Credit Card Fraud explodes -- Yawn.

Yawn.

Identity Theft Victimizes Millions, Costs Billions

...About 3.3 million American consumers discovered within the last year that their personal information had been used to open fraudulent bank, credit card or utility accounts, or to commit other crimes, according to the Federal Trade Commission's first national survey on identity theft...

In 1998 I was among the victims of the NetFill scam; at the time it was among the biggest credit card scams in history. The perpetrators, some of whom have continued in the same business set up a bank. Turns out that's easy to do. As a bank they then bought credit card numbers and identify information. Turns out that's easy to do too. Then they ran small transactions on a routine basis, switching vendor names every few months. They raked in millions. Cases are hard to pursue and penalties are modest. The FTC has lots of smart people, but they're fighing a losing battle.

Sadly, the banks have known about the problems behind credit card authentication for about 20 years. Any fix they can come up with tends to lower transaction volume and increase transaction costs -- so it's more cost effective to ignore the problem. If customers notice the banks reimburse them -- though some banks are pretty rude about it. If they don't notice, there's no problem.

Hey, VISA/MasterCharge and their franchisee banks have to make money! Any bank that really pushed for a better system would lose business and have to abandon the credit card market.

Then there's the small detail of using Social Security Numbers as a global personal identifier. SSNs are on insurance cards and in just about every database you can imagine. We might as well tatoo them on our foreheads.

So what's a poor fool to do?

1. Lobby congress -- this needs legislation, voluntary fixes have failed for a generation. Of course banks make large donations to reelection campaigns. Maybe vote Democrat?
2. Use American Express -- they do take security more seriously.
3. Don't carry checks -- they're really bad news.
4. Convince the credit reporting agencies to put a "fraud watch" marker in your file -- makes it harder to create a fraudulent account.

Update 9/24/09: Nothing has changed six years later, but this time AMEX is a victim of massive internal fraud.

Occult software parasitizes Microsoft Windows PCs

NYT 9/4: Heart of Darkness, on a Desktop: "More and more [Windows] PC owners are discovering software lurking on their computers that they had no idea was there - software that can snoop, destroy or simply reproduce itself in droves."

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This is pretty much a Wintel problem; though I think there is some spyware for Linux the problem is much smaller. This is not a Mac OS problem.

As usual, buy a Mac.

Overall this is a fairly poor article. There are a number of programs that check for unexpected communication activity, the author should at least have mentioned them. The phenomena is interesting, however, because of inevitable analogy to ecosystems. This software is parasitizing the ecosystem of home computers. A form of natural selection is in action, with mutation arising from human intervention.

It's very, very, hard to avoid such spyware. I almost got caught on a Win2K box when downloading an update to the PalmOS from Palm Inc. If Palm is covertly installing spyware-like software, then Window users are truly doomed.

In our home we're moving to Macs for client and server machines, a non-connected (no network connection, no Internet connection, no floppy drive) Windows 98 machine for children's games and software, and a single WinXP workstation that is sealed to the max and accessed only by our most paranoid user -- me.

House to remove funding for walking and bicycle paths

Editorial: Healthier design / House should fund walking, biking

It's especially worrisome, then, that the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives proposes today to strip from the transportation appropriations bill all funding for pedestrian walkways and bicycle paths, and to severely curtail transit spending while adding more money for roads.

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Sigh. Compared to everything else the House does I suppose this is a minor detail.

I've long suspected that few Republicans ride bicycles, but I haven't seen any real data. Bicycling just feels like an un-Republican pursuit; a tax on gasoline that funds bicycle paths must be quite annoying to the neoCons.

Beyond a job-loss recovery -- a job-loss future?

Economics 101b: Fall 2003: The Erosion of Okun's Law: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal

... The fact that falling hours have been accompanied by rapidly-rising productivity is what has given us not a jobless recovery but a massive job-loss recovery. The normal pattern we would expect from the past two years' output growth would be that employment and hours would have been nearly flat. Why the different pattern this time? We think that it is because firms are no longer "hoarding labor" when times are slack because the industries losing jobs no longer expect employment to bounce back.

This means that we no longer have any confidence that we understand the cyclical pattern of productivity growth--which means that we have little ability to translate the (high) productivity growth numbers we see into information about what the underlying long-run trend growth rate of the economy is. ...

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This is part of a lengthy DeLong post; it looks like he did it for one of his undergraduate econ classes.

Economists are puzzled by why employment continues to fall even as both GDP and productivity rise. The concern is that something is different about our economy now; perhaps job losses reflect a permanent change in employment structures. For example (my example, not DeLong's), no further American manufacturing and a very much smaller American IT industry; accompanied by a burgeoning market for butlers, chefs, nannies, personal physicians, retained attorneys, personal pilots, etc to serve the new ultra-rich.

That would be fine, if people could switch from mechanical enginnering to pastry preparation with ease and comfort.

Look for socialism to make a comeback, probably with a different label. Bush is already setting up a special post concerned with the decline of American manufacturing ...

Rumsfeld may be on the way out?

Powell and Joint Chiefs Nudged Bush Toward U.N. (washingtonpost.com)

People close to the administration said the Joint Chiefs and Powell (a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs) did not win a bureaucratic battle as much as Rumsfeld lost one. 'Rumsfeld lost credibility with the White House because he screwed up the postwar planning,' said William Kristol, a conservative publisher with close ties to the administration. 'For five months they let Rumsfeld have his way, and for five months Rumsfeld said everything's fine. He wanted to do the postwar with fewer troops than a lot of people advised, and it turned out to be a mistake.'

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The long knives are out. Rumsfeld may not make it to an honorable exit at the end of the Bush first term. I suspect Bush will dump Cheney, Ashcraft and Rumsfeld -- they've taken so much incoming fire they're all used up ...

The Radical President

INTEL DUMP: The post-modern presidency of George W. Bush

I remember Bush's campaign rhetoric seemed pretty radical to me; it was the US media that insisted on portraying him as moderate. Josh Marshall captures something very important about the way Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the other neocons think (emphasis mine):

Almost all of Bush's deceptions have been deployed when he has tried to pass off his preexisting agenda items as solutions to particular problems with which, for the most part, they have no real connection. That's when the unverifiable assertion comes in handy. Many of the administration's policy arguments have amounted to predictions--tax cuts will promote job growth, Saddam is close to having nukes, Iraq can be occupied with a minimum of U.S. manpower--that most experts believed to be wrong, but which couldn't be definitely disproven until events played out in the future. In the midst of getting those policies passed, the administration's main obstacle has been the experts themselves--the economists who didn't trust the budget projections, the generals who didn't buy the troop estimates, intelligence analysts who questioned the existence of an active nuclear weapons program in Iraq. That has created a strong incentive to delegitimize the experts--a task that comes particularly easy to the revisionists who drive Bush administration policy. They tend to see experts as guardians of the status quo, who seek to block any and all change, no matter how necessary, and whose views are influenced and corrupted by the agendas and mindsets of their agencies. Like orthodox Marxists who pick apart mainstream economics and anthropology as the creations of 'bourgeois ideology' or Frenchified academic post-modernists who 'deconstruct' knowledge in a similar fashion, revisionist ideologues seek to expose "the facts" as nothing more than the spin of experts blinded by their own unacknowledged biases. The Bush administration's betes noir aren't patriarchy, racism, and homophobia, but establishmentarianism, big-government liberalism, and what they see as pervasive foreign policy namby-pambyism. For them, ignoring the experts and their 'facts' is not only necessary to advance their agenda, but a virtuous effort in the service of a higher cause.

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Bush's central values are values of faith, not of reasoning. He is not stupid (unfortunately), but he is said to be very unimaginative. He believes what he believes, and empiricism is not a part of that. He's post-modern in that "facts" are very fluid things, yet also medieval in his rejection of empiricism. He reminds me of some advocates of alternative medicine; a movement that often rejects conventional methods of proof and disproof.

Experts are very often wrong and people who reject empiricism can be correct. So far, however, Bush has an impressive record of failure -- at least as far as anyone can match his promises to outcomes.

The US Military attacks the Bush administrations handling of Iraq

INTEL DUMP

Read the above for Phil Carter's extracts and commentary. When the US military starts to attack the Bush administration it's time for Rove to start sweating. This may explain the sudden enthusiasm of the Bushies for UN assistance (which will go nowhere, no nation is going to bail the US out of Iraq.)

The Genetics of IQ: Variance among the non-wealthy?

Genes' Sway Over IQ May Vary With Class (washingtonpost.com): ".. a groundbreaking study of the interaction among genes, environment and IQ finds that the influence of genes on intelligence is dependent on class. Genes do explain the vast majority of IQ differences among children in wealthier families, the new work shows. But environmental factors -- not genetic deficits -- explain IQ differences among poor minorities."

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One might guess that genes determine potential IQ, and that environment impacts how well one reaches that potential. Wealthy children function near their potential, but poor children may fall below potential.

A few caveats:

1. Most research suggests that the most important environment is intrauterine. So the journalist is mistaken to think this necessarily strengthens the case for Head Start and other programs. It may strengthen the case for smoking prevention and smoking cessation, for alcohol and substance abstention, for dental care, prenatal vitamins, dietary counseling, etc.

2. The study methodology sounds pretty tortured. This study really only suggest the need for directed research.

3. Rich people are smarter than the rest of us (on average). So they might be seeing an effect that says that high range IQ is highly gene determined, but mid-range IQ is less gene determined.

A NYT summary of the state of string theory -- explaining the universe

One Cosmic Question, Too Many Answers

In a series of conceptual and technical breakthroughs, a group of theorists at Stanford showed this year that string theory could describe a universe whose expansion was accelerating -- something that many experts thought impossible.... The new calculations suggest that this dark energy cannot last forever, that it will disappear sometime in the far future, according to the researchers ...

...When the variations are taken into account, the number of solutions and the number of possible universes can easily exceed 10^100.

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1. In an infinitely expanding universe immortality is theoretically impossible. OTOH if the dark energy is exhaustible, that might allow a way out -- for something :-)!

2. 10^100 universes is roughly a billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion universes, and that's a minimum. Some of these are thought be potentially infinite in scope.

I love this stuff. It's so bizarre. It's numbers like these that make it mathematically conceivable that you have a twin somewhere in the megaverse.

Microsoft's next step: DRM for Word

New Office locks down documents | CNET News.com: "Office 2003, the upcoming update of the company's market-dominating productivity package, for the first time will include tools for restricting access to documents created with the software. Office workers can specify who can read or alter a spreadsheet, block it from copying or printing, and set an expiration date."

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No surprises here, this has inevitable for years. Once one takes this step leased software is a small next step. This has huge "face appeal" for corporate customers. There are so many, many interesting implications of this technology.

If you don't like it, buy a Mac.

BBC NEWS: Asteroid danger in 2014 downplayed. (Inappropriately?)

BBC NEWS | UK | Asteroid danger in 2014 downplayed

... there is a one in 909,000 chance of asteroid 2003 QQ47 impacting our planet...The rock is said to measure approximately 1.2 kilometres (less than a mile) across - only one tenth of the size of the impactor thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago... "In theory such an asteroid could cause devastation across an entire continent," Christine McGourty says.

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This is not necessarily a sterilizing event, but wiping out a continent would pretty much end our civilization.

So there's a 1 in one million probability of losing our civilization from this one rock. There are, however, many more of them. Based on what we've seen in the past few years, and applying some very rough and ready stats, the odds of a civilization ending impact in the next 100 years is probably on the order of 1/100,000.

The Economist had a good discussion on this statistic several years ago. Based on what we spend on prevention of typical risks (pesticide management, food poisoning, head injury, airplane crashes) we should be spending several billion dollars a year to develop a strategy to monitor asteroids and develop an avoidance strategy.

Human brains don't work well with managing this kind of risk though ...

iPod foam earbud covers

Apple - Discussions - Replacement foam earbud covers

It took weeks of moderately persistent research to find this data, but now that it's known it will be everywhere :-).

iPod replacement foam earbud covers: Radio Shack part # 33-376

Here's the RadioShack page for ordering the replacement earpads (http://tinyurl.com/m0qu). A set of 4 is $2.00. I think they're a bit cheaper at some retail outlets.

http://headwize2.powerpill.org/faqs.htm covers getting replacement foam covers for other earsets.

[meta: earpad, earset, earphone, earbud, in-ear, headset, micro, iPod, earphone, foam pad, foam cover, jfaughnan, jgfaughnan]

Jimmy Carter on a US North Korean war (USA Today 9/1/03)

Jimmy Carter:U.S. - North Korea war seems 'strong possibility'

North Korea is an isolated country, poverty stricken, paranoid, apparently self-sacrificial and amazingly persistent in international confrontations, as is now being demonstrated. It is a cultural and almost sacred commitment for its leaders not to back down, even in the face of international condemnation and the most severe political and economic pressure.

... As the [1994] crisis escalated, The Carter Center was finally given reluctant permission from President Clinton for me to visit Pyongyang. A satisfactory agreement was concluded and later confirmed by both governments, with participation by South Korea, Japan and others. But neither side honored all the commitments...

... There are other issues, but the basic North Korean demand is a firm non-aggression commitment from the United States, which U.S. officials continue to reject. The U.S. insists first on a complete end to the North Koreans' nuclear program, which they have refused to accept. If neither side will yield or compromise, then an eventual military confrontation seems likely. The United States can prevail, but with terrible human casualties in both North and South Korea.

There must be verifiable assurances that prevent North Korea from becoming a threatening nuclear power, with a firm commitment that the U.S. will not attack a peaceful North Korea...

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I'd forgotten that Carter negotiated the 1994 accord; it rarely gets mentioned in the US media. Even the Bush administration, when they used to criticize that deal, omitted Carter's name. (They've stopped criticizing it.)

The Bush administration, as has been routine for them, has been incompetent in their management of North Korea. They seem to have a fundamental problem with seeing the world as others see it.

That said, even for a competent administration, North Korea would have been a hard problem to tackle. Now, with the failures of the Bush policies, it's much harder.

I can fully understand why NK wants a nuclear weapon; even before the crazed rhetoric of the neocons they knew the proven value of a nuclear deterrent. So even if they didn't have a very weird culture and a near-insane leader they'd want a nuclear weapon. What Carter doesn't address is that they also want to sell nuclear weapons; that would solve their cash flow needs.

Given their incentives to possess nuclear weapons, and their desire to sell them, I do have a hard time understanding why they'd give all that up. A promise not too invade can't be worth all that much. For one thing they'd never trust the US (who would?), for another that doesn't address their fundamental problem. They need much more than we can give them.

China is the key to North Korea, and China's export market is the key to China. It's time to offer China a deal -- either you deal with North Korea, or we withdraw from the WTO and put tariffs on Chinese goods. Sure, that would cause our economy to crater, but China would do down with us. As ugly as a world recession would be, it beats nuclear war on the Korean penninsula -- not to mention a nuclear strike on a US port. On the other hand, if China cooperates, we keep the spigots running, and spend our resources (aid, unemployment extensions, tax cuts, education credits, etc.) helping the US manufacturing sector fade gently into the night.

In need of adult supervision -- so what are the ultra-rich doing?

Home Alone - Bob Herbert

We are at a stage now where mature, responsible leadership is more essential than ever. All of the problems that we have ignored until now remain with us. But the money that might have started us on the road to solutions is gone. We are mired in Iraq, and not properly prepared at home.

We could use some adult supervision.

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The "Adult Supervision" phrase is often used to refer to the current administration -- it was also used by the Bush campaign to refer to the needs of the Clinton administration. So, there's an ironic touch.

Irony aside, where would this adult supervision come from? I wonder what the ultra-rich are up to, people like Gates and company. Their are a lot of dumb moderately rich people, but Gates, Buffet et al are not dumb. They worry about where things are going, and they're unlikely to vent by writing unread blogs. So what are they doing?

Rumsfeld and Condi invent an alternative German history

Condi's Phony History - Sorry, Dr. Rice, postwar Germany was nothing like Iraq.

Rumsfeld and Condi Rice make up stories about post-occupation Germany, trying to make it sound like Iraq. The "werewolf" stories are fanciful. What does this ploy reveal about their mental status? Do they think there's no-one left who can read?

As Daniel Benjamin writes:

So, how did this fanciful version of the American experience in postwar Germany get into the remarks of a Princeton graduate and former trustee of Stanford's Hoover Institute (Rumsfeld) and the former provost of Stanford and co-author of an acclaimed book on German unification (Rice)? Perhaps the British have some intelligence on the matter that still has not been made public. Of course, as the president himself has noted, there is a lot of revisionist history going around.

It is disturbing that both Condi and Rumsfeld seem to have crossed over into the twilight zone.

Maybe their mental state is related to rumors that Rumsfeld will leave after Bush's first term.