I agree entirely. The mafia and other organised criminals do the same thing, by offering "protection" for an exorbitant fee, and then belting the crap out of anyone who doesn't pay. I believe it's called "racketeering".
How can this not apply in the commercial world? In this instance. Microsoft are not doing the actual "belting" but they are just as guilty by act of negligence, allowing someone else to do the belting...
Hmmm, looked into this further and actually you're not covered. See, the $699 fee is per CPU, and since the problem occurred on a second, virtual CPU, it's outside SCO's obligation to support you.
In addition, SCO are now aware that you have not purchased a licence for this second, virtual CPU, and are sending a squadron of jackbooted fascist lawyers around to your house to collect your nuts, left leg and firstborn son...
Come now... Google, Apple, et. al. all get Slashdotted for the most inconsequential stories, devoid of details. Why should the little guys miss out on some "Google Founder's cat stuck up tree again" Slashvertising?
displaying a black screen will be much less obtrusive and obvious in what you call "high traffic areas"
Very true, but I still wonder whether there is value in "hiding" errors from anyone.
I've recently noticed that one of ATMs at my bank branch near my work has had error messages and/or BSODs on it regularly (like maybe, once a week for the last month). I've actually closed all my accounts and switched banks because of it. If it was just "black" and appeared offline, I would not've been so concerned...
You may be using a version that isn't available yet (eg. British-english, as opposed to American-english). You can force a manual check with "Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Software Update -> Check Now", if doesn't find any updates then I guess there's non eavailable for your version yet...
For purposes of confirming the identity of a person standing in front of you, a biometric solution (such as retina scanning) is vastly superior to using some kind of card with a picture on it.
That's a different statement to the one you started with. You were the one who initially suggested paranoia was a good thing, I'm just playing devil's advocate and taking that paranoia to it's logical conclusion. The technology developed to do what you propose is fine, in the isolated cases you have considered it. But sooner or later, it will be used in situations where it can be abused.
In your original post, you never mentioned that the presence of a third party (preferably one sufficiently empowered to prevent a crime when identity verification fails) was required.
Automation (replacing people with machines) has been the way technology has headed since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Are you trying to tell us that there will never be any case where biometric technology is used for identification, without paying some lunkhead (who is armed to the teeth) to observe that process?
Excellent - skinning the pad of a finger (or even making a latex mould of it) is so much easier than removing an eyeball. Easier to pretend the copy is part of your own body to fool human observers too.
On a more serious note, that may work for you, but what about the majority? Big banks are "big" because they have the most customers.
Example scenario: say PINs are replaced with a retinal scan at ATMs. Thug just needs to find an unattended ATM somewhere and withdraw the balance of the victim's accounts. By the time the cops view the footage from the ATM (assuming there is some to begin with) he'll be long gone.
You mentioned (in a different sub-thread) that a cop could have a hand-held retinal scanner. Fine, he cound do something about it on the spot in that case.
The liquor store analogy falls down though, because the clerk won't be able to prevent a crime occurring.
It becomes a dangerous possibility where it can be done without people noticing, or where people notice but are unable to do anything about it in a timely fashion (eg. if it is recorded on CCTV and not seen by a fat security guard until two weeks later, when the cops pull the recording).
Eg. if they installed "automatic" (IE unattended) readers at school entrances to check attendance, pupils (no pun intended) could actually cover up murders by scanning the corpse's eyeball for weeks. Plenty of time to hide the body and establish an alibi...
(a) How many liquor stores do you know that do retinal scans? References, please...
(b) Your average liquor-store counter-jockey is just like any other lowly paid retail worker - they don't care about their job, which is why most of them still don't bother checking ID for under-age drinkers (in Europe/Australia at least). Even if, at some future point, banks introduce point-of-sale retinal scans for credit card verification, do you think the aforementioned clerks are going to actually do anything to prevent a credit card crime being committed?
If you were stuck in a job like that, and a sufficiently menacing thug came into the store carrying human body parts, I bet you'd be happy if that was the only crime he committed.
The only place the'd need to insert it is into whatever device is doing the retinal scan. And maybe a plastic bag to keep the blood out of their jacket pockets.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft! Because someone else is taking a bashing for a change...
I agree entirely. The mafia and other organised criminals do the same thing, by offering "protection" for an exorbitant fee, and then belting the crap out of anyone who doesn't pay. I believe it's called "racketeering".
How can this not apply in the commercial world? In this instance. Microsoft are not doing the actual "belting" but they are just as guilty by act of negligence, allowing someone else to do the belting...
Not if it ships with a lead codpiece as a standard accessory...
Looks like Apple's going to have to relocate their "iPod service centres" to a bunker many kilometres under the Mojave desert...
Hmmm, looked into this further and actually you're not covered. See, the $699 fee is per CPU, and since the problem occurred on a second, virtual CPU, it's outside SCO's obligation to support you.
In addition, SCO are now aware that you have not purchased a licence for this second, virtual CPU, and are sending a squadron of jackbooted fascist lawyers around to your house to collect your nuts, left leg and firstborn son...
Don't worry, the $699 licence fee you paid covers technical support. Of course, you did pay the fee, right? RIGHT?
Come now... Google, Apple, et. al. all get Slashdotted for the most inconsequential stories, devoid of details. Why should the little guys miss out on some "Google Founder's cat stuck up tree again" Slashvertising?
Careful what you eat... hyper-threadworms are so much harder to get rid of than normal threadworms...
displaying a black screen will be much less obtrusive and obvious in what you call "high traffic areas"
Very true, but I still wonder whether there is value in "hiding" errors from anyone.
I've recently noticed that one of ATMs at my bank branch near my work has had error messages and/or BSODs on it regularly (like maybe, once a week for the last month). I've actually closed all my accounts and switched banks because of it. If it was just "black" and appeared offline, I would not've been so concerned...
We wanted to start small as we were concerned that servers wouldn't be able to handle the load.
Welcome to slashdot. Now it's spreading like the fire inside the case of your webserver.
You may be using a version that isn't available yet (eg. British-english, as opposed to American-english). You can force a manual check with "Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Software Update -> Check Now", if doesn't find any updates then I guess there's non eavailable for your version yet...
I noticed the same thing in 1.0.2 and 1.0.3 too.
People have been describing it as a possible 'Blackberry killer.'
10 bucks says it turns out to be more useful in the weed-killing sense...
You originally posted the following:
...and expected not to have to back it up?
Sometimes whack-job paranoia is not a bad thing, though.
For purposes of confirming the identity of a person standing in front of you, a biometric solution (such as retina scanning) is vastly superior to using some kind of card with a picture on it.
That's a different statement to the one you started with. You were the one who initially suggested paranoia was a good thing, I'm just playing devil's advocate and taking that paranoia to it's logical conclusion. The technology developed to do what you propose is fine, in the isolated cases you have considered it. But sooner or later, it will be used in situations where it can be abused.
In your original post, you never mentioned that the presence of a third party (preferably one sufficiently empowered to prevent a crime when identity verification fails) was required.
Automation (replacing people with machines) has been the way technology has headed since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Are you trying to tell us that there will never be any case where biometric technology is used for identification, without paying some lunkhead (who is armed to the teeth) to observe that process?
Excellent - skinning the pad of a finger (or even making a latex mould of it) is so much easier than removing an eyeball. Easier to pretend the copy is part of your own body to fool human observers too.
On a more serious note, that may work for you, but what about the majority? Big banks are "big" because they have the most customers.
Erm... an ATM card is proof of identity for the purposes of the bank, when combined with the right PIN. That's the whole point of the cards.
Where do you draw the line, regarding "proof of identity"?
Example scenario: say PINs are replaced with a retinal scan at ATMs. Thug just needs to find an unattended ATM somewhere and withdraw the balance of the victim's accounts. By the time the cops view the footage from the ATM (assuming there is some to begin with) he'll be long gone.
Sure. But who's going to be around to see it?
You mentioned (in a different sub-thread) that a cop could have a hand-held retinal scanner. Fine, he cound do something about it on the spot in that case.
The liquor store analogy falls down though, because the clerk won't be able to prevent a crime occurring.
It becomes a dangerous possibility where it can be done without people noticing, or where people notice but are unable to do anything about it in a timely fashion (eg. if it is recorded on CCTV and not seen by a fat security guard until two weeks later, when the cops pull the recording).
Eg. if they installed "automatic" (IE unattended) readers at school entrances to check attendance, pupils (no pun intended) could actually cover up murders by scanning the corpse's eyeball for weeks. Plenty of time to hide the body and establish an alibi...
(a) How many liquor stores do you know that do retinal scans? References, please...
(b) Your average liquor-store counter-jockey is just like any other lowly paid retail worker - they don't care about their job, which is why most of them still don't bother checking ID for under-age drinkers (in Europe/Australia at least). Even if, at some future point, banks introduce point-of-sale retinal scans for credit card verification, do you think the aforementioned clerks are going to actually do anything to prevent a credit card crime being committed?
If you were stuck in a job like that, and a sufficiently menacing thug came into the store carrying human body parts, I bet you'd be happy if that was the only crime he committed.
The only place the'd need to insert it is into whatever device is doing the retinal scan. And maybe a plastic bag to keep the blood out of their jacket pockets.
Stealing somebody's retina pattern is beyond the skills of the typical street thug.
Actually, I would suggest that removing someones eyeball from their skull could quite reasonably be within the typical street thug's skill-set...
This is not the film you seek.
Unfortunately.
With optical fibers, what are the odds of the information superhighway actually being a highway in future?