Re: I am confused as to whether I should use numeric IDs or not

On Fri, 4 Feb 2000, Harry Chomsky wrote:

> I'm not sure I understand the distinction. What semantics does my SS# have?
> As far as I know it's just a unique id that the government uses to keep
> track of my identity. I don't know what algorithm was used to generate it,
> but I'd assume it's something resembling an autonumbering technique. What's
> the difference between a unique id generated by autonumbering, and a unique
> id like SS#?

It's not really germane here, but the first three digits of one's social security number indicate the state in which one received it, with a few exceptions dating from the system's introduction. Unlike Canada's UIDs, though, there's no checksum digit. Received on Sun Feb 06 2000 - 00:00:00 CET