The whole point of adblockers is to 'disrupt the relationship between advertisers and consumers'; because that 'relationship' is inherently somewhere between 'adversarial' and 'cold war'. We don't go to varying levels of hassle just for fun; we do so because we fucking hate you and your 'product'.
Adblock essentially changes that relationship from "adversarial" to "nuclear", it is one-sideed and it is the advertisers own damn fault.
A.5% negative interest rate right now would cost me $1000 a year.
Meanwhile some sack of pig shit who purchased 11 homes in Australia speculating on "ever increasing house prices, indefinitely and rapidly"* would actually be sent a cheque each fucking month as a reward for going into debt
God.Damned.Madness
Don't worry, the housing bubble is bursting (mining bubble is already gone).
I'm making my plans to flee Australia whilst the economy goes to pot for a few years. The problem is, all the pollies have their massive property portfolios so they're trying to stave off the bubble bursting for as long as possible... which will just make it worse when it inevitably happens (house prices are already dropping in Perth).
You may have a desire to live in a surveillance society in which everything you do it monitored and tied directly to you, but I sure as hell don't.
In Australia as well as Europe, there are limits on what merchants and banks are allowed to keep. A bank may not know the contents of a transaction and vice versa a merchant may not keep the card number or other identifying feature of a payment system (this is why they use store cards).
However I agree with you, cash is king. Having run my own business, I know how much goes in merchant service fees. If we get rid of cash (which is the cheaper option) banks will be free to charge even more. Every time you use a credit card, the merchant pays between 2% (Visa and Mastercard) to 6% (higher end AMEX and Discover) to the bank for accepting it. People need to realise just how many different parties are taking a chunk of a credit card transaction, at the very minimum is the 1. merchant's bank, 2. Issuing bank and 3. credit network. Count the number of fees each transaction is "less" on the infographic here.
I mentioned store cards above, in Australia the primary purpose of these are to entice people to buy specific products as you get additional "points" for buying specific things (sometimes you only get points for buying specific things) as well as trying to lock you into their chain, dont use your loyalty card, dont get a petrol discount. Supermarket chains are incredibly horizontally integrated. Coles and Woolworths own the majority of grocery, fuel, pharmacy, alcohol, hardware and whitegoods retail in Australia. Tracking your purchases is a secondary benefit.
Sorry, I think getting rid of paper notes is a stupid fucking idea, and would so fundamentally change some aspects of society as to be a terrible idea.
If the government got rid of government issued tender, it would be instantaneously replaced with another form of tender. Usually the coins and notes of another country. This happens in countries where the arse falls out of their economy and the government issued currency sufferes hyperinflation (Zimbabwe being one of the more recent examples). Cambodia has never officially adopted the USD, but you'll pull USD from ATM's and all prices are in USD. The Cambodian Real is used for change under $1 (4000 real is $1 from memory). The same will happen if you go cashless.
You're completely ignoring the cost of cash. For a small store, it typically takes at least half an hour per to balance the register at the end of the day if most people have used cash. That's three hours of employee time per register that you have to pay (or do yourself, if you don't want minimum-ways employees to be in a position where they can easily defraud you). You don't have to pay to deposit the cash, but you do have to pay for someone's time to transport the cash to the bank, stand in the queue, and get the receipt, and for the fuel that they consume doing so. If they're carrying large amounts of cash, you also have to pay for the security and you have to pay elevated insurance premiums for having a lot of cash on the premises.
Cash is better for small shops, but only for very small shops. Most moderately successful small shops would find it cheaper if everyone used credit cards.
No it doesn't take a half hour. as some one that is currently working one part time as suplimental income it takes 5 to 7 minutes to balance a till less time yet for the back office as they use a machine to count bills and change.
This, I used to run my own business. It took all of 5 minutes to close up the till and stick it in the lock box (which I'd take home and put in my safe). 25 minutes to go to the bank once per week. However it cost me 3-5% of my revenue, yes revenue, not profit, to accept credit cards. It was only as low as 3% on weeks where I did a lot of transactions in cash. Given I was in a low margin business (I sold computer parts in the early 00's) this meant the difference between profit and loss some weeks.
Handling money costs money. That is the reason Europe stopped using cheques.
No, the reason everyone except the US stopped using personal cheques is because they were too susceptible to fraud.
I've run my own business, whilst handling cash costs money, it costs less money than accepting credit cards. Merchant service fees would sometimes outstrip my staffing costs IN AUSTRALIA. It was one of the highest costs of doing business.
They will never know, as they do not know if I bought that or milk.
However the merchant now has to pay the bank extra for that milk, they pass that extra cost on to you.
If POS systems, banks and laws permitted businesses to add the merchant service fees onto the end of a transaction, you'd quickly change your tune about using credit as you'd realise just how much it's costing you.
The coffee scene exploded out of Melbourne in the early to mid 2000's but Fosters hasn't been sold here for decades. That is the kind of beer we only export, nothing is too bad for the rest of the world.
15 years ago (2001) you'd have VB as the bad beer closely followed by Toohey's Extra Dry (TED). Then the crappy beer brewed locally like West End (SA) Emu Export (WA) XXXX (QLD because the banana benders cant spell beer) and so fourth. So I have to call shenanigans on that part of the story. Beyond that we had a few good national breweries at that time, James Boag for one (15 years ago was about the time where they were taken over by a major beverage company, not sure which by Lion Nathan owns them now).
That's backwards. Your bank's web site is authenticated, so your browser can fairly strongly verify that it's legitimate, and the data is encrypted and authenticated so it can't be modified. Browsing/. (or any non-TLS web site), on the other hand, is dangerous because the Wifi operator can inject whatever they like into the stream. Exploits that target your browser, drive-by downloads, ads, tracking cookies (for any site)... whatever they like.
Here's the thing, I dont really care about something as trivial as a/. account. To expend efforts on securing that against all manner of threats wastes resources.
Also TLS is not immune to MITM attacks. It makes it harder, sure but not immune. Besides this you've got the traditional methods of social engineering, for example, a user goes to hsbc.co.uk and the rouge access point is configured to send them to hsbc.malice.com which looks identical to HSBC's internet banking site. You can collect their username and password without even bothering to break TLS. Depending on the sophistication of the site, they can even collect 2nd factor authentication info.
Granted, the risk of this kind of attack is low, which is why it's not worth protecting my/. account but it is worth protecting my banking details and credit card numbers.
As a security minded IT professional, I always assume two things about public Wifi.
1) that it is rouge.
2) that technology does not magically protect me.
I've always found it wise to err on the side of caution.
Not always easy to know what the name of the freewifi service is in an airport you are not familiar with too. All you really know is you're not going to PAY for one, so it's either free or you're tethering. But which one is the free one?
That's kind of my point.
How are you to know the difference between a legit and non legit network if they're both named "LAX Public Wifi".
You should really be suspicious of any Wifi network you dont control or at the very least, know the owners on a personal level. I use free wifi for browsing/. but not for doing banking or anything else that could potentially harm me, but as a sysadmin, I'm mindful of such things where as the average Joe isn't.
The only time I've ever had my Wifi connect to a strange access point without me asking it to were one's named "Linksys" and this was back in 2006. Seemed my old Windows XP lappy would interpret any open AP named Linksys as one I've connected to before because I had connected to one callled Linksys before.
I'm pretty sure modern OSes dont do this any more.
People would still take candy from strangers if we didn't drill it into them from a young age. Stupidity isn't limited to Wifi, it pervades everything people do.
However airports are strange. A lot of people are stuck there for some time with little to do. So free Wifi is a godsend, I admit, despite being quite security aware, that I've been a bit free and loose with connecting to airport Wifi when bored out of my skull at various airports (mostly Australian ones who didn't have free Wifi until recently).
Free Wifi isn't inherently unsafe, but must be treated with suspicion. However most people wont, so back to my original point... People are dumb.
By working and getting paid for it. In much of Africa, you can buy a phone capable of financial transactions for less than $20 new, and less than $5 used
This is for a basic Nokia rip off (not a genuine Nokia, that costs money). A smart phone will cost upwards of US$75 for a cheap Chinese model.
You cannot use a credit card for peer-to-peer transactions, and a CC is much harder for a poor person to get than a cellphone.
You cant use a phone for peer-to-peer transactions either. You will need, at the very least, significant back end infrastructure that can handle thousands of real time transactions a second. This isn't easy or cheap to do, this means the people doing it (erm... the banks) will want to make money off it. As this will increase costs, it will not be an attractive option for the African on a budget.
Those not on a budget will get a CC as it's a status symbol along with the 35 yr old Merc.
You must be an American. In much of the rest of the world, cell coverage is ubiquitous.
You must not have been to the rest of the world as you've not no idea how spotty and unreliable mobile coverage is in developing nations.
In the Philippines, I cant even get reliable coverage for the entirety of the NLEX (Northern Luzon EXpressway) which is 84 KM's of road through a relatively well to do part of the PI, let alone out in Leyte or Samar. Hell, sometimes I can walk from one end of my hotel room to the other and cross tower's 3 times... Internet outages for days are not uncommon (I had this happen after Typhoon Hagupit/Ruby rolled through in 2014). Compared to the African nations you're alluding to, the Phils is positively developed.
If you think instant, on demand internet access is commonplace in the developing world, you've clearly never been there.
Many people in poor nations do not have access to banking facilities but they do have a mobile phone. Paying for things via your phone (as opposed to a card) is the normal way of doing business for a large chunk of the world's population.
Hi, it sounds like you've never been to a developing nation. Would you like some help?
You see, in developing nations people use these small pieces of paper or polymer with numbers on them to trade for goods and services. They do this because adding banks into the mix creates extra costs that must be passed onto the consumer. Seeing as they dont have much money to begin with, they opt not to use the bank.
It'll be the same with phones. You dont need any infrastructure to deal in cash, you'll need infrastructure to deal with phones.
Google will find 100 times the amount of cases where the shooter took down an armed victim first... And another 10 times the amount where a person not under threat was shot with their own gun.
So it seems carrying a gun increases your risk of being shot and killed.
It should also be noted that the biggest risk from being shot and killed came from a family member, not a robbery.
Over three quarters (76.3 percent) of the homicide victims knew their assailant. Nearly one third (31.7 percent) of the homicides occurred during a family argument, 15.4 percent during a robbery, 4.1 percent during a drug deal, 0.2 percent during an abduction, and 44.1 percent for other unspecified reasons. In 4.5 percent of the homicides, multiple circumstances were reported.
Seems packing heat is a good way to kill the one you love.
What problems do drivers licenses solve for anyone? Do they ensure that all licensed drivers are good drivers? Do they keep unlicensed drivers off the roads?
Yes.
Contrary to your belief, this is exactly what they accomplish when combined with semi-competent law enforcement.
Why, because if you're caught driving without a license you risk jail in many countries. Because if you dont have a drivers license you cant work in many professions here in Australia. The risk of losing your license is enough to dissuade many, many people from doing the wrong thing.
Do you honestly want to argue that we'll have less people breaking the law if we didn't license drivers, that we'd have fewer bad drivers if they never had to sit a driving assessment?
At that speed, it would only take 8 seconds to consume my entire monthly 1GB data plan.
A good thing Smellstra's $30 prepaid plan now gives you 2.6 GB of data, so you've got a full 20.8 seconds.
I'm a happy Telstra customer... at least for the next few days. They already have the best LTE network in Perth, The work elevator is the only place I dont get coverage.
However with mobile speeds, you never get the full speed, it might be 1000 Mbps when you're 2 CM from the transmitter, but 1.5 KM away and you're getting a lot less.
Taliban, Al Queda, blah blah, these are just mobs. Organized crime. Treat them as such.
What are you on?
Are you suggesting we could bring down Al Queda by charging them with tax evasion al a Capone?
There's a big difference between terrorist organisations and organised crime. The biggest one is that terrorists are indiscriminate, they want their acts to be noticed and publicised, their ultimate motive is to sow terror and a lot of the violence is for the sake of violence. Organised crime on the other hand is using violence as a means to an end. Their actions are targeted and would prefer using threats rather than actual violence because the last thing they want is to draw attention to what they're doing. Their motive is to make money.
As someone who can not only play music, but write it. This is dead wrong.
Rap, much the same as electronic has a broken tempo, there is no flow, timing is all over the place. Add to this the grating tones they use and none of it is harmonious or melodic (I.E the notes dont naturally flow into each other, it's like playing an A minor, D major and then and F5 in the same bar, they just dont work together because their radically different chord families).
At best rap can be compared to poetry (which is why you concentrated on lyrics, not musical composition) and even then, it's pretty bad poetry.
As someone who can not only play music, but write it. This is dead wrong.
Rap, much the same as electronic has a broken tempo, there is no flow, timing is all over the place. Add to this the grating tones they use and none of it is harmonious or melodic (I.E the notes dont naturally flow into each other, it's like playing an A minor, D major and then and F5 in the same bar, they just dont work together because their radically different chord families).
I can appreciate a wide variety of music from classical, to jazz, to Latin jazz to rock and death metal, I even went to see Gilbert and Sullivan last year (and was at least 20 years younger than everyone else) but rap and electronic (techno, house and all of that crap) I cant consider music because there's nothing musical about it.
At best rap can be compared to poetry (which is why you concentrated on lyrics, not musical composition) and even then, it's pretty bad poetry.
Yep, TBP should sue Kanye for slander/deformation on behalf of their users for insinuating that they listen to his crap (like all rap, I cant call it music).
I have also never heard about any (large scale) fraud with these cards.
Thats because a single standard has never been widely deployed. Nor has it had direct access to credit card numbers.
Paypaas/wave are the same the world over. Unlike Oyster/Octopus and other schemes that use a GUID as an identifier, Paypass/wave use the card number, name and expiry date... So basically everything you need to make transactions on the internet.
Theives are not interested in making $30 transactions in person (that's a great way to get caught)... They're interested in harvesting card numbers en mass. This is now easier than ever because it transmits all the info you need wirelessly.
So I really can't say they're dumb.
I cant say their dumb either. Dumb is when you stub your toe or accidentally get the wrong type of bread.
Contactless payments are not merely dumb, the implementation is the heir to the throne of the kingdom of stupid.
Nope. The object in his hand looks just like the contactless payment (combined with chip and pin) devices that are all over the place (in the UK anyway). Granted it doesn't look like the telepower device on the right side of the picture but certainly DOES look like a contactless payment device.
This doesn't rule out the story being BS for all the other reasons you give like needing to be tied to a traceable account...
You dont need a card reader, you just need any NFC enabled device. Here's an app for any NFC enabled Android phone that reads card information, its censored because it's a demonstration, but the source code is available, or you could just follow the spec's available on Visa and Mastercards websites.
The problem is that the information sent wirelessly isn't unique to contactless payment schemes. In fact it's everything on the front of your card (name, exp date and card number) which is all you need to make online transactions. So walking around a shopping centre with an antenna is an ideal way to anonymously collect card numbers.
But NFC in my phone is limited to a few CM I hear you say. This is entirely due to the antenna design and power limits. NFC's wavelength has a maximum theoretical range of 22 metres, OK that's theoretical. In reality if you had a large enough antenna and enough power you could easily get 2-3 metres, however that would create a problem with the number of responses you'll get, an antenna that reaches 0.5 to 1 metre would really be all you'd need to go on a fishing trip for card numbers... And no one is going to look at you twice with your strange device as long as you're wearing a high visibility vest and carrying a clip board.
Contact-less payments are dumb, and lead to precisely this kind of abuse. I mean it could be a simple confirmation, a single swipe on the screen or something (when talking about smartphone based payments). And contact-less keys can simply have a button you have to press before unlocking.
If contactless payments were using a unique GUID just for contactless then it would merely be dumb.
However it actually sends your card number, expiry date and name (everything on the front of the card and all you need to start making transactions online) so it's actually the heir to the throne of the kingdom of stupid.
In a few years, contactless will be a thing of the past because the cost of fraud will be so high they'll be forced to replace everyone's card.
The whole contactless thing originated with Visa and Mastercard (no collusion in this industry what so ever) as a way to kill the EFTPOS networks in various countries and force customers to use credit networks, even with debit cards. They did this because EFTPOS does not charge a percentage of each transaction to the merchant which the credit networks do. This means the credit networks are missing out on all the merchant service fees on purchases that dont go through their networks.
What more does the FBI want? The suspects are dead. Stop spending money on diminishing returns.
Because dissecting how a crime happened, we can look for the signs of similar crimes in the future and prevent them.
The FBI has, or at least used to have the worlds most talented criminal profilers. Understanding the motivations, wants and actions of spree killers can help us spot the signs of them before they become spree killers.
Sorry if this sounds more sensible than blaming video games, rock and/or roll music, Satan, D&D, comic books, Game of Thrones, believing in the wrong sky faerie (or the right one in the wrong way), coloured chalk or whatever else the "Think of the Children" crowd think is causing all the evil in the world.
Slashdot Mirror
Stop it. Just stop it.
Also, can we just agree to stop adding "gate" to the ends of the things bad people do?
I propose we call this phenomena gate-gate.
The whole point of adblockers is to 'disrupt the relationship between advertisers and consumers'; because that 'relationship' is inherently somewhere between 'adversarial' and 'cold war'. We don't go to varying levels of hassle just for fun; we do so because we fucking hate you and your 'product'.
Adblock essentially changes that relationship from "adversarial" to "nuclear", it is one-sideed and it is the advertisers own damn fault.
A .5% negative interest rate right now would cost me $1000 a year.
Meanwhile some sack of pig shit who purchased 11 homes in Australia speculating on "ever increasing house prices, indefinitely and rapidly"* would actually be sent a cheque each fucking month as a reward for going into debt
God.Damned.Madness
Don't worry, the housing bubble is bursting (mining bubble is already gone).
I'm making my plans to flee Australia whilst the economy goes to pot for a few years. The problem is, all the pollies have their massive property portfolios so they're trying to stave off the bubble bursting for as long as possible... which will just make it worse when it inevitably happens (house prices are already dropping in Perth).
In Australia as well as Europe, there are limits on what merchants and banks are allowed to keep. A bank may not know the contents of a transaction and vice versa a merchant may not keep the card number or other identifying feature of a payment system (this is why they use store cards).
However I agree with you, cash is king. Having run my own business, I know how much goes in merchant service fees. If we get rid of cash (which is the cheaper option) banks will be free to charge even more. Every time you use a credit card, the merchant pays between 2% (Visa and Mastercard) to 6% (higher end AMEX and Discover) to the bank for accepting it. People need to realise just how many different parties are taking a chunk of a credit card transaction, at the very minimum is the 1. merchant's bank, 2. Issuing bank and 3. credit network. Count the number of fees each transaction is "less" on the infographic here.
I mentioned store cards above, in Australia the primary purpose of these are to entice people to buy specific products as you get additional "points" for buying specific things (sometimes you only get points for buying specific things) as well as trying to lock you into their chain, dont use your loyalty card, dont get a petrol discount. Supermarket chains are incredibly horizontally integrated. Coles and Woolworths own the majority of grocery, fuel, pharmacy, alcohol, hardware and whitegoods retail in Australia. Tracking your purchases is a secondary benefit.
You're completely ignoring the cost of cash. For a small store, it typically takes at least half an hour per to balance the register at the end of the day if most people have used cash. That's three hours of employee time per register that you have to pay (or do yourself, if you don't want minimum-ways employees to be in a position where they can easily defraud you). You don't have to pay to deposit the cash, but you do have to pay for someone's time to transport the cash to the bank, stand in the queue, and get the receipt, and for the fuel that they consume doing so. If they're carrying large amounts of cash, you also have to pay for the security and you have to pay elevated insurance premiums for having a lot of cash on the premises.
Cash is better for small shops, but only for very small shops. Most moderately successful small shops would find it cheaper if everyone used credit cards.
No it doesn't take a half hour. as some one that is currently working one part time as suplimental income it takes 5 to 7 minutes to balance a till less time yet for the back office as they use a machine to count bills and change.
This, I used to run my own business. It took all of 5 minutes to close up the till and stick it in the lock box (which I'd take home and put in my safe). 25 minutes to go to the bank once per week. However it cost me 3-5% of my revenue, yes revenue, not profit, to accept credit cards. It was only as low as 3% on weeks where I did a lot of transactions in cash. Given I was in a low margin business (I sold computer parts in the early 00's) this meant the difference between profit and loss some weeks.
No, the reason everyone except the US stopped using personal cheques is because they were too susceptible to fraud.
I've run my own business, whilst handling cash costs money, it costs less money than accepting credit cards. Merchant service fees would sometimes outstrip my staffing costs IN AUSTRALIA. It was one of the highest costs of doing business.
However the merchant now has to pay the bank extra for that milk, they pass that extra cost on to you.
If POS systems, banks and laws permitted businesses to add the merchant service fees onto the end of a transaction, you'd quickly change your tune about using credit as you'd realise just how much it's costing you.
15 years is a long time.
The coffee scene exploded out of Melbourne in the early to mid 2000's but Fosters hasn't been sold here for decades. That is the kind of beer we only export, nothing is too bad for the rest of the world.
15 years ago (2001) you'd have VB as the bad beer closely followed by Toohey's Extra Dry (TED). Then the crappy beer brewed locally like West End (SA) Emu Export (WA) XXXX (QLD because the banana benders cant spell beer) and so fourth. So I have to call shenanigans on that part of the story. Beyond that we had a few good national breweries at that time, James Boag for one (15 years ago was about the time where they were taken over by a major beverage company, not sure which by Lion Nathan owns them now).
Here's the thing, I dont really care about something as trivial as a /. account. To expend efforts on securing that against all manner of threats wastes resources.
/. account but it is worth protecting my banking details and credit card numbers.
Also TLS is not immune to MITM attacks. It makes it harder, sure but not immune. Besides this you've got the traditional methods of social engineering, for example, a user goes to hsbc.co.uk and the rouge access point is configured to send them to hsbc.malice.com which looks identical to HSBC's internet banking site. You can collect their username and password without even bothering to break TLS. Depending on the sophistication of the site, they can even collect 2nd factor authentication info.
Granted, the risk of this kind of attack is low, which is why it's not worth protecting my
As a security minded IT professional, I always assume two things about public Wifi.
1) that it is rouge.
2) that technology does not magically protect me.
I've always found it wise to err on the side of caution.
One of the best things to come out of Fremantle but now it's brewed in the east, I think.
Ahem,
https://littlecreatures.com.au/venues/1-fremantle-brewery
Admittedly, not much else comes out of Freo besides STDs.
BTW, hardly surprised to find Aussies at the centre of this thread. Two things we do exceptionally well are Beer and Coffee.
Not always easy to know what the name of the freewifi service is in an airport you are not familiar with too. All you really know is you're not going to PAY for one, so it's either free or you're tethering. But which one is the free one?
That's kind of my point.
/. but not for doing banking or anything else that could potentially harm me, but as a sysadmin, I'm mindful of such things where as the average Joe isn't.
How are you to know the difference between a legit and non legit network if they're both named "LAX Public Wifi".
You should really be suspicious of any Wifi network you dont control or at the very least, know the owners on a personal level. I use free wifi for browsing
Or do their devices automatically do it for them?
The only time I've ever had my Wifi connect to a strange access point without me asking it to were one's named "Linksys" and this was back in 2006. Seemed my old Windows XP lappy would interpret any open AP named Linksys as one I've connected to before because I had connected to one callled Linksys before.
I'm pretty sure modern OSes dont do this any more.
Yes, stop snickering, I called Windows "Modern".
Lets face it, people are dumb.
People would still take candy from strangers if we didn't drill it into them from a young age. Stupidity isn't limited to Wifi, it pervades everything people do.
However airports are strange. A lot of people are stuck there for some time with little to do. So free Wifi is a godsend, I admit, despite being quite security aware, that I've been a bit free and loose with connecting to airport Wifi when bored out of my skull at various airports (mostly Australian ones who didn't have free Wifi until recently).
Free Wifi isn't inherently unsafe, but must be treated with suspicion. However most people wont, so back to my original point... People are dumb.
This is for a basic Nokia rip off (not a genuine Nokia, that costs money). A smart phone will cost upwards of US$75 for a cheap Chinese model.
You cant use a phone for peer-to-peer transactions either. You will need, at the very least, significant back end infrastructure that can handle thousands of real time transactions a second. This isn't easy or cheap to do, this means the people doing it (erm... the banks) will want to make money off it. As this will increase costs, it will not be an attractive option for the African on a budget.
Those not on a budget will get a CC as it's a status symbol along with the 35 yr old Merc.
You must not have been to the rest of the world as you've not no idea how spotty and unreliable mobile coverage is in developing nations.
In the Philippines, I cant even get reliable coverage for the entirety of the NLEX (Northern Luzon EXpressway) which is 84 KM's of road through a relatively well to do part of the PI, let alone out in Leyte or Samar. Hell, sometimes I can walk from one end of my hotel room to the other and cross tower's 3 times... Internet outages for days are not uncommon (I had this happen after Typhoon Hagupit/Ruby rolled through in 2014). Compared to the African nations you're alluding to, the Phils is positively developed.
If you think instant, on demand internet access is commonplace in the developing world, you've clearly never been there.
Many people in poor nations do not have access to banking facilities but they do have a mobile phone. Paying for things via your phone (as opposed to a card) is the normal way of doing business for a large chunk of the world's population.
Hi, it sounds like you've never been to a developing nation. Would you like some help?
You see, in developing nations people use these small pieces of paper or polymer with numbers on them to trade for goods and services. They do this because adding banks into the mix creates extra costs that must be passed onto the consumer. Seeing as they dont have much money to begin with, they opt not to use the bank.
It'll be the same with phones. You dont need any infrastructure to deal in cash, you'll need infrastructure to deal with phones.
Here are 10 cases where armed citizens took down active shooters:
http://www.personaldefenseworl...
Google will find more.
Google will find 100 times the amount of cases where the shooter took down an armed victim first... And another 10 times the amount where a person not under threat was shot with their own gun.
Allow me to use research, instead of an obviously biased site based on unverified news reports.
https://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17922-carrying-a-gun-increases-risk-of-getting-shot-and-killed/
So it seems carrying a gun increases your risk of being shot and killed.
It should also be noted that the biggest risk from being shot and killed came from a family member, not a robbery.
Over three quarters (76.3 percent) of the homicide victims knew their assailant. Nearly one third (31.7 percent) of the homicides occurred during a family argument, 15.4 percent during a robbery, 4.1 percent during a drug deal, 0.2 percent during an abduction, and 44.1 percent for other unspecified reasons. In 4.5 percent of the homicides, multiple circumstances were reported.
Seems packing heat is a good way to kill the one you love.
Yes.
Contrary to your belief, this is exactly what they accomplish when combined with semi-competent law enforcement.
Why, because if you're caught driving without a license you risk jail in many countries. Because if you dont have a drivers license you cant work in many professions here in Australia. The risk of losing your license is enough to dissuade many, many people from doing the wrong thing.
Do you honestly want to argue that we'll have less people breaking the law if we didn't license drivers, that we'd have fewer bad drivers if they never had to sit a driving assessment?
At that speed, it would only take 8 seconds to consume my entire monthly 1GB data plan.
A good thing Smellstra's $30 prepaid plan now gives you 2.6 GB of data, so you've got a full 20.8 seconds.
I'm a happy Telstra customer... at least for the next few days. They already have the best LTE network in Perth, The work elevator is the only place I dont get coverage.
However with mobile speeds, you never get the full speed, it might be 1000 Mbps when you're 2 CM from the transmitter, but 1.5 KM away and you're getting a lot less.
Taliban, Al Queda, blah blah, these are just mobs. Organized crime. Treat them as such.
What are you on?
Are you suggesting we could bring down Al Queda by charging them with tax evasion al a Capone?
There's a big difference between terrorist organisations and organised crime. The biggest one is that terrorists are indiscriminate, they want their acts to be noticed and publicised, their ultimate motive is to sow terror and a lot of the violence is for the sake of violence. Organised crime on the other hand is using violence as a means to an end. Their actions are targeted and would prefer using threats rather than actual violence because the last thing they want is to draw attention to what they're doing. Their motive is to make money.
As someone who can not only play music, but write it. This is dead wrong. Rap, much the same as electronic has a broken tempo, there is no flow, timing is all over the place. Add to this the grating tones they use and none of it is harmonious or melodic (I.E the notes dont naturally flow into each other, it's like playing an A minor, D major and then and F5 in the same bar, they just dont work together because their radically different chord families). At best rap can be compared to poetry (which is why you concentrated on lyrics, not musical composition) and even then, it's pretty bad poetry.
It's not all bad.
As someone who can not only play music, but write it. This is dead wrong.
Rap, much the same as electronic has a broken tempo, there is no flow, timing is all over the place. Add to this the grating tones they use and none of it is harmonious or melodic (I.E the notes dont naturally flow into each other, it's like playing an A minor, D major and then and F5 in the same bar, they just dont work together because their radically different chord families).
I can appreciate a wide variety of music from classical, to jazz, to Latin jazz to rock and death metal, I even went to see Gilbert and Sullivan last year (and was at least 20 years younger than everyone else) but rap and electronic (techno, house and all of that crap) I cant consider music because there's nothing musical about it.
At best rap can be compared to poetry (which is why you concentrated on lyrics, not musical composition) and even then, it's pretty bad poetry.
And his music is terrible.
Yep, TBP should sue Kanye for slander/deformation on behalf of their users for insinuating that they listen to his crap (like all rap, I cant call it music).
Thats because a single standard has never been widely deployed. Nor has it had direct access to credit card numbers.
Paypaas/wave are the same the world over. Unlike Oyster/Octopus and other schemes that use a GUID as an identifier, Paypass/wave use the card number, name and expiry date... So basically everything you need to make transactions on the internet. Theives are not interested in making $30 transactions in person (that's a great way to get caught)... They're interested in harvesting card numbers en mass. This is now easier than ever because it transmits all the info you need wirelessly.
I cant say their dumb either. Dumb is when you stub your toe or accidentally get the wrong type of bread.
Contactless payments are not merely dumb, the implementation is the heir to the throne of the kingdom of stupid.
Nope. The object in his hand looks just like the contactless payment (combined with chip and pin) devices that are all over the place (in the UK anyway). Granted it doesn't look like the telepower device on the right side of the picture but certainly DOES look like a contactless payment device.
This doesn't rule out the story being BS for all the other reasons you give like needing to be tied to a traceable account...
You dont need a card reader, you just need any NFC enabled device. Here's an app for any NFC enabled Android phone that reads card information, its censored because it's a demonstration, but the source code is available, or you could just follow the spec's available on Visa and Mastercards websites.
The problem is that the information sent wirelessly isn't unique to contactless payment schemes. In fact it's everything on the front of your card (name, exp date and card number) which is all you need to make online transactions. So walking around a shopping centre with an antenna is an ideal way to anonymously collect card numbers.
But NFC in my phone is limited to a few CM I hear you say. This is entirely due to the antenna design and power limits. NFC's wavelength has a maximum theoretical range of 22 metres, OK that's theoretical. In reality if you had a large enough antenna and enough power you could easily get 2-3 metres, however that would create a problem with the number of responses you'll get, an antenna that reaches 0.5 to 1 metre would really be all you'd need to go on a fishing trip for card numbers... And no one is going to look at you twice with your strange device as long as you're wearing a high visibility vest and carrying a clip board.
who said this is a good idea the first place?
Contact-less payments are dumb, and lead to precisely this kind of abuse. I mean it could be a simple confirmation, a single swipe on the screen or something (when talking about smartphone based payments). And contact-less keys can simply have a button you have to press before unlocking.
If contactless payments were using a unique GUID just for contactless then it would merely be dumb.
However it actually sends your card number, expiry date and name (everything on the front of the card and all you need to start making transactions online) so it's actually the heir to the throne of the kingdom of stupid.
In a few years, contactless will be a thing of the past because the cost of fraud will be so high they'll be forced to replace everyone's card.
The whole contactless thing originated with Visa and Mastercard (no collusion in this industry what so ever) as a way to kill the EFTPOS networks in various countries and force customers to use credit networks, even with debit cards. They did this because EFTPOS does not charge a percentage of each transaction to the merchant which the credit networks do. This means the credit networks are missing out on all the merchant service fees on purchases that dont go through their networks.
What more does the FBI want? The suspects are dead. Stop spending money on diminishing returns.
Because dissecting how a crime happened, we can look for the signs of similar crimes in the future and prevent them.
The FBI has, or at least used to have the worlds most talented criminal profilers. Understanding the motivations, wants and actions of spree killers can help us spot the signs of them before they become spree killers.
Sorry if this sounds more sensible than blaming video games, rock and/or roll music, Satan, D&D, comic books, Game of Thrones, believing in the wrong sky faerie (or the right one in the wrong way), coloured chalk or whatever else the "Think of the Children" crowd think is causing all the evil in the world.