| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |||
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 |
| Months | ||
|---|---|---|
| Jan | Feb | Mar |
| Apr | May | Jun |
| Jul | Aug | Sep |
| Oct | Nov | Dec |
Tue, 14 Feb 2006
[10:04] Happy Chip and PIN day!
Ahhh, technology. Only technology can bring us such marvelous slogans! And of course the logos (such as the one below) that go with them:
Chip and PIN is the new, more secure way to pay with credit or debit cards in the UK.OK, some changes to the way we pay for things here in Old Blighty. Let's move on to paragraph the second:
Instead of using your signature to verify payments, you will be asked to enter a four-digit Personal Identification Number (PIN) known only to you.This is just happening now. Surprised? Here's a little history:
When I finally got myself a debit (as opposed to credit) card over here, one of the first things I purchased was a ticket for the Tube, aka an Oyster card. An Oyster card contains an RFID tag that keeps track of how much credit you've got and where you've been. You can top up the card yourself at ticket machines in the station by waving the card at the machine and picking the amount you'd like to credit the card with.
I was bemused and flabbergasted when I discovered that all I had to do to complete the transaction was slip my debit card into the machine! Maybe someone got an urgent phone call and thus left halfway through the "Something You Have and Something You Know" authentication lecture, causing them to implement only the "Something You Have" half that they heard. The implication of this is that merely by obtaining someone's debit card you can credit an Oyster card with up to £60 a day with NO authentication at all. Same thing in the majority of shops, they treat all transactions like credit transactions - you make up a squiggle that theoretically matches the squiggle on the back of the card but because it's a debit card not a credit card people don't ever bother to check the card. I've not been asked ONCE by the store people to look at the signature!
Anyway, the nightmare is over (theoretically) because today is Chip and PIN day - hurrah! Now we all have exciting little smart cards instead of a plain old mag-stripe card. I haven't really looked into these much yet but I'm assuming they're going to be a lot harder to read than the old mag stripes...sounds like a fun project finding out what other sensitive data they're keeping on there.
I think it was Paul Keating who uttered the famous quote "Australia is the arse end of the world". All I have to say on the matter is: If Australia is the arse end of the world, and has managed to have PIN number verification on debit card transactions for as long as I can remember (even in places like, say Yackamdandah, to pick somewhere in the middle of nowhere), then take me back to Arseland!
I must admit that I was more than a little surprised to find Australia seemingly on the leading edge of this kind of technology - after the last 7 months in London I'm not so surprised! From Andrew's blog it seems that the Americans seem to be laungishing in the same state of affairs.
category: /tech | permalink | Comments suspended due to spamwhores
Sun, 05 Feb 2006
[13:15] The Weekend Off
I started out my weekend off by heading to this months London 2600 Meeting with Shona. I have to say that The Freemasons Arms on a Friday evening is not the most conducive atmosphere for chatting about stuff, mostly you have to yell to be heard by anyone more than half a meter away! The turnout was roughly similar to last time with a couple of different people but with a very similar plan - head the the pub and hammer on the local WiFi....meh. We bailed and went to the bookshop instead. I was looking for Windows Internals, 4th Edition but I came out with Love and Other Near Death Experiences instead. They didn't have the book I wanted (well not by itself anyway, if I'd had a spare £220 then I could have bought the box set) but I'd read that LAONDE was coming out soon and £8 just seemed like too much of a bargain!
Flushed with post-consumer contentment, we headed back to the Tube and for home, pausing only to purchase an exquisite (no really) kebab from the Waterloo Kebab and Burger House. We watched some amusing television whilst eating, and retired. We then proceeded to sleep in until nearly 0730 on Saturday morning and which point we were roused by the postman delivering a package. There's something to be said for England's weekend mail service, and sometimes it has four letters.
I was intending to spend the majority of the weekend studying for my impending interview (3 days and counting) but I sabotaged myself with my fictional book purchases and spent 4 hours mirthfuly reading whilst Shona was out raiding the knitting shop. I did get to the study when she came home but it seems that mostly my body wanted to rest and I ended up sleeping from about 1600 to 2030 at which point I got up for dinner before collapsing back into bed.
Sunday brought more procrastination when we decided to visit the Imperial War Museum which we've been meaning to go and see since we moved into this place (the museum is less than 3 minutes walk away). We checked out the Great Escapes exhibition which was quite interesting - it covered POW WWII escapes from places like Colditz and Stalag Luft III and also included a small display of Chicken Run sets and characters, some of the few Aardman creations to escape the fire that destroyed most of the Aardman history. I was amazed to see that some enterprising bastards in Colditz actually built a glider out of matress covers and offcuts (not too mention the tools to make it) which reminded me of the one and only Macgyver episode I ever saw in which he does exactly that. It was pretty amazing to read and hear just how much of a sport the process of escaping was treated as for the majority of the war (provided you weren't in a Japanese POW camp that is). It all seemed to be very Hogans Heros.
We also wandered around the lower floor of the museum (there are four floors of death contraptions to view in total) but we'd inspected the wide variety of tanks, planes, submarines and bombs in the entrance hall and after spending a further few hours in the Great Escapes exhibition we weren't really up for any more ingenious ways of killing people - war museums have a real spirit sapping quality to them I find. We wandered into the Post '45 section and after I'd watched all of the Protect and Survive telvision advisories the government produced in the late 70's to help the populace survive a nuclear attack I reached my limit. We evacuated and went home and I finally got some study done. I should also mention that I ate my "All Day Breakfast In A Can" for linner. It tasted like baked beans.
category: /life | permalink | Comments suspended due to spamwhores