That isn't a valid argument. You could say the same thing about any subject. Such as:
At many levels, Mathematics is an agenda as well. Why else would there be such a push to have it taught in schools?
The simple answer is because evolutionism is actually based on scientific evidence. ID is simply a religion that is trying to make itself look scientific so it can be lobbied to be taught in public schools.
I think a better solution is to say that companies can't use information gathered on you against you unless they can prove that the information is accurate. No reporting to credit agencies unless they have something like a photocopied drivers license, and signature on file, or another secure electronic method. Such as the government creating a service that both companies and people can get access to that allows for secure electronic identification like a hashed password.
The company tells you it's ID, then you go to the government website and give them the company ID and how long to keep that ID valid (24 hours - 3 months, user selectble). The company can then check using your name/SSN on the government website that their ID is currently valid. Once that is done, their ID is then de-activated immediately. Companies may have terminals installed to allow you to log into the government website I guess, but that may raise more security concerns.
Now companies can continue to use SSN's whereever they want, and identity theft is a problem of the past for anything important. And more importantly if it does occur, the user has a valid and easy way of disputing the problem quickly and easily.
Q20: Are Social Security numbers reused after a person dies?
A: No. We do not reassign a Social Security number (SSN) after the number holder's death. Even though we have issued over 415 million SSNs so far, and we assign about 5 and one-half million new numbers a year, the current numbering system will provide us with enough new numbers for several generations into the future with no changes in the numbering system.
I just gave you 5 rules of a natural key (Well one rule stated twice in differing specificity). Briefly:
Must be derived from the object's real world attributes. Must be unique to that specific object. There must only be one object with that key. Must not be generated by a second authority (Must not need a central authority).
----
As for a unique integer, there is no rule for that. Integer isn't a rule for a key, surrogate key, artifical key, primary key, or unique key (constraint). The only thing a unique integer describes is... An integer with a unique constraint. You may prefer an integer type key as they TYPICALLY are a short, but integer doesn't necessarily need to be short -- a number with a billion digits may be an integer, but would make a terrible key/index, nor does it guarantee there isn't a better non-integer solution (character, boolean).
Keeping your SSN "secret" isn't the problem. The problem is that it is used as a form of authentication, and rarely isn't identified. You SHOULD be able to post your SSN, name and DOB on a billboard and not care. That's the problem.
Based on your argument, perhaps instead of keeping SSN secret, you should just keep your name secret. You really can't do much with a SSN if no one knows the name of the person it belongs to. I know that's silly, but so is trying to keep your SSN secret. It's a terrible system that is completely broken.
SSNs are guaranteed to be unique. That does not guarantee that a SSN won't be entered or gathered correctly, but that doesn't invalidate the fact that SSNs are indeed unique. If you have SSN collisions, and you have a true need for correct SSNs then you need to have a discussion about correct gathering and verification.
Because an account number isn't natural, it fails many tests of a natural key, and hence it is a surrogate (or to be really technical, an artificial not surrogate) key. Surrogate keys aren't supposed to be known to users, while artificial keys are, but that's another topic. In either case, it isn't a natural key. And actually a SSN isn't a natural key either in the strictest sense, but it's much closer to one than an account number is.
A) It isn't derived from the attributes of the object/record in question. B) It isn't necessarily unique for each object/record in question (As you said you could as policy force only one account, but that's a policy, not a guarantee). C) The same object/record would not create the same account number in all circumstances. AKA, if you signed up for service, what would be your account number? D) It has no real world applicability outside of your own realm. Can AT&T tell me your Comcast account number? E) It depends on a central authority to generate.
First Comcast would need your SSN to do a credit check, unless you prepay your cable service including any pay-per-view charges you might incur. Secondly, your phone number, address, and name do not allow comcast to accurately identify if you had a prior account with them that is in default. Lastly, they may want your SSN incase you bounce checks so they can report you to the cheques system so that other companies can then deny you service or force you to pre-pay.
The problem is that it isn't cost efficient to offer three options. At the very least, what should happen is that buyers of custom made computers should be forced to pay the full additional costs involved with handling, maintaining and supporting those custom machines (plus a sizable margin). Of course, even that wouldn't be enough because it diverts attention and energy away from the actual core of the business, so the margin would have to be significant enough to warrant diverting focus, and by the time all that is done and calculated, your "No OS"/"Linux" machine now costs $150 more per machine than the one mass produced with windows on it.
Demanding a choice is awesome, but it that doesn't mean it should be free. Pay the costs and incentives to get it, and manufacturers will be happy to oblige. Problem is you are demanding choice which costs manufacturers time, money, and focus and demanding a reduction in price (when the actual costs go way up).
Who or what generates the number isn't the problem. If everyone switched over to using your ID number, then pretty soon everyone would be saying to keep that secret just like they do for SSN now. The problem is that the number is being used to authenticate you instead of just identifying you. If companies demanded a valid notarized SSN card as proof prior to obtaining anything in your name, then you could tell your SSN to anyone and it wouldn't matter (with the assumption that it's impossible to forge a SSN card -- granted it isn't impossible, but that's another topic).
Full Name + DOB is not guaranteed to be unique and it isn't that uncommon of an occurrence either. Grats on a crappy design, glad you aren't a system designer working for me. Not only that, but many times like for insurance, people get their children's birthdays wrong, which will throw a wrench into your database, and litter it with duplicate entries (Which was/is the point of a primary key). Massive fail.
You obviously don't understand the technologies behind flash. There is no extra write.
In either case, if you wrote to the non-GC'ed sectors, you need to do a sector clear, then write (because flash can only write to cleared sectors -- essentially). Although writes are really free, it's the clear that has a limited number of uses per sector. Reads are free, writes are free, clears are limited. You can't write to a non-clear sector, so for simplicity -- people say flash has a limited number of write cycles.
Flash writes can only change bits from 0 to 1. If any bit in that sector is currently a 1, and needs to be a 0, then you have to clear the sector first. So if the sector is say 00000001, and you want to write 00010001, then you don't NEED a clear, but if it is currently 00010001, and you want to write 00000001, then you need to first clear the sector, and then write. The odds of any garbage sector having all the 1's in the correct spots so a new write to the same sector eliminates the need for a write is so small, that in most cases you might as well think of being able to write to the same sector multiple times as not being possible. Yes, there are cases in which it COULD happen, but it is so rare, that outside of the drives own housekeeping, I don't think the drive even considers it an option in most firmwares.
If the power line is underground, the construction company paid to have it run to the house - unless animals, or man with equipment dig into it, it won't be damaged (unless the shielding is faulty and degrades underground).
No, the power company paid to have it run to the house.
In any case, the company already got paid to run the wire. They get paid by all the other users on the grid to keep it going.
If a line goes down, does it cost more if 99 out of 100 people use the electricity than if 100 of 100 use it?
Are you suggesting the first guy on the block should pay for the transformers and the wires, and maintenance and everyone else gets it free since it doesn't cost more for 2 than 1 or 99 than 1?
What about lines run out to a single house, who isn't using solar. Do they charge him more because he's the only one on the line? (Beyond the footing the bill to get it to his/her house that is)
The point is that those costs were factored into the bill before, but because there is a change in the demographics of the users, that cost is no longer being covered.
If 99% of the users are drawing power, hell, even if there's 50% of the users drawing power constantly, there's more than enough to cover repairs.
And again, why should the 99% or 50% be subsidizing the 1% or 50%? They shouldn't necessarily, especially in areas in which there may be large amounts of people with alternative power sources that could be straining power companies finances.
This is greed - pure and simple.
It's neither pure, nor simple. Whether it's greed or not depends on whether you think that the power companies should be forced to maintain lines to solar users for free and recoup the losses from users who aren't, or if the cost should be paid by those who are incurring the costs.
I think you missed the fact that even if the power evens out at the end of the month, solar users are still using the grid. They send (extra) power during the day, and pull power at night (when the panels aren't powerful enough). Hence, even though the net power usage may be 0, a solar user is using the grid every day.
Of course, if you installed batteries to keep the power, and you ran solely on that (never drained your batteries, etc), then you aren't using the grid as much, but the power company still had to run a line to your house, and maintain it. If a storm knocks out a power line, the power company still has to fix it (and pay for the repairs). Being hooked up to the grid and using a net usage of 0KWH isn't "free" for the power company.
I would love to find some links that show some of those things you mentioned (The 6000 MPG car... 9998 MPG vehicle), because I can't find anything even remotely close. Best I can find is articles on people getting just under 110 MPG in priuses. Unless you are referring to gallons of something other than gas, like hydrogen. In which case you might be talking about the PAC, if you used some crazy math to try and convert grams of hydrogen into an equivalent in gallons of gas.
I think you are greatly mistaken, but if you aren't, then I would be interested if you could point out some links for me.
Better than the linux store, where you have to build the whole store yourself. If you don't like the pot holes in the parking area, they say you can fix them yourself.
I had incorrectly assumed that the integration components would work under both Hyper-V and Virtual PC. At least at the current time, that is incorrect, so as you have stated, the importance of these drivers is not nearly as high as I thought.
Still important for those shops that already have Windows Hyper-V servers running, and they would like to be able to consolidate (or add) linux on them as well as their Windows servers. It may or may not be typical, but the only company that I have hands-on experience running virtual servers is/was using Virtual Server 2005 R2, and have likely upgraded to Hyper-V by now, and they aren't likely to switch to another platform just because linux doesn't (didn't) run well on it. They would be more likely to just flat out deny any purchases that required linux because of it. Considering they had just completed a server consolidation, trying to get a server that couldn't be run on their virtualized hardware would be next to impossible. Yes, this was a Fortune-50 company.
Perhaps. That is not my understanding, but I am not a lawyer. That was told to me by the president of our company from our legal department, but I don't know the quality of our legal department, nor how well the information was conveyed to him and then to me. This was many years ago, perhaps more recent rulings may have changed things as well.
Slashdot Mirror
That isn't a valid argument. You could say the same thing about any subject. Such as:
At many levels, Mathematics is an agenda as well. Why else would there be such a push to have it taught in schools?
The simple answer is because evolutionism is actually based on scientific evidence. ID is simply a religion that is trying to make itself look scientific so it can be lobbied to be taught in public schools.
Cost efficiency is part of running a business. Always doing the right thing is part of running a religion.
Happens here. My x-wife is prepaying her cable bill, while I don't have to. In fact she had to put a deposit down on her PVR as well, while I didn't.
I think a better solution is to say that companies can't use information gathered on you against you unless they can prove that the information is accurate. No reporting to credit agencies unless they have something like a photocopied drivers license, and signature on file, or another secure electronic method. Such as the government creating a service that both companies and people can get access to that allows for secure electronic identification like a hashed password.
The company tells you it's ID, then you go to the government website and give them the company ID and how long to keep that ID valid (24 hours - 3 months, user selectble). The company can then check using your name/SSN on the government website that their ID is currently valid. Once that is done, their ID is then de-activated immediately. Companies may have terminals installed to allow you to log into the government website I guess, but that may raise more security concerns.
Now companies can continue to use SSN's whereever they want, and identity theft is a problem of the past for anything important. And more importantly if it does occur, the user has a valid and easy way of disputing the problem quickly and easily.
Q20: Are Social Security numbers reused after a person dies?
A: No. We do not reassign a Social Security number (SSN) after the number holder's death. Even though we have issued over 415 million SSNs so far, and we assign about 5 and one-half million new numbers a year, the current numbering system will provide us with enough new numbers for several generations into the future with no changes in the numbering system.
http://www.ssa.gov/history/hfaq.html
I just gave you 5 rules of a natural key (Well one rule stated twice in differing specificity). Briefly:
Must be derived from the object's real world attributes.
Must be unique to that specific object.
There must only be one object with that key.
Must not be generated by a second authority (Must not need a central authority).
----
As for a unique integer, there is no rule for that. Integer isn't a rule for a key, surrogate key, artifical key, primary key, or unique key (constraint). The only thing a unique integer describes is... An integer with a unique constraint. You may prefer an integer type key as they TYPICALLY are a short, but integer doesn't necessarily need to be short -- a number with a billion digits may be an integer, but would make a terrible key/index, nor does it guarantee there isn't a better non-integer solution (character, boolean).
Keeping your SSN "secret" isn't the problem. The problem is that it is used as a form of authentication, and rarely isn't identified. You SHOULD be able to post your SSN, name and DOB on a billboard and not care. That's the problem.
Based on your argument, perhaps instead of keeping SSN secret, you should just keep your name secret. You really can't do much with a SSN if no one knows the name of the person it belongs to. I know that's silly, but so is trying to keep your SSN secret. It's a terrible system that is completely broken.
SSNs are guaranteed to be unique. That does not guarantee that a SSN won't be entered or gathered correctly, but that doesn't invalidate the fact that SSNs are indeed unique. If you have SSN collisions, and you have a true need for correct SSNs then you need to have a discussion about correct gathering and verification.
Because an account number isn't natural, it fails many tests of a natural key, and hence it is a surrogate (or to be really technical, an artificial not surrogate) key. Surrogate keys aren't supposed to be known to users, while artificial keys are, but that's another topic. In either case, it isn't a natural key. And actually a SSN isn't a natural key either in the strictest sense, but it's much closer to one than an account number is.
A) It isn't derived from the attributes of the object/record in question.
B) It isn't necessarily unique for each object/record in question (As you said you could as policy force only one account, but that's a policy, not a guarantee).
C) The same object/record would not create the same account number in all circumstances. AKA, if you signed up for service, what would be your account number?
D) It has no real world applicability outside of your own realm. Can AT&T tell me your Comcast account number?
E) It depends on a central authority to generate.
First Comcast would need your SSN to do a credit check, unless you prepay your cable service including any pay-per-view charges you might incur. Secondly, your phone number, address, and name do not allow comcast to accurately identify if you had a prior account with them that is in default. Lastly, they may want your SSN incase you bounce checks so they can report you to the cheques system so that other companies can then deny you service or force you to pre-pay.
The problem is that it isn't cost efficient to offer three options. At the very least, what should happen is that buyers of custom made computers should be forced to pay the full additional costs involved with handling, maintaining and supporting those custom machines (plus a sizable margin). Of course, even that wouldn't be enough because it diverts attention and energy away from the actual core of the business, so the margin would have to be significant enough to warrant diverting focus, and by the time all that is done and calculated, your "No OS"/"Linux" machine now costs $150 more per machine than the one mass produced with windows on it.
Demanding a choice is awesome, but it that doesn't mean it should be free. Pay the costs and incentives to get it, and manufacturers will be happy to oblige. Problem is you are demanding choice which costs manufacturers time, money, and focus and demanding a reduction in price (when the actual costs go way up).
Who or what generates the number isn't the problem. If everyone switched over to using your ID number, then pretty soon everyone would be saying to keep that secret just like they do for SSN now. The problem is that the number is being used to authenticate you instead of just identifying you. If companies demanded a valid notarized SSN card as proof prior to obtaining anything in your name, then you could tell your SSN to anyone and it wouldn't matter (with the assumption that it's impossible to forge a SSN card -- granted it isn't impossible, but that's another topic).
Full Name + DOB is not guaranteed to be unique and it isn't that uncommon of an occurrence either. Grats on a crappy design, glad you aren't a system designer working for me. Not only that, but many times like for insurance, people get their children's birthdays wrong, which will throw a wrench into your database, and litter it with duplicate entries (Which was/is the point of a primary key). Massive fail.
Account numbers are a surrogate key, not natural.
That should have read "eliminates the need for a clear is so small"
You obviously don't understand the technologies behind flash. There is no extra write.
In either case, if you wrote to the non-GC'ed sectors, you need to do a sector clear, then write (because flash can only write to cleared sectors -- essentially). Although writes are really free, it's the clear that has a limited number of uses per sector. Reads are free, writes are free, clears are limited. You can't write to a non-clear sector, so for simplicity -- people say flash has a limited number of write cycles.
Flash writes can only change bits from 0 to 1. If any bit in that sector is currently a 1, and needs to be a 0, then you have to clear the sector first. So if the sector is say 00000001, and you want to write 00010001, then you don't NEED a clear, but if it is currently 00010001, and you want to write 00000001, then you need to first clear the sector, and then write. The odds of any garbage sector having all the 1's in the correct spots so a new write to the same sector eliminates the need for a write is so small, that in most cases you might as well think of being able to write to the same sector multiple times as not being possible. Yes, there are cases in which it COULD happen, but it is so rare, that outside of the drives own housekeeping, I don't think the drive even considers it an option in most firmwares.
Personally I will never buy a SSD disk until crap like wear leveling is unecessary and random write performance does not suck.
Oh, so you bought a SSD 9 months ago?
He was trying to be funny, as sledgehammer was a popular song released by peter gabriel around the same time that phil collin's sussudio was released.
If the power line is underground, the construction company paid to have it run to the house - unless animals, or man with equipment dig into it, it won't be damaged (unless the shielding is faulty and degrades underground).
No, the power company paid to have it run to the house.
In any case, the company already got paid to run the wire. They get paid by all the other users on the grid to keep it going.
If a line goes down, does it cost more if 99 out of 100 people use the electricity than if 100 of 100 use it?
Are you suggesting the first guy on the block should pay for the transformers and the wires, and maintenance and everyone else gets it free since it doesn't cost more for 2 than 1 or 99 than 1?
What about lines run out to a single house, who isn't using solar. Do they charge him more because he's the only one on the line? (Beyond the footing the bill to get it to his/her house that is)
The point is that those costs were factored into the bill before, but because there is a change in the demographics of the users, that cost is no longer being covered.
If 99% of the users are drawing power, hell, even if there's 50% of the users drawing power constantly, there's more than enough to cover repairs.
And again, why should the 99% or 50% be subsidizing the 1% or 50%? They shouldn't necessarily, especially in areas in which there may be large amounts of people with alternative power sources that could be straining power companies finances.
This is greed - pure and simple.
It's neither pure, nor simple. Whether it's greed or not depends on whether you think that the power companies should be forced to maintain lines to solar users for free and recoup the losses from users who aren't, or if the cost should be paid by those who are incurring the costs.
I think you missed the fact that even if the power evens out at the end of the month, solar users are still using the grid. They send (extra) power during the day, and pull power at night (when the panels aren't powerful enough). Hence, even though the net power usage may be 0, a solar user is using the grid every day.
Of course, if you installed batteries to keep the power, and you ran solely on that (never drained your batteries, etc), then you aren't using the grid as much, but the power company still had to run a line to your house, and maintain it. If a storm knocks out a power line, the power company still has to fix it (and pay for the repairs). Being hooked up to the grid and using a net usage of 0KWH isn't "free" for the power company.
I would love to find some links that show some of those things you mentioned (The 6000 MPG car... 9998 MPG vehicle), because I can't find anything even remotely close. Best I can find is articles on people getting just under 110 MPG in priuses. Unless you are referring to gallons of something other than gas, like hydrogen. In which case you might be talking about the PAC, if you used some crazy math to try and convert grams of hydrogen into an equivalent in gallons of gas.
I think you are greatly mistaken, but if you aren't, then I would be interested if you could point out some links for me.
Thanks in advance.
Better than the linux store, where you have to build the whole store yourself. If you don't like the pot holes in the parking area, they say you can fix them yourself.
I had incorrectly assumed that the integration components would work under both Hyper-V and Virtual PC. At least at the current time, that is incorrect, so as you have stated, the importance of these drivers is not nearly as high as I thought.
Still important for those shops that already have Windows Hyper-V servers running, and they would like to be able to consolidate (or add) linux on them as well as their Windows servers. It may or may not be typical, but the only company that I have hands-on experience running virtual servers is/was using Virtual Server 2005 R2, and have likely upgraded to Hyper-V by now, and they aren't likely to switch to another platform just because linux doesn't (didn't) run well on it. They would be more likely to just flat out deny any purchases that required linux because of it. Considering they had just completed a server consolidation, trying to get a server that couldn't be run on their virtualized hardware would be next to impossible. Yes, this was a Fortune-50 company.
A burp tank you probably know as the "overflow tank", or "coolant reservoir".
Perhaps. That is not my understanding, but I am not a lawyer. That was told to me by the president of our company from our legal department, but I don't know the quality of our legal department, nor how well the information was conveyed to him and then to me. This was many years ago, perhaps more recent rulings may have changed things as well.