Selectees are passengers who are chosen for more intense security checks (indicated by a bunch of SSSSSSs on the boarding pass. Selectees will be interviewed, hand examined, have their carry ons opened...etc.)
Certain criteria automatically trigger it (buying a ticket in cash, buying a ticket within 24 hours of flight time...certain names/date combinations...et cetera.) And of course, the airline itself can make the passenger a selectee (such as not having ID.)
Fortunately the act was written so states could decline to comply, and not have to deal with losing funding (which is unavailable to help states comply anyway.)
As I point out, on a day to day basis most people don't need a federally accepted ID card. It's cheaper for the states to tell people who need a federal ID card to just get a passport (which about 25% of Americans already have.)
If worse comes to worst, the occasionaly traveller can just travel ID-less. The airline will decide what to do with the ID card, and if it's not accepted, the passenger will become a selectee (which is the normal procedure for a passenger without ID.)
I push the button, he moves his ass over and life goes on.
Why don't you just pass him on the right?
I'm not sure why, but people in other states are really against passing on the right. We Ohioans just pass on the right, and I don't see what the big deal is.
Make the qualification for a driver's license tougher not easier. If there are skills that are critical to driving safely, they should be on the test.
The driver's license test is farcically easy for a reason--when you make the test any harder, people just skip the license and drive.
The way the driver's license works is not via accreditation (saying the person can drive because they've proven it via education and testing) but through tracking and history (saying the person can drive because in the most recent time period they haven't done anything horribly stupid, or haven't had a series of relatively stupid things happen.) (I call this, for obvious reasons "credit.")
In either case, making the driver's license more difficult to obtain for adults, on the macro level, really just means fewer people get licenses, and that's not to our advantage. It's a bizarre balance.
I'm unnerved by the name of this site. It requires participants to admit to themselves that they are either "old" or "too old" to do X.
It seems that that is a failure of marketing 101. Age is a sensitive issue for many, and with the advancements and new thinking behind aging and longevity, the generation of baby boomers, and younger, are going to be fighting it and delaying it at every turn. This web site's core audience is not very likely to admit to being too old for anything.
This could be different in an Eastern culture (where age is a more positive concept associated with wisdom.) Some people are happy to associate themselves and admit to other failings or issues (you could probably sell a lot of drugs from "OCDfreaks.com.") But a quick sampling of slashdot postings is showing that many of what is likely this site's core audience are refusing to associate themselves as being potential members./couldn't read the article, was already slashdotted
counties in Ohio have different tax rates. It has nothing to do with municipalities...
That's usually true, but there are exceptions.
Ohio law does permit certain municipalities to levy sales taxes. I believe these are "resort" cities like Put-in-Bay. (I wanna say there's a Put-in-Bay resort tax, and it's assessed as a sales tax on everything.)
Another peculiarity is Columbus. As I recall, the issue is the 1/4% sales tax that is levied in Franklin County for the Central Ohio Transit Authority.
Somehow that tax applies not just to Franklin County, but also to the city of Columbus that extends outside of Franklin County.
The result is that the Polaris Mall, which is located in the City of Columbus in Delaware County, has a sales which is 1/4% higher than what is the normal sales tax for Delaware County. (I believe the same applies for any retail establishment in the City of Columbus in Fairfield County.)
There are only a handful of situations like this, but they do occur.
Does anybody else despise CNN's word choice of "fails" in this headline?
Yes...and no.
While it's true the word "fails" most often implies a failure of something that should have happened (in a political sense) the word is not entirely inaccurate here.
There was a process in place which was more or less a steaming train toward reauthorization. However, certain parliamentary procedures got in the way and raised the bar on what was needed for authorization--so it's not so inaccurate to say that reauthorization failed because it sincerely was on a track towards passing.
Procedurally "fail" is the right word but in a resultative sense, (which is what people care about more) it's the wrong word and does imply something.
Heck, even if they integrated a 4 digit PIN on all credit card transactions in addition to a signature, you'd cut down on fraud significantly.
It remains my understanding that only 10-20% of credit card fraud is with the card in hand at point of sale.
Having said that, I believe it's unlikely you'll see a pin code for credit card transactions in the US, because it would resemble too much a debit card transaction, and MC/Visa need to make sure that people use credit, and not debit, for their own financial benefit.
If anything, you'll see more and more transactions not requiring signature at all--so that the transactions are processed quickly and painlessly.
My aunt was a keypuncher for IBM in the late 1960s early 1970s. She said this was indeed the policy in place.
However, everyone knew about it, and furthermore, IBM specifically discouraged any notice at all. They made it very clear to employees, if you want to quit, do it at the end of your last day and that will be that. (That strikes me as the professional thing to do.)
Clearly, that's just the logical conclusion of this security conundrum. I understand why its done, but it's essentially an unsolvable security problem at its conclusion.
Permit me to explain a bit better what I'm thinking. I might have mislead you a bit.
The big revolution in American income tax collection was withholding, which didn't happen until World War 2--a good 30 years+ after income tax was introduced.
Before withholding or (immediately) after withholding it was the same amount of income tax, and the person was always aware of the amount they were spending. However, before withholding, they knew the amount they were paying in taxes because they actually had to make the check to the government yearly. After the introduction of withholding, the amount is withheld from the paycheck before it ever touches the taxpayer's hands. Sure, the amount that's withheld is indicated on the paycheck receipt, but since the taxpayer never actually touched the money or had any chance to interact with it, its like it never existed. They didn't actually feel like they were paying the tax.
The system of withholding allows governments to increase taxes with the taxpayers not noticing that much. Federal income taxes have gone up by about 20% since World War 2. It's no small coincidence that the people who are the most angry about income taxes are small business owners--because they have to pay income taxes quarterly by check since they have no one to withhold for them. The quickest way of causing a political upheaval regarding income taxes would be to eliminate withholding and forcing all Americans to write the IRS a check for their tax obligations yearly.
I wouldn't mind such an outcome because low taxes happen to match my political views. I want people to feel the pain of taxes everytime they pay for them, whether its income, sales or property. (Property taxes are the hardest to hide into anything, which is why they are also the most disliked.) That way, I hope they would question the cost of those taxes and whether they are getting their money's worth. Seeing the sales tax that was paid on the receipt but included in the price is not the same asfeeling the sales tax added to good's price at the cash register.
Frankly, in order to have sales taxes as high as you do in Europe, you have to hide them in the price of the good. If we had a non-hidden 18% sales tax the state legislature would already have been burned down. But you could probably hide an 18% sales tax in the good's price in America too, and likely get away with it.
In my state of Ohio, sales taxes range by county, and county referenda determine the rates. Voters know the pain of paying for the taxes, and take that into account when authorizing new tax referenda (as well as property tax referenda too. Amusingly, Ohio income taxes are both hidden and not subject to referenda, so people don't care about them as much. It's no surprise that it's the income tax which has increased the most.)
I usually do know the county's sales tax in advance, or at least have an idea. It only took me once or twice buying good's in high sales tax districts (like New York or San Francisco) before I gave up on that and wouldn't buy things there. I perceived the sales tax pain as too much (in comparison to my cheaper Ohio) and wouldn't buy anything there.
I *don't* enjoy the sales tax surprise, but I know it's good for me to feel the pain so I keep pressure on my legislators to keep taxes low. I know I don't enjoy the surprise for when I'm truly surprised--for instance, a peculiarity of Ohio law is that there is sales tax for food that is consumed in a restaurant, but not food that is carried away and eaten elsewhere. This peculiarity is not in most states--so if I find myself in the drive thru at Taco Bell in New Jersey...I have a small moment of annoyance and anger because sales tax is added to drive thru items--and it reminds me why I don't like living in Jersey.
But as for your original contention, I don't see any advantage to the businesses for having the taxes non-hidden. On the other hand, the advantage is to the government to have the taxes hidden, and, frankly, I'm sometimes
It's like sales tax that has to be added to the advertised price...
Actually, I happen to prefer that the sales tax not be added to the advertised price...so I know exactly how much the government is taking on that transaction.
While I understand your frustration (assuming that you're a european who was unpleasantly surprised by sales tax while purchasing in the US) I find that the system of including the sales tax in the price a government scam to hide the true cost of the tax.
That's not to say that this is not done in the US--taxes on cigarettes, alcohol and gasoline are required, by law, to be rolled into the price in order to "hide" the true cost of the tax (although many retailers will post a sign anyway saying "the cost of gasoline per gallon includes 44 cents in federal and state taxes....")
In either case, legal requirements to include the tax in the sale price are a government attempt at hiding the cost of the tax, and not a service for the consumer. While I agree that the US could be better about consumer protection...I dislike the government scam of included taxes in the price, and I prefer my taxes added at the time of sale, thank you.
Yeah, that knowledgable person just entered your card information in the same form that you wouldn't use...
Having worked for several retail/online call centers (including one which was a cluster of outsourced companies) I can vouch that usually a CSR is placing orders on a modified website that runs off the same server.
In one situation, one of the call centers had telecommuting employees which just placed orders on the public website. Anything more complex than placing an order was transferred to a CSR located in the call center.
The risk of course raises dramatically when you call in your order--after all, now you're giving a real live human being a credit card number and all the other information to use it maliciously.
In the time I've spent in Costa Rica (vacations here and there...I'm American raised but Costa Rican born) I've only been to one house--a luxury home owned by an American, that had a water heater.
The electronic duchas seem to work ok once you get the hang of them--(err...since I'm part Costa Rican my 5'8" height is compatiable with their normal placement.)
However, they don't seem to be able to handle things that long. I'm accustomed to taking long american showers, and after about 7-9 minutes the duchas seem to smoke a bit.
I was always a bit unnerved of the exposed wiring myself, but it was typically mounted on the wall away from the shower and you really never had to touch it anyway.
A while ago there was some research into giant tinfoil equipped satellites which could redirect sunlight onto the earth during darkness.
I'm convinced that we'll see, in the next 20 years, a project to do just that with the purpose of raising temperatures in the northern latitudes during winter.
There is simply too much money and too many people in the northeastern US (Chicago east to New England down to DC) for it not to occur. I don't think they would try to raise Cleveland to 70 degrees in January but I could see stabilizing temperatures at 50 degrees year round. (At least during day...night temperatures would be just as cold as they are now.)
There are some major environmental bonuses--it's a form of renewable energy on a massive scale--and there would be major cost savings due to less energy usage to keep homes/businesses warm.
"If you haven't done anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"
Though I've hardly refined it, anytime I've received this response I ask the person if they've ever used a dressing room in a clothing store.
Just about everyone has used a dressing room...so the question is...what do they have to hide? Why doesn't the person undress and try the clothes on in front of everyone? They have nothing to hide. Everyone's got body parts like everyone else.
People use dressing rooms because they are shy about their bodies. They decline to reveal their bodies to people even though, in the great scheme of things, it doesn't matter to society as a whole--but it matters deeply to the person whose body it is. Clearly that implies that other things could be irrelevant to society, but very important and closely held to the individual.
I guess what he doesn't like is that, for a while, there was an information imbalance between sellers and buyers, with sellers being able to use sophisticated computer systems for pricing, but buyers being left clipping coupons. Well, that imbalance is going away.
There was a great article in the Economist about this fairly recently. The imbalance has not just gone away, it's arguably in favor of the consumer now.
One example was the fact that 80% of people who walk into a Ford dealer now know exactly what car they want (what options, what color, etc) but also how much they should expect to pay for it. Salesmen have turned into an order taker, so the job has changed...but it also means that inventory has to be more malleable--since the consumer won't just take any car off the lot now.
Too much a part of our identification paradigm--what we perceive as being important and not important and how to asess it.
But I think you could make an amazing justification that passportless travel would be more secure than with passports. I wish someone worked harder on that...as I've understood it, the reason modern passports were invented was to prevent the travel of spies across European borders during World War I. Clearly the acceptance of passports during that time is indication that people were just as dumb then as they are now.
Since Social Security numbers are non-random, could they be sourced?
Yes, definitely. In particular now...the Social Security Number generally wasn't issued at birth until 1986. All the people who are now 19 and younger generally have SSNs at birth, so we can say with some certitude that the SSN of those people are predictable within some type of range.
People who were children in 1986 got their SSN in 1986, and it was based on the place it was applied for, not necessarily where they were born. Adults in 1986 got it when they applied for it for their first job.
Don't buy the DVD, though. I've had two copies of it, and something went wrong in the MPEG encoding very near the end of the match.
Interesting that you should say that. DVD Player on Mac OS X wouldn't play the last 30-40 minutes of the film (it started to pixellate and just gave up.) Fortunately, however, VLC player had no issues playing those scenes.
Do you want those people paid 20k less here, where they will spend some of it on cars, food, etc, or do you want them paid 40k less in India/China?
An Indian acquaintance (who is a semi-powerful businessman back in India) says that outsourcing was the direct result of reducing H1B visas several years back.
In most instances, Indians rather immigrate, but with a visa shortage they were contented to be paid significantly less and remain in India. His point was that the US shot itself in the foot, and is about to get the pooch screwed raw because of a slight anti-immigration bias at this time.
From the context of economy and taxation, it's far preferable to have them working in the US paying taxes and buying things than in India contributing little to the US economy.
On the other hand, India has a goal of being a 1st world nation in 20 years, and the US government's restriction on H1B's will have a major role to play in that.
How many people do absentee votes in the U.S. (or any democratic country)?
The entire state of Oregon votes via mail. Washington State was second with a very high mail voting turnout.
A few other states, linked above, also allow "no excuse" absentee voting. Thanks to Oregon, which has shown high voter participating and no discernible fraud, the expectation is that states will gradually all go to voting via mail. (very, very, very gradually. Right now states seem to be on a fraud hunting kick, but can't seem to find it.)
let's not ride the wave of many technologists who believe they are too good to condescend to write English properly.
Exactly! We should do something modern and erase both words and replace them with "uhffect" thereby eliminating this confusing and worthless* differentiation!
*(after all, the difference goes unnoticed in spoken language, with no resulting confusion. the reason it's hard for people to get is because they can use them interchangeably without difficulty)
Slashdot Mirror
Selectees are passengers who are chosen for more intense security checks (indicated by a bunch of SSSSSSs on the boarding pass. Selectees will be interviewed, hand examined, have their carry ons opened...etc.)
Certain criteria automatically trigger it (buying a ticket in cash, buying a ticket within 24 hours of flight time...certain names/date combinations...et cetera.) And of course, the airline itself can make the passenger a selectee (such as not having ID.)
I've written about non-compliance as a solution to the REAL ID Act.
Fortunately the act was written so states could decline to comply, and not have to deal with losing funding (which is unavailable to help states comply anyway.)
As I point out, on a day to day basis most people don't need a federally accepted ID card. It's cheaper for the states to tell people who need a federal ID card to just get a passport (which about 25% of Americans already have.)
If worse comes to worst, the occasionaly traveller can just travel ID-less. The airline will decide what to do with the ID card, and if it's not accepted, the passenger will become a selectee (which is the normal procedure for a passenger without ID.)
I push the button, he moves his ass over and life goes on.
Why don't you just pass him on the right?
I'm not sure why, but people in other states are really against passing on the right. We Ohioans just pass on the right, and I don't see what the big deal is.
Make the qualification for a driver's license tougher not easier. If there are skills that are critical to driving safely, they should be on the test.
The driver's license test is farcically easy for a reason--when you make the test any harder, people just skip the license and drive.
The way the driver's license works is not via accreditation (saying the person can drive because they've proven it via education and testing) but through tracking and history (saying the person can drive because in the most recent time period they haven't done anything horribly stupid, or haven't had a series of relatively stupid things happen.) (I call this, for obvious reasons "credit.")
In either case, making the driver's license more difficult to obtain for adults, on the macro level, really just means fewer people get licenses, and that's not to our advantage. It's a bizarre balance.
I'm unnerved by the name of this site. It requires participants to admit to themselves that they are either "old" or "too old" to do X.
/couldn't read the article, was already slashdotted
It seems that that is a failure of marketing 101. Age is a sensitive issue for many, and with the advancements and new thinking behind aging and longevity, the generation of baby boomers, and younger, are going to be fighting it and delaying it at every turn. This web site's core audience is not very likely to admit to being too old for anything.
This could be different in an Eastern culture (where age is a more positive concept associated with wisdom.) Some people are happy to associate themselves and admit to other failings or issues (you could probably sell a lot of drugs from "OCDfreaks.com.") But a quick sampling of slashdot postings is showing that many of what is likely this site's core audience are refusing to associate themselves as being potential members.
counties in Ohio have different tax rates. It has nothing to do with municipalities...
That's usually true, but there are exceptions.
Ohio law does permit certain municipalities to levy sales taxes. I believe these are "resort" cities like Put-in-Bay. (I wanna say there's a Put-in-Bay resort tax, and it's assessed as a sales tax on everything.)
Another peculiarity is Columbus. As I recall, the issue is the 1/4% sales tax that is levied in Franklin County for the Central Ohio Transit Authority.
Somehow that tax applies not just to Franklin County, but also to the city of Columbus that extends outside of Franklin County.
The result is that the Polaris Mall, which is located in the City of Columbus in Delaware County, has a sales which is 1/4% higher than what is the normal sales tax for Delaware County. (I believe the same applies for any retail establishment in the City of Columbus in Fairfield County.)
There are only a handful of situations like this, but they do occur.
Does anybody else despise CNN's word choice of "fails" in this headline?
Yes...and no.
While it's true the word "fails" most often implies a failure of something that should have happened (in a political sense) the word is not entirely inaccurate here.
There was a process in place which was more or less a steaming train toward reauthorization. However, certain parliamentary procedures got in the way and raised the bar on what was needed for authorization--so it's not so inaccurate to say that reauthorization failed because it sincerely was on a track towards passing.
Procedurally "fail" is the right word but in a resultative sense, (which is what people care about more) it's the wrong word and does imply something.
Heck, even if they integrated a 4 digit PIN on all credit card transactions in addition to a signature, you'd cut down on fraud significantly.
It remains my understanding that only 10-20% of credit card fraud is with the card in hand at point of sale.
Having said that, I believe it's unlikely you'll see a pin code for credit card transactions in the US, because it would resemble too much a debit card transaction, and MC/Visa need to make sure that people use credit, and not debit, for their own financial benefit.
If anything, you'll see more and more transactions not requiring signature at all--so that the transactions are processed quickly and painlessly.
Seems like a silly "security" measure to me.
My aunt was a keypuncher for IBM in the late 1960s early 1970s. She said this was indeed the policy in place.
However, everyone knew about it, and furthermore, IBM specifically discouraged any notice at all. They made it very clear to employees, if you want to quit, do it at the end of your last day and that will be that. (That strikes me as the professional thing to do.)
Clearly, that's just the logical conclusion of this security conundrum. I understand why its done, but it's essentially an unsolvable security problem at its conclusion.
Permit me to explain a bit better what I'm thinking. I might have mislead you a bit.
The big revolution in American income tax collection was withholding, which didn't happen until World War 2--a good 30 years+ after income tax was introduced.
Before withholding or (immediately) after withholding it was the same amount of income tax, and the person was always aware of the amount they were spending. However, before withholding, they knew the amount they were paying in taxes because they actually had to make the check to the government yearly. After the introduction of withholding, the amount is withheld from the paycheck before it ever touches the taxpayer's hands. Sure, the amount that's withheld is indicated on the paycheck receipt, but since the taxpayer never actually touched the money or had any chance to interact with it, its like it never existed. They didn't actually feel like they were paying the tax.
The system of withholding allows governments to increase taxes with the taxpayers not noticing that much. Federal income taxes have gone up by about 20% since World War 2. It's no small coincidence that the people who are the most angry about income taxes are small business owners--because they have to pay income taxes quarterly by check since they have no one to withhold for them. The quickest way of causing a political upheaval regarding income taxes would be to eliminate withholding and forcing all Americans to write the IRS a check for their tax obligations yearly.
I wouldn't mind such an outcome because low taxes happen to match my political views. I want people to feel the pain of taxes everytime they pay for them, whether its income, sales or property. (Property taxes are the hardest to hide into anything, which is why they are also the most disliked.) That way, I hope they would question the cost of those taxes and whether they are getting their money's worth. Seeing the sales tax that was paid on the receipt but included in the price is not the same as feeling the sales tax added to good's price at the cash register.
Frankly, in order to have sales taxes as high as you do in Europe, you have to hide them in the price of the good. If we had a non-hidden 18% sales tax the state legislature would already have been burned down. But you could probably hide an 18% sales tax in the good's price in America too, and likely get away with it.
In my state of Ohio, sales taxes range by county, and county referenda determine the rates. Voters know the pain of paying for the taxes, and take that into account when authorizing new tax referenda (as well as property tax referenda too. Amusingly, Ohio income taxes are both hidden and not subject to referenda, so people don't care about them as much. It's no surprise that it's the income tax which has increased the most.)
I usually do know the county's sales tax in advance, or at least have an idea. It only took me once or twice buying good's in high sales tax districts (like New York or San Francisco) before I gave up on that and wouldn't buy things there. I perceived the sales tax pain as too much (in comparison to my cheaper Ohio) and wouldn't buy anything there.
I *don't* enjoy the sales tax surprise, but I know it's good for me to feel the pain so I keep pressure on my legislators to keep taxes low. I know I don't enjoy the surprise for when I'm truly surprised--for instance, a peculiarity of Ohio law is that there is sales tax for food that is consumed in a restaurant, but not food that is carried away and eaten elsewhere. This peculiarity is not in most states--so if I find myself in the drive thru at Taco Bell in New Jersey...I have a small moment of annoyance and anger because sales tax is added to drive thru items--and it reminds me why I don't like living in Jersey.
But as for your original contention, I don't see any advantage to the businesses for having the taxes non-hidden. On the other hand, the advantage is to the government to have the taxes hidden, and, frankly, I'm sometimes
It's like sales tax that has to be added to the advertised price...
Actually, I happen to prefer that the sales tax not be added to the advertised price...so I know exactly how much the government is taking on that transaction.
While I understand your frustration (assuming that you're a european who was unpleasantly surprised by sales tax while purchasing in the US) I find that the system of including the sales tax in the price a government scam to hide the true cost of the tax.
That's not to say that this is not done in the US--taxes on cigarettes, alcohol and gasoline are required, by law, to be rolled into the price in order to "hide" the true cost of the tax (although many retailers will post a sign anyway saying "the cost of gasoline per gallon includes 44 cents in federal and state taxes....")
In either case, legal requirements to include the tax in the sale price are a government attempt at hiding the cost of the tax, and not a service for the consumer. While I agree that the US could be better about consumer protection...I dislike the government scam of included taxes in the price, and I prefer my taxes added at the time of sale, thank you.
They're not draining wetlands, they're reclaiming them.
I think this one is slightly unfair because "wetland" is already a nifty PR spinword all by itself.
Wetlands are really just swamps. There clearly are uses for wetlands, but they're just swamps.
Yeah, that knowledgable person just entered your card information in the same form that you wouldn't use...
Having worked for several retail/online call centers (including one which was a cluster of outsourced companies) I can vouch that usually a CSR is placing orders on a modified website that runs off the same server.
In one situation, one of the call centers had telecommuting employees which just placed orders on the public website. Anything more complex than placing an order was transferred to a CSR located in the call center.
The risk of course raises dramatically when you call in your order--after all, now you're giving a real live human being a credit card number and all the other information to use it maliciously.
In the time I've spent in Costa Rica (vacations here and there...I'm American raised but Costa Rican born) I've only been to one house--a luxury home owned by an American, that had a water heater.
The electronic duchas seem to work ok once you get the hang of them--(err...since I'm part Costa Rican my 5'8" height is compatiable with their normal placement.)
However, they don't seem to be able to handle things that long. I'm accustomed to taking long american showers, and after about 7-9 minutes the duchas seem to smoke a bit.
I was always a bit unnerved of the exposed wiring myself, but it was typically mounted on the wall away from the shower and you really never had to touch it anyway.
A while ago there was some research into giant tinfoil equipped satellites which could redirect sunlight onto the earth during darkness.
I'm convinced that we'll see, in the next 20 years, a project to do just that with the purpose of raising temperatures in the northern latitudes during winter.
There is simply too much money and too many people in the northeastern US (Chicago east to New England down to DC) for it not to occur. I don't think they would try to raise Cleveland to 70 degrees in January but I could see stabilizing temperatures at 50 degrees year round. (At least during day...night temperatures would be just as cold as they are now.)
There are some major environmental bonuses--it's a form of renewable energy on a massive scale--and there would be major cost savings due to less energy usage to keep homes/businesses warm.
"If you haven't done anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"
Though I've hardly refined it, anytime I've received this response I ask the person if they've ever used a dressing room in a clothing store.
Just about everyone has used a dressing room...so the question is...what do they have to hide? Why doesn't the person undress and try the clothes on in front of everyone? They have nothing to hide. Everyone's got body parts like everyone else.
People use dressing rooms because they are shy about their bodies. They decline to reveal their bodies to people even though, in the great scheme of things, it doesn't matter to society as a whole--but it matters deeply to the person whose body it is. Clearly that implies that other things could be irrelevant to society, but very important and closely held to the individual.
I guess what he doesn't like is that, for a while, there was an information imbalance between sellers and buyers, with sellers being able to use sophisticated computer systems for pricing, but buyers being left clipping coupons. Well, that imbalance is going away.
There was a great article in the Economist about this fairly recently. The imbalance has not just gone away, it's arguably in favor of the consumer now.
One example was the fact that 80% of people who walk into a Ford dealer now know exactly what car they want (what options, what color, etc) but also how much they should expect to pay for it. Salesmen have turned into an order taker, so the job has changed...but it also means that inventory has to be more malleable--since the consumer won't just take any car off the lot now.
Why not just get rid of passports?
Too much a part of our identification paradigm--what we perceive as being important and not important and how to asess it.
But I think you could make an amazing justification that passportless travel would be more secure than with passports. I wish someone worked harder on that...as I've understood it, the reason modern passports were invented was to prevent the travel of spies across European borders during World War I. Clearly the acceptance of passports during that time is indication that people were just as dumb then as they are now.
Since Social Security numbers are non-random, could they be sourced?
Yes, definitely. In particular now...the Social Security Number generally wasn't issued at birth until 1986. All the people who are now 19 and younger generally have SSNs at birth, so we can say with some certitude that the SSN of those people are predictable within some type of range.
People who were children in 1986 got their SSN in 1986, and it was based on the place it was applied for, not necessarily where they were born. Adults in 1986 got it when they applied for it for their first job.
Don't buy the DVD, though. I've had two copies of it, and something went wrong in the MPEG encoding very near the end of the match.
Interesting that you should say that. DVD Player on Mac OS X wouldn't play the last 30-40 minutes of the film (it started to pixellate and just gave up.) Fortunately, however, VLC player had no issues playing those scenes.
Do you want those people paid 20k less here, where they will spend some of it on cars, food, etc, or do you want them paid 40k less in India/China?
An Indian acquaintance (who is a semi-powerful businessman back in India) says that outsourcing was the direct result of reducing H1B visas several years back.
In most instances, Indians rather immigrate, but with a visa shortage they were contented to be paid significantly less and remain in India. His point was that the US shot itself in the foot, and is about to get the pooch screwed raw because of a slight anti-immigration bias at this time.
From the context of economy and taxation, it's far preferable to have them working in the US paying taxes and buying things than in India contributing little to the US economy.
On the other hand, India has a goal of being a 1st world nation in 20 years, and the US government's restriction on H1B's will have a major role to play in that.
It's like driving around in an old saab
In the last month or so I bought a 20gb iPod, a 14" iBook, and a 02 9-5 Arc.
I knew there were other people like me, I just wasn't sure where.
Hmm...I take that back...my other Saab friends also own Macs.
How many people do absentee votes in the U.S. (or any democratic country)?
The entire state of Oregon votes via mail. Washington State was second with a very high mail voting turnout.
A few other states, linked above, also allow "no excuse" absentee voting. Thanks to Oregon, which has shown high voter participating and no discernible fraud, the expectation is that states will gradually all go to voting via mail. (very, very, very gradually. Right now states seem to be on a fraud hunting kick, but can't seem to find it.)
..for taking so long. Apparently the lack of good voice recognition technology held up the discovery significantly.
let's not ride the wave of many technologists who believe they are too good to condescend to write English properly.
Exactly! We should do something modern and erase both words and replace them with "uhffect" thereby eliminating this confusing and worthless* differentiation!
*(after all, the difference goes unnoticed in spoken language, with no resulting confusion. the reason it's hard for people to get is because they can use them interchangeably without difficulty)