Better option than that rant: use the right tool for the job!
Single quick question? text it.
Long data dump? email it.
Sequence of questions that will probably need additional clarification? call.
This, oh a thousand times this.
If I'm sending a lot of info, email.
If I dont want an answer immediately or at all, text.
If I need an answer immediately, call.
Personally I've found the quality of voice calls, mobile, land line and VOIP to have improved significantly in the last 15 years (or 5 years in the case of VOIP). Granted I live in Australia, so I can't speak for the quagmire that is the US telecommunications industry but getting a phone call that isn't clear is a very rare event for me. Ever since we changed to digital codecs and packet switched networks line artefacts and drop-outs have pretty much become a thing of the past... Although I still use the "you're breaking up" as a polite excuse to slow down people who have very thick accents I have trouble understanding.
Of course this hasn't changed the attitudes of some people still firmly stuck in the 90's with phones... No need to shout, it's 2015 and you're coming in loud and clear... in fact you're coming in too fucking loud, does everyone you speak to have burst ear drums.
When the World Trade Center collapsed, there were those who said the burning fuel from the airliners never got hot enough to melt the steel beams of the buildings. This means, in their warped view, there was no way for the buildings to have collapsed on their own and were instead deliberately destroyed.
Well yes, but what about tanks that make the chem trails... Who know what temperature that stuff burns at?
"Battleships", LOL. "Battleship" is not a synonym for "warship". Bismarck was a battleship. Hint - eight 15" guns, over 40,000 tons. Nobody has built a battleship in 70 years.
The Mistrals are "amphibious warfare ships". Puny in size, slower than shit, with next to no armament, they can carry 16-35 helicopters and no more than 450 troops except 900 for short duration.
Amphibious assault ships are for projecting ground power. The US has two classes (America and Wasp). The Mistral has provision for 40 tanks which is enough to put the fear of whatever deity they worship into a small nation. They have no offensive armament but to be fair Russia isn't short on offensive warships, however they are short on amphibious transports (which is why they were buying them from the French).
So many industries are this way. They assume that there is a captive audience with only a few malcontents, but over time it starts slipping away and they don't know how to cope. Like television, they decide to save money by having crappier unscripted content or hire only interns as script writers, then are baffled that people are cutting the cord.
Why was it made illegal again? To protect the taxi industry. That's it. Safety, insurance, etc were tacked on later,
Actually you have that backwards.
It was safety, protectionism was tacked on later and this is evidenced by places where there is no taxi protectionism like London where Minicabbing has been done for decades. The famous London black cabs have not been killed by pimply teens mincabbing in a VW Lupo who dont know where they're going for some strange reason.
To figure this out you need to step out of the bubble you live in and look at places where there are no taxi restriction (or they're universally ignored). What always happens here is that the taxis form gangs and prevent any competition from forming. This is why Uber doesn't really operate in Phuket, the local Mafia will find Uber drivers, drag them out of their cars and beat them.
The same happened in western countries 70+ years ago, over 100 years ago in some cities which is why the restrictions were put in place that long ago.
Seriously, where does this happen so frequently that an invention had to be made because of it?
Sure, there's bike-share in big cities these days, but is drunken cycling a really big problem in these places?
Cyclists are demanding the same rights as motorists, no reason why they shouldn't have to have the same responsibilities.
Back in the days when the bloke riding home from the pub was smart enough to stay on the foot path it was fine, but the cyclists sense of self entitlement has gotten so big that they've demanded everyone rides on the road and tried to make it illegal to ride on foot paths. An experienced and sober cyclists wobbles enough as it is and are a big enough hindrance and danger to other road users, as a motorist I'd hate to see one blind drunk that has an even higher risk of falling over in front of me and no, it is not reasonable to force motorists to drive at 15.5 KPH (average speed of a cyclist in the bike Mecca of Amsterdam), especially on a clear road.
So as long as cyclists demand on using the roads, I see no reason why they shouldn't be held to the same laws and standards as motorists.
..and that response is: Fuck you, asshole. How about we 'embed' our collective boots in your ass, jerk? Fucking politicians, why do we even tolerate them!?
This is a minor politician from an extremist party appealing to populist hate and fear to get their name in the papers and remain relevent. The correct response is to ignore the living fuck out of them.
They aren't worth the time it takes to tell them to fuck off and calling them arsehole is an insult to genuine arseholes. Worse than that, it gives them the validity they desperately seek.
Typical retail clerk, probably per store policy, in a power outage will be to say "Can't do it." Can't/won't take cash because "the computers are down". You can tote up the costs and add the tax and have exact change, but they still won't make the effort to accept it because "the computers are down".
Must suck to live where you do.
With EFT systems, comms failure (lost connection) is more common than a power outage. Where I live I can still pay with cash where as the fool who puts everything on credit finds themselves putting things back.
There's some indication that your body actually reacts to the taste of sweetness... although I only half-believe that myself, it's still interesting to think about at minimum.
There is evidence that diet sodas actually cause weight gain. They are not simply water: the artificial sweeteners have physiological effects, and they are not benign.
While we're still figuring out exactly what those effects are, the main ones that we're aware of now are:
1) They stimulate your appetite.
2) They disrupt your intestinal bacteria.
I'd like to see this evidence as just about every book published by a recognised authority recommends using artificial sweeteners in lieu of sugar for diabetics because artificial sweeteners (including sugar alcohols like Maltitol) are not adsorbed or do not significantly change glucose levels. There's so much bullshit around artificial sweeteners its not funny.
The problem people have with diet soft drinks is that they aren't going to cause weight loss on their own. You still need to do exercise and change your diet to include less sugar, carbohydrates and to a lesser extent, fats (yes, fats, particularly animal fats are not that bad for you) then you wont lose weight. Switching to diet soft drinks as a way of reducing sugar intake is going to be beneficial _IF_ you're also improving the rest of your diet and exercise regime.
Yeah. Advertising agencies only have themselves to blame for the fact that most people hate ads. It started with intrusive and annoying TV ads. They deem it necessary to raise the volume by 50% when the ads come up? They deem it necessary to drive a nail into your head by inserting an add when you least expect it in the middle of a scene? And they deem it necessary to fill ads with lies and ridiculous false promises of beauty, health and popularity?
Just an FYI but they dont increase volume for ads, that would be actually illegal and easy to prove. TV stations have been required to transmit advertisements and content at the same volume for years (decades in my country). However what they do is change the audio compression to make them sound louder, ads use a smaller dynamic range than the content so quieter sounds are not recorded, this makes it sound louder. You get the same thing with music these days (this means we've lost fidelity, but you dont need fidelity for Rap and Electronic music as you dont have the same dynamic range as a guitar, let alone a piano).
The rest of your comment, spot on. Advertisers are the scum of the earth.
The real risk are the Drop Bears. Suicidal little buggers. Gotten worse since they figured out how to make explosives.
Seriously, a lot of Australians are just idiots. Computer technology has proliferated in the last 20 odd years but brains haven't. Almost everyone now has some kind of computer and has to use one for work but cant seem to grasp the basics of security. I have to wonder if these people would open a package some random stranger gave them on the street.
Combine this with the fact there is a large subculture glorifying idiocy and backwards thinking in this country (that's about to become a serious problem, but that is for another thread) and it's little wonder that people are getting Cryptolockers.
I have no sympathy for them, its the sysadmins that have to restore backups that I feel sorry for. Inevitably Braindead Bruce will get angry at the sysadmin when they find out that Bruce didn't keep backups of his important files (read: porn and car pictures).
So apparently if you don't post profits immediately, you are a failed company? Isn't it standard to post losses for 2-3 years before you become profitable. Well, 3 years in California. After 3 you cant write off the losses from your company anymore.
When you adopt this business model, you start with a large cost (CAPEX or Capital Expenditure) and reduce that cost over time, your operational expenditure (OPEX) should not exceed your revenue. Uber is doing the opposite, their expenditures are not only exceeding their revenue, their OPEX growth is exceeding their revenue growth. This is a situation which any company should avoid, you want your P&L to show that your ongoing costs are lower than your revenue from day 1 if possible.
Its OK to go into the red for an expansion but this should be almost all CAPEX, when you're in the red on operating costs, you're doing it horribly wrong. Most western countries allow you to write off CAPEX losses over several years where as OPEX can only be written off on the year it was incurred because CAPEX is used to grow a business but OPEX is used just to keep the lights on.
Their entire business model is predicated on "not a taxi company, a rideshare Schelling Point company".
This is exactly why Uber will fail.
If I set up a fridge and trade people a beer for $2 no-one will believe that I'm not an unlicensed bar, I'm just "Beer sharing(TM)".
If make an app to allow prostitutes to connect to Johns and take 20% of the top, no-one will believe that I'm not a pimp, I'm just "Body sharing(TM)".
Uber facilitates a taxi service, they organise the car, take the money and pay the driver. How is that not the exact definition of a taxi service.
Maybe, licensing taxies was a good idea at some point.
And they still are.
You might want to go and actually live in a place where licenses on taxis isn't enforced. I can suggest a few (Phuket, Thailand is a good one). Taxi gangs are so powerful there, they've stopped any attempt at getting public transport in many towns and villages, in many cases by beating up the drivers whenever a Baht Bus service is started. They've divvied up turf and will happily fight with each other over it, every Tuk Tuk driver is armed for just this very reason and they ensure profitability by refusing to turn on the engine for less than 300 Baht (which is the minimum wage in Phuket).
This is in stark contrast to well regulated Bangkok. Taxi's are cheap and plentiful, less than 400 Baht from the city centre to the airport and if that's too rich for your blood, the train now goes to the airport as well.
Unregulated taxi environments always lead to violence and a poorer experience for the passenger. Most western nations learned this generations ago when jitneys and illegal cab operations were literally run by organised criminals, in many developing nations where governments are too inept, corrupt or both to control the taxi drivers, this situation continues. Honestly, if you think the taxi laws around your area are too restrictive then work to change them rather than eliminate them because unregulated taxi environments are worse than the strictest regulations.
Also, calling your opponents "statists" only demonstrate that your point is extremely weak and that you've haven't even got the originality to use a semi-original insult... or even one that has a proper meaning.
It is totally impossible to secure credit cards given the way that credit card transactions work. I simply don't understand how come credit cards work the way they do. There's absolutely no authorization step involved.
Because right now, the cost of fraud is less than the fees they charge the merchant for accepting credit cards.
This is true in countries where banks are forced to cover the cost of fraud like Australia, in countries where they can pass it onto the merchant or user, its a license to print money.
Put simply, there's no impetus to be secure yet. Banks dont want it, users will reject it, merchants dont get a say in it. The major credit card providers are looking for ways to remove the current authorisation steps (entering a PIN) in order to get more people using the credit networks.
Eventually the cost of fraud will force some security measures in, even then it will probably have to be mandated by the EU or US govts before anything is done and the implementation will still be half arsed.
We have card readers attached to our pay-for-print release stations. Turns out if you open Notepad on the release station, the card reader instantly becomes a card skimmer, because, well, card readers read cards.
Why bother with card skimmers any more when contactless cards will tell you everything you need to know to make purchases online wirelessly?
Card number, check
Name, check
Expiry date, check
Everything you need to sell that shit on the black market delivered wirelessly... And no one questions why someone is walking around with a high visibility jacket, clipboard and strange antenna in a crowded shopping mall.
The real question is, what are the odds that a car thief is going to spend the money (likely more than $30 if they're buying from someone who knows how to make one) or the time to learn how to make one of these? The barrier to entry just to get one of these working (having to have technical knowledge to put one together, having to hide it under the car and get the owner to open it first and potentially notice the device when it jams their unlock signal) means that thieves will stick to the tried-and-true $5 wrench method rather than try one of these.
Considering most cars are stolen to be parted out, if it only costs $30 to get $5000 odd of parts, even the dumbest crims will figure the economics of that one out.
This is a bigger problem in Europe where the car can simply be driven over the border and resold. It may cost 600 Euro to put a new lock and immobiliser system in, but you can sell it for thousands of euro in a variety of places in eastern Europe (not to mention the illegal car export industries that exist in these places).
If you honestly dont believe that this technology will find its way into the mainstream criminals hands, just look at the number of card skimmers out there.
Slashdot Mirror
Better option than that rant: use the right tool for the job!
Single quick question? text it.
Long data dump? email it.
Sequence of questions that will probably need additional clarification? call.
This, oh a thousand times this.
If I'm sending a lot of info, email.
If I dont want an answer immediately or at all, text.
If I need an answer immediately, call.
Personally I've found the quality of voice calls, mobile, land line and VOIP to have improved significantly in the last 15 years (or 5 years in the case of VOIP). Granted I live in Australia, so I can't speak for the quagmire that is the US telecommunications industry but getting a phone call that isn't clear is a very rare event for me. Ever since we changed to digital codecs and packet switched networks line artefacts and drop-outs have pretty much become a thing of the past... Although I still use the "you're breaking up" as a polite excuse to slow down people who have very thick accents I have trouble understanding.
Of course this hasn't changed the attitudes of some people still firmly stuck in the 90's with phones... No need to shout, it's 2015 and you're coming in loud and clear... in fact you're coming in too fucking loud, does everyone you speak to have burst ear drums.
When the World Trade Center collapsed, there were those who said the burning fuel from the airliners never got hot enough to melt the steel beams of the buildings. This means, in their warped view, there was no way for the buildings to have collapsed on their own and were instead deliberately destroyed.
Well yes, but what about tanks that make the chem trails... Who know what temperature that stuff burns at?
"Battleships", LOL. "Battleship" is not a synonym for "warship". Bismarck was a battleship. Hint - eight 15" guns, over 40,000 tons. Nobody has built a battleship in 70 years.
The Mistrals are "amphibious warfare ships". Puny in size, slower than shit, with next to no armament, they can carry 16-35 helicopters and no more than 450 troops except 900 for short duration.
Amphibious assault ships are for projecting ground power. The US has two classes (America and Wasp). The Mistral has provision for 40 tanks which is enough to put the fear of whatever deity they worship into a small nation. They have no offensive armament but to be fair Russia isn't short on offensive warships, however they are short on amphibious transports (which is why they were buying them from the French).
It's more like "Dual 2D".
Yeah but marketing, we're up to 6D.
So many industries are this way. They assume that there is a captive audience with only a few malcontents, but over time it starts slipping away and they don't know how to cope. Like television, they decide to save money by having crappier unscripted content or hire only interns as script writers, then are baffled that people are cutting the cord.
For case in point see: retail in Australia.
See also: travel agents.
...which basically consists of "drive a '92 Jeep where the only major electronics in the car are my cell phone".
It doesn't even have power windows.
Hack that wirelessly, bitches.
The brakes on a Jeep will fail on their own, no need to hack them.
Actually you have that backwards.
It was safety, protectionism was tacked on later and this is evidenced by places where there is no taxi protectionism like London where Minicabbing has been done for decades. The famous London black cabs have not been killed by pimply teens mincabbing in a VW Lupo who dont know where they're going for some strange reason.
To figure this out you need to step out of the bubble you live in and look at places where there are no taxi restriction (or they're universally ignored). What always happens here is that the taxis form gangs and prevent any competition from forming. This is why Uber doesn't really operate in Phuket, the local Mafia will find Uber drivers, drag them out of their cars and beat them.
The same happened in western countries 70+ years ago, over 100 years ago in some cities which is why the restrictions were put in place that long ago.
By the same token, if I connect People to booze for money, I'm not a bar, I'm beer sharing.
If I connect Prostitutes to Johns for a cut of the money, I'm not a Pimp, I'm body sharing.
So clearly someone giving rides for money isn't running a taxi service.
Seriously, where does this happen so frequently that an invention had to be made because of it?
Sure, there's bike-share in big cities these days, but is drunken cycling a really big problem in these places?
Cyclists are demanding the same rights as motorists, no reason why they shouldn't have to have the same responsibilities.
Back in the days when the bloke riding home from the pub was smart enough to stay on the foot path it was fine, but the cyclists sense of self entitlement has gotten so big that they've demanded everyone rides on the road and tried to make it illegal to ride on foot paths. An experienced and sober cyclists wobbles enough as it is and are a big enough hindrance and danger to other road users, as a motorist I'd hate to see one blind drunk that has an even higher risk of falling over in front of me and no, it is not reasonable to force motorists to drive at 15.5 KPH (average speed of a cyclist in the bike Mecca of Amsterdam), especially on a clear road.
So as long as cyclists demand on using the roads, I see no reason why they shouldn't be held to the same laws and standards as motorists.
..and that response is: Fuck you, asshole. How about we 'embed' our collective boots in your ass, jerk? Fucking politicians, why do we even tolerate them!?
This is a minor politician from an extremist party appealing to populist hate and fear to get their name in the papers and remain relevent. The correct response is to ignore the living fuck out of them.
They aren't worth the time it takes to tell them to fuck off and calling them arsehole is an insult to genuine arseholes. Worse than that, it gives them the validity they desperately seek.
Typical retail clerk, probably per store policy, in a power outage will be to say "Can't do it." Can't/won't take cash because "the computers are down". You can tote up the costs and add the tax and have exact change, but they still won't make the effort to accept it because "the computers are down".
Must suck to live where you do.
With EFT systems, comms failure (lost connection) is more common than a power outage. Where I live I can still pay with cash where as the fool who puts everything on credit finds themselves putting things back.
Sending angry emails does not make me angry, quite the opposite, I find it cathartic.
Its the angry responses I get that make me angry. Some people just dont know when to shut up and be abused.
I'd try that but it would probably spell out ads and spy on my internals as it moved through my system. I just can't risk it.
Coke adds life? I dont remember eating that.
There's some indication that your body actually reacts to the taste of sweetness... although I only half-believe that myself, it's still interesting to think about at minimum.
From what I understand artificial sweeteners causes insulin to increase the way that sugar/HFCS does, but since they don't have any calories, you're left feeling more hungry.
From your article:
Serum insulin levels tended to be higher after diet soda, without statistical significance.
This basically means they didn't get enough data to form a solid conclusion.
What you're saying is wrong.
There is evidence that diet sodas actually cause weight gain. They are not simply water: the artificial sweeteners have physiological effects, and they are not benign.
While we're still figuring out exactly what those effects are, the main ones that we're aware of now are:
1) They stimulate your appetite.
2) They disrupt your intestinal bacteria.
I'd like to see this evidence as just about every book published by a recognised authority recommends using artificial sweeteners in lieu of sugar for diabetics because artificial sweeteners (including sugar alcohols like Maltitol) are not adsorbed or do not significantly change glucose levels. There's so much bullshit around artificial sweeteners its not funny.
The problem people have with diet soft drinks is that they aren't going to cause weight loss on their own. You still need to do exercise and change your diet to include less sugar, carbohydrates and to a lesser extent, fats (yes, fats, particularly animal fats are not that bad for you) then you wont lose weight. Switching to diet soft drinks as a way of reducing sugar intake is going to be beneficial _IF_ you're also improving the rest of your diet and exercise regime.
Yeah. Advertising agencies only have themselves to blame for the fact that most people hate ads. It started with intrusive and annoying TV ads. They deem it necessary to raise the volume by 50% when the ads come up? They deem it necessary to drive a nail into your head by inserting an add when you least expect it in the middle of a scene? And they deem it necessary to fill ads with lies and ridiculous false promises of beauty, health and popularity?
Just an FYI but they dont increase volume for ads, that would be actually illegal and easy to prove. TV stations have been required to transmit advertisements and content at the same volume for years (decades in my country). However what they do is change the audio compression to make them sound louder, ads use a smaller dynamic range than the content so quieter sounds are not recorded, this makes it sound louder. You get the same thing with music these days (this means we've lost fidelity, but you dont need fidelity for Rap and Electronic music as you dont have the same dynamic range as a guitar, let alone a piano).
The rest of your comment, spot on. Advertisers are the scum of the earth.
No, this is just the preceding steps before they release their new line of soups.
The real risk are the Drop Bears. Suicidal little buggers. Gotten worse since they figured out how to make explosives.
Seriously, a lot of Australians are just idiots. Computer technology has proliferated in the last 20 odd years but brains haven't. Almost everyone now has some kind of computer and has to use one for work but cant seem to grasp the basics of security. I have to wonder if these people would open a package some random stranger gave them on the street.
Combine this with the fact there is a large subculture glorifying idiocy and backwards thinking in this country (that's about to become a serious problem, but that is for another thread) and it's little wonder that people are getting Cryptolockers.
I have no sympathy for them, its the sysadmins that have to restore backups that I feel sorry for. Inevitably Braindead Bruce will get angry at the sysadmin when they find out that Bruce didn't keep backups of his important files (read: porn and car pictures).
So apparently if you don't post profits immediately, you are a failed company? Isn't it standard to post losses for 2-3 years before you become profitable. Well, 3 years in California. After 3 you cant write off the losses from your company anymore.
When you adopt this business model, you start with a large cost (CAPEX or Capital Expenditure) and reduce that cost over time, your operational expenditure (OPEX) should not exceed your revenue. Uber is doing the opposite, their expenditures are not only exceeding their revenue, their OPEX growth is exceeding their revenue growth. This is a situation which any company should avoid, you want your P&L to show that your ongoing costs are lower than your revenue from day 1 if possible.
Its OK to go into the red for an expansion but this should be almost all CAPEX, when you're in the red on operating costs, you're doing it horribly wrong. Most western countries allow you to write off CAPEX losses over several years where as OPEX can only be written off on the year it was incurred because CAPEX is used to grow a business but OPEX is used just to keep the lights on.
that many of them chose to carry because of clear and present threats from which law enforcement could not protect them.
As the GP said, they dont understand that they are crazy.
Personally I'm glad to live in a country where the criminals are scared of an UNARMED person.
This is exactly why Uber will fail.
If I set up a fridge and trade people a beer for $2 no-one will believe that I'm not an unlicensed bar, I'm just "Beer sharing(TM)".
If make an app to allow prostitutes to connect to Johns and take 20% of the top, no-one will believe that I'm not a pimp, I'm just "Body sharing(TM)".
Uber facilitates a taxi service, they organise the car, take the money and pay the driver. How is that not the exact definition of a taxi service.
And they still are.
You might want to go and actually live in a place where licenses on taxis isn't enforced. I can suggest a few (Phuket, Thailand is a good one). Taxi gangs are so powerful there, they've stopped any attempt at getting public transport in many towns and villages, in many cases by beating up the drivers whenever a Baht Bus service is started. They've divvied up turf and will happily fight with each other over it, every Tuk Tuk driver is armed for just this very reason and they ensure profitability by refusing to turn on the engine for less than 300 Baht (which is the minimum wage in Phuket).
This is in stark contrast to well regulated Bangkok. Taxi's are cheap and plentiful, less than 400 Baht from the city centre to the airport and if that's too rich for your blood, the train now goes to the airport as well.
Unregulated taxi environments always lead to violence and a poorer experience for the passenger. Most western nations learned this generations ago when jitneys and illegal cab operations were literally run by organised criminals, in many developing nations where governments are too inept, corrupt or both to control the taxi drivers, this situation continues. Honestly, if you think the taxi laws around your area are too restrictive then work to change them rather than eliminate them because unregulated taxi environments are worse than the strictest regulations.
Also, calling your opponents "statists" only demonstrate that your point is extremely weak and that you've haven't even got the originality to use a semi-original insult... or even one that has a proper meaning.
It is totally impossible to secure credit cards given the way that credit card transactions work. I simply don't understand how come credit cards work the way they do. There's absolutely no authorization step involved.
Because right now, the cost of fraud is less than the fees they charge the merchant for accepting credit cards.
This is true in countries where banks are forced to cover the cost of fraud like Australia, in countries where they can pass it onto the merchant or user, its a license to print money.
Put simply, there's no impetus to be secure yet. Banks dont want it, users will reject it, merchants dont get a say in it. The major credit card providers are looking for ways to remove the current authorisation steps (entering a PIN) in order to get more people using the credit networks. Eventually the cost of fraud will force some security measures in, even then it will probably have to be mandated by the EU or US govts before anything is done and the implementation will still be half arsed.
We have card readers attached to our pay-for-print release stations. Turns out if you open Notepad on the release station, the card reader instantly becomes a card skimmer, because, well, card readers read cards.
Why bother with card skimmers any more when contactless cards will tell you everything you need to know to make purchases online wirelessly?
Card number, check
Name, check
Expiry date, check
Everything you need to sell that shit on the black market delivered wirelessly... And no one questions why someone is walking around with a high visibility jacket, clipboard and strange antenna in a crowded shopping mall.
The real question is, what are the odds that a car thief is going to spend the money (likely more than $30 if they're buying from someone who knows how to make one) or the time to learn how to make one of these? The barrier to entry just to get one of these working (having to have technical knowledge to put one together, having to hide it under the car and get the owner to open it first and potentially notice the device when it jams their unlock signal) means that thieves will stick to the tried-and-true $5 wrench method rather than try one of these.
Considering most cars are stolen to be parted out, if it only costs $30 to get $5000 odd of parts, even the dumbest crims will figure the economics of that one out.
This is a bigger problem in Europe where the car can simply be driven over the border and resold. It may cost 600 Euro to put a new lock and immobiliser system in, but you can sell it for thousands of euro in a variety of places in eastern Europe (not to mention the illegal car export industries that exist in these places).
If you honestly dont believe that this technology will find its way into the mainstream criminals hands, just look at the number of card skimmers out there.