Mark Jacobs wrote: >The Social Security Administration does not reuse Social Security >numbers. It has issued over 450 million since the start of the >program, and at a use rate of about 5.5 million per year. It says >it has enough to last several generations without reuse or changing >the number of digits.
The Social Security Administration could easily give 20 years of advance warning before expanding their number space if they wish. They've got several options before that far distant future, such as: 1. Allowing capital letters except those that can be confused with numeric digits. That'd likely mean excluding B, D, F, G, I, L, O, Q, S, T, U, Y, and Z if they want to be maximally cautious. That still leaves 13 letters available, or 14 if they want to include the symbol representing the artist formerly known as Prince. :-) They'll also probably have some placement exclusions to avoid spelling out any words. Even with these restrictions, the character space is vast. 2. Alternatively, and in an overlapping period, some brand new digital identity scheme. - - - - - - - - - - Timothy Sipples I.T. Architect Executive Digital Asset & Other Industry Solutions IBM Z & LinuxONE - - - - - - - - - - E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
