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A Number For Everything
jtcampbell writes: "Whilst reading the Times today I found this article about a U.S. government idea to give everyone a unique 'ENUM,' that serves as a universal phone number, email address, and fax number. Quite a cool idea, but will everyone adopt the standard? besides, i thought we left numeric email addresses with compuserve a few years back. And remembering these 11 digit numbers could be fun ..."
Oh great, now it will be even easier for spammers to make sure their junk reaches everyone.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Its much bigger than just the US govt, they have a very minor role here. This is an IETF/ITU thing
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
In a country where people regularly protest business using the social security number as a unique identifier, I can't wait to see the congressional hearings once this hits the fan.
ELITISM: It's always lonely at the top. Uninvited company is rarely welcome.
Looks like something to replace the SSN, actually...and a _lot_ of damage can be done if that falls into the wrong person's hands. "Can I have your phone number?" Eeek.
Speaking of which, I don't think SSNs can be replaced if stolen...maybe if you're in the Witness Protection Program...
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
How many times did you choose to use your social security number as a username ?
What about changing your number? With regular phone numbers and email addresses you can change them if you get too many prank phone calls or too much spam. If everyone had a unique number issued by the government, which would probably be easy for others to find, I think we would run into all kinds of privacy issues.
Can you say "goodbye privacy"? Can you believe any of the wacko right isn't going to claim this is your beast number, signifying the last days are here? And given how much influence they have over our current leaders, you think this is really going to happen?
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
What, me worry?
Instead of 11 numbers, you could use just four kanji characters to cover the spread. And you get the added benefit of learning Japanese or Chinese in the process!
Yes, indeed, remembering such numbers would be a pain; like having to type in IP addresses instead of domain names. The difficulty is, they are allowing themselves to be limited by the limitations of existing technology - to wit, telephones only have digits on them.
And can you imagine the privacy issues with such numbers? Telephone SPAM, here we come!
(shudder)
-=- Say it with flowers. Send a Triffid. -=-
While CompuServe didn't have much luck with their numerical e-mail addresses, ICQ seems to work quite well. IMHO, it is much easier to give someone a 6-9 digit number for ICQ than spell out a screen name for AIM. It is certainly within human ability to remember one 11-digit number.
Well, I'm sure you don't remember lots of (up to) 12 digit sequences that already exist, but have no problems remembering things like 'slashdot.org' and 'www.userfriendly.org'. As in the Internet, so with life. If you want to do this right, you'd have some form of "Personal Name System" to act as an equivalent to the "Domain Name System" we already seem to use quite successfully.
This sounds like yet another attempt to give up personal privacy in exchange for a minor personal convenience.
i have more than one main telephone number? does one get an enum and the other doesnt? .. do i get two enums? what if i only have one email and two phone #'s?, Im sure they'll sove this problems, yet it should be interesting how they go about doing it.
[alk]
This will never come about. Why? Fundamentalist Christians will identify this ENUM with the "mark of the beast" in the Book of Revelations. I know that sounds bizarre, but there are some people out there with some really odd belief systems. And there are enough of these people to actually have an influence on government policy.
1) They don't mention anything on how the e-mail would be handled [will the e-mail address be an alias in some central database, which you could change, ie forward it to your regular account? or would they have their own mail servers, which would handle all of the people in united states? no details whatsoever]
2) Spam, spam and more spam. It wouldn't be hard to write a script to e-mail everybody in united states at once.
3) How would it be administered? What about changing your location? Let's say I'm moving from California to New York. I would like to keep my e-mail, but my area code would be different. What do we do in this case?
This could be an interesting idea, but the implementation would take years, imho. I'd like to see a detailed description of this plan first.
--- d'oh
Ahh. The wonders of the digital age. People are numbers. Information is controlled. Everything is in nice little packages. Everything you hear, see, and read controlled and monitored easily. Am I the only one worried that "individual" and "outlaw" will soon be practically interchangable? You know, I could of swore I read a book about this.......
I can't see how anyone can think this is a good idea.
Another way for someone to steal my identity (medical history, my credit history, etc).
Thanks but no thanks...
The number of the beast.
You're Just Jealous Because The Voices Are Talking To Me.
It sounds like a neat idea, but it's immensely annoying.
Given a reasonably level playing field, who would win a fight between a bear and a shark?
It's called the SSN, or Social Security Number.
The SSN is *NOT* supposed to be our unique personal identifier, but is treated as one anyway.
more trouble for me and my girlfriend. "No, I'm sorry honey! I SWEAR I dialed 3.5.7.3.1.4.6.7.1.2! I must have made a typo! Besides, I'm not the one who emailed 5.3.2.3.5.3.5.6.1.4.arpa last night!!! Give me a break... we went from 123465.234@compuserve.com to slickwilly@aol.com and we're supposed to go back? Soon I expect it to remind me of the days in the 50s when my phone number was TY-63202. That's 896-3202 to you younger ones. We always seem to be going from numbers to words and back to numbers. so now, "The White House number of 1-202 -456-1414 would become .1.4.1.6.5.4.2.0.2.1.e164.arpa. " Or, more like .1HIOLGA.0B.1e in phone-letter speak.
Better yet, why not use hex? I'd love to tell people my phone number was F00F or B00B5.
The higher, the fewer.
We already have a number for an address, a number for social security, an if you're in highschool a student id.
these are the numbers we use to talk to the government already, what's your problem with having fewer to write down when filling out government forms?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Worked for Adolf, didn't it?
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
How would you implement this for the different types of media? I'm specifically talking about phone numbers. 1-800-hot-love is not a good DNS implementation if you ask me. I'm not trying to be a troll, but how do you envision this? I'm really interested in how this could possibly work, since I can't think of a way myself.
--- d'oh
I think that the US government should give everyone an IPV6 address and distribute the addresses via smartcards (or any memory device that can store it properly). It's a great way to mass introduce this new technology. Then, watch for new applications (malicious or not) derived from this unique ID.
¦ ©® ±
There are 100 thousand million potential individual combinations available if all digits between 0 and 9 are employed. It is likely, however, that each country would administer its own numbers and use its own area and country codes, which could further increase the possible combinations.
Does anyone else find it interesting that no matter what country/area code scheme is used, there are still only 100 billion (or 100 million, as the author cleverly states to increase his word count) combinations available?I'm wondering just what true benefit this actually provides? I've seen a few independent telephone companies who have tried to offer single-number unified messaging, voice and fax without much success (i.e. your phone AND fax number is 2125555555, your email address has an alias of 2125555555@phonecompany.com and your homepage has an alias to 2125555555.company.com). At the end of it all, you still need to ask a person what his/her unique number is, just like you have to do with a phone number today.
And who's going to fund this? Who's going to use it? Assigning me a government-issued email address is not going to make me stop using my current email address.
It does seem like an interesting way for the government to get in touch with people when they need to (maybe for emergency information, urgent messages, etc.), but what about infrastructure? If the government gives a sheep herder in remote parts one of these unique numbers, who's going to make sure the infrastructure is there for him to actually do anything with it?
Seems like there's a whole lot more thinking to be done about this one.
This way, when you give someone your phone number you are giving them your social security noumber, tax number, medical identity, etc.
The problem with that is that it opens you up to two things: abuse and honest mistakes. Both for obvious reasons would be real problems.
Example. The credit agency in Canada seems to think I owe BMW money for a car. That is long gone (when the lease ended, I sold that car and bought a different make). Still, it's well neigh impossible to get that off the record. Now imagine everyone had that info!
And another example. I recently changed medical insuramce companies at work, and that needed an AIDS test. Negative, I am happy to say. But if it had not been: if all these systems had been tied together (as they will be soon, with one number) that information would quite easily have got back to the bank, or the employer, etc.
I think we need to be very careful indeed with systems that make it easier for people bad or good to track us and what we do.
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
Does anyone else have deja vu? (THE PRISONER TV SERIES)
Forget the fact that this is a terrible idea due to all the privacy implications.
But does it have to be a number? I know that personally, I couldn't remember a number for the life of me. I barely even know my own phone number (well yes, I do know it, but I forget what it is from time to time). Beat's me what the PIN number is for my bank card!? I just use the tellers, I hate all this techno mumbo jumbo bank cards anyway. And so on. My point here is, why not use the person's name? It's already somewhat unique (yes I know lots of people have the same name, but you could attach other info with it). I would much rather call John Smith by entering John Smith into my phone instead of dialing 911-555-1010.
Of course, technically looking up a number in a computer is much easier than a name. We don't think in digial, so why do we force ourselves into the digital realm?
Might as well get the number tatooed on to the back of our necks as a bar code... it would be even easier to user then. [- Sepultura]. Personally, I don't want to be easily identified.
http://www.enum.org/information/faq.cfm
You're Just Jealous Because The Voices Are Talking To Me.
The following is a sample of people who might need more than one identity:
- Battered wives hiding from husbands.
- Witness protection programs
- Whistle-Blowers and others wanting to be semi-anomonious
- People having strong gender dysphoria, wishing to have a foot in each gender. [Yes, it's a real condition that has a high suicide rate, because the mind and body don't get along that well.]
So we should consider the identity issues before we start slamming other doors first.OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
This idea really sucks for phone numbers and email addresses, but what about your home address?
I've long wished that the postal system would assign everyone a unique number, and if someone wanted to send you something, they'd address it to that number instead of some street address. The mail is already routed by computers, so it'd be easy for those computers to look up that number, correllate it to your current physical address, and send it there.
This would really be helpful if you move a lot. Right now, you have to file a change of address form, which isn't completely reliable, and that only lasts a few months. After that, if someone hasn't been informed of your new address, it'll go to your old address. There's just no excuse for this any more.
And remembering these 11 digit numbers could be fun ...
I've memorized my social security number, and I don't even use it on a regular (everyday/week) basis. The numbers are not the problem.
The real problem is the fact that every right to privacy group would scream bloody murder. Have you seen people's reactions to what they did at the Super Bowl last year? The cameras that find felons in the crowd? I didn't care about that, I mean, finding felons isn't a bad thing.
However, this makes me a little apprehensive. Ever read 1984 by Orwell? This calls that to mind. With everything being wireless now it would be easy for the government (the NSA already monitors practically every electronic signal in the world) to know that:
Number 12345678901: Cellular phone call from 8th and Maple. Withdrew $50 from ATM on corner of 9th and Maple.
Etc.
I'm sure extremist are already envisioning numbers tatooed on people's foreheads. I don't think that would happen, but if this number became the only means of ID I would move to Ireland. (Dual citizenships are cool).
No sig for you.
We could move to a more logical system.
People related to each other could be issued numbers ending in a similar series of digits. We could easily tell relationships by looking at these numbers. We could then take an internet style approach and run "DNS"-style systems, where a unique series of digits would correspond to a word. Since this word would relate to the last series of numbers in an identification string, we could refer to this string as a "last word" or "last name".
In order to retain a certain sense of relation and creativity, parents would be able to specify a word, or "name" that would correspond to the series of digits that preceeded the "last name".
Now we all know that people aren't computers, so they won't be able to just magically connect to a "DNS"-type server. In order to make it easy on the less technically inclined among us, we'll publish a large book containing the corresponding relationships between the "number" and the "name" of a person. Since the "last name" would be far more unique, we'll organize this listing according to those "names", and list the unique contact number next to those "names".
Ultimately, all of these numbers can be tracked by a central office, which will store the information relating to these unique numbers and their corresponding "names". This office will be responsible for this massive "social" program, and will also maintain the "security" of the program. Of course, they will issue cards containing this number, so that people can prove who they are when requesting important documents.
But then again, who am I to suggest a radical change in the system?
Weren't phone numbers created as 7 digit numbers because that's the average segment a person can remember? I remember in psychology talking about the way the memory centers work, and I was thinking it was 7 that was the typical chunk size of a person's memory? For the most part, we don't have to remember area codes, and for those of us who have to use 10 digit dialing, the first 3 digits are nearly uniform for our day to day calling (and thus memorization). How will an 11 character reference work out?
Information is the catalyst for revolution
I can't imagine an easier way to welcome in a brave new world of tyranny and oppression than this.
Here at the First Federated National Bank, you're not just a number. You're four numbers, a dash, three letters, four more numbers...
16: And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
:)
17: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
18: Here is wisdom, Let him that have understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. (666)
Someone was going to post this eventually.
There goes all my karma
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
It sure sounds like the "Cerebral Communicator" plan we first heard about in The President's Analyst.
-soup (GNUrd, Speaker to Machines) "Laugh at yourself- Why should everyone else have all the fun?" -Romanchek's 6th Ru
I'd be more interested in number portability between companies, especially cell phone vendors?
For example, I've had a cell phone with SprintPCS for several years. Most everybody I know or do business with calls me on my Sprint number.
So if I want to switch to Verizon or Nextel or Cingular or Voicestream I lose my number. Plus, the cell phone is not listed in the phone book so people I don't talk to often will have trouble getting a hold of me.
Being able to xfer your number across company boundaries, even if it cost more money would be a worthwhile thing.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
That's not The Times, that's The Times of London . Please do not confuse the Grey Lady with her dismal foreign imitators.
Someone commented in the earlier story about Passport security that "they'll probably tie it up with ENUM, which links DNS info to phone numbers." I subscribe to the cock-up theory of history - which is not to say that governments don't engage in conspiracies, but rather that they tend to cock it up when they do. The possibilities for cockups with this seem rather immense, though... and what on earth will the "UN Black Helicopters / CIA / They're Tryin' to Take Our God-given right to carry guns away / It's the End Times" brigade make of it? Not that they need an excuse, but it seems silly to give them free *cough* ammunition...
In Ira Levin's sci-fi novel, This Perfect Day, everyone was genetically homogenized, and was known by a nameber . They hailed a government run by Uni, a massive computer.
- "Listen, Li RM35M26J449988WXYZ," Papa Jan said. "Listen. I'm going to tell you something fantastic, incredible. In my day--are you listening?--in my day there were
- over twenty different names for boys alone! Would you believe it? Love of Family, it's the truth. There was 'Jan,' and 'John,' and 'Amu,' and 'Lev.' 'Higa,' and 'Mike'! 'Tonio'! And in my father's time there were even more, maybe forty or fifty! Isn't that ridiculous? All those different names when members themselves are exactly the same and interchangeable? Isn't that the silliest thing you ever heard of?"
Thank you. No, Thank Uni. A pretty decent "hero rebels against the system" kind of story, worth the read. Written in 1969.And Chip nodded, confused, feeling that Papa Jan meant the opposite, that somehow it wasn't silly and ridiculous to have forty or fifty different names for boys alone.
"Look at them!" Papa Jan said, taking Chip's hand and walking on with him--through Unity Park to the Wei's Birthday parade. "Exactly the same! Isn't it marvelous? Hair the same; boys, girls, all the same. Like peas in a pod. Isn't it fine? Isn't it top speed?"
[
Why stop at an ENUM which doesn't guarantee uniqeness amoung non-human objects as well? Assign everybody a 128-bit number (a GUID), such as {979EE714-E220-4291-B6AF-36C08B787FED}. Provide ways to easily map it onto shorter lists (such as 20020201-103050) for the 103,050th person born on 1 Feb 2002, but store it in a database as 128 bits. That way all things are uniquely determined.
... recalls when the United States government propaganda pointed out that the Soviet Union "gives every citizen a number that identifies them." Of course, it was implied that the United States was better than such a totalitarian regime that treats its citizens like sheep or automatons.
Sigh.
fifth sigma, inc.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Maybe Jack Chick was right all along....
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
Having a 'permanent record' number in high school is a different thing. When they mess up your record it isn't propagated everywhere instantly.
Whenever I read one of these stories I tend to think it's a leak in the matrix. We're not this stupid right? SSN isn't a big enough problem?
Like many, I don't have a cell phone to avoid reachability. I know a few people with 'secret' cell phones, but they have to change their number a bit too often for my lazyness factor.
I also have a cell phone, and I'm very careful with whom I give that number. There are some people that I absolutely want to have it; there are other people that, under no circumstances, would I want them to have it. It's the same at work. I give some people my direct desk extension, and I send some people through the secretary. Having a universal access number like that could cause no end of grief for people, and eliminate one of the great ways of escaping contact when that's necessary.
Also, IIRC (and I'm sorry, but I don't feel like checking this out), I thought that originally it was illegal to use a SSN to track anything other than Social Security. Of course, people use it for everything now, but I'm not so sure that's a good idea.
My $.02
For people who like facts with their uninformed speculation.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
and then we can all have wireless, handheld devices that we take with us everywhere, and each one of them will have our individual number in it, and then we can have a completely surveillance-based society.
oh, joy.
So every time I place a phone call to someone with caller ID, or to an 800 number which has to keep track of where calls are coming from just so they can pay thier phone bill, I'd be volunteering my medical history, my credit history, and the records of my wife and kids. Remember that theyre info is often tied into mine, and vice versa (IE Credit apps). Could almost be a Gattaca thing.
Now when I come at you with a cattle prod later and threaten your testicles with its repeated and forceful application, I'm sure you'll remember my site's IP address.
Then again, it could just be a made up number. But you won't care either way. You'll be too busy "moo"ing for me.
How about just using my fuckin' finger-prints? (And the differences in skin temperature between the different parts of the print?)
Security based on what can be counterfeited is no security at all. Base it on something existential and you might have a chance.
Who's the fuckin' imbecile of a post-pubescent, pre-menopausal, unpreoccupied, '4F', tea-totaling bitch who came up with that shit.
I know people who can't remember if its their third or fourth martini. A four didit PIN number at the ATM dictates whether they buy or bum another round.
11 digits... Yeah right.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I mean the whole numero o' de beastie thingy. What about that? And of course the ident theft, fraud being made easy, easier tracking by the gov, IETF/ITU being the ones responsible for not only assigning but also maintaining, distributing, and reissuing. Hmmm. Oh yeah, and conspiracy buffs will love it!!!!
Honestly. Do you really think anyone cares about your "private" information? Even if this were somehow used as a means of violating your precious privacy, does it really matter? Would the playing field not be leveled for everyone? Or is this a great conspiracy to violate YOUR privacy, Joe Q. Geek, to steal your Star Trek memorabilia?
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
or if you want the alternate joke...
"Who does number 2 work for!?"
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
whats Your prefix ?
It takes very little contemplation (~3 milliseconds) to realize that this is not a good idea.
Unless you want to be branded like cattle.
Or happen to be the hearder.
This is a tactic of a police state for control not a convienience for individuals, custom built for abuse by those in and out of "authority" in what ever of the overlaping juridictions you happen to reside in to visit.
morturii
I don't to be identified by one number; sometimes I want to be an employee, sometimes anonymous, and sometimes just myself
Government standardls like this - while not inherently oppresive - make it far too easy to pevert the system into something more sinister. Processing info is easy; it is collecting it is hard.
It's no gov't scheme, it's the devil, I tell you... it's Satan! Watch out, do-gooders.... you're gonna be Numbered and you're all going to hell!
As soon as countries standardise on 00 as the international access code (and that's happening) then we will have a global unique numbering system administered by countries. It's called the phone system.
In the UK, we can already get "personal numbers" which you can have redirected to wherever you are. There's no reason why companies in other countries can't do the same thing.
That gives you all the benefits of unique personal numbering without many of the SSN/Big Brother/Brave New World/buzzword-X privacy concerns.
Gerv
Think of this like ICQ numbers. If you want to spam people, you can just send to consecutive numbers- you're guaranteed a hit.
IPs get this treatment regularly (think portscans) but an IP is just a gateway to services, not actual communication.
This sort of numbering is a Bad Thing, even beyond the obvious Mark of the Beast problems.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Or something like that this will for sure be the end of privacy for almost anyone think bout it I could just start pushing random numbers on a phone and identify people and steal there life just to easy. Folks come on Demand the right to be you we are not the BORG. I am not desiring to be called unit 111-36-7689 instead of a name. This is just injustice to basic human rights.
This sounds like an urban legend. It sounds like the internet tax or some other e-mail hoax.
Even if it was real, it wouldn't make it out of committee.
photosMy Photostream
"Proximity to wonder has blunted our perception and appreciation of it" --Tim Hartnell in 'Exploring ARTIFICIAL INTELLI
Just think! We'd have yet another registrar for the Personal Name system! You'd have to coordinate it with vital statistics, and for those too poor to get their own personal name, we'd let them use a sub-personal name for free. Oh meegosh.
The one reason this may not work with individuals is that many people do not want a single point of contact. I know several people who assiduously keep several SIM cards on their cells, so that personal and business calls can be separated (their service providers typically have not provided call sorting). Businesses, with their mess phone/fax/email contact points, would probably take to this like ducks to water though.
But you may not have to remember it, Network Solutions would be too happy to provide ENUM-to-name mapping to you
This would be fine, as long as they use the number as a unique identifier ONLY. Why anyone takes your SS#/bday as any form of ID is beyond me. A unique Id that was for ID PURPOSES ONLY would be really useful (i.e. like your name, but unique. Still have to PROVE you are who you say you are with something like a drivers license, smart card, etc). I have an unusual first name, but the bank I used to bank at had someone with the exact same name. Made for some interesting queries and such (until they used my SS#, but that seemed dumb to me. If I knew the SS# of the other guy with the same name, would they have let me draw funds out of his account??????) But personally I would rather just see em stamp a barcode tattoo on every newborn (wait a minute....)
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
First of all, remember when Social Security started? There was a little provision in a little section of the code, which everyone seems to "forget."
It is illeagal to use one's SSN for identifacation purposes outside of authorized fedral goverment activities.
There I said it. Don't all stand up and agree at once. The fact ofthe matter is everyone uses it for ID, this is an improper use, and no one does anything about it. "But we need an universal ID " you say. Why, is it nessicarry to be tracked in a unified way through all aspects of life?
"Well it shouldn't matter if you have nothing to hide." If one does or doesn't have something to hide is not the real issue. What ever happened to trust someone until you have reason not to? A system like the one inplace now is "volentary" but not participating is contrived as de facto admission of guilt. This is wholely unacceptable.
So, SSNs have become guarded by most people, they only give them to who they chose and for a damn good reason. '"Big Brother", who I am convienced is no more than a few power hungry men in the bussiness world pressures goverment to make a universal ID that people have no choice but to make very public weather they like it or not. Yes, let's take an SSN leke number and make it your phone number, email, fax, shirt size, driver's ID and goddamn NAME if we can.
Think of the market research we can get on people it will be great! Finally, everyone will have a easily found number in our database!
This is all they are thinking, this has no real value to the average citizen of the US, EU or the earth as a whole, let's just make ourselves a little more trackable.
I know that I want to be completely revealed to everyone with my phone number. Now that's a great idea!
I have moved three times in five years, and coincidentally changed jobs just as often (different months,) and kept the same mailing address and phone number all this time by using a mail box service and a cell phone.
I'm mobile and its my responsibility to pick up my mail and amswer my phone. Its not the phone company's, or the bank's, or my 401k's or the government's hassle where I am, just as long as they can get in touch with me.
You want to move around, go ahead and move around but leave a stable point of reference and you'll have no problems with anybody.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
... they call it, and has been advocated by Bill Gate's for a number of years, it has just started manifesting itself in products... hrm, MS Passport anyone?
A number isn't so bad as long as you could preface it with an email address, a la DNS.
However, spammers would love such an idea, they wouldn't even need to harvest email adresses, just cycle through an address block in consequent order. Further, they could simaltanious spam your email, fax and voice-mail, and instant messenger no doubt.
Let's brand the number on your right hand (or optionally your forehead). You'll have to use it to buy food, or anything, really.
requiring the use of an ENUM on Usenet and other discussion forums would keep the number of flames down, if the entire world can call you at 3am local time to voice their opinion.
I sure hope the IETF members and our US politians are willing to use their home phone number as their ENUM, because that will make short work of this proposal.
I can see it now. They would simply just set up a program that would start at 00000000000 and count up to 99999999999. That would make life SO much easier. I'm gonna start writing the software now. I'll sell it for $100 a pop and commerce will flow...
- Jimbob
Anyone else suspect maybe this is just a big scheme to use the .us TLD for something besides low-rent local government Web sites? I bet the Postal Service is connected to this idea somehow, if it's for real.
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
Ptewie!
Speaking as a paid up member of the "wacko right", let me disabuse you right now of the notion that our "current leaders" give a rat's ass what we think. They will take orders from their paymasters, same as always, just like their political "opposition". If this thing does not come to pass, it will not be because some wacko on the Internet is wasting bandwidth denouncing "the mark of the Beast"!!!
...be pushed, filed, indexed, stamped, briefed, debriefed or numbered.
11 digit sequential numbers as e-mail for everyone in US? I thought AOL was bad with spam.
for(x,x++,x99999999999;)
{
cout "mailto:" + x + "@resedent.usa.gov SUBJECT='Hi' BODY='I'm a sweet 18yr old...'";
}
not hard at all...
WikiAfterDark.com It's a sex wiki, go now!
Mind you, it's not all-encompassing (yet), just a means to simplify things a little bit. But when Big Brother's doing it, hey! It's cool! Ha ha!
If you don't see anything disturbing about this possibility, mind letting me borrow your rose-colored glasses for a while?
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
...if BR549 is already taken?
From the article...
Just say, 100 Billion combinations...
And in the second part of the paragraph... if each country uses it's own area codes, it would decrease, not increase the combinations...
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
Number Two: "In the Village."
Prisoner: "Who are you?"
Number Two: "The new Number Two."
Prisoner: "Who is Number One?"
Number Two: "You are."
Prisoner: "What do you want?"
Number Two: "Information."
Prisoner: "Well, you won't get it!"
Number Two: "By hook or by crook, we will."
Prisoner: "I am not a number, I am a free man."
Number Two: (laughs)
Someone had to post it. I figure since I used to actually watch "The Prisoner" it's not entirely out of line. First it starts with the "Dr. Who". Next think you know you're watching "The Prisoner" and "The Avengers". That damn anglophilic PBS.
Frylock: That's not a toy!
Master Shake: You say that about everything you own. You should own toys. They're fun.
How is this different from Microsoft's Passport scheme? Basically, it is the same in the end, it seems to me.
One number controls everything, making spying and control much easier.
Bush's education improvements were
"What are those other four extra numbers?"
"Those are Citezen Relocation Codes... Lets hope we never need to use those..."
In a slashdot where idiots regularly protest taco using the lameness filter as an annoyance, I can't wait to see the first psoats once this hits the front page.
You don't have anything to HIDE do you?
Chant of the weasels that want control.
I recall several years back, AT&T (or was it MCI?) had a bunch of hoopla and commercials advocating a single telephone number that would ring your office, cell phone, home and fax all at the same time. Similar idea, one number. Now, I know that UReach.com has a similar, web-based service that will ring I think up to 4 numbers, in order, as well as take faxes and emails for you.
The higher, the fewer.
Although I am probably for something like this, I can already see the spammer's eyes lighting up. Just think, why buy a list of email addreses when you can just spam to
00000000001@whatevertheycomeupwith.gov to 99999999999@whatevertheycomeupwith.gov
Your rights and freedom are slowly slipping away when the government stops recognizing you as an individual and instead a number. Check out this article for some insight
http://www.warroom.com/newnatid.htm
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Here is wisdom. Let him that has understanding count the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six.
Ok. Just for fun. There are two individuals mentioned in that passage:
Individual #1. He that has understanding and is to count the number of the beast.
Individual #2. The beast.
Now which one of those two individuals is the last sentence refering to? Note that the reader is apparently warned from the beginning that it takes wisdom to understand the sentence. Maybe everybody is wrong about the number of the beast. Which would make sense considering that the book of revelation claims that almost everybody is deceived by the beast.
If you believe in this stuff about 666 being the number of the beast, why do you think that you are not one of the deceived ones? And if the number is given to you, why would the author of the passage ask you to calculate it? Just a thought. Move along now.
for (long long n=0; n99999999999; n++)
{ send_spam(n,text); }
By using this number, instead of having to steal your DNA and have it identified with all your personal info, they can just use the phone number you gave them. You know, to save costs and all that.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. (666)
The name of the contributor of the original article?
Damian Whitworth
That's right. DAMIAN
*Now* I've got the heebie-jeebies...
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
34601
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
I have always preferred ICQ's "numbered users" scheme over AIM and e-mail having names. With ICQ you can always change your handle without getting and telling everyone a new number/name to reach you at. I've had so many e-mail address in the past 6 years--probably 3 or 4 per year, because I'm always changing ISPs. What I wouldn't give to have had a universal number this whole time, which I could forward to my mailbox at my current ISP.
The one thing, and people have mentioned this higher up, is preventing spam. My suggestion would be to require you to "authorize" other users to contact you. Once we all have PDAs this might be practical. You could also have a "request" sort of thing, like ICQ has...but then you would likely get inundated with "Request for authorization from: teensex00124134 free teen sex at www.teensex.com" sort of authorization messages. maybe if the requests would only show the number&name of the person/organization, rather than a spammable text message...
The big numbers are harmless, just like slashdot's new comment numbering system.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
I remember reading an old Peanuts comic strip (bless Charles Schulz's memory), where Charlie Brown and Lucy meet a kid whose name is '5'. He explains that his parents gave him and his sisters ('3' and '4') names as numbers as a protest of sorts. Then Charlie Brown muses that what if everyone had numbers for names, and thinks that he'd have 3.1416 as his name...
Just a silly thought...looks like your government is insisting that everyone have numbers for names. :)
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
As someone without a phone number (that I will give out, call me homeless) I want to register 666 with ICANN and all the other that own the Internet
I believe they stole the scheme from TPC.INT.
Look at RFC 1530 for the actual RFC.
It's dated october 93, so there's nothing new here
man is everyone freakin BLIND????
now they'll be able to track you down wherever the HELL YOU ARE...cell phone/pda...there will be no where to hide...
*sighs*
There's a lot of detailed technical info here.
Find free books.
One woman who was pissed off at her ex-husband filed a tax return in his name, saying that he had a few million in gambling winnings.
The man spent YEARS trying to get the IRS liens off his credit record, not to mention the trouble of trying to convince the IRS JBT's not to steal his house, car, bank accounts, etc.
I don't want the Federal government to have *any* records on individuals, unless they're government employees or convicts.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I could see the system working well, and resisting spam, if the following safeguards are put in place
1) No message to be delivered to an ENUM unless it's from another ENUM
2) No interference with existing email addresses - allow these to keep being used
3) Allow ENUM users to set 'privacy policies' on their ENUM, including 'no unsolicited promotional material'. Sending spam to an ENUM in defiance of applicable policies to be a criminal offense.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
Thanks for telling me which end of your post is up. It is much easier to read that way.
yuo mean yuo can now send email to my SSN? cool! then again, i dont know if i want spammers knowing it...oh well, win some, lose some :-[
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
18. hic sapientia est qui habet intellectum conputet numerum bestiae numerus enim hominis est et numerus eius est sescenti sexaginta sex
It seems to me that "sescenti sexaginta sex" refers to the beast here.
The question is, who does "et numerus eius" refer to? And what happened to the original punctuation marks? I am pretty sure there were punctuation marks in the original Greek.
So AT&T thinks I want business calls ringing my home phone? Or faxes setting off my cell phone?
It's tatooed on my forehead. 01010011010
First there is the reference in revelations, for those who believe, but if you don't, take a look at some facts.
Over and over again we are conditioned to believe that our government has our best interests in mind, and only wants to improve our convenience with ID systems, all the while gathering enormous amounts of data that is continuously generated and offered by the citizens of this nation, so they can better plan our cities, etc. But truth be known -- take a look back at RedWitchHunt days of our nation, and genetic purification -- all ID data usually does is allow someone to have a bit of data over on someone else. I know several Russians who were unfortunate to be here during those sad times. Their SSN numbers and linked nationality data were in fact used against them. You say it won't happen again? Whatever... say, I have some land down in Florida I'd like to sell ya... you are just the idi...errr... customer for this special land I have been looking for!
I guess as with all such schemes that deal with the ID of the average citizen, we have once again gotten comfortable with all the easy things that a hash function applied to database key can bring (be it hashed alphabetically on paper, molten silicon switches (tubes), or silicon die with metal on top). Government now believes we are ready to be ID'd with precision, and then additionally, easily located. What happens then when the wrong people get this data, sort of like McCarthy-ism? They know with absolute precision who you are, where you live, and all they have to do is key you into the global routing system (PING) and wham, they can drive the paddy wagon right to your door for easy, no-muss pickup. Say what you want about the wonders about ID technology, nothing about it turns me on. DNA is good enough, after all, the cops are not supposed to have easy jobs. They don't need to find me unless I performed a "crime against humanity" anyway.
So whatever.... if you want someone to know your every thought and move, then fine. Oh, I forgot, this is Richard Stallman's harem. You wouldn't understand, that just as with gun control, the very people who would be best ID'd and tracked are the very ones who will be the ones that stay under (or over) the system. When average people will figure this out instead of mewling in line for the latest public safety/super-duper-consumer convenience fad, then perhaps we will have a truly safe society where the line in the sand over privacy will be clearly drawn.
Additionally, I remember one poster endorsing the idea that a ID system that eliminated privacy would be the great equalizer. You, my son, are no more brilliant than the doorstop my cat knaws on nightly. There will always be those outside of the system, and anyone outside of the system and not subject to its laws, can dominate/play said system ot their sole advantage. Start using your brain, and quit thinking like a socialist. Any communal equalization system will end in failure. It always does, always will. I'm not sure what the blissful fascination with socialism is.... yeah, it looks good on paper, just like a dot com, but it sucks in real life.
I am now wearing a fire suit, and the halon is near. Bring it on!
Good-day to you,
TurboD
Relax, it won't be the mark of the beast unless they force it to be tatooed on your forehead.
Oops, I shouldn't have given them the idea!
There are good reasons to consolidate databases and use one candidate key as the unique identifier. However, I think it wise to continue some level of separation of database based on subject matter -- my religious beliefs should have no interest to a prospective employer.
I remember reading about 10 years ago of a new technology that had a magnetic code that was implantable under the skin of an animal.
Initially, this was to be used for pets, to aid in recovery of lost animals.
At the time, I remember thinking that the next step would be to use them on soldiers, to eliminate the need for dog tags.
Eventually, it would be offered as a way of "Keeping Kids Safe" (tm) from abductors.
Eventually, everyone would be required to have one.
If I remember correctly, the implant was a series of magnetic wafers stacked with their polarity representing a binary code, all sealed in a glass or plastic capsule. Never wears out or needs a power source.
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
and it is called your Social Security Number. Needed for school registration, credit card accounts, drivers license, all kinds of various identifications.
Any US Citizens here _not_ have their SSNs memorized? Raise your hands. I didn't really think so. Guess what, to Government, you are a number!
(There was some lip-service given to "restricting use" and "preventing abuse" decades ago, but it's been forgotten for the utility of SSN identifiers.)
Too late!
AFAIK, it's not illegal in the US not to have a SSN: it's just illegal to attend most schools, serve in the military, or work for taxable wages without one.
Of course it's also possible to acquire _more_ numbers - if you're ever arrested, you'll get a case number (if convicted and sentenced to jail or prison, you'll get an inmate number too); if sued in civil court, you'll get a docket number, etc., etc. But those happen if you break the law or piss someone off...
But you have more numbers, even if you're an upstanding gentle citizen: drivers license, credit cards, bank accounts, phone number, cellphone, et al.
Bottom line, I think a case can be made for a UIN (Universal Identification Number), for two reasons: (1) it will simplify so many mundane things, from communications (live and electronic) through public records and commercial transactions, and (2) it will require revising almost all the record keeping systems extant, boosting the economy as a great successor to the Y2K convulsion, a good way to get 250,000+ programmers re-employed!
After all, most of us have some sort of numbers assigned to us. Several phone numbers, credit card numbers, etc. Now, I'm really getting tired of remembering my 3-4 phone numbers, plus my several email addresses. Add to that my ICQ.
A single number for everything would solve that problem. Now... just have to keep the spammers out.
The number will be coded into a smart microchip implanted in your forehead (mark of the beast!).
Just pass the scanner built in to a computer, cell phone, ATM, etc. over your forehead and there you are.
As a bonus, this number will force everybody on earth to be extremely polite to everybody else. That person you offended will be able to find you, no matter where you hide! That kid you bullied in high school may track you down at any time!
"LA Times" - Single-Number Plan Raises Privacy Fears. System would link telephones, faxes and Web addresses while creating giant databases.
A controversial technology under development by the communications industry that links Internet addresses with phone numbers has quietly picked up key government support as concern mounts among critics that the technology will broadly undermine privacy.
The technology, known as e-number, or ENUM, would link phone numbers to codes that computer servers use to route traffic on the Web. Proponents say the technology would improve communication for consumers and marketers alike.
[ ... ]
But privacy advocates fear the system could undermine online privacy and erode the security of the public phone system as well. They worry that the system would destroy a pillar of Internet privacy: the assumption by users that they enjoy anonymity in cyberspace.
The government's endorsement of the technology, disclosed in interviews and outlined in an Aug. 21 letter distributed to an industry group, is seen as critical in pushing it forward.
"The United States does see merit in pursing discussions regarding implementation of a coordinated, global [system] . . . for ENUM," Julian E. Minard, a State Department advisor to the International Telecommunication Advisory Committee, wrote to representatives of AT&T and other companies. But Minard cautioned in the letter that aspects of the technology advocated by industry "go beyond what is prudent or necessary."
- The first 8 bits would be a Being Type ID, which can be used for discriminating between organic/cyborg/silicon AI beings that we might have in the future.
-
For conventional earthly sentient beings, such as humans (or gorillas that
own their own nature reserve in Uganda), the next 128 bits will be the MD5 hash of their DNA fingerprint.
- The last 32 bits are an instance ID which allows for cloned humans (such as natural born twins) or for mass-produced cyborgs.
The final number is obtained by concatenating the previous numbers into a 168 bit block, and then taking the 128 bit SHA hash of it if that turns out to be more convenient for processing.For AIs and commercial cyborgs, I guess they'd have a ISSN or UPC number indentifying manufacturer or model number etc.
This number will be embedded in a tiny little standard transponder which can optionally be bundled with a secret key and shielded with encryption. :)
Cyborgs and AIs must have it built in to them. People can have it implanted or just carry it in a smart card, depending on their preference. The advantage for humans is that even if they lose their smart card, their ID has can always be exactly recomputed from a hair sample!
Can I please take over the world now?
-OzJuggler
Life's a buffer; you can only get out of it what you put into it! C:-)
Tatoos are SO twentieth century. The mark of the beast will be either an embeded microscopic chip or some sort of biochemical marker.
I forget what it was called, but it was around about 3 or 4 years ago. Had to do with something called a "Q" number. It was almost exactly the same concept as this. Really kind of stupid, it never caught on (obviously).
Univerisal access to me is not a right for anyone. I prefer to have different channels of access through different means and paths as a method for me to filter out the folks I probably don't want to talk to versus the people that I'm more likely going to want to talk to.
The only thing this would do is make it easier to marketers to peddle crap to us. *grin*
Yup! BierGuzzl's right, We here in the deep south have been read'en our bibles, and figur'en out how this here internet would be used help satan... We thought we seen it all when the porn (btw: we should all boycott Afro Sqad for hosting kitty p0rn) showed up, but now the number of tha beast is apon us.
A lot of stupid people can't remember complex things such as someone's phone number and cell number, so this would certainly make it easier for them to contact you. Of course, you can also set it up so only certain people can contact you, so can have your own intelligence test to get on your allowed list.
However, what about numbers like 911? That's certainly not standard across countries, it's not even standard everywhere in the US. And with all the IP system problems we have, why would we limit it to only 11 digits? I might want a different number for business contacts than I do for my friends to reach me at, I certainly wouldn't want business associates hearing the message I have on my answering machine now.
However, one last point, this really could bring about true convergence of communication, and might even pave the way for video phones, because presumably this connection would be more high-bandwith if it's used as an email address, I have certainly received some rather large downloads that would have taken hours over a regular phone line.
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
Yea, Everyone knows its 23!
Every Thing Is Fire!
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
those morons in the US government. more numbers to memorize. God. It's horrible. In some areas, they are having to go to 11 digits for every goddang phone call as it is. I mean, it's good in the sense that i will have the internet available, becuz hopefully my mom will stop calling our neighbor when they're both outside, less than 200 feet away, on a perfectly fine day. but still, people don't want this becuz they don't want more numbers to memorize. and someone said something about spam: horribly true. Great, my toaster printed GOD^!%*& SPAM on my breakfast. yeah. I can't wait till my alarm clock wakes me up with "RESOLVE YOUR DEBT NOW! WE CAN CONSILIDATE ALL YOUR BILLS!"
What idiot thought this up? They need to be shot.
Theoretically, yes, under certain circumstances. But the government has walled off the procedure behind a small army of clueless bureaucrats (which, to my mind, is still the only unbreakable security system ever invented), making it practically impossible.
a _lot_ of damage can be done if that falls into the wrong person's hands
Or -- Lord forbid -- the government's hands.
This is precisely why I never gave out my proper SSN to anyone aside from the SSA, my banks and employers. Credit card companies, Equifax, health insurers, my colleges, even the drivers' license bureau, all got made-up ones, and no one was the wiser. The down side was I had to remember what number I gave to whom.
The only reason most of entities request your social security number is because they assume everyone else already has it. Credit card companies request it because they assume your credit history is already tracked under it. My drivers' license bureau requires it because the government is already de facto using it as a standard ID number (SSA regulations restricting it to social security purposes only were revised back in the early seventies, and the restriction statement was removed from SSN cards at that time).
Even a local video store once required me to provide it when I tried to sign up for a membership. Only when I challenged them on it, and the manager couldn't explain why they wanted it, did they relent. And I once went several rounds with a health insurer who had absolutely no provision for assigning records except under the customer's SSN, even though no one there could explain why it had to be my SSN. I finally told some manager I was just going to make up a number, and she agreed there wouldn't be any repercussions.
Now that I'm back in Taiwan, I can't even remember what my SSN is. It's a relief in a way.
"Can I have your phone number?"
And with the advent of GPS-enabled cellphones, it won't even be necessary to call the phone company to have the number forwarded; it will follow you automatically. What could be more convenient?
And yet there are any number of legitimate reasons for having multiple phone numbers. I don't want business calls ringing my home phone; I don't want faxes setting off my cell phone; I might prefer having an unlisted home phone; I might have a personalized number.
And phone numbers aren't just assigned to individuals. Businesses use them too, of course. What about all those businesses with personalized numbers, such as 1.800.CALL-ATT? Who gets first rights to such phone numbers? Am I going to find myself sued some day for "cyberphone-squatting?"
This is aparently an IETF initiative rather than a U.S. government initiative, however, given government backing, will contact through this mechanism be considered a means of official notification? By this I mean will the government then be able to deliver IRS documents and notifications via Email, and have them be considered legal notifications? This seems to present the potential problem of adoption by older generations of Americans, who either might not own a computer or other device (maybe fax machine) on which to print delivered documents. This would give Kinkos a whole new revenue streams. 'What? you want to recieve your absentee ballot? The printing fee is $5'. While I can't say this is definately wrong or inappropriate, but it certainly leaves an uneasy feeling...
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
If all my contacts are going to be tied to one number, I'd much rather it work like this: I get assigned a unique id. I can use that unique ID and a system (government, public institution, whatever) that could use that key to generate any number of unique 20 digit numbers (okay, one billion 20 digit numbers) that I could use as one-time or at least one-user contacts.
For example, if my # was 1111-111-1111 I could take the unique ID 000000002-1111-111-1111, run it through this institutions encryption to create a scrambled, but unique, id (this has problems. There would only be one key in this system, and if it was comprimised, though it's only ever used by the intitution, then that would be a problem. It wouldn't even have to be a key, it could just be a relational table, but data compromising issues would still exist). I could give this ID out (at a bar, to an employer, whatever) and when the person used it, by phone, email, fax, whatever, it would get processed by the institution, decrypted, and would reveal the ID and the 'serial number'.
the benefit of this system is the person you give the card to has no way of knowing what your ID is, as it never appears in plaintext, and if you're tired of hearing from that person (or that # ends up on a spam list) you can simply refuse the serial number 000000002. They don't know what 20-digit number would decrypt to 000000003-1111-111-1111, so you're safe.
I could see business cards (and personal cards) with two parts, you detach it when you give it to someone and write the name of who you gave it to on the part you keep. that part has the serial number (000000002) on it so you can trace how someone 'got your number'.
Kevin Fox
no...
:)
Setting aside any privacy issues does anyone truly believe that a government ruled by Stram Themans (sp?) and Hillary Clintons could ever hope to administer something like this with any degree of efficiency? Is it to much to ask or ever hope that we should be left alone? Personally, I don't want anything more from our federal government. Perhaps this is one more thing to sped my tax money on, rather than letting me buy more unregistered guns
--Sovereign, White, Southern, Male
echelon already traces all cell phone calls for key words and locations.
echelon scans all emails , faxes and electronic transactions for potential danger.
I know alot about echelon because they wanted to recruit me for my encryption stuff.
However, they only have my weak crap.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
As usual, those on slashdot have begun to open their privacy tantrum-mouths again before researching.
ENUMs will be aliases for other services (like e-mail, telephone services, etc.). Each service will require a type of authentication before it can get into the wrong hands. It's just basically a convience measure. Instead of giving all your info to the phone company to get service, you just give them your ENUM, they get your info with a public key issued for phone company service providers. So they have access only to that info which is required under those specific aliases.
If you think of an ENUM as a kind of relational ID in a database for all services, accounts, etc. you have, and only specific people having keys to access that information referenced to by your ENUM, you'll get the idea. So when you give an average citizen your ENUM, you can choose to enable them to have your phone number, etc. if you want. Or you can give them a NULL ENUM, which basically would serve as a number to track you in case you, say, pass a bad check (and would offer no information initially).
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
In australia, they have 8 digits for local numbers.
In new zealand, mobile numbers have 2 digit area codes, then 6 digits for plan phones, 7 digits for prepaid phones.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
But this thing is gonna be so long it'll have to be continued on the next forehead over!
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Who doesn't know their area code + phone number? Thats 10 digits. I don't think adding an extra digit will exhaust the average joe's memory capacity.
;)
As to universal numbering, I DON'T WANT to be assigned a phone number that sticks with me. I WANT to be able to avoid having others know how to contact me.
Derek
umm, spell satan with 2 a's.
who is selur natas?
Beware of false profits.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
a unique, 11 digit #...
what's wrong with the 9 digit # we already have? If ya don't have a social security #, then...
This sounds awesome, when do i get mine tatooed on the back of my neck?
subvert the elitist slashdot patriarchy! (where all the stupid women at up in here?)
Can I be # 00000000006 ?
dkfjads dfkdjf dfkjdkjf dfkdfj. obligatory non-caps.
That's really funny, since I'm moving in a couple weeks and the "Phone Number Portability" that I've been paying for all my life will not suffice to make my new phone ten minutes from here ring with my old number. They can forward calls from my old phone to my new one for a while, but I still have to get a new number.
I support the ENUM idea primarily because it would force the phone number to get their act together.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
..never use SSN (or even SSN+name+etc) as the primary key. Use a unique identifier like a sequence. My DB prof always used the example of George Foreman. He told use that George named all five of his children "George Foreman". He also told us that there were several instances of duplicate SSNs and commonly saw problems with large databases. He used to teach DB design for Oracle.
it will be mine. oh yes, it will be mine.
[...] And remembering these 11 digit numbers could be fun ...
:)
I prefer to remember 20 (VISA)
ok, i'll go along with it, but I got dibbs on "1".
Privacy -> Your Rights Online
Interesting -> Insightful
Troll -> Flamebait
user 14563876234986342 writes:
Hello 2343786543832,
I disagree with your posting regarding Linux. As 7658934526548 said in his last post, samba can help bridge the compatibility gap between Linux and NT systems in a network as far as file sharing is concerned. But if you look at what 567534291836543 has to say, this has already been tested and verified by the lads at 5674530231785's lab.
Cheers,
14563876234986342
But there are also lots of other legitimate reasons why a person might want two identities: a high profile person can have a private identity that is unknown to others: eg Bette Middler might also be Norma Jones.
Whatever it is, it needs to be addressed seriously.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
Possibilities for unsolicited advertising galore.
Just expect people send voice messages to you
like ones from call girls/boys, y2k liquidation
firms and who knows what else. Maybe like 128
bit number would be of more appropriate spacing.
How about this one - extensible id. first 8 bits
will point to number of bits in rest of the number
so that now we can use like 32+8 - 40 bit scheme,
and when time hits and we populate universe
we can up the bit number to 256. =) Any one got
calculator for 2 ** 256 - 1 ?
On other hand hex numbers would even better idea.
2c
This can be set up, just details. Perhaps you
can have two numbers. =)
is it possible to pre order 666 for my number?
"You have the right to remain fabulous!" -Chief Clancy Wiggam
That might work, but the limited size of the serial number means that you'd never be able to give out your contact details more than 100000000 times. That might sound silly, but if you were at a conference and thousands of people were walking past, you might want to beam a unique contact number to each of them individually (so you could selectively block them later on).
A better idea might be to actually use the combination of the two people's IDs together to create a contact identifier that links them together. That way, you won't ever hand out multiple, but different contact details to the same person. You also get reciprocal contact information tied to the details you hand out -- it becomes an enchange of details instead of a one way transfer.
It still has the obvious problem that if your "secret" ID is ever stolen or discovered, you are in serious trouble :)
I want a unique number for everything. Dogs, streets, cities, countries, schools, houses, cars, computers, words, phrases, commercials, tv stations, URLs... Everything, all with a GUID. Then when I do a search on Google for '"Nicole Kidman" naked' I can do a search for "293180921832 528347338338". Don't have to worry about different Nicole Kidmans, and don't have to worry about different meanings of the word naked.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
You won't have to memorize your number since it will be conveniently tattooed to the inside of your forearm.
burris
(blah blah Goodwin's Rule blah blah)
Makes me use my SSN ???
Are you sure you didn't just agree to use it, because they asked you to? Be honest now!
I'm a programmer; I love numbers and the ease they lend to certain tasks. However, I find the thought of everything I am being represented by a number as dehumanizing as the switch from being called a "customer" to being called a "consumer."
We're not nameless and faceless; we're not a piece of data, even if we're represented by one in a database. But I think this will tip us just that much further to thinking of each other as somehow less than we are.
The name of the contributor of the original article? Damian Whitworth. That's right. DAMIAN. *Now* I've got the heebie-jeebies...
So fscking what? My name is Damian Yerrick. Lingua::Romana::Perligata was invented by another Damian. Don't let bad dreams from watching the "Cartman's birthday" episode of South Park influence how you perceive a name, and don't let a name affect how you perceive a person.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Please READ RFC 2916.
I know that people are using your phone# as index into customer databases and all sorts of junk.
But this stuff has only ONE purpose:
Given a phone number (whether it is a real phone, an IP phone, or some other thing assigned a number, how can you find out how to call, fax or mail that number over the Internet?
That's ALL. All the other stuff is mainly speculation, FUD and bullshit.
several years back, AT&T (or was it MCI?) had a bunch of hoopla and commercials advocating a single telephone number that would ring your office [and other phones]
Was it called MCI One?
Umm, how did you sell a car that you were leasing?
Many vehicle leases come with an option to purchase the vehicle at a drastically reduced price.
Will I retire or break 10K?
"I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me.
And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands" - Revelations 1:12, RSV
I found that when I was camping in Alaska, and had to kill some time in a motel. :)
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Aaliyah, P. Diddy, Axl Rose, Fee Waybill, Prarie Prince, Re Styles, Beyoncé, Mean Ween, Money Mark, Buckethead, Terminator X, Kardinall Offishal.
The list is endless!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
In response to the concerns over not being able to change your demon/armageddon/Republican "contact" numbers once enough spammers and other jerks get a hold of them, I thought of this solution:
Everyone might still have the normal area code+7 digit phone #, same freedom of email addys, etc., however, these would all relay to the afformentioned super contact number.
Some degree of anonymity/flexibility is maintained, and you still have the mark of the beas, er, the convienience of only really needing one number to access all that data. Now this doesn't mean that the companies (Hotmail, Buy.com, et al) that you give the relaying uber-# to won't leak it....
Green-voting, republican-registered, socialist-libertarian.
An Australian company offers this service. It allows you to use your mobile phone number as your email, fax, web address. I can't for the life of me remember its name, but I do remember that they had a patent for it.
email addresses were of the for 01892702987@companyname.com.au
web: 01892702987.companyname.com.au
The fax service was promised but it never turned up as far as I know.
No need to get all hyper by thinking about spooks following you around.
For those who actually read the article, it mentions the ENUM adresses are based on a variant of the DNS system where the adress ends in x.e164.arpa. Cute... and the IETF has something to do with that.
E.164 sound a bit like V.90 doesn't it? Thats because they were named by the same body, the ITU.
If you don't trust the US Gov, will you at least surf over to the IETF or the ITU's website and get the specs and make your own opinion?
Cell phone e-mail was in the form phone#@docomo.ne.jp as in 09012345678@docomo.ne.jp That was exploited by the junk e-mailers as they could just write software that emailed every email address from 09000000000 to 09099999999 (090 is the prefix for cell phones).
The solution that the various cellphone companies provided is to allow you to choose and or change your cell phone e-mail address to anything you want (that's not already used) so for example. jowbloe@docomo.ne.jp
As an example when I got my cell phone, I wasn't allowed to register a new e-mail address until whatever info han propogated through their system. Specifically the next morning 9am. Within those first 20 hours of owning my cell phone with a phone#@ e-mail address I got 6 junk e-mails (and on a cell phone EACH E-MAIL COSTS MONEY)
Hmm Spammers will have an easy life... just flood from 00000000001 to 99999999999.. Hmm or think about some nasty sircam clones ;)
True or not this is the funniest thing I have heard in a while.
War is necrophilia.
ENUM is simply a way to store information associated with a given phone number into a directory server.
h tm l
h tm l
To quote from the IETF ENUM working group:
"This working group will define a DNS-based architecture and protocols for mapping a telephone number to a set of attributes (e.g. URLs) which can be used to contact a resource associated with that number. "
ENUM is not a "US Government idea". It started in the IETF, the most open standards group around. It is now a hot item in the FCC/US Govt. because it will either (1) help centralize power for the telcos or (2) help decentralize power from the telcos. As a result, lots of folks -- big and small -- have been politicing back and forth around ENUM.
Obviously we'd like the second, decentralized, unregulated ENUM solution to happen, and initial feedback shows that the US government would like that too.
Done right, this will allow you to individually decide what published or private information to associate with your phone number, such as:
1. the IP address of an alternate Voice over IP phone for your number (bypassing the telco)
2. The URL of, say, a VoiceXML application to run if your phone is not answered
3. your email address (for phone # to email address lookup, very useful for unified messaging, internet voicemail, etc.)
4. What phone company your phone # connects via on the "traditional" telephone network, allowing you to switch phone companies without switching phone numbers (also known as "local number portability", which can be done without ENUM but is much cooler with it)
Done wrong, ENUM will allow telcos to decide when and what information is associated with your phone number, continuing their dominance (and some might claim abuse) of the telecommunications industry.
Why associate information with phone numbers? Why not use normal domain names or email addresses?
Because phone numbers are the most pervasive, portable, consumer oriented, cross platform addresses around. Unlike email addresses, they can be entered easily via keyboard, mouse & gui, telephone keypad, and even voice recognition.
Why use DNS instead of LDAP?
Sveral eprevious efforts to deliver public phone number directories in LDAP have not succeeded in an "industry wide" way.
On the other hand, DNS Servers are everywhere. Clients are even more everywhere. DNS is much simpler to deal with than LDAP. And DNS is, thank the gods of human readable text protocols, not ASN.1 encoded. But most importantly, major momentum is building behind ENUM, as the list of links below shows.
-Jonathan
IETF ENUM working group:
http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/enum-charter.
NetNumber, a company leading the good variety ENUM commercialization:
http://www.netnumber.com
ENUM.ORG a NueStar project. NeuStar is the company currently contracted by the FCC to manage the allocation of real phone numbers:
http://www.enum.org
Enumworld, a general site about ENUM:
http://www.enumworld.com
The ITU enum site:
http://www.itu.int/infocom/enum/
Another good ENUM links collection:
http://www.ngi.org/enum/
IETF site for Internet voicemail standard:
http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/vpim-charter.
VoiceXML Forum:
http://www.voicexml.org/
Voxeo, a site for VoiceXML development:
http://community.voxeo.com
"Patrik Falstrom, an engineer at the computer giant Cisco Systems Inc, came up with the idea."
what a fucking crock..
when i was born twentyfive years ago in the cold wates of norway, i was allocated an eleven-digit number as a social security number, and one of the first things to strike me was that this would be excellent to unify communications in an ever growing and more complex world.
Flarnflarn
So back off Patrick! I saw impracticably long numbers first.
However, it's basically clear from the context that the referent is in fact the beast (so it's neuter in Greek).
On a more significant level: this number has been over-hyped by the devotees of Hal Lindsey, as though it referred to someone who has yet to appear in human history. This turns out not to be the case. It's historically likely that the beast was actually a reference to Nero (or else the Roman Empire itself).
Don't buy Hal Lindsey's snake oil.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
First of all I have to say that I havent seen so many wild speculations before. You should find out some small scrap of fact before you complain about beeing branded and whatever garbage writen in this thread. It sounds like the meaning of life in the US is to come up with conspiracy theories about the goverment.
If you knew what ENUM really means you should know that you already are branded by the goverment. You have an e-mail adress dont you? then you have a personal identifier. scary? I wouldnt think so.
What ENUM offers is only a way to enter a phone number into DNS. If you dont want a numeric adress you dont get one, you get a regular e-mail adress. how difficult could it be? This is only a way to let you control your number in a better way. If you only want your family to reach you on your cellular phone, only they will be able to do so. If you dont want e-mail to the number you dont have to.
I have to add a last comment, everything doesnt concern the US goverment. The ENUM initiative is run by IETF and The US goverment has only shown interest in it. The US goverment dont run the Internet (anymore) so hold your conspiracy theories to yourselves please.
Just a thought, but in conjuction with this objously brilliant idea, why not create Unique Number Fashion Accessory Ear Rings (UNFAER). Before you dismiss the idea as a troll, hear me out!
My vision on this is a step above the average! It could be fitted with an electronic system that guaranteed the uniqueness. It would work by emitting a small electronic signal to be picked up by a global array of satelites to be known as Binary Imaging Grid for the Electronic Navigational Devices (BIG.END). This feature would not only be used to detect fraudulent misuse of your personal UNFAER, but also the heat signature of any person not wearing one so that we can determine exactly who is being unfashionable and where they are at any given time and place!
So what do ya'll think?
Reciprocal of the Beast.
666B Baker Street
Address of Sherlock Beast
999
Beast in the mirror
666A
The other neighbour of the Beast
666.666666666...
The recurring number of the Beast
66
The mini Beast
800-666
Free phone number of the Beast
I am not a number, I am a Free human being!
Just make e-mail addresses work for *everything* -- if you contact an e-mail address using a voice protocol, your phone rings, if you contact using an e-mail protocol, your mailbox gets filled. This is not hard to implement, and text e-mail addresses (a) already exist and (b) are easier to remember. Of course, this does mean yet another thing dependent on the DNS system... :-)
Rather than invent a new standard of unique identification, why not use the existing social security numbers? I mean, it's a forgone conclusion that today's young adults are never going to see that money anyway, so why not put the numbering system to good use, instead of inventing a new numbering convention? The social security number has already been accepted as a legal form of identification.
From there, the challenge would be to reverse-engineer the existing system to make it impossible to fraudulently acquire someone's resources using their social security number, but surely this would be easier than inventing a new identification convention, right?
Only on Slashdot would this be moderated up as "interesting" rather than "funny".
And talking about his tax return...
It's called person-number. It's easy to remember since it's your birth date plus four digits YYMMDD-NNNN like 700516-4953. The first three last digits is a birth number between 001 - 999 that is odd for boys and even for girls. The last digit is a modulo 10 checksum - add the first nine digits and subtract the last digit of the result from 10 to get it. Like 7+0+0+5+1+6+4+9+5 = 37. And 10 -7 = 3.
;-) It's the same as the millennium bug problem.
We've had this system since 1947. The checksum digit was added 1967. When you are born or immigrate to Sweden you receive a person-number and it never canges (except if you get 100+)
This is of course convinient to use in databases, and every public record uses them, it is also very, very easy to combine different databases since this number is a uniqe primary key. This of course is a privacy issue. For eg the police can take their database and combine it with the immigrant office records, and the hospitals records and the...you get it.
You might think there would be problems with the ammount of numbers. There have been cases when people have received an existing person-number, but it's because of human error, since the numbers are plenty. At least for this country (8 million). All that is required is that babies born on the same day get different birth numbers. When you, or if rather, you pass one hundered years the minus sign is changed to a plus sign like 700516+4953 to avoid that new born babies are confused with you.
But yes, old and dead people have received samples of babie dipers etc in the mail. Not all systems are perfect
/Patrik, Sweden
http://www.alvestrand.no/objectid/
Deleted
Why not extending our current scheme?
The email system uses the @ (at) sign to designate people "at" a certain logical location
john.doe@company.com
[john.doe AT Company.com]
why not extend this with
john.doe@company.com#phone or
john.doe@company.com#fax
john.doe@company.com#icq
john.doe@company.com#cellphone
john.doe@company.com#postal
john.doe@comapny.com#anymeans
etc.
[John Doe AT Company.com BY phone]
[John Doe AT Company.com BY fax]
etc.
We have to figure out a convenient character for the "BY" part. I would certainly welcome this scheme and it seems pretty straighforward to integrate in the current scheme of communication.
Funny, the article says that Patrik Falstrom came up with this idea. Falstrom is a swedish name. He's getting credit for inventing something that's more than 50 yrs old! Cool ;-)
About privacy: Yes there is a definite problem. Personally I don't like our person-numbers very much. It's easy to get someones number, and then do different frauds.
But then I have the bible in eBook format.
This sig made only from recycled ASCII
1337 :)
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law"
Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law (Liber AL vel Legis), aka Liber CCXX (Book 220), ca. 1904
( )
~..~
\/
|
"She's sixteen and SIN-less"
-- William Gibson
-- Truth suffers from too much analysis.
From the last several years of reading Slashdot & various odds and ends on the internet, I've seen the slow & deliberate push towards an international police & corporate state.
This is the single most sinister thing I have ever seen proposed. This is worse than Echelon.
I will never accept this evil system conceived by intelligence agencies and big business. It's purpose is to make our communications monitorable, and to clear the way for easier corporate communicative access to us. They want to take our anonity away from us. Intelligence services want to monitor enemies of the state, such as environmentalists.
Before you call me a conspiricy theorist, consider this - every message posted to this website would be _tracable_to_its_sender_.
It is not necessary the action of persocuting freedom of speech that stops it, but the perception of threat. Singapore for example.
Oh, and anybody who thinks intelligence services and big business can be trusted with this sort of power over us, ought to read up on them. They are serious sickos.
Cherish freedom while you still can, because in 10 years from now I couldn't post this message without my name going on a list. If that's not sinister, I don't know what is.
Means no more slandering ppl anonymously on the internet!
If you didn't crimethink then you wouldn't have anything to worry about. The act of worrying itself is a blatant thoughtcrime and reading books like the ones you're reading only make it worse. You should try to concentrate on becoming a happy, productive member of society. Everybody has to pull their own weight here so do as you're told, do as everybody else does for that matter, and everything will be allright!
A better article about ENUM and its capabilities was published in Telecom Magazine couple of months ago.
//SaVa
We just got portable mobile phone numbers in Australia.
Apparently nobody noticed.
Mobile phoneless and proud.
50% of the worlds population have never placed a phone call. And you want to give these people a unique universal identification number?
-- Salu2, Søren.
heh, if you would look at what we 'wackos' have been saying for the last 20 years and compare it to what has happened, you either know Jesus is coming and don't care, or are patiently waiting for His arrival. Heh, a universal unique ID# assigned to a global population is one step short of burning them into everyone's hand. Cheers m8.
Tattoo's anyone?
NeoIngozi
-.-
The main problem with the social security numbers being used as identifiers is that far too many places treat it as both a username & a password. They assume, wrongly, that only you know your SSN, so they allow people to identify and authenticate themselves with a single number. If we moved to a system where everyone had a unique identifier that was public knowledge, companies would use it solely as an identifier, not as a means of authentication. That can only be a good thing.
dude, that is SO cool...
What app do you use for it?
Gotta have that!
Why not just use peoples Social Security Number, every legal person in the U.S. is suppose to have one. Why reinvent the wheel when everyone has a unique number already.
Let's just hope
StuP
again,
This is a very bad idea.
thanks
"FOR (sic) those who cannot remember their work, home, mobile, fax and pager numbers, and their e-mail address, help may be at hand."
Yes sir
You know, I'm quite proud of our Government. Always trying to help they are. They're worried my insurance premium might go up, so they pass a law requiring me to wear a seat belt. You would think that if they passed such a law it would be to save my life
Of course, if the Government really wanted to help me remember all my numbers, then they would assist me in getting a handheld. This is more so big business doesn't have trouble finding my number.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
... is the number of the beast with two backs
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=81707& lastnode_id=81706
... 42. I think rather highly of myself, I know ...
Have I seen this somewhere before?
I woulda got one of those chips if they hadn't done that.
Because we know there is one to one correlation between phone numbers and people, right. They basically haven't stopped to think about this at all. What if two people living together are separated? For example, which one do I get when I call, and which one is cut off from all synchronous communication until they 'merge' again?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Here's the IETF's ENUM working group charter. If you read this as opposed to the news article, the whole scheme may make a bit more sense.
Reading through the charter (And glancing at the RFC, I don't see where they came up with the "number for every person" idea. To me, it looks like they are just giving FQDN to devices that have phone numbers. ie. your cell phone (which may be able to recieve short messages), can now have its own FQDN so internet users can address it.
Isn't this what Social Security(or lack thereof) Numbers are for?
"...I'll need guns" --Chow Yun-Fat in 'Replacement Killers'
And he causeth all ... to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads
:)
Interestingly enough, this is one of the few remaining strong superstitions I hold. Whenever I'm somewhere and they need to stamp my hand for something, they invariably want to stamp my right hand. Because this passage freaked the shit out of me back in junior high school, I always hold out my left, instead. It's amazing (and very annoying) how these people can't handle that someone might want the other hand stamped.
One of these days, if I'm sufficiently annoyed, I'll just start quoting the verse in a loud voice, shouting religious discrimination, and see what happens. Might help that I'm in a relatively conservative state, too.
What we need is email that is routed through the US Postal Service so they can postmark it and guarantee a minimum level of privacy (ie. SSL to and from USPS servers). They could charge a nominal fee which I am sure most companies would be happy to pay in lieu of postage. And the post office could use their legal authority on spammer's, mail fraud, etc.
It would be one email address that I could give out with some sense of security that it won't be abused. I could even go into the local post office to authenticate myself with my Driver's License. I would even be willing to pay $20-30 for an the hardware at my end that would be my digital mailbox.
Not only does this scheme seem very wrong in terms of personal privacy, is there any wonder that the whores in the US govt are backing the idea? Just think, everything a consumer does, theoretically, will be tracked. Spam? You cannot hide. Marketing towards you specifically based upon your spending habits, neatly organized for easier dissemination by those wanting to sell you stuff. Stuff stuff stuff. What the hell was Cisco thinking?
From the article: Patrik Falstrom, an engineer at the computer giant Cisco Systems Inc, came up with the idea.
Guess what, it is a very old idea. Examples of this idea can be easily found in sci-fi such as Star Treck, but forget that, just read Isaac Asimov's Multivac series.... everyone was recognized by their unique identification number, so computer could run their lives. Sounds great, doesn't it?
You can't handle the truth.
Nowhere in the article did it mention that this would be a replacement for a SSN, tax number, or do anything besides act as a way for people to contact you.
When you give someone your number with this, you are giving them only contact information, and nothing more. Treat it accordingly.
In my opinion, the entire notion of a pseudo-secret ID number like social security numbers, is silly anyway, as they can be too easily obtained and abused. There needs to be a better alternative; I just can't think of one right now.
I think that these aren't such a good idea because the private sector already has the whole personal communications thing covered pretty well, and they don't make me remember an email addy like 4.1.4.1.6.5.4.2.0.2.1.e164.arpa@whitehouse.gov (or whatever).
Read the article; don't assume everything will be used to invade your privacy.
- Adam
n/t
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
How long until the ENUM is needed to book a flight, take a cab, register a car, enter a fed. building, or fill up your tank? Sounds like a universal ID with a different name
a "nameserver" like system would be cool (if you
drop all thoughts about all the abuse
which could be done then).
It would be easier to change your location etc,
but also much easier to track your whole life.
The Bible! *Another gasp!* Since most of the anti-Christian zealots are now listening: What better reason to require having the 'Mark of the Beast' imprinted on everyone's head and hand? You don't want you number stolen, so the only way to safeguard against that with any pretty reasonable protection would be to have it tattooed, chip implanted, or whatever on two places on your body that are important for everyday life. IE - your head and your hand. Scan everyone's hand at the checkout line, just like those stupid supermarket Saver! cards that are around these days, and you can verify if the person is who they claim to be or not. Plus, you get big savings! (Not to mention the fact that the supermarkets just hike the prices for everything that's "on sale" using their Saver! cards so that anyone who doesn't have 'the card' gets screwed.)
Now look, I won't take part in any universal numbering scheme that requires me to place said number in or on my person (in a permanant fashion, such as a tattoo or embedded chip), but if you people want to, be my guest. I'm just going on the record as saying: "The Bible tells us not to," and it does so because it's just a bad idea, for one thing. The rules and laws contained in the Bible are not to keep us repressed, they're to keep us from harming ourselves, just like parents discipline their kids to keep them from harming themselves. It just so happens that God knows everything, therefore He knows everything that could harm us, even if it seems fun or 'beneficial' at the moment.
Let the flames begin...
despite the success in other countries for universal identification numbers, it would not work on the scale mentioned. how many people have multiple phone #s and multiple email address, not to mention the chaos it would create making the telcos completely revise their switching systems. and then there's all your privacy paranoids out there who feel that universal id is the first step in government control of everything.
See the subject. Submit T-minus 14 seconds, 10 seconds, 8 seconds, 2 seconds, submitting. We have submit.
is it me or does giving everyone a number that can identify them one of the signs of the coming of the antichrist?
isnt this foretold on the bible?
Now back to your regularly scheduled rant already in progress...
Similar to how I don't need to remember 216.239.33.101 whenever I need to do a search, names could be registered to those unique numbers. Better yet, multiple names could be registered, and in this way you would not need to worry as much about SPAM, if the system did not allow you to resolve the name into the number yourself (i.e., you can't use a tool like ping to get the unique number for SidewaysTheDog, but if you try to access that name via your cell phone, my phone would ring). You could have multiple throw-away accounts, like email addresses nowadays, as well as semi-permanent accounts that you give out with care.
This does hinge on the system being able to resolve your unique number without giving the number to another user, but considering modern cryptography techniques, and a secure routing system, I think that is a reasonable thing to do.
"Love is never saying you're too proud." -Tonic
XNS (extensible name service) already addresses some of this. See their webpage for general information, or this page for a nutshell description
I call dibs on 00000000668 "The Neighbor of the Beast"
It is also a cultural and historical city (country even) People like Goethe or Victor Hugo and William Turner enjoyed Luxembourg. You should visit it, or just at least take a visit the website .
Besides, the system is extremely evident...of course, it is...there aren't 200 diffent ways to easily number a large number of people. When reading the posts a bit further I noticed Denmark has a similar system but with 4 extra numbers instead of 3.
Remind me to bitch on your country the next time you post something about it. My only purpose was to enable others to compare "what exists" around the world.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Also implementing simple systems for business would then become a nightmare. Can you image creating subnet masks for employees who all have unrelated unique identifiers?
I'd like mine stamped on my forehead or right hand please! Oh oh, and can I have 666 if it's not already taken?? Thanks =)
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Next number up for grabgs: 666
Who wants it?
*rolls eyes*
I think government will never learn. Perhaps it's time for me to leave the country.
the editor of the beast
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
They're just stealing ideas from the bible...
I do everything the voices in my head tell me to...
Identification number = Your birth date + 5 digit code
Less than 100,000 people are born each day
No thanks. I don't want something that the government assigns that ties everything I do to me, and makes it even EASIER for:
Spammers
TeleMarketers (is there a diff between 1 & 2?)
Marketers
Law Enforcement
Scumbag Lawyers
Criminals
Pranksters
to make my life a living miserable hell. Anyone ever watch Babylon 5 and remember the race of technomages ("hackers") that made Ambassador Molari's live a living hell? Well, with one simple identifier, it could be that...
Anyone want to consider what happens when some dyslexic clerk (no offense to dyslexics out there... I have friends with it...) transposes two digits, and now you're on the most wanted list?
Or lawyer:
"Gee Mr. 1234567, you pass through toll booth XYZZY every day at approximately 4:30pm, then go to a McDonalds and buy 3 big macs and a small diet orange drink, then pass through toll booth XYZZS at approximately 6:30pm. Isn't it interesting that the McDonalds that you spend 2 hours "eating" at happens to be 3 blocks away from your mistresses house?"
Screw this... the whole thing stinks. It's not my job to make life easier for anyone - especially Government - it's their job to protect me and that's it.
anyone else thinking of alien nation here?
No, I amn't. I remember the film but I don't see the relation to this. Care to remind me?
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Don't worry THX-1138, all is well. Take your pills.
Be nice to everyone, they out number you 6 billion to 1.
In the BBS heyday (1986-1990) abuses of the systems led to most of the sysops requiring positive identification of users _before_ they were allowed to have an account on the system. Persons wishing to have an account often had to talk voice with the sysop and sometimes provide a drivers license number or other such ID.
The point? Think about the above the next time you portscan some anonymous person's networked box. Government is under fantastic pressure from individuals, groups (business in particular) to provide for a secure environment (which is governments primary job, btw.)
The result? What better way to ensure the responsible behaviour of individuals and groups than to make them identify themselves.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
Didn't the Bible predict something like this?
You do realize that not all modern democratic nations require that all of its citizens be identified by a unique number? In fact there are many that would argue that a free and democratic society must not force such a system on its citizens.
Americans seem to have grown so used to having "unique" number stamped onto your arm at birth that you assume that it is necessary. Then you wonder why all of you can have your indentities stolen by anyone with $5 and an internet account.
In Canada for instance everyone over 12 has a SIN or social insurance number issued to them. However the use of the SIN as part of an identification system is severely restricted. Further the number itself is not considered unique. In fact it is possible, even in a relatively small group(say 10,000 people) for this number to collide.
No company can require you to provide your SIN for any purpose, including credit card companies or apartment rental companies etc. Nor can they use it to uniquely identify you.
There are a few specific exceptions.
Basically the only purposes for which you must provide your SIN is where the recipient has responsibilities to Canada Customs and Revenue Agency(CCRA), Canada's IRS. For example your employer or other agent for which you will have income. For example an investment bank where interest income will be returned will require a SIN to report income to the CCRA. In this case the number must be only used for this purpose, not for indentification (ie not as a unique key) and must be destroyed upon termination of your relationship (ie you move to a new job).
See the Privacy Comission of Canada's web site for more information.
Even the CCRA does not use your SIN as an standalone identifier. You see the CCRA has learned that in a database you can use multiple DB columns to create a unique id. So in fact your identity is determined by multiple values.
So in Canada you get the benefits of being able to identify someone for tax purposes without all of the danger and flaws in a single "unique" number. A number which even in the US is aparently not all that unique if you read some of the posts.
Now the US government wants to issue a unique number for phone, e-mail and fax?
You americans are crazy.
Yeah, you're right. Both great books. But people tell me my taste in books tends to be a little "paranoid". Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean that big brother isn't out to destroy my individuality.
yeah, that's exactly what the government needs to collect information and follow the movements of everyone. Really cool, yep...
How do I know?
because it says it will in the Bible.
I confirmed that they were being kept out of the systems -- the required tax paperwork was done manually by the few people which the employment agreement allowed to have the SSNs.
Anything can be changed by contract or law.
I wonder how much the government could raise by auctioning vanity numbers. Would someone pay extra for 1111111111, 1000000000, 1234567890?
Personally, I'd want a random number rather than something which might be used in database tests...
This is an example of a number game called geometria. The Hebrews (and here the early Christians) would take a word and play with its numerical value to show hidden meanings in the word. ...
It's also an example of using hidden encrypted information to avoid censorship.
The Roman Empire had strong censorship of criticism of its officials' actions. Death penalty for inciting revolt against the Empire. Of course the official making the call was usually the one criticized, since he'd be the one running things locally and annoying people.
But Rome had a big thing about allowing the subject people their religions, to reduce the incentive to revolt. (That's why "Carthage Must Be Destroyed!" - due in large part to their baby-roasting cult - took so long to get through the Senate.) So religious tracts could be published without restriction.
So a large amount of anti-Roman propaganda and organizational literature was disguised as religious tracts, with well-known codes, such as local-culture referances and local-language puns and rhymes, used for the encryption. The Hebrews were among the big users of this technique and a lot of their work still survives. Revalations is a typical example of the form, criticizing a Roman general, which just happens to have been disguised well enough that it made it into the Christian canon. (I don't recall which general. But it's well known in anthropological circles and the rest of the text matches what he was up to at the time.)
The "Number of the Beast" is how the Hebrew radicals identified the person being discussed. They already had this hashing function for other uses: Replace each letter with its cabalistic value and add the result. So they could identify the person by using "The Number of his Name". To see who they were talking about, apply the function to the names of each of the well-known officials in the area at the time and look for a match.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Hello. My name is Doug.
This is a post on slashdot.
There are many other posts on slashdot, just as there are many chapters in the bible. Some chapters have more relevance and importance that others--for example, chapters teaching directly are more important than chapters teaching the rationale, or the consequences of failure.
Within each chapter, as within each post, there are verses that are simply there to hold it together--and which can be toned down as not important for whole message.
****
Leaving biblical necessity behind, OF COURSE you have the right to ignore any part of the bible you want. You might not get into heaven, but you also might get there without ever opening up that book or hearing a single verse.
Free Will is something that man has, and that most of the modern world treasures very highly. What most people don't realize, though, is that Free Will is, at its most basic level, the ability to go against the words of authority and do the wrong thing.
Certain things can have consequences, be they damnation, the end of a friendship, or legal repurcussions, but the ability to choose between right or wrong, regarding the consequences as you will, is the very heart of free choice.
Sound like one of those half-decent ideas from the idiots in charge, but we'll have to wait a couple more decades until the population is more balanced between good old god fearin' americans, and rational people...
Shift happens. Fire it up.
Another example might be people in the public eye, a separate identity gives a cloak of anomynity that allows them to move around undetected.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
Is only one thousand millions in US.
what if I want to seperate work from pleasure? I don't want to give my clients my UIN, do I? What if I sell porn or something (seriously)?
It is extremely unlikely that there will be a duplicate house number within a 9-digit zip code, which usually narrows the area down to a street or neighborhood. So you simply put the house number and the 9-digit zip, resulting in a complete address which looks like 4871 13068-4310.
The US Postal Service already implements this, although only in the barcodes and not in human-readable address labels. The full Delivery Point Bar Code consists of your Zip+4, followed by the last 2 digits of your apartment number, box number, or housenumber, followed by a check digit. See Domestic Mail Manual section C840 (requires Adobe Acrobat).
Quis metamoderunt ipses metamoderatores?
Oh great, a public LDAP server with everybody's name in it. Talk about a spammers wet dream!!!
...so long as George Washington gets 00000000001.
I think you can learn it yourself adequately well, using a good book (like, for instance, Machen's New Testament Greek for Beginners - if you're interested in the Koine Greek used in the New Testament; I have no recommendation for Classical Greek). Taking it at a university gets you certification ("I took a class on this") but little else, and it's not terribly relevant unless you're seeking further certification associated with the language (of course, there's always the discipline associated with taking a class that should not be ignored, either...). I took it in school, but I think that the texts available are more than adequate for the average man's casual reading of Greek.
I apologize for the delay in replying (you may not even read this... :-), but I hope it may be helpful.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.