This is why I'm not a fan of biometrics. What would have happend if the car used Face Recognition?
"Carjackers nipped off the fingertip of a man to make away with his luxury vehicle whose security system required the owner's fingerprint to start it."
Remember that the Dutch SNS bank announced they would become the first in the world to offer a MSN Payment system? Well, they did not really announce it but the information leaked on Emerce. Oops. A proof of their problem with confidentiality. I expressed my doubts about the system since MSN can hardly be considered secure.
Today they made another, bigger, mistake. This time showing they don't know anything about proper e-mail use and privacy. They send an e-mail to everybody who registered with Buddy to tell them the Buddy system will become active. They send an e-mail and put all the Buddy members in the CC field of the e-mail, exposing thousands of addresses. (screendump by Geenstijl.nl). This is a very clear and direct violation of their own Privacy Policy.
Glad I didn't sign up.
Phishing anybody?
Update: LogicaCMG developed this brilliant Buddy system for NSN.
I HAVE A DAY OFF :)
New Microsoft Longhorn chief is indigestion expert: Mike Sievert
"By placing a bottle of Pepto-Bismol® at the heart of the American home, he single handedly saved many a celebration from turning into a drive-by projectile vomiting incident."
- The Register
I received an interesting e-mail today. A new Home Sweet Home Audio Show coming up?
Dear FreezeM,
My name is S, I'm a producer working for the English service of Radio Netherlands.
I'm putting together a feature about why an increasing number of Dutch people want to emigrate and my research has led me to your weblog. I see that you yourself have emigrated from Holland and seem to have quite strong views about your country and why you left. As such I'd be really interested in interviewing you on the subject (by telephone or ISDN). Would this be possible?
I'd be very grateful if you could let me know whether or not this would be possible.
Many Thanks, & Best Regards
S
Ok, so she thinks we're already living in the US. I wish! I sent her an e-mail back to schedule the interview.
After being mentioned in the New York Times, this is a new milestone :)
Remember this friendly lady with the problem opening a pdf document? Here's how the call log continued...
Two news items that make an interesting combination. The first one is that the Ducth SNS bank will introduce online banking using MSN (buddybanking). The second one: IM malware threat skyrockets (zdnet).
"81 percent of reported incidents included IM virus or worm propagation, of which 10 percent were able to hijack file transfers. Thirteen percent of incidents used known exploits, and 70 percent targeted Microsoft's MSN service."
SNS bank is so proud to be the first bank in the world to offer bancking services over MSN. But why do you think no other bank is doing it? Probably because they know it's not secure and are afraid to implement it. Remember last October, Microsoft forced users of MSN 7 to downgrade because serious security issues.
Who in their right minds will use Buddybankig?
I know! Hackers, but they just won't use their own bankaccount.
Dutch people where asked to give their opinion about Dutch society and rank it with a number between 0 and 100. It turns out that a lot of people are much more negative about it than I am, on average only 36 points :) Yesterday's emigration numbers make sense. People want to get out of here.
DutchReport has the full translated results here.
We are not the only ones that want to emigrate. The bureau of Statistics Netherlands reported emigration is on a record high. Not since 1954 did so many people leave The Netherlands. With one big difference, in the fifties the Dutch government promoted and even financially supported migration out a fear of over-population. This is not the case now. Part of the reason for this increase in migration is the economic situation. But when you look at the countries people are moving to; Belgium/Germany, it’s not much better there. So there must be other reasons why people are leaving.
Finally some real weather in The Netherlands. SNOW!
Between 20 and 30cm of snow has fallen in the past 24 hours in parts of the provinces of Friesland and Drenthe, with meteorology bureau KNMI describing the snowfalls as moderate to heavy.
"This does not happen very often," a KNMI spokesman said.
The snowstorm is forecast to spread across almost the entire country on Wednesday. (Expatica)
Sweety is taking pictures so check out her site later today.
"I tried to find aperson porviding me the MS Project S/W on CD, but could get sombody."
This is a copy, paste form an actual e-mail I received.
