This ^^ +1000

And tell me, who is likely to *know* who is able to afford the loan better?

A) The bank who has collective experience in the thousands of man-years in making loans and seeing the trends of who pays and who doesn't and what kind of debt load is reasonable. An institution who has NO OTHER job than to manage money, cash-flow and manage risk from loans and investment?

or

B) Sammy Homeowner who simply wants a house. He's not very sophisticated - he couldn't even calculate how his loan should work out in interest and principle. He works hard, but also wants all the good stuff, and his loan officer is telling him - "This is a great deal! You'll love it. It will be great. Here, just sign right here."

If you pick B, can I have what you're smoking - it's really incredible stuff.

The banks knew who was likely to not repay - they are vastly more sophisticated than virtually *ANY* home-owner getting a loan.

I'd agree the person taking the loan should have used more diligence - but the disparity is staggering. Blame ought to be apportioned 10:1 to the Bank.

Even in the *best* case, if true - it indicates a *HUGE* issue.

The FBI should be professional no matter if you cooperate or not. Sure, they *can* be a dick if they want, but it's bad all the way around if they are.
It is, essentially, a violation of the constitutional rights of the accused - in that they are treated differently under the law. [Some nicely, some not.] Proving it in court is a far more difficult matter, however.

That law enforcement doesn't see it as a problem, indicates a serious flaw in their understanding of their responsibilities and have thrown away their honor.

It is, IMO, because of this kind of mind-set that the public starts to lose their respect for law-enforcement and see them as opportunistic thugs. Then the system breaks down - people feel they'll just do whatever they can, if they can get away with it. When people start shooting cops, they don't care much because the cops only care for their "friends" ... and since the cops aren't their friends, whatever bad things happen are just too bad - they're getting back what they did to the public.

It's not right for the public to feel that way - any more than the cops are right to do what they do - but it certainly makes the breakdown of respect more understandable.

So, being thugs and treating some defendants nicely and others like crap really, ultimately costs law enforcement a lot. It also costs society a lot too.

But I really, really hate "explanations" like the parent, because they seem to justify that kind of behavior. IMO, if you can't treat all your "customers" with respect you need to find another job. That doesn't mean you have to love them all - that's pretty hard - but you can at least do your job well and with respect for those you work around/ or with, and interact with.

And you are like some mindless automaton that will believe that every claim made by the government about how "bad" those "evil-doers" are, is really true?

Seriously!? WTF

Ever hear of Brandon Mayfield? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Mayfield
How about Wen Ho Lee? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Ho_Lee

The list is endless.
If it fits their purposes, they will intentionally or not blame anyone that is convenient.

That you believe any such claim without giving the accused the fair opportunity to examine the evidence and confront their accusers, and do it in front of a judicial branch judge, instead of some sycophant stooge who wants nothing more than to get the next golden political appointment inside the executive branch... well, if you believe that, then in all fairness it would only be fair if you were the next victim.

Or, I can sign up with StraightTalk, for $45 a month vs $70 for the same or worse from Verizon. (And taxes/fees on ST are tiny. You know how you almost always pay $5-9 in "extra" fees - well not on ST. The regulatory and recovery fees are less than $1. So that $45 becomes something like $45.92 - not nearly $50.)

I don't know about their StraightTalks's plans on Verizon's networks, but on AT&T, I'm getting LTE - so I expect it's 4G on Verizon's network too.

Ahem. If this is "helping" me, please stop. I really don't need your "help" Verizon.
Somehow I'm not rushing out to pay at last $30 more to get 3G instead of 4G.

Can you say slashvertizement?

Inconceivable!

[sarcasm] [cynicism] [dispair]
If Romney is pres, you can at least expect the Dems to wet their pants in horror over Romney's civil liberties abuses, just like they did with Bush.
[/sarcasm] [/cynicism] [/dispair]

Now, is that a better or worse situation than the current one, where Dems seem completely uninterested that a Democratic President is murdering citizens without any due process far from any "battlefield."

I'm not sure I know - but it certainly throws a wet blanket on the "the Republicans are SO crazy" that electing Romney has to be worse.

[You may dispute it's murder, but IMO, killing someone without due process and not on a battle-field is murder. There simply is no recognized legal basis for it, and unless it's recognized by law, one should consider it murder.]

At least, if we could count on Dems cynically using the situation to maximize damage to Romney, and opposing, as they once did such civil liberties excesses, then it might actually be better. Perhaps not better for the reasons you'd have thought, but because of shameless cynicism.

The downside? That wretched stew can't be good for the country.

As I see it...we are so screwed, it can only be amusing, in a sick twisted way.

You can have it one way or the other, not both.

Either
A) 65K is a trivial fraction of the workforce, so that 65K won't make even a tiny bit of difference, even if we completely shut it off.

OR

B) We really need 65K workers, and they're going to make a huge difference.

If A, then the visa program is worth nothing to employers in the grand scheme of things. [Clearly the employers don't think so.]
If B, then the effect is lots larger than you imply and thus will have very substantial impacts on the wages paid etc.

I think given the stance employers have, that B is a much more likely option. In fact, in any sane system, you'd bet far more heavily on B than A, even knowing nothing other than employers are pushing hard for it.

H1B visa's are likely to increase the pool of labor substantially thus lowering wages.
Additionally, the lowed wages probably has knock-on effects that depress the number of in-country people who will enter that particular labor force, thus exacerbating the problem and putting more pressure to increase the number of H1B visa's and the cycle reinforces itself.

Finally, it can be xenophobia AND true all at the same time. And I expect for some people it is.

But for those who aren't out to keep the "furriners from takin' our jobs" the case is still valid - H1B visas are highly desired by many firms, so they must have some reason for wanting it.

The only business-rational reason is cost. It will cost too much to get in-country people to do the work, and we're not willing to pay.

No matter the current supply, with enough cash you'll find your labor pool. And perhaps it's higher than you'd like. Just give it time. The increased wages should provide increased supply in a few years.

-Greg

If the company has any physical assets within the jurisdiction of the courts you can petition the court to demand payment and if they fail to respond the judge can and often will send the sheriff to seize those assets to satisfy the judgement. If the company has no presence in your location then the general solution is to turn it over to a collections agency, most companies will settle with a collections agency quickly as they don't want to have their creditors apprised of them not making good on obligations.

And you'll do that for well under four hours of time?

Oh, not likely eh? Hm...
Seems like there's a case for class action suits after all...

Sure, they don't recover lots of resources for the plaintiff, but the costs are at least likely to cause the defendant to change their behavior. While I'd ideally like to have both come true, I'll opt for the latter if that is the best I can do.

When:
-an individual plaintiff is out less than several thousands+ of dollars and
-the defendant is a large company with lots of resources
-who refuses to negotiate in good faith to a resolution, and
-where lots of parties are impacted, ...the only reasonable approach is a class-action.

IMO, it's simply the only way the plaintiff parties will have any impact on the behavior of the defendant, and perhaps get some resources back. [Much less likely for the latter, but perhaps something.]

(And I'm someone who really has little care for the lawyers - but sometimes it's the only lever that works.)

-Greg

It sucks on your end but on the other end you always get great service by demanding more for less.

I have news for you. People have the most ingenious ways of paying back arseholes. Thus, you don't always get great service by demanding more for less.

As a matter of fact, you may [meaning almost certainly WILL] get pretty bad service when you treat people badly - by continually demanding more for less, past the point of reasonableness and fairness.

So you're completely good if you're charged with say, a criminal trespass violation, for the court to order a search of your home - even where there's no reasonable expectation that the search would reveal anything of use to the prosecution?

Who follows a twitter user, and location data simply are not relevant, IMO, to the criminal prosecution.
And you can't get a warrant to grab and search for information that isn't directly relevant to the crime. [And since specifically protected constitutional issues are at issue here, I'd expect a reasonable judge to be even more vigilant in protecting the rights of the *accused* [not convicted.]

Evidently you think that once you're accused of a crime law enforcement should be able to troll through every facet of your life. It's too bad the US has stooped so low and given away the protections we used to hold dear. But evidently, simply being accused of disrupting traffic is enough for fellow citizens to feel perfectly fine with law enforcement getting all sorts of constitutionally protected data that doesn't have any real purpose in law enforcement's hands.

Sad.

To expand.

I can't see any rational reason for a fishing expedition that reveals association data [among other things] in his criminal case. And uncovering who he "associates" with is a direct affront to the freedoms guaranteed in the constitution and amendments.

IMO it's not relevant to the case at all and grabbing for it is simply harassment, or worse, by law enforcement.

But this isn't just the tweets.

It's all the data Twitter holds on the user. Location data. Friends who follow, association or links with others etc.

To portray this as only revealing the public tweets is wrong. I'm not sure if that's deliberate or intentional, but it's a misstatement of fact.
The WP article as light as it is on details makes clear that Harris was most concerned about user information, not the public tweets.

An interesting side note:

If Romney was pres, would Dems stand up and complain loudly [and with maximum hypocrisy] about Romney's transgressions on civil liberties?
Probably yeah.

And if we'd had nursing-home-fodder McCain instead of B.O. - would have Dems done that [complained vigorously]? Yup - they sure would have.

And the result would have been that violating civil liberties [what a meek description for a "kill/murder your own citizens without any judicial oversight," among other things.] would have been a one-party Republican supported mess. But now it is the new "normal." Both Dems and Reps think it's "great" and we're stuck with it.

I don't like that line of thinking any better than any other progressives do, but it's something to consider.

---
Lastly, anyone that uses the "They are worse." is simply a moron. Hitler was probably worse than Stalin - but I'm not voting for Stalin no matter how much better he was than Hitler.

"Harold over there shoots little children and *eats* them. We only shoot them. You ought to side with us!"
Sheesh.

-Greg

To amplify that:

If the attacker already knows the PSK, then your whole network is screwed and individual session security, while important, becomes far less important.

So, yes, individual sessions are important - but this really isn't any/much different than ARP poisoning on a switched network. You shouldn't rely on such methods for real security.

However, for small networks - ergo home/small business networks - using WPA2-PSK is perfectly fine - just be careful who you share the key with, just like you'll be careful who you let plug into your ethernet switch.

PSK isn't very appropriate for larger more sophisticated networks with more complicated security issues.

WPA2-PSK is insecure due to a separate issue entirely (see Firesheep).

Citation needed.

---
Not to be harsh, but WPA2-PSK has NOTHING to do with firesheep. JUST NOTHING.

Firesheep is a takover of a non SSL wrapped session. So, someone on a non-switched ethernet network can take-over a session. Same is true for any shared medium network, like wireless.However, since WPA2 uses weak individual session encryption you can perhaps determine the PWMK and then sniff all other sessions.

But to determine the PWMK you need the PSK to start with. This doesn't mean that the whole WPA2-PSK is broken.
It does mean individual session security is bad if you already know the PSK.

If you don't have the PSK, I'm not aware of any non-brute force method of hacking WPA2-PSK, especially AES. [There are some cases where you can inject packets in a TKIP encrypted session.]

So, I guess I think your claim that WPA2-PSK is broken requires a citation.