Plenty of people enjoy the gambling to the extent that it is worth the losses to them (Personally, my actual gambling is limited to the occasional Mega Millions ticket, but only when the expected value of the ticket goes above the cost, it is fun to fantasize about absurd wealth once in a while).
As far as the stock market, you can actually bet with the house (buy an index fund). The last 10 or 15 years certainly have been miserable, but good investment advice pretty much starts with "don't invest money that you might need short term access to in stocks"; that advice gets roundly ignored (people in their 50's and 60's frequently have huge exposure to equities, when they shouldn't), but that doesn't change the value of the advice for people that follow it, so 10 years of poor market performance is easy to view as an opportunity to buy...
Even Jim Cramer, a guy a lot of people view as a loudmouth tool of the bad guys, starts with advising people to take out insurance against catastrophes (good medical insurance and disability insurance, to protect against illness and loss of income, which are much bigger considerations for retirement than good investment performance) and to conservatively invest their retirement assets (the title of his show "Mad Money" is a reference to money that the particular investor can afford to lose, and thus can take larger risks with).
The officers certainly deserve to have their privacy respected and their identities protected, but I'm not sure that translates to them having the right to have their privacy respected and identities protected.
Say a drug dealer is having a conversation with someone who is unaware of their illegal activities, and that someone mentions that they saw the new guy in the bar at a police station wearing a uniform, and the dealer later kills the officer; is the casual friend of the drug dealer on the hook for revealing the identity of the officer?
That example is horribly contrived, but horribly contrived things actually happen in a world with millions of people in it, so there is good reason to write laws quite carefully.
I would be shocked if the EE program at a major state university did not include a rigorous lab (I didn't do EE or anything, but at my school, those folks consistently complained about their labs).
Identity theft is a misnomer. When a bank extends credit to someone who is impersonating me, the bank is being defrauded, not me, and the bank could be more diligent about actually identifying the person in question, but that would cost more money than making messes that they just push off onto people (this seems to largely be a result of the current regulation of the credit industry).
My driver's license and social security card, and every other document I have with identification on it is properly called a credential, my identity is something else that is innate to me, something that cannot be stolen (would you expect a family member to check your documents in order to identify you?). The people that are called identity thieves are just fraud artists that create false credentials (you outline how it is possible to get authentic credentials with false information on them, so the credentials may be more than fake).
So you want better credentials, because it works around the thorny problem of positively identifying people and associating them with existing records, but the idea that people need to carry around and offer up unique identifiers is one of economic convenience (it saves time and money), not one of necessity (bankers used to know the people they loaned money to personally).
That's an important comma there (just to be clear, it is there).
I don't smoke, but I don't look at people that smoke as doing something wrong (except that pregnant woman last Christmas), I just look at them as doing something foolish. If it is someone I know well, I don't have any qualms about making this opinion clear to them.
Those 'to an extent' statements are pretty big hedges when you get along to discussing mass murderers (I mean, I don't aspire to evil, but I haven't even killed 1 person, let alone thousands or millions).
(I largely agree with the rest of what you said, evil is not a cartoon villain, evil is a misguided man doing things he believes are right, or at least, necessary)
Irritatingly, satellite is my only broadband option at the moment (and I just can't bring myself to pay for it).
(also, I find with something like netflix, the tiny little bit of initiative required means I don't end up watching anything. The TV has trained me well)
discuss the type of number you are talking about? The page states that ITINs will only be issued to those who do not have and are not eligible for SSNs.
And in most areas 1/10 of the channels, maybe (I don't pay Dish for local channels, I get them over the air, but I only get ABC/CBS/Fox/NBC/PBS/Create, and there can be an astonishing lack of programming on that combination).
So in that last bit there, you are saying that if, instead of relying on SSNs, companies bothered to actually identify the people they were dealing with, using the SSN as a private key wouldn't be necessary?
Yes, people have no one to blame but themselves. On the other hand, the developer better not expect the community to be excited about what they did, they should expect some sort of outcry when they violate people's expectations (regardless of whether those expectations are objectively reasonable or not...).
In the glorious future, the government will extend resources to financial institutions that mistakenly issue credit on fraudulently provided information, and help them deal with and resolve the consequences of their actions.
Slashdot Mirror
The Pentagon is not a bank, it is a landmark military post, and it was also attacked on 9/11.
9/11 was an attack on the institutions of the United States in general, not simply an attack on a BANK.
Plenty of people enjoy the gambling to the extent that it is worth the losses to them (Personally, my actual gambling is limited to the occasional Mega Millions ticket, but only when the expected value of the ticket goes above the cost, it is fun to fantasize about absurd wealth once in a while).
As far as the stock market, you can actually bet with the house (buy an index fund). The last 10 or 15 years certainly have been miserable, but good investment advice pretty much starts with "don't invest money that you might need short term access to in stocks"; that advice gets roundly ignored (people in their 50's and 60's frequently have huge exposure to equities, when they shouldn't), but that doesn't change the value of the advice for people that follow it, so 10 years of poor market performance is easy to view as an opportunity to buy...
Even Jim Cramer, a guy a lot of people view as a loudmouth tool of the bad guys, starts with advising people to take out insurance against catastrophes (good medical insurance and disability insurance, to protect against illness and loss of income, which are much bigger considerations for retirement than good investment performance) and to conservatively invest their retirement assets (the title of his show "Mad Money" is a reference to money that the particular investor can afford to lose, and thus can take larger risks with).
The officers certainly deserve to have their privacy respected and their identities protected, but I'm not sure that translates to them having the right to have their privacy respected and identities protected.
Say a drug dealer is having a conversation with someone who is unaware of their illegal activities, and that someone mentions that they saw the new guy in the bar at a police station wearing a uniform, and the dealer later kills the officer; is the casual friend of the drug dealer on the hook for revealing the identity of the officer?
That example is horribly contrived, but horribly contrived things actually happen in a world with millions of people in it, so there is good reason to write laws quite carefully.
All the financial risk. Months of time don't get devoted to a project without having some sort of impact on the author's life.
I would be shocked if the EE program at a major state university did not include a rigorous lab (I didn't do EE or anything, but at my school, those folks consistently complained about their labs).
My basement has a strong 'neener-neener-neener' field, so as a practical manner, the rights of the patent holder aren't that big a deal there.
I prefer it if the government were drawing up a plan for dealing with zombie infestations.
When I vomit, I call it free radical expression.
Okay, but his manner of conveying that observation is ridiculous.
Identity theft is a misnomer. When a bank extends credit to someone who is impersonating me, the bank is being defrauded, not me, and the bank could be more diligent about actually identifying the person in question, but that would cost more money than making messes that they just push off onto people (this seems to largely be a result of the current regulation of the credit industry).
My driver's license and social security card, and every other document I have with identification on it is properly called a credential, my identity is something else that is innate to me, something that cannot be stolen (would you expect a family member to check your documents in order to identify you?). The people that are called identity thieves are just fraud artists that create false credentials (you outline how it is possible to get authentic credentials with false information on them, so the credentials may be more than fake).
So you want better credentials, because it works around the thorny problem of positively identifying people and associating them with existing records, but the idea that people need to carry around and offer up unique identifiers is one of economic convenience (it saves time and money), not one of necessity (bankers used to know the people they loaned money to personally).
It would be worse if it decided your life was so trivial and banal that no further action was necessary.
Give him a milkbone.
Isn't the whole point of Frankenstein that the monster is not as evil as the man?
That's an important comma there (just to be clear, it is there).
I don't smoke, but I don't look at people that smoke as doing something wrong (except that pregnant woman last Christmas), I just look at them as doing something foolish. If it is someone I know well, I don't have any qualms about making this opinion clear to them.
Those 'to an extent' statements are pretty big hedges when you get along to discussing mass murderers (I mean, I don't aspire to evil, but I haven't even killed 1 person, let alone thousands or millions).
(I largely agree with the rest of what you said, evil is not a cartoon villain, evil is a misguided man doing things he believes are right, or at least, necessary)
Irritatingly, satellite is my only broadband option at the moment (and I just can't bring myself to pay for it).
(also, I find with something like netflix, the tiny little bit of initiative required means I don't end up watching anything. The TV has trained me well)
My library still uses paper books. The fools!
Actually, they announced a re-imagined Taurus.
I thought the 500 was a decent brand, I don't really understand why they decided to replace it.
So how bout you drop some of that wisdom on us Merlin, instead of just fucking telling us we are stupid.
Does this page:
http://www.irs.gov/individuals/article/0,,id=96287,00.html
discuss the type of number you are talking about? The page states that ITINs will only be issued to those who do not have and are not eligible for SSNs.
And in most areas 1/10 of the channels, maybe (I don't pay Dish for local channels, I get them over the air, but I only get ABC/CBS/Fox/NBC/PBS/Create, and there can be an astonishing lack of programming on that combination).
So in that last bit there, you are saying that if, instead of relying on SSNs, companies bothered to actually identify the people they were dealing with, using the SSN as a private key wouldn't be necessary?
Absolutely freaking weird.
Well, I was joking by combining Stallman's (seemingly) absurd system with the everyday habits of more casual users.
Yes, people have no one to blame but themselves. On the other hand, the developer better not expect the community to be excited about what they did, they should expect some sort of outcry when they violate people's expectations (regardless of whether those expectations are objectively reasonable or not...).
In the glorious future, the government will extend resources to financial institutions that mistakenly issue credit on fraudulently provided information, and help them deal with and resolve the consequences of their actions.
The hilarity of that statement makes me sad.