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McNealy Calls for National ID Card Too
Syre writes: "Well McNealy's at it again calling for a national ID card (a smart card powered by Java, anyone?)." So let's get this straight: Oracle wants a national ID card powered by Oracle. Sun wants a national ID card powered by Java. (Even though the U.S. already has a national ID card, since the states are in the process of linking their driver's license databases together.) Is there any company that doesn't want to exploit a tragedy for financial gain? And didn't each and every one of the hijackers present valid ID?
Think about it. Easy to hack, no security, have to reboot all the time, and you always have a lawyer on call.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Well, that sounds like the first trumpet...
We should be expecting a bunch of losers to be carried away in chariots any minute now. Then a couple dudes will be standing around the Mid-East shooting fire out of their mouths.
Thanks, Scott. Do you have a particular design you'd like us to tattoo, also?
USA needs to freeze immigration, revoke all visas for visitors from hostile middle eastern countries. I would included student visas in that mix too. All middle eastern non-citizens should be deported back to their homeland. It is time that the USA regains control of her borders. Military should be deployed to assist border patrol to prevent terrorists and their weapons from slipping into the country unchecked. Write to your senator and representative and demand action.
Actually, many of the hijackers presented forged ID, and to this day we don't really know who they are.
Furthermore, as many of them were in the country on temporary visas, with a national ID there might have been a way to root them out. So do not pretend that there are absolutely no benefits to having a national ID.
Still there are drawbacks, and no it doesn't have to do with any silly 1984-type distopian fantasies. With a national ID used everywhere, all those lovely illegal immigrants from Latin America would be kicked out. Why is that bad? Because it would very quickly drive the U.S. into a full fledged depression. The U.S. needs its illegals just as much as they need us; it's just that we don't admit it to ourselves.
Just because the U.S. isn't being hypocritical dealing with the Taliban doesn't mean we aren't hypocrites in many other places.
CREATORS ADMIT UNIX, C HOAX
| "+(*u/4)*962);
In an announcement that has stunned the computer industry, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan admitted that the Unix operating system and C programming language created by them is an elaborate April Fools prank kept alive for over 20 years. Speaking at the recent UnixWorld Software Development Forum, Thompson revealed the following:
"In 1969, AT&T had just terminated their work with the GE/Honeywell/AT&T Multics project. Brian and I had just started working with an early release of Pascal from Professor Nichlaus Wirth's ETH labs in Switzerland and we were impressed with it's elegant simplicity and power. Dennis had just finished reading 'Bored of the Rings', a hilarious National Lampoon parody of the great Tolkien 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy. As a lark, we decided to do parodies of the Multics environment and Pascal. Dennis and I were responsible for the operating environment. We looked at Multics and designed the new system to be as complex and cryptic as possible to maximize casual users' frustration levels, calling it Unix as a parody of Multics, as well as other more risque' allusions. Then Dennis and Brian worked on a truly warped version of Pascal, called 'A'. When we found others were actually trying to create real programs with A, we quickly added additional cryptic features and evolved into B, BCPL and finally C. We stopped when we got a clean compile on the following syntax:
for(;P(" "),R--;P("|"))for(e=C;e--;P("_"+(*u++/8)*962))P("
To think that modern programmers would try to use a language that allowed such a statement was beyond our comprehension! We actually thought of selling this to the Soviets to set their computer science progress back 20 or more years. Imagine our surprise when AT&T and other US corporations actually began trying to use Unix and C! It has taken then 20 years to develop enough expertise to generate even marginally useful applications using this 1960's technological parody, but we are impressed with the tenacity (if not common sense) of the general Unix and C programmer. In any event, Brian, Dennis and I have been working exclusively in Pascal on the Apple Macintosh for the past few years and feel really guilty about the chaos, confusion and truly bad programming that have resulted from our silly prank so long ago."
Major Unix and C vendors and customers, including AT&T, Microsoft, Hewlett- Packard, GTE, NCR, and DEC have refused comment at this time. Borland International, a leading vendor of Pascal and C tools, including the popular Turbo Pascal, Turbo C and Turbo C++, stated they had suspected this for a number of years and would continue to enhance their Pascal products and halt further efforts to develop C. An IBM spokesman broke into uncontrolled laughter and had to postpone a hastily convened news conference concerning the fate of the RS-6000, merely stating 'VM will be available Real Soon Now'.
In a cryptic statement, Professor Wirth of the ETH institute and father of the Pascal, Modula 2 and Oberon structured languages, merely stated that P. T. Barnum was correct. ----
Microsoft believes its customer base of 120 million will make it dominant in the field.
The the courts aren't taking more aggressive action at breaking up their monopoly power? Make Passport dominant in the face of Sun's superior product design. They are definitely right - that user base will make their product dominant. Come on DOJ, do something!
Why bother.
someone sent me this link the other day about the terrorists being here on H1B visa's. Here is the link http://visa.servecounterstrike.com/ . I think you should take a look.
What about a microchip planted under the skin for ID? It would come up as a legitimit ID without giving up any type of number. If yours is forged, it would be quite obvious. I wouldn't want to see it used to buy something, just a means of identification.