1. you don't have to go to law school to become a lawyer.
2. you can go to yale or harvard or upenn law schools and be a crappy lawyer, while the best lawyer in the country went to farmtown college law school.
the school you go to has no effect on how successful you will be. if you can prove yourself, the name of the school on your degree (or even the name of the degree itself) means absolutely nothing. that stuff just gets you in the door. if you can't live up to it, you've screwed yourself anyways.
oh, and take broadway stars for example. a lot of them are hollywood stars trying to make it big on broadway too. many of them suck. many shows are not good until those hollywood stars leave the stage. and the same can be said about an amateur acting group. they might be far better actors than broadway stars and stick to the amateur scene because it's less demanding and more fun, even if it pays less. not everyone thinks about money.
he did not make an explicit offer. he only said that his domain was worth $10000 to him because of the cost of making up all the business cards, stationary, advertising, etc. all that has his url as mikerowesoft.com. if MS goes and pays for him to get all new stuff made up, it would cost them $10000. the kid has a company. if you had a small company (or even a decent size company) and some large corporation wanted to buy up your domain name for a measly $10, you would be pretty pissed too after spending tons of money in advertising, building a customer/client base, letterhead, business cards, etc all using that domain name. if you had to go and change it on the drop of a dime because some large multi-billion dollar company calls it a copyright infringement (which it isn't if it's using your own given name), it'd cost you probably a similar amount, maybe even more depending on the size of your company, your client/customer base, etc. he never turned around to MS and said, "i will only sell it to you for $10000". had he done that, it would be an explicit offer. he only said how much it was worth to him and his company and that he had no intention of selling it for even $10000. he did not buy up the domain thinking "MS will find me and try to buy this from me and i can make thousands off of it". he bought it because it consisted of his legal name followed by "soft" because that's what he does. if he was a plumber and used mikerowesoft.com, it'd be different, but he's a software guy.
not necessarily. if the kid gets support from us, he can get enough money to fight them to the point where they just give up because they should have better things to do like write better software than to pick on kids that have names that sound similar to their company name. his actual name is Mike Rowe. That is not a copyright violation. who in their right mind is going to accidentally type in mikerowesoft.com if they want information on windows or office? you have to be really dumb to make that mistake, especially since microsoft is all over the news and tv and advertising everywhere. you see their name everywhere, you're gonna spell it right. it sounds the same. great. so the english language is at fault here apparently, not the poor kid who's mom named him mike and he decided to go into web design.
on the other hand, he probably did name his domain mikerowesoft for the play on words, but MS has to prove it to the courts (the canadian courts that is). i'm not sure what copyright laws are like up there, so it's very possible the kid will get off pretty easily. and it's also possible that the kid does have a small business where his domain could be worth $10000 to him. if i were MS, i would leave the kid alone, better to ignore the problem and continue to make billions than to get even more bad publicity. MS's bad publicity is what will bring them down, since obviously their bad software hasn't yet. let the kid make a few grand off of using a play on words, it's not like MS will make any money off of having mikerowesoft.com. the only thing they'll do is piss off the kids clients who don't realize he had to get a new domain and go there and end up at MS's site. god know MS isn't going to build websites for them.
and i'm sure no one that wants a nice professional looking website is going to go to mikerowesoft.com and see it forwards them to the frontpage website and decide to buy front page and make the page themselves rather than hire this kid's services. there's way more to web design than using a crappy program. frontpage offers no creativity advice, no artistry, nothing that a real web designer can give you. it doesn't make your page more functional or prettier, it just makes it easier to make.
here's the thing. your SSN is also your information. they can give you a swipe card that you can give to your friend to swipe you in and you can still show up an hour late. not protecting them one bit. they'll probably also charge you for a new swipe card if you lose it considering that's what most places do anyways.
how can someone steal your palm print? your palm print is not recorded in any national database (such as your SSN). your palm print cannot be removed or remade perfectly on someone else's hand to be used to cover up a crime. the fact remains that nothing is tied to your palm print. there's nothing to hide in it, there's nothing to protect. while your SSN is a completely different story. your whole life is tied to it and it's used by so many different places for so many different reasons that stealing your identity and completely messing up your life would be a very trivial task (much much more trivial than stealing your palm print). i think that's more spooky than some company using biometrics to clock their employees in and out.
they are starting. it is against the law in most states (maybe even federal law), but you will be very very very surprised to find out the number of colleges and universities that still use the SSN as the ID number. last i checked, the university of connecticut still used them even though there was a law prohibiting it, i could be wrong (on the uconn thing, not the law).
how do you misuse a palm-print? i think the use of the social security number as a student ID number by like 90% of american universities is a much larger security/personal-privacy issue than using biometrics to clock in and out. the palm print system is the best way for an employer to make sure his employees aren't cheating the system. i happen to be one of those university supervisors who manages a staff of students and they just fill out their own time sheets. easy to cheat. i also worked at a university and filled out the time sheet. same thing and it did go through my head a couple times to cheat and make a little more, but we were restricted to a certain number of hours per week and i already worked pretty close to the max.
mcdonalds employees, whether you like it or not, are not the most honest people. the kinds of kids that work at mcdonalds generally do so because they really need the money or their parents made them get a job. it's easy with a regular punch card to have your friend clock you in and you show up an hour late or something. it's also easy to grab the wrong card. this way you can't screw up. this way your employer knows when you're there and when you're not which is their ABSOLUTE RIGHT in being your employer. if you don't like the fact that you might lose your job because you can no longer cheat the system, then quit, you shouldn't be working anywhere for any employer.
that's great that a college professor spoke out against it, but WHAT INFORMATION IS STORED IN YOUR PALM PRINT THAT THEY CAN MISUSE????? nothing. last i checked, my palm print was not on file anywhere in the country. my finger prints are on file in the state of CT because i used to work in a high school and that's the law. should i be fighting that system because it's put in place to protect the students (and me if you really get down to it)? no. what can i do with a copy of someone's palm print? nothing really. i can't easily go and make a fake palm to get them in trouble. you want to fight privacy issues, fight the american university system against using SSN's as ID numbers.
if every company was run by people like Aaron Feuerstein, the CEO of malden mills, the maker of polartec fleece, the world would be a much better place. talk about putting your employees, the real people that make the company, first. his factories burned to the ground in lawrence, mass, a small not so well-off city. instead of taking the money and shutting down the company, he continued to pay all the employees their normal salaries and rebuilt in the same city. he not only gave the employees their fair wages, he also kept the economy of that city going. i don't think there are any others like him. the company went into bankrupcy and is now back out.
the problem with most companies is they see their employees as expendable. he didn't. he saw each person as someone that brought something positive to the company that was irreplacable. he lost a ton of money because of it, but he didn't care what happened to him, his company and employees were more important. that's a guy taht knows what he's doing. most will continue to raise their salaries. i would also like to compare the government to this as well. the senate recently voted a salary increase for themselves, something that is far greater than the cost of living for them (including all their travel to and from DC). they voted it in during the economic downfall, how convenient, people lose jobs, but they get higher pay. same goes for the governor of CT, my home state, john rowland. he gave himself a raise while the state's economy is in shambles. it's really greedy and stupid and really pisses me off. i don't see it changing anytime soon, hopefully the government won't listen to the schmucks that run the big tech corporations and put restrictions on their doings, or at least raise taxes on the companies that outsource to other countries.
this completely goes against what another poster said... that it's the female that generally wants the one-on-one conversation. i find this difficult. my girlfriend is still in school and living there. she gets in these "moods" where she would rather me tell her a really long drawn out story on IM than call me up (or vice versa) and tell her into the phone in a much more personal manner. i for one think that the modern female is moving against the grain into a more IM type conversation since we all know that the majority of college-aged females use IM literally all the time. they're on it at their college jobs (i have a bunch that answer phones at the helpdesk i work at), they're on it in their dorm rooms, they're on it when they go home for breaks, they're on it with their cell phones (generally that's more SMS than wireless AIM, but still), they're on it when using a computer lab to write a paper or in a class that utilizes the lab. they talk to their boyfriends on IM more than they're on the phone. what was the phone of the 80's and 90's for girls has turned is now IM. and they all have 100+ buddies, of whom, they only talk to like 5, but you never know, and besides, those others are good for reading away messages when you're waiting for your friend to get out of the shower or get back from lunch or class.
seriously, it's quite odd how while we would think that women prefer the more traditional one-on-one or phone conversation over IM, the world is changing. it will ruin a relationship when you're chatting with your significant other all day and have nothing to say to each other when you see each other later on. there's no need for the 2 of you to be chatting at work about general everyday stuff. if you absolutely need to ask them something or are trying to get a reservation for a certain time or something like that, a short 5 min IM conversation is probably easier than calling, especially if personal calls are frowned upon. then when you do see each other and go out to eat or whatever, you'll have dinner conversation and won't be that couple taht goes into the restaurant orders, eats, and leaves withotu saying 2 words to each other other than maybe takling about the food or the restaurant. it's just a bad way of running a relationship. everyone needs their alone time, and honestly, work is one of those places where you get time away from your significant other, and it's not very professional to always be chatting online at work.
they went by top albums of the year. i'm sure all the albums they use were much higher selling and higher on the charts than any of the bands you mention (iron maiden and iced earth are the only ones i've even heard of and i know lots of smaller lesser known bands). it's not a crime at all that these bands weren't mentioned. the crime is that people buy shitty "music" now. outkast, 50 cent, justin timberlake? come on now. some of the ones they mentioned are good (johnny cash, drive by truckers, jane's addiction, emmylou harris), but the others just don't add up to quality music. being #1 on the chart doesn't mean it's good music and that's how they got their statistics, from teh billboard charts. so what it does do is take all the billboard charts and come up with the top albums based on their performances on their respective genre's chart, but it doesn't take into consideration that music as a whole has become very stale lately, which is what you're complaining about. at least a halfway decent band (the white stripes) were #1.
slowly cut back like people who quit cigarettes cold turkey do. eventually you get down to nothing. if you really like coffee, go the decaf route. try ordering herbal tea at the coffee shops (regular tea still has the caffeine). and i worked with a carpenter for a summer and i don't drink coffee. he'd come in with one and i'd have water or something. he'd drink seltzer the rest of teh day. cutting back on that stuff will also help you do other things like lose weight and feel better in general. soda is generally not good for you. and i'm honestly sure that the electrician you work with will not give 2 shits if you drink OJ or water in teh morning. show up with decaf if you're that worried. at least it still looks, smells, and tastes the same. and going out with your co-workers/friends is the same thing. order something else. both starbucks and dunkin' serve drinks other than coffee. and when you go to a restaurant like mcdonalds, ask for water. if you have to buy a soda to get your "free" sub at subway, fill the cup with water (all their soda machines have a water button), at least the whole thing is only costing you like $1.25. if you go to a restaurant and usually order coke, order ice water. they don't care. that's what i do all the time when i go out with my girlfriend.
as far as your comment about the think geek caffeine section goes... they removed that from your post for obvious conflict of interest reasons. i truly doubt the caffeine soap gives you the caffeine high (or any caffeine at all, more just for stupid caffeine bragging rights than anything else).
all addictions are generally treated by slowly reducing the amount of intake of teh "drug" whether it be nicotine, caffeine, or heroin. that's how drug treatment centers help the highly addicted. they're so addicted removing it completely would almost kill them, so they get the drug or something that acts in a similar way given to them, slowly reducing it until they're to the point of just getting off it. caffeine is different than the smoking addiction because the oral fixation is not there. most smokers have a problem with that, but you can fulfill that by drinking something else. slowly cutting back won't hurt you one bit. and the biggest thing to almost any addiction is will power. you have to want to quit before you actually will. a lot of smokers run into that problem and end up starting up again.
doctors are also required by law and license to help those in need so much as they can stay alive relatively comfortable. if you are in the united states and have something seriously wrong with you, go to the nearest hospital (especially one that carries some sort of religious name) and you will find that even though you can't pay for it, they will still help you within reason. you'll be on the bottom of their priority list, but you will get taken care of.
i realize that depending on the clearance, a contractor would be submitted to more rules and a stricter process than many gov't jobs, but an intelligence agency would probably require more since you're literally doing all the work and any leak could put millions of lives in jeopardy, where a contractor, someone making stuff like weapons and vehicles for the military, would only put their own work in jeopardy if anything was leaked. sure it could possibly allow for enemies to target certain locations and it could allow for enemies to get a general idea of what sorts of secret weapons we might have, but the guys that use them, the guys that are in the intelligence have a lot more at their fingertips than someone who works for say lockheed martin or EB or sikorsky or any of the other major contractors. intelligence staff could possibly have access to information that when used in teh wrong hands could affect more than just this country.
either way, i still don't see how anyone could consider the process to be too in depth, otherwise, you get an american-born terrorist who works for osama applying for the job and getting it. that would be really bad. like if that american taliban guy was really an american soldier. the taliban and others would know exactly what the military was doing. so when applying to a job like that, don't complain about the strict in depth interview process, hell, a very very large majority of US citizens (natural born) can't even get an interview, nevermind have to go through the whole process.
i just think it's ridiculous that people think the procedure is ridiculous. i wouldn't expect anything less for a highly classified job like that. i know someone who got one of those top secret or classified security clearances. he interviewed for the job, got the job and got the clearance. they wouldn't even tell him where he was working, they just told him what area of the state to look for an apartment (i assume that was before the clearance was given). and he doesn't even work for the government, just a gov't contractor.
so an administrator in winxp or 2k can't access some parts of the operating system? i think not. i use my win2k machine solely as administrator, makes it easier to do the things i need to do. there's no reason for me to login as a regular user. i can make any changes, make it as insecure as i want, and all this as administrator. i see no difference between this and root under any linux/unix box. the only real difference is MS defaults to hiding file extensions and hiding any hidden and system files. it also gives you a warning when you "explore" to the windows or winnt or windows\system or winnt\system directories. makes people afraid to do anything. most regular users don't know about regedit or any of the other commands that can make serious system changes. most of the stuff they can see is generally benign. if this stuff was hidden in linux or even if lindows and the other desktop linux distributions did something to "hide" or "mask" the stuff that shouldn't be touched, it would be generally harmless for someone to login as root. with debian, you can add the security patch source to the sources list for apt, automatically downloading and updating any software that's got security flaws (generally where most of my updates come from when i remember to update). the only thing that needs to be done is create something like this that automatically does this. the only thing it doesn't cover is third party software, but if you can minimize the amount of 3rd party software that gets installed by providing a good majority of software to the users through the distribution (like debian does), you pretty much keep any of these problems from happening. linux can be more secure than windows in that there are very few, if not zero, viruses that cause major problems. the operating system itself is far more secure. the general software that one would use is generally more secure.
your wrapper suggestion would definitely be much easier, but does osx remove root priviledges once they are no longer needed or does entering the password leave them enabled? that could be bad if that's the case. install something and you're root until you log off, which could allow you to do all sorts of damage.
i upgraded my operating system to win98 (illegally i might add) and they still gave me free hardware when stuff broke (cd-rom twice, keyboard once, monitor twice). when looking up my system, they would see that it was win95 when i got it, but when i called, i told them it was win98 (this was years ago). i can even still continue to call tech support for various problems, but that happens less and less because much less of my computer is actually original parts. the original hard drive now resides in my linux box. the monitor is dead (had to buy one because my warranty was up, but i have lifetime phone support), the ram is gone and replaced with newer bigger ram, the processor is sitting in the box that the new one came in. the floppy is gone because i had to alter my case for my new cdrom drive since gateway's sucked, and then the burner. i think the only things left that are original are the case (but it's pretty altered) and the motherboard.
wow, when i lived in a 9x12 room, i had a strip on each of the side walls with about 5 outlets each. that made it nice, but i still needed a couple power strips based on where my electronics were located. i lived there when they first opened up the dorm for students (it was an old overflow/guest housing place). if 2 people on the floor had microwaves going, the power died for the floor.
when i lived in a larger room (a double, the first was a single), i had a similar setup with even more outlets on each side of the room, and then we had a standard double outlet by the door which was perfect for plugging in a phone or answering machine (or both). never had problems here with too much power being used, and both places were engineering dorms, so you could imagine the power being used...
as children get older, they get more freedom. i am 24, by no means an adult (i'm still living at home now, 2 yaers after graduating, although i just got a job, so i'm moving in a few weeks). you can't just go and let children do what they want because they will all go and drink and do drugs and sleep with some little slut no matter what you do. that is perhaps the most ridiculous, stupid, ignorant statement i have ever heard. yes, we all know young adults experiment with all these things. the point is to teach them morals so taht they don't want to do all that stuff, so they realize that maybe they shoudl wait. i was no model child or anything, but i didn't try any of this stuff until i was on my own in college. i drank, i smoked pot, i even had sex. but my morals up until that point kept me from doing any of that stuff. i didn't want to smoke, i didn't want to drink. plain and simple. i even went to a graduation party after high school and only drank non-alcoholic beer (open bar, but they gave booze to the recent graduates).
the fact remains that my parents instilled in me morals that i took with me. i still don't think people younger than 18 should be drinking or smoking or anything. i work in a high school and it disgusts me that so many of them smoke. it's terrible. cigarettes are still one thing i am very much against because of the addictive nature. i have grown and made up my own mind on certain things (like pot) and decided it's ok, but as far as children go (and any adolescent is still a child), they need rules and shoudl follow them or face repercussions.
they don't need a tyranny, especially if you were firm with them before and properly instilled the right morals in them, but they still need a watchful eye and need to learn that they can lose their freedoms as quickly as they gain them. it's a give and take. they do need to tell the parents where they're going, who they're with and a firm curfew needs to be set in place. if they break it, they don't go out again for a while. these same rules go for the computer. i don't think they should have their own computer in their bedrooms, it should be in a public place because i still believe that a bedroom is somewhat private (although if there's reason to believe something is going on, parents have every right to "raid"). i don't believe in setting up the parenting software to block websites, bad sites are something that should be talked about. it opens the lines of discussion. i don't think they should be allowed to look at porn (another thing i never saw until i was in college, i just wasn't interested).
most importantly giving children freedom because you know they're going to do it anyways is just being a bad parent, eventually it'll come to bite you in the ass. i know people who let their son and his friends drink at home since he started high school, they gave them beer whenever they were drinking themselves. what did their son turn out to be? he just gets drunk all the time now, and he's still not 21 yet. he became a waste of a life because he just didn't care about a thing and his parents could care less.
you could also not supply all of the "changes" to the public.
i'm not saying i am against open source, but it's far from perfect. i am not a microsoft lover or anything, i'm not married to bill gates, i just don't think open source is the answer to every software question.
key statement regarding open source... "If reported these holes can be fixed." it's not foolproof. it doesn't offer a much greater advantage over closed source assuming closed source companies aren't selling their product for ridiculous prices (see ms). how many software companies do you know that purposely write holes in their software and use them? i'm not talking about your gator or other ad/spyware applications, i'm talking major software (office suites, photo editors, operating systems, web browsers, email clients, etc). i'm sure some people here will say that microsoft puts these holes in their software for their benefit, but it can't be easily proven. the government should require the source be submitted before accepting it, but they should not be offering the source to the general public.
but anyone can look at the code and find the vulerabilities in it using purely legal means since it's provided to the public. that's what i'm talking about. even though code changes are submitted for review with linux, anyone can go and look at the actual code and not tell anyone about a vulerability they found and exploit it. usually those vulnerabilities are picked up fast with linux because it's a world-wide used OS, but an american voting system would be strictly american. sure the vulnerabilities will still be picked up fast, but not necessarily reported fast enough.
this sounds like a great way of doing it, and i don't see how there could really be a need for a recount other than the scan-tron machine going haywire.
i don't know if there's anyone other than the elderly who doesn't know how to use a scantron. they can even supply the necessary #2 pencils and that mistake won't be made. the only problem would be if someone were to erase incompletely, but how often does someone go back and change their vote? the hanging chads don't even allow for that. i have never done it, it's not necessary, but the voting booths allow it if i choose before i pull the big lever that enters my vote.
no matter what method is used for voting, there will always be problems with it and always be a possible necessary need for manual re-counts. here in CT they tried out the computer things, i believe they had problems in one town and had to go to paper (or maybe they had a problem with the mechanical voting booths, i don't remember). either way, there will be problems.
one last comment i want to make is that i don't understand how an open source voting software would be better than closed source. open source gives that many more people the code and ability to possibly mess with it. sure it gives that many more the ability to fix it as well, but closed source, if properly tested keeps people from being able to break in and mess with it unless they really try. i just see this as one use when closed source would be better. same goes for mission critical military, intelligence, and government applications.
Now I shall concede that it is a bigger problem in the U.S, where it seems polling stations do not close at a fixed time across the board (Allowing yet more idiots to declare "winners" before other polls have even closed)
i believe it is a big problem during national elections that the east coast announces their winners hours before the west coast has finished voting. this can strongly influence voters who are undecided as to who to vote for. they will simply vote for whoever they feel would win rather than who they feel would be the best for the job. they need to have election officials keep the results quiet and locked until everyone has finished voting.
as for the electoral college, it's supposed to force candidates to campaign everywhere and give everyone something. otherwise, they would just go to all the most populated cities in the country and could easily win the popular vote that way skipping almost the entire midwest. they'd be a president for the east and west coasts but not the middle states. with the electoral system, they have to get votes from all the states otherwise, there's a good chance they won't win.
orbitz.com has relatively decent popup ads. they include little games like minigolf, a dunk tank, and a few others. they're pretty amusing and take some of the bore out of a long boring day. they make popup ads much more bearable. punch the monkey is stupid because nothing happens and once you click it you're brought to the site, it's not really a game.
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1. you don't have to go to law school to become a lawyer.
2. you can go to yale or harvard or upenn law schools and be a crappy lawyer, while the best lawyer in the country went to farmtown college law school.
the school you go to has no effect on how successful you will be. if you can prove yourself, the name of the school on your degree (or even the name of the degree itself) means absolutely nothing. that stuff just gets you in the door. if you can't live up to it, you've screwed yourself anyways.
oh, and take broadway stars for example. a lot of them are hollywood stars trying to make it big on broadway too. many of them suck. many shows are not good until those hollywood stars leave the stage. and the same can be said about an amateur acting group. they might be far better actors than broadway stars and stick to the amateur scene because it's less demanding and more fun, even if it pays less. not everyone thinks about money.
he did not make an explicit offer. he only said that his domain was worth $10000 to him because of the cost of making up all the business cards, stationary, advertising, etc. all that has his url as mikerowesoft.com. if MS goes and pays for him to get all new stuff made up, it would cost them $10000. the kid has a company. if you had a small company (or even a decent size company) and some large corporation wanted to buy up your domain name for a measly $10, you would be pretty pissed too after spending tons of money in advertising, building a customer/client base, letterhead, business cards, etc all using that domain name. if you had to go and change it on the drop of a dime because some large multi-billion dollar company calls it a copyright infringement (which it isn't if it's using your own given name), it'd cost you probably a similar amount, maybe even more depending on the size of your company, your client/customer base, etc. he never turned around to MS and said, "i will only sell it to you for $10000". had he done that, it would be an explicit offer. he only said how much it was worth to him and his company and that he had no intention of selling it for even $10000. he did not buy up the domain thinking "MS will find me and try to buy this from me and i can make thousands off of it". he bought it because it consisted of his legal name followed by "soft" because that's what he does. if he was a plumber and used mikerowesoft.com, it'd be different, but he's a software guy.
not necessarily. if the kid gets support from us, he can get enough money to fight them to the point where they just give up because they should have better things to do like write better software than to pick on kids that have names that sound similar to their company name. his actual name is Mike Rowe. That is not a copyright violation. who in their right mind is going to accidentally type in mikerowesoft.com if they want information on windows or office? you have to be really dumb to make that mistake, especially since microsoft is all over the news and tv and advertising everywhere. you see their name everywhere, you're gonna spell it right. it sounds the same. great. so the english language is at fault here apparently, not the poor kid who's mom named him mike and he decided to go into web design.
on the other hand, he probably did name his domain mikerowesoft for the play on words, but MS has to prove it to the courts (the canadian courts that is). i'm not sure what copyright laws are like up there, so it's very possible the kid will get off pretty easily. and it's also possible that the kid does have a small business where his domain could be worth $10000 to him. if i were MS, i would leave the kid alone, better to ignore the problem and continue to make billions than to get even more bad publicity. MS's bad publicity is what will bring them down, since obviously their bad software hasn't yet. let the kid make a few grand off of using a play on words, it's not like MS will make any money off of having mikerowesoft.com. the only thing they'll do is piss off the kids clients who don't realize he had to get a new domain and go there and end up at MS's site. god know MS isn't going to build websites for them.
and i'm sure no one that wants a nice professional looking website is going to go to mikerowesoft.com and see it forwards them to the frontpage website and decide to buy front page and make the page themselves rather than hire this kid's services. there's way more to web design than using a crappy program. frontpage offers no creativity advice, no artistry, nothing that a real web designer can give you. it doesn't make your page more functional or prettier, it just makes it easier to make.
here's the thing. your SSN is also your information. they can give you a swipe card that you can give to your friend to swipe you in and you can still show up an hour late. not protecting them one bit. they'll probably also charge you for a new swipe card if you lose it considering that's what most places do anyways.
how can someone steal your palm print? your palm print is not recorded in any national database (such as your SSN). your palm print cannot be removed or remade perfectly on someone else's hand to be used to cover up a crime. the fact remains that nothing is tied to your palm print. there's nothing to hide in it, there's nothing to protect. while your SSN is a completely different story. your whole life is tied to it and it's used by so many different places for so many different reasons that stealing your identity and completely messing up your life would be a very trivial task (much much more trivial than stealing your palm print). i think that's more spooky than some company using biometrics to clock their employees in and out.
they are starting. it is against the law in most states (maybe even federal law), but you will be very very very surprised to find out the number of colleges and universities that still use the SSN as the ID number. last i checked, the university of connecticut still used them even though there was a law prohibiting it, i could be wrong (on the uconn thing, not the law).
how do you misuse a palm-print? i think the use of the social security number as a student ID number by like 90% of american universities is a much larger security/personal-privacy issue than using biometrics to clock in and out. the palm print system is the best way for an employer to make sure his employees aren't cheating the system. i happen to be one of those university supervisors who manages a staff of students and they just fill out their own time sheets. easy to cheat. i also worked at a university and filled out the time sheet. same thing and it did go through my head a couple times to cheat and make a little more, but we were restricted to a certain number of hours per week and i already worked pretty close to the max.
mcdonalds employees, whether you like it or not, are not the most honest people. the kinds of kids that work at mcdonalds generally do so because they really need the money or their parents made them get a job. it's easy with a regular punch card to have your friend clock you in and you show up an hour late or something. it's also easy to grab the wrong card. this way you can't screw up. this way your employer knows when you're there and when you're not which is their ABSOLUTE RIGHT in being your employer. if you don't like the fact that you might lose your job because you can no longer cheat the system, then quit, you shouldn't be working anywhere for any employer.
that's great that a college professor spoke out against it, but WHAT INFORMATION IS STORED IN YOUR PALM PRINT THAT THEY CAN MISUSE????? nothing. last i checked, my palm print was not on file anywhere in the country. my finger prints are on file in the state of CT because i used to work in a high school and that's the law. should i be fighting that system because it's put in place to protect the students (and me if you really get down to it)? no. what can i do with a copy of someone's palm print? nothing really. i can't easily go and make a fake palm to get them in trouble. you want to fight privacy issues, fight the american university system against using SSN's as ID numbers.
if every company was run by people like Aaron Feuerstein, the CEO of malden mills, the maker of polartec fleece, the world would be a much better place. talk about putting your employees, the real people that make the company, first. his factories burned to the ground in lawrence, mass, a small not so well-off city. instead of taking the money and shutting down the company, he continued to pay all the employees their normal salaries and rebuilt in the same city. he not only gave the employees their fair wages, he also kept the economy of that city going. i don't think there are any others like him. the company went into bankrupcy and is now back out.
the problem with most companies is they see their employees as expendable. he didn't. he saw each person as someone that brought something positive to the company that was irreplacable. he lost a ton of money because of it, but he didn't care what happened to him, his company and employees were more important. that's a guy taht knows what he's doing. most will continue to raise their salaries. i would also like to compare the government to this as well. the senate recently voted a salary increase for themselves, something that is far greater than the cost of living for them (including all their travel to and from DC). they voted it in during the economic downfall, how convenient, people lose jobs, but they get higher pay. same goes for the governor of CT, my home state, john rowland. he gave himself a raise while the state's economy is in shambles. it's really greedy and stupid and really pisses me off. i don't see it changing anytime soon, hopefully the government won't listen to the schmucks that run the big tech corporations and put restrictions on their doings, or at least raise taxes on the companies that outsource to other countries.
this completely goes against what another poster said... that it's the female that generally wants the one-on-one conversation. i find this difficult. my girlfriend is still in school and living there. she gets in these "moods" where she would rather me tell her a really long drawn out story on IM than call me up (or vice versa) and tell her into the phone in a much more personal manner. i for one think that the modern female is moving against the grain into a more IM type conversation since we all know that the majority of college-aged females use IM literally all the time. they're on it at their college jobs (i have a bunch that answer phones at the helpdesk i work at), they're on it in their dorm rooms, they're on it when they go home for breaks, they're on it with their cell phones (generally that's more SMS than wireless AIM, but still), they're on it when using a computer lab to write a paper or in a class that utilizes the lab. they talk to their boyfriends on IM more than they're on the phone. what was the phone of the 80's and 90's for girls has turned is now IM. and they all have 100+ buddies, of whom, they only talk to like 5, but you never know, and besides, those others are good for reading away messages when you're waiting for your friend to get out of the shower or get back from lunch or class.
seriously, it's quite odd how while we would think that women prefer the more traditional one-on-one or phone conversation over IM, the world is changing. it will ruin a relationship when you're chatting with your significant other all day and have nothing to say to each other when you see each other later on. there's no need for the 2 of you to be chatting at work about general everyday stuff. if you absolutely need to ask them something or are trying to get a reservation for a certain time or something like that, a short 5 min IM conversation is probably easier than calling, especially if personal calls are frowned upon. then when you do see each other and go out to eat or whatever, you'll have dinner conversation and won't be that couple taht goes into the restaurant orders, eats, and leaves withotu saying 2 words to each other other than maybe takling about the food or the restaurant. it's just a bad way of running a relationship. everyone needs their alone time, and honestly, work is one of those places where you get time away from your significant other, and it's not very professional to always be chatting online at work.
they went by top albums of the year. i'm sure all the albums they use were much higher selling and higher on the charts than any of the bands you mention (iron maiden and iced earth are the only ones i've even heard of and i know lots of smaller lesser known bands). it's not a crime at all that these bands weren't mentioned. the crime is that people buy shitty "music" now. outkast, 50 cent, justin timberlake? come on now. some of the ones they mentioned are good (johnny cash, drive by truckers, jane's addiction, emmylou harris), but the others just don't add up to quality music. being #1 on the chart doesn't mean it's good music and that's how they got their statistics, from teh billboard charts. so what it does do is take all the billboard charts and come up with the top albums based on their performances on their respective genre's chart, but it doesn't take into consideration that music as a whole has become very stale lately, which is what you're complaining about. at least a halfway decent band (the white stripes) were #1.
slowly cut back like people who quit cigarettes cold turkey do. eventually you get down to nothing. if you really like coffee, go the decaf route. try ordering herbal tea at the coffee shops (regular tea still has the caffeine). and i worked with a carpenter for a summer and i don't drink coffee. he'd come in with one and i'd have water or something. he'd drink seltzer the rest of teh day. cutting back on that stuff will also help you do other things like lose weight and feel better in general. soda is generally not good for you. and i'm honestly sure that the electrician you work with will not give 2 shits if you drink OJ or water in teh morning. show up with decaf if you're that worried. at least it still looks, smells, and tastes the same. and going out with your co-workers/friends is the same thing. order something else. both starbucks and dunkin' serve drinks other than coffee. and when you go to a restaurant like mcdonalds, ask for water. if you have to buy a soda to get your "free" sub at subway, fill the cup with water (all their soda machines have a water button), at least the whole thing is only costing you like $1.25. if you go to a restaurant and usually order coke, order ice water. they don't care. that's what i do all the time when i go out with my girlfriend.
as far as your comment about the think geek caffeine section goes... they removed that from your post for obvious conflict of interest reasons. i truly doubt the caffeine soap gives you the caffeine high (or any caffeine at all, more just for stupid caffeine bragging rights than anything else).
all addictions are generally treated by slowly reducing the amount of intake of teh "drug" whether it be nicotine, caffeine, or heroin. that's how drug treatment centers help the highly addicted. they're so addicted removing it completely would almost kill them, so they get the drug or something that acts in a similar way given to them, slowly reducing it until they're to the point of just getting off it. caffeine is different than the smoking addiction because the oral fixation is not there. most smokers have a problem with that, but you can fulfill that by drinking something else. slowly cutting back won't hurt you one bit. and the biggest thing to almost any addiction is will power. you have to want to quit before you actually will. a lot of smokers run into that problem and end up starting up again.
doctors are also required by law and license to help those in need so much as they can stay alive relatively comfortable. if you are in the united states and have something seriously wrong with you, go to the nearest hospital (especially one that carries some sort of religious name) and you will find that even though you can't pay for it, they will still help you within reason. you'll be on the bottom of their priority list, but you will get taken care of.
then why do diabetics still drink it?
i realize that depending on the clearance, a contractor would be submitted to more rules and a stricter process than many gov't jobs, but an intelligence agency would probably require more since you're literally doing all the work and any leak could put millions of lives in jeopardy, where a contractor, someone making stuff like weapons and vehicles for the military, would only put their own work in jeopardy if anything was leaked. sure it could possibly allow for enemies to target certain locations and it could allow for enemies to get a general idea of what sorts of secret weapons we might have, but the guys that use them, the guys that are in the intelligence have a lot more at their fingertips than someone who works for say lockheed martin or EB or sikorsky or any of the other major contractors. intelligence staff could possibly have access to information that when used in teh wrong hands could affect more than just this country.
either way, i still don't see how anyone could consider the process to be too in depth, otherwise, you get an american-born terrorist who works for osama applying for the job and getting it. that would be really bad. like if that american taliban guy was really an american soldier. the taliban and others would know exactly what the military was doing. so when applying to a job like that, don't complain about the strict in depth interview process, hell, a very very large majority of US citizens (natural born) can't even get an interview, nevermind have to go through the whole process.
i just think it's ridiculous that people think the procedure is ridiculous. i wouldn't expect anything less for a highly classified job like that. i know someone who got one of those top secret or classified security clearances. he interviewed for the job, got the job and got the clearance. they wouldn't even tell him where he was working, they just told him what area of the state to look for an apartment (i assume that was before the clearance was given). and he doesn't even work for the government, just a gov't contractor.
so an administrator in winxp or 2k can't access some parts of the operating system? i think not. i use my win2k machine solely as administrator, makes it easier to do the things i need to do. there's no reason for me to login as a regular user. i can make any changes, make it as insecure as i want, and all this as administrator. i see no difference between this and root under any linux/unix box. the only real difference is MS defaults to hiding file extensions and hiding any hidden and system files. it also gives you a warning when you "explore" to the windows or winnt or windows\system or winnt\system directories. makes people afraid to do anything. most regular users don't know about regedit or any of the other commands that can make serious system changes. most of the stuff they can see is generally benign. if this stuff was hidden in linux or even if lindows and the other desktop linux distributions did something to "hide" or "mask" the stuff that shouldn't be touched, it would be generally harmless for someone to login as root. with debian, you can add the security patch source to the sources list for apt, automatically downloading and updating any software that's got security flaws (generally where most of my updates come from when i remember to update). the only thing that needs to be done is create something like this that automatically does this. the only thing it doesn't cover is third party software, but if you can minimize the amount of 3rd party software that gets installed by providing a good majority of software to the users through the distribution (like debian does), you pretty much keep any of these problems from happening. linux can be more secure than windows in that there are very few, if not zero, viruses that cause major problems. the operating system itself is far more secure. the general software that one would use is generally more secure.
your wrapper suggestion would definitely be much easier, but does osx remove root priviledges once they are no longer needed or does entering the password leave them enabled? that could be bad if that's the case. install something and you're root until you log off, which could allow you to do all sorts of damage.
i upgraded my operating system to win98 (illegally i might add) and they still gave me free hardware when stuff broke (cd-rom twice, keyboard once, monitor twice). when looking up my system, they would see that it was win95 when i got it, but when i called, i told them it was win98 (this was years ago). i can even still continue to call tech support for various problems, but that happens less and less because much less of my computer is actually original parts. the original hard drive now resides in my linux box. the monitor is dead (had to buy one because my warranty was up, but i have lifetime phone support), the ram is gone and replaced with newer bigger ram, the processor is sitting in the box that the new one came in. the floppy is gone because i had to alter my case for my new cdrom drive since gateway's sucked, and then the burner. i think the only things left that are original are the case (but it's pretty altered) and the motherboard.
wow, when i lived in a 9x12 room, i had a strip on each of the side walls with about 5 outlets each. that made it nice, but i still needed a couple power strips based on where my electronics were located. i lived there when they first opened up the dorm for students (it was an old overflow/guest housing place). if 2 people on the floor had microwaves going, the power died for the floor.
when i lived in a larger room (a double, the first was a single), i had a similar setup with even more outlets on each side of the room, and then we had a standard double outlet by the door which was perfect for plugging in a phone or answering machine (or both). never had problems here with too much power being used, and both places were engineering dorms, so you could imagine the power being used...
as children get older, they get more freedom. i am 24, by no means an adult (i'm still living at home now, 2 yaers after graduating, although i just got a job, so i'm moving in a few weeks). you can't just go and let children do what they want because they will all go and drink and do drugs and sleep with some little slut no matter what you do. that is perhaps the most ridiculous, stupid, ignorant statement i have ever heard. yes, we all know young adults experiment with all these things. the point is to teach them morals so taht they don't want to do all that stuff, so they realize that maybe they shoudl wait. i was no model child or anything, but i didn't try any of this stuff until i was on my own in college. i drank, i smoked pot, i even had sex. but my morals up until that point kept me from doing any of that stuff. i didn't want to smoke, i didn't want to drink. plain and simple. i even went to a graduation party after high school and only drank non-alcoholic beer (open bar, but they gave booze to the recent graduates).
the fact remains that my parents instilled in me morals that i took with me. i still don't think people younger than 18 should be drinking or smoking or anything. i work in a high school and it disgusts me that so many of them smoke. it's terrible. cigarettes are still one thing i am very much against because of the addictive nature. i have grown and made up my own mind on certain things (like pot) and decided it's ok, but as far as children go (and any adolescent is still a child), they need rules and shoudl follow them or face repercussions.
they don't need a tyranny, especially if you were firm with them before and properly instilled the right morals in them, but they still need a watchful eye and need to learn that they can lose their freedoms as quickly as they gain them. it's a give and take. they do need to tell the parents where they're going, who they're with and a firm curfew needs to be set in place. if they break it, they don't go out again for a while. these same rules go for the computer. i don't think they should have their own computer in their bedrooms, it should be in a public place because i still believe that a bedroom is somewhat private (although if there's reason to believe something is going on, parents have every right to "raid"). i don't believe in setting up the parenting software to block websites, bad sites are something that should be talked about. it opens the lines of discussion. i don't think they should be allowed to look at porn (another thing i never saw until i was in college, i just wasn't interested).
most importantly giving children freedom because you know they're going to do it anyways is just being a bad parent, eventually it'll come to bite you in the ass. i know people who let their son and his friends drink at home since he started high school, they gave them beer whenever they were drinking themselves. what did their son turn out to be? he just gets drunk all the time now, and he's still not 21 yet. he became a waste of a life because he just didn't care about a thing and his parents could care less.
you could also not supply all of the "changes" to the public.
i'm not saying i am against open source, but it's far from perfect. i am not a microsoft lover or anything, i'm not married to bill gates, i just don't think open source is the answer to every software question.
key statement regarding open source... "If reported these holes can be fixed." it's not foolproof. it doesn't offer a much greater advantage over closed source assuming closed source companies aren't selling their product for ridiculous prices (see ms). how many software companies do you know that purposely write holes in their software and use them? i'm not talking about your gator or other ad/spyware applications, i'm talking major software (office suites, photo editors, operating systems, web browsers, email clients, etc). i'm sure some people here will say that microsoft puts these holes in their software for their benefit, but it can't be easily proven. the government should require the source be submitted before accepting it, but they should not be offering the source to the general public.
there were several towns in CT that used them this year. they all seemed to be enjoyed greatly over the old machines.
but anyone can look at the code and find the vulerabilities in it using purely legal means since it's provided to the public. that's what i'm talking about. even though code changes are submitted for review with linux, anyone can go and look at the actual code and not tell anyone about a vulerability they found and exploit it. usually those vulnerabilities are picked up fast with linux because it's a world-wide used OS, but an american voting system would be strictly american. sure the vulnerabilities will still be picked up fast, but not necessarily reported fast enough.
this sounds like a great way of doing it, and i don't see how there could really be a need for a recount other than the scan-tron machine going haywire.
i don't know if there's anyone other than the elderly who doesn't know how to use a scantron. they can even supply the necessary #2 pencils and that mistake won't be made. the only problem would be if someone were to erase incompletely, but how often does someone go back and change their vote? the hanging chads don't even allow for that. i have never done it, it's not necessary, but the voting booths allow it if i choose before i pull the big lever that enters my vote.
no matter what method is used for voting, there will always be problems with it and always be a possible necessary need for manual re-counts. here in CT they tried out the computer things, i believe they had problems in one town and had to go to paper (or maybe they had a problem with the mechanical voting booths, i don't remember). either way, there will be problems.
one last comment i want to make is that i don't understand how an open source voting software would be better than closed source. open source gives that many more people the code and ability to possibly mess with it. sure it gives that many more the ability to fix it as well, but closed source, if properly tested keeps people from being able to break in and mess with it unless they really try. i just see this as one use when closed source would be better. same goes for mission critical military, intelligence, and government applications.
Now I shall concede that it is a bigger problem in the U.S, where it seems polling stations do not close at a fixed time across the board (Allowing yet more idiots to declare "winners" before other polls have even closed)
i believe it is a big problem during national elections that the east coast announces their winners hours before the west coast has finished voting. this can strongly influence voters who are undecided as to who to vote for. they will simply vote for whoever they feel would win rather than who they feel would be the best for the job. they need to have election officials keep the results quiet and locked until everyone has finished voting.
as for the electoral college, it's supposed to force candidates to campaign everywhere and give everyone something. otherwise, they would just go to all the most populated cities in the country and could easily win the popular vote that way skipping almost the entire midwest. they'd be a president for the east and west coasts but not the middle states. with the electoral system, they have to get votes from all the states otherwise, there's a good chance they won't win.
orbitz.com has relatively decent popup ads. they include little games like minigolf, a dunk tank, and a few others. they're pretty amusing and take some of the bore out of a long boring day. they make popup ads much more bearable. punch the monkey is stupid because nothing happens and once you click it you're brought to the site, it's not really a game.