The Death
Master File, a list compiled by the U.S. Social Security Administration
contains birth dates and other sensitive information on more than 89 million
deceased. The government doesn’t put the
file on the Internet itself. It sells
the records to local governments, hospitals, pension funds, and private
companies. Because the list is
considered public information, it’s legal for any buyer to post it online. That means criminals don’t have to look very
hard for names and numbers to poach. Thieves can file a fraudulent return either by
claiming false income or false dependents, and request that a refund be
deposited onto a prepaid debit card. Nina
Olson, the U.S. Taxpayer Advocate, has called it a “relatively new tactic” in
the realm of tax-related identity theft, which the IRS says has ensnared more
than 490,000 victims since 2008. Once
the IRS dispatches the money to a debit card, it’s hard to trace. Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue
has said it will take an act of Congress to restrict the death file’s release
to companies that meet a set of qualifying standards—which a bill introduced in
the U.S. Senate would do. http://mobile.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-10/identity-theft-grave-robbing-for-a-tax-refund
Retired librarian Marlene Heard wanted to continue to share her passion for books, so
she started her own little library. She can't live without books. "I have to be with a library, I just have
to be." So when Marlene found out
about the Little Free Library movement, by reading of course, she knew
instantly she had to be a part of it. "I
called my son and said hey, you can cover a whole bunch of holidays; I want
this. So he got it and made it up right
away," she explains. Marlene's
already noticed books flying off her shelf. "I just looked this morning
and there are very few in there!" Heard exclaims. But thanks to the painted "Take one,
leave one?" instructions, books are not only returned, but the collection
grows. Marlene even had to add two extra
book bins, "Just to see people take books, bring them back, bring back 3,
4 and they only took out one and they get them from neighbors, this is just...
to me, I just love it, it's fun!" The
Little Free Library movement began in Hudson, Wisconsin and is spreading across
the nation. http://www.620wtmj.com/news/local/150656865.html
Aristotle, one of the most important philosophers ever
to write about justice lived in
ancient Greece, some 2400 years ago. He
thought that justice means giving each person his due, or what he
deserves. But how do we know what people
deserve? What goods and opportunities
should go to which persons? Aristotle’s
answer is that we have to consider the telos—the end or the purpose—of
the good in question. Find eight topics
for discussion at:
Book I of Plato's The Republic appears to be a Socratic dialogue on the nature of justice. The goal of the discussion is to discover the genuine nature of the subject at hand, but the process involves the proposal, criticism, and rejection of several inadequate attempts at defining what justice really is. The elderly, wealthy Cephalus suggests that justice involves nothing more than telling the truth and repaying one's debts. But Socrates points out that in certain (admittedly unusual) circumstances, following these simple rules without exception could produce disastrous results. (Republic 331c) Returning a borrowed weapon to an insane friend, for example, would be an instance of following the rule but would not seem to be an instance of just action. The presentation of a counter-example of this sort tends to show that the proposed definition of justice is incorrect, since its application does not correspond with our ordinary notion of justice. In an effort to avoid such difficulties, Polemarchus offers a refinement of the definition by proposing that justice means "giving to each what is owed." The new definition codifies formally our deeply-entrenched practice of seeking always to help our friends and harm our enemies. http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/2g.htm
Getting what you deserve may also be phrased as getting your just deserts.
Quote Justice was based on a word in Hebrew that meant giving people what they needed, not what they deserved. Cage of Stars, a novel by Jacquelyn Mitchard
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth
Circuit has found
that the red wax seal on the Maker’s Mark bourbon whiskey is protected trade dress. The ruling
gave Judge Boyce Martin Jr. an opportunity to talk at length about the history
of bourbon — an opportunity he clearly relished. Judge Martin’s opinion begins, Justice Hugo
Black once wrote, “I was brought up to believe that Scotch whisky would need a
tax preference to survive in competition with Kentucky bourbon.” While there may be some truth to Justice
Black’s statement that paints Kentucky bourbon as such an economic force that
its competitors need government protection or preference to compete with it, it
does not mean a Kentucky bourbon distiller may not also avail itself of our
laws to protect its assets. This brings
us to the question before us today: whether the bourbon producer Maker’s Mark
Distillery, Inc.’s registered trademark consisting of its signature trade dress
element—a red dripping wax seal—is due protection, in the form of an
injunction, from a similar trade dress element on Casa Cuervo, S.A. de C.V.’s
Reserva de la Familiatequila bottles. We
hold that it is. The judgments of the
district court in this trademark infringement case are AFFIRMED. What makes bourbon bourbon? Corn-based mash and aging in charred oak
barrels. The name itself can be traced
to one of the original nine counties of Kentucky — Bourbon County – named in
honor of the French royal family.
A comparative analysis of Wikipedia’s appearance on page one of the search
results shows Google favors Wikipedia far more than Bing, appearing on page one
46 percent of the time for combined keywords (informational and transactional)
compared to 31 percent for Bing. Comparison of instances Wikipedia did not
appear in the search results at all shows it occurred 64 percent of the time
for Bing compared to 29 percent of the time for Google. http://www.conductor.com/blog/2012/05/googles-love-affair-with-wikipedia-far-more-serious-than-bings-study/
Two Toledo searchers ran "lunch hour" to test the theory above. Searchers #1 and #2 each got 7,850,000 hits
in Google with Wikipedia mentioned on page 1.
Searcher #1 got 2,630,000 hits in Bing with no mention of Wikipedia on
page 1. Searcher #2 got 1,250,000 hits
in Bing with no mention of Wikipedia on page one. Searcher #2 reports: "I also ran the search in DuckDuckGo, a
non-filtering search engine. Wikipedia does not show up on the results
listed below. Between Google and Bing there appears to be a marked
difference between results, but DuckDuckGo and Bing appear somewhat similar
(though there are some unique results). As DuckDuckGo is powered by Bing,
this is not surprising."
Some of the largest companies on the Web have attempted to compete with Google and
failed. DuckDuckGo, on the
other hand, is about as small as a company can be—it has one full-time employee—and
has come up with one of the most appealing Google alternatives to date. It doesn't involve e-mail, maps, real-time
results or social networking. It's just
a simple, straightforward search engine that's reminiscent of early Google,
with a no-nonsense privacy policy (it
will not store any information that could tie you to your searches). Best of all, the results are dependably
relevant and devoid of spam. Link to The 50 Best Websites of 2011 at: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2087815_2088176_2088178,00.html
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