Cory Doctorow: Bills are useless as proof of identity (Guardian Unlimited)I've been living here since 2003, but I still can't make any sense of Britain's love affair with the utility bill. Of all the romantic fixations, why something as ridiculous as a gas bill? My first peek into this bizarre romance came on my second day in London. I marched into the Citibank on the Strand, sat down with a banker and said: "Here are a year's worth of Citibank US statements from ...
THE TOM FACTOR (New York Post)Merrill Lynch is examining its contract with United Artists as the beleaguered bank looks to revise the deal on more favorable terms, The Post has learned. Merrill's goal is to see if studio parent Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer violated any terms by axing...
Web Fraud 2.0: Validating Your Stolen Goods (Washington Post)If there is any truth to the old saying that there is no honor among thieves then it is doubly true for thieves who transact with one another yet never actually meet face-to-face. Perhaps that explains the popularity of certain services in the underground cyber crime economy that make it easy for crooks to purchase stolen credit and bank accounts in bulk and check whether the accounts are ...
Marsh on Monday: Germany's bad foreign takeover bill (Market Watch)LONDON (MarketWatch) -- At least by comparison with the credit crunch-hit Anglo-Saxons, the German economy may look to the outside world in reasonably good shape - but the Germans themselves are feeling distinctly vulnerable. Government statistics show the economy declined by 0.5 per cent in the second quarter - after a blip of 1.2 per cent growth in the first quarter - but Germany (unlike the ...