So don't look at this as big brother, look at this as (possibly) a lack of parenting and the school being a bit over eager to correct it.
Well, I think you're half right. This isn't exactly Big Brother, although it more or less amounts to that. Before anyone jumps all over me for going against one of slashdot's favorite rallying cries ("it's Orwellian!") you have to keep in mind that this is not exactly "the school" doing it in the sense that everyone there agrees with or requested this policy. I doubt that teachers who have to deal with 5 or 6 classes of something like 30 (or more!) students, behavioral problems, learning diabilities that are overlooked by a teach-for-the-test system, and have mountains of papers to grade all while trying to have a life - I doubt it's those teachers who are happy to be required to enforce yet another policy. This is probably the brainchild of a handful of admins who have the time to sit around and say "how can we create top-level solutions to all our problems? I know, monitor the interwebs!" The people that are coming up with this aren't necesarily the ones who will be doing the policing or the direct enforcing, or even possibly fully thinking out the budgeting for it in both time and manhours. They're frustrated with constant bahvior problems (let's face it though, in the teen years there will always be constsant behavior problems, it's the nature of that age in life). They are sick of disaffected and lax parents, even though those parents may be in the minority they are the ones the school has to deal with the most so they appear to be a majority. And maybe the admins are a bit nosy, I've seen a couple PTA meetings with parents who are more interested in other people's kids' upbringing than their own "perfect little angels".
The end result is a vague, unfair, and unenforcable policy created by the people at the top with not a lot of regard for the devils in the details since they won't be the ones on the front lines in every instance.
So yes, it boils down to being an issue with the school, but it's amazing how bad policies like this can come from a few nosy nellies on the board who don't necessarily represent the feelings or good intentions of a majority of the teachers/admins. Sorta like how a few bad eggs in the US government can make the rest of its citizens look bad?
It's not that I don't agree with you, and pretty much everyone else here, that the school is overstepping their bounds, but the schools already do claim - and exercise - the right to punishment without trial. Simply because they are not on par with criminal court punishments, and for the sake of keeping order, this has not been challenged, and to a certain extent must be allowed. You see this everyday, teacher catches two students fighting, gives both a detention even though only one student may have been responsible for the incident and the other was just defending themself by time the teacher saw it. Is there a trial? Do the students get to call witnesses? Are any witnesses even listened to if they're not one fo the "good kids" the teacher trusts? Hardly, it's totally up to that teacher/admin, and it is often selectively enforced. Now of course to maintain order there needs to be some ability for teachers to make judgements, else the entire school day would be taken up by student trials, much as a lot of our corporate culture is now consumed day to day with IP infringement trials. Now, things like expulsions do require some sort of meeting of administrators, they can't be handed out like late slips, but even then I'm sure they don't resemble anything approaching due process.
The problem here is not going to be outright illegal acts - like photos of a kid smoking from a bong - assuming that it is reported to the police and handled soley by them (but even then it needs to be proven by a court that there were illegal substances at work). No, the problem is when administrators stert handing out punishments there's no oversight for, for acts that they have vaguely deemed as "undesirable" or "disruptive". And you can bet any amount of money there will never be a well defined list of what those offences are, and that it won't change week to week on the whim of the administrators.
This is where the schools have no business policing behavior. If it's illegal, then it should be reported to the police, if it's not illegal and done outside of school property/hours, then they should have no power to mete out any punishment of any kind. If I had kids and one of them came home and told me they got detention for something they did on MY time as a parent, I would be at the school everyday causing trouble for them and reminding them that *I* and *I alone* as the parent can punish my kids for actions taken outside of the school environment.
What next? Start handing out extra gym periods to kids who are reported not to finish their vegetables at dinner?
Will I be able to get an unsold seat at a never-sold-out event like a Minnesota Twins baseball game for $1?
Not sure why you got modded funny, hopefully part of that mod is insightful. I'm willing to bet they will not follow a true supply-demand model and will insist on a floor for all ticket prices, likely the still rediculously high price that a ticketmaster ticket works out to once their multitude of fees is tacked on. They will of course tout that this new sales model is based on supply/demand and give reasons like recouping base costs incurred as to why they will have a price floor. But even for events that have already made them a profit I'm sure you still won't see that price floor go away on the crappier seats even if it means leaving some seats unsold. It's not entirely about maximizing profit, it's also about maximizing control.
Except that it's not the guy putting on the show that will be getting the extra money, it will be ticketmaster. No more goes to the artist as far as I know. Please someone fill me in if that's not how it works.
"'But it can't be the case that that right trumps over the right that Americans would like to see, the ability of the federal government to go after criminal activity,' he said. 'And so those two principles have to be accommodated.'"
OK, so what the Attorney General is saying here is that a well-established and extremely core right to freedom of the press that is clearly enumerated in the First Amendment can be trumped by a non-existant so-called "right" for the government to prosecute criminals that people may only WANT to see?
I'm sorry, I thought I was living in a country based on laws, the rule of law, and upon a foundation of the constitution of our nation which all federal government officers and military personal have sworn to uphold. NOT a place where one man's personal interpretations of the feelings of the population somehow create new "rights" that somehow are rights fot he federal government. There are no federal government rights in the constitution, there are rights fo PEOPLE, there are LIMITATIONS for government.
Mayve when the people, through their elected representatives, actually push through amendments that clearly revoke freedom of the press and also push forward with clarity the "right" for the federal government to prosecute crimes at any cost to liberty than Gonzalez might be in the right on this one, but until then he's talking about something even he admits is at best only something people "would like to have" - as in not the law currently.
I, for one, am sick of the Bush administration and its lawyers trampling rights and rewriting laws baased on fast and loose or extremely technical interpretations of laws that are essentially legal loopholes. What they are doing is making a mockery of the law. They are searching statutes for minute differences in wordings that can be exploited to permit or disallow whatever is politically advantageous for them. And most of these interpretations seem to fly in the face of the spirit of the laws they are citing. If congress had truly intended these laws to be interpreted as is being done then they would have clearly enumerated these gotchas, not secretly imbedded them in tricky wording waiting for some clever lawyer to discover congress' "true intention" of the law that somehow went unnoticed for years. The Loophole Legality policy of the Bush admin has been used to justify everything from torture, to renditions, to suspension of haebois corpus to restrictions on speech at just about every level (I don't care how the law is interpretted, our founders never intended freedom of speech to be satisified by locking all dissenting protestors in a big cage far away from the politicians ala the RNC & DNC 'freedom of speech areas'). This has to stop. The SCOTUS needs to wake up and start telling the Attorney General that him, his crony interpreters, and his policies can go take a flying leap as THEY and not him are the interpretters of the consititution and the rights granted therein. As in the actual rights granted and the laws that pertain to them, not phantom rights that people would supposedly like to see but aren't actually in law.
To those of you in Louisiana I stringly suggest you started writing/calling/emailing/confronting in public your representatives about this. Even if you agree with the legislation in question what you need to be calling them on is why they voted FOR a bill they had reservations about. Particularly since those reservations were related to first amendment issues.
One would hope that their representatives are not only representing their constituents' views but also strongly protecting their guaranteed constitutional rights! It shouldn't matter if the bill is 100% aligned with how your constituents feel, if that bill infringes upon their rights then it is the rep's JOB to vote against it and protect the people's rights even if it's against their will. Too often the government tries to save us from ourselves but in the wrong way. In this case I think voting against a bill that infringes/removes rights is the proper thing to do even if people are requesting otherwise. If they really want the bill passed then pen it in such a way as it does NOT conflict with constitutional rights!
Wow, scary. I knew that most of the mail system had this kind of automation but I failed to put 2 and 2 together on it. I'm willing to bet that this information is probably already being collected and mined according to the points you outlined, especially after the anthrax scare in 2001. (BTW: wtf ever happened to that? IIRC no one was ever caught and it sort of just fell off the public radar, but I don't think there's been closure on that act of terrorism that could in theory happen again, even with whatever safeguards are in place.)
My point about the mail was more of an argument to give to people who think that the NSA having all their phone logs w/o a warrant is OK. I'm willing to bet that once they hear the parallel idea of a physical agent showing up daily and writing down their mail addressing info in a log all of a sudden a light will go on - gee maybe this is a bit invasive. People need to be change their thinking from "This is ok by me because I have done nothing wrong" TO "Why am I being searched/tracked when I have done nothing wrong?"
Tried to state that myself and then I just sort of flew off the handle, heh. Anyway, I totally agree. This poll is being touted to make everyone get in line and stop questioning the program.
Anyone who blindly changes their mind over a poll with a slim majority difference deserves what they get. Unfortunately for the rest of us we'll be getting it too.:-/
I read in TIME magazine last night that over 50% of the people interviewed think that the NSA call database is justified in the War On Terror
Was the article getting those numbers from Time's own poll, or the recently released telephone poll of 502 (IIRC) Americans which there are plenty of problems with? This is exactly why the saying "there are lies, damn lies, and statistics" is applicable. This single - IMHO flawed - poll is being used at every media outlet to show people there isn't a problem and 'see, most Americans think this is ok so You Should Too.'
Well that's not what democracy is about, it's not about groupthink, otherwise there would be no wheelchair access to most places, plenty of towns would probably still have public buildings segregated by race/class/religion, etc, etc. Majority - or mob - rule is something that democracy tries to prevent, just because the majority thinks one way does not mean they are right. And yet people allow themselves to be coerced by one stupid poll after another. Let's face it, anyone who is willing to answer a 50 question telephone poll is likely not terribly interested in their privacy, that fact alone should invalidate the poll as it introduces an unmeasurable - but likely significant - bias. My thought is that a more thorough, in-person poll with a larger sampling will show that in fact most Americans don't think this program is ok. But until such a less biased poll is conducted then all that will be referenced is this stupid poll that forwards the government's agenda. And if I'm proven wrong then so be it, in that case then this poll should no longer be quoted to assauge people's fears of this domestic spying program, but should be used as an alarm that this country is asleep! The populace needs to be woken up. Until 100% of the people are screaming mad at a warrantless datamining/spying program undertaken by the government against anyone and everyone regardless of guilt, then it means we have some educating to do! You wouldn't let a government agent swing by every morning and look at all the mailing addresses on letters going to/from your house, why the hell would you let them do the same to your phone records? Because you can't see it? Because "it doesn't affect me"? If nothing else the whole program is stupid because the government is looking for a needle in a haystack in these communications and thus far all their efforts are doing is adding more hay! Some of the 9-11 hijackers' calls were intercepted before 9-11, but they weren't translated in time to be of any use. Now we're expected to believe that fewer agents sifting through more data will somehow prevent another attack of the same sort? Laughable if it weren't so damn unfunny. [/rant]
Bravo. That was the best spoken and most reasoned response to the chestbeating head-in-the-sand warhawks I've seen yet. I have saved it for reference in future conversations, hope you don't mind if I quote you from time to time. Also added you as a friend. Anyone on/. who can speak their mind with such clarity and logic is a welcome addition.
I have always heard that stores can not use information attached to your credit card to track you
As i understand it the name on the card is not one of those protected pieces of information. Any credit card receipt you get lists the last 4 digits of the card and the cardholder name. The point here is if you don't want the store to associate their loyalty card with your true identity then even letting them get your real name is too much information.
Of course, whether one should really be paranoid about the local supermarket's data collected on you is another debate. But if you truly wanted to stay out of 'The System' you're not likely to have a credit card anyway, eh?;)
On a sidenote, I just love watching the reaction on clerks' faces when they ask "can I get your zipcode/phone number?" and I say no. They never give me a hassle - and had better not! - but it seems everyone else hands it over so readily that it trips them up for a second when someone actually refuses.
Otherwise use the "Fletch" approach on things like your customer loyalty cards. I keep mine under Harry S Truman
Just a word of caution, if you actually care about remaining anonymous with regards to a customer loyalty card then you can only make transactions in cash with that store. The moment you use a credit card that info is correlated to your account and then they do have your proper name associated with it. And yes, they do collect some credit card data because one of the things stores with loyalty cards like to track is how many people are paying with credit and what they're buying on credit.
On a related note I recall reading some of the compiled data from supermarkets and there are some unexpected and oddly detailed correlations, one was if someone buys (IIRC) Ragu pasta sauce there is something like an 80% chance they also own a dog.
Bravo, this is the only post I've seen thus far that cites specific examples of why people dislike SOX and how it is in fact creating uneccesary costs (in time, money, manpower, etc). Pointing out the double standard for management also elucidates the fact that the people SOX was meant to hold accountable - management who make the company-wide decisions - are not being made more responsible in some ways that perhaps they should be.
doesn't mean it wasn't still just a last minute gimmick and attempt to steal thunder from the Wii. Just means the poor bastards who had to implement it in crunch-time actually got the job done.
There is no reason to be buying SUV's other than to look retarded (SUV's are rather ugly)
I'm afraid I have to agree with the AC who already responded to you. Your statement above is total crap, or at the very least worded wrong. Let me correct it for you: There is no reason to be buying a SUV as a daily use vehicle for only one or two people at a time.
There ARE however, plenty of uses for them, including for large families who also need to tow. You can't put a family of 6 in a minivan AND tow your boat to the lake. Or anyone that actually goes offroad and needs to bring people and/or equipment. The problem here is people using these vehicles (light trucks) as personal daily transport, that's not the best use for them, and many other cars could do the same job better for less money if that's all it will be used for. But we live in a free society, based upon a capitalist market, which means you gotta take the bad with the good. Sure, it's dumb for people to be driving these around, but if they have the money then they can do that, it's theirs to waste. Do I like it? Nope. But if you start legislating personal choices like these then it applies to tons of other industries/wasteful practices. Hell, rollercoasters eat tons of power, let's just close all of them down.
I think the solution needs to be some combination of better efficiency standards for light trucks along with a different licensing scheme. That way we weed out the people who don't really need it, but if they're willing to get the SUV-class license then they still can, but others who could survive just as well with a regular car may think twice. Just a thought, there are more solutions out there, but direct bans are costly (under many definitions) and rarely the best course of action.
Totally offtopic message to you, meringuoid. I have enjoyed your sig for sometime, and only with the recent airing of the new Dr. Who series have I understood what it even meant. But damnit, I was so sure the disbaled dalek they found in the bunker was going to blast the place to hell when they all ran into the stairwell. It was a big disappointment when it simply went into hover mode.:(
That way, if some bad person steals them, we can find them! (Not sure exactly how that works if the kid is say... locked in a closet somewhere...but *shrugs* guess the Illusion of Security started long before 9/11.)
You hit the nail on the head there, any thinking person with a kid old enough to know their own name should question the purpose of the fingerprints. The sad, morbid reality is - besides having them on record for future criminal searches - that it's to help identify the body and notify the parents. When a child is recovered/found and is alive but is unable to respond they go and search the missing person's reports for children of that age, since no parent* loses a kid and doesn't file a missing persons report.
[*within reason, criminals and crackpots notwithstanding]
The point is that they could do some things, but not all. To open a bank account, for example, would need a lot of additional documentation. Some of it much harder to forge. Admittedly, not impossible but a different level of difficulty.
Unfortunately that may not be true in all situations. In the US, for example, once you have a passport number a bit of social engineering or more searching can yield the social security number, which is the key to everything - including getting a copy of a birth certificate (I have ordered a copy of my birth certificate over the phone with only my SSN), which here can be used to open a bank account. Many credit card companies don't require nearly as much information as a bank, and suddenly the crook can get two or three lines of credit up to tens of thousands of dollars in a matter of a week or so.
Admittedly, I'm not sure how easy this is to do outside the US, as our SSN system is a huge weakness being a central access point for most financial institution interactions. However I should think that any ID theif worth their salt that is now armed with your name, address, passport number, and perhaps a few more details - should be totally able to at least get a credit card in just about any country. A lot of this type of theft is supplemented with good old fashioned social engineering. All it takes is one customer service rep who feels bad for a made-up sob story abotu how they were robbed and don't have anything to verify with but their passport number and next thing you know they have the final piece of information they DO need to get into a bank account etc. When the payoff is tens of thousands of dollars per victim these people are going to put more than bare minimal effort into it.
Anyway, I think we're both in agreement that this is a bad thing regardless of the level of immediate damage that can be caused. Thanks for the reply!
Remember that the USA spent US$5.99 billion on the shuttle which was never value for money!
OK, I'm about to be slighly optimistic here which is out of character for me, so don't get on my case too hard about this. Granted $6 billion-with-a-B is a helluva lot, but we did get a lot of new tech, a lot of science, and - here it comes - can you put a price tag on millions of kids around the world being inspired? [ducks] But seriosuly, the space shuttle was our generation's Apollo and it sure as hell inspired in ways that those missions didn't. Robotic arm, crew and cargo in one ship, could (but didn't) retrieve sattelites, mutliple docking capability. I dunno, it sure was pretty in my mind. It represented the next step in space exploration that a single-shot capsule program never could. The shuttle was that first step between an orbiting can and the Enterprise. Sometimes it's good to spend a bit of time/money on some dreams.
In addition to put things in perspective a bit - we have had, what, 4 emergency spending bills for the Iraq war, each of them near $100 Billion?? I'd say $6 billion, even adjusted for inflation to today's dollars, was a bargin. The government wastes so much money on bad programs and overspending that it seems a bit misguided to point to the comparably paltry costs of a program that has expanded our knowledge of the universe and technology and helped to usher in the next crop of scientists and explorers.
The important thing is that you will not be allowed on an international flight without showing a valid passport. BA boarding procedures mandate a check of the passport against the ticket at the gate.
I think you missed the point a bit on this one. The important thing is not that they could buy a ticket in his name, it's that they got all the information they needed to do ANYTHING with his name. Identity theft is the goal here. Once you get all the information they had access to you can open a bank account, get new credit cards, get checks printed, etc. then it's spend spend spend till someone catches on and the thief is long gone but this guy's credit is ruined for life.
Unfortunately, that turned out to be Judge Kollar-Kotelly, who has less antitrust experience in her whole body than Judge Jackson had in his lovesack. Her over-the-head-ness led to a desperate, frantic plea for a settlement. Here's Factor 2.
2) While Factor 1 was going down, we had a change of Administration and the DOJ's antitrust bunch were replaced by Republican douches whose entire antitrust experience was based on the assertion that antitrust was nonsense and probably an affront to God Almighty. When presented with Judge K-K's desperate, frantic plea for a settlement, they all sprouted wood and absolutely, utterly, shamefully threw in the towel and offered up a settlement that wasn't so much a slap on the wrist as it was a long, slow, deep, wet tongue-kiss.
History isn't always written by the victors.
No, but apparently sometimes it's written by a romance novelist!
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I think you're half right. This isn't exactly Big Brother, although it more or less amounts to that. Before anyone jumps all over me for going against one of slashdot's favorite rallying cries ("it's Orwellian!") you have to keep in mind that this is not exactly "the school" doing it in the sense that everyone there agrees with or requested this policy. I doubt that teachers who have to deal with 5 or 6 classes of something like 30 (or more!) students, behavioral problems, learning diabilities that are overlooked by a teach-for-the-test system, and have mountains of papers to grade all while trying to have a life - I doubt it's those teachers who are happy to be required to enforce yet another policy. This is probably the brainchild of a handful of admins who have the time to sit around and say "how can we create top-level solutions to all our problems? I know, monitor the interwebs!" The people that are coming up with this aren't necesarily the ones who will be doing the policing or the direct enforcing, or even possibly fully thinking out the budgeting for it in both time and manhours. They're frustrated with constant bahvior problems (let's face it though, in the teen years there will always be constsant behavior problems, it's the nature of that age in life). They are sick of disaffected and lax parents, even though those parents may be in the minority they are the ones the school has to deal with the most so they appear to be a majority. And maybe the admins are a bit nosy, I've seen a couple PTA meetings with parents who are more interested in other people's kids' upbringing than their own "perfect little angels".
The end result is a vague, unfair, and unenforcable policy created by the people at the top with not a lot of regard for the devils in the details since they won't be the ones on the front lines in every instance.
So yes, it boils down to being an issue with the school, but it's amazing how bad policies like this can come from a few nosy nellies on the board who don't necessarily represent the feelings or good intentions of a majority of the teachers/admins. Sorta like how a few bad eggs in the US government can make the rest of its citizens look bad?
Hooray one of the greatest questions in our time may have finally been answered! Let's try it out!
Step 1. Steal underpants.
Step 2. Snitch!
Step 3. Profit!
Hmmmm, I think this one may need a bit more time in the laboratory.
The problem here is not going to be outright illegal acts - like photos of a kid smoking from a bong - assuming that it is reported to the police and handled soley by them (but even then it needs to be proven by a court that there were illegal substances at work). No, the problem is when administrators stert handing out punishments there's no oversight for, for acts that they have vaguely deemed as "undesirable" or "disruptive". And you can bet any amount of money there will never be a well defined list of what those offences are, and that it won't change week to week on the whim of the administrators.
This is where the schools have no business policing behavior. If it's illegal, then it should be reported to the police, if it's not illegal and done outside of school property/hours, then they should have no power to mete out any punishment of any kind. If I had kids and one of them came home and told me they got detention for something they did on MY time as a parent, I would be at the school everyday causing trouble for them and reminding them that *I* and *I alone* as the parent can punish my kids for actions taken outside of the school environment.
What next? Start handing out extra gym periods to kids who are reported not to finish their vegetables at dinner?
Not sure why you got modded funny, hopefully part of that mod is insightful. I'm willing to bet they will not follow a true supply-demand model and will insist on a floor for all ticket prices, likely the still rediculously high price that a ticketmaster ticket works out to once their multitude of fees is tacked on. They will of course tout that this new sales model is based on supply/demand and give reasons like recouping base costs incurred as to why they will have a price floor. But even for events that have already made them a profit I'm sure you still won't see that price floor go away on the crappier seats even if it means leaving some seats unsold. It's not entirely about maximizing profit, it's also about maximizing control.
Except that it's not the guy putting on the show that will be getting the extra money, it will be ticketmaster. No more goes to the artist as far as I know. Please someone fill me in if that's not how it works.
OK, so what the Attorney General is saying here is that a well-established and extremely core right to freedom of the press that is clearly enumerated in the First Amendment can be trumped by a non-existant so-called "right" for the government to prosecute criminals that people may only WANT to see?
I'm sorry, I thought I was living in a country based on laws, the rule of law, and upon a foundation of the constitution of our nation which all federal government officers and military personal have sworn to uphold. NOT a place where one man's personal interpretations of the feelings of the population somehow create new "rights" that somehow are rights fot he federal government. There are no federal government rights in the constitution, there are rights fo PEOPLE, there are LIMITATIONS for government.
Mayve when the people, through their elected representatives, actually push through amendments that clearly revoke freedom of the press and also push forward with clarity the "right" for the federal government to prosecute crimes at any cost to liberty than Gonzalez might be in the right on this one, but until then he's talking about something even he admits is at best only something people "would like to have" - as in not the law currently.
I, for one, am sick of the Bush administration and its lawyers trampling rights and rewriting laws baased on fast and loose or extremely technical interpretations of laws that are essentially legal loopholes. What they are doing is making a mockery of the law. They are searching statutes for minute differences in wordings that can be exploited to permit or disallow whatever is politically advantageous for them. And most of these interpretations seem to fly in the face of the spirit of the laws they are citing. If congress had truly intended these laws to be interpreted as is being done then they would have clearly enumerated these gotchas, not secretly imbedded them in tricky wording waiting for some clever lawyer to discover congress' "true intention" of the law that somehow went unnoticed for years. The Loophole Legality policy of the Bush admin has been used to justify everything from torture, to renditions, to suspension of haebois corpus to restrictions on speech at just about every level (I don't care how the law is interpretted, our founders never intended freedom of speech to be satisified by locking all dissenting protestors in a big cage far away from the politicians ala the RNC & DNC 'freedom of speech areas'). This has to stop. The SCOTUS needs to wake up and start telling the Attorney General that him, his crony interpreters, and his policies can go take a flying leap as THEY and not him are the interpretters of the consititution and the rights granted therein. As in the actual rights granted and the laws that pertain to them, not phantom rights that people would supposedly like to see but aren't actually in law.
Damnit. I strongly suggest you confront them. 'Stringly' not being so much a word. ;P
One would hope that their representatives are not only representing their constituents' views but also strongly protecting their guaranteed constitutional rights! It shouldn't matter if the bill is 100% aligned with how your constituents feel, if that bill infringes upon their rights then it is the rep's JOB to vote against it and protect the people's rights even if it's against their will. Too often the government tries to save us from ourselves but in the wrong way. In this case I think voting against a bill that infringes/removes rights is the proper thing to do even if people are requesting otherwise. If they really want the bill passed then pen it in such a way as it does NOT conflict with constitutional rights!
My point about the mail was more of an argument to give to people who think that the NSA having all their phone logs w/o a warrant is OK. I'm willing to bet that once they hear the parallel idea of a physical agent showing up daily and writing down their mail addressing info in a log all of a sudden a light will go on - gee maybe this is a bit invasive. People need to be change their thinking from "This is ok by me because I have done nothing wrong" TO "Why am I being searched/tracked when I have done nothing wrong?"
Anyone who blindly changes their mind over a poll with a slim majority difference deserves what they get. Unfortunately for the rest of us we'll be getting it too. :-/
Was the article getting those numbers from Time's own poll, or the recently released telephone poll of 502 (IIRC) Americans which there are plenty of problems with? This is exactly why the saying "there are lies, damn lies, and statistics" is applicable. This single - IMHO flawed - poll is being used at every media outlet to show people there isn't a problem and 'see, most Americans think this is ok so You Should Too.'
Well that's not what democracy is about, it's not about groupthink, otherwise there would be no wheelchair access to most places, plenty of towns would probably still have public buildings segregated by race/class/religion, etc, etc. Majority - or mob - rule is something that democracy tries to prevent, just because the majority thinks one way does not mean they are right. And yet people allow themselves to be coerced by one stupid poll after another. Let's face it, anyone who is willing to answer a 50 question telephone poll is likely not terribly interested in their privacy, that fact alone should invalidate the poll as it introduces an unmeasurable - but likely significant - bias. My thought is that a more thorough, in-person poll with a larger sampling will show that in fact most Americans don't think this program is ok. But until such a less biased poll is conducted then all that will be referenced is this stupid poll that forwards the government's agenda. And if I'm proven wrong then so be it, in that case then this poll should no longer be quoted to assauge people's fears of this domestic spying program, but should be used as an alarm that this country is asleep! The populace needs to be woken up. Until 100% of the people are screaming mad at a warrantless datamining/spying program undertaken by the government against anyone and everyone regardless of guilt, then it means we have some educating to do! You wouldn't let a government agent swing by every morning and look at all the mailing addresses on letters going to/from your house, why the hell would you let them do the same to your phone records? Because you can't see it? Because "it doesn't affect me"? If nothing else the whole program is stupid because the government is looking for a needle in a haystack in these communications and thus far all their efforts are doing is adding more hay! Some of the 9-11 hijackers' calls were intercepted before 9-11, but they weren't translated in time to be of any use. Now we're expected to believe that fewer agents sifting through more data will somehow prevent another attack of the same sort? Laughable if it weren't so damn unfunny.
[/rant]
Regards,
Jtheletter
As i understand it the name on the card is not one of those protected pieces of information. Any credit card receipt you get lists the last 4 digits of the card and the cardholder name. The point here is if you don't want the store to associate their loyalty card with your true identity then even letting them get your real name is too much information.
Of course, whether one should really be paranoid about the local supermarket's data collected on you is another debate. But if you truly wanted to stay out of 'The System' you're not likely to have a credit card anyway, eh? ;)
On a sidenote, I just love watching the reaction on clerks' faces when they ask "can I get your zipcode/phone number?" and I say no. They never give me a hassle - and had better not! - but it seems everyone else hands it over so readily that it trips them up for a second when someone actually refuses.
An Ulysses S Grant proposal?
[ba-dum, ching!] Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week.
(I know, technically not a founding father, but damnit no one ever claimed the art of pun was precise.)
Just a word of caution, if you actually care about remaining anonymous with regards to a customer loyalty card then you can only make transactions in cash with that store. The moment you use a credit card that info is correlated to your account and then they do have your proper name associated with it. And yes, they do collect some credit card data because one of the things stores with loyalty cards like to track is how many people are paying with credit and what they're buying on credit.
On a related note I recall reading some of the compiled data from supermarkets and there are some unexpected and oddly detailed correlations, one was if someone buys (IIRC) Ragu pasta sauce there is something like an 80% chance they also own a dog.
Bravo, this is the only post I've seen thus far that cites specific examples of why people dislike SOX and how it is in fact creating uneccesary costs (in time, money, manpower, etc). Pointing out the double standard for management also elucidates the fact that the people SOX was meant to hold accountable - management who make the company-wide decisions - are not being made more responsible in some ways that perhaps they should be.
doesn't mean it wasn't still just a last minute gimmick and attempt to steal thunder from the Wii. Just means the poor bastards who had to implement it in crunch-time actually got the job done.
I'm afraid I have to agree with the AC who already responded to you. Your statement above is total crap, or at the very least worded wrong. Let me correct it for you: There is no reason to be buying a SUV as a daily use vehicle for only one or two people at a time.
There ARE however, plenty of uses for them, including for large families who also need to tow. You can't put a family of 6 in a minivan AND tow your boat to the lake. Or anyone that actually goes offroad and needs to bring people and/or equipment. The problem here is people using these vehicles (light trucks) as personal daily transport, that's not the best use for them, and many other cars could do the same job better for less money if that's all it will be used for. But we live in a free society, based upon a capitalist market, which means you gotta take the bad with the good. Sure, it's dumb for people to be driving these around, but if they have the money then they can do that, it's theirs to waste. Do I like it? Nope. But if you start legislating personal choices like these then it applies to tons of other industries/wasteful practices. Hell, rollercoasters eat tons of power, let's just close all of them down.
I think the solution needs to be some combination of better efficiency standards for light trucks along with a different licensing scheme. That way we weed out the people who don't really need it, but if they're willing to get the SUV-class license then they still can, but others who could survive just as well with a regular car may think twice. Just a thought, there are more solutions out there, but direct bans are costly (under many definitions) and rarely the best course of action.
Totally offtopic message to you, meringuoid. I have enjoyed your sig for sometime, and only with the recent airing of the new Dr. Who series have I understood what it even meant. But damnit, I was so sure the disbaled dalek they found in the bunker was going to blast the place to hell when they all ran into the stairwell. It was a big disappointment when it simply went into hover mode. :(
There is no such english word as virii!
Mods, please don't even bother modding people up who use the term. Seriously, where do people even pick this up?
You hit the nail on the head there, any thinking person with a kid old enough to know their own name should question the purpose of the fingerprints. The sad, morbid reality is - besides having them on record for future criminal searches - that it's to help identify the body and notify the parents. When a child is recovered/found and is alive but is unable to respond they go and search the missing person's reports for children of that age, since no parent* loses a kid and doesn't file a missing persons report.
[*within reason, criminals and crackpots notwithstanding]
Unfortunately that may not be true in all situations. In the US, for example, once you have a passport number a bit of social engineering or more searching can yield the social security number, which is the key to everything - including getting a copy of a birth certificate (I have ordered a copy of my birth certificate over the phone with only my SSN), which here can be used to open a bank account. Many credit card companies don't require nearly as much information as a bank, and suddenly the crook can get two or three lines of credit up to tens of thousands of dollars in a matter of a week or so.
Admittedly, I'm not sure how easy this is to do outside the US, as our SSN system is a huge weakness being a central access point for most financial institution interactions. However I should think that any ID theif worth their salt that is now armed with your name, address, passport number, and perhaps a few more details - should be totally able to at least get a credit card in just about any country. A lot of this type of theft is supplemented with good old fashioned social engineering. All it takes is one customer service rep who feels bad for a made-up sob story abotu how they were robbed and don't have anything to verify with but their passport number and next thing you know they have the final piece of information they DO need to get into a bank account etc. When the payoff is tens of thousands of dollars per victim these people are going to put more than bare minimal effort into it.
Anyway, I think we're both in agreement that this is a bad thing regardless of the level of immediate damage that can be caused. Thanks for the reply!
OK, I'm about to be slighly optimistic here which is out of character for me, so don't get on my case too hard about this. Granted $6 billion-with-a-B is a helluva lot, but we did get a lot of new tech, a lot of science, and - here it comes - can you put a price tag on millions of kids around the world being inspired? [ducks] But seriosuly, the space shuttle was our generation's Apollo and it sure as hell inspired in ways that those missions didn't. Robotic arm, crew and cargo in one ship, could (but didn't) retrieve sattelites, mutliple docking capability. I dunno, it sure was pretty in my mind. It represented the next step in space exploration that a single-shot capsule program never could. The shuttle was that first step between an orbiting can and the Enterprise. Sometimes it's good to spend a bit of time/money on some dreams.
In addition to put things in perspective a bit - we have had, what, 4 emergency spending bills for the Iraq war, each of them near $100 Billion?? I'd say $6 billion, even adjusted for inflation to today's dollars, was a bargin. The government wastes so much money on bad programs and overspending that it seems a bit misguided to point to the comparably paltry costs of a program that has expanded our knowledge of the universe and technology and helped to usher in the next crop of scientists and explorers.
I think you missed the point a bit on this one. The important thing is not that they could buy a ticket in his name, it's that they got all the information they needed to do ANYTHING with his name. Identity theft is the goal here. Once you get all the information they had access to you can open a bank account, get new credit cards, get checks printed, etc. then it's spend spend spend till someone catches on and the thief is long gone but this guy's credit is ruined for life.
2) While Factor 1 was going down, we had a change of Administration and the DOJ's antitrust bunch were replaced by Republican douches whose entire antitrust experience was based on the assertion that antitrust was nonsense and probably an affront to God Almighty. When presented with Judge K-K's desperate, frantic plea for a settlement, they all sprouted wood and absolutely, utterly, shamefully threw in the towel and offered up a settlement that wasn't so much a slap on the wrist as it was a long, slow, deep, wet tongue-kiss.
History isn't always written by the victors.
No, but apparently sometimes it's written by a romance novelist!