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Funny thought —
Joe
Today, 12:06 am
My current gaming computer has near 100x the storage (@1.75TB) of the PC I first played Half Life on (20GB).
National ID Card and You —
boskei
Yesterday, 8:57 am
So, its in the news again. The US Government is making another pass at a National ID card that would be required to gain employment. I don't honestly know a lot about it since I just started reading up on it, but I am curious what you all think about it. What benefits/drawbacks do you see to having one ID card to rule them all? ... So to speak.
Personally I am torn on the idea. I think there needs to be a real unification effort on national identification in some way. But at the same time I don't like my personal information known to anyone who doesn't need to know.
I didn't used to care as much until the last couple years. Joanna works at Walmart and she tells me about how many foreign, poor, etc type people come in with huge welfare checks to be cashed. Many with as much in welfare money as she makes actually working a real job. And then I look at my taxes and I am paying 25-30% and still owing at the end of tax season.
I could go on, but I am more interested in other opinions than my own.
Personally I am torn on the idea. I think there needs to be a real unification effort on national identification in some way. But at the same time I don't like my personal information known to anyone who doesn't need to know.
I didn't used to care as much until the last couple years. Joanna works at Walmart and she tells me about how many foreign, poor, etc type people come in with huge welfare checks to be cashed. Many with as much in welfare money as she makes actually working a real job. And then I look at my taxes and I am paying 25-30% and still owing at the end of tax season.
I could go on, but I am more interested in other opinions than my own.
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Re: National ID Card and You — Dan Yesterday, 9:44 amWe already have it in the form of the poorly-designed social security cards. I don't see a problem with it. I'm not sure where you are headed with the welfare/taxes part. That seems like a different issue than privacy, and it is unclear how it is connected to a universal ID system.
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Re: National ID Card and You — boskei Yesterday, 9:52 amI guess the specifics are more that this "new" ID card would require biometrics (finger prints, etc) as a means to prohibit companies from hiring illegal immigrants (my point about welfare and taxes). To the Social Security card bit, it was never intended to be a national identification card, to my knowledge the only card that holds that right now is the drivers license.
Show/Hide not quite a rant
Basically I think a universal identification card could be a good thing, but I am too sure of the negative implications that would make many many people be so against it as I am seeing as I look into the topic.-
Re: National ID Card and You — Dan Yesterday, 5:02 pmMost illegal immigrants pay social security (automatically withdrawn from their wages) without ever being eligible for social security benefits. (The linked article is from 2005 but I've read the same basic story several times more recently.)
Businesses will not stop employing illegal workers while they are willing to work for lower wages than their American counterparts*. The economic benefits are too great, and there is effectively no negative consequences even when they are caught. The economies of most first-world countries are funded by the exploitation of cheap labor, legal and illegal.
Illegal immigration policy is a dirty secret in this country because our economy would be destroyed if it were eliminated, but we do not have a fast, cheap, easy, or secure path to legal citizenship. As a matter of national policy, the path to legal employment must be fixed before the enforcement issue of illegal immigration can be addressed. The creation of seasonal worker permits would be a good first step in this direction.
*This ignores the problem that there are not enough people willing to do many of these jobs—crop harvest for example—even at higher wages.
There is a whole pile of information on wikipedia, as usual.
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Re: National ID Card and You — babada Yesterday, 11:33 amI agree with Dan.
More details:
* I am against SSN because they aren't unique and the number space is too small
* People/businesses are using SSN as a personal identifier
* I am for a strict ID replacement in the sense that I get a number when I am born or nationalized that is a nationally unique number
* I am for a country code being prepended to make United States IDs globally unique
* Uniqueness should be designed so that one number always points to a specific identity. I have less of a problem with a person having more than one ID. This would allow for flagging IDs as compromised due to identity theft and so on.
More thoughts on identification issues:
* Fingerprints should be recognized as not uniquely identifying
* Driver's licenses, passports, and other legal identification should be associated with your national ID
* I have no problem with medical records being associated with your national ID
* I have no problem with financial records being associated with your national ID
* Medical and financial records are generally associated with SSN now, anyway, and it is ridiculously trivial to match someone's banking information to their medical information if you already have both pieces.
* Electronic medical records are quickly becoming mandatory and will probably pose a bigger threat to hacking and identity theft than it ever should be
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Penny Arcade: The Opposite of Poker Face —
babada
Yesterday, 8:51 am
For those who haven't seen it yet, Penny Arcade just mentioned Shadows Over Camelot.
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Re: Penny Arcade: The Opposite of Poker Face — steven Yesterday, 9:17 amthis one is so great.
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Re: Penny Arcade: The Opposite of Poker Face — boskei Yesterday, 9:25 amThe news article that went with it was decently entertaining as well.
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A thought crushed my mind... —
Joe
Monday, March 8, 9:44 pm
How hard would this be?
Previous Position Metadata: Having a section in the metadata of A/V files that is essentially a bookmark. I know itunes/zune do this with podcasts and audiobooks with some sort of locally saved data but if it was actually in the metadata of the file you would be able to be watching a video on your PC or laptop and decide you want to switch over to your HTPC or PS3 by streaming it and with this marker it would just pick up where you left off. A lot of this kind of stuff is done within particular programs but having it ubiquitous would really simplify everything so that if you were creating a program you wouldn't have to set up any sort of structure for bookmarking but rather simply integrate the standard. Just a thought but figured I would get an opinion.
Previous Position Metadata: Having a section in the metadata of A/V files that is essentially a bookmark. I know itunes/zune do this with podcasts and audiobooks with some sort of locally saved data but if it was actually in the metadata of the file you would be able to be watching a video on your PC or laptop and decide you want to switch over to your HTPC or PS3 by streaming it and with this marker it would just pick up where you left off. A lot of this kind of stuff is done within particular programs but having it ubiquitous would really simplify everything so that if you were creating a program you wouldn't have to set up any sort of structure for bookmarking but rather simply integrate the standard. Just a thought but figured I would get an opinion.
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Re: A thought crushed my mind... — babada Yesterday, 8:37 amIf you are streaming a video, where is the marker saved?
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Re: A thought crushed my mind... — Joe Yesterday, 8:45 amIt would be in the metadata of the file itself (like id3 for mp3s) so if you wanted it to put in the marker you would simply have the network share setup as read/write. If you didn't want the marker you could just turn off read write. You would usually have read/write set up on a home server as typically you would manage the files remotely from another computer (especially in the case of a NAS or headless file server).
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Re: A thought crushed my mind... — babada Yesterday, 8:52 amOh, okay. I misunderstood what you meant by streaming. I was trying to figure out how you would bookmark something like a Hulu video for thousands of people at once.
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Hey Adam... —
boskei
Monday, March 8, 3:14 pm
You, and your family for that matter, might be interested in this article pertaining to upcoming Valve support for Macs.
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Re: Hey Adam... — babada Monday, March 8, 3:20 pm
While Valve's back catalogue will be released for Mac in April, the recently-announced Portal 2 will be the studio's first day-one Mac release.
Woohoo!
Performance —
boskei
Friday, March 5, 3:14 pm
Here is a fun little read on the status of The Web Browser as done by Tom's Hardware.
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Re: Performance — babada Friday, March 5, 4:06 pm
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Re: Performance — Dan Friday, March 5, 5:38 pmUntil it has adblock it loses in my book.
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Re: Performance — Joe Friday, March 5, 7:53 pmIt does as an extension. I still prefer FF.
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Mark Herscher Household —
Josh
Friday, March 5, 5:06 pm
Have any of you seen my cool off-white home knit scarf? I think I may have left it at your place?
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Re: Mark Herscher Household — Dan Friday, March 5, 5:37 pmHaven't.