Take cover! It's a Rant! And a tangential one at that! AAAAAAAH!

Most days, I'll check out "TheDailyWTF" to get an injection of geek humor. But this, while definitely a WTF, isn't funny.

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Oklahoma-Leaks-Tens-of-Thousands-of-Social-Security-Numbers,-Other-Sensitive-Data.aspx

To boil it down, the URL of a link on the State of Oklahoma's website listing "known sex offenders" included the SQL statement used to retrieve the data. Which essentially means that I, or anyone with a week of SQL training, could modify the statement to retrieve whatever data was in the database. That's outrage number One. This is the LAST thing you do, and it's just the mark of an ignorant/lazy programmer, as well as ignorant/lazy bosses. Outrage number Two: When the issue was called to the attention of the State of Oklahoma, they didn't do anything about it.... UNTIL it was shown that the employees data was vulnerable also. That's just lame.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about...

Now, I have a daughter. I fully agree that sex offenders are pretty low on the "deserving of oxygen" scale. What truly bothers me about the idea of a "sex offender" registry is the hypocrisy of it. Why isn't there a "drunk driver" registry? I'm one hell of a lot more worried that my daughter is going to get killed by a drunk driver than by a pervert. Why isn't there a registry for "Politicians who want to distract the voters from the real issues"?

Oh. Never mind.

I'm not blaming politicians for this, mind you. If we didn't want to be distracted, we wouldn't be. The last politician who insisted on telling us what we NEEDED to hear rather than what we WANTED to hear was Jimmy Carter in 1980, and we all know what happened to him. We don't want to hear about drunk drivers, because too many of us drink. As far as I'm concerned, every car should have a breathalyzer in it, to prevent anyone blowing a .05 from starting the car. Everyone who has been convicted of DUI should have a flashing green light on top of their car to warn the rest of us.

Makes about as much sense as a "sex offender registry"...

I'll stop this rant now, because I've got about four other tangents to go off on, and they each deserve their own thread, and I don't want to drown you in vitriol.

Take care,
Curt