No, but it's the same information in yet another file that can be compromised/lost on a stolen laptop/etc. It just multiplies the existing risk.
The way to deal with this is to make the information of little value. e.g. the only kinds of things someone could do with your SSN would be along the lines of paying your income tax, which would equate to giving you money.
The ones in the unions do the actual work and are the lowest paid. If you want to save money, get rid of most of the middle management.
Assuming that it is possible to do this without giving them so much "compensation" that it actually costs more money to fire them. Of course that would still leave plenty of managment.
Actually, if you want to save government money get us the hell our of Iraq! The only ones who have benefitted from that senseless waste of lives and money is the oil companies, due to the further destabilization of the region.
The oil companies are doing very well right now. Alsi they arn't the only "people" to have benefitted. There's been all sorts of corruption and "backhanders" involved.
You know, I don't see how this is any different then requiring an employer to submit a 1099 for contract workers and other similar paid people. I mean the changes are so it reports the total amount of sales (income) a merchant or business owner has made through a credit card account. It would almost be the same as the card companies issuing a 1099 to the merchants.
The real SSN problem is their use for completly unrelated purposes. Including as proof of identity. Using them as an authenticator rather than an identifier is where the problem is. It's an interesting question what, if anything, can be used as an authenticator between two parties. But having one (and typically only one) of the parties produce a list of identifiers can't do this.
Elemental fluorine is highly reactive, yes, but that doesn't necessarily carry over to fluorine compounds, because the fluorine in the compound is already reacted, by virtue of the fact that it's in compound.
It can be the case that compounds containing highly reactive elements are very stable.
But anyway - a lot of things are explosive. A tablespoon of petrol in a large barrel is sufficient for a good bang. It's just the question of getting the mixture right.
Getting the fuel/air mixture right is the difficult part. There is a lot of engineering goes into ensuring that this happens inside the engine.
And I also heard about two boys playing and they got hold of an inner tube for a tractor. They filled it with gas from a gas welder and added a long fuse. They nearly cracked all windows in the village they lived - and they did get a beating by their father afterwards...
In this case it would be fairly easy to get the right gas mixture into the container. A party balloon filled with two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen will make a bigger bang than one filled with pure hydrogen.
And overheated water boilers are fine too! Just watch that episode on Mythbusters...
With incompetent plumbers being the danger here. Not also that Mythbusters have never managed to get a car fuel tank to explode, dispite trying hard. Thus being one of those things which requires "Hollywood physics and chemistry". Not that "terrorists" appear to watch Mythbusters, otherwise they'd know things like in order to turn a propane tank into a bomb you need high explosives. Putting one in a fire will at most result in a jet of flame after some time.
Cults engage in serious mind control. Religions are just a set of spiritual principles. For example, there are some Christians who worship in a cult-like society, and some that do not.
Also not all cults are religious. Psychotherapy and politics can also be the basis for a cult.
I think, under the law, if microsoft refused, I could sue and the burden of proof would be on microsoft to show reasonable suspicion that I was copying the software, which would be difficult under nearly all circumstances of legitimate use.
You could also expect Mircosoft to settle if they were sued. Indeed the suprise here is that Autodesk didn't offer a large amount of money to avoid a judgment against them. A judgment which could cost the proprietart software industry a lot of money...
Last time I checked, my copy of Shrek 2 had a picture of a two green ogres a donkey and a cat on it, not Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz and Antonio Banderas
If well known actors providing the voices in an animated movie don't get on the box what chance has someone who is much less well known.
Hollywood actors don't give a shit that the creative talents of special effects guys or camera crew don't get rewarded with millions, if this guy wants fairness, why doesn't he complain about all the rest of the production crew not getting an equal share?
Do stunt doubles of star actors get royalties? These people often have to work very hard.
This guy has the nerve to complain that he was ONLY paid $100k to essentially do voice over work.
Over 15 months, which equates to $80k per annum, quite possibly without this being the only job he was doing at that time.
Apparently, he has absolutely no frame of reference for the entertainment industry (or at least, no frame of reference that's grounded in reality).
Which is all too common with the entertainments industry!
By that rationale, eveyone who had ever done voice-over work for documentaries, or was a guest on a radio show would be a millionaire. The problem here is that this person a) maybe didn't negotiate well at the onset of the project and b) is confusing the success of the game with his success. These games didn't succeed and become wildly popular BECAUSE of this person's voice (or simulated gait for crying out loud). Rather, this person gained popularity due to the game's success (due to the design, art work, marketing, R&D, etc etc). This just sounds like a whiney guy who can't find other work....maybe because he isn't that great as a "voice actor".
It's only a minority of actors who are paid "royalties" in the first place. Typically actors, like other people, are paid for the work they actually do.
They restrained a Brazilian electrician then shot him in the head 7 times suspecting him of being a terrorist. His name was Jean-Charles De Menezes.
But does anyone know the names of his killers.
After the police essentially investigating themselves for the incident, it was decided that it was a health and safety violation.
Things would have been very different had a group of Brazilian electricians injured (let alone killed) a plain clothed police officer they suspected of being a terrorist. For all anyone knows Mr De Menezes may have died thinking he was facing a terrorist attack.
The pornography industry has an unwritten agreement not to prosecute non-commercial copyright infringement of their materials. This has not made pornography unprofitable... at all. In fact it continues getting more profitable, as people seek out niche materials, such as interactive or fetish pornographic material.
Yet other parts of the entertainments industry do not appear to realise this. Maybe they understand things better than the RIAA, MPAA, etc.
The one big embarrassment out of that, is that it shows that they had total access to the network, and yet 9/11 occurred. So, does that mean that this was not being used for terrorism, or does this indicate that we did know and ignored what was to happen.
The other possibilities are that such monitoring isn't much use for discovering terrorists, terrorists don't discuss their plans over the phone or that the monitoring system has been infiltrated by terrorists.
Greenpeace's FOUNDER quit because he had had it with the exaggeration and the "we won't be happy until humans produce zero carbon dioxide" attitude.
Hardly the only example of a founder leaving because of a "kook takeover". It was mentioned recently on Slashdot that the founder of MAD quit, because most of the people involved were not against drunk driving so much as against alcohol...
'Greenpeace reserves the right to arbitrarily change a company's score if they decide the company did something disagreeable' I tkae this as popularity points so to speak, the companies have to "suck up" to them if they don't want to "lose" points.
Which makes the whole thing and utterly meaningless exercise. As well as a waste of resources, thus not very "green". Wonder how well Greenpeace itself would rate for "greenness":)
Car manufacturers would certainly not try to force you to buy a certain configuration. The car industry is a good example of "mass customization", that is, you buy a basic configuration which you then customize by adding different options. It is very strange that computers are sold with a forced to buy option, which not even adds to the functionality of the machine.
Especially considering that computers (even laptops) tend to be much more modular than cars. Also a larger HDD or more RAM may take up no more physical space. Whereas it would be tricky to increase the cargo or fuel capacity of a car. It's not impossible to find suppliers where you alter any component of a computer, except the OS.
In order to use that car you bought, you have to agree to a separate legal agreement (road rules) with a third party (the government) who was not involved in the legal and financial transaction of buying the car. Furthermore, that legal agreement was not conveyed to you before you purchased the car.
That's if you want to drive the car on public roads. If you wanted to use the car somewhere else, e.g. a racing circuit, there might be very different rules related to driving it.
Why is a car considered a single product, while a computer including an operating system is not? The computer is pretty useless without an operating system.
A car isn't of much use without fuel. But someone selling you a car can't tell you where to buy fuel. If you intend driving on public roads having at least third party insurance tends to be a requirement, but again a car seller can't insist that you buy their insurance before they will sell you the car.
What if ASUS doesn't want to sell it to you without an OS ?
Then they can't sell it in France. About the only way in which they may be able to legally sell a computer with an OS in France is if they wrote one from scratch. On the other hand Renault can't force you to buy your fuel from Elf.
The operating system is a component of the computer, just like the processor, video card, sound card, network card, monitor, keyboard, mouse,... Just because it's not hardware doesn't make it less necessary for using the end product.
In many cases types of monitor, video card, HDD, optical drive, keyboard, mouse, CPU, memory, etc are options. How is with or without an OS different from with or without a DVD drive or one stick of RAM vs two sticks of RAM?
The law explictly, specifically, prohibits tie-ins. It's the fucking law. It applies to carpets, car insurance, hair stylists and frozen vegetables. So why shouldn't it apply to computer and operating systems?
If you or Asus don't like it, why don't you fucking go to Russia or something?
This is, in my opinion, where the problem lies. Many computer dealers who sell only systems with Windows pre-installed will only sell you a system if you sign a purchase contract. This purchase contract is separate from the Windows EULA; it states, among other things, that you must buy the entire package, and that you can only return the operating system if you return everything else in the system.
Such a contract only has any effect if the "law of the land" supports it. If there is applicable statute or case law which says otherwise then such a "contract" is null and void.
It is usually Americans who use the "Yeah but we aren't as bad as [insert worse country here]" argument to justify censorship or the curtailing of freedoms.
Kind of hard to do this with things like proportion of the population in prison though...
It is also usually Americans shouting about how the whole world and his dog is anti-American.
Or "anti-smitic" if the US/Israel relationship is involved.
It seems China and the USA have more in common than just the same aim of a totalitarian police state masquerading as something soft and cuddly.
The truth is probably along the lines of government attracting the same kind of people the world over. About the only difference is that this "masquerade" appears to work best in North America and Europe.
Mourning should be optional, it should not be used by any goverment to 'focus' a 'national mind', and distract it from other atrocities ( Read human rights, tibet, etc). The fact you even use the phrase 'national mind' just re-enfoces how well the patriot re-education act has worked.
This sort of thing is hardly unique to China. There are all sorts of issues surrounding the US "Pledge of Allegiance", especially concerning the 1951 rewording. Then there was the way in which the death of "Princess" Diana was treated in the British media at the time, which included trashing TV and radio schedules for several hours for no good reason.
Slashdot Mirror
No, but it's the same information in yet another file that can be compromised/lost on a stolen laptop/etc. It just multiplies the existing risk.
The way to deal with this is to make the information of little value. e.g. the only kinds of things someone could do with your SSN would be along the lines of paying your income tax, which would equate to giving you money.
The ones in the unions do the actual work and are the lowest paid. If you want to save money, get rid of most of the middle management.
Assuming that it is possible to do this without giving them so much "compensation" that it actually costs more money to fire them. Of course that would still leave plenty of managment.
Actually, if you want to save government money get us the hell our of Iraq! The only ones who have benefitted from that senseless waste of lives and money is the oil companies, due to the further destabilization of the region.
The oil companies are doing very well right now. Alsi they arn't the only "people" to have benefitted. There's been all sorts of corruption and "backhanders" involved.
You know, I don't see how this is any different then requiring an employer to submit a 1099 for contract workers and other similar paid people. I mean the changes are so it reports the total amount of sales (income) a merchant or business owner has made through a credit card account. It would almost be the same as the card companies issuing a 1099 to the merchants.
The real SSN problem is their use for completly unrelated purposes. Including as proof of identity.
Using them as an authenticator rather than an identifier is where the problem is. It's an interesting question what, if anything, can be used as an authenticator between two parties. But having one (and typically only one) of the parties produce a list of identifiers can't do this.
Elemental fluorine is highly reactive, yes, but that doesn't necessarily carry over to fluorine compounds, because the fluorine in the compound is already reacted, by virtue of the fact that it's in compound.
It can be the case that compounds containing highly reactive elements are very stable.
But anyway - a lot of things are explosive. A tablespoon of petrol in a large barrel is sufficient for a good bang. It's just the question of getting the mixture right.
Getting the fuel/air mixture right is the difficult part. There is a lot of engineering goes into ensuring that this happens inside the engine.
And I also heard about two boys playing and they got hold of an inner tube for a tractor. They filled it with gas from a gas welder and added a long fuse. They nearly cracked all windows in the village they lived - and they did get a beating by their father afterwards...
In this case it would be fairly easy to get the right gas mixture into the container. A party balloon filled with two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen will make a bigger bang than one filled with pure hydrogen.
And overheated water boilers are fine too! Just watch that episode on Mythbusters...
With incompetent plumbers being the danger here. Not also that Mythbusters have never managed to get a car fuel tank to explode, dispite trying hard. Thus being one of those things which requires "Hollywood physics and chemistry".
Not that "terrorists" appear to watch Mythbusters, otherwise they'd know things like in order to turn a propane tank into a bomb you need high explosives. Putting one in a fire will at most result in a jet of flame after some time.
Cults engage in serious mind control. Religions are just a set of spiritual principles. For example, there are some Christians who worship in a cult-like society, and some that do not.
Also not all cults are religious. Psychotherapy and politics can also be the basis for a cult.
I think, under the law, if microsoft refused, I could sue and the burden of proof would be on microsoft to show reasonable suspicion that I was copying the software, which would be difficult under nearly all circumstances of legitimate use.
You could also expect Mircosoft to settle if they were sued. Indeed the suprise here is that Autodesk didn't offer a large amount of money to avoid a judgment against them. A judgment which could cost the proprietart software industry a lot of money...
Last time I checked, my copy of Shrek 2 had a picture of a two green ogres a donkey and a cat on it, not Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz and Antonio Banderas
If well known actors providing the voices in an animated movie don't get on the box what chance has someone who is much less well known.
Hollywood actors don't give a shit that the creative talents of special effects guys or camera crew don't get rewarded with millions, if this guy wants fairness, why doesn't he complain about all the rest of the production crew not getting an equal share?
Do stunt doubles of star actors get royalties? These people often have to work very hard.
This guy has the nerve to complain that he was ONLY paid $100k to essentially do voice over work.
Over 15 months, which equates to $80k per annum, quite possibly without this being the only job he was doing at that time.
Apparently, he has absolutely no frame of reference for the entertainment industry (or at least, no frame of reference that's grounded in reality).
Which is all too common with the entertainments industry!
By that rationale, eveyone who had ever done voice-over work for documentaries, or was a guest on a radio show would be a millionaire. The problem here is that this person a) maybe didn't negotiate well at the onset of the project and b) is confusing the success of the game with his success. These games didn't succeed and become wildly popular BECAUSE of this person's voice (or simulated gait for crying out loud). Rather, this person gained popularity due to the game's success (due to the design, art work, marketing, R&D, etc etc). This just sounds like a whiney guy who can't find other work....maybe because he isn't that great as a "voice actor".
It's only a minority of actors who are paid "royalties" in the first place. Typically actors, like other people, are paid for the work they actually do.
They restrained a Brazilian electrician then shot him in the head 7 times suspecting him of being a terrorist. His name was Jean-Charles De Menezes.
But does anyone know the names of his killers.
After the police essentially investigating themselves for the incident, it was decided that it was a health and safety violation.
Things would have been very different had a group of Brazilian electricians injured (let alone killed) a plain clothed police officer they suspected of being a terrorist.
For all anyone knows Mr De Menezes may have died thinking he was facing a terrorist attack.
The pornography industry has an unwritten agreement not to prosecute non-commercial copyright infringement of their materials. This has not made pornography unprofitable... at all. In fact it continues getting more profitable, as people seek out niche materials, such as interactive or fetish pornographic material.
Yet other parts of the entertainments industry do not appear to realise this. Maybe they understand things better than the RIAA, MPAA, etc.
The one big embarrassment out of that, is that it shows that they had total access to the network, and yet 9/11 occurred. So, does that mean that this was not being used for terrorism, or does this indicate that we did know and ignored what was to happen.
The other possibilities are that such monitoring isn't much use for discovering terrorists, terrorists don't discuss their plans over the phone or that the monitoring system has been infiltrated by terrorists.
Greenpeace's FOUNDER quit because he had had it with the exaggeration and the "we won't be happy until humans produce zero carbon dioxide" attitude.
Hardly the only example of a founder leaving because of a "kook takeover". It was mentioned recently on Slashdot that the founder of MAD quit, because most of the people involved were not against drunk driving so much as against alcohol...
No, propaganda is useless, because it's always done with a spin, half truths, and outlight lies, all mixed into one.
Which, at least short term, can be used to gain political power.
When you need to lie to make your point, people tend to think you have something to hide and are trying to trick them.
Having political power helps with dismissing and silencing people who spot your lies...
'Greenpeace reserves the right to arbitrarily change a company's score if they decide the company did something disagreeable' I tkae this as popularity points so to speak, the companies have to "suck up" to them if they don't want to "lose" points.
:)
Which makes the whole thing and utterly meaningless exercise. As well as a waste of resources, thus not very "green". Wonder how well Greenpeace itself would rate for "greenness"
Car manufacturers would certainly not try to force you to buy a certain configuration. The car industry is a good example of "mass customization", that is, you buy a basic configuration which you then customize by adding different options. It is very strange that computers are sold with a forced to buy option, which not even adds to the functionality of the machine.
Especially considering that computers (even laptops) tend to be much more modular than cars. Also a larger HDD or more RAM may take up no more physical space. Whereas it would be tricky to increase the cargo or fuel capacity of a car.
It's not impossible to find suppliers where you alter any component of a computer, except the OS.
In order to use that car you bought, you have to agree to a separate legal agreement (road rules) with a third party (the government) who was not involved in the legal and financial transaction of buying the car. Furthermore, that legal agreement was not conveyed to you before you purchased the car.
That's if you want to drive the car on public roads. If you wanted to use the car somewhere else, e.g. a racing circuit, there might be very different rules related to driving it.
Why is a car considered a single product, while a computer including an operating system is not? The computer is pretty useless without an operating system.
A car isn't of much use without fuel. But someone selling you a car can't tell you where to buy fuel. If you intend driving on public roads having at least third party insurance tends to be a requirement, but again a car seller can't insist that you buy their insurance before they will sell you the car.
What if ASUS doesn't want to sell it to you without an OS ?
Then they can't sell it in France. About the only way in which they may be able to legally sell a computer with an OS in France is if they wrote one from scratch. On the other hand Renault can't force you to buy your fuel from Elf.
The operating system is a component of the computer, just like the processor, video card, sound card, network card, monitor, keyboard, mouse, ... Just because it's not hardware doesn't make it less necessary for using the end product.
In many cases types of monitor, video card, HDD, optical drive, keyboard, mouse, CPU, memory, etc are options.
How is with or without an OS different from with or without a DVD drive or one stick of RAM vs two sticks of RAM?
The law explictly, specifically, prohibits tie-ins. It's the fucking law. It applies to carpets, car insurance, hair stylists and frozen vegetables. So why shouldn't it apply to computer and operating systems? If you or Asus don't like it, why don't you fucking go to Russia or something?
:)
Maybe Russia has similar laws
This is, in my opinion, where the problem lies. Many computer dealers who sell only systems with Windows pre-installed will only sell you a system if you sign a purchase contract. This purchase contract is separate from the Windows EULA; it states, among other things, that you must buy the entire package, and that you can only return the operating system if you return everything else in the system.
Such a contract only has any effect if the "law of the land" supports it. If there is applicable statute or case law which says otherwise then such a "contract" is null and void.
It is usually Americans who use the "Yeah but we aren't as bad as [insert worse country here]" argument to justify censorship or the curtailing of freedoms.
Kind of hard to do this with things like proportion of the population in prison though...
It is also usually Americans shouting about how the whole world and his dog is anti-American.
Or "anti-smitic" if the US/Israel relationship is involved.
It seems China and the USA have more in common than just the same aim of a totalitarian police state masquerading as something soft and cuddly.
The truth is probably along the lines of government attracting the same kind of people the world over. About the only difference is that this "masquerade" appears to work best in North America and Europe.
Mourning should be optional, it should not be used by any goverment to 'focus' a 'national mind', and distract it from other atrocities ( Read human rights, tibet, etc). The fact you even use the phrase 'national mind' just re-enfoces how well the patriot re-education act has worked.
This sort of thing is hardly unique to China. There are all sorts of issues surrounding the US "Pledge of Allegiance", especially concerning the 1951 rewording. Then there was the way in which the death of "Princess" Diana was treated in the British media at the time, which included trashing TV and radio schedules for several hours for no good reason.