iamnotlarry

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Zuckerberg should invest in a competing startup. Something that can cash in on the anti-Facebook mania of the moment. Give users a cut of the ad revenue specifically generated from their pages and let them decide how much they will get paid per ad. If somebody doesn't want any ads on their content, they can demand 5 cents per ad. But everyone could have some skin in the game. Or do something else that will generate a lot of buzz and attract Facebook quitters.

Put some spare $millions into it, pump it to a $2 billion valuation and decide from there.