Whatever...

A place to share stuff that isn't at all fintec related but is amusing, absurd or scary.

Retired Member 

News is Priceless - Not Owned By Newspapers

There are some big rumblings in the 'media' at the moment, where the 'media' is making the 'news', or as in the case of some newspaper journalists making up the news. The big guns are out for copyright infringement by new media systems, blogs, mash-ups, search engines web video channels etc. Who owns the news, the facts, the ideas? Who owns the co...

06 August 2009

Retired Member 

The Decline and Fall of Newspapers

What is behind high frequency trading? I read an article in a paper. I won't name it since I could be hassled for copyright infringement if I reuse as few as 11 words. Insufficient to link it, let alone make you interested enough to bother reading it. We've read about high frequency, flash trading or whatever you wish to call it and there has been ...

03 August 2009

Retired Member 

Aussie Banks Bow To Overdraw Pressure

NAB has made the first move to remove overdraw fees from personal accounts. Fees as high as $33.00 are charged for overdrawn accounts. In what I think has been tantamount to theft, banks have been charging customers the overdraw fee for attempting to withdraw even $1 more than their balance. High balance enquiry fees especially at ATM's not owned ...

29 July 2009 /retail

Retired Member 

European Court of Justice Has Brain Failure

The EU court has erred, in fact had a complete brain snap. 11 word snippets or quotes are copyright infringement? (that's only 8) Hows this for copyright infringement? Once upon a time in a land far far away there.... Want to make some money? Simply (copy)write a book with every possible combination of words in it and you're on the gravy train to s...

28 July 2009

Keith Appleyard IT Consultant at available for hire

118 800 mobile phone directory may stay offline permanently

I wrote back on 10th June https://www.finextra.com/blogs/fullblog.aspx?blogid=2942 and 13th July about the new UK Mobile Phone Directory https://www.finextra.com/blogs/fullblog.aspx?blogid=3057 Good news for Privacy advocates is that following a wave of negative publicity, after initially saying the service was operating within the rules, the Offic...

28 July 2009 /security /regulation

Retired Member 

iPod Meets Electric Car - Disruptive Technolgy?

I had a thought while I was checking out the electric car offerings and can really see where electric cars might be disruptive to iPod users, perhaps downright dismembering. Maybe the solution is to build iPod sensors into electric vehicles so they can hook into some sort of collision avoidance system. The probability of an iPod wearer stepping in...

27 July 2009

Retired Member 

Internet - Sites, Ads, Ad sites, clickfraud

I am confused. I can't help but wonder what is real, and what actually has a human behind it (in the normal sense, I know some human is behind everything). The internet started out as a sort of twitter thing. Then came websites. Websites were sometimes used to advertise or sell products. Someone got a bright idea to use ads to sell products from ot...

26 July 2009

Retired Member 

Robin Hood Carries A Netbook and No Guilt

One thing that hackers have worked out is that the financial system is all smoke and mirrors running on hot air. It doesn't take much experience at the exploit level to realise that you can just print your own money and someone is going to quietly cover their/your ass, because it's their ass they're covering too. Very much like the government bail-...

26 July 2009 /security

Retired Member 

Have The Geeks Killed The Golden Goose?

Technology has a way of being disruptive. I mentioned some little gadgets from Fusion-io which can turn your desktop screamer into a 2TB 1 Gigi per second screamer. Some of the server arrays out there with optic networking are providing surreal performance and it seems, surreal profits. I notice that I haven't been the only one into the speed machi...

24 July 2009

Elizabeth Lumley Global FinTech Commentator at Girl, Disrupted

Pile it high and sell it very low

Believe me, I went looking for a worthy blog post for today--maybe something on the 'LSE failing to grab the OTC derivatives bull by the exchange-traded horns'--but of course, this little number caught my eye. Bloomberg posted that Lehman Brothers is setting up a retail shop in order to sell all its surplus logo'ed merchandise as part of its effor...

21 July 2009 /regulation