional CPUs. IBM and Apple usually work pretty close together when it comes to future CPUs for Apple's OS. I can't imagine that Apple hasn't at least discussed it with IBM.
I can imagine XML documents created in such a manner that they could constitute an object from an OOP (Object Oriented Programming) perspective, containing their own schema, characteristics, relationships and data. Further, I can imagine the ability of accepting such an XML document object into a range of other things, such as a modular program (dynamic program extensibility) or a database (temporary database extension). I can imagine the ability to package up such XML documents so that databases can be built simply by linking the XML documents together.
So (for example), one could send a request to the XML index in the sky, find and link documents containing a subset of know medical facts, and then kick off a data mining process that could discover previously unknown medical relationships. All without needing to know anything other than where to find the XML files.
Now imagine a tool that could convert all of the terabytes of data the world is generating every day into small, linkable, OOP like XML files...
Sounds like a great open source project to me...
I don't think the picture makes it too easy to see that this is OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 and ALT Linux Compact 2.3 (unless you can read Romanian?), but here is an alternate link to the picture (the other link isn't working for me...).
Didn't know this was a religious discussion but...
Many people (both Christians and non-Christians) promote the Bible as the sum total of human history. However, it is not that at all. The Bible is simply God's recorded plan on how He will redeem mankind from his fallen nature. No more, no less. There is nothing in the Bible that says the universe is only XXXX number of years old (yes, I know all about "created the world in 6 days and rested for 1, etc., etc.).
[...]let's just say that IF a supergenius computer driven by 'emotion' suddenly appears[...]
I got news for you...this may have already occurred. How could you tell that you are not already living in a Singularity derived virtual world...? In other words, everyone predicting a technological singularity may have already been right...there's no way to tell...
Actually, you are not that much of an anomaly (really not at all, I would say)...
Statistically, the likelihood of one of each in a family with precisely two children (as opposed to 2.4) is about 54.5%. The likelihood of two of the same (boy or girl) is 45.5%.
If you consider how likely the second child will be the same sex as the first, regardless of how many kids you eventually have, the likelihood of the first two children being the same sex is 47.8% (no doubt the higher percentage is due to couples deciding to have a third child because the first two were of the same sex).
And, as an aside, your first child proves you can father children of that sex (regardless of which one)...you have not yet proven you can father a child of the other sex until you actually have one.
These numbers are from a 1979 study (PDF file, sorry), based on a US population of 8,770 households (being based entirely on US households might affect the statistics somewhat for the rest of the world)...
Since wireless access is fast becoming ubiquitous, and since often you can connect at one place (the library) thru a different place (the nearby hotspot), how will the library react to personal computers connecting to the internet without going thru the library's network? Are they going to ban all personal laptops in libraries? Actually, a connection to the internet is not required to display your porn collection stored on your personal computer. Maybe they are going to require me to install fingerprint readers on my own computer and then validate me with their fingerprint system?
Come on, isn't the goal to keep some pervert from acting out with the library patrons? Wait, I know! How about they walk around the library once in a while and make sure everyone still has their pants zipped up? How hard can that be?
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, but I have NO credit cards and likely will never have one. No credit card debt means I don't work for money grubbing credit card companies (a serious problem for many Americans).
Paypal is way too dangerous to trust with your debit card (and almost too bad to trust with a credit card), which you will find out if you ever have a problem with a bogus transaction. The reason? Paypal is NOT a bank and consequently has much fewer regulations and controls. If Paypal wants to, they can declare any transaction valid and YOU would have to sue them to prove otherwise.
This happened to me about 4 years ago...
I had a bogus $400 charge show up on my checking account debit card. I saw the charge almost immediately (about two days after it happened) because I routinely monitor my checking account from online daily. I contacted the bank and the police. The police told me that they couldn't take the report unless the bank initiated it. The bank said they would start an investigation, which they did. In the meantime, they put $400 back in my account.
My statement to the bank was as follows:
My debit card has never been missing
My debit card has never been used by anyone other than myself
No one else knows my pin number (not even my wife)
I had never used the ATM where the charge was recorded (the bank sent me a statement from some third party bank showing the address of the ATM and the transactions that had been attempted. There were 8 tries late at night for different amounts, starting at $1100 and going down until the $400 transaction worked).
About 4 months later (after bugging them about once a week to find out what was going on), the bank came back and said the transaction was valid because a debit card had been used to make the transaction and so they were taking their $400 back. This is actually what they said, even after I had told them that I had not used my card for the transaction and the pattern of transactions obviously showed that someone was fishing for an amount that would be accepted.
As far as the bank was concerned, case closed. Fortunately for me, I had the foresight to marry a lawyer. Being a personal injury attorney, my wife was somewhat familiar with the rules the bank had to follow in a situation like this and luckily for us one of their duties was to perform a timely investigation, which had been defined in our area of the world as within 45 days. So, only because they took so long we were able to make them hand us back the $400.
However, in the course of our investigation, we learned a number of things I found quite fascinating. First, we found out many (if not most) ATM cameras are no longer maintained. So, a lot of the time there is no visual record of who is using the ATM machine. Second, the bank didn't consider the pattern of tries to be significant, as they felt it was only an attempt by me to fool them into thinking it was someone else(and obviously ignoring the fact that by the same logic if I was trying to defraud them, I would have also said my card had been stolen or lost). Third, the only place I had EVER used my pin prior to this transaction was at the local grocery store. I mean EVER. I am very careful about where I use my pin and up to that point I had only ever used it at the local grocery store (I had never even used it at the bank's ATMs). This probably means someone at the store saw me enter the pin (probably using the store's surveillance cameras) and had enough access to my bank's debit card information to create a new card using my account number and pin. This last part is speculation but I don't know of any other way they could have used a real debit card to make the withdrawal. Unless, of course the bank was lying to us and their computers had been hacked (but in that case, why the multiple tries?). In any case, we concluded something out of our control was wrong at the grocery store and/or the bank, so we stopped using the store and changed banks.
Since then, we keep two checking accounts at our current bank: One for the money and one for the debit card. We keep a minimum balance for day-to-day purchases (gas, food, etc.) in the debit card account and we plan big purchases and ALL online purchases in advance by transferring the money from the money account to cover the purchase right before we make it. At least that way the debit card has a lowered risk because the balance is always very low and the other account is only accessed through the bank's computer. Yes, I know it isn't perfect, but it is better than having all of our cash exposed.
These days, PC means Windows of all flavors (at least in the Windows world).
Yeah but try doing that on 500 machines. Then, to make matters worse, finding one has to deal with machines set up exactly the same no longer acting the same after an upgrade had been applied...
There's no such thing as "first post" on Slashdot...the posts are routinely reordered depending on how much pixie dust has infiltrated the Slashdot servers...
Wowzers, every post on this topic is going to be modded flamebait...
Asbestos suits, anyone?
Multiple properly configured firewalls do help. When one has a major compromise (as was the case in this article) the other still does the job. Keep in mind they are working in serial fashion, not in parallel.
Just because I run two separate software based firewalls that have no relationship to each other on my XP machine (and I'm NOT talking about the lame-o one that comes with the system, so there)...
Not sure they all qualify as blogs, but here are some great sources for news related to interests such as tranhumanist discussions...
Accelerating Times and their blog.
KurzweilAI (one of my favorites).
SL4
Yahoo Transhuman Group
Just to list a few...
That is interesting speculation...eventually every system will run on every chip. Kind of like Linux today... :)
On the other hand...
OSX core is open source Darwin, which already runs on Intel processors. I would bet that deep inside Apple, they maintain a fully functional OSX on typical Wintel hardware (speculation only but why wouldn't Apple make the effort? Sort of a hedge against CPU lock-in).
I think a more interesting line of speculation is: Is Apple developing, or thinking of developing, an OSX version for the new CELL processor? After all, IBM surely thinks that CELL will eventually replace conventional CPUs. IBM and Apple usually work pretty close together when it comes to future CPUs for Apple's OS. I can't imagine that Apple hasn't at least discussed it with IBM.
Uou'ee rifht...my thpibg is muxh faatet niw...
I woke up and had an interesting thought...
I can imagine XML documents created in such a manner that they could constitute an object from an OOP (Object Oriented Programming) perspective, containing their own schema, characteristics, relationships and data. Further, I can imagine the ability of accepting such an XML document object into a range of other things, such as a modular program (dynamic program extensibility) or a database (temporary database extension). I can imagine the ability to package up such XML documents so that databases can be built simply by linking the XML documents together.
So (for example), one could send a request to the XML index in the sky, find and link documents containing a subset of know medical facts, and then kick off a data mining process that could discover previously unknown medical relationships. All without needing to know anything other than where to find the XML files.
Now imagine a tool that could convert all of the terabytes of data the world is generating every day into small, linkable, OOP like XML files... Sounds like a great open source project to me...
I don't think the picture makes it too easy to see that this is OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 and ALT Linux Compact 2.3 (unless you can read Romanian?), but here is an alternate link to the picture (the other link isn't working for me...).
Didn't know this was a religious discussion but...
Many people (both Christians and non-Christians) promote the Bible as the sum total of human history. However, it is not that at all. The Bible is simply God's recorded plan on how He will redeem mankind from his fallen nature. No more, no less. There is nothing in the Bible that says the universe is only XXXX number of years old (yes, I know all about "created the world in 6 days and rested for 1, etc., etc.).
Dons asbestos suit...
Some things never change...
[...]let's just say that IF a supergenius computer driven by 'emotion' suddenly appears[...]
I got news for you...this may have already occurred. How could you tell that you are not already living in a Singularity derived virtual world...? In other words, everyone predicting a technological singularity may have already been right...there's no way to tell...
Actually, you are not that much of an anomaly (really not at all, I would say)...
Statistically, the likelihood of one of each in a family with precisely two children (as opposed to 2.4) is about 54.5%. The likelihood of two of the same (boy or girl) is 45.5%.
If you consider how likely the second child will be the same sex as the first, regardless of how many kids you eventually have, the likelihood of the first two children being the same sex is 47.8% (no doubt the higher percentage is due to couples deciding to have a third child because the first two were of the same sex).
And, as an aside, your first child proves you can father children of that sex (regardless of which one)...you have not yet proven you can father a child of the other sex until you actually have one.
These numbers are from a 1979 study (PDF file, sorry), based on a US population of 8,770 households (being based entirely on US households might affect the statistics somewhat for the rest of the world)...
Interesting theory...didn't know boys could have anything, actually...
Ha...I'm surprised DHS hasn't required Google to avoid displaying high profile, tempting terrorist targets (T^3) yet...
Since wireless access is fast becoming ubiquitous, and since often you can connect at one place (the library) thru a different place (the nearby hotspot), how will the library react to personal computers connecting to the internet without going thru the library's network? Are they going to ban all personal laptops in libraries? Actually, a connection to the internet is not required to display your porn collection stored on your personal computer. Maybe they are going to require me to install fingerprint readers on my own computer and then validate me with their fingerprint system?
Come on, isn't the goal to keep some pervert from acting out with the library patrons? Wait, I know! How about they walk around the library once in a while and make sure everyone still has their pants zipped up? How hard can that be?
How many clicked on the "Girls who love Geeks" link first? (the other link is better)
Everybody, let's all click on the lowest ranking site together...
Ready, one, two, three, go!!!!
Or Girls who love Geeks will always beat out Fun with your new head anyday.