I'm a huge licene plate fan...here in Ohio...I've assisted with several license plate projects.
For the amusement of the/. crowd, I submit an article, written last year, in which I half seriously proposed another plate for the great state of Ohio. Any Ohioans out there wishing to help me...please send me an email. ___________________ Every time I see a bumper sticker or a t-shirt that says, "Don't mess with Texas" I find myself snickering. It's not that I do not like Texans, on the contrary, I've met a bunch of them, and they are quite an independent lot. (A Texan I know, in protest of his local school taxes, intends to pay his property tax in person with 63,000 nickels. It's that type of ballsy bravado that does Texas, and America for that matter, proud.) Regrettably, most Texans these days are just as milquetoasty as people from any other state.
But Texans do make a good marketing campaign. The Alamo has become a fantastic tourist trap in spite of being a horrific military failure. We Ohioans have much to learn about marketing our own state.
A great example of this is our license plates. Finally, with the introduction of the new Bicentennial Plate on October 1, we can actually put a halfway nice looking license plate on our cars. However, it is still encumbered by the "Birthplace of Aviation" slogan. The problem is, another state claims to be the birthplace of aviation, and they're doing a better job marketing it. (The North Carolina plate is a more elegant salute to the Wright Brothers than our half-ass'd slogan.) Unfortunately, the slogan on the plates is state law, and will require action by the state legislature to change (and that is akin to an act of God.)
Perhaps we should go into our history books and find something of consequence to feature on a special plate--something which encapsulates Ohio, its people and its history. You wouldn't need to look far, because Lancaster's own Gen. William T. Sherman blessed Ohio history with the type of achievement over which other states regularly drool.
In November 1864, he burned Atlanta down.
In commemoration of this event, work should begin immediately on a special license plate devoted to this incident in history.
First, we must find an appropriate tagline and graphic. If we choose a graphic that's, say, a little building burning, then a good tagline may be "Sherman burning Atlanta --Nov. 1864." I guess the plate could be devoted to General Sherman himself, with a little picture of him and the tagline "Gen. Sherman--the man who burned down Atlanta."
I am however much more in love with a tagline saying, "Don't mess with Ohio or we'll burn down Atlanta...again." (Consider the new tagline a swipe not at Georgia, but at Texas--I mean, what have they ever burned down?) I think that nicely summarizes this feat in Ohio history, in addition to describing the feistiness that Ohioans should be known for. (Admittedly burning Atlanta down today would require a lot of work--its metropolitan area now extends into Tennessee and Florida.)
There is precedence for acridity on license plates. New Hampshire started it all with "Live Free or Die"--homage to our Revolutionary roots. Washington DC's new plates are emblazoned with "No Taxation without Representation"--another commemoration of America's Revolutionary history, not to mention the District's unique political situation. Even "Birthplace of Aviation" is a passive-aggressive swipe at North Carolina. Not all Ohioans may wish to have the Sherman plate; some may wish to drive south of Covington, Kentucky. But for those who do, I don't see why "Don't mess with Ohio or we'll burn down Atlanta...again" cannot be issued to the proud Ohioan interested in memorializing our state, and our nation's, history.
To the critics who say that license plates are meant only for vehicle identification purposes, my response is that special plates are doing an adequate job identifying vehicles. However, they are a medium for so much more. Pennsylvania's ex-Governor Tom Ridge said that license plates are moving billboards for a state. Ohio must learn to leverage this advertising space in its favor in order to establish a unique state identity. The new Bicentennial plate is a start.
A petition must be circulated to collect 1000 names, addresses and current plate numbers of individuals willing to buy the plate when it is introduced. Contact me if you're interested in helping get the petition started.
Because when Americans see the LOCAL ADVANTAGE (always on data capacity and text messages) they may start to see the international roaming capacity, and international compatibility.
Well first, Americans are far less likely to travel internationally than Europeans are. I think that international roaming will always be a low priority for them. And anyway, since our system charges for outbound or inbound use (whereas Europeans on the cell only pay for outbound) roaming can get damn expensive. Furthermore, flat rate land line phone service is so much cheaper than land line in Europe--we only use our cells when we are not near a land line phone or maybe when we wanna use long distance and have lots of long distance minutes. That removes roaming incentive (assuming you'll be near a usable land line phone.)
TriBand GSM (900/1800/1900) phones that are FINALLY hitting the US shores in SOME number are going to be the ONLY hope we have (in the US)
That's a temporary thing...since 3G is slowly coming this way. I believe however that Europe is standardizing on CDMA 3G, the same one we'll be using...so that should work out ok. The future does not rest with 2G of anything, be it CDMA or GSM.
It's down to a simple fact that the US has done exactly the oppisite of the rest of the world, they have SEPERATE systems for each cell carrier.
Part of this is because European governments segmented land areas and awarded the areas to cell phone companies based on highest bidder--it was used as a (very expensive) taxation scheme. One which Europeans are paying out the ass for in cell phone rates. (This was done in the US for analog systems, but it was far cheaper.) With one company controlling one area, there was no choice but for everyone to standardize on one system so that people could roam freely. Here, a company could put cell phone towers which ran on any system wherever they want as long as it met FCC regulations and local tower erection ordinances.
I like having multiple protocols...there are advantages and disadvantages to them. GSM works outstandingly well for Europe--for instance, it has SMS. Here you can have SMS too...but it's used far less because of that billing issue above (and to a certain extent that most people didn't have the same protocol to actually use SMS. SMS was an act of serendipity anyway...it was a part of GSM's configuration protocol, not a purposeful cell phone feature.) I believe that CDMA is the superior protocol (although I think that TDMA is even better, and if I were to do it all over again, I would take a TDMA phone.)
The point of all this is...it's just different. I think in the long run, it'll be hard to say one system is better or worse...except that, generally speaking, telecommunication is cheaper in the US...and perhaps that's the most important metric.
(haha...metric...US...see...I made a joke...ohh nevermind...to the devil with you all)
As far as I can tell this lossage is due precisely to the lack of any leverage that carriers have over handset makers in the US.
This is actually due to several other factors, beginning with cultural--the Japanese, and for that matter, Europeans, look at cellphones very differently from Americans. Studies have shown that Americans see cell phones for one thing, and that pretty much is talking on them--web and email features are much lower on their list of priorities (and Americans have not proven themselves interested in paying for that stuff.) Part of this is because of billing issues--cell phone use is charged differently here (outgoing is cheaper than in europe, but we pay for incoming which is not paid in europe--the person making the call pays for charge, whereas land line here is a flat rate. Flat rate landline makes for cheaper internet service, whereas I suspect that having per minute charges for internet makes it more likely for the consumer to use the cell phone to browse the net, since the cost is the same anyway.)
Then there is the issue of the cells themselves. Japan can upgrade its cell phone system much faster since the country is smaller land area wise and the population is much more dense--meaning that 3G could be rolled out very quickly since far fewer new towers needed to be erected. Europe is more or less the same--especially since all cell phone companies in Europe use the same cellular system.
Moving on past that, the American cell phone companies have a lot of say in how their phones are designed--not as much as NTT DoCoMo, who designs the phones themselves, but quite a lot nevertheless.
3G is coming to the US...albeit slowly. And what you will likely see is a pretty small rush for the technology.
California did sign the agreement. Oracle expects them to abide by the contract.
The situation is not exactly clear yet, but the article leads me to believe that the state will claim that Oracle and this Logicon company thinger may have misrepresented themselves during the contract negotiation process. Misrepresentation is definitely something that can cause contract to get nullified:
"The disparity "raises the question that Logicon may have misled the state," the audit says. "The fact that Logicon appears to benefit by as much as $28.5 million from its role... makes these disparities even more troubling."
Is that how it works? Here in Columbus (Ohio) they advertise for jobs at the Pizza hut call center. I presume that it is a national call center where they route all the pizza orders.
Energy specialists estimate that oil production will start to decline within the next 10 to 15 years, as the economically viable reserves start to run out.
Not a well written paragraph from an Economics point of view. What will happen is once the easier to tap reserves run out, production will shift to the harder to tap reserves. More likely than not, that'll lead to technology that'll make those reserves just as economically viable as the current ones now. Therefore, at worst, we may see a price rise, but I would be surprised to see a decline in production.
This can work in most states. Most of the time the legislatures did in fact pass laws requiring that photos be on licenses. (New York is an exception, a photo is not required on a license, but the commissioner of motor vehicles can require a photo if s/he wants. And of course Vermont doesn't require a photo at all.)
Anyway, state legislatures however have generally not passed laws authorizing their DMV's to keep the photos in archive. (NJ and CO are however exceptions--the only ones so far I've found.)Most states have privacy laws that prohibit the collection of data which is not authorized by statute.
I just took a gander through CT law, and I see the requirement for a photo license, but no requirement for digitally archiving the photo.
So here is the crux:
*a photo is required on a license by CT law *no statute exists that says that the photo has to be archived *since CT issued non digital licenses without archiving photos for many years, your argument can be that the DMV can carry out their duties without archiving all the photographs--in particular, yours *i bet CT does have some privacy laws that prohibit the collection of data which is not authorized by statute, nor collecting data which is necessary to carry out duties required by statute *with all the above, go file a mandamus action ordering the dmv commissioner to remove your photo from the database
If all the above is the case, I would ask you put some money into it and get a lawyer--to set up good precedence.
Here in Ohio, the same thing can be done (no money for lawyer right now though.:-( Better yet, here in Ohio, the legislature did require that photos from commercial licenses be archived...but not those from regular operator licenses. So here's it's even easier to argue that if the legislature did not authorize the collection, and the bmv survived fine without doing it, then it is not necessary to carry out their duties, and is a violation of Ohio privacy law.
I'm not a lawyer, I don't even play one on television, but I like to think that I know something about this topic.:-)
This is an interesting argument...but the driver's license has a valid purpose. It's not to see if you can drive a car--the silly test they administer you basically makes sure you know what the signs mean and where the gas and brake pedals are.
A driver's license is simply a form of credit. When you take the tests, and pass them, the state considers you a good risk, and gives you credit to drive. Get a speeding ticket...that's ok...because you've got the credit for it. Eventually you'll pay off the credit (time will pass without more tickets) and the ticket will disappear. Get a DUI? Whoa...that's like getting foreclosed on...may lose your credit for a very long time.
The driver's license is to make sure that you are using your own credit and that what you are doing is being noted on your own credit record. That's all it does--not a thing more.
The photo though is not related to this purpose. In 1969, when my state of Ohio added the photo to the license, it was for reasons other than driving--in fact, the highway patrol had no opinion to the photo one way or another. Vermont still issues non photo licenses, as does Quebec. New York made the photo mandatory after the first WTC bombing. New Jersey made the photo mandator in January of this year (I leave it as an exercise of the reader as to why.) The driver's license not being an ID card...that's a much more interesting and reasonable argument.
photo Ontario government health card? what's that?
Actually Ontario added photographs to licenses in 1992 I believe. That was far after most US states did. And remember, several provinces still do not require photos on licenses (Quebec, New Brunswick.) Why didn't Ontario make it optional like those other provinces (well part of that is the rather passive way the assembly passed the legislation. Ontario licenses, by the Highway Act, do not have to have photos on them...but the Minister of Transportation may require someone to be photographed for a license.)
The Ministry of Transportation does keep the photos in their database, but I believe that you can fight that with the Ontario Privacy Commissioner--in fact, I've been telling someone to do just that.
Since Sept. 11, Ellison argued, those qualms no longer make any sense: ''It's our lives that are at risk, not our liberties,'' he said.
''Like, that's really disturbing. Like, don't mess with my mall experience. O.K., so people have to die over here without this, but that's not going to affect my experience going to the mall.'' He exhaled, and in his regular billionaire voice asked, ''I mean, what the hell is going on?''
It's funny to me that the second richest man in the world, who has everything, seems so sincerely scared of being killed. I mean, do you think he's saying these things as part of his salesmen's pitch (which is entirely possible...he could be a closet privacy activist but such a good salesman that we would never know) or is the fear of being killed randomly part of his psyche?
I suspect he is also really obsessive about the food he eats, exercising, doing yoga, et cetera. All the money in the world can't buy him another body, or a better body, and he probably knows that in the back of his mind. Hence we have a person who is likely very afraid of dying.
Not to mention the ego trip of being omniscient. Because if Oracle databases know everything, then at some level, he knows everything.
''I really don't understand. Central databases already exist. Privacy is already gone.''
For him. There's no doubt it's gone for him...it would be hard living his life and maintaining any sense of privacy. The rich and famous are the least sensitive to data privacy issues, because frankly, they don't understand them. How can they have a good grasp of what privacy is, when they don't live private lives. Actors should though--they aren't getting paid all that moolah because they are working really hard--they are getting paid all that moolah because they are selling the rights of their "image." That brings along a certain amount of disadvantages, like no privacy, but you are getting paid for it. Ellison likely never got paid for it.
It is a federal crime to _require _ your SSN for any reason other than social security
You are referring to the Privacy Act of 1974...which regulates how governments at all levels may use and collect SSN's.
Business can do more or less what they want, unless they are prohibited from doing so by state law.
The Privacy Act of 1974 did in fact prohibit SSN usage by governmental agencies, except for quite a lot of reasons, including taxes and driver's license issuance (since some states were collecting SSN's prior to 1974.)
Regrettably, federal law requires all states to collect SSN's for licenses to prevent child support fraud.
Among the applications required by emergency management agencies are voice, video, instant messaging
fuzzyvixen69: IMPORTANT MESSAGE! Terrorists have flown commercial airplanes into the WTC...tens of thousands possibly dead, billions in property damage. Get out of the New York area! Ohhh the humanity!
bigballs15: a/s/l?
choosey people choose...
on
FreeDOS
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· Score: 2, Funny
A (blank) ID with smart card functions and other forgery deterrents would be MUCH more difficult to fake
which is what they say everytime they bring out a new driver's license...the only time they didn't say that is when we had non photo licenses--because then it just didn't matter
listen, the state has to make them cheaply, quickly, and provide them to millions of people--i think if you consider those requirements, then you could not really create something that is also simultaneously difficult to forge.
California has the nation's hardest license to copy...still they have to make them in lots of 22,000 per day, send them out by us mail, and do it for about $3 a card. A national ID card would have to be produced in higher quantities for probably the same amount of money or slightly more. If they can do it cheaply and quickly with what they have, it probably wouldn't take much for a lone person to figure out too.
The national license (or national regulations of existing ones) would seem to be setting an appropriate standard for the 'easy' Ohio one to be forced up to. If anything issues of forgeability might affect the cheapo fakes, but seem unlikely to make things much different for a professional.
The difference between faking an Ohio and a California license is not that big (they are there, but not in a huge way. )You have to remember, the standards are encumbered by states needs which include
a.) cost. most of the cost of licensing comes from paperwork tranasction costs--licenses themselves need to be made pretty cheaply
b.) speed. licenses need to be produced quickly and for huge amounts of people
c.) visual security--the only types of security measures which are effective are those which are visible to the naked eye. clearly microprinting and secret features are effective only for law enforcement, but even they know that they dont' need those--they can check in their computers if the license is real or not.
As far as I'm concerned, states are screwed. Within weeks of the introductoin of the new California license, good fakes ones started to appear. And as for Ohio...the current license dates back to 1995, and it simply is too old now, but the cost of changing to a new one is huge, and really won't get us anywhere anyway.
There are basically two types of people making license forgeries--those doing it to get underage peeps into bars, and those doing it to do money fraud--cash out bank accounts, make bad checks, et cetera.
Let's say the forger is in California. He can decide to make either a California license (which is not impossible...but hard to do) or a Ohio license (much easier.)
The bonus to making the Ohio license is, Californians may have seen it, but won't be acquianted with its peculiarities--peculiarties that the forger himself may not know well enough to make. On the other hand, Californians know California licences well, and the forger will have to work hard designing those peculiarities (but one advantage to him is, he'll have at grasp about 30 million examples of the license to look at.)
If he's doing it so that underage peeps can get alcohol, he may just do it a bad Ohio one--and no one will know the difference. For money fraud purposes, the extra legitimacy involved may require a California license.
So the point is, different forgers around the country have the specialties--rare is it that one forger can make a good copy of more than half a dozen states--there is simply no need for them to do that.
So we standardize the license, or create a national ID. That means that every forger, no matter where they are or what purpose they are forging for--will be putting in all their resources and time into forging the National ID (and they'll all have 250 million copies of it to examine, take apart and immerse in all sorts of liquids in order to figure out the best way of making it look good.)
If it takes them more than a week to make a perfect copy...its because they were being lazy. Detecting forgery on an out of state license is hard, but detecting forgery on a really well made instate license is harder. So funny enough, my theory is that the current system is actually slightly better.
Regrettably, the last state has given up on this. Congress now requires states to require SSN's on DL renewal/first time issuance in order to--get this--track dead beat parents.
Michigan threw a hissy fit about it and sued--but didn't get anywhere. (It wasn't the best case in my opinion.)
I believe this is entirely possible. In the mid 90's (we are talking 1995-1997) there was a belieft that Congress was going to force states to set the DL numbers to the SSN. Some states changing their license making equipment at the time, like Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New York, decided to set themselves up for this possiblity.
The DL numbers in those states are 9 digits long--but are *not* the Social Security Number. They are spaced out all funny to indicate such (as opposed to xxx xx xxxx a PA license reads something like xx xxxx xxx or something like that.) I guess their thinking was, at some point, they may have to change, so might as well be ready for it.
My theory is that it's entirely possible that you'll either find
a.) a person with a DL number which matches another individual's SSN
or...
b.) a person with a DL number with matches not only their SSN, but also their DL number if they live in a state which still uses the SSN as a DL number (which in about 5 years will probably be elminiated by all states.)
A bunch of states (IL, MI, NK, WI, MN, FL--just to mention a few) use a stardardized (long) number which is a hash of your name in Soundex, bdate and a few digits at the end. It is entirely possible that you could move from one state using this system to another state with this system--and have the exact same DL number. Obviously, two people with the same name and bdates in two separate states could have the same number as well.
Let me make a prediction--in 10 years, some state is going to stop printing DL numbers on licenses because of identity fraud risks--and the license number will be encyrpted into machine readable form.
As an incidental point, perhaps one already mentioned, SMS is, after all, serendipity. It was included in the GSM protocol, as I recall, as a way of sending messages to the phone for configuration purposes from the network carrier. It caught the cell phone industries completely by surprise that SMS had uses for the cell phone public. CDMA/TDMA didn't need SMS because, funny enough, they had more sophisticated configuration protocols.
So it irkes me when people say behind the curve.:-)
When Oregon first introduced their new digital license, they said it was uncounterfeitable...blah blah blah.
So...a bunch of smart ID theft artists broke into an Oregon DMV office, stole the Polaroid ID printer, 5000 ID card blanks and Holograms. The DMV went out of their way to note that no one with a fake license could go into a DMV or drive on the license--but that's hardly the reason why they stole all the equipment.
The Oregon theft I think was the biggest, but the same thing has happened in Florida and Kentucky as well.
Do be careful when you see the word "notary" in reference to a foreign country. I guess for the purposes of what you said up there and what the article is about, you can sorta use it in the same way.
49 states are "common law" states. A notary public in these states doesn't do anything else except notarize (certify) documents (that the person is whom they claim to be and that they sign the document intentionally and not under duress...etc.)
Brazil, most foreign countries, and Lousiana are "civil law" jurisdictions. Notaries in those places do a lot more than just certify documents. They are actually lawyers who have quite a lot of interesting powers and duties. For instance, a Lousiana notary is involved in the buying/selling of a home (in the other 49 states, we use "title agencies.)
My point is, in the 49 states, notaries don't really do all that much...whereas notaries in civil law countries are quite a part of everday life--so there may not be all that much of a reason for notaries to go online here--but notarial services in civil law countries is quite a convenience.
This topic is similar in spirit to the idea of printing a person's diary after they die (a famous person for ease of argument.) In life, they would have some right to privacy, but do they have the same right after death?
Family and friends may have the right to privacy...since while the dead person may not suffer anguish in having his/her privacy being invaded, friends and family may.
On the other hand, think about it this way: a peeping tom is (surreptitiously)looking at you getting undressed--is your privacy invaded when he starts looking at you, or when you *realize* he is looking at you. Is your privacy invaded at all if you completely undress and you never realized he looked at you do it? Since a person is dead, and doesn't realize people poking around in their stuff, that could be similar to a person living and not realizing that someone is poking around in their stuff--or looking at them undress...since neither the dead person, nor the live person who doesn't know any better--suffer any emotional anguish.
On a quick side note...the political argument about the rich giving money to their kids is interesting in that the very rich often figure out ways to get around inheritance taxes, since they have the money to form trusts and lawyers to figure out that sorta thing. It's the not-so-rich who get hammered with them. (Farmers, who are rich by land but not by any other type of wealth, often get screwed here.)
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I'm a huge licene plate fan...here in Ohio...I've assisted with several license plate projects.
/. crowd, I submit an article, written last year, in which I half seriously proposed another plate for the great state of Ohio. Any Ohioans out there wishing to help me...please send me an email.
For the amusement of the
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Every time I see a bumper sticker or a t-shirt that says, "Don't mess with Texas" I find myself snickering. It's not that I do not like Texans, on the contrary, I've met a bunch of them, and they are quite an independent lot. (A Texan I know, in protest of his local school taxes, intends to pay his property tax in person with 63,000 nickels. It's that type of ballsy bravado that does Texas, and America for that matter, proud.) Regrettably, most Texans these days are just as milquetoasty as people from any other state.
But Texans do make a good marketing campaign. The Alamo has become a fantastic tourist trap in spite of being a horrific military failure. We Ohioans have much to learn about marketing our own state.
A great example of this is our license plates. Finally, with the introduction of the new Bicentennial Plate on October 1, we can actually put a halfway nice looking license plate on our cars. However, it is still encumbered by the "Birthplace of Aviation" slogan. The problem is, another state claims to be the birthplace of aviation, and they're doing a better job marketing it. (The North Carolina plate is a more elegant salute to the Wright Brothers than our half-ass'd slogan.) Unfortunately, the slogan on the plates is state law, and will require action by the state legislature to change (and that is akin to an act of God.)
Perhaps we should go into our history books and find something of consequence to feature on a special plate--something which encapsulates Ohio, its people and its history. You wouldn't need to look far, because Lancaster's own Gen. William T. Sherman blessed Ohio history with the type of achievement over which other states regularly drool.
In November 1864, he burned Atlanta down.
In commemoration of this event, work should begin immediately on a special license plate devoted to this incident in history.
First, we must find an appropriate tagline and graphic. If we choose a graphic that's, say, a little building burning, then a good tagline may be "Sherman burning Atlanta --Nov. 1864." I guess the plate could be devoted to General Sherman himself, with a little picture of him and the tagline "Gen. Sherman--the man who burned down Atlanta."
I am however much more in love with a tagline saying, "Don't mess with Ohio or we'll burn down Atlanta...again." (Consider the new tagline a swipe not at Georgia, but at Texas--I mean, what have they ever burned down?) I think that nicely summarizes this feat in Ohio history, in addition to describing the feistiness that Ohioans should be known for. (Admittedly burning Atlanta down today would require a lot of work--its metropolitan area now extends into Tennessee and Florida.)
There is precedence for acridity on license plates. New Hampshire started it all with "Live Free or Die"--homage to our Revolutionary roots. Washington DC's new plates are emblazoned with "No Taxation without Representation"--another commemoration of America's Revolutionary history, not to mention the District's unique political situation. Even "Birthplace of Aviation" is a passive-aggressive swipe at North Carolina. Not all Ohioans may wish to have the Sherman plate; some may wish to drive south of Covington, Kentucky. But for those who do, I don't see why "Don't mess with Ohio or we'll burn down Atlanta...again" cannot be issued to the proud Ohioan interested in memorializing our state, and our nation's, history.
To the critics who say that license plates are meant only for vehicle identification purposes, my response is that special plates are doing an adequate job identifying vehicles. However, they are a medium for so much more. Pennsylvania's ex-Governor Tom Ridge said that license plates are moving billboards for a state. Ohio must learn to leverage this advertising space in its favor in order to establish a unique state identity. The new Bicentennial plate is a start.
A petition must be circulated to collect 1000 names, addresses and current plate numbers of individuals willing to buy the plate when it is introduced. Contact me if you're interested in helping get the petition started.
Because when Americans see the LOCAL ADVANTAGE (always on data capacity and text messages) they may start to see the international roaming capacity, and international compatibility.
Well first, Americans are far less likely to travel internationally than Europeans are. I think that international roaming will always be a low priority for them. And anyway, since our system charges for outbound or inbound use (whereas Europeans on the cell only pay for outbound) roaming can get damn expensive. Furthermore, flat rate land line phone service is so much cheaper than land line in Europe--we only use our cells when we are not near a land line phone or maybe when we wanna use long distance and have lots of long distance minutes. That removes roaming incentive (assuming you'll be near a usable land line phone.)
TriBand GSM (900/1800/1900) phones that are FINALLY hitting the US shores in SOME number are going to be the ONLY hope we have (in the US)
That's a temporary thing...since 3G is slowly coming this way. I believe however that Europe is standardizing on CDMA 3G, the same one we'll be using...so that should work out ok. The future does not rest with 2G of anything, be it CDMA or GSM.
It's down to a simple fact that the US has done exactly the oppisite of the rest of the world, they have SEPERATE systems for each cell carrier.
Part of this is because European governments segmented land areas and awarded the areas to cell phone companies based on highest bidder--it was used as a (very expensive) taxation scheme. One which Europeans are paying out the ass for in cell phone rates. (This was done in the US for analog systems, but it was far cheaper.) With one company controlling one area, there was no choice but for everyone to standardize on one system so that people could roam freely. Here, a company could put cell phone towers which ran on any system wherever they want as long as it met FCC regulations and local tower erection ordinances.
I like having multiple protocols...there are advantages and disadvantages to them. GSM works outstandingly well for Europe--for instance, it has SMS. Here you can have SMS too...but it's used far less because of that billing issue above (and to a certain extent that most people didn't have the same protocol to actually use SMS. SMS was an act of serendipity anyway...it was a part of GSM's configuration protocol, not a purposeful cell phone feature.) I believe that CDMA is the superior protocol (although I think that TDMA is even better, and if I were to do it all over again, I would take a TDMA phone.)
The point of all this is...it's just different. I think in the long run, it'll be hard to say one system is better or worse...except that, generally speaking, telecommunication is cheaper in the US...and perhaps that's the most important metric.
(haha...metric...US...see...I made a joke...ohh nevermind...to the devil with you all)
As far as I can tell this lossage is due precisely to the lack of any leverage that carriers have over handset makers in the US.
This is actually due to several other factors, beginning with cultural--the Japanese, and for that matter, Europeans, look at cellphones very differently from Americans. Studies have shown that Americans see cell phones for one thing, and that pretty much is talking on them--web and email features are much lower on their list of priorities (and Americans have not proven themselves interested in paying for that stuff.) Part of this is because of billing issues--cell phone use is charged differently here (outgoing is cheaper than in europe, but we pay for incoming which is not paid in europe--the person making the call pays for charge, whereas land line here is a flat rate. Flat rate landline makes for cheaper internet service, whereas I suspect that having per minute charges for internet makes it more likely for the consumer to use the cell phone to browse the net, since the cost is the same anyway.)
Then there is the issue of the cells themselves. Japan can upgrade its cell phone system much faster since the country is smaller land area wise and the population is much more dense--meaning that 3G could be rolled out very quickly since far fewer new towers needed to be erected. Europe is more or less the same--especially since all cell phone companies in Europe use the same cellular system.
Moving on past that, the American cell phone companies have a lot of say in how their phones are designed--not as much as NTT DoCoMo, who designs the phones themselves, but quite a lot nevertheless.
3G is coming to the US...albeit slowly. And what you will likely see is a pretty small rush for the technology.
California did sign the agreement. Oracle expects them to abide by the contract.
... makes these disparities even more troubling."
The situation is not exactly clear yet, but the article leads me to believe that the state will claim that Oracle and this Logicon company thinger may have misrepresented themselves during the contract negotiation process. Misrepresentation is definitely something that can cause contract to get nullified:
"The disparity "raises the question that Logicon may have misled the state," the audit says. "The fact that Logicon appears to benefit by as much as $28.5 million from its role
We shall see what happens in court.
Is that how it works? Here in Columbus (Ohio) they advertise for jobs at the Pizza hut call center. I presume that it is a national call center where they route all the pizza orders.
I wonder if it really is all that great.
Energy specialists estimate that oil production will start to decline within the next 10 to 15 years, as the economically viable reserves start to run out.
Not a well written paragraph from an Economics point of view. What will happen is once the easier to tap reserves run out, production will shift to the harder to tap reserves. More likely than not, that'll lead to technology that'll make those reserves just as economically viable as the current ones now. Therefore, at worst, we may see a price rise, but I would be surprised to see a decline in production.
This can work in most states. Most of the time the legislatures did in fact pass laws requiring that photos be on licenses. (New York is an exception, a photo is not required on a license, but the commissioner of motor vehicles can require a photo if s/he wants. And of course Vermont doesn't require a photo at all.)
:-( Better yet, here in Ohio, the legislature did require that photos from commercial licenses be archived...but not those from regular operator licenses. So here's it's even easier to argue that if the legislature did not authorize the collection, and the bmv survived fine without doing it, then it is not necessary to carry out their duties, and is a violation of Ohio privacy law.
:-)
Anyway, state legislatures however have generally not passed laws authorizing their DMV's to keep the photos in archive. (NJ and CO are however exceptions--the only ones so far I've found.)Most states have privacy laws that prohibit the collection of data which is not authorized by statute.
I just took a gander through CT law, and I see the requirement for a photo license, but no requirement for digitally archiving the photo.
So here is the crux:
*a photo is required on a license by CT law
*no statute exists that says that the photo has to be archived
*since CT issued non digital licenses without archiving photos for many years, your argument can be that the DMV can carry out their duties without archiving all the photographs--in particular, yours
*i bet CT does have some privacy laws that prohibit the collection of data which is not authorized by statute, nor collecting data which is necessary to carry out duties required by statute
*with all the above, go file a mandamus action ordering the dmv commissioner to remove your photo from the database
If all the above is the case, I would ask you put some money into it and get a lawyer--to set up good precedence.
Here in Ohio, the same thing can be done (no money for lawyer right now though.
I'm not a lawyer, I don't even play one on television, but I like to think that I know something about this topic.
This is an interesting argument...but the driver's license has a valid purpose. It's not to see if you can drive a car--the silly test they administer you basically makes sure you know what the signs mean and where the gas and brake pedals are.
A driver's license is simply a form of credit. When you take the tests, and pass them, the state considers you a good risk, and gives you credit to drive. Get a speeding ticket...that's ok...because you've got the credit for it. Eventually you'll pay off the credit (time will pass without more tickets) and the ticket will disappear. Get a DUI? Whoa...that's like getting foreclosed on...may lose your credit for a very long time.
The driver's license is to make sure that you are using your own credit and that what you are doing is being noted on your own credit record. That's all it does--not a thing more.
The photo though is not related to this purpose. In 1969, when my state of Ohio added the photo to the license, it was for reasons other than driving--in fact, the highway patrol had no opinion to the photo one way or another. Vermont still issues non photo licenses, as does Quebec. New York made the photo mandatory after the first WTC bombing. New Jersey made the photo mandator in January of this year (I leave it as an exercise of the reader as to why.) The driver's license not being an ID card...that's a much more interesting and reasonable argument.
photo Ontario government health card? what's that?
Actually Ontario added photographs to licenses in 1992 I believe. That was far after most US states did. And remember, several provinces still do not require photos on licenses (Quebec, New Brunswick.) Why didn't Ontario make it optional like those other provinces (well part of that is the rather passive way the assembly passed the legislation. Ontario licenses, by the Highway Act, do not have to have photos on them...but the Minister of Transportation may require someone to be photographed for a license.)
The Ministry of Transportation does keep the photos in their database, but I believe that you can fight that with the Ontario Privacy Commissioner--in fact, I've been telling someone to do just that.
Since Sept. 11, Ellison argued, those qualms no longer make any sense: ''It's our lives that are at risk, not our liberties,'' he said.
''Like, that's really disturbing. Like, don't mess with my mall experience. O.K., so people have to die over here without this, but that's not going to affect my experience going to the mall.'' He exhaled, and in his regular billionaire voice asked, ''I mean, what the hell is going on?''
It's funny to me that the second richest man in the world, who has everything, seems so sincerely scared of being killed. I mean, do you think he's saying these things as part of his salesmen's pitch (which is entirely possible...he could be a closet privacy activist but such a good salesman that we would never know) or is the fear of being killed randomly part of his psyche?
I suspect he is also really obsessive about the food he eats, exercising, doing yoga, et cetera. All the money in the world can't buy him another body, or a better body, and he probably knows that in the back of his mind. Hence we have a person who is likely very afraid of dying.
Not to mention the ego trip of being omniscient. Because if Oracle databases know everything, then at some level, he knows everything.
''I really don't understand. Central databases already exist. Privacy is already gone.''
For him. There's no doubt it's gone for him...it would be hard living his life and maintaining any sense of privacy. The rich and famous are the least sensitive to data privacy issues, because frankly, they don't understand them. How can they have a good grasp of what privacy is, when they don't live private lives. Actors should though--they aren't getting paid all that moolah because they are working really hard--they are getting paid all that moolah because they are selling the rights of their "image." That brings along a certain amount of disadvantages, like no privacy, but you are getting paid for it. Ellison likely never got paid for it.
It is a federal crime to _require _ your SSN for any reason other than social security
You are referring to the Privacy Act of 1974...which regulates how governments at all levels may use and collect SSN's.
Business can do more or less what they want, unless they are prohibited from doing so by state law.
The Privacy Act of 1974 did in fact prohibit SSN usage by governmental agencies, except for quite a lot of reasons, including taxes and driver's license issuance (since some states were collecting SSN's prior to 1974.)
Regrettably, federal law requires all states to collect SSN's for licenses to prevent child support fraud.
Among the applications required by emergency management agencies are voice, video, instant messaging
fuzzyvixen69: IMPORTANT MESSAGE! Terrorists have flown commercial airplanes into the WTC...tens of thousands possibly dead, billions in property damage. Get out of the New York area! Ohhh the humanity!
bigballs15: a/s/l?
Fuck vi! To hell with emacs!
Go edlin!
I still cannot figure out how he says storing data on DRAM is cheaper than storing it on hard-disks. Maybe, if you buy in bulk?"
Does anyone remember the SNL skit concerning a bank which specialized in making change?
"From a dollar, you can get 20 nickles. You could get 10 nickles and 50 pennies--if you want. How do we do this...?volume!"
That's what I thought of.
A (blank) ID with smart card functions and other forgery deterrents would be MUCH more difficult to fake
which is what they say everytime they bring out a new driver's license...the only time they didn't say that is when we had non photo licenses--because then it just didn't matter
listen, the state has to make them cheaply, quickly, and provide them to millions of people--i think if you consider those requirements, then you could not really create something that is also simultaneously difficult to forge.
California has the nation's hardest license to copy...still they have to make them in lots of 22,000 per day, send them out by us mail, and do it for about $3 a card. A national ID card would have to be produced in higher quantities for probably the same amount of money or slightly more. If they can do it cheaply and quickly with what they have, it probably wouldn't take much for a lone person to figure out too.
It's all about trust relationships.
Damn straight. In the old days, we just trusted the person that they were whom they claimed to be. It's much easier than trusting the DMV.
The national license (or national regulations of existing ones) would seem to be setting an appropriate standard for the 'easy' Ohio one to be forced up to. If anything issues of forgeability might affect the cheapo fakes, but seem unlikely to make things much different for a professional.
The difference between faking an Ohio and a California license is not that big (they are there, but not in a huge way. )You have to remember, the standards are encumbered by states needs which include
a.) cost. most of the cost of licensing comes from paperwork tranasction costs--licenses themselves need to be made pretty cheaply
b.) speed. licenses need to be produced quickly and for huge amounts of people
c.) visual security--the only types of security measures which are effective are those which are visible to the naked eye. clearly microprinting and secret features are effective only for law enforcement, but even they know that they dont' need those--they can check in their computers if the license is real or not.
As far as I'm concerned, states are screwed. Within weeks of the introductoin of the new California license, good fakes ones started to appear. And as for Ohio...the current license dates back to 1995, and it simply is too old now, but the cost of changing to a new one is huge, and really won't get us anywhere anyway.
Think about it this way:
There are basically two types of people making license forgeries--those doing it to get underage peeps into bars, and those doing it to do money fraud--cash out bank accounts, make bad checks, et cetera.
Let's say the forger is in California. He can decide to make either a California license (which is not impossible...but hard to do) or a Ohio license (much easier.)
The bonus to making the Ohio license is, Californians may have seen it, but won't be acquianted with its peculiarities--peculiarties that the forger himself may not know well enough to make. On the other hand, Californians know California licences well, and the forger will have to work hard designing those peculiarities (but one advantage to him is, he'll have at grasp about 30 million examples of the license to look at.)
If he's doing it so that underage peeps can get alcohol, he may just do it a bad Ohio one--and no one will know the difference. For money fraud purposes, the extra legitimacy involved may require a California license.
So the point is, different forgers around the country have the specialties--rare is it that one forger can make a good copy of more than half a dozen states--there is simply no need for them to do that.
So we standardize the license, or create a national ID. That means that every forger, no matter where they are or what purpose they are forging for--will be putting in all their resources and time into forging the National ID (and they'll all have 250 million copies of it to examine, take apart and immerse in all sorts of liquids in order to figure out the best way of making it look good.)
If it takes them more than a week to make a perfect copy...its because they were being lazy. Detecting forgery on an out of state license is hard, but detecting forgery on a really well made instate license is harder. So funny enough, my theory is that the current system is actually slightly better.
Regrettably, the last state has given up on this. Congress now requires states to require SSN's on DL renewal/first time issuance in order to--get this--track dead beat parents.
Michigan threw a hissy fit about it and sued--but didn't get anywhere. (It wasn't the best case in my opinion.)
I believe this is entirely possible. In the mid 90's (we are talking 1995-1997) there was a belieft that Congress was going to force states to set the DL numbers to the SSN. Some states changing their license making equipment at the time, like Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New York, decided to set themselves up for this possiblity.
The DL numbers in those states are 9 digits long--but are *not* the Social Security Number. They are spaced out all funny to indicate such (as opposed to xxx xx xxxx a PA license reads something like xx xxxx xxx or something like that.) I guess their thinking was, at some point, they may have to change, so might as well be ready for it.
My theory is that it's entirely possible that you'll either find
a.) a person with a DL number which matches another individual's SSN
or...
b.) a person with a DL number with matches not only their SSN, but also their DL number if they live in a state which still uses the SSN as a DL number (which in about 5 years will probably be elminiated by all states.)
A bunch of states (IL, MI, NK, WI, MN, FL--just to mention a few) use a stardardized (long) number which is a hash of your name in Soundex, bdate and a few digits at the end. It is entirely possible that you could move from one state using this system to another state with this system--and have the exact same DL number. Obviously, two people with the same name and bdates in two separate states could have the same number as well.
Let me make a prediction--in 10 years, some state is going to stop printing DL numbers on licenses because of identity fraud risks--and the license number will be encyrpted into machine readable form.
As an incidental point, perhaps one already mentioned, SMS is, after all, serendipity. It was included in the GSM protocol, as I recall, as a way of sending messages to the phone for configuration purposes from the network carrier. It caught the cell phone industries completely by surprise that SMS had uses for the cell phone public. CDMA/TDMA didn't need SMS because, funny enough, they had more sophisticated configuration protocols.
:-)
So it irkes me when people say behind the curve.
When Oregon first introduced their new digital license, they said it was uncounterfeitable...blah blah blah.
So...a bunch of smart ID theft artists broke into an Oregon DMV office, stole the Polaroid ID printer, 5000 ID card blanks and Holograms. The DMV went out of their way to note that no one with a fake license could go into a DMV or drive on the license--but that's hardly the reason why they stole all the equipment.
The Oregon theft I think was the biggest, but the same thing has happened in Florida and Kentucky as well.
...the ones not requiring you to submit your fingerprint for an fscking driver's license :-)
Do be careful when you see the word "notary" in reference to a foreign country. I guess for the purposes of what you said up there and what the article is about, you can sorta use it in the same way.
49 states are "common law" states. A notary public in these states doesn't do anything else except notarize (certify) documents (that the person is whom they claim to be and that they sign the document intentionally and not under duress...etc.)
Brazil, most foreign countries, and Lousiana are "civil law" jurisdictions. Notaries in those places do a lot more than just certify documents. They are actually lawyers who have quite a lot of interesting powers and duties. For instance, a Lousiana notary is involved in the buying/selling of a home (in the other 49 states, we use "title agencies.)
My point is, in the 49 states, notaries don't really do all that much...whereas notaries in civil law countries are quite a part of everday life--so there may not be all that much of a reason for notaries to go online here--but notarial services in civil law countries is quite a convenience.
This topic is similar in spirit to the idea of printing a person's diary after they die (a famous person for ease of argument.) In life, they would have some right to privacy, but do they have the same right after death?
Family and friends may have the right to privacy...since while the dead person may not suffer anguish in having his/her privacy being invaded, friends and family may.
On the other hand, think about it this way: a peeping tom is (surreptitiously)looking at you getting undressed--is your privacy invaded when he starts looking at you, or when you *realize* he is looking at you. Is your privacy invaded at all if you completely undress and you never realized he looked at you do it? Since a person is dead, and doesn't realize people poking around in their stuff, that could be similar to a person living and not realizing that someone is poking around in their stuff--or looking at them undress...since neither the dead person, nor the live person who doesn't know any better--suffer any emotional anguish.
On a quick side note...the political argument about the rich giving money to their kids is interesting in that the very rich often figure out ways to get around inheritance taxes, since they have the money to form trusts and lawyers to figure out that sorta thing. It's the not-so-rich who get hammered with them. (Farmers, who are rich by land but not by any other type of wealth, often get screwed here.)