Leader: Today's big deals

One multibillion-dollar deal will hog the headlines today and tomorrow. Adobe's proposed purchase of Macromedia is certainly a big deal in the software world. It's a marriage that is likely to solidify Adobe's position as a stalwart that has for years more than survived in a world where Microsoft usually comes along with its 'winner takes all' approach.

But we'd argue that two multibillion dollar projects a little closer to home are equally as important, at least for many users and virtually all of us as citizens and consumers.

Yet again, there is controversy today over the government's plans for a national ID card scheme. This time we hear that the Liberal Democrats, unique among the major parties, would scrap the scheme and use the money for things such as speech recognition technology to allow police to do their jobs better.

Much as that seems attractive – use of such technology as opposed to scrapping ID cards, an argument for another day – and much as they tell us that the NHS is increasingly using such tech, we have to wonder whether it would also fall afoul. After all, it is thought speech recognition is unreliable about 8 per cent of the time. Fine for some things, but not others – including, some might argue, sensitive police work.

Meanwhile, another controversial subject, this time for the retail and financial worlds, has in the last 24 hours seen what many consider the nightmare scenario. The subject we're referring to is the rollout of chip-and-PIN for card payments. A shopper in Kent apparently gave both her card and her PIN to a check-out assistant who ended up trying to steal £600 (two withdrawals of £300) from the hapless woman, who was said to be distracted at the time by her children.

Details of just how she disclosed the number remain sketchy, though clearly we can surmise the wrong-doer in this case didn't just guess the four-digit code or keep hold of the card and then put it in an ATM accidentally. Twice.

These pages hear frequent criticism of chip-and-PIN. In terms of how it works, it is often stretching the case for the prosecution a little far. After all, the 'observing a PIN being entered then mugging a cardholder' argument has been around for about as long as there have been ATMs. And, in time, chip-only cards will be much more secure at points of transaction.

But when it comes to passing liability on to consumers and away from financial institutions – and here there are reports that the woman in question at first didn't get a very sympathetic hearing from her bank – there are real concerns.

Make no mistake, chip-and-PIN as well as ID cards involve huge sums of money and are bound to face many types of obstacle. The integration of two well-known, successful software vendors is a walk in the park in comparison.