The idenfitifaction numbers shouldn't be required to be secret. They should be used for just one purpose - to identify a person in a database, to act as a foreign key so the government databases can join together all data they have on you using it as a key. Or some private company as well. It shouldn't be ever used to authenticate people, but that's how the SSN is used in the US and what's causing all these problems. It should be required that you show a valid identification document with your picture on it, that also includes your ID number. If I know someone's ID number here in Estonia, then all I can do is guess their age and sex from it. That's it, when you apply for a credit card you have to show some kind of document, so this fuss about ID numbers being secret is just insane and inconveivable for anyone outside the US. Here (in Estonia), if we need to identifi and authenticate ourselves to the government or some private company (banks to do online banking, telecoms to check the phone balance or whatever, change the cable tv package) we can use our ID card which has a private key on the chip and requires the knowledge of a PIN code for authentication, another PIN for giving digital signatures. The Japanese are doing it a bit wrong, they should put their "my number" of id documents like passport or drivers license. Roll it out when peoples documents expire and they have to get new ones.

Labor unions are what is causing problems for the auto companies in Europe. They have too many factories with too many workers, and not selling all the cars produced in Europe, but can't close the unprofitable factories or lay off people who aren't needed, because labor unions won't let them do that.

Amarok 2.0 was the reason I stopped using Linux for a while, because with the KDE 4 upgrade there was no usable music player. Now Amarok works somehow, but does all kinds of useless shit. I will never buy any songs through my music player, I don't really care abot seeing album art or the lyrics in the music player. I just want to listen to my mp3/ogg files! The developers have turned it into some monster, like how Winamp 2.x was nice and did one thing well, and then in the next versions they added a toaster and a kitchen sink. I just want to see my song collection, with different views (sorted by author/album or as a directory tree) and be able to add songs to a playlist. None of the other shit is needed I was very happy when I found out about Clementine

This Seliger camp is organized by the ruling party of Russia, so all the kids who go there get some good brainwashing about the greatness of russia and what a good ruler Putin is. There they learn how to fight against western imperialists and such good things.