• Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to jay
    jay:
    Maybe those of us who are creeped out by Facebook building a database of photos with names should start a campaign to mis-label photos. Find pictures of your friends and label them "Zaphod Beeblebrox", "Attila the Hun", and so forth.
    No need. A campaign is well under way to find lamps, rocks, grassy knolls, etc., and tag them with names of Facebook account holders. This is why, if Facebook doesn't trust a login and demands that the person say which name was given by some unknown tagger as being the friend who is really a sofa, tree, or window, Facebook blocks the login and locks the account.

    Next of course the locked-out person creates a new Facebook account, but they and all their friends continue tagging chairs, dogs, and buses with the names of their friends. Thus the cycle continues.

    The Real What The Facebook is F*k.

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to dn3s
    ince:
    The ATM thing reminds me of my vacations on Crete.

    Whenever you saw or heard of thunderstorms in the mountains, it was the perfect time to go to an ATM and pick up as much money as possible because chances were that a power outage was near, disabling communication between the ATM and the rest of the world, presenting you with free money. It worked three times.

    dn3s:
    wouldn't the smart thing be for ATMs to locally cache transactions and send them later when the network's back up? or for that matter just not allow transactions to begin with, or place a cap on withdrawals. I guess the problem with caching is you have no idea if they are overdrawing. although I thought newer "chip" cards stored a copy of your balance on the card?
    Best cache machine ever!

  • (cs) in reply to dn3s
    dn3s:
    wouldn't the smart thing be for ATMs to locally cache transactions and send them later when the network's back up? or for that matter just not allow transactions to begin with, or place a cap on withdrawals. I guess the problem with caching is you have no idea if they are overdrawing. although I thought newer "chip" cards stored a copy of your balance on the card?
    This used to be done, and was used to perpetrate some really big thefts from ATMs using variations on a replay attack. These days, banks instead go for keeping the ATMs online (let's face it, it's not that expensive any more, not by comparison with handling cash at all). In any case, keeping the balance on the card wouldn't work given the number of people buying stuff online; the balance on the card could only be correct if you also embedded a GSM module and power so that the card-not-present interactions could be processed correctly. Banks, being cheap-ass wiseguys, have a central server instead and bear the (small) risk of the network going down to the ATM you're using.

    Anything else would be TRWTF.

  • (cs)

    Oh Twitch, can you do anything right?

  • (cs)

    ...and they can't even spell "septiembre"...

  • Twelve Inch Pianist (unregistered) in reply to foo
    foo:
    Privacy:
    Wow. I thought I was the only one who feels that way. (With over 1B people on Facebook, and everyone looking at me funny when I say I don't have an account, it's easy to think you're all alone.)
    When they look at me funny, I start quoting from FB's terms and conditions (well, translated from lawyerspeak into real language). They'll still look funny, but not at me.

    You must be great at parties.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to JAPH
    JAPH:
    xaade:
    JAPH:
    I thought the angels generally covered their eyes so they wouldn't inadvertently be looking at another angel?

    BTW, the first statue seems to be a likeness of Jesus.

    ... Did you learn that from Oprah?

    The angels that cover their eyes are called Seraphim. They have six wings: two for face, two to fly, and two to cover feet. They cover their face because they are literally where God manifests himself in heaven. Their duty is to worship God. They cover their feet because they are in the most holy place in heaven.

    I think you missed the Dr. Who references in this thread.

    The Weeping Angels have appeared in multiple episodes. The Weeping Angels can only move when no one is looking at them. If they touch you, you turn to stone.

    I think you missed all the Doctor Who episodes with Weeping Angels.

    If they touch you they teleport you back in time, with the exception of one group that killed people by snapping their necks instead.

  • (cs)

    What's this? CSS source links smeared across the screen?!

  • I forget (unregistered)

    The borked HTML is what you get for being a heretic and not using the One True web browser, the decreed standard of the internet for all time, the one browser to rule them all: Microsoft Internet Explorer 6

  • Jimmy (unregistered) in reply to foo
    foo:
    Privacy:
    Wow. I thought I was the only one who feels that way. (With over 1B people on Facebook, and everyone looking at me funny when I say I don't have an account, it's easy to think you're all alone.)
    When they look at me funny, I start quoting from FB's terms and conditions (well, translated from lawyerspeak into real language). They'll still look funny, but not at me.
    I'm so paranoid about the whole FB thing, I don't even post in places like this lest they work out where I am and what I'm doing. After all, they needn't really bother with FB given all the tracking stuff they got inside every computer they possibly can.

    ...the internet is a dangerous playground, but remember, just because you realise you're paranoid, doesn't mean that they're not out to get you....

  • libdir (unregistered) in reply to dkf
    dkf:
    dn3s:
    wouldn't the smart thing be for ATMs to locally cache transactions and send them later when the network's back up? or for that matter just not allow transactions to begin with, or place a cap on withdrawals. I guess the problem with caching is you have no idea if they are overdrawing. although I thought newer "chip" cards stored a copy of your balance on the card?
    This used to be done, and was used to perpetrate some really big thefts from ATMs using variations on a replay attack. These days, banks instead go for keeping the ATMs online (let's face it, it's not that expensive any more, not by comparison with handling cash at all). In any case, keeping the balance on the card wouldn't work given the number of people buying stuff online; the balance on the card could only be correct if you also embedded a GSM module and power so that the card-not-present interactions could be processed correctly. Banks, being cheap-ass wiseguys, have a central server instead and bear the (small) risk of the network going down to the ATM you're using.

    Anything else would be TRWTF.

    And in totally unrelated ATM trivia, apparently the banks/guards quite regularly lose the cartridges they use to fill the machines (I think worth somewhere around quarter of a million dollars if they're full of $50s)....(no I'm not suggesting the guards are bodgey, but apparently the cartridges walk VERY quickly if they take their eyes off them even for a second - might be a bit like those weeping angels everyone is talking about....

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    I think you missed all the Doctor Who episodes with Weeping Angels.

    I know I did. Heard there was another doctor after Colin Baker, but never saw any of those episodes.

  • anon (unregistered) in reply to chubertdev

    I'm not your PAL, NTSC.

  • Jonathan Wilson (unregistered)

    Figures that the broken ATM would be one from the Crappywealth (aka Commonwealth). Those guys are probably the worst bank in Australia :)

  • jay (unregistered)

    Years ago I got some money out of an ATM, then perhaps half an hour later decided that I hadn't gotten out enough so I stopped at another ATM to withdraw some more ... and the balance they showed was the balance BEFORE my first withdrawal. Apparently at least one of the ATMs was not on line. Maybe that's why they limited withdrawals to $200. If I could hit every ATM in town and withdraw my entire life savings five times, I might then run off to some tropical island that doesn't have an extradition treaty. But at $200 each, well, so I could get $1000. I wouldn't get very far on that, and then the next day or whatever they'd resync and I wouldn't have gotten away with anything. So there wasn't much potential for a scam.

    More recently when I visited a second ATM in short order, the balance was indeed updated, so they're now either on-line 24/7 or they resync very often.

  • jay (unregistered) in reply to IN-HOUSE-CHAMP
    IN-HOUSE-CHAMP:
    xaade:
    JAPH:
    I thought the angels generally covered their eyes so they wouldn't inadvertently be looking at another angel?

    BTW, the first statue seems to be a likeness of Jesus.

    ... Did you learn that from Oprah?

    The angels that cover their eyes are called Seraphim. They have six wings: two for face, two to fly, and two to cover feet. They cover their face because they are literally where God manifests himself in heaven. Their duty is to worship God. They cover their feet because they are in the most holy place in heaven.

    Cherubs have 4 wings that cover their front and back when at rest, and angle out perpendicularly and at 45 degrees from the line that runs shoulder to shoulder. They have four "faces". In my opinion, it is likely that they have one true face and the rest is just a visual side-effect of the shape of their head. Their forward facing face is able to change at will. They guard God's throne and don't face God but outward so they don't have to cover their face.

    The remaining known type of angel is the Arch-angel. The only describe of an Arch-angel is Michael. He is only ever described as having two wings.

    Remaining angels have appeared as men.

    Other creatures than angels exist in heaven, but the term angel merely means messenger from the original language. So an angel is any creature that God tasks to deliver a message to men.

    Cherub have four wings

    How come you don't make any mention of Gabriel, who's also an Archangel?

    What makes you think Gabriel is an archangel? The Bible never gives him such a title.

    Nor does Dr Who, to the best of my knowledge.

  • L.P.O. (unregistered) in reply to jay
    jay:
    What makes you think Gabriel is an archangel? The Bible never gives him such a title.

    But Wikipedia does, so it must be true.

  • (cs) in reply to dn3s
    dn3s:
    wouldn't the smart thing be for ATMs to locally cache transactions and send them later when the network's back up? or for that matter just not allow transactions to begin with, or place a cap on withdrawals. I guess the problem with caching is you have no idea if they are overdrawing. although I thought newer "chip" cards stored a copy of your balance on the card?

    Sure, but these weren't network outages, they were power outages. These usually only lasted a couple of seconds to a couple of minutes, but apparently that was enough to result in no money actually being withdrawn from my account (in a different country). By it having worked three times I mean three different occasions where the power went out shortly after getting the money and the card back. A cap on withdrawals existed at that time, but I don't remember what it was. There was no point in taking out less money than the limit due to the fees, anyway.

  • Tawnos (unregistered) in reply to quack
    quack:
    TRWTF is the utterly improbable, very tiny non-even-power-of-2 rounding error in the Quicken Loans image, which (according to a QL developer of my acquaintance -- and you can scarcely swing a cat in Detroit's IT scene without hitting one) is absolutely fake.

    Then, if I didn't care to be trolled after a rough week, perhaps Error'd was not the place to visit...

    wv: incassum, n. code intended to support a hypothetical future requirement, esp. where obscured and convoluted

    I assure you, it was a very real ad I got.

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