See, I don't get this. You can measure gmail's usage by the number of emails going in and out of their servers, it's not that hard. You want to show Google that you use gmail... great.. then use it!
The google people don't need you to pay them directly to see how useful and popular it is. Google has decided to stake it's money on advertising, and it has to be understood that most people don't click on ads. It's about getting maximum exposure, and you are one of the 99 out of 100 people (or whatever he ratio is) that don't click ads; Google expects that (I believe they are smart enough to see that).
Now, being worried that the advertising market would crash and Google forced to shut down services is a real concern, but at this point I don't think it is not a big concern. Fearing that Google doesn't know how to track the use of services that they have full control over is illogical.
What's the law on putting up security cameras outside your house? Inside your house you can record whatever you want. But if you put up a security camera outside your house, are there limits to what you can record? If there are limits, did this guy cross the line?
Think about it, it makes sense to put up a security camera to video tape your backyard, but what's to stop you from putting up a security camera to videotape your neighbor? You can't wiretap your neighbor so I'm sure the statute has legalese for videotaping things outside. This might actually have a leg to stand on.
Dude, I don't know why you have your panties in a bunch, it's the law. Why do you think the legal system sends everything via certified send/receive mail? To have a written record it was sent and received! Duh! Fedex, UPS, and Airborne express all live and die by signatures and proof of delivery.
Most credit card transactions are between businesses or from business to consumer. It's the cost of doing business and all ethical businesses have a way to prove that they delivered something. Which do you think is smarter, forcing a large company with lots of money and resources to prove that they shipped something, or forcing an individual person who may be making an average wage to prove they didn't receive it? Also, which is easier?
Obviously this doesn't apply to person to person transactions, but they have alternatives to paypal which are more secure too.
If you really want to take the discussion a new direction, how about you lay it all out on the line. We live in a world of stupid, rude, prudish people who need to get over themselves.
It is true that the motivating factors here are for the University to basically avoid litigation, save face, and present a superficial facade to make it look better. And it's because the people in this country and many others are so overly concerned about what the next person is doing in their own personal life and what their personal values and ideas are.
The only reason the university is being prudish is because prudes come out of the woodwork if a guy posts a picture of himself holding a beer. C'mon! We all drink! Get over it! And if you didn't, what the hell is with the stick up your ass? Lots of us do things a little crazy, but that's by definition that these are the people who push at societies stupid mores and boundaries. So society reels them back in by playing the power and money card. It's utter bullshit.
You might say "well that's the way it goes" but this goes to underlying freedoms and trying to deal with people on a reasonable and logical level. This is not reasonable or logical. Society shouldn't be worried about what this does to the image of the university. And yet they pass it off as being worried about their athletes. If they were worried about their athletes, the logical way to go about this would be to what Ohio state did, and set up some committee or group to educate kids. To take it a step further, set up some department that reviews kids "public" information and offers councilling and discussion. If the kid who posts a picture of himself holding a beer says "well it was a joke because I found an empty can lying around" well what's wrong with that? If the kid turns out to be alcoholic, that's something else. You can't make that judgement from that picture, but somehow we judge that picture to be bad.
I'm really just playing devil's advocate today because I'm tired of hearing about "this is the world we live in so just deal." I just feel that excuse is old. I have my own website and I'm starting to finally get how aware I have to be about this website about removing personal information, down to my name, or people are going to find me, read my opinions, and make judgements not on the merit of my opinions, but for my potential candicacy for a job or loan or some other crap.
And just to tack on, the point about scholarships is very scary, because schools use it all the time to control students. The cost of college is skyrocketing, and so many kids get scholarships on their atheletic abilities. This is how they get into school and pay their way, and they are being judged on how they pump up the image of college, not about their ability on the field. And because they might be your average college kid who just wants to have fun, if they fail to be pristine and shiny, they could basically lose their scholarship and be forced to leave the school. That's not a student athlete doing something they like as an extra curricular activity, that's being forced to be a whore.
If you don't have the material in your hand, and he doesn't have a receipt that you signed saying you got it, then the chargeback is not fraudulent. If you issue a chargeback, it's on the person who sold you the goods to prove that receipt of goods took place.
With a credit card, you have the ability to issue a charge back for failure to deliver goods. With Paypal, you have no such protection. This is the #1 reason I never use paypal. I want insurance that if I don't get something, I can go to my card company and get the charge reversed.
And a proper seller who takes credit card payments should have proof of delivery, documentation, etc. to protect themselves from fraudulent chargebacks.
Paypal is like handing your friend money to go downtown to pay some guy to deliver you some pizza, and the delivery guy never bothers to show up. Your friend did you a favor, but like hell is he going to work to help you get your food.
Another [student] belongs to the "My cell phone is my best friend when I'm drunk in Kent" group and lists skinny-dipping as an interest. She competes in track and field.
And I want to be her new best friend. I have a shore house, want to come visit?
Don't worry guys, those usually are the bean counters. People that do real work usually aren't fired.
Kill the bean counter contributions are always save bets on/.
Maybe then slashdotters, including yourself, should grow a heart then?
Job loss is Job loss. I'm not an accountant but accounting is an important job. Yes I know, accountants are the mortal enemies of IT by being bean counters, but those are usually the managers and execs who control the purse strings, and they are evil because they are know nothing managers, not because they are accountants. The accounting "grunts" who work the spreadsheets, record the money, and take the calls are the not your enemies, and they are also the same people who typically get the axe.
Actually the other division who typically get the axe are the IT people, so don't think you as a typical slashdotter is safe.
I see you posted as an anonymous coward. Good for you, because had you posted this under your normal ID, along with the intensely flaming replies made in this forum, a flaming 50lb bag of dogshit would be on your front porch by the end of the day.
Way to protect yourself from the wrath of the Slashdot masses:)
One of the better definitions of Addiction is not only some habitual, constant behavior that you have difficulty stopping, but that causes harm to you or those around you. Obviously in your situation your grades slipped tremendously. Drug addition is usually simple in that severe physical harm takes place to your body, but also one begins to let the drug control your actions, perhaps stealing money to get more of the drug, or not showing up to work because you have to go out to get a fix, or whatever.
Non-chemical addiction could be the same way, though it's a lot harder to define the harm. If you have a steady job that you have good performance at and okay health and game 6 hours a day and you aren't hurting anyone else, is that addiction? That's when it gets hard to define.
Recently, watching the Da Vinci Code movie, I marveled at how we have movies that allow PG-13 to contain "disturbing violent images" but only mild sex. There's a lot of sex not in that movie that's in the book. But the violence that was only passing in the book is really graphic in the movie. My conclusion was that the government cares only about limiting sex and not violence.
This would be a great point, if your example were based on fact. Neither the book nor the movie are sexual or terribly violent. There is violence in the book, but I feel the movie was pretty faithful to the book in terms of describing the violence that occured. In fact, the now infamous vitruvian man scene, and the scene right before where he was killed, happens in the movie almost exactly how it happened in the book.
Also, there was a scene describing a sexual ritual to which one of the characters witnessed in their youth, and it was a pretty brief flash in the movie, but you have to understand that you can tell a story of imagery a lot quicker in a 2 second movie clip than you can in 2 pages of a book. Other than that, there were no sexual situations in the book.
Please pick another example. I agree with your point, but your example you pulled out of your ass.
The most obvious reason is of course money, but also it's because of the culture surrounding Apple. Apple is a darling of the tech and consumer industry. People love their iPods and are getting turned onto their computers, and for the most part investors are warm to their financial performance.
So, when someone has some bad experiences, they cry louder than, say, someone who has a problem with a Microsoft product. "Oh, Windows broke again? Well, it does suck, that's just the way things are, oh well, no sense in complaining."
Being in support, I know all about the hyperboles users make when complaining about their problems. They go on and on about how this is a critical problem that must be fixed, how there's no quality assurance going on, and that everyone else in the world must be experiencing this same problem. Meanwhile, no one else has reported this problem, there are confirmed tests of this problem not occuring in many standard configurations, the user has a highly specialized configuration, and the affected area is not in fact a critical function.
The guy wants a little extra satisfaction, and wants to be heard. However, he wraps it in the cloak of an editorial, like most bloggers, so called journalists, and other web writers do.
Did the guy get into a crap situation? Probably, and that sucks. Did the guy get crappy support? Maybe, and that would suck.
But making a sweeping generalization that the products just suck when millions of human beings completely disagree with you is not going to get you any points with Apple or anyone else.
Whatever happened to writing about the facts? If you want to editorialize about any technology company, you have to go find the facts and then lay them out. Finding the facts means getting information on other peoples experiences, surveys, reviews, etc. You then take that information in context and write your own article.
However, if he was going for ad hits, congratulations. Good job there.
I have vonage, and currently love it, but I have to say getting into it was an incredible pain.
I got Vonage 3 years ago. I decided to port my local number so people could still call me. Well, the FCC says this should take no more thn 3 days or so (I forget the exact number of days)
It took Vonage 2 months.
I called them repeatedly to check on the status. They had the fucking nerve to lie to me and say it was verizon's fault for not releasing the line. That was the initial response, but then as I pressed them over days they admitted they had no idea why. I insisted several times for a supervisor and finally one day got one.
I learned that Vonage used a third party company to grab the line and pull it over. Somewhere in that chain, things broke down and my request to port the number simply never happened. 3 days after my last over the phone fit to them for not changing my line, the one where I got ahold of the supervisor, it was changed.
That experience is the only thing that has prevented me from overwhelmingly recommending Vonage to all my friends, even after 3 years. I stay with vonage because I don't have problems with it, it's cheaper than any plan I could find through a traditional land line, and it has nice interesting features that are very useful to me.
If it's that hard to get in, I'm not surprised people can't get out. Vonage has a suspicious problem with number porting, and I think its because current law covering number portability doesn't cover them. That's one law that should be changed to extend to them.
"No you are not required to, but the hospital is not required to treat you without it."
Philosophically it is just wrong to set up a SSN system and try to use that as an identification system, but that's exactly what everyone did anyway! There's no law that says you can't do that, and there never has been. You can't enforce a philosophical objection.
This is a portion from TFA:
Another measure, sponsored by Florida Republican Clay Shaw, would restrict the display of SSNs on credit reports and on various government-issued documents and identification tags. It would also make it illegal in certain cases for anyone to refuse to do business with people who decline to supply their SSNs.
I'm cautiously optimistic about this possibility (I'm cautious about any legislation that sounds like I might like it) but in essence this is what US law is missing. By giving the holders of the SSN the right to refuse to give the information, you give them the power to take legal action when someone asks for their SSN in situations which the law says it's not required. Granted, if someone is dying in a hospital, you are going to turn over your SSN. However, if you can then turn around after your life is saved and sue them, or expose them to having done something illegal, or whatever, the hospital will change it's practices to avoid litigation. It won't happen overnight but it will happen.
Originally, the creators of the SSN planned the SSN not to be an identification number, as in they hadn't planned on it being a reliable way to identify someone like for example a driver's license is a reliable way to identify someone. They just didn't count on how useful it would be for databases in the age of computing.
They never said "oh no you can't use this or we will smite you!"
We all thought MS would die because you couldn't get a lot of games for the console and it wasn't as cool as PS2. Now, Sony is making the blunder that will allow MS to be entrenched. Not that I mind competition, but two monopolistic behemoth making odd, stupid moves is not my idea of competition.
Sony is trying to push their High def DVD standard so as to gain acceptance and market share. They are constantly trying to introduce new formats to gain acceptance. However, their latest standard is not exciting. We are still using DVDs and still want to use DVDs, we don't need a high def standard any time soon.
The mistake is trying to entrench the standard by basically making the console overpriced. That will drive marketshare to Xbox, who already is out ahead with consoles and games in the next generation, despite the overheating issues. The console now costs as much as a midrange PC which is ridiculous, and now they are competing for people's money who are trying to consider if they want a PC or an PS3.
Sony's only hurting themselves. Hopefully Nintendo will get some benefit out of this in marketshare and more people and games will come to their console.
Okay... PLEASE. As IF there are New Yorkers that root for BOTH teams at once.
I know you are trying to be funny, but there are a few serious NY baseball fans who pray for a subway series every year that it goes to 7 games and the last game goes into overtime.
Frankly, I think these fans are a little unusual, but I used to work with one a while ago. They exist, trust me.
I'm not sure about the logic he uses to come up with these numbers either.
News for Nerds! News! This isn't news. This is a random and arbitrary article that passes itself off as fact when it's just speculation. That's not news! Why the hell did you post it Taco if it isn't news???? Please.
Webmasters the world over know that the numbers we get aren't entirely accurate because of DHCP servers, NATs, and all the things we for IP addressing. That's not news and no webmaster really needs to be reminded of it!
What would be news is a statistical study that tries to provide facts to back up this 1/10 number, or a new, more accurate way to count people who visit your website.
I remember sometime back in the nineties, a government report was released detailing how secure the governments systems were from cyberterrorism. The only department that was secure was the FAA, because "their systems were so antiquated, they could not be accessed with modern equipment."
Before any of the "you get what you pay for" comments come out, of course someone is paying for it.
It's paid for via taxes. Therefore the taxpayers should solicit the local city council for action since taxpayer money is being used because it is being paid for. No one should be putting up with these many problems, especially if the entire city is having these problems together.
I'm not pro or con the whole city wide free wireless internet thingie, just pointing out some facts.
That's where our powers of observation come in. Sure, we have that thought the first go round, but then we learn very quickly.
If you are in the opposite boat, where it takes you 1 hr to commute home but if you left say 30 minutes later and it only took you a half an hour, well you wouldn't know that until you tried it.
The submitter simply wrote something that, to me, made no sense the first time I read it. Then I read a bit of the article and it made sense. The article is about how it may actually take you longer to commute home if you leave early from work. Took me a second but I was wondering if the article was talking about how it would cost you or your employer extra man hours or something or reduced your efficiency at work? I thought this because #1 slashdot loves to post "lost productivity" articles and #2 slashdot would be as dumb to post an article about common sense would they?
This is worthy of a first year college student science project at best, or maybe a civil engineer project to improve traffic, but it's not news. Everyone who has at least a small smattering of logical power knows that it's if everyone else is on the road when you drive, not how soon. I take back roads to work. Why? Because everyone else is on the main road, duh! I work 9:00 to 6:00 as well, so the backroads almost never "overflow" during those times when there is a particularly nasty snag either.
I fail to see how these facts and figures teach us anything about the world we didn't already know. It doesn't belong on any news website. This must be the slowest news day ever
Okay, if you want to look at a ton of articles on boot camp, visit macsurfer.com. It's a very nice and simple metasite for mac news. Since released, Boot Camp is all the buzz so there are tons of articles there. It's also pretty neutral. They just post the links to articles. No discussion, but no bias either.
This article was listed, and it was the only damn article with a negative spin. Then I see this article here. All the articles to chose, and the slashdot editors of course pick the article which will stir up the most hornets.
Now I'll admit that there could be a lot of overly positive articles about boot camp, and that this article could potentially have a unique perspective. But c'mon, it's CNet. And I did read the article and it's nothing insightful. Same Apple bashing rehashed to include boot camp.
Post something balanced for a change that actually gives us real information for a change. Mod -1000 for annoying crap that is beneath the average slashdot reader.
Slashdot Mirror
See, I don't get this. You can measure gmail's usage by the number of emails going in and out of their servers, it's not that hard. You want to show Google that you use gmail... great.. then use it!
The google people don't need you to pay them directly to see how useful and popular it is. Google has decided to stake it's money on advertising, and it has to be understood that most people don't click on ads. It's about getting maximum exposure, and you are one of the 99 out of 100 people (or whatever he ratio is) that don't click ads; Google expects that (I believe they are smart enough to see that).
Now, being worried that the advertising market would crash and Google forced to shut down services is a real concern, but at this point I don't think it is not a big concern. Fearing that Google doesn't know how to track the use of services that they have full control over is illogical.
What's the law on putting up security cameras outside your house? Inside your house you can record whatever you want. But if you put up a security camera outside your house, are there limits to what you can record? If there are limits, did this guy cross the line?
Think about it, it makes sense to put up a security camera to video tape your backyard, but what's to stop you from putting up a security camera to videotape your neighbor? You can't wiretap your neighbor so I'm sure the statute has legalese for videotaping things outside. This might actually have a leg to stand on.
Dude, I don't know why you have your panties in a bunch, it's the law. Why do you think the legal system sends everything via certified send/receive mail? To have a written record it was sent and received! Duh! Fedex, UPS, and Airborne express all live and die by signatures and proof of delivery.
Most credit card transactions are between businesses or from business to consumer. It's the cost of doing business and all ethical businesses have a way to prove that they delivered something. Which do you think is smarter, forcing a large company with lots of money and resources to prove that they shipped something, or forcing an individual person who may be making an average wage to prove they didn't receive it? Also, which is easier?
Obviously this doesn't apply to person to person transactions, but they have alternatives to paypal which are more secure too.
If you really want to take the discussion a new direction, how about you lay it all out on the line. We live in a world of stupid, rude, prudish people who need to get over themselves.
It is true that the motivating factors here are for the University to basically avoid litigation, save face, and present a superficial facade to make it look better. And it's because the people in this country and many others are so overly concerned about what the next person is doing in their own personal life and what their personal values and ideas are.
The only reason the university is being prudish is because prudes come out of the woodwork if a guy posts a picture of himself holding a beer. C'mon! We all drink! Get over it! And if you didn't, what the hell is with the stick up your ass? Lots of us do things a little crazy, but that's by definition that these are the people who push at societies stupid mores and boundaries. So society reels them back in by playing the power and money card. It's utter bullshit.
You might say "well that's the way it goes" but this goes to underlying freedoms and trying to deal with people on a reasonable and logical level. This is not reasonable or logical. Society shouldn't be worried about what this does to the image of the university. And yet they pass it off as being worried about their athletes. If they were worried about their athletes, the logical way to go about this would be to what Ohio state did, and set up some committee or group to educate kids. To take it a step further, set up some department that reviews kids "public" information and offers councilling and discussion. If the kid who posts a picture of himself holding a beer says "well it was a joke because I found an empty can lying around" well what's wrong with that? If the kid turns out to be alcoholic, that's something else. You can't make that judgement from that picture, but somehow we judge that picture to be bad.
I'm really just playing devil's advocate today because I'm tired of hearing about "this is the world we live in so just deal." I just feel that excuse is old. I have my own website and I'm starting to finally get how aware I have to be about this website about removing personal information, down to my name, or people are going to find me, read my opinions, and make judgements not on the merit of my opinions, but for my potential candicacy for a job or loan or some other crap.
And just to tack on, the point about scholarships is very scary, because schools use it all the time to control students. The cost of college is skyrocketing, and so many kids get scholarships on their atheletic abilities. This is how they get into school and pay their way, and they are being judged on how they pump up the image of college, not about their ability on the field. And because they might be your average college kid who just wants to have fun, if they fail to be pristine and shiny, they could basically lose their scholarship and be forced to leave the school. That's not a student athlete doing something they like as an extra curricular activity, that's being forced to be a whore.
If you don't have the material in your hand, and he doesn't have a receipt that you signed saying you got it, then the chargeback is not fraudulent. If you issue a chargeback, it's on the person who sold you the goods to prove that receipt of goods took place.
With a credit card, you have the ability to issue a charge back for failure to deliver goods. With Paypal, you have no such protection. This is the #1 reason I never use paypal. I want insurance that if I don't get something, I can go to my card company and get the charge reversed.
And a proper seller who takes credit card payments should have proof of delivery, documentation, etc. to protect themselves from fraudulent chargebacks.
Paypal is like handing your friend money to go downtown to pay some guy to deliver you some pizza, and the delivery guy never bothers to show up. Your friend did you a favor, but like hell is he going to work to help you get your food.
Another [student] belongs to the "My cell phone is my best friend when I'm drunk in Kent" group and lists skinny-dipping as an interest. She competes in track and field.
And I want to be her new best friend. I have a shore house, want to come visit?
Don't worry guys, those usually are the bean counters. People that do real work usually aren't fired.
/.
Kill the bean counter contributions are always save bets on
Maybe then slashdotters, including yourself, should grow a heart then?
Job loss is Job loss. I'm not an accountant but accounting is an important job. Yes I know, accountants are the mortal enemies of IT by being bean counters, but those are usually the managers and execs who control the purse strings, and they are evil because they are know nothing managers, not because they are accountants. The accounting "grunts" who work the spreadsheets, record the money, and take the calls are the not your enemies, and they are also the same people who typically get the axe.
Actually the other division who typically get the axe are the IT people, so don't think you as a typical slashdotter is safe.
In several decades, he'll be dead. And you can't take it with you :)
I see you posted as an anonymous coward. Good for you, because had you posted this under your normal ID, along with the intensely flaming replies made in this forum, a flaming 50lb bag of dogshit would be on your front porch by the end of the day.
:)
Way to protect yourself from the wrath of the Slashdot masses
One of the better definitions of Addiction is not only some habitual, constant behavior that you have difficulty stopping, but that causes harm to you or those around you. Obviously in your situation your grades slipped tremendously. Drug addition is usually simple in that severe physical harm takes place to your body, but also one begins to let the drug control your actions, perhaps stealing money to get more of the drug, or not showing up to work because you have to go out to get a fix, or whatever.
Non-chemical addiction could be the same way, though it's a lot harder to define the harm. If you have a steady job that you have good performance at and okay health and game 6 hours a day and you aren't hurting anyone else, is that addiction? That's when it gets hard to define.
Recently, watching the Da Vinci Code movie, I marveled at how we have movies that allow PG-13 to contain "disturbing violent images" but only mild sex. There's a lot of sex not in that movie that's in the book. But the violence that was only passing in the book is really graphic in the movie. My conclusion was that the government cares only about limiting sex and not violence.
This would be a great point, if your example were based on fact. Neither the book nor the movie are sexual or terribly violent. There is violence in the book, but I feel the movie was pretty faithful to the book in terms of describing the violence that occured. In fact, the now infamous vitruvian man scene, and the scene right before where he was killed, happens in the movie almost exactly how it happened in the book.
Also, there was a scene describing a sexual ritual to which one of the characters witnessed in their youth, and it was a pretty brief flash in the movie, but you have to understand that you can tell a story of imagery a lot quicker in a 2 second movie clip than you can in 2 pages of a book. Other than that, there were no sexual situations in the book.
Please pick another example. I agree with your point, but your example you pulled out of your ass.
The most obvious reason is of course money, but also it's because of the culture surrounding Apple. Apple is a darling of the tech and consumer industry. People love their iPods and are getting turned onto their computers, and for the most part investors are warm to their financial performance.
So, when someone has some bad experiences, they cry louder than, say, someone who has a problem with a Microsoft product. "Oh, Windows broke again? Well, it does suck, that's just the way things are, oh well, no sense in complaining."
Being in support, I know all about the hyperboles users make when complaining about their problems. They go on and on about how this is a critical problem that must be fixed, how there's no quality assurance going on, and that everyone else in the world must be experiencing this same problem. Meanwhile, no one else has reported this problem, there are confirmed tests of this problem not occuring in many standard configurations, the user has a highly specialized configuration, and the affected area is not in fact a critical function.
The guy wants a little extra satisfaction, and wants to be heard. However, he wraps it in the cloak of an editorial, like most bloggers, so called journalists, and other web writers do.
Did the guy get into a crap situation? Probably, and that sucks.
Did the guy get crappy support? Maybe, and that would suck.
But making a sweeping generalization that the products just suck when millions of human beings completely disagree with you is not going to get you any points with Apple or anyone else.
Whatever happened to writing about the facts? If you want to editorialize about any technology company, you have to go find the facts and then lay them out. Finding the facts means getting information on other peoples experiences, surveys, reviews, etc. You then take that information in context and write your own article.
However, if he was going for ad hits, congratulations. Good job there.
I have vonage, and currently love it, but I have to say getting into it was an incredible pain.
I got Vonage 3 years ago. I decided to port my local number so people could still call me. Well, the FCC says this should take no more thn 3 days or so (I forget the exact number of days)
It took Vonage 2 months.
I called them repeatedly to check on the status. They had the fucking nerve to lie to me and say it was verizon's fault for not releasing the line. That was the initial response, but then as I pressed them over days they admitted they had no idea why. I insisted several times for a supervisor and finally one day got one.
I learned that Vonage used a third party company to grab the line and pull it over. Somewhere in that chain, things broke down and my request to port the number simply never happened. 3 days after my last over the phone fit to them for not changing my line, the one where I got ahold of the supervisor, it was changed.
That experience is the only thing that has prevented me from overwhelmingly recommending Vonage to all my friends, even after 3 years. I stay with vonage because I don't have problems with it, it's cheaper than any plan I could find through a traditional land line, and it has nice interesting features that are very useful to me.
If it's that hard to get in, I'm not surprised people can't get out. Vonage has a suspicious problem with number porting, and I think its because current law covering number portability doesn't cover them. That's one law that should be changed to extend to them.
If I say "George Bush is an alien," should he undergo a medical examination specifically to prove that he is human?
Fuck yes.
No wonder I feel shafted every day... Bush is in fact an alien who is probing me! It's about time we probed back damnit! See how he likes it!
You answered your own question in your write up.
"No you are not required to, but the hospital is not required to treat you without it."
Philosophically it is just wrong to set up a SSN system and try to use that as an identification system, but that's exactly what everyone did anyway! There's no law that says you can't do that, and there never has been. You can't enforce a philosophical objection.
This is a portion from TFA:
Another measure, sponsored by Florida Republican Clay Shaw, would restrict the display of SSNs on credit reports and on various government-issued documents and identification tags. It would also make it illegal in certain cases for anyone to refuse to do business with people who decline to supply their SSNs.
I'm cautiously optimistic about this possibility (I'm cautious about any legislation that sounds like I might like it) but in essence this is what US law is missing. By giving the holders of the SSN the right to refuse to give the information, you give them the power to take legal action when someone asks for their SSN in situations which the law says it's not required. Granted, if someone is dying in a hospital, you are going to turn over your SSN. However, if you can then turn around after your life is saved and sue them, or expose them to having done something illegal, or whatever, the hospital will change it's practices to avoid litigation. It won't happen overnight but it will happen.
Originally, the creators of the SSN planned the SSN not to be an identification number, as in they hadn't planned on it being a reliable way to identify someone like for example a driver's license is a reliable way to identify someone. They just didn't count on how useful it would be for databases in the age of computing.
They never said "oh no you can't use this or we will smite you!"
We all thought MS would die because you couldn't get a lot of games for the console and it wasn't as cool as PS2. Now, Sony is making the blunder that will allow MS to be entrenched. Not that I mind competition, but two monopolistic behemoth making odd, stupid moves is not my idea of competition.
Sony is trying to push their High def DVD standard so as to gain acceptance and market share. They are constantly trying to introduce new formats to gain acceptance. However, their latest standard is not exciting. We are still using DVDs and still want to use DVDs, we don't need a high def standard any time soon.
The mistake is trying to entrench the standard by basically making the console overpriced. That will drive marketshare to Xbox, who already is out ahead with consoles and games in the next generation, despite the overheating issues. The console now costs as much as a midrange PC which is ridiculous, and now they are competing for people's money who are trying to consider if they want a PC or an PS3.
Sony's only hurting themselves. Hopefully Nintendo will get some benefit out of this in marketshare and more people and games will come to their console.
Okay... PLEASE. As IF there are New Yorkers that root for BOTH teams at once.
I know you are trying to be funny, but there are a few serious NY baseball fans who pray for a subway series every year that it goes to 7 games and the last game goes into overtime.
Frankly, I think these fans are a little unusual, but I used to work with one a while ago. They exist, trust me.
I'm not sure about the logic he uses to come up with these numbers either.
News for Nerds! News! This isn't news. This is a random and arbitrary article that passes itself off as fact when it's just speculation. That's not news! Why the hell did you post it Taco if it isn't news???? Please.
Webmasters the world over know that the numbers we get aren't entirely accurate because of DHCP servers, NATs, and all the things we for IP addressing. That's not news and no webmaster really needs to be reminded of it!
What would be news is a statistical study that tries to provide facts to back up this 1/10 number, or a new, more accurate way to count people who visit your website.
I want both of them to keep fighting it out... for a very long time.
Because when video rental services compete, I win.
Three cheers for competition!
I remember sometime back in the nineties, a government report was released detailing how secure the governments systems were from cyberterrorism. The only department that was secure was the FAA, because "their systems were so antiquated, they could not be accessed with modern equipment."
:)
Maybe they are finally getting something going?
Before any of the "you get what you pay for" comments come out, of course someone is paying for it.
It's paid for via taxes. Therefore the taxpayers should solicit the local city council for action since taxpayer money is being used because it is being paid for. No one should be putting up with these many problems, especially if the entire city is having these problems together.
I'm not pro or con the whole city wide free wireless internet thingie, just pointing out some facts.
That's where our powers of observation come in. Sure, we have that thought the first go round, but then we learn very quickly.
If you are in the opposite boat, where it takes you 1 hr to commute home but if you left say 30 minutes later and it only took you a half an hour, well you wouldn't know that until you tried it.
The submitter simply wrote something that, to me, made no sense the first time I read it. Then I read a bit of the article and it made sense. The article is about how it may actually take you longer to commute home if you leave early from work. Took me a second but I was wondering if the article was talking about how it would cost you or your employer extra man hours or something or reduced your efficiency at work? I thought this because #1 slashdot loves to post "lost productivity" articles and #2 slashdot would be as dumb to post an article about common sense would they?
This is worthy of a first year college student science project at best, or maybe a civil engineer project to improve traffic, but it's not news. Everyone who has at least a small smattering of logical power knows that it's if everyone else is on the road when you drive, not how soon. I take back roads to work. Why? Because everyone else is on the main road, duh! I work 9:00 to 6:00 as well, so the backroads almost never "overflow" during those times when there is a particularly nasty snag either.
I fail to see how these facts and figures teach us anything about the world we didn't already know. It doesn't belong on any news website. This must be the slowest news day ever
Okay, if you want to look at a ton of articles on boot camp, visit macsurfer.com. It's a very nice and simple metasite for mac news. Since released, Boot Camp is all the buzz so there are tons of articles there. It's also pretty neutral. They just post the links to articles. No discussion, but no bias either.
This article was listed, and it was the only damn article with a negative spin. Then I see this article here. All the articles to chose, and the slashdot editors of course pick the article which will stir up the most hornets.
Now I'll admit that there could be a lot of overly positive articles about boot camp, and that this article could potentially have a unique perspective. But c'mon, it's CNet. And I did read the article and it's nothing insightful. Same Apple bashing rehashed to include boot camp.
Post something balanced for a change that actually gives us real information for a change. Mod -1000 for annoying crap that is beneath the average slashdot reader.