Isn't there something to be said about not having any edges? For instance, if a round manhole cover comes out of the manhole a bit, and a car goes over it, there are no sharp edges that the tire can hit, which could either damage it, or be a point of leverage to cause the cover to flip up in some way. The round cover may lift slightly, and then collapse back down. Eventually if it works its way back to it's happy manhole home, it will just pop itself back in. On the other hand, I believe that the other shapes, like the Rouleaux polygons, would be more likely to snap themselves up when hit by a car (at the cover's edge) increasing the likelyhood of damage.
And if they were halfway smart about it, they would have reported their card lost. "Oh...I lost my card at 6pm friday...I didn't realize it until the next day."
In which case you would be dealing with the testimony of the people at the party, which is what you would have been dealing with without the logins.
The email actually tried to claim that it was not illegal, by virtue of the fact that they couldn't disclose it to anyone. (It also implies that my main concern at that time period was that it coulda been a public record, but I had no such concern...my concern was simply the data collection. Typical lawyer response, trying to appear I was addressing one thing while I was addressing something else.)
Relevant law: 1347.05 Duties of state and local agencies. Every state or local agency that maintains a personal information system shall: (H)Collect, maintain, and use only personal information that is necessary and relevant to the functions that the agency is required or authorized to perform by statute, ordinance, code, or rule, and eliminate personal information from the system when it is no longer necessary and relevant to those functions.
what they said: It appears that your main concern is that the data generated by that system is a matter of public record and, for that reason, violates Ohio Revised Code Chapter 1347. As an initial matter, the availability of information under the Ohio Public Records Act does not and cannot constitute a violation of Chapter 1347, which specifically provides that "[t]he disclosure to members of the general public of personal information contained in a public record... is not an improper use of personal information". Ohio Rev. Code 1347.04(B). More importantly, however, the data generated by that system constitutes an "education record" within the meaning of the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and, as such, is exempt from the disclosure requirements of the state Public Records Act. In fact, FERPA affirmatively prohibits us from disclosing that data in most circumstances without the relevant students' consent.
After I left the Ohio State dorms in 1998 (I'm still a student) the university started to put card readers on the dorm entrances (up to that time either you had a key that opened both your dorm room and the main entrance, or you had two separate keys if you lived in a really big dorm.)
It does offer some advantages, for instance, all people could be allowed into the dorms at some parts of the day, but other times of the day only people who live in that dorm could gain entry.
Though there are some interesting caveats
*the first one, which I didn't really know well at the time, is the fact that making a copy of the card is far easier than making a copy of the key. Remagnetizing magnetic stripes is not the hardest thing in the world.
*the campuswide system runs off of ethernet to the AT&T9000 computer which administers everything. If a particular door gets disconnected with the central computer, it's default setting is to pretend like everything is normal, and let everyone in, and it has a cache of swipes which it would then transmit back to the central computer when the connection was restored. That seems like a sensible kludge given the circumstances, given a network failure it would be more sensible to allow all in as opposed to all out, especially at a dorm. (Higher security places would have their door failure mode set to allow no one.) On the other hand, as a security concept, it just bugged me. (this is explained in the powerpoint presentations.)
*my big concern at the time was the tracking and auditing abilities, and it still is. the key system had no tracking and auditing. The swipe system allowed the university to keep a record of when students come into the building (and implicitly, when they go.) I pointed out that Ohio law prohibited a government institution from collecting information which were not authorized by law, nor required to achieve a particular purpose...and that the system need not perform the tracking, it only needed to perform the authorization.
The response I got was that the system was not designed with a zero tracking/auditing setting, it needed to perform tracking and auditing as part of its authentication mechanism. I pointed out that I can't help that the university bought a dumbass product, and I threatened to sue them, but I was young, and I threatened to sue everyone.:-)
I got a letter from the university lawyers saying "While we ourselves certainly hope never to need the archived data -- and, fortunately, rarely do -- it can be of unquestionable value in investigating incidents in the residence halls. It is for this very reason that similar systems are in use at numerous colleges and universities around the country."
I've however pointed out that any idiot who was gonna do something in the dorms would do what everyone else does, and that is follow someone who swiped before you, and not swipe themselves.
I still hope to work on this issue at some point.:-)
...is specifically a type of Green Tea, that is very strong.
I found a box of it here. In the great spirit of chinese packaging oddities, they seem to like to make certain words jump out over other ones (this box saying in its biggest font "special gunpowder.") You can see how this causes problems.
On a slightly unrelated note, how is this supposed to work in school districts that by law have to give access to illegal immigrants who by their very nature have no SSN?
How about taking this topic up to the higher level question: why does the school system even collect SSN's?
Since the Privacy Act of 1974 has not been amended to allow school systems to collect SSN's, I would be very surprised if they can even legitimately do it, or in the least, force a parent to give it before admitting a child. This is just one of those verboten things the Privacy Act prohibits.
I happen to know the school system I went to did not collect SSN's, at least, at the time period I went there.
I was talking to a friend of mine here who said that her daughter went to a school system in the area and she refused to supply her daughter's SSN. The school system (Worthington, OH) continiously was bugging her daughter (for instance, sending notes to her from the office during class) to get her SSN, but the daughter honored her mother's wishes and refused to provide it. She graduated without ever giving it.
Clearly any parent who really cares for their child would not give their SSN when it isn't required, and if they would, they don't deserve to see their child's homework and grades, because they are too incompetent.
Ok, ok, that clearly wasn't supposed to be the conclusion, but I admit it was the one I was having fun with, and SSN collection in schools makes me steamed. If I were the person posting the question, I would be raising hell about the SSN collection (with both your own parents, other people's parents and school, write me an email if you need some help starting), and then moving on to the FERPA issues of using it as an identifier for some silly web thingy. And there was another post that said that this Pinnacle thing is security-crap, so there's another thing to do. Not only would you be doing a good thing, but hopefully you'll get your parents thinking about it in a new light other than just homework and grades.:-) good luck
I can imagine the message these days would have something added like: "Your caller-id should indicate this call is from 555-1234, if it does not please notify the school of this discrepancy."
I seem to recall that there are devices on the market (not your normal market mind you:-) to corrupt the caller ID signal and display whatever it is you want it to.
In which case the modern crack of this system is even more beautiful. "but the phone number said it was 555-1212 and that's definitely the number for the principal's office! I called it myself."
Most of the posts here have to do with consulting/permatemping in the IT field...permatemping in the non-IT field is slightly different, since the pay is usually quite a lot lower, and there are a few other things of note.
I worked for the financial services arm of a large european auto company (whose name begins with B and ends with W) and the cost to the company for me was just a little bit lower than for a regular employee, when extra administrative costs and temp company costs were added in. The claim was that headquarters in Germany specifically authorized headcount, and apparently that took ages to do, so the only solution was to have permatemp employees.
They did make some effort to move employees over, except for the fact that, since we were a "bank" of some type, they took credit issues seriously. You could get hired as a temp with bad credit, but you couldn't get hired as a perm with bad credit, and worse, if the company found out about your bad credit in your application, you jeopardized your temp. position.
That essentially meant that we had permatemp employees making a lot less than regular employees stuck in permatemp positions, and oddly enough, they sorta of worked up the ladder in the permatemp system, so they were often people who were somewhat key to the system based on their knowledge and experience.
The other odd thing was, after I left, that temps could apply for full time positions in the first month they worked in a position there, or after a year of working there. They could not apply for a full time position in months 2 through 11. This apparently was to reduce the amount of talented temps jumping into perm jobs ahead of other perm employees. The reports I've had are that if the temp is talented and realizes this, they just go elsewhere after month 1.
I do have some sympathy for the badge issue, in that it can be symbolic (we didn't have the same issue ourselves per se, temp badges did not have photos on them, and I was ecstatic to have a non-photo badge, and the perm employees were always cheesed off that they had to have photo ones. Perhaps a person who liked being photographed would have had a different attitude on it.) Our symbolic issue was the car, in that a perm employee could get a really great lease on a car after one year of working there. When I first got there, the time working as a temp was counted toward your one year...however, shortly before I left, it was decided to change that so that only the time working as a perm employee would be counted for that year. It caused a bunch of us to leave, since it was such a symbolic disappointment. (I drove a Saab anyway, a vastly superior car, which admittedly kept me on their shit-list.)
I volunteered to be a notary public (we had a use for a few of em.) The cost of training a notary was $40, but the company didn't want temps to be trained, no particular reason why. If a temp came in as a notary, all the cooler; and it would have made a lot of sense for them to train me, since I was there at times when most of the other notaries werent, yet, they didn't want to.
In the long run though, it was the pay...the difference between the $17/hr of a perm employee and the $10/hr of a temp was heartbreaking at times. I'm glad I'm no longer there.
Consultants or temps should NOT get a benefits package, consisting of medical, dental, and other coverage.
While the Microsoft permatemp lawsuit was really won on the stock options issues, the thing that made the permatemps so very unhappy is because they didn't get benefits.
Other than contract employees, companies do tend to give benefits to permatemps (or semi-permatemps if you prefer) after 90 days, otherwise it's just grounds for some uglyness, and I suspect some violations of state laws as well.
That's a very interesting and valid observation and I am completely willing to admit that identity is closely associated, psychologically, with the face.
The human brain has quite an interesting ability to process and remember faces. Several psychological studies have shown that a person will have a different physiological reaction to someone they have seen before, in comparison to a completely new face, which stimulates are more anxious reaction. One hypothesis for this is that it is an anachronism from a more dangerous time: "I've seen this guy before, and he didn't kill me then...so he must be ok."
Indeed, I remember one particularly interesting password system that showed the user a series of faces, and you chose the sequence in which they came. There were millions of possible sequences, but humans have the amazing ability to learn that sequence very very easily.
This is all of interest to me since my passion is driver's license law, and how photo ID cards play into all of that. One of the big failures of the photo ID card is that humans seem to glean more information from it psychologically than what actually is being represented by the card. These days I say that if I were to commit some sorta heinous crime, I would do it with a laminated photo ID badge around my neck...because it puts people at ease, like, somehow in having a cheap plastic card around my neck, not only do I have legitimacy, but I also am "revealing" myself to you.
Frankly, the way humans process photo based ID cards is a science within itself. But I've become convinced that people are bedazzled by the photograph. Of course, prior to photo licenses, states printed the description information, though more for the purpose of making the sure the document belonged to the person, as opposed to truly identifying the person (some states still do issue non-photo licenses like this. Almost all states still have the description information on the document, but this is an anachronism if there is a photo, sorta.) The description information is a pretty good way of making sure the document belongs to the person, with the added benefit that people are psychologically leery of accepting it in non-driving instances for identification.
Re:airlines created their own mess by chaning pric
on
Which Price is Right?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
There is no company or brand loyalty because the customer knows if they dont shop for price they WILL get screwed.
For the most part, airline service is not differentiable...though there does seem to be an observable difference between the low quality carriers and the high quality carriers on service and on-time performance. But that isn't known to your leisure travellers, who shop entirely by price, unless they have had some abnormally negative experience on carrier X. I need not tell you that everyone and their grandmother tries to book a trip somewhere, the first thing they ask about is price.
Having said that, leisure travellers simply aren't profitable, or you need a hell of a lot of them before the flight at least breaks even. Your supersaver 21 day advance fares are a loss to the airline. (Incidentally, the consistency in airline fares come from the fact that everyone knows that fares go up the closer you are to the travel date. On a side note, the expansion of the complexity of supersaver fares is how checking for photo ID was introduced--it never had anything to do with security, it had to do with making sure that person X wasn't buying a ticket in advance that they had no intention to use, to sell to person Y who suddenly needed to go somewhere and didn't wanna pay full price.)
Anyways interesting example of this (regrettably, the only example in my head) is the Continental 757 flight from Cleveland to London Gatwick. It's not an exception at all incidentally...but if you fill all the first class seats on this flight, you'll pay for the entire plan to London *and* back. On the other hand, you need a good 100 passengers in economy class to get same result. Therefore first class is vitally important...and airlines spend huge amounts of money trying to differentiate their first class products. And who flies first class? Business travelers who care about being on-time and the service/amenities they get. Simply, airlines can barely care about their economy class product since they lose money/only break even on the majority of seats anyway.
I'm from Costa Rica, and my mother often flies down there to see the family. One thing that always bugged her was the fact that fares to latin america were terribly high in comparison to fares to europe, and it seems that flying to europe is a much more complex transaction, not to mention it's farther:-) . Fact is, it's very hard to sell expensive first class seats to latin america, in comparison to europe, so the airlines can only try to make a profit on economy class. Which is exactly what they do with fares that seem abnormally high for the distance traveled. (I should add that fares to latin america are some of the most stable...they barely move up or down, and we've paid the same price, within $100, 90% of the time we've gone there, for the last 20 years. Clearly it's getting slightly cheaper with time, but it's pretty stable.)
So having said that, it only makes sense that airlines try to change prices many times per day to eek out just a little bit of profit on the economy class seats. It's the only thing they can do.
I incidentally disagree with your comment that Customers do not want to be in the price shopping business. Customers love to price shop...especially when they are buying their ticket 3 months in advance. There is such a psychological reward in getting a good deal.
Sometime ago I remember one of the talk shows, I believe Donahue or Geraldo, but I think it was Donahue, had a segment on a catalog company sending out different catalogs with different prices. I already knew that Barnes and Noble did this, my father got the catalog at his house, my mother at her house, and I already saw price differences.
Anyways, the company that they were picking on the show was Victoria's Secret (this was many years ago...dunno if they do it anymore.) The consumer advocate was getting everybody up in arms over this business practice, saying that it was unamerica...et cetera.
Oh yes. Victoria's secret, entirely American, wholesome, God-fearing company. How dare they pull the wool over our eyes on...umm...bras and underwear.
My understanding is that the British have Experian like credit history databases (which are not catalogued by a universal identification number, like the SSN, which I believe is the failure point of the US style databases.) So I'm not sure where this fits in...the article seems to imply it's for online transactions?
The URU proposal has some interesting elements:
*(it appears) that inclusion in the database would be voluntary, per European and British data privacy laws
*the "check number" is essentially the electrical meter on your house. meaning that, at least in some way, the number can be changed, at least by you moving elsewhere. furthermore, there is no reason why anyone else would have that number, theoretically. it's a semi-constant.
*you are automagically notified when someone performs a check, and i suspect that checks can only be performed when the person authorizes them.
While the current British government is a bit fixed on putting an "entitlement card" together which will essentially be the you can't live without it national ID card, this proposal is vaguely interesting to me. I need more info to run it through a security model though.
The electoral system isn't "antiquated". If the founders had intended the electoral college members to be nothing more than courriers, they could have easily done that.
I actually do agree with your idea that the electoral system is not antiquated, and I prefer it slightly to just en masse popular voting.
But, as far as I can tell, the electoral college was sincerely set up as a system of couriers. Not just from the level of pragmatics, but also because, considering what they foresaw as the extent of the "union" at that time, the idea of some sorta national system watching the election returns from each secretary of states office just doesn't seem like a way they would sought to do things.
The concept of electoral votes going winner takes all on the state by state basis is not implicit. I believe that Nebraska splits its electoral college votes by the actual popular vote. However, states quickly figured out that their own power in any election was maximized by going winner takes all. That's created an interesting system that continues to this day...and one which I still slightly prefer to en masse popular.
That doesn't mean that innovations still can't be done. For instance, a state could go to some type of multichoice/preference voting system for the presidential election, but still be winner takes all with the electoral college. That way the state is still individually powerful, but minor party candidates have some chance in affecting an election.
What we need is one of the large media outlets to interview someone about security issues, and with any luck, that individual would say insightful things like
*there's no reason why a security device should be sent up in a rocket which could very well blow up over earth and then could be refound and it's security implements "un-engineered." if the device is that sensitive to unengineering, then either it is defective, and serves no role to play, or its role should not be on the shuttle. The idea of the shuttle exploding over land was always under consideration.
I will likely never know what is in this security device and how it works exactly, but I usually have greater faith that the government has some understanding of security issues, and that they wouldn't design single source of failure systems.
On the other hand, if this device is part of the original shuttle design, then perhaps I'm just being too hard on them, since no one including their grandmother truly understood security issues at that time. Whereas today...we all do...now don't we?:-)
I don't understand how this is different from a drug screening test. Most employers require it.
As already echoed by other posts to this comment, most employers do not require drug screening.
One thing that is really interesting is that, according to what I have heard, pre-employment drug testing in Canada is unheard of. Even companies in the US which do it at all their branches don't do it in Canada.
Apparently one thing we can learn from the Canucks is that they have a higher regard for privacy issues (as evidenced by the Privacy Commissioner's recent and very eloquent report to Parliament) and Canadians as a whole are much more willing to show their middle fingers high to any employer whose policies they don't like.
Having said that, as time has gone on, I've become convinced that the employers who do drug testing are doing it because they have bought the line, hook and sinker, of drug testing companies, who claim all sorts of horrible things that happen if you don't do drug testing, and that you must invest in these fairly expensive and tremendously profitable tests. I believe that drug testing policies always come from the department of Human Resources, which is usually collectively as dumb as a branch of the DMV, and not much more sympathetic either.
Someday someone with some balls is gonna invest some money in a real study on drug testing, and show how truly worthless they are, but for right now the drug testing companies are running the show.
the current situation is silly and needs change so they have brought out photo licenses (like you have in the US) but no one can make me get one.
UK Photo licenses were not introduced because of any need in the UK. The requirement was put into place because the EU wanted to standardize driving licenses across the EU, and the vast majority of countries had photo licenses. There was no interest in the UK in having a photo license, be it from law enforcement, DVLA, insurance companies, et cetera. It simply isn't worth stealing a license to drive...people will just get into a car and drive.
As for North America...two states and several Canadian provinces still issue non-photo licenses. In not a single jurisdiction have I ever found any evidence that the photo was added to the license for reasons related to driving an autmobile.
While that may be a joke, the new Saab 9-3 (which everyone should look at...especially when it comes out in Arc/Vector versions, byootiful car) also depends heavily on computers (though thankfully it doesn't have the nasty iDrive interface.)
The interesting thing is that if these vehicles (new 9-3) lose the computer input, the car will just shut off. There is a 45 pin connector to the central computer that somtimes gets a little loose, and if the computer is lost, the car turns off. Other very random sounding error messages have been popping up (many of them long and unwieldly--"bi xenon headlamp leveling failure" even if the levellers are working perfectly fine.) So, either you turn off car, or take to the dealer, who gets periodic software updates. So yeah, software updates to exist..and SP1 for the 2003 9-3 has already been released. No doubt it has been released for the 745i as well.
Credit Card fraud, even Credit card fraud online, is dropping, so there is good news (check both visa.com and mastercard.com and see their security/fraud info for proof of this.)
Having the numbers embossed on the front of the card is simultaneously a relic and a backup for when the hypercom goes down and the merchant has to run the credit card on the little swipe machine thinger.
But if we didn't need that, or perhaps in the future Visa/MC will just decide to remove the embossed numbers, or part of the numbers (or better yet, you have a credit card you use with merchants that have no embossed numbers...and then you have one at home with embossed numbers for when you are ordering stuff online and need to know the number.)
As for the form of fraud when they swipe the card through another reader to capture the numbers, other than an encryption system, which I don't have much faith in at this scale, that's what fraud protection is for.:-)
States had been pushing for internet sales tax for some time now...but now everybody's got a bee in their bonnet to see it occur. States feel that they are losing big bucks now because people are ordering online (though their calculations are only thinking about the internet sales going to their state, not necessarily the opportunity cost of jobs and stuff that may be created in their state because of internet commerce.)
Thing is, states have screwed themselves with progressive income taxes. Sales taxes do go up and down with consumption (obviously) but not as severely as income taxes. California for instance has this really progressive system where the top 10% of income earners are paying for some 75% of California government. So, the economy takes a tumble, income generally does go down...but the top 10% of income earnerrs have *huge* decreases in income, so suddenly California has a $25 billion shortfall. They can't increase the progressivity of the tax structure--you're not gonna get much more out of people who's income's dropping severely, so all ya can do is widen the tax base...meaning increase income taxes for median earners, or sales tax, or find new tax sources. I believe states are starting to understand how easy it is to screw the pooch raw with progressive income taxes (note that the states that have blown their budgets the most are those with income taxes, CA, OR, OH, IL, NY, whereas non-income tax states like TN, FL, NH, TX, are not looking at such bad looking budgets. Those states have much more reliable income streams from property taxes and/or sales taxes.)
How libraries work in the US goes back and forth between state, because it is the state that funds em. Ohio has been consistently ranked as having the best libraries in the nation (and on the smaller level, individual Ohio cities win lots of contests. No surprise to see Cleveland doing something innovative.) This is because a good chunk of their funds come from the state, and then they can add additional property tax levies, if they desire. (You would think that would be common, but apparently we're the only state that does it.)
So my local library (Columbus public) has everything for free. I can rent 5 DVD's at a time for five days for free, same thing for videos, 10 CD's/audio cassettes for thirty days for free, et cetera. And I guess it's a cool thing to take advantage of (wanna rent more than 5 DVD's at a time? Just bring in two library cards.)
They get new books, cd's and DVD's very quickly, and that's cool too. When it comes to books, if the book is popular enough, they'll order several dozen of em.
One thing that is neat is that, generally speaking, it's people in the urban areas who take advantage of the library more than those in the suburban areas. That's cool.
However, I have to wonder if it is appropriate to have a state funded Blockbuster...because that's essentially what it is...my income and property taxes going to create a "free" Blockbuster.
One thing (as far as I can tell unmentioned to this point) is the fact that Oregon has the lowest (or one of the lowest) yearly license fees in the nation--just $15. So low is it that the Oregon DOT had signs warning out of state drivers not to come to Oregon and register their vehicles.
While some states have a yearly vehicle property tax (like Colorado, Taxachusetts, Rhode Island) that assesses a significant fee per year, most of that goes to local government for schools and stuff.
Most states have a fee of $30-$80/year, and that provides a nice revenue base that the state/local governments can depend on (for road financing) no matter how much people drive, and yet it still is not pricey enough to be severely regressive to the grandma who drives only 500 miles a year.
Some states, like Michigan, have an ad valorem, which is based on the value of the vehicle, and so people with more expensive cars pay more (this isn't a property tax because it is a flat percentage, it isn't based on property tax millage, and the money goes to the state for funding roads, not the local government.) It is gently rising, and my friend with a 2002 Corvette pays about $120, which isn't severe for an expensive vehilcle (and it caps off at some value.) That is clearly a progressive system for road financing irrelevant to how much ya drive or how much wear and tear you put on the roads.
New York has a system which has some type of base amount (like $40, but I can't remember what it is) and then adds some surcharge if the vehicle is heavy. That's essentially the same as the fuel tax, but once again, it offers a stable revenue base that fuel taxes can build off of.
Another suggestion is to change the fuel tax system to a hybrid style. Most states that I know of assess a fuel tax on each gallon of gasoline sold (like in Ohio, it's 22 cents...I think.) Instead, Ohio could consider making it 18 cents per gallon sold, then add another 5 cents for every dollar's of gasoline sold. That way, if gas prices go up and sales go down, the revenue stream is a bit more stable (and it still works well if prices go down, and people end up buying more gasoline.
At any rate, Michigan style ad valorem, New York vehicle weight surcharge, hybrid style gasoline taxes or simply raising yearly fees are significantly better ways of road financing than the complexity of a GPS system.)
The odd part is, there's plenty of very un-PC porn. There's more rape porn out there than the mind can comfortably conceive, and I'm sure that there exists rape porn that has racial characteristics, and I don't doubt for a moment that it existed at that time.
But the author in this article alluded to why it was so controversial--people thought of gaming systems as for kids, and this game/these games went over some social norm-border.
On the other hand, the VCR has always been, from the start, your at home porn machine. Make a rape fantasy with native american girls for VHS and it doesn't raise an eyebrow; make a game cartridge with the same theme for a game system and everyone gets pissed.
Actually, as I consider it, that's happening today with Vice City. There's nothing in there that hasn't been in a million different Hollywood movies, but I suspect Vice City cheeses off people because it adds an extra element of interactivity; in one situation you're a passive participant, possibly or possibly not enjoying all the violence, and in the other situation you're an active participatn causing the "violence."
Texas does NOT require fingerprinting for a either a Driver's License or a State-Issued ID card for those who do not drive.
I could show ya a million links to the contrary (like here) but it also helps that I've been involved with an organization, based in Texas, which is devoted to changing Texas law and prohibiting driver's license fingerprinting.
Kroger usually uses its home base of Ohio as it's testing market for new things.
That's why a lot of stores (Home Depot and Lowes come to mind) don't even bother checking the signature panel on your card anymore - and let you swipe it yourself. Biometrics (fingerprints) are the next logical step in combating fraud.
Technically these two sentences are in opposition to each other. The vast majority of credit card fraud is online fraud, not in store fraud (which is dropping and continues to drop.) The reason those two places, in addition to many other places (Chipotle is one that comes to mind) are not checking the signature strip is because the in store credit card fraud is too unusual to care about it. That also answers the question why photographs on credit cards are not being persued--it simply isn't econommically viable/justifiable.
Having said that, Kroger is trying out this system as a nifty way (for them) of mating the kroger plus card with your bank card, all in one biometric.
Anyone else wonder if this is being done in Texas for a reason? Whenever I see grocery store biometric projects, they are either in Texas or California--two states that require that people be fingerprinted for their driver's licenses--so the vast majority of people in those states have been fingerprinted. That's not the case for the rest of the states.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't there something to be said about not having any edges? For instance, if a round manhole cover comes out of the manhole a bit, and a car goes over it, there are no sharp edges that the tire can hit, which could either damage it, or be a point of leverage to cause the cover to flip up in some way. The round cover may lift slightly, and then collapse back down. Eventually if it works its way back to it's happy manhole home, it will just pop itself back in. On the other hand, I believe that the other shapes, like the Rouleaux polygons, would be more likely to snap themselves up when hit by a car (at the cover's edge) increasing the likelyhood of damage.
But their card was swiped.
And if they were halfway smart about it, they would have reported their card lost. "Oh...I lost my card at 6pm friday...I didn't realize it until the next day."
In which case you would be dealing with the testimony of the people at the party, which is what you would have been dealing with without the logins.
The email actually tried to claim that it was not illegal, by virtue of the fact that they couldn't disclose it to anyone. (It also implies that my main concern at that time period was that it coulda been a public record, but I had no such concern...my concern was simply the data collection. Typical lawyer response, trying to appear I was addressing one thing while I was addressing something else.)
... is not an improper use of personal information". Ohio Rev. Code 1347.04(B). More importantly, however, the
Relevant law:
1347.05 Duties of state and local agencies.
Every state or local agency that maintains a personal information system shall:
(H)Collect, maintain, and use only personal information that is necessary and relevant to the functions that the agency is required or authorized to perform by statute, ordinance, code, or rule, and eliminate personal information from the system when it is no longer necessary and relevant to those functions.
what they said:
It appears that your main concern is that the data generated by that system is a matter of public record and, for that reason, violates Ohio Revised Code Chapter 1347. As an initial matter, the availability of information under the Ohio Public Records Act does not and cannot constitute a violation of Chapter 1347, which specifically provides that "[t]he disclosure to members of the general public of personal information
contained in a public record
data generated by that system constitutes an "education record" within the meaning of the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and, as such, is exempt from the disclosure requirements of the state Public Records Act. In fact, FERPA affirmatively prohibits us from disclosing that data in most circumstances without the relevant students'
consent.
After I left the Ohio State dorms in 1998 (I'm still a student) the university started to put card readers on the dorm entrances (up to that time either you had a key that opened both your dorm room and the main entrance, or you had two separate keys if you lived in a really big dorm.)
:-)
:-)
It does offer some advantages, for instance, all people could be allowed into the dorms at some parts of the day, but other times of the day only people who live in that dorm could gain entry.
Though there are some interesting caveats
*the first one, which I didn't really know well at the time, is the fact that making a copy of the card is far easier than making a copy of the key. Remagnetizing magnetic stripes is not the hardest thing in the world.
*the campuswide system runs off of ethernet to the AT&T9000 computer which administers everything. If a particular door gets disconnected with the central computer, it's default setting is to pretend like everything is normal, and let everyone in, and it has a cache of swipes which it would then transmit back to the central computer when the connection was restored. That seems like a sensible kludge given the circumstances, given a network failure it would be more sensible to allow all in as opposed to all out, especially at a dorm. (Higher security places would have their door failure mode set to allow no one.) On the other hand, as a security concept, it just bugged me. (this is explained in the powerpoint presentations.)
*my big concern at the time was the tracking and auditing abilities, and it still is. the key system had no tracking and auditing. The swipe system allowed the university to keep a record of when students come into the building (and implicitly, when they go.) I pointed out that Ohio law prohibited a government institution from collecting information which were not authorized by law, nor required to achieve a particular purpose...and that the system need not perform the tracking, it only needed to perform the authorization.
The response I got was that the system was not designed with a zero tracking/auditing setting, it needed to perform tracking and auditing as part of its authentication mechanism. I pointed out that I can't help that the university bought a dumbass product, and I threatened to sue them, but I was young, and I threatened to sue everyone.
I got a letter from the university lawyers saying "While we ourselves certainly hope never to need the archived data -- and, fortunately, rarely do -- it can be of unquestionable value in
investigating incidents in the residence halls. It is for this very reason that similar systems are in use at numerous colleges and universities
around the country."
I've however pointed out that any idiot who was gonna do something in the dorms would do what everyone else does, and that is follow someone who swiped before you, and not swipe themselves.
I still hope to work on this issue at some point.
...is specifically a type of Green Tea, that is very strong.
I found a box of it here. In the great spirit of chinese packaging oddities, they seem to like to make certain words jump out over other ones (this box saying in its biggest font "special gunpowder.") You can see how this causes problems.
On a slightly unrelated note, how is this supposed to work in school districts that by law have to give access to illegal immigrants who by their very nature have no SSN?
:-) good luck
How about taking this topic up to the higher level question: why does the school system even collect SSN's?
Since the Privacy Act of 1974 has not been amended to allow school systems to collect SSN's, I would be very surprised if they can even legitimately do it, or in the least, force a parent to give it before admitting a child. This is just one of those verboten things the Privacy Act prohibits.
I happen to know the school system I went to did not collect SSN's, at least, at the time period I went there.
I was talking to a friend of mine here who said that her daughter went to a school system in the area and she refused to supply her daughter's SSN. The school system (Worthington, OH) continiously was bugging her daughter (for instance, sending notes to her from the office during class) to get her SSN, but the daughter honored her mother's wishes and refused to provide it. She graduated without ever giving it.
Clearly any parent who really cares for their child would not give their SSN when it isn't required, and if they would, they don't deserve to see their child's homework and grades, because they are too incompetent.
Ok, ok, that clearly wasn't supposed to be the conclusion, but I admit it was the one I was having fun with, and SSN collection in schools makes me steamed. If I were the person posting the question, I would be raising hell about the SSN collection (with both your own parents, other people's parents and school, write me an email if you need some help starting), and then moving on to the FERPA issues of using it as an identifier for some silly web thingy. And there was another post that said that this Pinnacle thing is security-crap, so there's another thing to do. Not only would you be doing a good thing, but hopefully you'll get your parents thinking about it in a new light other than just homework and grades.
I can imagine the message these days would have something added like:
:-) to corrupt the caller ID signal and display whatever it is you want it to.
"Your caller-id should indicate this call is from 555-1234, if it does not please notify the school of this discrepancy."
I seem to recall that there are devices on the market (not your normal market mind you
In which case the modern crack of this system is even more beautiful. "but the phone number said it was 555-1212 and that's definitely the number for the principal's office! I called it myself."
Most of the posts here have to do with consulting/permatemping in the IT field...permatemping in the non-IT field is slightly different, since the pay is usually quite a lot lower, and there are a few other things of note.
I worked for the financial services arm of a large european auto company (whose name begins with B and ends with W) and the cost to the company for me was just a little bit lower than for a regular employee, when extra administrative costs and temp company costs were added in. The claim was that headquarters in Germany specifically authorized headcount, and apparently that took ages to do, so the only solution was to have permatemp employees.
They did make some effort to move employees over, except for the fact that, since we were a "bank" of some type, they took credit issues seriously. You could get hired as a temp with bad credit, but you couldn't get hired as a perm with bad credit, and worse, if the company found out about your bad credit in your application, you jeopardized your temp. position.
That essentially meant that we had permatemp employees making a lot less than regular employees stuck in permatemp positions, and oddly enough, they sorta of worked up the ladder in the permatemp system, so they were often people who were somewhat key to the system based on their knowledge and experience.
The other odd thing was, after I left, that temps could apply for full time positions in the first month they worked in a position there, or after a year of working there. They could not apply for a full time position in months 2 through 11. This apparently was to reduce the amount of talented temps jumping into perm jobs ahead of other perm employees. The reports I've had are that if the temp is talented and realizes this, they just go elsewhere after month 1.
I do have some sympathy for the badge issue, in that it can be symbolic (we didn't have the same issue ourselves per se, temp badges did not have photos on them, and I was ecstatic to have a non-photo badge, and the perm employees were always cheesed off that they had to have photo ones. Perhaps a person who liked being photographed would have had a different attitude on it.) Our symbolic issue was the car, in that a perm employee could get a really great lease on a car after one year of working there. When I first got there, the time working as a temp was counted toward your one year...however, shortly before I left, it was decided to change that so that only the time working as a perm employee would be counted for that year. It caused a bunch of us to leave, since it was such a symbolic disappointment. (I drove a Saab anyway, a vastly superior car, which admittedly kept me on their shit-list.)
I volunteered to be a notary public (we had a use for a few of em.) The cost of training a notary was $40, but the company didn't want temps to be trained, no particular reason why. If a temp came in as a notary, all the cooler; and it would have made a lot of sense for them to train me, since I was there at times when most of the other notaries werent, yet, they didn't want to.
In the long run though, it was the pay...the difference between the $17/hr of a perm employee and the $10/hr of a temp was heartbreaking at times. I'm glad I'm no longer there.
Consultants or temps should NOT get a benefits package, consisting of medical, dental, and other coverage.
While the Microsoft permatemp lawsuit was really won on the stock options issues, the thing that made the permatemps so very unhappy is because they didn't get benefits.
Other than contract employees, companies do tend to give benefits to permatemps (or semi-permatemps if you prefer) after 90 days, otherwise it's just grounds for some uglyness, and I suspect some violations of state laws as well.
That's a very interesting and valid observation and I am completely willing to admit that identity is closely associated, psychologically, with the face.
The human brain has quite an interesting ability to process and remember faces. Several psychological studies have shown that a person will have a different physiological reaction to someone they have seen before, in comparison to a completely new face, which stimulates are more anxious reaction. One hypothesis for this is that it is an anachronism from a more dangerous time: "I've seen this guy before, and he didn't kill me then...so he must be ok."
Indeed, I remember one particularly interesting password system that showed the user a series of faces, and you chose the sequence in which they came. There were millions of possible sequences, but humans have the amazing ability to learn that sequence very very easily.
This is all of interest to me since my passion is driver's license law, and how photo ID cards play into all of that. One of the big failures of the photo ID card is that humans seem to glean more information from it psychologically than what actually is being represented by the card. These days I say that if I were to commit some sorta heinous crime, I would do it with a laminated photo ID badge around my neck...because it puts people at ease, like, somehow in having a cheap plastic card around my neck, not only do I have legitimacy, but I also am "revealing" myself to you.
Frankly, the way humans process photo based ID cards is a science within itself. But I've become convinced that people are bedazzled by the photograph. Of course, prior to photo licenses, states printed the description information, though more for the purpose of making the sure the document belonged to the person, as opposed to truly identifying the person (some states still do issue non-photo licenses like this. Almost all states still have the description information on the document, but this is an anachronism if there is a photo, sorta.) The description information is a pretty good way of making sure the document belongs to the person, with the added benefit that people are psychologically leery of accepting it in non-driving instances for identification.
There is no company or brand loyalty because the customer knows if they dont shop for price they WILL get screwed.
:-) . Fact is, it's very hard to sell expensive first class seats to latin america, in comparison to europe, so the airlines can only try to make a profit on economy class. Which is exactly what they do with fares that seem abnormally high for the distance traveled. (I should add that fares to latin america are some of the most stable...they barely move up or down, and we've paid the same price, within $100, 90% of the time we've gone there, for the last 20 years. Clearly it's getting slightly cheaper with time, but it's pretty stable.)
For the most part, airline service is not differentiable...though there does seem to be an observable difference between the low quality carriers and the high quality carriers on service and on-time performance. But that isn't known to your leisure travellers, who shop entirely by price, unless they have had some abnormally negative experience on carrier X. I need not tell you that everyone and their grandmother tries to book a trip somewhere, the first thing they ask about is price.
Having said that, leisure travellers simply aren't profitable, or you need a hell of a lot of them before the flight at least breaks even. Your supersaver 21 day advance fares are a loss to the airline. (Incidentally, the consistency in airline fares come from the fact that everyone knows that fares go up the closer you are to the travel date. On a side note, the expansion of the complexity of supersaver fares is how checking for photo ID was introduced--it never had anything to do with security, it had to do with making sure that person X wasn't buying a ticket in advance that they had no intention to use, to sell to person Y who suddenly needed to go somewhere and didn't wanna pay full price.)
Anyways interesting example of this (regrettably, the only example in my head) is the Continental 757 flight from Cleveland to London Gatwick. It's not an exception at all incidentally...but if you fill all the first class seats on this flight, you'll pay for the entire plan to London *and* back. On the other hand, you need a good 100 passengers in economy class to get same result. Therefore first class is vitally important...and airlines spend huge amounts of money trying to differentiate their first class products. And who flies first class? Business travelers who care about being on-time and the service/amenities they get. Simply, airlines can barely care about their economy class product since they lose money/only break even on the majority of seats anyway.
I'm from Costa Rica, and my mother often flies down there to see the family. One thing that always bugged her was the fact that fares to latin america were terribly high in comparison to fares to europe, and it seems that flying to europe is a much more complex transaction, not to mention it's farther
So having said that, it only makes sense that airlines try to change prices many times per day to eek out just a little bit of profit on the economy class seats. It's the only thing they can do.
I incidentally disagree with your comment that Customers do not want to be in the price shopping business. Customers love to price shop...especially when they are buying their ticket 3 months in advance. There is such a psychological reward in getting a good deal.
Sometime ago I remember one of the talk shows, I believe Donahue or Geraldo, but I think it was Donahue, had a segment on a catalog company sending out different catalogs with different prices. I already knew that Barnes and Noble did this, my father got the catalog at his house, my mother at her house, and I already saw price differences.
Anyways, the company that they were picking on the show was Victoria's Secret (this was many years ago...dunno if they do it anymore.) The consumer advocate was getting everybody up in arms over this business practice, saying that it was unamerica...et cetera.
Oh yes. Victoria's secret, entirely American, wholesome, God-fearing company. How dare they pull the wool over our eyes on...umm...bras and underwear.
Ooo...bras...underwear...
My understanding is that the British have Experian like credit history databases (which are not catalogued by a universal identification number, like the SSN, which I believe is the failure point of the US style databases.) So I'm not sure where this fits in...the article seems to imply it's for online transactions?
The URU proposal has some interesting elements:
*(it appears) that inclusion in the database would be voluntary, per European and British data privacy laws
*the "check number" is essentially the electrical meter on your house. meaning that, at least in some way, the number can be changed, at least by you moving elsewhere. furthermore, there is no reason why anyone else would have that number, theoretically. it's a semi-constant.
*you are automagically notified when someone performs a check, and i suspect that checks can only be performed when the person authorizes them.
While the current British government is a bit fixed on putting an "entitlement card" together which will essentially be the you can't live without it national ID card, this proposal is vaguely interesting to me. I need more info to run it through a security model though.
The electoral system isn't "antiquated". If the founders had intended the electoral college members to be nothing more than courriers, they could have easily done that.
I actually do agree with your idea that the electoral system is not antiquated, and I prefer it slightly to just en masse popular voting.
But, as far as I can tell, the electoral college was sincerely set up as a system of couriers. Not just from the level of pragmatics, but also because, considering what they foresaw as the extent of the "union" at that time, the idea of some sorta national system watching the election returns from each secretary of states office just doesn't seem like a way they would sought to do things.
The concept of electoral votes going winner takes all on the state by state basis is not implicit. I believe that Nebraska splits its electoral college votes by the actual popular vote. However, states quickly figured out that their own power in any election was maximized by going winner takes all. That's created an interesting system that continues to this day...and one which I still slightly prefer to en masse popular.
That doesn't mean that innovations still can't be done. For instance, a state could go to some type of multichoice/preference voting system for the presidential election, but still be winner takes all with the electoral college. That way the state is still individually powerful, but minor party candidates have some chance in affecting an election.
What we need is one of the large media outlets to interview someone about security issues, and with any luck, that individual would say insightful things like
:-)
*there's no reason why a security device should be sent up in a rocket which could very well blow up over earth and then could be refound and it's security implements "un-engineered." if the device is that sensitive to unengineering, then either it is defective, and serves no role to play, or its role should not be on the shuttle. The idea of the shuttle exploding over land was always under consideration.
I will likely never know what is in this security device and how it works exactly, but I usually have greater faith that the government has some understanding of security issues, and that they wouldn't design single source of failure systems.
On the other hand, if this device is part of the original shuttle design, then perhaps I'm just being too hard on them, since no one including their grandmother truly understood security issues at that time. Whereas today...we all do...now don't we?
I don't understand how this is different from a drug screening test. Most employers require it.
As already echoed by other posts to this comment, most employers do not require drug screening.
One thing that is really interesting is that, according to what I have heard, pre-employment drug testing in Canada is unheard of. Even companies in the US which do it at all their branches don't do it in Canada.
Apparently one thing we can learn from the Canucks is that they have a higher regard for privacy issues (as evidenced by the Privacy Commissioner's recent and very eloquent report to Parliament) and Canadians as a whole are much more willing to show their middle fingers high to any employer whose policies they don't like.
Having said that, as time has gone on, I've become convinced that the employers who do drug testing are doing it because they have bought the line, hook and sinker, of drug testing companies, who claim all sorts of horrible things that happen if you don't do drug testing, and that you must invest in these fairly expensive and tremendously profitable tests. I believe that drug testing policies always come from the department of Human Resources, which is usually collectively as dumb as a branch of the DMV, and not much more sympathetic either.
Someday someone with some balls is gonna invest some money in a real study on drug testing, and show how truly worthless they are, but for right now the drug testing companies are running the show.
the current situation is silly and needs change so they have brought out photo licenses (like you have in the US) but no one can make me get one.
UK Photo licenses were not introduced because of any need in the UK. The requirement was put into place because the EU wanted to standardize driving licenses across the EU, and the vast majority of countries had photo licenses. There was no interest in the UK in having a photo license, be it from law enforcement, DVLA, insurance companies, et cetera. It simply isn't worth stealing a license to drive...people will just get into a car and drive.
As for North America...two states and several Canadian provinces still issue non-photo licenses. In not a single jurisdiction have I ever found any evidence that the photo was added to the license for reasons related to driving an autmobile.
While that may be a joke, the new Saab 9-3 (which everyone should look at...especially when it comes out in Arc/Vector versions, byootiful car) also depends heavily on computers (though thankfully it doesn't have the nasty iDrive interface.)
The interesting thing is that if these vehicles (new 9-3) lose the computer input, the car will just shut off. There is a 45 pin connector to the central computer that somtimes gets a little loose, and if the computer is lost, the car turns off. Other very random sounding error messages have been popping up (many of them long and unwieldly--"bi xenon headlamp leveling failure" even if the levellers are working perfectly fine.) So, either you turn off car, or take to the dealer, who gets periodic software updates. So yeah, software updates to exist..and SP1 for the 2003 9-3 has already been released. No doubt it has been released for the 745i as well.
Credit Card fraud, even Credit card fraud online, is dropping, so there is good news (check both visa.com and mastercard.com and see their security/fraud info for proof of this.)
:-)
Having the numbers embossed on the front of the card is simultaneously a relic and a backup for when the hypercom goes down and the merchant has to run the credit card on the little swipe machine thinger.
But if we didn't need that, or perhaps in the future Visa/MC will just decide to remove the embossed numbers, or part of the numbers (or better yet, you have a credit card you use with merchants that have no embossed numbers...and then you have one at home with embossed numbers for when you are ordering stuff online and need to know the number.)
As for the form of fraud when they swipe the card through another reader to capture the numbers, other than an encryption system, which I don't have much faith in at this scale, that's what fraud protection is for.
States had been pushing for internet sales tax for some time now...but now everybody's got a bee in their bonnet to see it occur. States feel that they are losing big bucks now because people are ordering online (though their calculations are only thinking about the internet sales going to their state, not necessarily the opportunity cost of jobs and stuff that may be created in their state because of internet commerce.)
Thing is, states have screwed themselves with progressive income taxes. Sales taxes do go up and down with consumption (obviously) but not as severely as income taxes. California for instance has this really progressive system where the top 10% of income earners are paying for some 75% of California government. So, the economy takes a tumble, income generally does go down...but the top 10% of income earnerrs have *huge* decreases in income, so suddenly California has a $25 billion shortfall. They can't increase the progressivity of the tax structure--you're not gonna get much more out of people who's income's dropping severely, so all ya can do is widen the tax base...meaning increase income taxes for median earners, or sales tax, or find new tax sources. I believe states are starting to understand how easy it is to screw the pooch raw with progressive income taxes (note that the states that have blown their budgets the most are those with income taxes, CA, OR, OH, IL, NY, whereas non-income tax states like TN, FL, NH, TX, are not looking at such bad looking budgets. Those states have much more reliable income streams from property taxes and/or sales taxes.)
How libraries work in the US goes back and forth between state, because it is the state that funds em. Ohio has been consistently ranked as having the best libraries in the nation (and on the smaller level, individual Ohio cities win lots of contests. No surprise to see Cleveland doing something innovative.) This is because a good chunk of their funds come from the state, and then they can add additional property tax levies, if they desire. (You would think that would be common, but apparently we're the only state that does it.)
So my local library (Columbus public) has everything for free. I can rent 5 DVD's at a time for five days for free, same thing for videos, 10 CD's/audio cassettes for thirty days for free, et cetera. And I guess it's a cool thing to take advantage of (wanna rent more than 5 DVD's at a time? Just bring in two library cards.)
They get new books, cd's and DVD's very quickly, and that's cool too. When it comes to books, if the book is popular enough, they'll order several dozen of em.
One thing that is neat is that, generally speaking, it's people in the urban areas who take advantage of the library more than those in the suburban areas. That's cool.
However, I have to wonder if it is appropriate to have a state funded Blockbuster...because that's essentially what it is...my income and property taxes going to create a "free" Blockbuster.
One thing (as far as I can tell unmentioned to this point) is the fact that Oregon has the lowest (or one of the lowest) yearly license fees in the nation--just $15. So low is it that the Oregon DOT had signs warning out of state drivers not to come to Oregon and register their vehicles.
/year, and that provides a nice revenue base that the state/local governments can depend on (for road financing) no matter how much people drive, and yet it still is not pricey enough to be severely regressive to the grandma who drives only 500 miles a year.
While some states have a yearly vehicle property tax (like Colorado, Taxachusetts, Rhode Island) that assesses a significant fee per year, most of that goes to local government for schools and stuff.
Most states have a fee of $30-$80
Some states, like Michigan, have an ad valorem, which is based on the value of the vehicle, and so people with more expensive cars pay more (this isn't a property tax because it is a flat percentage, it isn't based on property tax millage, and the money goes to the state for funding roads, not the local government.) It is gently rising, and my friend with a 2002 Corvette pays about $120, which isn't severe for an expensive vehilcle (and it caps off at some value.) That is clearly a progressive system for road financing irrelevant to how much ya drive or how much wear and tear you put on the roads.
New York has a system which has some type of base amount (like $40, but I can't remember what it is) and then adds some surcharge if the vehicle is heavy. That's essentially the same as the fuel tax, but once again, it offers a stable revenue base that fuel taxes can build off of.
Another suggestion is to change the fuel tax system to a hybrid style. Most states that I know of assess a fuel tax on each gallon of gasoline sold (like in Ohio, it's 22 cents...I think.) Instead, Ohio could consider making it 18 cents per gallon sold, then add another 5 cents for every dollar's of gasoline sold. That way, if gas prices go up and sales go down, the revenue stream is a bit more stable (and it still works well if prices go down, and people end up buying more gasoline.
At any rate, Michigan style ad valorem, New York vehicle weight surcharge, hybrid style gasoline taxes or simply raising yearly fees are significantly better ways of road financing than the complexity of a GPS system.)
But it is certainly not PC, I'll grant you that.
The odd part is, there's plenty of very un-PC porn. There's more rape porn out there than the mind can comfortably conceive, and I'm sure that there exists rape porn that has racial characteristics, and I don't doubt for a moment that it existed at that time.
But the author in this article alluded to why it was so controversial--people thought of gaming systems as for kids, and this game/these games went over some social norm-border.
On the other hand, the VCR has always been, from the start, your at home porn machine. Make a rape fantasy with native american girls for VHS and it doesn't raise an eyebrow; make a game cartridge with the same theme for a game system and everyone gets pissed.
Actually, as I consider it, that's happening today with Vice City. There's nothing in there that hasn't been in a million different Hollywood movies, but I suspect Vice City cheeses off people because it adds an extra element of interactivity; in one situation you're a passive participant, possibly or possibly not enjoying all the violence, and in the other situation you're an active participatn causing the "violence."
Texas does NOT require fingerprinting for a either a Driver's License or a State-Issued ID card for those who do not drive.
I could show ya a million links to the contrary (like here) but it also helps that I've been involved with an organization, based in Texas, which is devoted to changing Texas law and prohibiting driver's license fingerprinting.
Kroger usually uses its home base of Ohio as it's testing market for new things.
That's why a lot of stores (Home Depot and Lowes come to mind) don't even bother checking the signature panel on your card anymore - and let you swipe it yourself. Biometrics (fingerprints) are the next logical step in combating fraud.
Technically these two sentences are in opposition to each other. The vast majority of credit card fraud is online fraud, not in store fraud (which is dropping and continues to drop.) The reason those two places, in addition to many other places (Chipotle is one that comes to mind) are not checking the signature strip is because the in store credit card fraud is too unusual to care about it. That also answers the question why photographs on credit cards are not being persued--it simply isn't econommically viable/justifiable.
Having said that, Kroger is trying out this system as a nifty way (for them) of mating the kroger plus card with your bank card, all in one biometric.
Anyone else wonder if this is being done in Texas for a reason? Whenever I see grocery store biometric projects, they are either in Texas or California--two states that require that people be fingerprinted for their driver's licenses--so the vast majority of people in those states have been fingerprinted. That's not the case for the rest of the states.