Re: Things that Longhorn seems to be doing right

["Richard B. Johnson" <root@chaos.analogic.com>]

On Fri, 31 Oct 2003, Herman wrote:

> On Friday 31 October 2003 8:47 pm, Hans Reiser wrote:
> > I can't get US bank accounts for my programmers working for me.  Why?
> > Because every US bank without exception uses social security numbers as
> > a primary key.  A person without a social security number cannot be
> > coped with.  This is a weakness directly due to molding rather than
> > matching structure in data.
>
> No, that is a legal requirement, not a weakness due to molding,
> but I get your point.
>

Not a legal requirement in the United States. In fact, using a
"social security" or "taxpayer identification number" for
identification is contrary to federal law and a SS card contains
the words; "Not for identification".

This is rigidly enforced by many federal agencies and completely
ignored by others (go figure). Banks say they need to have a
SS number for 1099 forms, even for accounts that earn no
interest! It's just that their databases have an entry for
SS numbers (if required by the kind of account), and the
software is defective, requiring that field to be filled.
The result being that many person's rights are violated because
of defective software!

Incidentally, I recently obtained a so-called identification
badge that is now required for me to have access to my airplane.
I purposely left the SS# entry blank when I filled out the
form. This raised a stink that likely went all the way to the
state house. I got the badge. It seems that a State Government,
that has no business regulating air commerce, also wants to
keep my SS# on hand for surveillance. You need to keep putting
those attempts down.

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.22 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).
            Note 96.31% of all statistics are fiction.