Are confirmation numbers really confirmations, or are they just record keys? That is to say, how does a confirmation prove that I paid my gas bill other than to uniquely identify my payment record? If their database farts and my payment record gets lost, is my confirmation number worthless? My guess is yes. What they really need to do is cryptographically sign a receipt at the time of payment that I can hang onto. It won't prove that I paid, but it can prove that they said I did, which is good enough for me. I suspect most people haven't thought about what a confirmation number really means, otherwise they'd realize that it probably doesn't confirm much of anything.

¶ 1481 Posted at 06.55 PM ⇒ No Comments ( questions | ideas )

Does anyone lose weight switching from regular Coke to diet? Butter to margarine or olive oil? Oreos to Snackwells? Whole milk to skim? My suspicion is that it doesn't make a difference. Eating the low-sugar, low-fat versions of the same things you've always eaten probably doesn't do much. You have to make a more drastic change than that, like kicking the (soda) can completely. I think the so-called "healthier" versions of unhealthy foods are just like "educational" toys: they're the exact same thing with a superficial veneer of goodness. Of course, I could be wrong...

¶ 1565 Posted at 11.48 AM ⇒ No Comments ( questions | food )

If you transport a minor from one state to another to another, does that count as two felonies even if it's one trip? You don't have to travel very far to go from, say, Virginia to West Virginia to Maryland to Pennsylvania, or Connecticut to New York to Pennsylvania to New Jersey, or Utah to Colorado to New Mexico to Arizona (Four Corners). Given the aggressive nature of our "justice" system, my guess is they'd pin as many counts on you as they could, regardless of how accurately they reflected the severity of the crime. Or, let's suppose I transported a minor from Texas to Oklahoma and then back. I'll bet they'd try to get 2 separate counts.

¶ 1668 Posted at 11.53 AM ⇒ No Comments ( questions | crime )

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Blog in your native Indic script: Convert English characters to Indic script as you type! Learn more about transliteration on Blogger.

¶ 1732 Posted at 09.11 AM ⇒ No Comments ( observations | questions )