There are tools to generate these, though. Basically, keygens for SSNs - which you can sort or filter by birth year, city, and probably a bunch of other things. (I'm not sure what all is encoded in a SSN).
I've worked in a couple of different places where they were used, along with random names addresses, etc., as test data for databases where we don't want to have real customer data on our less secure development networks.
I think it unlikely that the VA depended on the "Last Accessed Date" when they made their claim that the data hadn't been stolen.
Given what we've seen so far in the case, it's more likely that they carefully scanned it, determined the data was still there, and therefore must not have been stolen.
The world is not in crisis - if anything, humans may be approaching one.
You're being far too literal.
It should be pretty obvious that when someone in this kind of context says "the world" they are actually talking about humanity. No, global warming, or an asteroid impact, or a nuclear war, or runaway deforestation or strip mining or anything else of the type won't destroy the world.
But it does have a good chance of changing it to be less favorable to human life.
As a small part of said human life, I'm happy to see any efforts made to avoide this.
When I first started my last job, I didn't have a bank account for the first three months I worked there. (I had to close my current ones due to SEC regulations, and it took me three months to open a new one due to errors I'd made while closing the original.)
Since I was staying with a friend for the first month, while looking for an apartment, I didn't have a permanent address, either.
So, I picked up a check at the building I worked in, and took it to the company's bank to cash it. You can always cash a check at the bank that the account is at, whether you have an account there yourself or not.
So, yeah, a bank account is not a requirement. And, in all the jobs I've had, I was never asked about a bank account until after I already had the job.
The deer and rabbits didn't rape this "lifeless rock" [...] and use up all they could because they felt entitled to it, above other species, as humans have done
You obviously haven't been to Australia recently...
Or Oregon, for that matter, where deer overpopulation is a frequent problem.
In fact, of all species, humans are the only ones we know of that have made a conscious effort to preserve something of the environment, rather than just use as much as possible until famine and disease reduce our population.
How exactly will they imprison the entire Walmart branch's employees at once?
They won't. Just the clerk at the checkout counter who makes the actual sale.
The floor person who helped the kid find it, and the stocker who put it on the shelf, and bagger who packed it up to be carted out to the car, will not be held responsible.
And, of course, the manager of the store, as a person who has a salary high enough to afford a lawyer if need be, would never be charged with anything related to this.
If I want to go to a public library I have to drive several miles down a busy highway... And once I get to the library I have to share one of two computers with everyone else. Also there is no wifi where I live.
And if we thought for a minute that North Korea and Iran would follow in this tradition of having nuclear weapons but not using them...
North Korea already has nuclear weapons, and has not used them.
But there is, so far, no evidence that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons. And nobody, not even Iran, is arguing that Iran having nuclear weapons would be a good thing. The point of contention relates to nuclear power plants. Under 1968's Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, nations have the right to develop nuclear power, including enriching their own uranium.
What we (that is, the U.S., Germany, and a few other nations) are trying to block is Iran's uranium enrichment program, instead insisting that they purchase enriched uranium from us.
Iran, however, does not want to be dependent on foreign nations for their energy needs, as they are familiar with where that sort of thing leads. They have in the past said they'd allow inspectors from the IAEA, but that giving up their enrichment program altogether was non-negotiable.
We have refused to negotiate on allowing enrichment, even overseen by IAEA inspectors. So, because of our complete unwillingness to negotiate, they now have an on-going, and uninspected, uranium enrichment program going on.
And, if they've learned anything from the lessons of Iraq and North Korea, they will now be doing all they can to develop nuclear weapons, knowing that we won't invade if they have them, but we almost certainly will if they don't.
But when AT&T, Verizon and their cousins start to throttle VOIP bandwidth, their call quality will suffer; or their IM's will get slower, google searches will take forever to load, take your pick. Which is when they will realize something is not up-n-up and start making noise.
My suspicion is that they won't. Common thinking, supported by Verizon's and AT&T's ads, will be more along the lines "I used to use Yahoo IM, but it's just so damn slow, so now I use Verizon's. It's much better, and it supports video." and "I would never use VOIP - the sound quality is just so low. I'll just stick to my traditional cell phone."
They'll know that some of their services aren't what they should be, but it'll never occur to most people to ever wonder why.
Thanks for posting that! I admit I was confused myself until I saw the letter - now I know to be firmly in opposition to this legislation. What convinced me? He had to pull out all the old cliches:
1. This is to keep your prices low. Of course. That's always the first concern of any big business. 2. Your prices are high, and America is lagging behind, because of Clinton. Of course. Everything's Clinton's fault. The fact that Clinton vetoed the 1996 Telecommunications Act and the Republican-controlled congress over-rode his veto certainly doesn't absolve him of responsibility! 3. "the mistruths that liberal groups are spreading". What mistruths, he never actually says. Does or does not this bill specifically state that companies can pick and choose what traffic goes over their lines? 4. "liberal special interest groups have seized on this opportunity to garner guaranteed access to Internet services" Again with the liberals! And, of course, if liberals have guaranteed access to the internet, there's no telling what might happen!
Letter: High on rhetoric. Low on information. I give it a C for content, but an A+ for spin.
I just find it pretty shocking that Best Buy doesn't seem to have any set policy regarding handling of sensitive data.
I work for a small non-profit that refurbishes used computers for re-use, and we wipe every hard drive with an 11-pass system. (Probably overkill, DoD specifies just 7). Every volunteer who works on the computers is trained in how to do it, and in the importance of doing so. It doesn't take much person-time: Hook up the hard drive to a computer, boot from the Knoppix CD, and enter the command. A couple of hours later you have a clean safe hard drive with no trace of the original data.
Any employee capable of replacing a hard drive should be capable of understanding the importance of the data that may be on it.
Why?
Why is having AT&T, a group over which you exert almost no influence, examining every packet that leaves your house a hundred times better than having the government, which is bound by law and the constitution, doing it?
Many years ago, I published a column in which I espoused that same idea. The second amendment was written at a time when your average citizen would have the exact same weaponry as any government forces. Since that is no longer true, went the gist of my argument, the right to bear arms is more or less obsolete.
I have re-thought my reasoning quite a bit since then. While you won't be able to out-gun the government should it come to that, the weaponry available to the average rural homeowner is roughly equivalent to that available to the average burglar, so such weapons are still useful in self-defense.
Furthermore, to defeat a government in today's world it is not necessary for a people to completely destroy their ability to make war, but it is enough to hold them off long enough that either their people can force them to withdraw, or you make it no longer cost-effective to bother you anymore. We've seen this many times recently: in 1994, the Maya in Chiapas, armed with bolt-action rifles and sticks were able to force concessions from their government, armed with tanks and F-15s. Hell, right now in Iraq we have a bunch of people with personal firearms and improvised explosives holding their own against the most powerful military force ever assembled.
So, no, despite the imbalance of power, usage of guns to defend against a tyrannical government is far from an obsolete purpose of the second amendment.
Arthur C. Clarke was once asked when he thought the space elevator would actually be built.
He replied "About ten years after everyone stops laughing about it."
I think he's wrong in this case. It'll be built about a year before most people stop laughing about it.
Also, Spanish and Arabic. If you can say a word out loud, you can spell it. If you know the rules.
Of course, Arabic has a *lot* of rules for varying the pronunciation of various letter-combinations...
I dunno about that.
I know several companies, including the rather large one I currently work at, that rely heavily on Samba.
There's no way we're getting rid of our several hundred Unix (Solaris, HPUX, & Linux) servers, so if new versions of Windows desktop won't talk to them, we may have no choice but to switch to Linux for our 20,000+ desktop systems.
Such a switch would be tremendously expensive (in terms of time to do the switch and training for end-users), but probably less so than purchasing PC/NFS and a new version of Windows for every system. And management might finally see that there's a big payoff in long-term maintenance costs.
As for software, we're already using a lot of Java-based systems for our in-house apps, so all we need to run it on a workstation is a good web browser. Openoffice can replace MS-Office without losing document portability (in fact, gaining some since they'll be readable from Unix as well). Email, desktop publishing, database, calendaring, project planning, software configuration management tools, etc., all have Linux equivalents (often, such as with the Rational suite, the same software, from the same vendor).
I was a NeXT "Campus Consultant" (their sales/support people for universities) in 1990-91. Trying to sell them to students and faculty in 1990, two of the most frustrating questions I got:
1. After demonstrating how well it handles multi-tasking, people would ask me "yeah, but how often do you really need to run more than one program at a time?"
2. To configure a network, you simply plugged in the cable, turned the computer on, and it would detect the other computers, and ask you a few questions, with a nice gui, and voila - a network. Which would frequently be followed up by the question "yeah, but how often do you really need to share data between computers anyway?"
Remember, the competition (similar prices) at the time was a 386 running Windows 3.1.
I miss that thing: Magneto-Optical drive, 2.88 MB floppy, $300 400dpi laser printer, and all.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, at least a couple moderator's got it :)
There are tools to generate these, though. Basically, keygens for SSNs - which you can sort or filter by birth year, city, and probably a bunch of other things. (I'm not sure what all is encoded in a SSN).
I've worked in a couple of different places where they were used, along with random names addresses, etc., as test data for databases where we don't want to have real customer data on our less secure development networks.
I think it unlikely that the VA depended on the "Last Accessed Date" when they made their claim that the data hadn't been stolen.
Given what we've seen so far in the case, it's more likely that they carefully scanned it, determined the data was still there, and therefore must not have been stolen.
The hard part is finding them again after you've plugged them into the machine...
You're being far too literal.
It should be pretty obvious that when someone in this kind of context says "the world" they are actually talking about humanity. No, global warming, or an asteroid impact, or a nuclear war, or runaway deforestation or strip mining or anything else of the type won't destroy the world.
But it does have a good chance of changing it to be less favorable to human life.
As a small part of said human life, I'm happy to see any efforts made to avoide this.
My guess is, that's the point.
Likely, it's the point of a lot of firearm regulation.
At least, it doesn't seem to have much other effect.
When I first started my last job, I didn't have a bank account for the first three months I worked there. (I had to close my current ones due to SEC regulations, and it took me three months to open a new one due to errors I'd made while closing the original.)
Since I was staying with a friend for the first month, while looking for an apartment, I didn't have a permanent address, either.
So, I picked up a check at the building I worked in, and took it to the company's bank to cash it. You can always cash a check at the bank that the account is at, whether you have an account there yourself or not.
So, yeah, a bank account is not a requirement. And, in all the jobs I've had, I was never asked about a bank account until after I already had the job.
You obviously haven't been to Australia recently...
Or Oregon, for that matter, where deer overpopulation is a frequent problem.
In fact, of all species, humans are the only ones we know of that have made a conscious effort to preserve something of the environment, rather than just use as much as possible until famine and disease reduce our population.
They won't. Just the clerk at the checkout counter who makes the actual sale.
The floor person who helped the kid find it, and the stocker who put it on the shelf, and bagger who packed it up to be carted out to the car, will not be held responsible.
And, of course, the manager of the store, as a person who has a salary high enough to afford a lawyer if need be, would never be charged with anything related to this.
And you did all that just to post that comment?
But there is, so far, no evidence that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons. And nobody, not even Iran, is arguing that Iran having nuclear weapons would be a good thing. The point of contention relates to nuclear power plants. Under 1968's Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, nations have the right to develop nuclear power, including enriching their own uranium.
What we (that is, the U.S., Germany, and a few other nations) are trying to block is Iran's uranium enrichment program, instead insisting that they purchase enriched uranium from us.
Iran, however, does not want to be dependent on foreign nations for their energy needs, as they are familiar with where that sort of thing leads.
They have in the past said they'd allow inspectors from the IAEA, but that giving up their enrichment program altogether was non-negotiable.
We have refused to negotiate on allowing enrichment, even overseen by IAEA inspectors. So, because of our complete unwillingness to negotiate, they now have an on-going, and uninspected, uranium enrichment program going on.
And, if they've learned anything from the lessons of Iraq and North Korea, they will now be doing all they can to develop nuclear weapons, knowing that we won't invade if they have them, but we almost certainly will if they don't.
My suspicion is that they won't. Common thinking, supported by Verizon's and AT&T's ads, will be more along the lines "I used to use Yahoo IM, but it's just so damn slow, so now I use Verizon's. It's much better, and it supports video." and "I would never use VOIP - the sound quality is just so low. I'll just stick to my traditional cell phone."
They'll know that some of their services aren't what they should be, but it'll never occur to most people to ever wonder why.
Thanks for posting that! I admit I was confused myself until I saw the letter - now I know to be firmly in opposition to this legislation. What convinced me? He had to pull out all the old cliches:
1. This is to keep your prices low. Of course. That's always the first concern of any big business.
2. Your prices are high, and America is lagging behind, because of Clinton. Of course. Everything's Clinton's fault. The fact that Clinton vetoed the 1996 Telecommunications Act and the Republican-controlled congress over-rode his veto certainly doesn't absolve him of responsibility!
3. "the mistruths that liberal groups are spreading". What mistruths, he never actually says. Does or does not this bill specifically state that companies can pick and choose what traffic goes over their lines?
4. "liberal special interest groups have seized on this opportunity to garner guaranteed access to Internet services" Again with the liberals! And, of course, if liberals have guaranteed access to the internet, there's no telling what might happen!
Letter: High on rhetoric. Low on information. I give it a C for content, but an A+ for spin.
god only knows.
I just find it pretty shocking that Best Buy doesn't seem to have any set policy regarding handling of sensitive data.
I work for a small non-profit that refurbishes used computers for re-use, and we wipe every hard drive with an 11-pass system. (Probably overkill, DoD specifies just 7). Every volunteer who works on the computers is trained in how to do it, and in the importance of doing so. It doesn't take much person-time: Hook up the hard drive to a computer, boot from the Knoppix CD, and enter the command. A couple of hours later you have a clean safe hard drive with no trace of the original data.
Any employee capable of replacing a hard drive should be capable of understanding the importance of the data that may be on it.
Wait... that wasn't real?
But... I just finally got my first bluetooth PDA and... and...
Well, damn.
You mean, like Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates?
Why? Why is having AT&T, a group over which you exert almost no influence, examining every packet that leaves your house a hundred times better than having the government, which is bound by law and the constitution, doing it?
Absolutely! Because a for-profit corporation like AT&T would never share our private data with the government!
Many years ago, I published a column in which I espoused that same idea. The second amendment was written at a time when your average citizen would have the exact same weaponry as any government forces. Since that is no longer true, went the gist of my argument, the right to bear arms is more or less obsolete.
I have re-thought my reasoning quite a bit since then. While you won't be able to out-gun the government should it come to that, the weaponry available to the average rural homeowner is roughly equivalent to that available to the average burglar, so such weapons are still useful in self-defense.
Furthermore, to defeat a government in today's world it is not necessary for a people to completely destroy their ability to make war, but it is enough to hold them off long enough that either their people can force them to withdraw, or you make it no longer cost-effective to bother you anymore. We've seen this many times recently: in 1994, the Maya in Chiapas, armed with bolt-action rifles and sticks were able to force concessions from their government, armed with tanks and F-15s. Hell, right now in Iraq we have a bunch of people with personal firearms and improvised explosives holding their own against the most powerful military force ever assembled.
So, no, despite the imbalance of power, usage of guns to defend against a tyrannical government is far from an obsolete purpose of the second amendment.
Arthur C. Clarke was once asked when he thought the space elevator would actually be built. He replied "About ten years after everyone stops laughing about it." I think he's wrong in this case. It'll be built about a year before most people stop laughing about it.
Also, Spanish and Arabic. If you can say a word out loud, you can spell it. If you know the rules. Of course, Arabic has a *lot* of rules for varying the pronunciation of various letter-combinations...
I dunno about that. I know several companies, including the rather large one I currently work at, that rely heavily on Samba. There's no way we're getting rid of our several hundred Unix (Solaris, HPUX, & Linux) servers, so if new versions of Windows desktop won't talk to them, we may have no choice but to switch to Linux for our 20,000+ desktop systems. Such a switch would be tremendously expensive (in terms of time to do the switch and training for end-users), but probably less so than purchasing PC/NFS and a new version of Windows for every system. And management might finally see that there's a big payoff in long-term maintenance costs. As for software, we're already using a lot of Java-based systems for our in-house apps, so all we need to run it on a workstation is a good web browser. Openoffice can replace MS-Office without losing document portability (in fact, gaining some since they'll be readable from Unix as well). Email, desktop publishing, database, calendaring, project planning, software configuration management tools, etc., all have Linux equivalents (often, such as with the Rational suite, the same software, from the same vendor).
I was a NeXT "Campus Consultant" (their sales/support people for universities) in 1990-91. Trying to sell them to students and faculty in 1990, two of the most frustrating questions I got: 1. After demonstrating how well it handles multi-tasking, people would ask me "yeah, but how often do you really need to run more than one program at a time?" 2. To configure a network, you simply plugged in the cable, turned the computer on, and it would detect the other computers, and ask you a few questions, with a nice gui, and voila - a network. Which would frequently be followed up by the question "yeah, but how often do you really need to share data between computers anyway?" Remember, the competition (similar prices) at the time was a 386 running Windows 3.1. I miss that thing: Magneto-Optical drive, 2.88 MB floppy, $300 400dpi laser printer, and all.