I know quite a few people that have multiroom/wireless/wired/whole house/multiple zone/ etc setups and not one person really uses it much after about the first 2 months, or they only use it about once a year. It all looks like an outstanding design, great in theory and looks like a tremendous advantage to have such a thing but when it really comes down to it, they just do not use it. Throw computers into the mix and it makes it seem even much more the hassle of maintaining it and although a lower cost, still maybe not worth the time investment. I am all for geek projects but it is hard to justify the cost for a specialized system. Of topic here but i know one guy who went through a tremendous effort to broadcast the output of his central DVD player to any tv in the house. He had signal combiners and notch filters and attached the output to his house cable system along with a IR remote extender. Neat idea, you can tune any tv in the house to channel 80 or something in that region and watch what the downstairs DVD player is playing and using a universal remote control to control it. Well, you can buy standalone DVD players from Wal-Mart for $29. Was the effort worth it? Maybe to some but not others.
On that note.. I have a multipurpose computer near my stereo and I use plain old mapped drives to get to my music and video. For the audio connection, I use the coaxial digital output of my SBLive directly to my reciever (limits ground loops and much less noise then using the analog outputs). If you go that route, use the KX driver pakage, not the drivers from SB, they are much better.
I can not comment on the decision to use a 40 bit key but I will still carry and use my SpeedPass. You can only use the device at these gas stations and for the in store purchases. Not high dollar unless you fill a few diesel trucks. A thief has to be physically present in these stores to use the cloned ID. Basically, he/she is not online in Russia somewhere ordering plasma screens. A large shopping spree would consist of the person going from gas station to gas stations buying junk food and gas. Your credit card company and the SpeedPass system will refund any fradulent purchases you did not make and the thief does not have your actual credit card number or any personal information about you that would be useful for anything. In conclusion.. When I compare convienence to security, the SpeedPass still wins. To compare, my standard credit card if taken or even sighted, has the number written right on it with no encryption for anyone to see, including the resturant personell or gas station attendant inside the store who will gladly take the card and swipe it for you. They can do much more with that then my SpeedPass that is tied to that same exact credit card.
The concept of these RFID keys is you still need the actual key regardless how you get the ignition switch to move. If the sensor does not sense the id of your key, it will not start. On cars such as this, many aftermarket remote starters require a second key with some wire wrapped around them to allow the car to start. I'm sure people have figured a way around that authentication also but it takes more then a large flat head screwdriver and a slide hammer. Of course this discussion has nothing to do with the SpeedPass;)
I don't know about you but I remember a lot of stories about fire fighters actually starting fires. I have absolutely no statistics or figures but the point is, when a fire fighter is involved, people remember it was a fire fighter regardless of the persons name. If it was a network engineer that started the fire, you tend not to group that figure into you memory and probably forget about it.
An example being a really large forest fire in the western US about two years ago started by a park firefighter? There have probably been 20 or more serious wild fires since then that were not started by a fire fighter but I remember the one that was. I'm sure a random sampling of people that would make up a jury would remember that as well. Of course when the facts come out and the entire story is told by both sides, the jury should be able to make an unbiased decision.
Give them a last name and a telephone number. Voila.
This is a big assumption here but doesnt that name and last four numbers actually get validated or something to determine if that account even exists? Can you give them any bogus information and it will work (like get reconciled later on the backend) or are you simply implying that you specifically give someone elses information that you know has one of those cards?
I actually use those cards all the time but not a single one has my real information. If authorities have my actual card, they would be able to pull up what I bought in the past but armed with only my address, name or phone number, they would find nothing. I guess they could setup some system to standby and wait until that specific card gets used again and then tackle me in the parking lot. I guess the point is, if you are going to commit a crime with something bought from the grocery store, use cash and spend the extra $0.50 that the card would save you.
I scoured their user agreements CAREFULLY for mention of a bandwidth cap and found no mention of such a thing. If they try to tag me with one, and it's still not in their subscriber agreement, they will be hit with a class-action false advertising suit.
I do agree with you 100% but Comcast IS sending out warnings. Quite honestly, I don't think they would care a single bit if the people they flagged as high useage would quit or not so the court trip would be your only recourse. You can be the Guinea Pig..
What makes the final application used the guilty party? Why not the storage media you put it on? How about the computer? the operating system? The network card? the TCP/IP stack? the high speed internet service? the router companies? Every one of theose things is required to complete the transaction including at least TWO PEOPLE. IMHO, the meida companies want to make the job of protecting their interests as easy as possible with carpet bombing. They are willing to go directly to congress to get the laws changed as well to support that. As a side effect, legal uses are thrawted as well which they also benefit from. More independant online publishing means less income for them. The same reason the National Association of Brodcasters fought long and hard to try prevent small local low power radio stations from becoming a reality and the RIAA with its death blow to the online radio stations.
There is options available right now for the people that want it. NOAA weather radio. Available in all kinds of portable radios, police scanners, stand alone "weather radios", and even in FRS two way radios. Even Amazon sells 31 products capable of receiving these broadcasts. Basically, you can pick something up at any retail store in the US for under $20 that will receive these broadcasts. I use one every time a storm is identified in my area. As soon as I hear the warnings on television, I grab my police scanner and press the NOAA button. NOAA repeats and updates the emergency condition far more often and identifies very specific areas that should take immediate actions far better then any commercial AM/FM/TV weather team does. They also provide around the clock tidal and water level conditions but that is of no interest to me in my house. Even if you are not camping, it is a good idea to have something capable of receiving these broadcasts just in case.
Crippled, proprietary formats do not sell and the more they try to cram them down our throats, the more people will just buy an iPod that plays MP3 and AAC.
I understand the iPod plays what you reference but think about your statement. People will buy a crippled proprietary format from iTunes that requires either iTunes or an iPod to listen to it and whistle happily along. Go figure.
My Sony AV receiver failed as well. Bought in 1992, broke in 1993 ($625). Yeah I am refering to something 14 years ago but my Sony car stereo I bought in 1990 ($475), my camcorder I bought in 1990 ($1250), my 5 disc cd changer I bought in 1993 ($245) and my hi-fi VCR bought in 1992 ($425) were all Sony and all broke within 2 years. I have not bought anything from them since. On the other hand, I have several heavy duty Sony commercial television monitors that I got when I used to work for an airline and they are all still chugging along. They were used as the displays the passengers use to check flights near the gates so basically in use 24*7*365 for years before I got them. One of them has some burnin of a some flight s but the others still have an outstanding picture.
Sega had decent products. In fact the Dreamcast has features that the others did not at the time and some still do not, like built in modems, network capability, VGA monitor hookup, external KB, mouse, advanced memory cards[1], vibration packs etc.. The Dreamcast could also browse the internet similar to WebTV over your choice of standard dialup or via the ethernet cable. You still can not do this with the PS2 or Xbox which I think is very odd. Maybe they are afraid that ability would cut into game sales or existing competeing services those companies offer. Basically, the Dreamcast offered much more for the end user but was basically dropped like a rock. Maybe it was poor marketing, maybe a little inside pressure and a juicy conspiracy theory with the other vendors.
[1] The memory cards had LCD screens, hooked together to transfer files between them, you could carry around the cards and play small cheesy games on the cards, used as a small suplemental information screens while playing the game, example being Sega 2K series football, you could allow play selection via the memory card screen preventing the other player seeing what play you selected.
I don't see how Sega can have success now with a generic football game.
Make it configurable and allow imports of configurations. It would be nice to import teams.bin, stadium.bin, and players.bin and now you have something close to the NFL. Of course I do not know how to handle the audio portion of the commentary. Instead of hearing Bettis carried for 97 yards, you would hear number 33 carried for 97 yards.
I bought a 7ft gold plated Belkin cat 5 cable from BB for only $36 when I bought a new computer. The BB salesman said my old computer was only 2.0Ghz so I would not benefit from the better cable, now that I have a 3.0Mhz CPU, it would make a huge difference. Last week with my old computer and Comcast cable, I was only getting 3Mbps down, today with my new computer and cable, I am getting 4Mbps and my upload went from 256kbs to 384kbs!! BB salesmen rock! I am so happy, I am going back to buy the $40 gold plated USB cable for my $30 printer.;)
Does code for Firefox/Mozila have the ability to run things beyond the scope of the browser engine like run fdisk or format? Bascially can it run outside the browser like the integration of IE/Explorer/Windows with ActiveX. Not trolling here, I really have no idea.
Remember that there was a recent court decision allowing ISPs to read your email when it touches their hard drive.
Email messages are always tranfered on as they are received, anyone from point a to b can read it in plain text if you send plain text. I understand your point about wanting to avoid your specific ISP but big picture here, even with your ISP mail server out of the path, a plain text email is open to anyone with access along the way legally or not. If someone eavesdropping on your email is that much of a problem for you, your specific ISP is one of many things you need to consider as it is no weaker then the other links in the chain, including the recipients ISP mail server. I suggest GPG or one of the closed source alternatives. Maybe your plan is using your mail server to get directly to someone elses bypassing any middle man or ISP mail server queue, good in theory but seems like much more trouble and still less secure then just using PGP to begin with.
I have been doing the same exact mp3 via Squid via SSH tunneling also. I was doing this back when it was 128kbits upload and it did not work to good though. 256 has worked very well.
Again, I am just bringing up the point of comparision. Much of what you said is worth noting but there is FUD in there also.
(because the Mac does not ship with a crippled version of OS X)
That is FUD plan and simple and honestly shows your true intention of not providing a balanced comparision. XP home can not participate in a Windows domain. That is not going to effect a home user at all so your claim of requiring XP Professional is completely bogus. In all fairness, the OSX machine will not natively participate in a Windows domain at the same level as XP professional either.
DVD Drive. That is an expensive upgrade from Dell at$79. You could buy your own DVD+-RW anywhere for about $60 (Yes, you can buy upgrade parts from anywhere).
I can't seem to find any information about the Dell's video card, Dell's video card in a cheap integrated model and the 3000 motherboard offers no AGP slot, huge downside. The integrated Intel is not as good as a ATI 9200 but.. Neither is outstanding regardless. Better relative to each other really has no impact on the end user as they are both relatively slow. Just as my GF2 is far better then a Trident Blade chipset, neither is useful for anything recent if gaming is your purpose. Beyond the scope of comparision but you can buy a ATI 9200 PCI card for roughly $50 at newegg. Considering neither of these machines is a powerhouse overall, anyone wanting power would be equally frustrated at the performance of either. Firewire and DVI is also an advantage with the Mac, but only an advantage to those that desire this functionality. Firewire not being as popular in the IBM PC world, users do not assume it will be there and not frustrated that it is not. External connection of a DV camera being main reason for use. I happen to use firewire on my PC and I had to buy a seperate card. Your rebates comment is FUD also. I personally know of at least 10 people that have bought Dell computers in the past year with a rebate and not a single one has had a problem getting the money back. I'm sure it does happen but not to the level you describe.
Size? HUGE difference. Always an Apple initiative. You can not put a price on what size means to an individual. I can honestly not figure out when and when I would ever not have room for a PC. I am comfortable with a standard PC so that means very little to me. Could be a deal maker or breaker breaker for many.
I can see where each machine could have an advantage. You seem to be willing to twist everything possible to only see things your way which kind of makes my reply to your comment a waste of time.
Dell has deals cheaper then the one in the comparison. This one is only $429. 80GB HD and 512MB ram. I could care less what anyone buys but in every single Apple computer article that mentions price, people compare prices of Dell to Apple and always seem to quote Dell prices that are always higher then what you can get from Dell directly. I do not know if this is on purpose or people just don't realize Dell has deals that rotate. I do not own a Dell but I have recently got out of the white box building side business and I point people to Dell instead. It saves me the hassle of providing free lifetime support. Of the 30 or so people I have quided in this direction, no one has been displeased at all with the quality of what they recieved. I personally think Dell support is lame but on par with every single tech support center I have ever called for anything.
There are people that stand above and below the crowd but not entire geographical regions. IMHO, the relative difference of intelligence between different people makes a much smaller difference in how they succeed compared to much larger factor being the surrounding culture they grew up in. Meaning.. take two people with the same intelligence, one living in the inner city rundown drug infested area with different parents every year compared to the person with a close stable family structure in upper middleclassville. Which one do you think has a better chance of being successful? It had nothing to do with intelligence. In fact the person from middleclassville could be much less intelligent and probably still have a better chance at being successful. You seem to by impling that because the person from middleclassville became successful and innercity did not is because of the intelligence, which in turn got passed on to the next generation further dividing the intelligence gap. I do not think that is the case.
Who the hell would give BlockBuster their SSN? Do they require that? I suggest to leave that box blank. I do that ALL THE TIME and rarely will they ask again thinking I missed that block and if they do I reply with "you do not need my SSN for this". I don't think any business has taken it further then that. My credit union and when applying for a loan are different but anything other then my financial institutions do not get the number.
Slashdot Mirror
I know quite a few people that have multiroom/wireless/wired/whole house/multiple zone/ etc setups and not one person really uses it much after about the first 2 months, or they only use it about once a year. It all looks like an outstanding design, great in theory and looks like a tremendous advantage to have such a thing but when it really comes down to it, they just do not use it. Throw computers into the mix and it makes it seem even much more the hassle of maintaining it and although a lower cost, still maybe not worth the time investment. I am all for geek projects but it is hard to justify the cost for a specialized system. Of topic here but i know one guy who went through a tremendous effort to broadcast the output of his central DVD player to any tv in the house. He had signal combiners and notch filters and attached the output to his house cable system along with a IR remote extender. Neat idea, you can tune any tv in the house to channel 80 or something in that region and watch what the downstairs DVD player is playing and using a universal remote control to control it. Well, you can buy standalone DVD players from Wal-Mart for $29. Was the effort worth it? Maybe to some but not others.
On that note.. I have a multipurpose computer near my stereo and I use plain old mapped drives to get to my music and video. For the audio connection, I use the coaxial digital output of my SBLive directly to my reciever (limits ground loops and much less noise then using the analog outputs). If you go that route, use the KX driver pakage, not the drivers from SB, they are much better.
I have to ask. What is artificial sand?
I can not comment on the decision to use a 40 bit key but I will still carry and use my SpeedPass. You can only use the device at these gas stations and for the in store purchases. Not high dollar unless you fill a few diesel trucks. A thief has to be physically present in these stores to use the cloned ID. Basically, he/she is not online in Russia somewhere ordering plasma screens. A large shopping spree would consist of the person going from gas station to gas stations buying junk food and gas. Your credit card company and the SpeedPass system will refund any fradulent purchases you did not make and the thief does not have your actual credit card number or any personal information about you that would be useful for anything.
In conclusion..
When I compare convienence to security, the SpeedPass still wins. To compare, my standard credit card if taken or even sighted, has the number written right on it with no encryption for anyone to see, including the resturant personell or gas station attendant inside the store who will gladly take the card and swipe it for you. They can do much more with that then my SpeedPass that is tied to that same exact credit card.
The concept of these RFID keys is you still need the actual key regardless how you get the ignition switch to move. If the sensor does not sense the id of your key, it will not start. On cars such as this, many aftermarket remote starters require a second key with some wire wrapped around them to allow the car to start. I'm sure people have figured a way around that authentication also but it takes more then a large flat head screwdriver and a slide hammer. ;)
Of course this discussion has nothing to do with the SpeedPass
I guess I have more faith in the system.
I don't know about you but I remember a lot of stories about fire fighters actually starting fires. I have absolutely no statistics or figures but the point is, when a fire fighter is involved, people remember it was a fire fighter regardless of the persons name. If it was a network engineer that started the fire, you tend not to group that figure into you memory and probably forget about it.
An example being a really large forest fire in the western US about two years ago started by a park firefighter? There have probably been 20 or more serious wild fires since then that were not started by a fire fighter but I remember the one that was. I'm sure a random sampling of people that would make up a jury would remember that as well. Of course when the facts come out and the entire story is told by both sides, the jury should be able to make an unbiased decision.
Give them a last name and a telephone number. Voila.
This is a big assumption here but doesnt that name and last four numbers actually get validated or something to determine if that account even exists? Can you give them any bogus information and it will work (like get reconciled later on the backend) or are you simply implying that you specifically give someone elses information that you know has one of those cards?
I actually use those cards all the time but not a single one has my real information. If authorities have my actual card, they would be able to pull up what I bought in the past but armed with only my address, name or phone number, they would find nothing. I guess they could setup some system to standby and wait until that specific card gets used again and then tackle me in the parking lot. I guess the point is, if you are going to commit a crime with something bought from the grocery store, use cash and spend the extra $0.50 that the card would save you.
I scoured their user agreements CAREFULLY for mention of a bandwidth cap and found no mention of such a thing. If they try to tag me with one, and it's still not in their subscriber agreement, they will be hit with a class-action false advertising suit.
I do agree with you 100% but Comcast IS sending out warnings. Quite honestly, I don't think they would care a single bit if the people they flagged as high useage would quit or not so the court trip would be your only recourse. You can be the Guinea Pig..
What makes the final application used the guilty party? Why not the storage media you put it on? How about the computer? the operating system? The network card? the TCP/IP stack? the high speed internet service? the router companies? Every one of theose things is required to complete the transaction including at least TWO PEOPLE. IMHO, the meida companies want to make the job of protecting their interests as easy as possible with carpet bombing. They are willing to go directly to congress to get the laws changed as well to support that. As a side effect, legal uses are thrawted as well which they also benefit from. More independant online publishing means less income for them. The same reason the National Association of Brodcasters fought long and hard to try prevent small local low power radio stations from becoming a reality and the RIAA with its death blow to the online radio stations.
There is options available right now for the people that want it. NOAA weather radio. Available in all kinds of portable radios, police scanners, stand alone "weather radios", and even in FRS two way radios. Even Amazon sells 31 products capable of receiving these broadcasts. Basically, you can pick something up at any retail store in the US for under $20 that will receive these broadcasts. I use one every time a storm is identified in my area. As soon as I hear the warnings on television, I grab my police scanner and press the NOAA button. NOAA repeats and updates the emergency condition far more often and identifies very specific areas that should take immediate actions far better then any commercial AM/FM/TV weather team does. They also provide around the clock tidal and water level conditions but that is of no interest to me in my house. Even if you are not camping, it is a good idea to have something capable of receiving these broadcasts just in case.
Crippled, proprietary formats do not sell and the more they try to cram them down our throats, the more people will just buy an iPod that plays MP3 and AAC.
I understand the iPod plays what you reference but think about your statement. People will buy a crippled proprietary format from iTunes that requires either iTunes or an iPod to listen to it and whistle happily along. Go figure.
My Sony AV receiver failed as well. Bought in 1992, broke in 1993 ($625). Yeah I am refering to something 14 years ago but my Sony car stereo I bought in 1990 ($475), my camcorder I bought in 1990 ($1250), my 5 disc cd changer I bought in 1993 ($245) and my hi-fi VCR bought in 1992 ($425) were all Sony and all broke within 2 years. I have not bought anything from them since. On the other hand, I have several heavy duty Sony commercial television monitors that I got when I used to work for an airline and they are all still chugging along. They were used as the displays the passengers use to check flights near the gates so basically in use 24*7*365 for years before I got them. One of them has some burnin of a some flight s but the others still have an outstanding picture.
Sega had decent products. In fact the Dreamcast has features that the others did not at the time and some still do not, like built in modems, network capability, VGA monitor hookup, external KB, mouse, advanced memory cards[1], vibration packs etc.. The Dreamcast could also browse the internet similar to WebTV over your choice of standard dialup or via the ethernet cable. You still can not do this with the PS2 or Xbox which I think is very odd. Maybe they are afraid that ability would cut into game sales or existing competeing services those companies offer. Basically, the Dreamcast offered much more for the end user but was basically dropped like a rock. Maybe it was poor marketing, maybe a little inside pressure and a juicy conspiracy theory with the other vendors.
[1] The memory cards had LCD screens, hooked together to transfer files between them, you could carry around the cards and play small cheesy games on the cards, used as a small suplemental information screens while playing the game, example being Sega 2K series football, you could allow play selection via the memory card screen preventing the other player seeing what play you selected.
I don't see how Sega can have success now with a generic football game.
Make it configurable and allow imports of configurations. It would be nice to import teams.bin, stadium.bin, and players.bin and now you have something close to the NFL. Of course I do not know how to handle the audio portion of the commentary. Instead of hearing Bettis carried for 97 yards, you would hear number 33 carried for 97 yards.
WWW, blah. I'd be all for it with a CLI!
I bought a 7ft gold plated Belkin cat 5 cable from BB for only $36 when I bought a new computer. The BB salesman said my old computer was only 2.0Ghz so I would not benefit from the better cable, now that I have a 3.0Mhz CPU, it would make a huge difference. Last week with my old computer and Comcast cable, I was only getting 3Mbps down, today with my new computer and cable, I am getting 4Mbps and my upload went from 256kbs to 384kbs!! BB salesmen rock! I am so happy, I am going back to buy the $40 gold plated USB cable for my $30 printer. ;)
Does code for Firefox/Mozila have the ability to run things beyond the scope of the browser engine like run fdisk or format? Bascially can it run outside the browser like the integration of IE/Explorer/Windows with ActiveX. Not trolling here, I really have no idea.
Remember that there was a recent court decision allowing ISPs to read your email when it touches their hard drive.
Email messages are always tranfered on as they are received, anyone from point a to b can read it in plain text if you send plain text. I understand your point about wanting to avoid your specific ISP but big picture here, even with your ISP mail server out of the path, a plain text email is open to anyone with access along the way legally or not. If someone eavesdropping on your email is that much of a problem for you, your specific ISP is one of many things you need to consider as it is no weaker then the other links in the chain, including the recipients ISP mail server. I suggest GPG or one of the closed source alternatives. Maybe your plan is using your mail server to get directly to someone elses bypassing any middle man or ISP mail server queue, good in theory but seems like much more trouble and still less secure then just using PGP to begin with.
I have been doing the same exact mp3 via Squid via SSH tunneling also. I was doing this back when it was 128kbits upload and it did not work to good though. 256 has worked very well.
Again, I am just bringing up the point of comparision. Much of what you said is worth noting but there is FUD in there also.
(because the Mac does not ship with a crippled version of OS X)
That is FUD plan and simple and honestly shows your true intention of not providing a balanced comparision. XP home can not participate in a Windows domain. That is not going to effect a home user at all so your claim of requiring XP Professional is completely bogus. In all fairness, the OSX machine will not natively participate in a Windows domain at the same level as XP professional either.
DVD Drive. That is an expensive upgrade from Dell at$79. You could buy your own DVD+-RW anywhere for about $60 (Yes, you can buy upgrade parts from anywhere).
I can't seem to find any information about the Dell's video card,
Dell's video card in a cheap integrated model and the 3000 motherboard offers no AGP slot, huge downside. The integrated Intel is not as good as a ATI 9200 but.. Neither is outstanding regardless. Better relative to each other really has no impact on the end user as they are both relatively slow. Just as my GF2 is far better then a Trident Blade chipset, neither is useful for anything recent if gaming is your purpose. Beyond the scope of comparision but you can buy a ATI 9200 PCI card for roughly $50 at newegg. Considering neither of these machines is a powerhouse overall, anyone wanting power would be equally frustrated at the performance of either.
Firewire and DVI is also an advantage with the Mac, but only an advantage to those that desire this functionality. Firewire not being as popular in the IBM PC world, users do not assume it will be there and not frustrated that it is not. External connection of a DV camera being main reason for use. I happen to use firewire on my PC and I had to buy a seperate card.
Your rebates comment is FUD also. I personally know of at least 10 people that have bought Dell computers in the past year with a rebate and not a single one has had a problem getting the money back. I'm sure it does happen but not to the level you describe.
Size? HUGE difference. Always an Apple initiative. You can not put a price on what size means to an individual. I can honestly not figure out when and when I would ever not have room for a PC. I am comfortable with a standard PC so that means very little to me. Could be a deal maker or breaker breaker for many.
I can see where each machine could have an advantage. You seem to be willing to twist everything possible to only see things your way which kind of makes my reply to your comment a waste of time.
Nice rip of the comments from this forum.
Dell has deals cheaper then the one in the comparison. This one is only $429. 80GB HD and 512MB ram.
I could care less what anyone buys but in every single Apple computer article that mentions price, people compare prices of Dell to Apple and always seem to quote Dell prices that are always higher then what you can get from Dell directly. I do not know if this is on purpose or people just don't realize Dell has deals that rotate. I do not own a Dell but I have recently got out of the white box building side business and I point people to Dell instead. It saves me the hassle of providing free lifetime support. Of the 30 or so people I have quided in this direction, no one has been displeased at all with the quality of what they recieved. I personally think Dell support is lame but on par with every single tech support center I have ever called for anything.
Can to give some insight on some of the hidden costs that were not mentioned?
What about a version of Bob for XP?
There are people that stand above and below the crowd but not entire geographical regions. IMHO, the relative difference of intelligence between different people makes a much smaller difference in how they succeed compared to much larger factor being the surrounding culture they grew up in. Meaning.. take two people with the same intelligence, one living in the inner city rundown drug infested area with different parents every year compared to the person with a close stable family structure in upper middleclassville. Which one do you think has a better chance of being successful? It had nothing to do with intelligence. In fact the person from middleclassville could be much less intelligent and probably still have a better chance at being successful. You seem to by impling that because the person from middleclassville became successful and innercity did not is because of the intelligence, which in turn got passed on to the next generation further dividing the intelligence gap. I do not think that is the case.
Who the hell would give BlockBuster their SSN? Do they require that?
I suggest to leave that box blank. I do that ALL THE TIME and rarely will they ask again thinking I missed that block and if they do I reply with "you do not need my SSN for this". I don't think any business has taken it further then that. My credit union and when applying for a loan are different but anything other then my financial institutions do not get the number.