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.

You can't claim negligence if you don't have the copyright for the works you're suing about...

At least that seems to be the problem here...

In short, the referenced documents on Beckerman's page, indicate that ScumSuckingRodent (TM) (C) plaintiff sued for infringement of "Some stupid pron title" but the registered title was "Some Horny gay guys - some stupid pron title"

So, the infringement suit was dismissed.

As a result, you can't claim negligence on an infringement that didn't occur.

Did I miss something more nuanced - because it seems Beckerman is implying there's something more fundamental here?

-Greg

I can only speak for me...but the scummy thing I see is they really want it both ways.

1) You can pay more for higher speeds
2) You can pay more for more bandwidth.

And we'll be really slow about moving the boundaries so as to capture as much money as possible.

Higher speed should just be included, and fine, charge a reasonable amount for bandwidth.
OR
You charge by the speed tier and however much bandwidth I consume you live with it.
[The pricing seems high too, IMO.]

But no, they want to make you pay both ways. [And pay again when you can't stream data (without meter) from other vendors - you have to pay extra to CC.]

Wireless carriers do it like this too.

Them: "No, you can't tether, that costs extra."
Me: "Why? You're capping my data consumption anyway. If it's not unlimited, then I should get to choose where I use my data - the phone, a tablet, or my laptop."

Either it's unlimited to a single device, in which case, I can stream netflicks 24x7 - or I pay for X amount of data and I can use it in any way, with any device I like.

But no. We'll pick the terms we like when it benefits us, and then mix and match to make even more.
Screw you customer! Just keep forking over the cash.

-Greg

See:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/tsa-defends-pat-year-kan-airport-16215862#.T6RGaqv2agQ

I'll summarize:
---
The grandmother of a 4-year-old girl who became hysterical during a security screening at a Kansas airport said Wednesday that the child was forced to undergo a pat-down after hugging her, with security agents yelling and calling the crying girl an uncooperative suspect.

The child's grandmother, Lori Croft, told The Associated Press that Brademeyer and her daughter, Isabella, initially passed through security at the Wichita airport without incident. The girl then ran over to briefly hug Croft, who was awaiting a pat-down after tripping the alarm, and that's when TSA agents insisted the girl undergo a physical pat-down.

Isabella had just learned about "stranger danger" at school, her grandmother said, adding that the girl was afraid and unsure about what was going on.

"She started to cry, saying 'No I don't want to,' and when we tried talking to her she ran," Croft said. "They yelled, 'We are going to shut down the airport if you don't grab her.'"
---
Massive stupidity ensues on the part of the TSA.

Now, once it becomes a widely read story, does the TSA apologize and essentially say - "We're sorry. We could have done this in a lot better, less traumatic, thoughtful and professional way?"

No, they say: "TSA has reviewed the incident and determined that our officers followed proper screening procedures in conducting a modified pat-down on the child," the agency said.

(sarcasm) Ah, what tact and professionalism. (/sarcasm)

No, IMO, these people, in general, as viewed from the pronouncements from the very top *are* thugs.

What they did was legal. But it wasn't necessary, reasonable or the way any reasonable person would handle things.
The fact that they take every opportunity to defend what's indefensible in any reasonable person's mind just show the "thug" mentality they have.

Sure, I'd guess there's quite a few nice TSA people. But the thuggishness comes from the top. I think much is the same with most police forces.

They can, so they do. And not only that, they defend their actions to the maximum.

That's the definition of a thug, IMO. "I can, legally, be a total ass, and I know that the top brass will defend my "assish-ness" to the maximum. So, FOAD, ya powerless loser!"

Perhaps your definition of "thug" doesn't include the above, but I think for most of us, the reasonable definition of a thug certainly includes this kind of attitude and behavior. And this thugish behavior is vigorously defended to the maximum by the people all the way to the top.

If we were seeing people get fired and publicly so - taking strong legal action against them, and very strongly defending the dignity of the passengers - then perhaps there'd be some argument about them being the "government's thugs." But as it is, they do most everything they do without any serious push back from anyone senior at the TSA.

In my world, that means they're doing what the TSA wants them to do - and thus, these thugs *are* government thugs.

-Greg

Nixon covered up a conspiracy that by its nature was a threat the the fabric of democracy. Namely he was using the power of the executive branch to commit crimes [felonies] in order to subvert a free and fair election.

While killing people is not a good thing, I think the threat to the democracy that Nixon posed was far greater than that posed by the ATF and their gun-running scheme.

Given that the threat to the fabric of democracy was threatened in such a way, I'd have to go with Nixon being a bigger problem than some stupid ATF people.

That absolutely should not be taken as my "giving a pass" to the ATF. It isn't. But I don't think the threat posed by the two acts is anywhere remotely equally grave in the context of the republic and its strength. [Which appears to be the point you're making - which IMO, is glue huffing territory.]