Neil Hopcroft

“This will change the way people drink coffee”

“To be frank, the cold pasteurised lattés on offer today taste like sick, and there’s little reason to suppose a self-heating version will be any more appetizing.”

…can you guess which I’m going to be doing…?

Third rate tobacconist steals PIN data

The reason, apparently, that ‘Chip and PIN’ is important is that it shifts the liability in case of fraud. If you are signing for transactions then it is the bank (or the shop) checking the signature against the card. It is far more difficult to claim fraud in case of entering a PIN, since it must be your fault for disclosing the PIN.

So, a question: Does the oft-quoted 80% fraud reduction in France mean a real fraud reduction or a reduction in the amount /banks/ are liable for?

fantasygoat

“Despite an hours-long search Tuesday night, the bag, containing a fake bomb complete with wires, a detonator and a clock, made it onto an Amsterdam-bound flight”

Its interesting to think about screening in the light of the book I’m reading at the moment – Reckoning with Risk, Learning to live with Uncertainty. The book describes the problems with screening programs, and how the communication of probabilities can be made such that the risks involved in such programs can be understood by those deciding to participate.

Firstly there is an interesting statistic that none of the physicians questioned take part in screening programs, while they encourage their patients to participate. Then there is also significant evidence that the screening programs for both breast cancer and prostate cancer cause as many deaths as lives they save, giving them a net-benefit in terms of life expectancy of zero.

Now, applying the logic from the book onto a screening program for bombs on planes – what do we have? You can easily split probabilities down into four sections, true negatives, false negatives, false positives and true positives. Running any kind of screening process forces some kind of a balance between false positives and false negatives. In general (and certainly in this case) false negatives are considerably more costly than false positives, so the results will err toward saying ‘its a bomb’ when its not, rather than toward saying ‘its not a bomb’ when it is.

The interesting bit comes when you look at the actual number of bombs (true positives) compared to the number of false positives….I’m guessing that any airport is unlikely to find more than, say, one real bomb per week. Out of a passenger roll of, say 400 people per plane on 100 planes per day in 7 days (say 250,000 pieces of luggage). So if the false positive rate is, say, 1 in 1000 they’ll be looking at 251 pieces of luggage, of which 1 contains a real bomb.

What is the cost of this kind of investigation? What is the benefit? Of course, if the screening program were not ‘guaranteed’ to create false negatives it would be a lot easier to actually get bombs onto planes, so there would likely be more of them (or would there? is there a political solution to this kind of problem?)

“I can see cell-phone vibrators opening the doors for people who are otherwise embarrassed about sex toys.”

…I wonder how you get to be on the team writing device drivers for them? …brings a whole new meaning to ‘having a deep personal raport with the testing team’.

“According to research by card provider Visa, 20% of people are not using their pin because they haven’t memorised it.”

I already have a head full of numbers, there isn’t space for any more. Someone helpfully pointed out that it was just four digits, but what they hadn’t realised was that I’ve already remembered something in the region of 60 four-digit PINs (and their associated systems, a vital part of the mapping), any more and that will jeopodise those already in storage. Its OK, I’ll start using cash again, until that makes me a complete non-citizen.

Today I’m officially freaked out. I received a communication from an ex of mine after my posting about the Army gig last night. The reason I’m freaked out is that we’ve not really communicated for nearly 8 years and we didn’t exactly part on good terms at the time. However, I think I’ve changed a little in those years, and I’m prepared to believe she has too. So, should I be worried that shes getting back in touch? Or happy? Or do I just ignore her and hope she’ll go away?

http://pimpcentral.org/classifieds.htm

“London, England – The one place in the world with too damn many hoes. Don’t come here unless you got cash, got it?”
“Taylor the Tailor makes custom boa’s just for pimps. Fur, velvet and muppet skin. 4th and Broadway.”

Its the first time I’ve seen New Model Army.

There, I’ve said it.

No, its true, I’ve never seen them before. I saw Justin Sullivan in Oxford a couple of years ago. Well, I would have done if I’d turned up in time, I got there for the last half of his set (what kind of headliner starts at 8pm?)

More freaky was meeting my accountant at the gig. Thats wrong on so many levels. Still, I did catch up with minusbat and godgirl, and some of their friends (whose names I almost instantly forgot), and pondered the possibility of the nurburg ring run, but I fear I’ll need to upgrade the Laguna to take on the Z, the Jag and the GTi, its no match for that lot. Maybe a couple of cruise lights would do the job…

The audience seems to have diverged into two distinct groups, the baldy guys with beerguts and the weird-hairs. The former group have cultivated a mechanism of getting through crowds which involves sending their gut ahead to clear the way before they pass through. Often they hold their pints above the extent of their guy (if they can reach that far) pouring beer on anyone who isn’t thoroughly repulsed by their sweaty fat pushing its way through.

The latter are still angry with the world, a kind of undirected rebellion. But they’ve all now grown up and bought sports cars. I suppose I’m spiritually part of this latter group, but without the horsepower.

As for the gig itself, they played for longer than most of the bands I see, well over an hour, but then I guess they’ve got quite a back catalogue these days – they didn’t seem afraid of playing things from all eras, so I knew a good chunk of the songs. Somehow the sound was too clean, closing my eyes, suddenly I was back home listening to the album, but with a slightly different mix and smokey air. Perhaps it was just too quiet, or maybe because I was by the sounddesk (always a good place if you want to listen). Something about the show seemed tired, I don’t think it was the band, they’ve been doing this for years and are likely to go on for a good many more, perhaps the audience are such old hands these days that they’re almost a part of the show.

Then the queue to get out of the carpark afterwards was evilness, the venue kick everyone out together, so clearly everyone goes to their cars to go home together (to their cars together, rather than home together, oh you know what I mean), so theres one hell of a queue to get out, and it takes so long that your 15 minutes grace after paying for your ticket exprires until the guys running the place are so annoyed having to check everyones ticket they just open the barriers anyway. And its not like all of the venues in the area close at the same time or anything…theres got to be a better way (which doesn’t involve moving to a small island and never seeing anyone ever again)