Posts by Ferry Boat

Who's that on the phone?

From a quick look at their website they seem a medium sized mid-range broker offering a full range of services. A fairly common operation.

They'll have a large number of clients. Ranging from man-in-street with a few hundred quid to high net worth clients. I'd expect execution-only clients to be asked for ID over the phone, passwords, DOB etc. However, for high net worth individuals who have a personal relationship with a broker this does not make sense. The client will become cross if they are subjected to such checks. Often the best way to ensure someone who you know is on the phone is via voice and personal chat. I know it's for their own good but that's not the way relationships like that work. If you are trusting a broker with a large amount of cash and investments they need to feel that you have a trusting personal relationship with the broker.

The conversation will go like this:

Broker: Good morning, Montmorency Piggington-Smythe speaking.

Client: Monty! Henry Fussington-Duckbilled here, how the devil are you?

MP-S: Good to hear you Henry, Pinkie told me you shot a 21 on old man Lyndley's course last night.

HF-D: Yes yes, doing fine until the last hole, blasted rain came down.

MP-S: And I hear you're off on holiday next week.

HF-D: Yes yes, just a week at the little place in France. Now, I heard on the news about that bank, what about them?

MP-S: Well, I'd see if they drop a little lower, word is the government will bail them out anyway...

...and so on. Now do you think 'Third and seventh digits of your PIN' fits into this?

The risk of fraud in such cases is quite low. The cash will usually be held on account with the broker if there is an instruction to sell. Money transferred out is usually via BACS direct to a bank account. The major risk has got to be the personal identifying information leaking out. To make changes to a client's account then a full range of checks should be carried out and the request for change should be in writing.

Account numbers on letters, backup tapes at home bad bad bad irrespective of the industry. Now if only all sectors where regulated and subject to spot checks.

Oh, and I know nothing about golf so 21 might be good or bad and 'shot' might not be the right verb. Although 'shot' and golfers does have a certain appeal.

My message wasn't delivered

Maybe because the subject was 'Garlic butter'.

McKenzie on the radio

I heard this 42tard on Today this morning. He really is the exact opposite of David Davis and a paid up member of the 'nothing to hide, nothing to fear' party.

@El Reg: please do a little story about the Irish 'No' to the Lisbon treaty, I'd like to type Eurotard.

I believe now

I didn't believe until I saw the comments from God. He seems to know what's the score so I'm convinced. Go God go.

Lil' Devil

There's aliens out there all right. Oh yes, they are coming too. In modified airliners they'll come. Did you know planes have been disappearing from the junk yard in the Arizona desert? Taken and modified by aliens, they were. They'll come soon enough. We'll all be sucked up into the modified planes and dropped into volcanoes. No amount of baggy trousers and madness with guns will save us. They may be amongst us already.

@Chris Miller

You are looking for the Paul Foot award:

http://www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=paul_foot

Although this is a comment piece, it's a good summary of the events.

@amanfromMars

The system and those within the system are not best placed to make the choice. Whoever the system is there to serve should be making the choice.

I am not a number I am a name

The last place I lived in had no house number or postcode. So using my UK card in the UK would have checked no numbers. I suppose I'd have been pretty well protected in that case. Now I just have one number, 7. That would also make me quite safe as a postcode (or at least all the ones I've seen) has at least two numbers.

It truly is a rubbish system though.

Extended oddness

I've had a look at their site. On the UK contact page there is this puzzling line:

C@ll CSC on 0845 602 4204

What in seven shades of madness is 'C@ll'? The closest I can pronounce it is 'cattle'. Has someone re-branded the letter 'a' for them or have I missed a bit of leet?

Gov.UK has something to learn here

Why don't we have a government department that passes names as acceptable or not? They could do it just before logging the child's DNA into the big database. In fact why just allocate the name to the child when it's born then parents wouldn't have to think at all. We could restrict the names to 8 characters maximum length to save on disk space. In fact with the list of acceptable names and a bit of normalisation we could really save on disk space. We'll need to when oil reaches $1,000 a barrel. Oh, yes lots of oil involved in disk drive manufacture, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. What's that? Time for the red pill, ok.

@Bob The Dog

Learjet 85 - Mach 0.82

747-400 - Mach 0.85

So maybe he wasn't all that far off.

Anyway, I ought to stop reading these articles, along with Private Eye, they just make me cross at bureaucracy, the waste of money and in this case life.

Impressed by size

They are quite big aren't they - much bigger than a Cessna 152. I didn't think they were that big. I was thinking 5 metre wingspan sort of thing but the wingspan is 20m.

Errr..... nothing more to add.

Ban cartoons - where will it end?

Anyway, the Australians are way ahead of us. Police just removed two pictures of naked children from an art gallery. Not sexual pictures, just pictures. The artist who took them may be "charged with obscenity".

She Sells Sanctuary

Now all the poor kid has to do is get his DNA off the police database.

delete from dna where citizen not in (select citizen from successfully_prosecuted)

NB. nowhere does it mention that his DNA was taken, I just though I'd help with a handy bit of code.

@MYOFB

<quote>

"Personally, I think we can best serve our country, in the not too distant future, by demanding our country be run by a coalition of the three polictical parties we have . . .

The caveat being . . . "You can squabble between yourselves as much as you want BUT you will be ultimately be responsible and answerable to . . .

US, the 'Common People'!!"

</quote>

How would they be accountable if we can't vote them out? Which is implied in what you say. You are on the right lines though. If you want anything long term done then democracy is not the best form of leadership to achieve it. Maximum term lengths mean the government always has an eye on getting in next time and they'll do anything to achieve that, especially towards the end of the term. Anyway the government is already answerable to the US.

Please help

What's better; Windows or Linux?

@everybody

I know it says that, it _looks_ like they all point down though.

@Peter Smith

I noticed that criminals breathe, maybe you'd better stop.

I'm ok because I run Linux

oh, hang on... A quick google search of comscore and linux seems to indicate they are recruiting software engineers.

apt-get install comscore

It's in the interest of companies that you deal with to know as much about you as they can. That's why this type of thing exists, there is a market for it. It's not in your interest though.

Only in the USA...

Not here of course, well, maybe when dope was only a class C drug. Nobody would dare do anything like that now it's class B.

Cost vs. benefit (in the UK at least)

Pure computerised voting:

Cost - difficult to secure, recounts impossible, no way for voter to be sure vote is counted correctly.

Benefit - you find out the result 5 mins after the poll closes.

Pure paper voting:

Cost - take a while to find out who won, recounts take a while.

Benefit - fairly difficult to massively rig, voter sure of who they voted for, recounts easy if time consuming.

Computerised voting with a bit of paper for the voter and a bit of paper for the counters:

Cost - difficult to secure, voter not entirely sure vote will be counted correctly in electronic count.

Benefit - find out result quickly, recounts possible using paper trail, voter sure who they voted for, paper can be counted to ensure electronic vote tallies.

As elections don't happen very often then paper is fine, if we are really bothered about finding out at 22:05 then we should go for the 3rd option.

Last time I flew a plane

A turn slowed it down (assuming I wanted to maintain altitude).

Errr....

Do you not just flog them on Ebay?

LONG LIVE SHEFFIELD!

Errr... am I on the right forum?

@Kevin Rudd

Is that a Zen Nano Plus second?

You can buy Lesbian olives on our local market

Anyway, lots of effort has gone into this - the lighting angle is even correct. Oh how I wish I had the chance to do this at work.

So, is the smell of burning rubber...

...Virgin Media back-pedalling at high speed?

Note to all: please stop using VM for Virgin Media. I read the comments and wonder why would someone install Phorm on a virtual machine.

Monkey Gone to Heaven

I wonder what percentage of your DNA needs to be human to get into heaven.

Dr MacKellar won't be going there, he's 100% donkey.

Free market and all that

Hummm..... another stab in the face for the free market by Labour. Either they are for it or against it. They should have let the market deal with that there Northern Crock thing too. Anyway, often you have to buy tickets for sports events and concerts months in advance. Who knows what they'll be doing in six months time? I don't even know which pub I'll go to at lunch.

Good old US

At least they are trying to conduct an investigation into the al-Yamamah arms deal. Much better than gov.uk who won't. Now, if the US has a lever to operate on the UK gov to make them co-operate with the investigation then hurrah for the US. At least they can hold our government to account even if we can't.

@Chris Cooper

Is the London one not named after 'Euston Station' by The Oyster Band then?

Can I join the Pete for PM club?

Spot on post. Before the dotcom bubble burst we even had a librarian at our place. We didn't have a library or a need for one, but we had a librarian.

Needless to say he was stamped out when the bad times rolled in.

Serve chilled

There is no substitute for looking out of the windows, keeping an eye on the mirrors, knowing the size of your car and generally being aware of what's going on. This will just make people take more risks like seat belts and better brakes did.

If you wanted to make cars really safe you'd sit the driver in a glass box sticking out of the front of the car.

Choice, my friendly monkey's arse

There should be no choice. Your kid should go to the nearest school. If the problem is that the nearest school is no good then the school needs fixing. All the 'choice' has done is add stress to parents, let poor schools fail, put more traffic on the road and favour the rich. Oh, and make councils spy on families. Fix the first problem and you don't have to deal with the problems from not fixing it.

@anon cow and your "don't"

So we should take action to create British jobs, no matter about morals?

Follow that to its logical conclusion and you'll have us going to war to create jobs. Err.....

Every other country should operate with high morals too, not just us. Err....

How does it smoke?

Just wondering.

Yes

because there weren't that many in the first place.

Please Mr Government give me something new to be afraid of.

What's that Mr Government? I should read the Daily Mail.

Ok then.

Please help

I may be a bit simple but the article in The Guardian has him saying:

"...when the world began to glaciate at the start of the Ice age about 35m years ago, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere stood at about 450ppm."

Then he says:

"If you leave us at 450ppm for long enough it will probably melt all the ice..."

Err... so it was at 450ppm when the ice formed but that same 450ppm is now enough to melt the ice. What is happening?

@Anon Cow and your one time pad thingy

Although you are right and it's a good system, there is no incentive for the banks to do this when they've put the risk onto the customer. Same as the move to chip and pin. Before, they had to verify your signature, now you have to make sure nobody sees your four secret digits. It would take a law to move the risk onto the banks and that won't happen.

iSeries, i5, i?

It's still a 400. Much easier to say.

IBM need to be easy on the i.

Let title='When the world was innocent.'

Please please please let the bit about Notes be true. Please take me back to a time before I knew of its existence.

Total distruction, brimstone, fire, it's like Sodom and Gomorrah

I think my daughter did some of that cosmic-ray pooh-pooh yesterday. I'm sure it could have been detected from space.

A shiny pound coin to anyone who can identify the lyrics in the title.

At least they weren't visited by Canadians

They'd have been clubbed to death instead of just getting flu.

@Chris W

Because inanimal is illegal. At least in this country.

What do they do with the carcasses? It would be a shame to leave them. Do Canadians eat them?