>"Being anti-gay-marriage is anti-gay. Anti-gay-marriage sentiment supports a position of denying something to one class of people that another class of people currently enjoys."
I stand by what I said. I could make the same argument that if marriage grants things to married people that single people don't enjoy, then being pro-any-marriage is anti-single or anti-asexual. Denying something to another TWO classes of people. Is that cool?
Marriage is an invention and completely arbitrary. It is very possible to grant the same protections and call it something else... and believe it or not, a lot of people object to "gay marriage" simply because of the word "marriage" (since that has a lot of historical and religious meaning) and would have been fine with "civil union" or something else. And still others that think the Fed is not who should decide what marriage is... it is not in the Constitution as a Federal power, so it SHOULD be at the state level. So it isn't that those people are necessarily anti-gay. That is all I was saying. I probably should have worded it better like this "being anti-gay marriage doesn't necessarily mean being anti-gay".
BTW- should we all support marriage between three people? How about four? If not, isn't that anti-poly-whatever? That's not cool either.
Personally, I think the whole concept of marriage is obsolete. Society has pretty much proven it now. The vast majority of marriages end in failure and usually divorce and most people seem to have no interest in marrying before having children. I think perhaps it is time the government should just get out of the relationship-defining business completely (just like they should stay out of the bedroom, and many other parts of our lives).
This is and always has run Linux.... it is pretty efficient. Several years ago when I built it, 8GB was a lot. Just so happens it still works fine, so I never bothered to add more!
>"the show will be broadcast on cbs there only talking streaming."
Not in the USA it won't. Why do you think everyone is upset? No OTA, no Netflex, and no Cable. It is pay up for their proprietary streaming crap that doesn't work with ANYTHING most of us own.
"Its also free to anyone in the US who can receive CBS OTA, and available to anyone with cable."
No it's not. That is the whole problem. CBS is putting it ONLY on their stupid, proprietary streaming. Which means it won't work on TiVo, won't work on our smart TV's, won't work on our Linux computers, etc.
I mean F-that! I paid almost $1000 for a top-end TiVo and freaking $100 a month for cable with 99% channels I don't ever watch, AND I pay for a Netflix subscription. And they want me to do WHAT???
They are just BEGGING everyone in the US to pirate the show.
Main system at home: Mageia Linux 5, KDE, but use Pluma as editor, Firefox, LibreOffice, Audacity, Audacious, Claws, vlc, Pidgin, Hexchat, ssh, etc.
Several-year-old homemade computer with a really nice Asus board and a 6 core 3.2Ghz AMD Phenom II X6 1090T, Antec 750W PS with huge, quiet fan. Centurion super tower case with 5x5.25" external bays, 1x3.5" external bays, and a lot of internal ones. Huge, quiet case fan, fanless Nvidia GeForce GT 730, 8GB RAM, several SATA hard drives in removable bays plus main drive is a Sandisk SSD, LG Bluray burner. Brother MFC-L2740DW all-in-one. LG ultrawide 29" LCD monitor (2560x1080). Cyberpower UPS, ASUS RT-AC68U router running Linux (of course). Ancient Microsoft Natural keyboard.
>"While using a significant amount of bandwidth and reducing the capacity for everyone else...bothering a number of people."
You can say that about Netflix and pretty much all video- tons of bandwidth. And with watching video or listening to music without headphones- bothering people.
>"So it's bad censorship to not broadcast porn in McDonalds and Starbucks?"
I never said that.
>" Have you ever had to sit next to someone doing this at a public wifi hotspot?"
No. Have you ever had to sit next to someone watching guts being ripped out of someone in a super gory movie while you are trying to eat? (I have) Is that "bad"? Should it be banned/filtered too? How about trying to eat and chat with friends while someone "entertains" their child with some game on their phone with the volume at full blast? (I have). I could go on, but hopefully you should get my point. You can't legislate common sense and courtesy into people (unfortunately).
Oh, conversely, one might sit next to someone watching porn on a screen that isn't visible by others, using headphones at a reasonable volume so nobody else can hear anything, and doing nothing else but eating a hamburger.... bothering nobody.
>"Besides, among republicans I've seen anti-2nd amendment and pro-choice."
Exactly. It seems popular here (and many places) to think that all Republicans are identical and believe the same things. They don't. Many Republicans do not support anti-abortion. Many Republicans support certain gun control. Many Republicans do not push a religious agenda of any sort. Also, despite the summary and prevailing theory, being anti-gay marriage doesn't mean being anti-gay nor does it automatically make it a religious issue. There is probably more variation in the Republican party than any other at this point (and one reason for things like the Tea Party splinter).
In the same light, not all Democrats think we should go further in debt, should prevent private gun ownership, have a forever-growing Fed, or that we would should tax everyone out of existence.
And it also doesn't mean that all Libertarians think we should have no national defense, have no regulations, should have no federal government, or should allow corporations to rape the environment.
>"The expectation that they MUST share ALL of the same views as their party is the whole reason we're stuck in this two party rut to begin with."
It is one of many reasons... of course the biggest reason we are stuck in a rut is because of a stupid two-party system, which can never change without changing to a ranked voting system... which itself can never change because the two-parties won't allow it.
So we are always stuck with voters having to pick between what they think is the lesser of two evils OR vote AGAINST the party they are most afraid of.... and usually fueled by single issues such as those I listed above.
>"Once we determine that our customers can access our free Wi-Fi in a way that also doesn't involuntarily block unintended content, we will implement this in our stores,"
Good luck with that.
There is nothing really "wrong" with porn. But go ahead and try to define what it is and how it is "bad" while other things are "good." That is the problem with censorship. Of course, they (the establishment owners) have the right to do this, it is their own WiFi and they can do what they want. (That right should NOT extend to the government nor ISP's) But once you start mucking around with it, don't be surprised when you are held responsible for what "bad" things WILL get through.
Remember, people can't be responsible for their own actions anymore- everything has to be someone else's fault.
>"But really, you can't fix the electoral process without also fixing how legislation is tabled (death to the omnibus bill), otherwise a truly representative congress becomes gridlocked on process."
Yes, that is a danger. But perhaps that is exactly what we need more of right now. The government (most especially the Fed) is just too large, too expensive, too imposing, and too corrupt. Maybe having far fewer laws but better ones (those that really can pass muster through lots of bickering and fighting) is much better than full-steam-ahead in directions that don't seem to be working all that well.
STV is not the only want to fix the system. Just about any type of ranked/preferential voting would be 1,000 times better than what we use now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Then we could truly vote the way we want, rather than voting against who we don't want because we are always afraid of a worse outcome. Unfortunately, the RepubliCrats (the collective term I use for Democrats and Republicans) will never allow this to happen, because they don't want to give voters real choice.
>"Believe it or not, the process for intelligence oversight mostly works really well."
Oh really. So secretive oversight by government officials of secretive things done by government officials "mostly works really well"? And how are we to know this?
Reply to self. Of course, then I read it again and duh. What they said that I quoted is absolutely correct, just a little misleading. What actually threw me was this:
>"a single-board computer that plugs into specific on-board memory slots"
The article makes so much more sense:
" Like its predecessor, it's likely the new Compute Module will be compatible with SODIMM slots, which are cheaper than PCI or SDRAM slots and can carry high-speed signals reliably. "
It is just designed to use an SODIMM slot connector not because it is an SODIMM or compatible with it in any way except physically, so a project designer can buy that connector cheaply and put it on their hardware project that uses a Pi3. Neat idea!
Imagine how badly it might destroy a "real" computer motherboard to plug a pi3 into one of the memory slots:)
>" But it will be smaller, with the memory, CPU, and storage embedded tightly on a board"
This threw me until I realized it is incorrect (it is pretty late/early in the morning). The new one will have embedded STORAGE. Of course the memory is embedded, it always has been on every Pi- none of them have memory slots or expandable memory..
If they were doing this INSTEAD of fingerprinting, I would say that is a privacy improvement... but you know that isn't the case. At least you don't leave your eye prints all over the place to be traced and tracked.
I think it is completely laughable the article or summary would even mention the word "privacy".... First, anyone that thinks the FBI and other 3 letter agencies don't have access to all the biometrics collected from every other government agency is off their rocker. So what difference does this make?? I suspect they do and/or will get their hands on private databases too (are you willfully handing over your fingerprint images to Apple/Google?) Second, how is this less privacy-eroding than fingerprints???? The only thing worse for privacy is DNA... and they will be collecting that, too.
Personally, I think you shouldn't be printed in any way (DNA, Iris, or fingerprint) unless you are formally charged with a crime, and they should be purged permanently if you are acquitted... but there is no way they would ever give up that data, even if it were the law. No way.
If they wanted to collect a more harmless biometric, it should be deep vein palm info. That registration data cannot be readily abused. It can't be latently collected like DNA, fingerprints, and face recognition can. You have to know you are registering/ enrolling when it happens. You don't leave evidence of it all over the place. When you go to use it, you know you are using it every time. And on top of all that, it is accurate, fast, reliable, unchanging, live-sensing, and cheap. If you must participate in a biometric, this is the one you should insist on using. Of course, crime units WANT latent biometrics, such as DNA and fingerprints.
Of course, this doesn't mean we should support being forced to positively identify ourselves all the time (when shopping, when going to a movie, when getting gas, etc) which seems to be the going trend. Freedom and privacy are closely linked and you can't really have one without the other.
>"The productivity gain is 18 times given the reduction in the number of employees given. I do not suppose that the current employees earn 18 times what the old employees earned. So who did get the benefit of the 18 fold increase in productivity? Answer me that you thieving bastards."
I don't think the actual numbers are 18 fold. It is far more complicated than that. But in any case, say it was a 9 fold increase overall.... the reason the company failed is they priced themselves out of the market. They couldn't afford to operate [the way they were] on what they were able to charge for what they marketed. Now, apparently they can. That is a good thing. And they can now afford to charge less to stimulate demand and re-establish a market. So that is lost revenue. Plus there is a great risk, they NEED to make a lot more money to pay for all the new machinery and setup. They can build reserves, invest in themselves, and spend on researching and creating new products to be diversified so they can continue to survive in the long term.
Simple capitalism.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with them making lots more profit than before. That should be the goal of ALL companies. If a competitor comes along (which should happen if there is enough demand in an elastic market), it will force the prices down.
>"Those 1,170 jobs are essentially new jobs. Yeah, they likely pay less with fewer benefits than the old company"
Not necessarily. With being streamlined and more automated, the new jobs are usually more highly skilled with people being paid more right off the bat. Or, at a minimum, the pay might be more reasonable for the new skill sets instead of GROSSLY over-inflated by unions who raise wages not by increasing productivity or value, but by artificially creating labor scarcity.... Oh, and ultimately being the biggest cause of the loss of the whole company.
Let's see- Unity or MS-Windows 10 interfaces? What kind of choice is that? Just shoot me! I think I will stick with KDE, Mate, Cinnamon, LXDE, or XFCE!
Freedom requires a certain amount of illogical latitude. There are all kinds of things people should be free to do which might cause harm to themselves or not be rational or logical. You cannot be free in a society which imposes strict logic and reason. Logic and science would seek to minimize risk and harm, but without risk and possible harm, innovation can be severely stifled. So while it is a good thing to generally live life rationally, and with laws based on science... it cannot be taken to an extreme. And I might add, it is not in our nature to be THAT logical- emotion, religion, fantasy, faith, art, etc, are all important parts of being human and to necessary to extract the most meaning from living and enjoy the world around us.
"Difficult to Forge Because vein patterns exist inside of the body, it is practically impossible to recreate someoneâ(TM)s biometric template. The sensor of the palm vein scanner needs the hand and blood flow to register an image."
I am not saying we shouldn't use biometrics at all, that is probably unrealistic. And I am certainly not advocating we are forced to identify ourselves wherever we go (that is unacceptable to). But when biometrics are necessary, deep vein scan is perhaps the best in every way- privacy, safety, accuracy, cost, and security.
>"Biometrics, however, are biologically unique to the individual; therefore, once compromised, the individual has no recourse, [and] is at heightened risk for identity theft."
Which is why fingerprints should never be used for biometrics.
Using fingerprints and allowing a third-party to have access to that data is unacceptable. Fingerprints are left everywhere and can be collected and accessed without your permission. Once collected, that data will NEVER be erased or restricted, regardless of claims or laws. They will like go or leak into huge databases and shared between various government agencies and used however they want for as long as they want. With every crime investigation, you will be searched without probable cause.
There is only one safer and practical biometric I know of- that is deep vein palm scan. That registration data cannot be readily abused. It can't be latently collected like DNA, fingerprints, and face recognition can. You have to know you are registering/enrolling when it happens. You don't leave evidence of the biometric all over the place. When you go to use it, you know you are using it every time. And on top of all that, it is accurate, fast, reliable, unchanging, live-sensing, and cheap. If you must participate in a biometric, this is the one you should insist on using.
Sorry, I don't believe Facebook will store it encrypted and have no backdoors. And with closed-source apps and mysterious back-end stuff, who will ever know for sure, regardless of what they might claim.
Slashdot Mirror
>"Being anti-gay-marriage is anti-gay. Anti-gay-marriage sentiment supports a position of denying something to one class of people that another class of people currently enjoys."
I stand by what I said. I could make the same argument that if marriage grants things to married people that single people don't enjoy, then being pro-any-marriage is anti-single or anti-asexual. Denying something to another TWO classes of people. Is that cool?
Marriage is an invention and completely arbitrary. It is very possible to grant the same protections and call it something else... and believe it or not, a lot of people object to "gay marriage" simply because of the word "marriage" (since that has a lot of historical and religious meaning) and would have been fine with "civil union" or something else. And still others that think the Fed is not who should decide what marriage is... it is not in the Constitution as a Federal power, so it SHOULD be at the state level. So it isn't that those people are necessarily anti-gay. That is all I was saying. I probably should have worded it better like this "being anti-gay marriage doesn't necessarily mean being anti-gay".
BTW- should we all support marriage between three people? How about four? If not, isn't that anti-poly-whatever? That's not cool either.
Personally, I think the whole concept of marriage is obsolete. Society has pretty much proven it now. The vast majority of marriages end in failure and usually divorce and most people seem to have no interest in marrying before having children. I think perhaps it is time the government should just get out of the relationship-defining business completely (just like they should stay out of the bedroom, and many other parts of our lives).
>"8 GB RAM? Aww, Grandpa!!"
This is and always has run Linux.... it is pretty efficient. Several years ago when I built it, 8GB was a lot. Just so happens it still works fine, so I never bothered to add more!
>"the show will be broadcast on cbs there only talking streaming."
Not in the USA it won't. Why do you think everyone is upset? No OTA, no Netflex, and no Cable. It is pay up for their proprietary streaming crap that doesn't work with ANYTHING most of us own.
"Its also free to anyone in the US who can receive CBS OTA, and available to anyone with cable."
No it's not. That is the whole problem. CBS is putting it ONLY on their stupid, proprietary streaming. Which means it won't work on TiVo, won't work on our smart TV's, won't work on our Linux computers, etc.
I mean F-that! I paid almost $1000 for a top-end TiVo and freaking $100 a month for cable with 99% channels I don't ever watch, AND I pay for a Netflix subscription. And they want me to do WHAT???
They are just BEGGING everyone in the US to pirate the show.
Main system at home: Mageia Linux 5, KDE, but use Pluma as editor, Firefox, LibreOffice, Audacity, Audacious, Claws, vlc, Pidgin, Hexchat, ssh, etc.
Several-year-old homemade computer with a really nice Asus board and a 6 core 3.2Ghz AMD Phenom II X6 1090T, Antec 750W PS with huge, quiet fan. Centurion super tower case with 5x5.25" external bays, 1x3.5" external bays, and a lot of internal ones. Huge, quiet case fan, fanless Nvidia GeForce GT 730, 8GB RAM, several SATA hard drives in removable bays plus main drive is a Sandisk SSD, LG Bluray burner. Brother MFC-L2740DW all-in-one. LG ultrawide 29" LCD monitor (2560x1080). Cyberpower UPS, ASUS RT-AC68U router running Linux (of course). Ancient Microsoft Natural keyboard.
>"While using a significant amount of bandwidth and reducing the capacity for everyone else...bothering a number of people."
You can say that about Netflix and pretty much all video- tons of bandwidth. And with watching video or listening to music without headphones- bothering people.
>"So it's bad censorship to not broadcast porn in McDonalds and Starbucks?"
I never said that.
>" Have you ever had to sit next to someone doing this at a public wifi hotspot?"
No. Have you ever had to sit next to someone watching guts being ripped out of someone in a super gory movie while you are trying to eat? (I have) Is that "bad"? Should it be banned/filtered too? How about trying to eat and chat with friends while someone "entertains" their child with some game on their phone with the volume at full blast? (I have). I could go on, but hopefully you should get my point. You can't legislate common sense and courtesy into people (unfortunately).
Oh, conversely, one might sit next to someone watching porn on a screen that isn't visible by others, using headphones at a reasonable volume so nobody else can hear anything, and doing nothing else but eating a hamburger.... bothering nobody.
>"Besides, among republicans I've seen anti-2nd amendment and pro-choice."
Exactly. It seems popular here (and many places) to think that all Republicans are identical and believe the same things. They don't. Many Republicans do not support anti-abortion. Many Republicans support certain gun control. Many Republicans do not push a religious agenda of any sort. Also, despite the summary and prevailing theory, being anti-gay marriage doesn't mean being anti-gay nor does it automatically make it a religious issue. There is probably more variation in the Republican party than any other at this point (and one reason for things like the Tea Party splinter).
In the same light, not all Democrats think we should go further in debt, should prevent private gun ownership, have a forever-growing Fed, or that we would should tax everyone out of existence.
And it also doesn't mean that all Libertarians think we should have no national defense, have no regulations, should have no federal government, or should allow corporations to rape the environment.
>"The expectation that they MUST share ALL of the same views as their party is the whole reason we're stuck in this two party rut to begin with."
It is one of many reasons... of course the biggest reason we are stuck in a rut is because of a stupid two-party system, which can never change without changing to a ranked voting system... which itself can never change because the two-parties won't allow it.
So we are always stuck with voters having to pick between what they think is the lesser of two evils OR vote AGAINST the party they are most afraid of.... and usually fueled by single issues such as those I listed above.
"Anti-terrorism Information Sharing Is Strength Act"
Seriously, who names these stupid things? How about we call it one of these:
"Government Spying on its Own Citizens is Unconstitutional Act"?
"Acting Like Citizens Are All Terrorists Is Wrong Act"?
"Giving Up Your Rights Is Weakness Act"?
"Calling People Who Give Up Liberty Claiming To Be Patriots Is an Unpatriotic Act Act"?
>"Once we determine that our customers can access our free Wi-Fi in a way that also doesn't involuntarily block unintended content, we will implement this in our stores,"
Good luck with that.
There is nothing really "wrong" with porn. But go ahead and try to define what it is and how it is "bad" while other things are "good." That is the problem with censorship. Of course, they (the establishment owners) have the right to do this, it is their own WiFi and they can do what they want. (That right should NOT extend to the government nor ISP's) But once you start mucking around with it, don't be surprised when you are held responsible for what "bad" things WILL get through.
Remember, people can't be responsible for their own actions anymore- everything has to be someone else's fault.
>"But really, you can't fix the electoral process without also fixing how legislation is tabled (death to the omnibus bill), otherwise a truly representative congress becomes gridlocked on process."
Yes, that is a danger. But perhaps that is exactly what we need more of right now. The government (most especially the Fed) is just too large, too expensive, too imposing, and too corrupt. Maybe having far fewer laws but better ones (those that really can pass muster through lots of bickering and fighting) is much better than full-steam-ahead in directions that don't seem to be working all that well.
I am sure we could work something out.
STV is not the only want to fix the system. Just about any type of ranked/preferential voting would be 1,000 times better than what we use now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Another such example is instant runoff voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Then we could truly vote the way we want, rather than voting against who we don't want because we are always afraid of a worse outcome. Unfortunately, the RepubliCrats (the collective term I use for Democrats and Republicans) will never allow this to happen, because they don't want to give voters real choice.
>"Believe it or not, the process for intelligence oversight mostly works really well."
Oh really. So secretive oversight by government officials of secretive things done by government officials "mostly works really well"? And how are we to know this?
Reply to self. Of course, then I read it again and duh. What they said that I quoted is absolutely correct, just a little misleading. What actually threw me was this:
>"a single-board computer that plugs into specific on-board memory slots"
The article makes so much more sense:
" Like its predecessor, it's likely the new Compute Module will be compatible with SODIMM slots, which are cheaper than PCI or SDRAM slots and can carry high-speed signals reliably. "
It is just designed to use an SODIMM slot connector not because it is an SODIMM or compatible with it in any way except physically, so a project designer can buy that connector cheaply and put it on their hardware project that uses a Pi3. Neat idea!
Imagine how badly it might destroy a "real" computer motherboard to plug a pi3 into one of the memory slots :)
>" But it will be smaller, with the memory, CPU, and storage embedded tightly on a board"
This threw me until I realized it is incorrect (it is pretty late/early in the morning). The new one will have embedded STORAGE. Of course the memory is embedded, it always has been on every Pi- none of them have memory slots or expandable memory..
>"also must pay a 250,000-dirham ($68,000) fine under the sentence from the Khor Fakkan Court of Misdemeanors"
Court of *misdemenors*? $68,000 and three months for a misdemeanor?? What is a felony? 600 years and $87 million fine?
Shouldn't be a crime at all, but that is just plain crazy.
If they were doing this INSTEAD of fingerprinting, I would say that is a privacy improvement... but you know that isn't the case. At least you don't leave your eye prints all over the place to be traced and tracked.
I think it is completely laughable the article or summary would even mention the word "privacy".... First, anyone that thinks the FBI and other 3 letter agencies don't have access to all the biometrics collected from every other government agency is off their rocker. So what difference does this make?? I suspect they do and/or will get their hands on private databases too (are you willfully handing over your fingerprint images to Apple/Google?) Second, how is this less privacy-eroding than fingerprints???? The only thing worse for privacy is DNA... and they will be collecting that, too.
Personally, I think you shouldn't be printed in any way (DNA, Iris, or fingerprint) unless you are formally charged with a crime, and they should be purged permanently if you are acquitted... but there is no way they would ever give up that data, even if it were the law. No way.
If they wanted to collect a more harmless biometric, it should be deep vein palm info. That registration data cannot be readily abused. It can't be latently collected like DNA, fingerprints, and face recognition can. You have to know you are registering/ enrolling when it happens. You don't leave evidence of it all over the place. When you go to use it, you know you are using it every time. And on top of all that, it is accurate, fast, reliable, unchanging, live-sensing, and cheap. If you must participate in a biometric, this is the one you should insist on using. Of course, crime units WANT latent biometrics, such as DNA and fingerprints.
Of course, this doesn't mean we should support being forced to positively identify ourselves all the time (when shopping, when going to a movie, when getting gas, etc) which seems to be the going trend. Freedom and privacy are closely linked and you can't really have one without the other.
>"The productivity gain is 18 times given the reduction in the number of employees given. I do not suppose that the current employees earn 18 times what the old employees earned. So who did get the benefit of the 18 fold increase in productivity? Answer me that you thieving bastards."
I don't think the actual numbers are 18 fold. It is far more complicated than that. But in any case, say it was a 9 fold increase overall.... the reason the company failed is they priced themselves out of the market. They couldn't afford to operate [the way they were] on what they were able to charge for what they marketed. Now, apparently they can. That is a good thing. And they can now afford to charge less to stimulate demand and re-establish a market. So that is lost revenue. Plus there is a great risk, they NEED to make a lot more money to pay for all the new machinery and setup. They can build reserves, invest in themselves, and spend on researching and creating new products to be diversified so they can continue to survive in the long term.
Simple capitalism.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with them making lots more profit than before. That should be the goal of ALL companies. If a competitor comes along (which should happen if there is enough demand in an elastic market), it will force the prices down.
>"Those 1,170 jobs are essentially new jobs. Yeah, they likely pay less with fewer benefits than the old company"
Not necessarily. With being streamlined and more automated, the new jobs are usually more highly skilled with people being paid more right off the bat. Or, at a minimum, the pay might be more reasonable for the new skill sets instead of GROSSLY over-inflated by unions who raise wages not by increasing productivity or value, but by artificially creating labor scarcity.... Oh, and ultimately being the biggest cause of the loss of the whole company.
>"Society has failed structurally to provide many with the opportunities and tools to keep a viable career path open for their working lifetime."
Or, you one can stop blaming "society" and say that PEOPLE HAVE CHOSEN to fail to keep themselves relevant. Just sayin'
Let's see- Unity or MS-Windows 10 interfaces? What kind of choice is that? Just shoot me! I think I will stick with KDE, Mate, Cinnamon, LXDE, or XFCE!
Freedom requires a certain amount of illogical latitude. There are all kinds of things people should be free to do which might cause harm to themselves or not be rational or logical. You cannot be free in a society which imposes strict logic and reason. Logic and science would seek to minimize risk and harm, but without risk and possible harm, innovation can be severely stifled. So while it is a good thing to generally live life rationally, and with laws based on science... it cannot be taken to an extreme. And I might add, it is not in our nature to be THAT logical- emotion, religion, fantasy, faith, art, etc, are all important parts of being human and to necessary to extract the most meaning from living and enjoy the world around us.
Yes, difficult to forge. And the full entry says:
"Difficult to Forge Because vein patterns exist inside of the body, it is practically impossible to recreate someoneâ(TM)s biometric template. The sensor of the palm vein scanner needs the hand and blood flow to register an image."
I am not saying we shouldn't use biometrics at all, that is probably unrealistic. And I am certainly not advocating we are forced to identify ourselves wherever we go (that is unacceptable to). But when biometrics are necessary, deep vein scan is perhaps the best in every way- privacy, safety, accuracy, cost, and security.
>"Biometrics, however, are biologically unique to the individual; therefore, once compromised, the individual has no recourse, [and] is at heightened risk for identity theft."
Which is why fingerprints should never be used for biometrics.
Using fingerprints and allowing a third-party to have access to that data is unacceptable. Fingerprints are left everywhere and can be collected and accessed without your permission. Once collected, that data will NEVER be erased or restricted, regardless of claims or laws. They will like go or leak into huge databases and shared between various government agencies and used however they want for as long as they want. With every crime investigation, you will be searched without probable cause.
There is only one safer and practical biometric I know of- that is deep vein palm scan. That registration data cannot be readily abused. It can't be latently collected like DNA, fingerprints, and face recognition can. You have to know you are registering/enrolling when it happens. You don't leave evidence of the biometric all over the place. When you go to use it, you know you are using it every time. And on top of all that, it is accurate, fast, reliable, unchanging, live-sensing, and cheap. If you must participate in a biometric, this is the one you should insist on using.
Example: http://www.m2sys.com/palm-vein...
We all need to realize that IT IS NOT EVERYONE'S BUSINESS WHAT WE ALL DO. And you can't trust latent biometrics with security.
Sorry, I don't believe Facebook will store it encrypted and have no backdoors. And with closed-source apps and mysterious back-end stuff, who will ever know for sure, regardless of what they might claim.