Posts
When I was younger, I used to get mistaken for all sorts of people: Euclid, King Canute (both before and after the Danish conquest), Johnny Appleseed. As the years passed, these cases of mistaken identity grew slim, and the autograph requests and DNA samplings dropped off to a trickle. Just when it seemed that blending in anonymously with the great mass of humanity was in the offing, along comes the amorphous digital fingerprint. Not only is it amorphous, it's also a fingerprint.
The thing of it is -- faking your own demise and starting afresh with a manufactured identity in, say, Australia, is no longer the child's play it once was. This is especially so for famous Australians. The traces are everywhere.
Where's the sin in insurance fraud, anyway? Aren't they, of all people, insured? Or is it like a case of the cobbler's children going about unshod and without cobs? "Well I'll be! We're the world's largest insurer, and yet, we forgot to insure ourselves! Ho Ho! What a snafu! Heads will surely roll over this!"
Life was better when people were smart and machines were the morons, instead of vice versa. Now gadgets are practically sentient beings for whom the concept of secrecy is as alien as is the thought that schmaltz herring is appealing to a six-year old ("Oh pleeeeeeeeeze, Mummy! Extra schmaltz! I'll be good, I promise!"). For instance, attempt to commit a crime with one (a gadget -- not a six-year old) at your peril:
"PROCEED TO THE HIGHLIGHTED ROUTE."
"Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Do you want to get us both killed? I told you to mute, dammit!"
And not only that, you now run the risk of being prosecuted for smashing your phone against a rock for ratting you out. At a minimum, it's witness tampering. Easy.
All the good excuses have left the building. As have the bad excuses. Whatever it is, I'm against it. But I have to own up to it in any event. They don't believe me when I tell them "the payment's in the mail," for, as more than one of them has haughtily pointed out, "the mail no longer exists."
Nor do they buy it when I say "You Jane. I Claudius."
"No you isn't," they say. "According to your profile, you're King Canute. Which is crazy, because you look just like his cousin, Canute Rockne."
"Yeah, I get that a lot."
"Well, King, debit or credit?"
See? They've ruined check-kiting for the rest of us.
The thing of it is -- faking your own demise and starting afresh with a manufactured identity in, say, Australia, is no longer the child's play it once was. This is especially so for famous Australians. The traces are everywhere.
Where's the sin in insurance fraud, anyway? Aren't they, of all people, insured? Or is it like a case of the cobbler's children going about unshod and without cobs? "Well I'll be! We're the world's largest insurer, and yet, we forgot to insure ourselves! Ho Ho! What a snafu! Heads will surely roll over this!"
Life was better when people were smart and machines were the morons, instead of vice versa. Now gadgets are practically sentient beings for whom the concept of secrecy is as alien as is the thought that schmaltz herring is appealing to a six-year old ("Oh pleeeeeeeeeze, Mummy! Extra schmaltz! I'll be good, I promise!"). For instance, attempt to commit a crime with one (a gadget -- not a six-year old) at your peril:
"PROCEED TO THE HIGHLIGHTED ROUTE."
"Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Do you want to get us both killed? I told you to mute, dammit!"
And not only that, you now run the risk of being prosecuted for smashing your phone against a rock for ratting you out. At a minimum, it's witness tampering. Easy.
All the good excuses have left the building. As have the bad excuses. Whatever it is, I'm against it. But I have to own up to it in any event. They don't believe me when I tell them "the payment's in the mail," for, as more than one of them has haughtily pointed out, "the mail no longer exists."
Nor do they buy it when I say "You Jane. I Claudius."
"No you isn't," they say. "According to your profile, you're King Canute. Which is crazy, because you look just like his cousin, Canute Rockne."
"Yeah, I get that a lot."
"Well, King, debit or credit?"
See? They've ruined check-kiting for the rest of us.
No comments:
Post a Comment