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ATM Fees - Where do they go?
Ok this is a story from January of this year, but i think about it all of the time. Where does all of the money from ATM transactions go? Think about, you can pay anywhere from zero (Normally your bank) up to $3 or more to take twenty dollars from YOUR checking or savings account. On top of that your bank may charge you more for using a competitors ATM. Story below...
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Consumers who rely on ATMs for quick cash access may find that getting their money actually costs them more as banks raise their ATM fees. The financial institutions, which already generate $10 billion a year in revenue from what they charge people for accessing their accounts from other banks' ATMs, have increased the fees in response to a poorer economy.
One expert said banks are relying on consumers to get them through the weak economic time.
"They're looking for ways to make up for the losses and nickel and diming appears to be the only way they can do it," Consumer Affairs analyst Joseph Enoch said.
Today, the average ATM fee is...
Read the Rest at Link... Ok this is a story from January of this year, but i think about it all of the time. Where does all of the money from ATM transactions ... more -
Coulter: Blame minority housing law for meltdown
Blame for the current economic crisis has been laid on many doorsteps, including the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999; credit default swaps; hedge funds; the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000; Alan Greenspan; and Phil and Wendy Gramm.
But it has fallen to right-wing pundit Ann Coulter to blaze a truly simple path through the maze of credit derivatives, collateralized loan obligations, tranches, securitization transactions, and Thomson Financial League Tables.
This gentle lady spells out the source and origin of the current economic crisis:
"THEY GAVE YOUR MORTGAGE TO A LESS QUALIFIED MINORITY!"
Coulter is putting forward an argument popular (who could be surprised?) among besieged conservatives, that "social engineering" is the root cause of the current economic crisis -- in the form of a 31-year-old law passed during the Carter administration by a Democratic Congress, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, "intended to encourage depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, consistent with safe and sound operations."
In Coulter's words, traditional yardsticks of a mortgage applicant's ability to make payments were replaced with "nontraditional measures of credit-worthiness, such as having a good jump shot or having a missing child named 'Caylee';" the result, Coulter continues, is that "middle-class taxpayers are going to be forced to bail out the Democrats' two most important constituent groups: rich Wall Street bankers and welfare recipients."
To make sure her meaning is clear, Coulter echoes a line from the famous anti-affirmative action "White Hands" commercial Jesse Helms used in his 1990 campaign against black challenger Harvey Gantt. The ad shows a pair of white hands crumpling a job rejection slip as the voiceover intones, "You needed that job, you were the best qualified. But they have to give it to a minority because of a racial quota."
Coulter is in the forefront of a concerted drive to shift...
Read the Rest at link... Blame for the current economic crisis has been laid on many doorsteps, including the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernizati... more -
Never mind social media, how about social hacking?
One of the basic tools of any good hacker has always been the ability to utilize the concept of social engineering as made famous by people like Kevin Mitnick and the Badir Brothers. The idea being -– according to Wikipedia — that “All social engineering techniques are based on specific attributes of human decision-making known as cognitive biases. These biases, sometimes called "bugs in the human hardware," are exploited in various combinations to create criminal attack techniques.”
While this type of ploy has been used to gain access to computer systems for various reasons, it also raises an interesting idea of it being used to get people to willingly do things on the Web that they might not think of doing on their own. Its possible that this is just another form of the mob mentality that we see in things like flash mobs, but isn't this just another form of social hacking?
Long before things like social networks and social media were the hot buzzwords used to spark VC feeding frenzies, Web forums and newsgroups were the main social communication tool. People would scour Web forums to spread news about people or products, good or bad. The overall effect of this type of promotion was usually limited, but it was still possible to get people riled up over something on a much larger scale.
Then along came blogs and the ability to instantly publish or comment about a person or a product. It provided a much easier way to galvanize people into acting, even if only verbally. To this mix now come things like Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, or any number of instant social tools that can broadcast your message instantly around the world to a potentially unlimited number of people. The effect being that within minutes you can galvanize an immense number of people into a single action.
One of the best of the classic online flash mobs can be seen anytime anyone says something negative about Apple products. The moment someone posts something like this, whether on a Web forum or a blog, you can be sure that in very short order the site will be inundated with Apple’s faithful arguing against whatever has been said. This varies from intelligent discussion to hateful things being said about the person who wrote the post.
Bring this forward to today and we see, as Svetlana Gladkova at Profy.com points out in a post, just how easy it could be to cause a major news group to pull down a service because of a social hack.
CNN editors expected to receive opinions from the site’s main target audience (which definitely is not in Russia) but what it received instead were mainly votes from Russia with the first answer getting 92% of votes (or over 329 thousand of people).
How did this happen? Very simple actually. The information about the CNN poll quickly made it to the Russian blogosphere (it is impossible to determine where it all started because of the huge number of posts on the topic) and bloggers started encouraging their readers to go to CNN and vote for the first option. The news was quickly disseminated over an enormous number of the Russian blogs and the results were predictable: 92% supported the official point of view of Russia.
The reality is that even with the simple social media tools that we have today it would be incredibly easy to use them to organize people unknowingly to attack the Web presence of a person or brand. Just as we can see daily on services like Twitter, where people are being directed to charities or new products, this group mentality could potentially be used as in the CNN story to cause damage. Why use things like botnets when you can just as easily obtain the same results by using social media - and it’s legal to boot.
Is it really that large of a step before incidents like the one that happened with CNN become part of the norm? Are we really beyond being used in such a way without even realizing that we have been a part of a social hack attack? Would you even realize it if you had been socially hacked? One of the basic tools of any good hacker has always been the ability to utilize the concept of social engineering as made famous by p... more -
Should we pipe music into the London Underground?
The Victoria line pumps 'masterpieces from the canons of classical music' at its passengers every day, ostensibly to reduce crime and relax irate customers. The Guardian arts blog comments, 'it's the same kind of social engineering that makes Top Shop play dance music at high-volume and high-speed to make you buy faster, quicker, and more; or that lulls you supposedly into an oasis of calm, as Vivaldi's Four Seasons chimes down the phone as you wait to speak to an airline, bank, or credit card company - something that tends to have the opposite effect.' More at the link.
Would you like your public transport to have music pumped into it? And if so, what sort? I think some jazz would go down quite well on the no. 73 to Islington ... The Victoria line pumps 'masterpieces from the canons of classical music' at its passengers every day, ostensibly to reduce ... more -
Social Engineering 101: Mitnick shows how it's done
Kevin Mitnick knows that the weakest link in any security system is the person holding the information.
As a young fugitive hacker, he went to jail for breaking into computer networks, mostly by using his cunning and persuasion than his tech skills. He was an early master of the science of social engineering--manipulating people into doing what you want, such as giving out passwords and other information that unlocks sensitive information on networks.
Mitnick and a panel of other hackers discussed their social engineering pranks and gave live demonstrations at the Live HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) conference late on Saturday. Kevin Mitnick knows that the weakest link in any security system is the person holding the information. ... more -
Work At Jelly
Jelly is Office 2.0. This bi-monthly event attracts young freelancers and web entrepreneurs, who might otherwise work from home, and creates an open, idea driven workspace, which can supplement the social interaction many miss out on working from home. In this pod we will meet a Jelly host that opens their living room for to Jelly and hear from the founder, Amit Gupta via iChat video, to learn more about how young people are working together in creative ways and Jelly is expanding. Jelly is Office 2.0. This bi-monthly event attracts young freelancers and web entrepreneurs, who might otherwise work from home, and ... more
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Propaganda
During WWII, Walt Disney made some propaganda shorts about the war. This Disney Cartoon is about taxes.The cartoon is called "The Spirit of 43".
In this cartoon Donald Duck plays the part of a draft dodger. Instead of fighting for his country he's back home doing his part as a factory worker, a job that millions of women were sufficiently able and lined up to do. Donald gets paid, then the narrator briefly explains the duality of the common factory worker duck. Donald Duck plays both sides for Nazis and Americans. He is in a debate on how to use his payday money. He has two personalities. Save the money for taxes (this side, the cartoon character reminds me of Uncle Scrooge), the other is a zoot-suit wearing Donald. He wanted him to spend his money at a club. During WWII, Walt Disney made some propaganda shorts about the war. This Disney Cartoon is about taxes.The cartoon is called "The... more -
Is your family any better than mine? Gender, Class, Ethnicity & Family Inequal...
The complex diversity of human ethnicity is a testament to human adaptability and resilience. Our libraries and schools are now filled with volumes written about unique and independent social systems that have coexisted for millennia throughout the planet. There are countless examples to choose from that run the gamut of human kin group possibilities?some egalitarian, some totalitarian. There is not one set standard, from an anthropological or sociological point of view that is constant with regard to marriage, or what constitutes a kin group. There are many complex individual psychological processes at work that cause people to bond and form into groups and the most commonly recognized and studied unit is the family. However, for many people at different times in human history, family has meant different things. What most anthropologists and sociologists do agree on is that in every society each individual has a role to play in the social construction of reality. However the situation that the public at large deals with on a daily basis is how to clearly identify individual roles and how to mediate conflicts arising from everyone?s individual pursuit of happiness; where these conflicts are most evident are in the arenas of gender, class, and ethnicity.
Quote from essay by Jon Jaramillo aka Jubal The complex diversity of human ethnicity is a testament to human adaptability and resilience. Our libraries and schools are now filled... more
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Social Engineering
