The most shocking thing is that they're not kidding: they're actually validating against your driver's license or something close to it. For sites that don't require any sort of "real life" presence, I don't use my real name. I usually use sunburntkamel as a last name. This time, the site wouldn't let me enter without using my real last name. Don't believe me? Here's a thread full of people sorting it out.

I don't know who sold that list, but I'm shocked that people aren't more upset about it. Not only does it teach people to be phished¹, It doesn't even come close to protecting minors. C'mon, how many kids don't know their parent's names and birthdays?

1. Providing private data across unencrypted channels to untrustworthy parties (back ↩)

• The regulations would require the people running a site to get and maintain personal information from every user (that means you) who posts a “sexually explicit” photo, including your photo ID (driver’s license, passport, or military ID).
• The regulations would allow the Attorney General to conduct warrantless searches at will on the sites’ records, including your personal information.
• There are few safeguards over what the FBI can do with the information it obtains.
• If a site operator fails to comply with the regulations, he or she would face a prison sentence of up to 5 years.
• For more detailed information on Sec. 2257, go to http://www.thetaskforce.org/downloads/misc/2257_fact_sheet.pdf.

Alberto Gonzalez may have resigned, be we are not out of the woods, by any means.  The US is picking and choosing what her citizens can and can't say.  For them, it's sexual activity; for Turkey, negative comments about Adnan Oktar.

1. not to mention, according to matt's statements about opendomain.org, Adnan Oktar had every right to demand that all domains containing permutations of his name be ceded to him, on the basis of him owning his own name (back ↩)

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Donorschoose.org, an amazing nonprofit organization that supports public school teachers and kids, is a finalist in the American Express Members Project. The prize is up to $5 million, and the outcome will be decided by votes of American Express card holders. If we help DonorsChoose.org win, all the proceeds will go to classroom projects in public schools!

This doesn’t require money; just 2 minutes of your time. You could impact hundreds of thousands of public school students by voting now for:

Teachers Ask. You Choose. Students Learn.

Yes, that tag line at the end is the name of the project, not donorschoose.org. Nonetheless, it's not surprising to see why an NFP promoting choice among donors would be popular in a poll among amex cardholders to choose a project to support. It's so circular it destroys otherwise sensible sentences.

Social Entrepreneurship can be a good thing, in that holding people accountable is always a good thing, but it is disconcerting to see NFP's now having to spend considerable time and effort on marketing, and becoming popular with donors.

One of the benefits of using open source software is supposed to be the freedom to modify it to meet you needs.  But by using SVN to upgrade, I can no longer hack core files without making upgrading far more painful.  All it takes to fix this is an option to not syndicate this crap.  Or even a hook, so that a plugin could disable it.

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on his site, he also has a proposal for american health care:

1. Every American must have full, uninterrupted health care coverage for life.
2. Private, for-profit health insurance companies must be abolished.
3. Profits of pharmaceutical companies must be strictly regulated like a public utility.

Which is sure to infuriate republicans and misguided capitalists everywhere. last time i was thinking about this, i came up with my own version, that's a little less extreme, and requires less gutting of the existing system:

1. Make it illegal to hire anyone for a permanent position without providing health insurance.

I think coupled with moore's third law up there, and regulation as to what's acceptable behaviour by insurance companies, we could get better health care without the dreaded 'S' word. Then again, i am a dirty hippy who's wished for socialism before.

h/t: et cetera

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