Airport security

February 9, 2005

Andy Bowers of Slate has an article about the problems related to the ease by which someone could get on an aircraft without having their true identity checked. He suggests the problem is simple to fix. I'm not so sure. As Bowers notes in the articles there are plenty of tech savvy, intelligent people out there who might like to do harm. They can easily, as Bowers did, modify a boarding pass in a few minutes. They could, however do much the same thing with a traditional boarding pass, not just the home printed one, or with slightly more effort produce counterfeit government documents. Anyone who has been around a college for long knows that the ability to get one's hands on fake id's is not limited to international spy-masters. Changing the homespun printing of boarding passes will, for a time, possibly make travelers believe they are more secure. It is all really mostly illusion anyway. The name-based no-fly-list is based on a fallacy itself that a terrorist would use their name or noms de plume to purchase tickets in the first place.

Doing it right

February 8, 2005

The meatball sub at Rebel Subs was quite tasty. Ad added benefit was that it was "free", being the 9th such lunch at their shop. So I handed over the full customer card which had the eight punches for half sandwiches and and one for a whole sandwich. Instead of burning the extra punch, and without being asked, the proprietor took a new card, transfered the unused punch to it and sent me on my way. Customer service the way it should be.

Super Bowl

February 7, 2005

As has been noted elsewhere, yesterday's Super Bowl had by far the best halftime show. There is some irony that a year ago CBS was exposed to one of the worst ever FOX, which is much more likely in general to have some questionable programming, has the best ever.

On the other hand, perhaps scared away by the titillating half time show last year the advertisers were anemic at best. Ford's Mustang Convertable and FedEx's Ten things required in ads weren't bad, not great either, CareerBuilder.com's ad(s) might have been better if it was one instead of a repetitious series that was old by the second version of the ad. And what is it with the Olympus creative team, I mean photo-copy team, whose ads are amongst the most blatant wanna-be-rip-off ads. Great way to launch a new product.

Life so serious

February 4, 2005

To fully understand the world and be a person who can help to add understanding to the society we live in, it is imperative that people remember how to have fun. It is only in the balance of hard work, scholarship and remembering to take the lighter moments in life that we can make our maximum impact on the world.

A new low

February 3, 2005

The first season of The Apprentice was pretty good. The second not so bad. The third is rapidly becoming a bad melodrama. Now comes word that in addition to casting for The Apprentice 4 and The Apprentice 5, NBC executives are looking for people apply for The Apprentice: Martha Stewart.

What's next The Apprentice Dennis Kozlowski or should we just have The Apprentice Enron Eddition? Does the fact that a business leader doing time in prison for crimes that involve violating the public trust not bother any of the executives at NBC? Maybe somebody should be looking into the finances there, or even at General Electric? If they openly promote dishonesty and encourage financial shenanigans perhaps we should be taking a second look at the financials.

Phishing phun

February 2, 2005

I was just reading one of the oh-so-frequent phishing scams purporting to be from eBay. It reads in part

Per the User Agreement, Section 9, we may immediately issue a warning, temporarily suspend, indefinitely suspend or terminate your membership and refuse to provide our services to you if we believe that your actions may cause financial loss or legal liability for you, our users or us.

And here I thought the whole idea was to buy and sell goods through auctions, including transactions of money, aka a legal liability (assuming the auction was not fraudulent). If only it actually said something so humorous.

February 2005