I don't think the costs will be expensive. You just need some new training and equipment at the places that already issue social security cards / drivers licenses. And the potential economic benefit is SO HUGE it would way more than cover those costs.
As far as additional identification: You put someone's picture on the card to verify important things, and have the smart card authenticate with a PIN perhaps? Set whenever you renew your license?
Revocation: If the credit card companies can put little inet-enabled scanners in every business that checks for revoked credit cards, it wouldn't be any harder to do it for national IDs.
I love the idea of everyone being issued a smart-card signed through a federal PKI. If such a system were open so that anyone with a smart-card reader use it, you could use that one card for EVERYTHING from unlocking hotel room doors to making credit card purchases to signing email messages!
Pop in a card and you can be sure (via digital signatures) that card really is Joe Citizen of Example, NY. Ask Visa if Joe has a credit card account, if so, bill to that with almost no risk of fraud.
Listen: This is a great idea if it is done right. You ALREADY trust the government to identify you. Let them do it properly and we could have some truly awesome benefits.
Still, there has to be some limit to what the professor can do on the school network. Suppose he is doing research on denial of service attacks. Should he be allowed to saturate his 1,000Mbps link?
You are forgetting that the best surgeon CAN botch a job, just as Tiger Woods can swing and miss the ball completely, even if he is not drunk. If a surgeon does botch a job, there is nothing wrong with saying he has done so.
Boo. I have about four years of experience, a degree, and make only a little more than half that. You are telling me that if I move to the Washington area I can double my pay? Where do I sign up?
Incidentally, thanks for crushing my current pride and sense of satisfaction:-(
What kind of a crap ISP do you have which makes it impossible to download two gigs if data? Are you on a research station in Antarctica? You won't get much sympathy over having to download two gigs from slashdot. Most people here download CD and DVD images on a regular basis.
You are a pirate. Every time your wife listens to one of your songs, you are a pirate in the eyes of the RIAA. Wait for the next version of iTunes DRM that watermarks ripped CDs, then notifies the lawyers if the watermarked songs are shared to another person's library (such as from yours to your wife's.
The iPod was successful because of an elegant hardware-software integration
Ha! That's a laugh. The iPod requires some stupid Windows service to be running at all times. When you connect it to a PC, it launches the entire iTunes UI to do the synching instead of doing it in the background. And the UI itself is slow and unresponsive.
Things could have been done FAR better than Apple did (on PC).
The constitution is not some sort of binary comparison test. It must be interpreted. If such a law were in place, it would be used as a political weapon more powerful than impeachment. It could shut down government entirely. If one party were to gain control of the Supreme Court, they could imprison their opponents to prison.
This started as criticizing people for feeling anxious on flights. The point I demonstrated and you failed to refute is that a person is closer to death on an airplane than in a car, so if anxiety is at all reasonable, it is more reasonable to be anxious while on a plane than in a car.
The safest way to travel a given number of miles (what you seem to be talking about) was never an issue.
We are the only lifeforms with high intelligence. We are the only lifeforms with space travel. It would be stupidly reductionist to assume that we are just another lifeform.
the sheer probability of getting into a car accident in one's lifetime
Hey Mr. Statistics: Care to use some meaningful numbers? What are the chances of dying PER HOUR of being on a plane compared to the chances PER HOUR of being in a car?
I haven't looked it up, but I assume a two-hour flight is more likely to kill you than a two-hour road trip. That's a pretty good justification to fear the flight more than the drive.
Not to take away from your argument, but I HATE bullshit statistics.
There's a lot of focus on OMG-deadly high-profile terrorist attacks, and on OMG-deadly consequences of global warming.
Terrorism could cause a tiny handful of people to die. Warming could cause a mass extinction. Do you understand what I mean by mass extinction? I mean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_extinction.
One of these is a minor annoyance to the human species. The other is the end of life as we know it. Some have even suggested that run-away global warming caused Venus to become the hell-hole it is today. These are very different problems.
You are right that politicians, in general, care more about the appearance of solving problems than actually solving problems. But don't equate global warming with the relatively trivial issue of terrorism.
Computer Science needs to die (well, shrink a lot). Industry does not need computer scientists. It needs software engineers, human interface engineers, and programmers.
Guido could _easily_ put in some sort of pragma to allow other types of blocks
but he won't, because that would be stupid. It would be akin to having differently-sized railroad tracks depending upon the whim of the person laying them.
Only a PERL programmer would think that is a good idea:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think the costs will be expensive. You just need some new training and equipment at the places that already issue social security cards / drivers licenses. And the potential economic benefit is SO HUGE it would way more than cover those costs.
As far as additional identification: You put someone's picture on the card to verify important things, and have the smart card authenticate with a PIN perhaps? Set whenever you renew your license?
Revocation: If the credit card companies can put little inet-enabled scanners in every business that checks for revoked credit cards, it wouldn't be any harder to do it for national IDs.
I love the idea of everyone being issued a smart-card signed through a federal PKI. If such a system were open so that anyone with a smart-card reader use it, you could use that one card for EVERYTHING from unlocking hotel room doors to making credit card purchases to signing email messages!
Pop in a card and you can be sure (via digital signatures) that card really is Joe Citizen of Example, NY. Ask Visa if Joe has a credit card account, if so, bill to that with almost no risk of fraud.
Listen: This is a great idea if it is done right. You ALREADY trust the government to identify you. Let them do it properly and we could have some truly awesome benefits.
Still, there has to be some limit to what the professor can do on the school network. Suppose he is doing research on denial of service attacks. Should he be allowed to saturate his 1,000Mbps link?
(Oh, and Gem, Gem is truly amazing...)
Is there an alternative? Do you know of an economic system in which the strong do not take advantage of the weak? Put up or shut up.
Maybe if you didn't have to work you would lose the stress and gain the time to exercise...
and Linden Labs (Second Life), and MySQL AB, and AOL (Mozilla), and, well, a lot of companies.
You got that backward. NAC offers real security. It does not offer theoretical security.
theoretical security: there is now known way to circumvent this (think one-time-pad)
real security: it's possible to circumvent this, but for 99.9% of potential attackers out there, it would take more effort than its worth.
Ow! I think I just pulled a muscle in my face rolling my eyes at that awful pun.
You have my sympathy.
Access to modern technology was a primary reason I moved to a metropolis.
That would be a waste of my mad unix skills... but for six figures, well, I would take a job kicking puppies for $100k.
You are forgetting that the best surgeon CAN botch a job, just as Tiger Woods can swing and miss the ball completely, even if he is not drunk. If a surgeon does botch a job, there is nothing wrong with saying he has done so.
Boo. I have about four years of experience, a degree, and make only a little more than half that. You are telling me that if I move to the Washington area I can double my pay? Where do I sign up?
:-(
Incidentally, thanks for crushing my current pride and sense of satisfaction
What kind of a crap ISP do you have which makes it impossible to download two gigs if data? Are you on a research station in Antarctica? You won't get much sympathy over having to download two gigs from slashdot. Most people here download CD and DVD images on a regular basis.
You are a pirate. Every time your wife listens to one of your songs, you are a pirate in the eyes of the RIAA. Wait for the next version of iTunes DRM that watermarks ripped CDs, then notifies the lawyers if the watermarked songs are shared to another person's library (such as from yours to your wife's.
Ha! That's a laugh. The iPod requires some stupid Windows service to be running at all times. When you connect it to a PC, it launches the entire iTunes UI to do the synching instead of doing it in the background. And the UI itself is slow and unresponsive.
Things could have been done FAR better than Apple did (on PC).
You're out of touch.
The constitution is not some sort of binary comparison test. It must be interpreted. If such a law were in place, it would be used as a political weapon more powerful than impeachment. It could shut down government entirely. If one party were to gain control of the Supreme Court, they could imprison their opponents to prison.
No, that's a terrible idea you have.
This started as criticizing people for feeling anxious on flights. The point I demonstrated and you failed to refute is that a person is closer to death on an airplane than in a car, so if anxiety is at all reasonable, it is more reasonable to be anxious while on a plane than in a car.
The safest way to travel a given number of miles (what you seem to be talking about) was never an issue.
Humans will be extinct? That's a bold statement.
We are the only lifeforms with high intelligence. We are the only lifeforms with space travel. It would be stupidly reductionist to assume that we are just another lifeform.
I haven't looked it up, but I assume a two-hour flight is more likely to kill you than a two-hour road trip. That's a pretty good justification to fear the flight more than the drive.
Not to take away from your argument, but I HATE bullshit statistics.
One of these is a minor annoyance to the human species. The other is the end of life as we know it. Some have even suggested that run-away global warming caused Venus to become the hell-hole it is today. These are very different problems.
You are right that politicians, in general, care more about the appearance of solving problems than actually solving problems. But don't equate global warming with the relatively trivial issue of terrorism.
Computer Science needs to die (well, shrink a lot). Industry does not need computer scientists. It needs software engineers, human interface engineers, and programmers.
Only a PERL programmer would think that is a good idea