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I live in a small U.S. town. There are not 10K people living within 25 miles of my house. While few here would admit to being rich, people who don't live here might see them as pretty well off. There is probably something close to 1 car per capita. That includes infants. If you throw in motorcycles, four-wheelers, tractors, loaders, golf carts, boats, jet skis, snowmobiles, personal fork-lifts, etc. we have to go well above 1 vehicle per capita.

Still, there are many functioning people here who do not own a single vehicle.

That doesn't make them poor or stupid or government-dependent.

Your ignorance and prejudice are undermining your ability to mount a convincing argument. I happen to think that a voter ID is not an unacceptable idea. But I run across so many people who seem to mount the kinds of uninformed arguments that you have here. These arguments scare me. They make me worry about the capacity of our society to enact a reasonable voter ID program. It seems like it should be so simple. Then I read the thinking of people like you and worry that it will be botched.


I grew up in a town smaller than that. How many adults do not have a driver's license, which is acceptable id for voting?


I, for one, hope that a driver's license in not an acceptable ID for voting. It certainly is not sufficient to prove citizenship.

Perhaps you think we control for that as part of voter registration. We do not. I registered by walking into a post office, filling out a form, and handing the clerk some pocket change for a stamp.


I have no way to count them. But I can give you one off the top of my head.

My dad.

Incidentally, he owns two cars.


Incidentally, he owns two cars.

If he drives them, he will rightfully be arrested. If he wants to bail out of jail after his arrest, the bondsman will require ID. No ID, and he sits there in jail until his case is heard several months down the line.

With respect to your other claims, you seem to be of the belief that a Driver's License and an ID are necessarily the same thing. They are not. You can easily acquire an ID card that is not a driver's license.


I was responding specifically to a claim that people without a car must be poor and on government support. That was followed by a question about how many adults don't have Driver's Licenses. To the first claim I responded with experience of people without cars who were not poor. To the second question I provided experience with people that don't have a Driver's License.

To your statement, I will respond by letting you know that he does not drive. I agree that he should be arrested if he is found driving without a license.

I will also point out that you have made some of the same poor assumptions as the first comment. If he wants to bail out of jail after his arrest, he will open his wallet and pay cash for his bail. If he doesn't actually have the cash in his wallet, he may send his driver to retrieve more cash.

People without a Driver's License are not necessarily poor. Or uneducated. Or dim-witted.


Who said anything about being poor? Are you implying that only poor people use bondsman?

In this thread you’ve said that you only fly private and that your father has a personal driver. Congratulations to you/him on your success in life, but something tells me that both of you have ID if this is the case.


I have an ID. Last time I renewed it I specifically spurned the "Real ID" option. Which supposedly means I can't get on an airplane. I have since been on an airplane. But not one that required a loss of dignity.

I did not provide a driver license to my employer. I have worked legitimately for them every day for many years.

I did not provide a driver license to my ISP.

I can't fathom why my bank would need to know if I am allowed to drive. They do, however, have a legitimate reason for wanting my SSN.

This current year I have traveled across 4 states several times. Nobody asked me for my license. I've spent many thousands of dollars with retailers. I've stayed at multiple hotels. I've been to the airport a few times. And I've lived in the home that I own all year long. In none of these situations have I been asked for a driver license.

I have been asked for my driver license in what seemed odd circumstances. I gave them a puzzled look and declined the requests. Once or twice they persisted and I asked them why they needed to know if I was permitted to drive. They sputter something about their computer screen. I ask them if we can proceed if I don't have a license, and they eventually figure out how to do that. We complete our business; I get in my car and drive home.

Honestly, I wish people like you would put up a little more resistance. But I recognize your right to do whatever you want with your license.


Which supposedly means I can't get on an airplane. I have since been on an airplane. But not one that required a loss of dignity.

You'll apparently "lose your dignity" in October [1].

I can't fathom why my bank would need to know if I am allowed to drive.

An ID and a driver's license are not necessarily the same thing.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/tsa-changes-deadline-for-real...


This is completely separate from voting issues, but I tend to avoid settings where I am treated like a suspect. I certainly don't pay people specifically to treat me like a suspect. As you might guess, this means that I don't do business with commercial airlines.

It also means that I avoid sporting events that require pat-downs. Or neighborhood parties that require criminal background checks. Or schools with metal detectors at the entrance.

In general, if an event is so sketchy and risky that it requires those measures, I take it as a signal to avoid that event. When I see somebody dressed in full combat gear I know I am not where I want to be.


"As you might guess, this means that I don't do business with commercial airlines."

It must be wonderful to be able to fly private, but that isn't an option for most of the people that are the subject of this conversation.


That's an amusing video. Well framed.

But as to your idea about life without an ID... I routinely refuse to show my ID to bank tellers, doctor offices, trains, planes, etc. I avoid most activities the require ID. There is one obvious exception--I drive every day.

I carry my ID with me at all times. But I refuse to show to somebody who is not writing me a traffic ticket. That refusal has not impeded my ability to conduct a normal life.

FWIW, I am not opposed to voter ID. I am opposed to universal ID. My voter ID should not be required to open a bank account, or rent an apartment. It should be for one purpose. I recently tried to open a bank account. They asked for my SSN. I gave it to them so they could report taxable income to the IRS. They asked for my drivers license. I refused. They asked for my employment history. I refused. If they asked for my shoe size, I would refuse.

Over-collection of personal data is a big problem right now. Most people facilitate it. I try to resist it.

So far, it hasn't prevented me from voting.


yes


I wouldn't say that Google is high on my list of trust, either. But TypeScript and VS Code do not jump you into a #2 ranking. Go and Chrome easily trump them for starters. Then you get things like node that ride off V8, and Atom that rides off Chrome. The Google ecosystem of community building blocks is still much, much more significant than MS. After all, Google actually dogfoods OSS.

FWIW, I don't and wouldn't use a source code repository of Google's or Facebook's, either. In fact, rather than open a GitLab account, I started self-hosting a year ago. GitLab made that easy. I also looked at Pagure.


wait, how does go and chrome trump open source c#, f#, vb.net, .net core, typescript, asp.net, visual studio code, monaco, powershell core, mono, and the many, many other things they have open sourced?

they’ve gone insane.

https://opensource.microsoft.com

https://github.com/Microsoft

and all of these are active and well managed with microsoft employees engaged in communication.


Angular, Polymer,

Dart, Go,

Android,

Chromium,

Protocol Buffers, Java Guice/Collections, C++ Abseil

Plus a bunch of minor things

https://opensource.google.com/projects/list/featured

and stuff Google contributes to but doesn't lead.


Kubernetes, CGroups (for containers) VP9, VP10 codecs


Microsoft open source is inherently less valuable because it is all built around being closed source until recently.

So there is much less of a network effect which makes it less valuable. One example: most open source modern OO languages, e.g. Kotlin, Scala, target the JVM, and so are interoperable. Whereas C# is in a closed Microsoft bubble of open source. If it had an LLVM or Java backend, it'd be much more useful.


none of that makes any sense. c#, f#, and vb.net all target .NET (and thus the CLR) and are interoperable. they are also cross-platform with .NET core.

and saying “most open source modern OO languages ... target the JVM” is not accurate. if you mean modern OO JVM languages, then yea, of course, but that is satisfied analogously by the .NET languages.

the c# and f# compilers, .NET core (libraries and framework), and core CLR (the runtime) are all open source and cross-platform. there isn’t anything closed about it. i don’t know what you mean by “closed microsoft bubble of open source”.

why do the .NET languages need LLVM or JVM implementations to be useful? again, that doesn’t make sense.


Nothing which a normal 'non microsoft' developer would profit from. Even their contributions to Linux were mostly about running Windows on Linux and the other way around. Nothing a non Microsoft dev would even care about.

Google however maintains a few products that can easily be considered standard, or at least will find their way in any other developer stack.


what is a non-microsoft developer? these are open platforms that happen to be made by microsoft.

if you use google’s open source projects are you now a google developer?

and visual studio code is probably used more for web development than it is .net work. it certainly is the major selling point of it on the website.


Agreed that is weird wording. When I look at my environment there are basically 2 kind of developers (from this point of view) those who do Net and use the MS stack, and those who don't do Net and at max worked with VS code.

I really don't know a lot of people who do anything with the MS stack. And those who do code on and for Microsoft (which already is a minority)

I personally don't know anyone who switched from Atom or Sublime to VS. Only VS users I know have been using real VS before.


I don't think so. See, for example, Wells Fargo. It's hard to imagine an institution that has abused their customers in a more ridiculous way and suffered fewer consequences.

People just don't seem to care how many times they get ripped off by WF. They don't move to the competition. They just stay there and take it over and over again. There is absolutely no incentive for banks to improve. Indeed, it is against the interests of big banks to improve the customer experience.


Selling a DVD for 0.25USD is hardly snake oil.

Perhaps you are confusing him with the official from Microsoft who testified that the discs were equivalent to the 25USD discs sold by Microsoft.


He wasn't selling the discs for $0.25. He was selling most of them for $3 or $4, and a small number of them for $30 and $40.


I very deliberately don't participate in loyalty programs. Every single time I go through a checkout at a local business, they ask me for my loyalty info. Every single time, I decline.

Then I swipe my credit card through their machine and give them the exact same credit card number to associate with every purchase I make.

I fully understand that they can track me. I am sending the message that I don't want to be tracked. I am also sending the message that I am willing to pass on their incentives to be tracked, but I am not willing to pass on the convenience of my credit card.

Then I make my credit card company send me a new card every year. So vendors get to track me through less than 50 purchases before I switch.

For businesses that track loyalty by customer name, I will give them the name of a neighbor or other acquaintance. It's astounding how often they are willing to give me back information about that person.


PCI compliance requires, among other things, that a credit card not be used to correlate purchases through time - that’s the main reason loyalty clubs exist; that’s your tracking identifier.

Whether or not this Requirement is observed, audited or enforced I have no idea.


I wrote a very small resolve hook for node that does this. It makes the directory of the initial module / for all imports. Node has made resolver hooks like that dead simple.


I think this is important. In the bad old days, I always developed in Firefox. I made a point of following standards. I despised IE.

I still use Firefox as my personal browser, but some recent development I have done has been in Chrome. Mostly because Firefox is missing one critical feature for that project. It's not quite in the standard yet. It is Stage 3 with TC39[0].

Stage 3 means, "The solution is complete and no further work is possible without implementation experience, significant usage and external feedback."

So they need browsers to implement it and provide feedback. Chrome has had it since v63. Firefox has had a bug for it for more than a year, but no public progress. Node will have it next month.

I chose to move ahead on it six months ago, figuring Firefox would be on board before I was ready to release. I was wrong. But I'm not going back. Partly for the same reason I stubbornly developed in Firefox during the IE years. This one feature is all that prevents my code from working in Firefox. They will get there eventually. I will not go back to giant build frameworks and bundlers and code splitters and transpilers and gigabytes of tooling. My code works now without those. I look forward to Firefox stepping into this world. I'm eager for that to happen. In the meantime, my users can use Chrome.

0. https://tc39.github.io/proposal-dynamic-import/


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