Why oh why do people give out their SSNs even when registering for college courses?
Because its utterly impossible to get by without doing so?
You aren't required to give your SSN.
You are, if you need student loans, work study, or other financial aid.
I'm a current student at Mesa Community College in Arizona, USA. I can tell you that there is absolutely no way I could have gotten through all the things I need to do to continue my education without using my SSN. I've personally asked about not using such information, and been told flat in several instances that I could not. Failure to cooperate results in poor service from the school, and likely revocation of privledges.
If I wanted to park within a mile radius of campus? SSN, Drivers License Number, and License Plate.
I'm normally quite concious about my personal information. There's just no way for me not to give my SSN to my school, though.
Talk about a literal interpretation of "thoughtcrime"! I shudder to think of the outcomes if our very thoughts could be used against us. How many slashdotters have thought some nasty things about our current president?
Besides, it says "what you are thinking" and not "anything you ever said, did, or thought."
Hopefully we'll be able to see some of ICQ's more advanced features (statuses, offline messaging, video?) make its way to AIM.
I've been unable to get some people to switch to open source messengers as a result of missing one or more of these features.
Could we even see an AIM component in Mozilla suite after this? I know I've often thought that the one thing missing from Moz Suite was a gaim-like multi IM application.
...meaning someone can set up a laptop outside the store and find out all the prescriptions that people are having filled.
Disclaimer: IANAPharmacist(yet), but I am a pharamcy student, which includes at least brief study of relavent law.
It is highly unlikely that this system would be used with prescriptions. For one, by its very nature, prescriptions are not selected by the customer, and the sale must be verified on the spot.
Also, the pharmacy records are considered medical records, and must be kept seperate and private from anything the store is using for other (read: marketing) purposes.
So while your encryption concern is likely accurate, and abuse is possible, pharmacy is not the area that is likely to be abused.
Wiccans themselves however would not be prone to war, its a very non violent "vegetarian tree hugger" religion.
If you don't believe it is possible for a religion to exist in peace for an extensive period of time, perhaps a brief history of Buddhism and Hinduism is in order?
If "working" is defined as "does what it was originally intended to do", we may or may not be 100% certain of that, ever.
The people of that era believed in Magic, in terms that specific rituals could coerce the divine to take action. If that was ever possible, it required Druids (no, not your D&D character), and we have lost a key element of the ritual.
However, what we do know is that it had religious signifigence to ancient celtic people, and still today, there are people that will make a pilgrimage to Stonehenge for religious purposes.
Whatever your personal beliefs, that it still has value to people even close to its original purpose so long after, is absolutely astounding.
It is a well-known fact that hippies, wiccans, and other undesirables congregate around the orignal Stonehenge in England, which is seen as a source of cosmic mystical power and other such mumbo-jumbo.
Sir, I invite you to take a World Religions course at your local community college. It might open your eyes a bit.
There are "undesireables", by which I hope you mean "people who use the name of the religion without understanding" in every religion.
As far as I am aware, no wiccans have ever gone to war and slaughtered entire civilizations over their religion. So whatever you may or may not believe in, saying that someone is undesireable because they prefer to visit a place of spiritual importance to them, is well, quite ignorant, and I am suprised you were modded up for it.
does anybody know the etymology of the word "patriot" with respect to this legislation?
Actually, its a convulted backronym that has lost its capitalization in common usage. The act is actually titled:
"... Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism"
Much like now common vocabularly SCUBA, RADAR, and LASER, The USA PATRIOT act is now commonly referred to in lower case. Unlike the previous three however, the outrageous full name was just backwardsly applied to terms that already had meaning.
Whose idea was it to use "patriot" and why?
I wasn't able to dig up "who" sponsored it, but regardless, it likely wasn't them, anyway. Some lobbying groups with an agenda to push, couldn't get the Anti Terrorism Act of 2001 to pass earlier, so right after 9/11, figured out that no one would read the bill if it was called USA PATRIOT, made a name change, tacked on a bunch of things that had routinely been shot down in the past, and now we're stuck with it.
Have you ever tried any cisco software(not ios), but their vpn clients etc?
Whether I have or not, I didn't say anything about Cisco's software. I'd be willing to bet that "crappy" or not; it does more stuff better than Norton.
The software runs on your workstation instead on separate box and cpu. It's clear it'll eat resources when processing incoming/outgoing traffic.
This is true, but not the reason I cited as Cisco's hardware advantage.
But why compare them in first place?
Because the original poster/article wrote: "...a move which may prove problematic for traditional security vendors like Symantec."
If you notice the AV part in Norton, it pretty clearly hints that it's anti-virus, not firewall. And can you really compare anti-virus to firewall/router?
Good top end products in the hardware line, if they really want to make a move in to being known for security, are going to include antivirus, among many other things.
But, if you'd like me to compare what you propose, fine:
Norton firewall is a bloaty, reactive toilet log, that will sink with the ship when the windows box its on gets loaded with the next worm.
Just out of curiosity, how come you flame Cisco hardware for not being "secure out of the box"; but then go on to claim that the systems Norton is on should be well configured?
This issue is often a source of heated debates among Libertarians. I admit, its a hard one to struggle with. You're correct, both parties offer major "evils" when viewed in libertarian terms.
Unfortunately, voting in the USA right now has major flaws when more than two parties participate.
Taking the most recent election for example, with the split being so close. In the previous election, the independant vote was decidedly on the "Left" side of center. Those voting Libertarian, Independant, or others, were still voting "against Bush". I phrase it in that way because it really felt to me like the last election was never "for Kerry" but only "for/against" Bush Jr.
In 1992, the independant vote was decidedly on the "Right" side of center. Ross Perot's vote was taken mostly from those that would have otherwise voted for Bush Sr.
How do you know which is which? Well I'm sure there is a socio-political scientist out there that can fund a study and take 10 years to come up with the answer. Truthfully, you just have to know the climate. When you have an election that offers no second choice or rating system, and 2 parties are virtually guarenteed to recieve 50/50 +/- 5% of the vote, voting outside of those two is likely to have unintended side effects.
I'm libertarian because I actually support most (I think at last count 22 of 24 major issues?) of their platforms. I put my money where my mouth is with donations, and I throw my support when I can. But if we have another election similar to 2004, voting Libertarian for President is a fast track to insuring I don't get to vote again.
Struck a cord with the common man? Come on, Howard Dean was a joke, and it shows there is a leadership problem at the top of the Dem party.
I agree with you that Dean wasn't the one striking a chord with the common man, but I don't think that was the reason. As much as I, and many here, hate George W. Bush, the reason he's in office is "striking a chord with the common man."
He comes off as "common man" with his poor speaking abilities. He goes to schools, and reads stories to children. He went out in the crowd of terrified family members after 9/11, shaking hands and pausing to listen to frightened citizens stories. Then shortly after, he stood up and told the country that he was going to make us safer, and make it alright.
"Common men" don't care about secret tribunals, election fraud, attacking the wrong guy, invading soveriegn nations, alienating the world, or any of that stuff that "nerds" (of all types) care about. They want to be told that their leader empathizes with them, and that by golly, he's going to make it right. That's the stuff that makes the "common man" sleep easy at night.
... As long as I can't realistically vote libertarian in a presidential election, this is the lesser of the major evils. I like Dean, too. Sure would have preferred him, but I digress.
But, if you lean that LP way, and alot on/. I imagine do, you should try and vote libertarian in your local and even congressional elections.
I'd venture a higher percentage are than in most other places.
* Developers actually want to be able to be contacted by other developers.
* Spammers don't generally parse source code for email addresses. Not only is the hit count relatively low, but developers almost surely have spam filtering and/or the smarts not to buy v! a5 r(\.
Blogs, in general, are already way more suspect than TV news, the random writings of random people?
Allow me to clarify. At no point did I ever say that blogs were as "trustworthy" as say, the Encyclopedia Britannica(EB).
However, the television news once was considered on par, or even better than the old dusty information in the EB. Today, educated folk still use EB, and citing it still maintains the full respect that it once did. Those same people also make sure to get news from around the world, paying little attention to the blatherings on the major US news networks.
Blogs right now are in a similar position. Their authoritative quality is rather low; meaning that I wouldn't automatically cite someone's blog as the word of god on an issue. This is the point many people responded in sarcasm with. A blog does contain an air of "actual experience/opinion" on whatever the topic is. Much like the television news, if we suspect the opinion is bought and paid for by an invisible spook known as "THEM", it will lose its value in this context as well. About all blogs have going for them as information sources, I might add.
If it was 1 out of the 420, you might say its a guy with a chip on his shoulder fearing a future pink slip.
10% of those that responded said they had been forced to change results.
420/1400 responded despite orders not to do so. If anything, this is a prime example of why voting must be anonymous, but that's another discussion.
How many of the remaining 980 surveyed did any of the following:
*) Threw the survey in the trash, and ignored any discussion of it, just out of annoyance with "surveys".
*) Recieved the orders not to do so, but decided to keep quiet about it in order to not put any risk on funding for their life's work?
*) Were not on a project who's data was sufficiently damaging to warrant political pressure.
Note that none of these options are that far fetched, and could have a serious impact on why we got the numbers we did. The responses we got merit further discussion and concern. It's not a partisan issue, really, but a result of big corporate, big government, and most people without the faintest clue why this matters since it doesn't seem to affect their kids going to school and they've got to get some sleep for work in the morning.
The law says I can't drive on public roads at speeds above the speed limit.
I can modify and use my car at 200mph, for example, on a private race track.
The example you give of cars is more akin to saying I can't cut my Tecmo Bowl Nintendo cartridge in to a knife, and stab someone, because stabbing people is illegal.
You can modify your Tecmo Bowl game to have new players, and you can tell other people how to put new players in their games too.
Just as you can put a rice kit on your car, sell rice kits, and tell others how to install rice kits.
Slashdot Mirror
Why oh why do people give out their SSNs even when registering for college courses?
Because its utterly impossible to get by without doing so?
You aren't required to give your SSN.
You are, if you need student loans, work study, or other financial aid.
I'm a current student at Mesa Community College in Arizona, USA. I can tell you that there is absolutely no way I could have gotten through all the things I need to do to continue my education without using my SSN. I've personally asked about not using such information, and been told flat in several instances that I could not. Failure to cooperate results in poor service from the school, and likely revocation of privledges.
If I wanted to park within a mile radius of campus? SSN, Drivers License Number, and License Plate.
I'm normally quite concious about my personal information. There's just no way for me not to give my SSN to my school, though.
~Rebecca
Oh dear please, no.
Talk about a literal interpretation of "thoughtcrime"! I shudder to think of the outcomes if our very thoughts could be used against us. How many slashdotters have thought some nasty things about our current president?
Besides, it says "what you are thinking" and not "anything you ever said, did, or thought."
~Rebecca
With movement control, comes Sign Language.
Hopefully we'll be able to see some of ICQ's more advanced features (statuses, offline messaging, video?) make its way to AIM.
I've been unable to get some people to switch to open source messengers as a result of missing one or more of these features.
Could we even see an AIM component in Mozilla suite after this? I know I've often thought that the one thing missing from Moz Suite was a gaim-like multi IM application.
~Rebecca
Disclaimer: IANAPharmacist(yet), but I am a pharamcy student, which includes at least brief study of relavent law.
It is highly unlikely that this system would be used with prescriptions. For one, by its very nature, prescriptions are not selected by the customer, and the sale must be verified on the spot.
Also, the pharmacy records are considered medical records, and must be kept seperate and private from anything the store is using for other (read: marketing) purposes.
So while your encryption concern is likely accurate, and abuse is possible, pharmacy is not the area that is likely to be abused.
~Rebecca
What is so difficult about going through a check out line? You might have to talk to a real person? Oh, how terrible.
... *rings up items*, *bags your food hastily, frustrated with your lack of 'cooperation'*
High School Flunkie Cashier: Do you have a Value Membership Card Ma'am?
Me: No.
HSFC: Oh would you like one? You can see all of our great savings!
Me: No.
HSFC: Okay then could I get your telephone number and zip code please?
Me: No.
HSFC: Are you sure? We could use that to save your the hassle of having to bring a card with you?
Me: No.
HSFC: Alright then
HSFC: Would you like to donate to the save the endangered cockroaches fund? 5% of every dollar goes to a real cockroach!
Me: No.
HSFC: Okay then will that be cash or charge?
Me: Cash. *hands HSFC a $20 bill*
Me: Excuse me, you shorted me a dollar.
HSFC: Oh I'm sorry, I can't open the drawer without a sale, could you wait to the side until this next customer is finished?
*head explodes*
At least at the local grocery store I shop at, which has a self check out, it STFU's the first time you say no, and gives correct change.
~Rebecca
Wiccans themselves however would not be prone to war, its a very non violent "vegetarian tree hugger" religion.
If you don't believe it is possible for a religion to exist in peace for an extensive period of time, perhaps a brief history of Buddhism and Hinduism is in order?
~Rebecca
Yes.
If "working" is defined as "does what it was originally intended to do", we may or may not be 100% certain of that, ever.
The people of that era believed in Magic, in terms that specific rituals could coerce the divine to take action. If that was ever possible, it required Druids (no, not your D&D character), and we have lost a key element of the ritual.
However, what we do know is that it had religious signifigence to ancient celtic people, and still today, there are people that will make a pilgrimage to Stonehenge for religious purposes.
Whatever your personal beliefs, that it still has value to people even close to its original purpose so long after, is absolutely astounding.
~Rebecca
It is a well-known fact that hippies, wiccans, and other undesirables congregate around the orignal Stonehenge in England, which is seen as a source of cosmic mystical power and other such mumbo-jumbo.
Sir, I invite you to take a World Religions course at your local community college. It might open your eyes a bit.
There are "undesireables", by which I hope you mean "people who use the name of the religion without understanding" in every religion.
As far as I am aware, no wiccans have ever gone to war and slaughtered entire civilizations over their religion. So whatever you may or may not believe in, saying that someone is undesireable because they prefer to visit a place of spiritual importance to them, is well, quite ignorant, and I am suprised you were modded up for it.
~Rebecca
does anybody know the etymology of the word "patriot" with respect to this legislation?
Actually, its a convulted backronym that has lost its capitalization in common usage. The act is actually titled:
"... Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism"
Much like now common vocabularly SCUBA, RADAR, and LASER, The USA PATRIOT act is now commonly referred to in lower case. Unlike the previous three however, the outrageous full name was just backwardsly applied to terms that already had meaning.
Whose idea was it to use "patriot" and why?
I wasn't able to dig up "who" sponsored it, but regardless, it likely wasn't them, anyway. Some lobbying groups with an agenda to push, couldn't get the Anti Terrorism Act of 2001 to pass earlier, so right after 9/11, figured out that no one would read the bill if it was called USA PATRIOT, made a name change, tacked on a bunch of things that had routinely been shot down in the past, and now we're stuck with it.
For good information check out EPIC's site on the USA PATRIOT act.
~Rebecca
Have you ever tried any cisco software(not ios), but their vpn clients etc?
Whether I have or not, I didn't say anything about Cisco's software. I'd be willing to bet that "crappy" or not; it does more stuff better than Norton.
The software runs on your workstation instead on separate box and cpu. It's clear it'll eat resources when processing incoming/outgoing traffic.
This is true, but not the reason I cited as Cisco's hardware advantage.
But why compare them in first place?
Because the original poster/article wrote: "...a move which may prove problematic for traditional security vendors like Symantec."
If you notice the AV part in Norton, it pretty clearly hints that it's anti-virus, not firewall. And can you really compare anti-virus to firewall/router?
Good top end products in the hardware line, if they really want to make a move in to being known for security, are going to include antivirus, among many other things.
But, if you'd like me to compare what you propose, fine:
Norton firewall is a bloaty, reactive toilet log, that will sink with the ship when the windows box its on gets loaded with the next worm.
Just out of curiosity, how come you flame Cisco hardware for not being "secure out of the box"; but then go on to claim that the systems Norton is on should be well configured?
~Rebecca
And some pretty good stuff, I might add. Popular with PHBs, too. Can we say "No one ever got fired for buying [Cisco]." yet?
This is going to be their major advantage when it comes to security, even down to the linksys brand for home users.
Good, proactive hardware provides real security. Bloaty, reactive software (Norton AV) goes down with the sinking ship (an exploding windows box).
Software, and security software has its purpose and can have value, but Cisco's advantage doesn't lie there.
~Rebecca
This issue is often a source of heated debates among Libertarians. I admit, its a hard one to struggle with. You're correct, both parties offer major "evils" when viewed in libertarian terms.
Unfortunately, voting in the USA right now has major flaws when more than two parties participate.
Taking the most recent election for example, with the split being so close. In the previous election, the independant vote was decidedly on the "Left" side of center. Those voting Libertarian, Independant, or others, were still voting "against Bush". I phrase it in that way because it really felt to me like the last election was never "for Kerry" but only "for/against" Bush Jr.
In 1992, the independant vote was decidedly on the "Right" side of center. Ross Perot's vote was taken mostly from those that would have otherwise voted for Bush Sr.
How do you know which is which? Well I'm sure there is a socio-political scientist out there that can fund a study and take 10 years to come up with the answer. Truthfully, you just have to know the climate. When you have an election that offers no second choice or rating system, and 2 parties are virtually guarenteed to recieve 50/50 +/- 5% of the vote, voting outside of those two is likely to have unintended side effects.
I'm libertarian because I actually support most (I think at last count 22 of 24 major issues?) of their platforms. I put my money where my mouth is with donations, and I throw my support when I can. But if we have another election similar to 2004, voting Libertarian for President is a fast track to insuring I don't get to vote again.
~Rebecca
Struck a cord with the common man? Come on, Howard Dean was a joke, and it shows there is a leadership problem at the top of the Dem party.
I agree with you that Dean wasn't the one striking a chord with the common man, but I don't think that was the reason. As much as I, and many here, hate George W. Bush, the reason he's in office is "striking a chord with the common man."
He comes off as "common man" with his poor speaking abilities. He goes to schools, and reads stories to children. He went out in the crowd of terrified family members after 9/11, shaking hands and pausing to listen to frightened citizens stories. Then shortly after, he stood up and told the country that he was going to make us safer, and make it alright.
"Common men" don't care about secret tribunals, election fraud, attacking the wrong guy, invading soveriegn nations, alienating the world, or any of that stuff that "nerds" (of all types) care about. They want to be told that their leader empathizes with them, and that by golly, he's going to make it right. That's the stuff that makes the "common man" sleep easy at night.
~Rebecca
... As long as I can't realistically vote libertarian in a presidential election, this is the lesser of the major evils. I like Dean, too. Sure would have preferred him, but I digress.
/. I imagine do, you should try and vote libertarian in your local and even congressional elections.
But, if you lean that LP way, and alot on
What Libertarians actually support.
Go LP!
~Rebecca
Poo on you and your logic and correctness.
Never pass up a chance to insult lawyers, microsoft, or $wing-lunatics.
~Rebecca
It states repeatedly that you can get MP3's to put on a Napster-supporting MP3 player.
Because you'd have to convince a lawyer (read: non technical person with their head lodged firmly in their backside) that a music file isn't an "MP3"?
Just a thought.
~Rebecca
I'd venture a higher percentage are than in most other places.
* Developers actually want to be able to be contacted by other developers.
* Spammers don't generally parse source code for email addresses. Not only is the hit count relatively low, but developers almost surely have spam filtering and/or the smarts not to buy v! a5 r(\.
~Rebecca
Blogs, in general, are already way more suspect than TV news, the random writings of random people?
Allow me to clarify. At no point did I ever say that blogs were as "trustworthy" as say, the Encyclopedia Britannica(EB).
However, the television news once was considered on par, or even better than the old dusty information in the EB. Today, educated folk still use EB, and citing it still maintains the full respect that it once did. Those same people also make sure to get news from around the world, paying little attention to the blatherings on the major US news networks.
Blogs right now are in a similar position. Their authoritative quality is rather low; meaning that I wouldn't automatically cite someone's blog as the word of god on an issue. This is the point many people responded in sarcasm with. A blog does contain an air of "actual experience/opinion" on whatever the topic is. Much like the television news, if we suspect the opinion is bought and paid for by an invisible spook known as "THEM", it will lose its value in this context as well. About all blogs have going for them as information sources, I might add.
~Rebecca
Once again, another fine example of how anywhere there is a profit to be made, someone will try and do it.
Let's hope this doesn't become so commonplace that the entire medium of blogs becomes suspect in the same way modern television news has.
~Rebecca
If it was 1 out of the 420, you might say its a guy with a chip on his shoulder fearing a future pink slip.
10% of those that responded said they had been forced to change results.
420/1400 responded despite orders not to do so. If anything, this is a prime example of why voting must be anonymous, but that's another discussion.
How many of the remaining 980 surveyed did any of the following:
*) Threw the survey in the trash, and ignored any discussion of it, just out of annoyance with "surveys".
*) Recieved the orders not to do so, but decided to keep quiet about it in order to not put any risk on funding for their life's work?
*) Were not on a project who's data was sufficiently damaging to warrant political pressure.
Note that none of these options are that far fetched, and could have a serious impact on why we got the numbers we did. The responses we got merit further discussion and concern. It's not a partisan issue, really, but a result of big corporate, big government, and most people without the faintest clue why this matters since it doesn't seem to affect their kids going to school and they've got to get some sleep for work in the morning.
~Rebecca
Incorrect.
The law says I can't drive on public roads at speeds above the speed limit.
I can modify and use my car at 200mph, for example, on a private race track.
The example you give of cars is more akin to saying I can't cut my Tecmo Bowl Nintendo cartridge in to a knife, and stab someone, because stabbing people is illegal.
You can modify your Tecmo Bowl game to have new players, and you can tell other people how to put new players in their games too.
Just as you can put a rice kit on your car, sell rice kits, and tell others how to install rice kits.
~Rebecca