Or what will happen is what is happening now: people who are technophobes with little to no online presence will be the only ones winning elections. So the guy who thinks using a Mac is too hard will be running your country.
You mean like the President who had to fight to keep his Crackberry, and whose staff had to convert the White House network to work with their Mac computers instead of just Windows?
This isn't about sports, though... it's about media. It's about declaring that your event can only be reported about by one particular (gigantic corporate) entity. In the case of sports, this may not seem particularly harmful, but it sets a precedent that could be seriously abused to create false impressions of purportedly public events of actual importance.
There are so many sources of cocaine and like substances in our society that it's no wonder it can be found everywhere (looking at currency is more sexy than say, doorknobs, and I'd imagine the same level of contamination), legal and otherwise. Benzocaine, for example, is a common numbing agent for oral use that is in the same chemical family. So is novacaine. They just don't have the popular cachet, but I'd be pleasantly surprised if the testing used could distinguished between them. I imagine if you tested currency for benzodiazepines (valium and the like) or SSRIs (Prozac and the like) or beta blockers or digitalis or any commonly prescribed drug, you'd find near 100% contamination as well. BFD. People use cocaine and other drugs both medically and recreationally. News at 11.
But they don't typically snort other drugs through a rolled-up bill. Hence, I'd be surprised to find the SSRI content of folding money to be as high as the cocaine content.
Credit cards(along with drivers licenses) are often used to chop up the coke lines. It's common for cokeheads to lick the card after they're done snorting the rails.
But they're unlikely to then pass that credit card on to someone else's wallet.
My cousin had a really similar story, with ovarian cancer. Only... the initial delay was because she was uninsured, and was scared of how expensive it might be to get all the tests to find out what was causing her pain.
In the end, she paid about $200,000 out-of-pocket for treatment that couldn't save her life. They didn't just close her back up and say "sorry," though. They took out her uterus, ovaries, and a section of her colon, sewed her back up with a brand-new colostomy bag, and then she went through chemo and radiation without a functional colon. then they opened her BACK up, found a new giant tumor just a few months later, took that out (and reconnected her plumbing), and gave her MORE treatment that didn't work... it just made her ephaisic for the last two weeks of her life.
I had begged her for years to sign up for the State's high-risk health insurance pool, but she didn't want to spend $700/month on health insurance, when she had to live the rest of her life on her assets and some rental income (she was disabled and couldn't work). Ironic that her life was shortened by the lack of coverage...
As another poster mentioned, the story you tell happens in private hospitals to insured patients too. Even worse is when the insurance company, following their policy of "deny all claims the first time," causes the delay themselves. The free market can't solve that problem any more than government regulation can. It's unfortunately something that needs to be addressed in how doctors are trained and how patients advocate for themselves.
We're sorry Matt Hew Johnson, we accidentally removed your leg as per operation instructions intended for Matthew Johnson down the hall.
Because with our current private healthcare system, such things NEVER happen. I was actually in a meeting yesterday with two doctors who were arguing over whether it was reasonable to plan a project that would require doctors in the ER to reconcile medications. You know, the part where they ask "Are you currently taking any prescription or over-the-counter medications?" The one working in a private practice insisted this was just too much (even though it's part of the standard of care); the one who spent 12 years working in the ER of the County hospital said they damned well BETTER be willing to do it, because it's crazy not to.
Yeah, in private practice, turning patients around faster means making more money. That doesn't really motivate doctors to take their time and do things right.
Social Security is different from other public benefit systems in the US and abroad. In effect, it's something of a forced savings plan. You pay into SSI, and when you retire, you receive a benefit based on what you put in and how long you're expected to live.
One of the reasons it was put in place was to encourage older people to leave the workforce, freeing up jobs for younger workers. It's also there to generally address poverty and related social ills among the elderly.
So anyway... refusing to pay out social security benefits to retirees because of where they live would be not entirely different from your IRA refusing to send you money because you retired to Aruba.
SSI also pays benefits to disabled folks who can no longer work, or to surviving minor children of deceased beneficiaries. Not sure what the policies for those are on residency.
By saying 'everybody's covered', we extend coverage to anyone who shows up in the U.S. Do you intend for that coverage to include even non-citizens? Visiting tourists? Even those here illegally? Admittedly the current system covers illegals, but a foreign tourist would probably have to offer some form of payment.
Yes. So, when people come here from, say, Europe, to spend their money on our tourism industry, and something unfortunate befalls them, it's not just the nightmare of the serious illness or injury... it's *also* the nightmare of getting payment arranged. In many cases, tourists cut short their stay because something relatively minor, but urgent, is too difficult to do here in the US.
OTOH... when Americans go to many countries abroad, and have the same thing happen to them, they receive excellent care at no charge. Those systems are set up to care for people, not to make money, so that's what they do. I know several Americans who have dealt with unexpected illnesses or injuries in Canada, Germany, France, Iceland, etc. and found the care to be comparable in quality to what they'd expect here, but much less cumbersome to obtain.
If it *really* seems like people are coming to the US just to fall ill, add another point onto the hotel occupancy tax to offset the costs. But, for crying out loud, just TAKE CARE OF PEOPLE. Other civilized countries have figured it out already, what's our problem?
Uh... there is actually. It's called the Because It's Your Job Act of 1972.
No, actually, it's not. It's their job to enforce criminal codes. There aren't any laws criminalizing undocumented immigration.
It's not so much "illegal" as it is "unprotected." People with visas, green cards, and citizenship have a legal right to live and (in many cases) work in this country. You can't kick them out. People who lack that right can be sent home, and THEIR EMPLOYERS can be fined for hiring them in violation of labor laws. However, unless an undocumented worker is suspected of a crime, the police have no cause to arrest them.
Most young children will be quite happy with "the baby comes out of mummy's tummy" (that's the answer I got when I was very young).
We started off with "There's a baby in mommy's tummy" when our three-year-old was about eight months out from becoming a big brother.
Now, this is a child who happens to have learned about the digestive system. So, a few days later, he tells us, "There's a baby in mommy's tummy, and it's going to grow and grow, and then come out her butt!"
Shortly thereafter, he learned the word "uterus" and proudly told everyone he knew that there was a baby in his mommy's uterus. He no longer thought I was going to poop a baby.
He's now five, and STILL has not asked how the baby got there in the first place, though.
A child asking "Where do babies come from" isn't "Daddy, explain to me what biological processes occur when a man ejaculates in a woman's vagina while she's ovulating." It's the physical "where do babies come from?" i.e. Are they brought by a stork? Are they bought at a store? Is there biology involved anywhere in the process regarding baby making? etc.
So no, "where do babies come from" is NOT a science question when asked by a child.
The question that the child would ask if he wanted to know the biology would be something like "how do babies grow in mommy's tummy?"
No, children are extremely imprecise in their questions.
When I tell my five-year-old "The wind is blowing really hard," and he says "Why?" he is sometimes asking "What processes cause the wind to blow harder?" and sometimes "How can you tell the wind is blowing hard?" and sometimes "Why are you telling me this, mom? I KNOW the freakin' wind is blowing hard, it nearly knocked me over.";-) It also means "I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter" (i.e. conversation is fun, and this is how we continue it, right?)
"Where do babies come from?" is the typical formation of a question from a preschooler, but it's not obvious what they mean by that. Sometimes they mean "Why does Jane's family have a new baby, and ours doesn't? Can we go get one?" And sometimes they mean "I know the baby came out of Jane's mommy's tummy, but where was it before THAT?" and sometimes they mean "How do we make sure we avoid ever accidentally having me a little sibling that screams all night?" and sometimes they mean "Teacher Diane comes from Mexico; all the babies I've ever seen happen to look Asian; what country do babies come from?"
Before answering such a huge question, it's a good idea to find out what prompted the inquiry in the first place, to get a better idea what the question really is.
And while the question may not be biology, it is almost certainly some sort of physical or social science. Inquiry about how the world works is a primitive form of science. Even if you won't run across the answer your child is searching for in a biology or physics text, the process of asking questions and evaluating answers is how we learn to do science.
"Do not take things out of context! What the document says is companies might save some money if they hire foreigners on F-1 or J-1 visas. It is just so foreigners _who_study_in_the_United_States_ can find a job since employers seem to be under the impression that hiring a foreigner is a hassle."
With the way the recession is currently in the US, it makes no sense for the US govt. to not only allow, but, in some cases expedite bringing foreigners in (or letting them in willy nilly across the border illegally) to fill jobs that our own citizens are in desperate need of...
These particular foreigners have come to study at universities here. The universities bring foreign students over for a number of reasons: * It makes it easier for our students to study in foreign countries when they want to. * Different academic emphases in different cultures lead to students who bring a fresh perspective and a different set of background knowledge to research and inquiry. * Foreign students are usually required to pay not just non-resident tuition, but an even higher additional fee to public universities. * Positive experiences studying in the US send foreign students home with a new take on American culture and values. It's a fairly cheap and easy method of exporting democracy to certain parts of the world.
Our own university system would suffer if we ended international student recruitment. Unfortunately, because studying at US institutions is so expensive, many foreign students need to be able to find jobs to work while they're in school. Therefore, those programs are threatened by bigoted or ignorant employers who have something against hiring foreign students. (They're also threatened by DHS procedures that get students placed on the wrong list and have their visas held up for weeks, while their research languishes and in some cases completely expires, losing them a year or more of work.)
If they're punishing UK citizens living in the UK for acts in the UK normally protected under UK law, then you have a point. But saying "We're not going to allow a citizen of another country to visit us" is a very different situation from such punishment.
After reading that, I was left with the feeling that I had no idea what I had read it for. Was it a call to arms? Was it a rant about our whole world? It seemed to offer more problems than solutions...
I found it very interesting as a discussion of economics in the broader sense, where economics is the science of decision-making. Understanding what guides decisions in the aggregate is essential to creating systems (of government, commerce, transportation, whatever) that work.
Like everything else, both self-enforcing 'protocols' and someone in between, say paypal, rely on trust from people.
No, they don't... that's the whole point.
A self-enforcing protocol is one which arranges the decision-making in such a way as to make the "fair" choice also the one that suits the individual decision-maker's self-interest. You don't even have to "trust" that they won't act AGAINST their interest, since if they do, you come out ahead. A properly-constructed self-enforcing protocol removes the trust issue entirely.
It's sort of like the inverse of the Prisoner's Dilemma. Quite elegant.
To be clear, I was responding to HangingChad's plea for credit to the Obama administration. It had nothing to do with whether I thought the policy should or shouldn't have been as it is or was, for either administration, but whether the administration was trying to do the right thing. Both tried. You agree that one got it right, and the other didn't. Fine. I probably even agree with you. But credit is deserved for anybody who tries to do the right thing, and both administrations deserve credit for that. If HangingChad wants to provide general praise for that sort of thing, he shouldn't talk out of both sides of his/her mouth.
Well, it depends on who is defining "the right thing." Yes, everyone, individually, is trying to do what they think is "right." When an undiagnosed schizophrenic kills someone because god told them to, they're "trying to do the right thing." When Harry Truman ordered the first and last nuclear strikes on live targets, he was "trying to do the right thing." When John Scopes taught his class about evolution, he was "trying to do the right thing." The public opinion may or may not agree with the individual, and may even change as time goes on.
But I think HangingChad was discussing it in a different sense. The prevailing opinion on this forum tends to be that there is insufficient protection of individual privacy. Therefore, "trying to do the right thing" is to strengthen those protections. The Obama administration is doing that; the Bush administration did the opposite.
Neither a fan of Bush nor Obama here - pretty ambivalent. But you'd be kidding yourself if you didn't think each administration wasn't doing what they thought was the right thing with respect to issues like this.
Well, yes... but under Bush, "What was right" was "If you don't have anything to hide, why do you need privacy?" Fear of terr'rists was used to bully Americans into giving up their expectation of privacy in their everyday lives. At the same time, corporate regulation was almost a swear-word.
This move is definitely in a different direction, and it's one I think we've needed for a loooooong time. Why should only health care providers be required to protect your personal info?
Please show me your RFID passport, give your liquids to the nice man from the TSA, and tell me your social-security number so I can enter it into my laptop.
1) That's what this is for. 2) My liquids don't really say much about me that's personally identifiable. 3) "The government" is pretty explicit on just how your SSN should NOT be used as an identifier except by very particular agencies, and never as a password. The folks who violate this premise most frequently are private businesses who want to make sure they can tell on you to the credit agencies if they decide you owe them money. While there have been cases of laptops containing personally identifiable info, including SSNs, stolen from federal agencies, there have been far, far more such cases with private companies (and a handful from state agencies or public universities).
Yeah, when it comes to protecting my privacy, I trust the Feds a whole heck of a lot more than I trust private corporations. But, as I once was told by a fortune cookie, "Trust him, but keep your eyes open." Ultimately, I'm the person who is most likely to protect my privacy. The less of my info I put in someone else's hands, the better.
They are not subscribers, so your argument is baseless. Subscribers are people who have an ongoing relationship with the publication.
Emphasis mine. People who have a relationship with Amazon don't have a relationship with WSJ. Amazon would have to incorporate new language into its terms of use, or have a special agreement when you create a subscription to WSJ on your Kindle, if they were to pass the information along.
Slashdot Mirror
Or what will happen is what is happening now: people who are technophobes with little to no online presence will be the only ones winning elections. So the guy who thinks using a Mac is too hard will be running your country.
You mean like the President who had to fight to keep his Crackberry, and whose staff had to convert the White House network to work with their Mac computers instead of just Windows?
This isn't about sports, though... it's about media. It's about declaring that your event can only be reported about by one particular (gigantic corporate) entity. In the case of sports, this may not seem particularly harmful, but it sets a precedent that could be seriously abused to create false impressions of purportedly public events of actual importance.
The snorting mythology is overblown, I think.
Haha, I see what you did there. ;-)
If you look, you'll see it's not uncommon to find a foreign professor where 90% of his graduate students are from his country of origin.
That's common for domestic professors, too... who vastly outnumber foreign ones.
There are so many sources of cocaine and like substances in our society that it's no wonder it can be found everywhere (looking at currency is more sexy than say, doorknobs, and I'd imagine the same level of contamination), legal and otherwise. Benzocaine, for example, is a common numbing agent for oral use that is in the same chemical family. So is novacaine. They just don't have the popular cachet, but I'd be pleasantly surprised if the testing used could distinguished between them. I imagine if you tested currency for benzodiazepines (valium and the like) or SSRIs (Prozac and the like) or beta blockers or digitalis or any commonly prescribed drug, you'd find near 100% contamination as well. BFD. People use cocaine and other drugs both medically and recreationally. News at 11.
But they don't typically snort other drugs through a rolled-up bill. Hence, I'd be surprised to find the SSRI content of folding money to be as high as the cocaine content.
Credit cards(along with drivers licenses) are often used to chop up the coke lines. It's common for cokeheads to lick the card after they're done snorting the rails.
But they're unlikely to then pass that credit card on to someone else's wallet.
My cousin had a really similar story, with ovarian cancer. Only... the initial delay was because she was uninsured, and was scared of how expensive it might be to get all the tests to find out what was causing her pain.
In the end, she paid about $200,000 out-of-pocket for treatment that couldn't save her life. They didn't just close her back up and say "sorry," though. They took out her uterus, ovaries, and a section of her colon, sewed her back up with a brand-new colostomy bag, and then she went through chemo and radiation without a functional colon. then they opened her BACK up, found a new giant tumor just a few months later, took that out (and reconnected her plumbing), and gave her MORE treatment that didn't work... it just made her ephaisic for the last two weeks of her life.
I had begged her for years to sign up for the State's high-risk health insurance pool, but she didn't want to spend $700/month on health insurance, when she had to live the rest of her life on her assets and some rental income (she was disabled and couldn't work). Ironic that her life was shortened by the lack of coverage...
As another poster mentioned, the story you tell happens in private hospitals to insured patients too. Even worse is when the insurance company, following their policy of "deny all claims the first time," causes the delay themselves. The free market can't solve that problem any more than government regulation can. It's unfortunately something that needs to be addressed in how doctors are trained and how patients advocate for themselves.
We're sorry Matt Hew Johnson, we accidentally removed your leg as per operation instructions intended for Matthew Johnson down the hall.
Because with our current private healthcare system, such things NEVER happen. I was actually in a meeting yesterday with two doctors who were arguing over whether it was reasonable to plan a project that would require doctors in the ER to reconcile medications. You know, the part where they ask "Are you currently taking any prescription or over-the-counter medications?" The one working in a private practice insisted this was just too much (even though it's part of the standard of care); the one who spent 12 years working in the ER of the County hospital said they damned well BETTER be willing to do it, because it's crazy not to.
Yeah, in private practice, turning patients around faster means making more money. That doesn't really motivate doctors to take their time and do things right.
Social Security is different from other public benefit systems in the US and abroad. In effect, it's something of a forced savings plan. You pay into SSI, and when you retire, you receive a benefit based on what you put in and how long you're expected to live.
One of the reasons it was put in place was to encourage older people to leave the workforce, freeing up jobs for younger workers. It's also there to generally address poverty and related social ills among the elderly.
So anyway... refusing to pay out social security benefits to retirees because of where they live would be not entirely different from your IRA refusing to send you money because you retired to Aruba.
SSI also pays benefits to disabled folks who can no longer work, or to surviving minor children of deceased beneficiaries. Not sure what the policies for those are on residency.
You may have missed my point, at least once.
By saying 'everybody's covered', we extend coverage to anyone who shows up in the U.S. Do you intend for that coverage to include even non-citizens? Visiting tourists? Even those here illegally? Admittedly the current system covers illegals, but a foreign tourist would probably have to offer some form of payment.
Yes. So, when people come here from, say, Europe, to spend their money on our tourism industry, and something unfortunate befalls them, it's not just the nightmare of the serious illness or injury... it's *also* the nightmare of getting payment arranged. In many cases, tourists cut short their stay because something relatively minor, but urgent, is too difficult to do here in the US.
OTOH... when Americans go to many countries abroad, and have the same thing happen to them, they receive excellent care at no charge. Those systems are set up to care for people, not to make money, so that's what they do. I know several Americans who have dealt with unexpected illnesses or injuries in Canada, Germany, France, Iceland, etc. and found the care to be comparable in quality to what they'd expect here, but much less cumbersome to obtain.
If it *really* seems like people are coming to the US just to fall ill, add another point onto the hotel occupancy tax to offset the costs. But, for crying out loud, just TAKE CARE OF PEOPLE. Other civilized countries have figured it out already, what's our problem?
Uh... there is actually. It's called the Because It's Your Job Act of 1972.
No, actually, it's not. It's their job to enforce criminal codes. There aren't any laws criminalizing undocumented immigration.
It's not so much "illegal" as it is "unprotected." People with visas, green cards, and citizenship have a legal right to live and (in many cases) work in this country. You can't kick them out. People who lack that right can be sent home, and THEIR EMPLOYERS can be fined for hiring them in violation of labor laws. However, unless an undocumented worker is suspected of a crime, the police have no cause to arrest them.
And yet, a higher percentage of the population is religious in the US than in the UK.
[What culture? Some places in the USA?]
Most young children will be quite happy with "the baby comes out of mummy's tummy" (that's the answer I got when I was very young).
We started off with "There's a baby in mommy's tummy" when our three-year-old was about eight months out from becoming a big brother.
Now, this is a child who happens to have learned about the digestive system. So, a few days later, he tells us, "There's a baby in mommy's tummy, and it's going to grow and grow, and then come out her butt!"
Shortly thereafter, he learned the word "uterus" and proudly told everyone he knew that there was a baby in his mommy's uterus. He no longer thought I was going to poop a baby.
He's now five, and STILL has not asked how the baby got there in the first place, though.
A child asking "Where do babies come from" isn't "Daddy, explain to me what biological processes occur when a man ejaculates in a woman's vagina while she's ovulating." It's the physical "where do babies come from?" i.e. Are they brought by a stork? Are they bought at a store? Is there biology involved anywhere in the process regarding baby making? etc.
So no, "where do babies come from" is NOT a science question when asked by a child.
The question that the child would ask if he wanted to know the biology would be something like "how do babies grow in mommy's tummy?"
No, children are extremely imprecise in their questions.
When I tell my five-year-old "The wind is blowing really hard," and he says "Why?" he is sometimes asking "What processes cause the wind to blow harder?" and sometimes "How can you tell the wind is blowing hard?" and sometimes "Why are you telling me this, mom? I KNOW the freakin' wind is blowing hard, it nearly knocked me over." ;-) It also means "I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter" (i.e. conversation is fun, and this is how we continue it, right?)
"Where do babies come from?" is the typical formation of a question from a preschooler, but it's not obvious what they mean by that. Sometimes they mean "Why does Jane's family have a new baby, and ours doesn't? Can we go get one?" And sometimes they mean "I know the baby came out of Jane's mommy's tummy, but where was it before THAT?" and sometimes they mean "How do we make sure we avoid ever accidentally having me a little sibling that screams all night?" and sometimes they mean "Teacher Diane comes from Mexico; all the babies I've ever seen happen to look Asian; what country do babies come from?"
Before answering such a huge question, it's a good idea to find out what prompted the inquiry in the first place, to get a better idea what the question really is.
And while the question may not be biology, it is almost certainly some sort of physical or social science. Inquiry about how the world works is a primitive form of science. Even if you won't run across the answer your child is searching for in a biology or physics text, the process of asking questions and evaluating answers is how we learn to do science.
"Do not take things out of context! What the document says is companies might save some money if they hire foreigners on F-1 or J-1 visas. It is just so foreigners _who_study_in_the_United_States_ can find a job since employers seem to be under the impression that hiring a foreigner is a hassle."
With the way the recession is currently in the US, it makes no sense for the US govt. to not only allow, but, in some cases expedite bringing foreigners in (or letting them in willy nilly across the border illegally) to fill jobs that our own citizens are in desperate need of...
These particular foreigners have come to study at universities here. The universities bring foreign students over for a number of reasons:
* It makes it easier for our students to study in foreign countries when they want to.
* Different academic emphases in different cultures lead to students who bring a fresh perspective and a different set of background knowledge to research and inquiry.
* Foreign students are usually required to pay not just non-resident tuition, but an even higher additional fee to public universities.
* Positive experiences studying in the US send foreign students home with a new take on American culture and values. It's a fairly cheap and easy method of exporting democracy to certain parts of the world.
Our own university system would suffer if we ended international student recruitment. Unfortunately, because studying at US institutions is so expensive, many foreign students need to be able to find jobs to work while they're in school. Therefore, those programs are threatened by bigoted or ignorant employers who have something against hiring foreign students. (They're also threatened by DHS procedures that get students placed on the wrong list and have their visas held up for weeks, while their research languishes and in some cases completely expires, losing them a year or more of work.)
If they're punishing UK citizens living in the UK for acts in the UK normally protected under UK law, then you have a point. But saying "We're not going to allow a citizen of another country to visit us" is a very different situation from such punishment.
Because bringing in additional glow sticks is much harder than sneaking extra ballots into a ballot box.
Make everyone walk in naked. Then collect all the glow sticks, and toss out any that are wet or sticky.
After reading that, I was left with the feeling that I had no idea what I had read it for. Was it a call to arms? Was it a rant about our whole world? It seemed to offer more problems than solutions...
I found it very interesting as a discussion of economics in the broader sense, where economics is the science of decision-making. Understanding what guides decisions in the aggregate is essential to creating systems (of government, commerce, transportation, whatever) that work.
Like everything else, both self-enforcing 'protocols' and someone in between, say paypal, rely on trust from people.
No, they don't... that's the whole point.
A self-enforcing protocol is one which arranges the decision-making in such a way as to make the "fair" choice also the one that suits the individual decision-maker's self-interest. You don't even have to "trust" that they won't act AGAINST their interest, since if they do, you come out ahead. A properly-constructed self-enforcing protocol removes the trust issue entirely.
It's sort of like the inverse of the Prisoner's Dilemma. Quite elegant.
To be clear, I was responding to HangingChad's plea for credit to the Obama administration. It had nothing to do with whether I thought the policy should or shouldn't have been as it is or was, for either administration, but whether the administration was trying to do the right thing. Both tried. You agree that one got it right, and the other didn't. Fine. I probably even agree with you. But credit is deserved for anybody who tries to do the right thing, and both administrations deserve credit for that. If HangingChad wants to provide general praise for that sort of thing, he shouldn't talk out of both sides of his/her mouth.
Well, it depends on who is defining "the right thing." Yes, everyone, individually, is trying to do what they think is "right." When an undiagnosed schizophrenic kills someone because god told them to, they're "trying to do the right thing." When Harry Truman ordered the first and last nuclear strikes on live targets, he was "trying to do the right thing." When John Scopes taught his class about evolution, he was "trying to do the right thing." The public opinion may or may not agree with the individual, and may even change as time goes on.
But I think HangingChad was discussing it in a different sense. The prevailing opinion on this forum tends to be that there is insufficient protection of individual privacy. Therefore, "trying to do the right thing" is to strengthen those protections. The Obama administration is doing that; the Bush administration did the opposite.
Neither a fan of Bush nor Obama here - pretty ambivalent. But you'd be kidding yourself if you didn't think each administration wasn't doing what they thought was the right thing with respect to issues like this.
Well, yes... but under Bush, "What was right" was "If you don't have anything to hide, why do you need privacy?" Fear of terr'rists was used to bully Americans into giving up their expectation of privacy in their everyday lives. At the same time, corporate regulation was almost a swear-word.
This move is definitely in a different direction, and it's one I think we've needed for a loooooong time. Why should only health care providers be required to protect your personal info?
...and I'm here to help you protect your privacy.
Please show me your RFID passport, give your liquids to the nice man from the TSA, and tell me your social-security number so I can enter it into my laptop.
1) That's what this is for.
2) My liquids don't really say much about me that's personally identifiable.
3) "The government" is pretty explicit on just how your SSN should NOT be used as an identifier except by very particular agencies, and never as a password. The folks who violate this premise most frequently are private businesses who want to make sure they can tell on you to the credit agencies if they decide you owe them money. While there have been cases of laptops containing personally identifiable info, including SSNs, stolen from federal agencies, there have been far, far more such cases with private companies (and a handful from state agencies or public universities).
Yeah, when it comes to protecting my privacy, I trust the Feds a whole heck of a lot more than I trust private corporations. But, as I once was told by a fortune cookie, "Trust him, but keep your eyes open." Ultimately, I'm the person who is most likely to protect my privacy. The less of my info I put in someone else's hands, the better.
Ok, thanks, I think... but, seriously, Ctrl+M/Ctrl+SHIFT+M is now Alt+H, AO/Alt+H, AI? This is really annoying. I might as well just click.
Thank you. Yes, that's an important distinction too.
They are not subscribers, so your argument is baseless. Subscribers are people who have an ongoing relationship with the publication.
Emphasis mine. People who have a relationship with Amazon don't have a relationship with WSJ. Amazon would have to incorporate new language into its terms of use, or have a special agreement when you create a subscription to WSJ on your Kindle, if they were to pass the information along.