Posts by realtimecat

Do you trust your waiter? Hacked bank-card reader TEXTS your info to crims

Re: The U.S. Credit Card industry *MUST* go to 100% adoption of smart chip cards

Contactless cards / rfid - terrible idea! Yes, more and more US POS terminals are supporting it. The fact that this is considered any way more secure than stripes is unexplainable. A smart chip with cryptographic security cannot be casually cloned. This is why it is the best solution available today.

I will never have a card that uses rfid or any other contactless system. Makes skimming cards even easier.

In answer to previous comments about mom&pops still using imprinting. If as a card user you're comfortable with that it is up to you. The thing with an imprinted card receipt is it is accompanied by a physical signature; so fraudulent charges made in this manner also gain counts of forgery to their charges if they are apprehended.

Just because the credit laws in the U.S. favor the consumer does not mean that the fraud doesn't cost real $$$ - we pay for it with higher fees to the merchants or higher interest rates to the consumer. Nothing is free. The price of changing over to smart chip cards is a fraction of what the losses to credit card fraud are with the current system.

American Express provided smart card readers for use on PCs with the original release of Amex Blue. There is no reason this could not be done again. I much prefer the idea of using a pin protected smart chip to complete a network purchase over manually typing in numbers from the front and back of the card.

The U.S. Credit Card industry *MUST* go to 100% adoption of smart chip cards

This is insane! I went to Europe in 2001 and found the biggest problem to my travels was that most merchants never used their swipe readers, and as a result they were too dirty to function reliably - this occurred over and over, both with large retailers and small businesses.

In that time the U.S. credit card industry has actually stepped *back* from implementing smartcard readers. American Express attempted to push it out with their "American Express Blue" card, but the latest version of that card does not come standard with a smart chip on it.

The U.S. Credit Card industry needs to wake up. This won't happen without *ALL* of the companies switching to the use of smart cards, and highly discounted readers for the merchants.

The only reason that this has not happened yet is that they are all too interested in bilking the consumer on the interest for the cards along with charging merchants for their use and have forgotten that they have to invest a trivial percentage of that into keeping the infrastructure secure.

Chromebooks now the fastest-growing segment of PC market

Better than windows 8 for a laptop?

I think the fact that Windows 8 has developed a GUI that is horrid, and the worst on a laptop with only a touchpad and keyboard are part of why this is happening.

I've played with Windows 8 enough to know it is bad on a desktop, and nearly unuseable on a laptop with no mouse.

The other choices are:

1) Apple OS/X based laptops - too expensive a price of entry for many people.

2) Linux (my personal choice going forward) - widely available and free, but not usually peddled off the retail shelf. Most linux desktops are easier to work with than the schizo Windows 8 interface and can easily be used with just a touchpad and keyboard.

3) Chrome OS - now becoming widely available in retail outlets, low cost, low learning curve to use and fast responding on inexpensive hardware (due to the lightweight implementation). Operating system was designed with the netbook form factor in mind.

The fact that a new (to the average consumer) operating system is gaining traction in the notebook market is a huge indicator of the failure of Microsoft to meet the needs of the average laptop owner with Windows 8. Everything I have read about 8.1 (or whatever the next upgrade will be called) leads me to believe that Microsoft has gotten too arrogant to recognize the true requirements and demands of the consumer.

The Osborne 1: 30 years old this month

My first home computer (2nd major technology purchase)

The osborne 1 was a great machine for it's time. My father and I shared usage of it. I found all the wonderful additions available, the z-80 enhanced version of CP/M, the standard C compiler. We had that and a Xerox KSR daisy wheel printer.

We got the mid-life upgrade for the osborne 1 which upped the screen resolution to 24/80. I was able to get a terminal emulator working on it so we could connect it up to the PDP-11/70 I had at work. Got modem7 running and was able to actually transfer files.

The system rarely travelled. On one of the few occasions it did, it was stolen out of the hotel room.

We ended up getting two Kaypro-4's with the money back from the insurance. By then I had moved out of the house, and it provided a perfect stepping off point for me.