Posted on 10/18/2001 7:25:25 AM PDT by Eala
Larry Ellison is promoting a new National ID Card based on Oracle software. He'll give the database engine away free to show his good spirit (but maintenance and upgrades will not be free.)
Sample of Larry Ellison's new National ID Card
Larry Ellison is promoting a new National ID Card based on Oracle software. He'll give the database engine away free to show his good spirit (but maintenance and upgrades will not be free.)
Here's a prototype of what his new card might look like. Of course, it would do nothing to combat terrorism, but it would help the government and corporations keep closer tabs on innocent people in the USA.
Turns out Jefferson may have gotten in backwards. The price of excessive vigilance is liberty.
More ironic than funny: Ellison's family took its name (not that long ago) from Ellis Island. He wants his card to be "optional" for citizens who don't mind being interrogated and searched when they travel, but mandatory for immigrants.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation? We fight stuff like Larry's card.
Agreed. But a national ID card won't increase your ability to find those that don't belong.
And therein lies the big problem. Once it's common, it becomes easily extensible.
For this particular application, I would prefer 1000 proprietary DBs to one common DB anyday.
Bill Gates is a booby head! Bill Gates is a booby head! Nyaa Nyaa...
As such, "civil disobedience" is very practical. Remember, far fewer blacks ever actually did it.
As such, "civil disobedience" is very practical. Remember, far fewer blacks ever actually did it.
My administrative law professor made the same point.
Efficiency is not in and of itself a good thing.
Why are you looking at this as "half full" ... look at it as a quick and easy way to identify who ISN'T a citizen.... we sure can't rely on our border patrol to do this.
The difficulty of obtaining a reasonable firearm for self-protection by an average, law-abiding citizen is just one example.
And I am with you on that one ... I would rather flash my "I am a citizen" ID to buy a guy than to have to go through a thumbprint registration and 30 day wait just because we don't have such a system. Not that these two extemes have been tied in any way .....
So, perhaps we should get rid of the locks on our doors?!?!?!?
Maybe we should do away with currency and just use gold bullion ... I mean there are counterfit'rs out there, you know ....
Come on gang, try harder ... convince me!
I'm also long term lurker, have learned a lot, and did not register until a Microsoft thread rang my bell. However, regarding point 2:
If databases are bad why is the FBI using them to find the money trail and email trail. It is pure speculation that they could do it without DB.
I don't think anyone stated databases are 'bad'. You are stating it as an either or proposition, and it ain't. Databases are tools. We are having a discussion on the ultimate application of a particular database, tracking one's existence. I don't buy groceries with a check for that reason.
Chances are Larry Ellison -- the brilliant, but boneheaded, bossman at Oracle -- is not a warm and fuzzy kind of guy. Not the kind of buddy you'd belly up to the bar with, one hand hanging onto a brew, the other his shoulder, singing college fight songs after the big game. No, he's definitely more of a my-way-or-the-highway kind of guy.
For instance, in a display of pique that rolled eyes even in consumer-crazed Silicon Valley, Ellison has threatened to sue San Jose, California, because the city won't let him land his personal jet at city-owned San Jose International Airport after 11:30 at night or before 6:30 in the morning. "San Jose has no right to tell me when I can land my airplane," Ellison said.
In an effort to improve the quality of life for city residents who live near the airport, San Jose prohibits airplanes of a certain size or greater from landing in the middle of the night. Small planes, or those experiencing air-traffic delays or mechanical difficulties, can land. Ellison's top-of-the-line Gulfstream Aerospace G-5 jet falls into the too-big-to-land-at-night category. It is worth noting, of course, that not only does Ellison not live near the airport, he doesn't even live in San Jose. But then laws put in place for the public welfare apparently don't apply to Ellison -- he's continued to land late at night at least nine times over the past two years, ignoring pleas from sleepy residents and the city.
I thought that's what we had green cards for - what added benefit will we derive from Nat'l IS cards? For that matter, how would a card stop terrorists who are legally in this country?
From bwteim to EricOKC, Baseballguy: I don't think anyone stated databases are 'bad'.
Eric, we must have been typing that line at the same time!
Now, if we'd just have a database, we could have been tracking each other's key strokes....
And a National ID (something between a drivers license and a passport) will make this a police state because ....?
Why do all the "chicken little" reasons why NOT to do this end up with purely emotion rather than any sort of logic in their arguements?
Look, I am speaking strickly as a business traveler who is finding that getting to the airport 3 hours earlier because we DON'T have any sort of national way of ID checking much more closer to living in a "police state" than I want as well ... so get out side and check out what is happening to the economy ... partly because of such emotional arguements that have no basis in fact.
Check the aliens more carefully at the borders, where the INS has miserably failed due to lack of resources,
Exactly ... it has failed .... should we hire thousands more to police these huge borders of ours? is that what other countries do? Perhaps putting up barbed wire would be better than actually having an ID ... sheesh ... let's get real guys. Reality says that our border will always be difficult to patrol.
Leave us law-abiding citizens alone. These ID cards would not have prevented 9/11, but a more vigilant INS would have.
A better way of ID'ing who is and who isn't a citizen is a realistic way of fixing our INS problem ..... not more manpower and more barbed wire.
Our benign government has been mechanically reading mail through unopened envelopes AT LEAST from all overseas locations--and listening in on whatever phone conversations it wanted--especially overseas locations for AT LEAST 30 years.
Anything certain branches want that's available in any other governmental body has been available or made available or stolen.
And you trust these guys?
I used to be a LOT more naive than I still am. . . but I'm not assuming such good faith on the part of the likes of Bimbo Crusher, at least. . . . If you do, enjoy whatever freedoms you have as much as possible. They are leaking fast down a black hole.
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