Twitter creator develops ridiculous insecure stupid device…
Apparently the creator of Twitter has developed a mobile credit card solution that will be given away for free...
Ok... First let's go through the problems with this...
I'll start with security, because that's what I like. We've seen the multitude of Twitter failings in this area over the past 3 years of it's operation. Would I trust the same guy that developed Twitter with developing something that was going to read my credit card??? Fuck no...
Another problem, which leads back to security, the whole "given away for free" thing. Anything that is given away for free is usually of low quality. Take for example company pens, they're most often of very low quality, they're going to be given away for free and have very little direct impact on the business so why give a damn. I feel that this device will not have the budget it deserves and will end up being horrendously insecure.
Now my problems with the actual idea. Something that reads my credit card, ON SOMEONE ELSES PHONE... This person could have ANYTHING on the phone. It could have been hacked, they could be being malicious and attempting to steal card data. At least with the current POS terminals I have some re-assurance that the firmware isn't emailing all my card data to some Russian who's going to go out and enjoy some nice Vodka on me tonight. Of course ultimately it'll be on the bank but that's another story.
Recent history is shown that smartphones are all the rage for hackers these days and that they're fast becoming the target of all types of nasties. This just gives more incentive to an already developing field. Props to you for the idea of having a device that reads a card and sends the data over the microphone port of a smartphone to ultimately be decoded by software but WHAT THE HELL... A smartphone is probably one of the most UNTRUSTED end-points ever... I'd prefer to trust my computers back in Wangaratta that my siblings have filled with malware than trust some random coffee shop owners smart phone with my card data.
And it's blatantly obvious that this doesn't support smart card tech. Which annoys the hell out of me. Why are we still developing end solutions for mag stripes??? Mag stripes in access control went out the window ages ago, why the hell are we still using it for processing payment data.
This device is useless.
Merchants already have access to terminals that work over 3G/GPRS data networks and something like credit cards should never be processed through someones personal smartphone that they just installed the lovely furry kitty screensaver on that is just waiting for something nice and juicy like a credit card to pass through the system.
I'm sorry but Jack Dorsey, do us all a favor, and stick to micro blogging... And stay the hell away from my credit cards...
SOURCE : http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/ptech/12/09/twitter.dorsey.credit.card/
Why I don’t like the new fire ratings…
So after Black Saturday fire authorities around this country where pressured into doing something. Something the community would notice, and something that would have an impact. So it appears that born out of this requirement is the new fire danger rating.
It used to be that we had a simple to understand fire rating system
- Extreme
- Severe
- Very High
- High
- Low - Moderate
Basically all the new one does is add "Code Red". What does that even mean, it's worse than severe but so what. What does a severe rating even mean. All the ratings do is rate how controllable a fire will be should it be ignited on the day. To me, even as a CFA volunteer, "Code Red" means nothing. It just means the FDI (fire danger indicator) has gone above a certain number and that if there's a fire it's likely to turn nasty. I wouldn't do anything different on a "Code Red" day than I would on an extreme day.
Of course now that I'm in the city this is all pretty meaningless to me ATM but I hope to help out with fires if there are any around Wangaratta this year.
We don't need a more complicated fire danger system.
What we do need (which has now been deployed) is an emergency alert system. (http://www.emergencyalert.gov.au/)
The system can call landlines in a specific area or txt mobiles based on their billing address. I'm still not happy that you can't txt based on a physical location derived from the connected cell towers, but the new system appears to be better than nothing.
But the problem still is, how do these alerts get issued.
And from visiting the website I notice that the same problem still remains. All of the different agencies have their own warnings (primarily CFA/DSE) and they have them on their own sites.
What we need to do is create a singular portal for each state for fire information. The agencies need to pull together and actually give us information available in one place. I also notice the CFA itself STILL doesn't display the fire danger levels on their site. The word was this was because of some disagreement between the CFA and the BOM (Bureau Of Meteorology) over how to set the fire danger. So the CFA just links to the BOM site and you still have to go there for the information.
How hard is it for the government to aggregate this information into one place, the things such a site could do would be limitless:
- Reports from fire officers in your area
- SMS alert sign up to get fire danger warnings
- A single alerting portal that shows all current incidents and any warnings associated with them
And the whole thing could have a sign up system that allowed the user to view a portal that was just for them.
But no, what did our government do, it just made another fire danger warning level. "Code Red" IMHO is a waste of money. There have already been a couple of "Code Red" days which seemed pretty non "Code Red" to me...
So anyway that's my rant... Started a month ago and finished today because I was a little more bored than usual...
Nothing
Nothing is nothing...
Nah... That's a cop out, can you imagine if I was like that though. Writing one sentence on this blog instead of hundreds where one would suffice. But I'm not, so here's a blog post about nothing.
Nothing, the word itself, is of no real significance, in fact you me even say nothing is less significant than nothing. But the absence of things, therefore nothing, may in itself have more meaning that some place where things are not absent. This can mean that:
Nothing > Things
And as Nothing has more characters in it and has an additional syllable it is quite obvious that:
Nothing > Things
However, it is quite obvious that having nothing may be far worse than having things. But it does then depend on which things you may or may not have. If you have a disease for example, this is worse than having nothing. But if you have nothing, disease wise, it may be said that you have your health. Therefore can nothing ever truly exist.
The existence of nothing can be proved by this blog post, although it is titled nothing the title in fact is not empty. The title has things in it so the word itself is not of any signifance.
Anyway I digress. In the event that you are attempting to describe a situation in which nothing truly exists you may use the word nothingness. However as nothingness contains nothing nothingness is not truly consistent with the meaning of nothing. That is that although something may be described as nothingness it is most likely that it is not in fact nothingness as nothingness contains nothing.
Therefore nothing is impossible. That is not that everything is possible, more that having nothing itself is impossible.
Though I may say my pockets contain nothing, therefore I am broke, this is true in the respect that my pockets do not contain any currency but it is not possible for the pockets to contain nothing. This is because although they do not contain currency they do in fact contain air and possibly snack food wrappers. However I will state that my pockets, or possibly my wallet is empty, knowing full well that in fact something is contained in the wallet and/or pockets.
If you say in fact that you have done nothing on a university assignment this is also untrue. Even if you have not completed anything you have in fact thought about the assignment and that in itself is work that will lead to the end assignment.
"Oh but Stubbers" you may say "You silly little fish fillet, you've forgotten, what if I specify a time period in which I did nothing". Ah yes, however during that time period you where breathing and your body presumably was working towards keeping you alive. If in fact it was then at that time you did do work on the assignment as staying alive will assist you in the completion of the goals set out by the assignment.
So next time you say you've done nothing, think about it, because even by saying you've done nothing you have in fact done a thing.
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Recent Posts
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- Twitter creator develops ridiculous insecure stupid device…
- Why I don’t like the new fire ratings…
Stubbers101 on Twitter
- stubbers101: Also "Internet jammer"... Where the hell did that come from... It jams GPS not the internet...
- stubbers101: Interesting... Read this http://zurl.ws/2T0 then this http://zurl.ws/2T1 and tell me how much News.com.au just fudged that headline...
- stubbers101: There is no Season 9 of Scrubs as far as I'm concerned...
- stubbers101: @aaron552 Liez... BFBC2 > FF* (prepares for flames...)