The wonderful world of Rik ‘Ranting’ Harris

Come on Lewis.. you can do it fella.. just keep your cool, forget this ‘i must win the race’ lark - you need 5th or better to win the world championship. 1st on the final race would be icing on the cake, but please, PLEASE do not risk everything just for the numbers game! - Lewis deserves to win, he was robbed last year (partly through his own lack of experience and maturaty) and he has had more than his share of bad luck (and BAD decisions from the FIA). I cant wait for the race, its gonna be a hum-dinger!

Oh and in other news i’m wearing underware this weekend.. for the first time in 5 years…! it feels weird but i think i can get used to it again.

^{London tonight - Catching the card fraudsters - Aired 20.00, 27th October 2008 on ITV1}

Morland Sanders investigates the credit card fraudsters, and straight away you learn that he isnt no Roger cook, rather a limp wristed, hairspray coated wannabe. On reflection he would have been better suited to some sing-along childrens program - i wonder if CITV are hiring?

Back to the plot. It seems that in 2007 plastic card fraud alone cost £535m, an increase of more than £100m over 2006 (figures published by APACS, the UK Payment Industry) and, apart from sending spongebob square head to give him a damn good talking to, what are we doing to help combat ‘card not present’ fraud?

Ive compiled a list..

• The government has allocated £29 million to be spent through 2010 putting into place the recommendations made in a cross-government fraud review conducted by the attorney general.
• A new fraud strategic authority will lead the battle to fight fraud in the UK, and a new fraud reporting centre will improve police intelligence about fraudsters targeting this country.
• A national lead force for fraud will enhance police work on fraud cases.
• The Home Office and the Corporation of London are each contributing additional resources towards the cost of an expanded City of London Police fraud squad and are both contributing just over £1.12m in 2007/08. This money helps the City of London Police expand its fraud squad so that it can better take on organised crime, and take a leading role in the investigation of fraud in London and the south east.
• Setting up a Dedicated cheque and plastic crime unit (DCPCU) This specialist police unit that we helped establish, aims to reduce organised card and cheque fraud using intelligence provided by the card industry, which funds it.

Thats great, and i know im no fraud expert, but im willing to offer my advice free of charge. How about..

• ONLY SHIPPING TO THE CARDHOLDERS ADDRESS??! - making this one change would stamp out 95% of all card not present fraud, sure it would be a little inconvenient for some, but a small price to pay.
• Texting the registered card holder the transaction so they have to reply to authorise it
• replacing chip and pin with thumb print readers - having the print stored on a central server rather than the card.
• embedding the card holders photo onto the credit card.

I know that the last two points would be expensive to roll out, but with the fraud costing £500 million a year and rising, im sure they wouldn’t have to wait long for the return on investment.

There seems to be a trend in the UK of putting all our resources into ‘catching the crooks’, instead of preventing the crime in the first place. - Its the CCTV, Speed camera mentality… clearly we are not bothered about the crime actually happening, but reactively catching the crooks (or not) after the event. SURELY its better to take away the ability to commit the crime in the first place?!

Just seems common sense to me..

 

Dont you just hate it when something big happens, and with all the power of the internet at your fingertips you have come to expect to know the answers to what happened to be right there waiting for you, and its not.

This happened to me today.. well not just me, i estimate around 120,000 people. At just after 3pm the internet in the office went down and refused to reconnect. The line was stable, but just no internet at the end of it. Shortly after getting annoyed we get a call from someone else in a different area also finding themself without the world wide web.

We investigate further and find that a whole heap of area codes are experiencing issues with their net links. (See below)

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_{Oxfam has made an urgent appeal for more aid to help millions of Ethiopians on the brink of starvation.}

Hang on – haven’t we been here before 1984, 1989 and 2004 as I recall…. Band Aid I, II and 20 (what happened 3-19?!) the orginal band aid helped raise an obscene amount of cash thanks the exploits of that scruffy Geldoff bloke.

I thought I would do some research and find out actually how much was raised… I remember hearing figures of £10million back in the day although now it seems all financial data has disappeared. Weird eh?I cant believe that they have spunked the countless millions that have been raised and donated over the years – there has to be another reason why they are back to where they started 25 years ago.

There is, and it’s the population issue. Because the selfish f**kers cant see past their genitals they just keep pumping out Aids infected malnourished offspring like its some kind of ‘repopulate the earth’ drive. Why, oh WHY, if you cant afford to feed yourself would you keep having children? How could you knowingly bring a child into this kind of environment?

The other reason for the population explosion is better medical provision than before with immunisation programmes (for killer diseases like polio), better birthing facilities, more widely available medicines and medical expertise. – Thanks to our original charity payout they are living longer but still dropping kids like starbucks waste water.

So, to recap.. We give them a bucket load of cash, help, and volunteers for 25 years and they repay us by doing NOTHING to help themselves. And now we need to help them again? – No. unless some kind of birth control can be introduced they will just continue to suck on financial resources like a crack head on benefits. 
We have enough problems of our own at the moment without worrying about a country that cant be bothered to help itself.

Have you added yourself to any networks on facebook? - maybe your home town or the company you work for?. Did you know that anyone else in those networks can view your complete profile by default? Yes.. not just your friends but ANYONE in the same network.

If like me, you have LONDON as a network - think of the amount of people that now have access to your account without your approval. I suggest you click on the following link http://www.new.facebook.com/privacy/?view=profile and update the piss poor default security settings so that only FRIENDS can view your profile.

I can only just deal with Xfactor at the best of times but its just too much lately. Its the interviews or rather the ‘fillers’ where the contestants explain how much they ‘want it’.

‘This is the most important thing in my life..’

‘It means the world to me..’

‘All i want to do is sing, thats all ive ever wanted to do..’

‘im gonna win this for my dead aunt/nan/dad/mum/sister….’

times the above quotes by 700 per episode, chuck in some painfully long pauses while the mentor dicks with their emotions in front of the camera and you’ve pretty much got Xfactor.

oh there is some singing occasionally too.

Well ive had windows vista now for a whole 2 days and i must say i have mixed feelings about it. For one - i dont like how ‘pretty’ it is now, i think microsoft are trying too hard to copy the wonderfullness of the Mac. Dont get me wrong im all for progress but i prefer behind the scenes progress, smoother, quicker more secure and more ‘user friendly’.

I dont know how Apple manage it but with only a few buttons / controls they seem to have mastered the human interface, i mean, could you imagine trying to use a windows machine with just ONE mouse button?!

At the moment i want XP back, maybe its just because i dont like change but i cant help noticing how much more of an effort everything is to get to - endless reams of options before you get to the setting you actually want. Add and remove programs in XP control panel was nice and easy, Vista calls it ‘Modify programs’ - how can uninstalling something be modifying?! - its just confusing.

Also, i think the added security features on Vista are a waste of time, asking the end user if its ok for a program to change something is just stupid as it just means there are more clicks to rush through saying YES from the ignorant user, and the same from a user who knows what he/she is doing. Why cant i disable this? - if i can, where is the damn option?

Its been proved time over that its the ignorance and/or stupidity of the end user that causes most bad stuff to happen. I see it everyday, people get an email, ‘oh whats this?’ (double click) ‘ooh here is the pictures attached..’ ooh, what pictures… (double click) *INFECTED*

Maybe Microshaft should spend some money on making a ‘guide to not being completely stupid’ for less seasoned users and less money on trying to rip off Apples GUI.

Just a serving suggestion you understand…

The weekend was upon us, the sun was shining, the petrol tank was full of Shells finest v-power, the car had been cleaned – we couldn’t just waste this collection of unique events. We decided to take a drive to Ely in Cambridge which is where Janet’s sister lives. We planned to leave at 12 but like the bakers dozen, our leaving at 12 means 1 – always an hour difference between the planned and actual times of departure.

Tommy the Type-R has so far only been used for shortish journeys (20 miles or less) and id never taken it on a motorway so today would be a good test of how the car behaves on a long journey. When I had mentioned that the type-R was my next choice of transport I had a wave of people warning me about the harsh ride, loud engine and poor fuel economy on long journeys and I am pleased to announce that they got 2 out of the 3 wrong.

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If ever you wanted living, breathing proof that Karma exists.. Look at whats been happening to Jade Goody lately. It fucks me off no end that the stupid pig faced whore is now making the papers every other day with her tear stained, punched in the face look and ‘winning’ the hearts of the British public again.

She first ‘found out’ she had the big C whilst in the big brother house in India. Yehhhh Righhttt… PR stunt anyone?

If you know me, and know whats happened in my life you will know that i dont muck around with anything todo with Cancer, its a serious subject, one that has ripped MY family apart as well as others.

But the way this woman (and her PR team) are dealing with this makes me funking SICK