You've already answered your own question: centralization of information.
Consider this. Someone wants to get information about you and wishes to do so by nefarious means. Suppose they manage to find your SSN. That's nice, what did that get them in the way of your passport? Not much, they'd have to climb that mountain separately. Now what if they wanted your driver's license? Damn, that's another agency to mess with. Anything else? Have to go to different agencies. And of course they have to cross-check the information to make sure it's you which may fail and then they're back at square one.
Now suppose it's "the government." Interestingly the system works against itself here. Suppose, hypothetically, they wanted to see if you drank alcohol before you got on a plane bound for the Netherlands (why? I don't know, probably something stupid and given the amount of blatant stupidity on capitol hill I wouldn't put it past them and this is just purely hypothetical). Well you're in line and now they "need" to know and they need that information fast. Well what do they have to check? Same kinds of things as in the previous example. They need to look into an arrest record, see if you've got a valid driver's license (did you have a DUI?), perhaps see if you've been flagged as a "bar hopper" in some database somewhere, your passport, or anything else. Problem is you're standing there in line and they've got to cross check all this ton of information. Why bother? You've got a passport, obviously someone thought you were good to go, and do they REALLY "need to know" anything else about you beyond someone giving you a passport? No. You get your ticket and you hop on the plane without fear of information about you being exploited because it was in a central location for some curious asshole to poke around with.
The cops around here have a saying. "If you want to charge someone just follow them long enough." Putting all that information in one place is making it VERY easy for someone nefarious to find something bad or at least bad-looking about you. Having it separate minimizes that. That's what's bad about it.
Remind me just how in the hell a more invasive ID will fix someone stealing your credit card number. Seriously, I'd like to hear how this contraption works that will have some online retailer/general department store/mom-and-pop-shop check for your proper credentials. I have NEVER and I mean never been asked in any state, store, or other for my identification. Ever. Not even once. The only time I'm ever asked for my ID is for military bases and night clubs. So please, tell me how a more invasive system capable of enabling people to keep more invasive databases on me will force that 15 year old across the counter to make sure that I possess my credit card (and don't feed that line about, "Well they're supposed to." I worked retail at a nationally recognized chain and when I asked people for their IDs I was eventually told to stop due to customer "convenience").
For the moment I'd also like to note that the most effective way to get someone's bank account number or credit card number, since you asked, is not in forging an ID but in using those wonderful social engineering skills to con them out of some wage-worker who's not paid enough to care. Read "The Art of Deception," it should help.
And this "RealID helping" thing. Remind me what on earth is going to "help" with these problems from a national identification system. In fact, if the government REALLY wants to help they'll look into punishing the crap out of any company who DOESN'T do something to help keep your identity safe. But then that steps on the toes of private business. So guess what, DON'T USE THOSE COMPANIES and trust the government will find some way of punishing them if they don't help safeguard your information.
I swear, the answer everyone's got these days to everything is, "Let the government do it." Schooling, parenting, stupidity, and everything else. Wanna know why the government is interested in regulating your entertainment, your food, your home, and now where you can fly, if you can leave the country, and whether you stand up when you pee? Here's a clue, because of reasoning like this.
Honestly, go to a different University. Seriously, if an institute of LEARNING is telling you that having an open mind (aka using different OSes and programs still compatible with recognized standards) is not allowed then I wouldn't deem them fit to educate anyone.
And besides, if everyone has to be able to access their mail that'd include the people in a UNIX lab (I've not seen a university with a CS program that doesn't have a UNIX/Linux lab). So they'd just be excluding any of those from checking their e-mail? Good idea, right.
Why would you want to outsource the e-mail anyway? Is it really THAT big a deal to host e-mail? Really? What about the concerns of privacy? Because it's going through a third party what if they decided to spy on your messages? That's some scary shit right there and what's to stop them?
Honestly I had the same problem for awhile and I didn't even own a Blackberry. Just my e-mail and home phone were enough in order to violate my "off time" from work and make my home feel like my workplace. When I go home I expect to do just that: BE AT HOME. Go to a club, play some games, have dinner, you know all the things that people like to do in the Sims. I found the easiest way to remove yourself from your work when you leave work is to NOT let them e-mail you, don't give them your cell phone number, and only have them contact you if it is an absolute DIRE emergency (I'm talking life and death here). I made this blatantly clear to my last workplace and if they dared violate it they caught quite the earful from me. To date they've only called me at home once and when I get home now it feels great.
Biggest suggestion I'd make to anyone who feels like they're chained to work is stop letting your work get in touch with you over anything less than someone just lost a limb and you personally need to apply a tourniquet.
Could this be a response to last week's news regarding the amount of movie bootlegs coming out of Canada or should this be considered totally unrelated?
Have to admit, I was thinking the same thing. Granted, I use Linux and tend to think about it when I hear about Open Source but I know that's just me, there's a lot of people who think Firefox, BSD, and even little gems like Audacity.
The name alone is going to hurt them I think. Linux is a wonderful face of Open Source but certainly not the one I'd use to portray ALL Open Source/Free Standards. Why not something like, "Free and Open Group," or "FOG?" I dunno, just off the top of my head.
Dunno, Wine seems to do just fine. Not exactly for the faint of heart, but with a helping hand I've helped quite a few people on their way with happy experiences running most of their Windows software for about $0.
Enough to "win the market?" If Linux/BSD/whatever-you-like was positioned to win the market it wouldn't be a very hard sell.
Technically yes, it does probably outdo the 360. But then isn't it interesting that not long ago people were having to spend thousands to be able to run F.E.A.R. on PC at even halfway acceptable framerates and graphics settings whilst the 360 version looks just as good, runs fast, with all that "inferior" hardware.
Sounds to me like your dual-core PC in the bedroom blows. With all that hardware you should be just blowing F.E.A.R. away by a mile using that logic. Shocking a $400 box of ancient hardware outperforms the best and brightest there.
But can it work for pr0n? To my understanding some users can generate nearly that much raw pr0n data every frustrated night, it'd be great if Google could release this groundbreaking (earth moving?) software for those poor users.
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You've already answered your own question: centralization of information.
Consider this. Someone wants to get information about you and wishes to do so by nefarious means. Suppose they manage to find your SSN. That's nice, what did that get them in the way of your passport? Not much, they'd have to climb that mountain separately. Now what if they wanted your driver's license? Damn, that's another agency to mess with. Anything else? Have to go to different agencies. And of course they have to cross-check the information to make sure it's you which may fail and then they're back at square one.
Now suppose it's "the government." Interestingly the system works against itself here. Suppose, hypothetically, they wanted to see if you drank alcohol before you got on a plane bound for the Netherlands (why? I don't know, probably something stupid and given the amount of blatant stupidity on capitol hill I wouldn't put it past them and this is just purely hypothetical). Well you're in line and now they "need" to know and they need that information fast. Well what do they have to check? Same kinds of things as in the previous example. They need to look into an arrest record, see if you've got a valid driver's license (did you have a DUI?), perhaps see if you've been flagged as a "bar hopper" in some database somewhere, your passport, or anything else. Problem is you're standing there in line and they've got to cross check all this ton of information. Why bother? You've got a passport, obviously someone thought you were good to go, and do they REALLY "need to know" anything else about you beyond someone giving you a passport? No. You get your ticket and you hop on the plane without fear of information about you being exploited because it was in a central location for some curious asshole to poke around with.
The cops around here have a saying. "If you want to charge someone just follow them long enough." Putting all that information in one place is making it VERY easy for someone nefarious to find something bad or at least bad-looking about you. Having it separate minimizes that. That's what's bad about it.
Remind me just how in the hell a more invasive ID will fix someone stealing your credit card number. Seriously, I'd like to hear how this contraption works that will have some online retailer/general department store/mom-and-pop-shop check for your proper credentials. I have NEVER and I mean never been asked in any state, store, or other for my identification. Ever. Not even once. The only time I'm ever asked for my ID is for military bases and night clubs. So please, tell me how a more invasive system capable of enabling people to keep more invasive databases on me will force that 15 year old across the counter to make sure that I possess my credit card (and don't feed that line about, "Well they're supposed to." I worked retail at a nationally recognized chain and when I asked people for their IDs I was eventually told to stop due to customer "convenience"). For the moment I'd also like to note that the most effective way to get someone's bank account number or credit card number, since you asked, is not in forging an ID but in using those wonderful social engineering skills to con them out of some wage-worker who's not paid enough to care. Read "The Art of Deception," it should help. And this "RealID helping" thing. Remind me what on earth is going to "help" with these problems from a national identification system. In fact, if the government REALLY wants to help they'll look into punishing the crap out of any company who DOESN'T do something to help keep your identity safe. But then that steps on the toes of private business. So guess what, DON'T USE THOSE COMPANIES and trust the government will find some way of punishing them if they don't help safeguard your information. I swear, the answer everyone's got these days to everything is, "Let the government do it." Schooling, parenting, stupidity, and everything else. Wanna know why the government is interested in regulating your entertainment, your food, your home, and now where you can fly, if you can leave the country, and whether you stand up when you pee? Here's a clue, because of reasoning like this.
Honestly, go to a different University. Seriously, if an institute of LEARNING is telling you that having an open mind (aka using different OSes and programs still compatible with recognized standards) is not allowed then I wouldn't deem them fit to educate anyone. And besides, if everyone has to be able to access their mail that'd include the people in a UNIX lab (I've not seen a university with a CS program that doesn't have a UNIX/Linux lab). So they'd just be excluding any of those from checking their e-mail? Good idea, right. Why would you want to outsource the e-mail anyway? Is it really THAT big a deal to host e-mail? Really? What about the concerns of privacy? Because it's going through a third party what if they decided to spy on your messages? That's some scary shit right there and what's to stop them?
Honestly I had the same problem for awhile and I didn't even own a Blackberry. Just my e-mail and home phone were enough in order to violate my "off time" from work and make my home feel like my workplace. When I go home I expect to do just that: BE AT HOME. Go to a club, play some games, have dinner, you know all the things that people like to do in the Sims. I found the easiest way to remove yourself from your work when you leave work is to NOT let them e-mail you, don't give them your cell phone number, and only have them contact you if it is an absolute DIRE emergency (I'm talking life and death here). I made this blatantly clear to my last workplace and if they dared violate it they caught quite the earful from me. To date they've only called me at home once and when I get home now it feels great. Biggest suggestion I'd make to anyone who feels like they're chained to work is stop letting your work get in touch with you over anything less than someone just lost a limb and you personally need to apply a tourniquet.
Could this be a response to last week's news regarding the amount of movie bootlegs coming out of Canada or should this be considered totally unrelated?
Have to admit, I was thinking the same thing. Granted, I use Linux and tend to think about it when I hear about Open Source but I know that's just me, there's a lot of people who think Firefox, BSD, and even little gems like Audacity. The name alone is going to hurt them I think. Linux is a wonderful face of Open Source but certainly not the one I'd use to portray ALL Open Source/Free Standards. Why not something like, "Free and Open Group," or "FOG?" I dunno, just off the top of my head.
Dunno, Wine seems to do just fine. Not exactly for the faint of heart, but with a helping hand I've helped quite a few people on their way with happy experiences running most of their Windows software for about $0. Enough to "win the market?" If Linux/BSD/whatever-you-like was positioned to win the market it wouldn't be a very hard sell.
It's not dedication, just means he's not particularly enthusiastic about his honeymoon.
Technically yes, it does probably outdo the 360. But then isn't it interesting that not long ago people were having to spend thousands to be able to run F.E.A.R. on PC at even halfway acceptable framerates and graphics settings whilst the 360 version looks just as good, runs fast, with all that "inferior" hardware. Sounds to me like your dual-core PC in the bedroom blows. With all that hardware you should be just blowing F.E.A.R. away by a mile using that logic. Shocking a $400 box of ancient hardware outperforms the best and brightest there.
Funny thing is Mattel's still around, perhaps it'll take Sony another 40 years to be where Mattel is now?
But can it work for pr0n? To my understanding some users can generate nearly that much raw pr0n data every frustrated night, it'd be great if Google could release this groundbreaking (earth moving?) software for those poor users.
Well you know the saying, given enough eyes no problem is too bi-...
You know, maybe we should just leave that saying alone this one time.