Business Continuity And Payment Systems

The Bank for International Settlements definition of a payment system states; A payment system consists of a set of instruments, banking procedures and, typically, interbank funds transfer systems that ensure the circulation of money (From A glossary of terms used in payments and settlement systems, Committee on Payment & Settlement Systems. BIS, Basel. March 2003).

Despite this we often associate the word system with only the technology; the bits and bites, the hardware and the software. We tend to forget that there is a lot more that goes into making up a payment system.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjdJfeiBuPA[/youtube]

A further problem is the users perspective, and in the case of a bank this is often from that banks own point of view a view that only concerns the bank itself. The outside world is seen as exogenous to the banks system. This is often the view taken when considering such critical issues as disaster recovery and business continuity planning. What is often overlooked is the big picture the users, the clearing system and the settlement agent.

This total picture is something that was very clearly illustrated in the effect that the events of 9/11 had on the payments system in the United States generally, but more specifically in lower Manhattan. The aftermath of the 9/11 events clearly illustrated this – that disaster recovery and business continuity planning had been too focused on single localized events and assumed that all the other system components would remain intact.

The major lessons learned were;

  • Business continuity planning failed to take into account the possibility of wide-area disasters and for the major loss of or inaccessibility of critical staff
    • At many organizations contingency planning had generally concentrated on problems with a single building or system.
    • Some firms maintained their backup facilities in nearby buildings, assuming that an event might debilitate or destroy a single facility.
    • Very few firms planned for an emergency that would disrupt whole business district or city. This led certain firms to loose access to both their main and backup facilities following 9/11 attacks.
    • Generally firms had also not considered the possibility that transportation of staff could be significantly disrupted and that their ability to move personnel to an alternative location would become extremely difficult or impossible.
  • The market and geographical focus intensified the effect of operational disruptions
    • Those financial institutions that were significantly concentrated within the geographic area in New York City were most affected by the devastation at the World Trade Center. This was made worse by the fact that some had consolidated their staff in one or two locations for efficiency purposes.
    • Certain critical market functions, especially in the clearing and settlement of funds, securities, and financial contracts, depend on a small number of specialist organizations each with their own operations in a concentrated area.
    • There were major weaknesses in telecommunications capabilities because of these concentrations. Many firms believed they had full redundancy in their communications systems because they had arrangements with multiple telecommunications providers or because they had contracted for diverse routing, only to discover that all of the communication lines traveled through any of several single points of failure.
  • There was a strong interdependence among financial system participants irrespective of where they were located
    • While financial institutions situated outside the New York City area were affected to a much lesser degree than were those inside it, many felt the effects of the disaster.
    • Most financial factors lost the ability to connect to banks, brokers and other organizations in lower Manhattan. This blocked their ability to conduct business and establish whether transactions had been completed as anticipated.
    • Some customers were affected by actions of institutions with which they did not even do business, when funds or securities could not be delivered due to operational problems at other institutions.
    • The suspension of all commercial flights had serious implications for the clearing of cheques.
    • In the post-9/11 world there is a clear understanding that the financial system has many components, and they all have to work. It is the big picture, not the narrow own view that has to be planned for.

Business continuity planning needs to be made far more robust. Revised plans should include the ability for a rapid resumption of critical operations following the loss or inaccessibility of staff in at least one major operating site; or following a wide-scale, regional disruption. It is vital that all critical internal and external continuity arrangements are effective and compatible.

Seven bushfires near Perth, Western Australia

Sunday, February 4, 2007

Fourteen houses have been destroyed and another 3 damaged by a bush fire burning in Jarrah forests and farmland near the historical timber town of Dwellingup 70km south east of Perth, Western Australia.

The fire has also destroyed approximately 100 power poles, leading to a loss of telecommunication services to the town and affecting water supplies. Mobile generators have been installed for emergency power.

Steve Slavin, spokesman for Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC), said that 250 fire-fighters are containing the fire with crews concentrating on the southern front, which is now within 3 km of the town.

Mr Slavin said “Our concern is that winds this afternoon will be swinging around to the south and increasing in intensity.” “It’s making us nervous. The advice we’re giving to people in Dwellingup is if they’ve decided that they will leave, this would be a good time to do it”

In separate fires near North Yunderup, Greenfields and Parkland have affected transmission lines supplying power to approximately 56,000 properties.

Additional fires are burning near Toodyay 85km north east of Perth, Another fire is burning near Williams approximately 160 south east of Perth and 90Km east of Dwellingup. And in the southern rural suburb of Forrestdale. These fires are reported to be under control.

Western Australian Police Arson squad are investigating these fires as some appear to be deliberately lit. The Police are also investigating the death of a women in her mid 20’s who died on Saturday after her car rolled while fleeing the fire near Toodyay.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Seven_bushfires_near_Perth,_Western_Australia&oldid=2470840”

Wikinews discusses DRM and DMCA with Richard Stallman after GitHub re-enables public access to youtube-dl

This article mentions the Wikimedia Foundation, one of its projects, or people related to it. Wikinews is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

On November 16, code-sharing and hosting service GitHub re-enabled the public access to youtube-dl repository, a software which can download videos from the internet via the command-line. This move comes after Mitchell Stoltz, a Senior Staff Attorney of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), sent a letter to GitHub on the behalf of youtube-dl’s maintainers. The repository was previously blocked on October 23, after GitHub received a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) take-down notice from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

Started in July 2008, youtube-dl is a free/libré open source software written in Python which can download videos from various websites. Citing alleged violation of 17 U.S. Code § 1201 Circumvention of copyright protection systems, RIAA’s takedown notice had alleged youtube-dl was intended to circumvent the technological protection measures of streaming services and to redistribute music videos without authorisation. youtube-dl’s source code had a number of unit tests to check if the software works in different circumstances or not. Some of the test cases included URLs of some copyrighted songs.

In the letter to GitHub, EFF’s attorney Stoltz said “This file contains series of automated tests that verify the functionality of youtube-dl for streaming various types of video. The youtube-dl source code does not, of course, contain copies of these songs or any others […] the unit tests do not cause a permanent download or distribution of the songs they reference; they merely stream a few seconds of each song to verify the operation of youtube-dl. Streaming a small portion of a song in a non-permanent fashion to test the operation of an independently created software program is a fair use.” The letter stressed “youtube-dl does not decrypt video streams that are encrypted with commercial DRM technologies”.

The URLs to copyrighted songs were removed from the source code on November 16, and replaced with a test video that uploaded on YouTube by Philipp Hagemeister, former maintainer of youtube-dl. Philipp Hagemeister had previously spoken about the takedown with Wikinews.

youtube-dl comes with a small JavaScript interpreter where it acts as a web-browser would behave while receiving video data from the server. The script has “extractors” for various websites to handle videos from different sources. “Any software capable of running JavaScript code can derive the URL of the video stream and access the stream, regardless of whether the software has been approved by YouTube”, the letter read. It borrowed an analogy of Doors of Durin from J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings for explanation: travelers come upon a door that has writing in a foreign language. When translated, the writing says “say ‘friend’ and enter.” The travelers say “friend” and the door opens. As with the writing on that door, YouTube presents instructions on accessing video streams to everyone who comes asking for it.

Hours after the public access was restored, Sergey M, one of the maintainers of youtube-dl wrote on GitHub, “We would like to thank @github for standing up for youtube-dl and making it possible to continue development without dropping any features. We appreciate [GitHub] for taking potential legal risks in this regard. We would also like to thank [EFF] and personally [Mitch Stoltz] for invaluable legal help. We would also like to heartily thank our main website hoster Uberspace who is currently being sued in Germany for hosting our essentially business card website and who have already spent thousands of Euros in their legal defense.”

Hours after GitHub restored the public access to the repository, Stoltz tweeted “I think of youtube-dl as a successor to the videocassette recorder. The VCR empowered people to take control of their personal use of free-to-air video, but it had to be saved from the copyright cartel. The same goes for youtube-dl. GitHub did the right thing here.”

youtube-dl is used by thousands of people around the world. Multiple Creative Commons-licensed and public domain videos on Wikimedia Commons are uploaded via a tool called video2commons, which relies on youtube-dl to download media. youtube-dl also lets users download videos from LiveLeak — a video-sharing platform for citizen journalism. Videos downloaded using youtube-dl are also used for the purpose of fair use, or for evidence.

When a copyright holder chooses to release their work, be it a photograph, a video, or audio, under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, they allow everyone to freely own, share or modify the work as long as the reusers properly attribute the author of the work. YouTube also hosts many audio and video recordings in the public domain which can be used for any purpose without any restrictions.

In the blog post announcing “youtube-dl is back”, GitHub said, “Although we did initially take the project down, we understand that just because code can be used to access copyrighted works doesn’t mean it can’t also be used to access works in non-infringing ways. We also understood that this project’s code has many legitimate purposes, including changing playback speeds for accessibility, preserving evidence in the fight for human rights, aiding journalists in fact-checking, and downloading Creative Commons-licensed or public domain videos.”

GitHub also announced any new 1201 takedown notices will be “carefully scrutinised by legal experts” to reject “unwarranted claims”, and said it will side with software developers if the claims are ambiguous. The announcement also mentioned GitHub Trust and Safety team would treat developer’s tickets as a “top priority”. GitHub also pledged donation of USD 1 million for developer defense fund “to help protect open source developers on GitHub from unwarranted DMCA Section 1201 takedown claims”.

GitHub had blocked public access to many forks of youtube-dl upon receiving the DMCA notice in October. At that time, Wikinews noted public access was not yet restored for the forked repositories listed in RIAA’s copyright notice and was still displays “Repository unavailable due to DMCA takedown”.

During the period when GitHub had disabled public access for the repository, Sergey M had been developing youtube-dl and hosting it on GitLab, another code-sharing and hosting site. However, since GitHub has restored public access of youtube-dl, Sergey M has made the GitLab repository private.

After this, Wikinews reached out to Richard Stallman, the founder of Free Software Foundation, who has been highly critical of DRM (digital rights management, the subject of the DMCA) for many years now, to discuss the harms of DRM and DMCA 1201.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Wikinews_discusses_DRM_and_DMCA_with_Richard_Stallman_after_GitHub_re-enables_public_access_to_youtube-dl&oldid=4618870”

Wikinews interviews 2020 Melbourne Lord Mayor Candidate Wayne Tseng

This article mentions the Wikimedia Foundation, one of its projects, or people related to it. Wikinews is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Thursday, October 22, 2020

2020 Melbourne Lord Mayor candidate Wayne Tseng answered some questions about his campaign for the upcoming election from Wikinews. The Lord Mayor election in the Australian city is scheduled to take place this week.

Tseng runs a firm called eTranslate, which helps software developers to make the software available to the users. In the candidate’s questionnaire, Tseng said eTranslate had led to him working with all three tiers of the government. He previously belonged to the Australian Liberal Party, but has left since then, to run for mayorship as an independent candidate.

Tseng is of Chinese descent, having moved to Australia with his parents from Vietnam. Graduated in Brisbane, Tseng received his PhD in Melbourne and has been living in the city, he told Wikinews. Tseng also formed Chinese Precinct Chamber of Commerce, an organisation responsible for many “community bond building initiatives”, the Lord Mayor candidate told Wikinews.

Tseng discussed his plans for leading Melbourne, recovering from COVID-19, and “Democracy 2.0” to ensure concerns of minorities in the city were also heard. Tseng also focused on the importance of the multi-culture aspect and talked about making Melbourne the capital of the aboriginals. Tseng also explained why he thinks Melbourne is poised to be a world city by 2030.

Tseng’s deputy Lord Mayor candidate Gricol Yang is a Commercial Banker and works for ANZ Banking Group.

Currently, Sally Capp is the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, the Victorian capital. Capp was elected as an interim Lord Mayor in mid-2018 after the former Lord Mayor Robert Doyle resigned from his position after sexual assault allegations. Doyle served as the Lord Mayor of Melbourne for almost a decade since 2008.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Wikinews_interviews_2020_Melbourne_Lord_Mayor_Candidate_Wayne_Tseng&oldid=4598699”

Brett Favre One Of The Best Quarterbacks In Nfl History

Submitted by: Rick Grantham

NFL fans could easily tell you a lot of facts when you ask them about the Green Bay Packer s greatest player, their own Brett Favre. Some would even consider him to be the greatest quarter back to ever play the game. He has made countless records for himself such as most career passing touchdowns, most career pass completions, most career pass attempts, and most AP NFL MVP awards.

College Career

Like a lot of great athletes, Favre had a hard time during the start of his career. During college, he was offered a scholarship by Southern Mississippi. They offered him a defensive back position, but he instead insisted on playing quarter back. He finally had his break as a 7th string QB during the 2nd half of the 3rd game of his freshman year. He played with a hangover and even threw up during their warm ups but still managed to give his team a victory by completing two touch-down passes. This would signal the start of a promising career.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LR1M7ThM-tE[/youtube]

Starting his NFL career

After a successful college stint of breaking numerous Southern Mississippi football records, he would then be drafted by the Atlanta Falcons during the 1991 NFL Draft. He was a 2nd round pick (33rd overall) and Atlanta coach Jerry Glanville didn t even want him there (big mistake). During his whole Atlanta career, he was only able to attempt four passes and wasn t able to complete any of them.

After a horrid start, Favre was traded to the Green Bay Packers during the offseason. He would then play 16 seasons with the Packers and this was the time he was able to truly shine. The start of his Green Bay career was quite rocky as well. During his first game, he played the 2nd half of the 2nd game of the 1992 season and they would lose the game 31-3 with a dismal performance by him. It was when their starting quarter back Don Majkowski injured a ligament that Farve started to get his act together. This was during their 3rd game of the season against the Cincinnati Bengals and he would still have a horrible game. They were trailing 23-17 with only 1:07 in the game but just like in the movies, the Packers gained momentum and Favre completed an amazing 42 yard pass from their 8 yard line. He was then able to complete a touchdown pass to win the game with only 13 seconds remaining. A week later, he would start the longest consecutive starts streak ever for a QB. He started the longest winning streak for the Packers since 1965 (6 games) but still they ended short of getting into the playoffs. The next season, he would lead his team to their first playoff appearance in 11 years. He would then win his numerous awards, break records, and lead the Packers to a Super Bowl Championship. He also lead his team to two NFC Championships in 1996 and 1997, seven division championships, and 4 NFC Championship games.

About the Author: Rick Grantham is an avid sports fan. Most of Rick’s articles focus on

pro sports memorabilia

. Many articles are related to

baseball fan gear

and other sports related topics. Rick is a contributing author to BooYah Village

Source:

isnare.com

Permanent Link:

isnare.com/?aid=319025&ca=Sports

Volvo announces all new car models electric or hybrid from 2019

Friday, July 7, 2017

On Wednesday, automobile company Volvo announced all of its cars to be released in 2019 onwards are to use some form of battery-powered engine, leaving conventional petrol-only vehicles altogether. The decision comes after Volvo announced in May their intent to cease production of diesel vehicles.

The chief executive of Volvo Cars, Håkan Samuelsson, said, “People increasingly demand electrified cars”. Volvo aims to release five new electric vehicle models between 2019 and 2021. While little has yet been revealed about them, the company has stated two of them are to be high-performance electric vehicles, branded as Polestars.

Other car models from 2019 may be plug-in hybrid or 48-volt “mild hybrid” systems. Audi and Mercedes-Benz are also releasing mild hybrid cars for the European market.

“This announcement marks the end of the solely combustion engine-powered car. Volvo Cars has stated that it plans to have sold a total of 1m electrified cars by 2025. When we said it we meant it. This is how we are going to do it,” Samuelsson said. Volvo is owned by Chinese automotive giant Geely, and China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has said by 2025 they want new vehicle sales to be 20 percent “new energy vehicles”.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Volvo_announces_all_new_car_models_electric_or_hybrid_from_2019&oldid=4332399”

South Park episodes available free online

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Episodes of the Colorado-based cartoon comedy television series South Park have been made available for free via streaming video on the website SouthParkStudios.com. Full-length episodes from the past 12 seasons of South Park can be seen on the site, as well as behind-the-scenes clips and information on upcoming episodes.

After new episodes of the program air on Comedy Central they will be added to the site for one week, but will then be unavailable for the next 30 days before being added to the site’s archives, due to contractual obligations. SouthParkStudios.com was relaunched with free streaming episodes on March 19, and as of Comedy Central’s announcement Tuesday the site had three million hits, two million video plays and one million full-episode streams. 168 of the series’ 169 episodes are currently available on the site.

The site is currently in a beta format and is ad supported, but visitors can watch an unlimited number of episodes. Streaming episodes are uncensored, and each episode will have between three and four advertisements. The website also has news, games, blogs and a feature where users can create South Park avatar characters in their likeness. Fans can also choose from 3,000 episode clips from the show to embed on their blogs or websites. The website was created by WPP agency Schematic, with Toyota and Virgin as launch sponsors.

SouthParkStudios.com launched this past summer with games and other media content, in a deal between South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker where their contract with Comedy Central was extended for three years and the cable television channel agreed to split online ad revenue 50-50. Matt Stone commented on the three-year contract to produce more episodes of the series: “Three more years of South Park will give us the opportunity to offend that many more people … And since Trey and I are in charge of the digital side of South Park, we can offend people on their cellphones, game consoles, and computers too. It’s all very exciting for us.”

We got really sick of having to download our own show illegally all the time, so we gave ourselves a legal alternative.

Parker and Stone released a statement about the website: “We got really sick of having to download our own show illegally all the time, so we gave ourselves a legal alternative.” Parker and Stone don’t think that the move will affect DVD sales of past seasons, because fans will still want to own episodes in a “hard copy” format.

The website is managed by South Park Digital Studios LLC, a joint venture of Parker and Stone and Comedy Central. Anne Garefino, general manager of South Park Digital Studios stated: “One goal in moving forward is to make every episode of South Park available worldwide … Currently, full episodes are not available in the U.K., Australia and a few other foreign territories, but we’re not far off from making that happen. We have some contractual issues to sift through but we’re getting there.”

On the move to make the episodes available for free, Sam Thielman of Variety wrote: “It’s a good time for Parker and Stone to distance themselves from the YouTube community given Comedy Central parent Viacom’s protracted lawsuit against the Web-based video distrib, which features clips from the show.” Viacom is suing YouTube for US$1 billion in damages relating to video clips displayed on the video-sharing website. Richard Menta of MP3 Newswire wrote: “With all their content already out there Stone, Parker and Viacom realized offering South Park episodes online directly is a low risk proposition. They might as well draw some ad revenue from it.”

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=South_Park_episodes_available_free_online&oldid=2594944”

US Department of Health proposes priorities for flu vaccine distribution

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Draft guidelines issued by the United States Department of Health and Human Services in November have established a series of tiers and categories for distribution of scarce vaccine in the event of pandemic flu. These guidelines give strong preference for emergency responders, military and national security personnel, and socially important occupations, such as top politicians, energy sector and communications personnel, bankers, and newborn infants. Distribution of vaccine to the elderly occupies a low priority, especially in the event of a severe pandemic with a case-fatality rate of 2% or more causing more than 1.8 million deaths. The scheme differs significantly from that proposed in Britain in 2005, which gave high priority to the elderly, noting that most of the deaths in recent years – ranging from 12,000 to 29,000 annually – were in elderly patients.

U.S. 2007 Britain 2005
Tier 1. Deployed/mission critical national security, health care providers, police, fire, vaccine manufacturers, top politicians Priority 1. Health care workers, nursing home staff
Tier 1*. Pregnant women, infants (*Sub-tier plan places at lower priority than other Tier 1) Priority 2. Fire, police, security, communications, utilities, undertakers, armed forces
Tier 2. Intelligence, border, national guard, other domestic national security, community support, electricity, natural gas, communications, water, critical government personnel, children, household contacts of infants Priority 3. High medical risk (e.g. diabetes, immunosuppressed)
Priority 4. All over 65 years of age
Tier 3. Other active duty military, important health care, transport, food, banking, pharmaceutical, chemical, oil sector personnel, postal and other government, children Priority 5. Selected industries, e.g. pharmaceuticals
Tier 4. High risk conditions, all over 65 years of age Priority 6. Children
Tier 5. General public Priority 7. General public

The plan is open to public comment under U.S. Federal Register guidelines until December 31.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=US_Department_of_Health_proposes_priorities_for_flu_vaccine_distribution&oldid=2526296”

Get The Stylish And Elegant Business Cards You Need}

Get the stylish and elegant business cards you need

by

John HollandIf you are looking for the best way to promote yourself and promote your business, then creating a business card may be the way to go. Working with a vendor that specializes in Calgary business card printing can help you attain this goal.

A business card communicates directly your brand and your professionalism. It indicates that you are a serious person of business, and that you hold yourself up to the highest standards of quality and excellence. Reputation is one of the most important things that any company can acquire and sustain. One of the best means of getting a solid reputation as a dedicated and effective professional is to market and display your brand on personalized and customized office products.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C32V4-P0idA[/youtube]

Going through the process of brand building and brand management involves a number of crucial steps. There are the tasks involved with launching a strategic public relations campaign of course. But there is more to it than that. You will meet people. You will go to places in which you are able to make connections with others. A business card can help you advance this particular aim. You can get a card with your company’s logo or any other design you deem fitting; doing this will help you promote your company and the products or services you are offering. Getting business cards printed is a decisive step in the development of your business.

However, it is important to get it right. Not all Calgary business card printing firms offer the same level of quality and service. That is why it is vital to select a company which will provide you with the kind of service you need. You want to work with a firm whose representatives are able to answer all of your questions in a timely and friendly manner. You also want to work with a company that can deliver the promised final products in an efficient and effective manner.

After you decide on the kind of design you want on your business card it should be developed and completed in a rather expeditious manner. At the end of the day, you have a business to run; and thus you have very little time to micro-manage the development and production of the letterhead. This should be left safely in the hands of the firm you’ve hired.

Value is also important. Creating a professional business card is a worthy investment. However, you should not have to pay exorbitant fees in order to get this service provided. The firm you work with should provide you a good, high quality final product at an excellent rate.

Going online to find a suitable vendor is the best way to get the matter settled quickly. You want to find someone you can trust. You want to locate a printing specialist with the creativity, style, and vision to produce for you a first-rate card. If you are to spend money on the product, it should exude excellence in every respect. Set your standards high and expect them to be met.

Are you looking to promote yourself in a more decisive way? You should get business cards/ Visit our website to learn the many advantages of working with a

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Article Source:

eArticlesOnline.com}

Ontario Votes 2007: Interview with Green candidate Marion Schaffer, Oakville

Monday, September 24, 2007

Marion Schaffer is running for the Green Party of Ontario in the Ontario provincial election, in the Oakville riding. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed her regarding her values, her experience, and her campaign.

Stay tuned for further interviews; every candidate from every party is eligible, and will be contacted. Expect interviews from Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, New Democratic Party members, Ontario Greens, as well as members from the Family Coalition, Freedom, Communist, Libertarian, and Confederation of Regions parties, as well as independents.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Ontario_Votes_2007:_Interview_with_Green_candidate_Marion_Schaffer,_Oakville&oldid=1891056”
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