Jack Devine is the subject of the sentence, so the article is saying that Aldrich Ames was Devine's former colleague, not Snowden's:

Thanks for the idea, and I'll check if my bank offers something similar for my credit card. But I'm going to stick with credit cards from now on. I realize now that there's a reason why banks seem to try to push us to use debit cards every change they get.

Here's an article describing why:
http://www.consumerreports.org...

I say screw them, at least until they pull their heads out of their asses and give us secure cards (chip and pin).

I'm getting so tired of these. It seems like every few months now I'm getting affected by one. Last year my bank replaced my debit card three times (Adobe breach, Target breach, and who knows what the third one was)! Consequently, I'm no longer using my debit card as a debit card, but only at ATMs. I use my credit card for any card-based purchases now. But it doesn't stop. You name it: zappos breach, dropbox breach, a breach at an old community college I attended years ago, and probably others that I've forgotten about in the last year or two. Fuck me running.

By the way, the stories about this breach claim that no financial data was compromised. That's fine, except that the data that was compromised may be used for identity theft: your name, date of birth, and street address. I'm pretty much getting ready to use the option that the credit reporting agencies offer to lock down my credit so that no one can obtain credit in my name without me unlocking it. It's a pain, but I don't think it's a choice anymore at the rate these breaches are going.

That's reassuring. Thanks for the reply!

Except you just happened to be come up for renewal on the authentication right now. Then you are screwed. How many thousands of clients will that probably be?

Be careful what you wish for. I'm guessing that you haven't seen one of the many videos of dolphins aggressively trying to have sex with humans? Some people even call it dolphin rape.
Here's one of those videos (for real, not a rickroll): https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (also look at the other related videos on that page of similar dolphin activities. I, for one, would not want to take my wife or any kids to swim with them.

That's really interesting. I've thought about doing the same if I were to find myself looking for a job, as I have premature grey hair. It's nice to know that it has the effect I guessed it might have. My question though is what happens after you get the job and you decide not to keep your hair dyed, or if your roots become noticeable? Has that happened to you, and did you get any weird looks or changes in attitude or treatment from co-workers or bosses?

I think it's well established now through various supreme court decisions that the only way left to enact real campaign contribution reform in the USA is through a constitutional amendment. Support one of the various organizations that are pushing for that:

http://www.democracyisforpeopl...
http://www.movetoamend.org/
http://www.wolf-pac.com/

Lots more links on how to address all facets of the problem here:

http://www.corporations.org/so...

I also want to add my vote against this design. I'm not a web designer, so can't give detailed suggestions about the design, but I agree with what tooyoung described above and with what valdrax described below, along with a few others. I think it boils down to:

Too much white space - use the screen as much as possible for the relevant information.
Not enough information - where is all the info on replies, post numbers, relationship, uid number, etc?
Loss of functionality - how do I open an entire branch of a thread to read? How do I even change my account settings?

Achievements? Really? Is this an xbox fansite now?

Sorry, but the new design is pretty terrible.

PS: Why does my post lose the blank lines I added between paragraphs?

Sorry, but I have to add one more vote for this "cause" of the crisis being right-wing propaganda.

The requirement to make loans to low-income people had little to do with how the sub-prime crisis went down. Instead it was mostly caused by greed in just about every sector. Here are a couple of links with a lot more details:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/355/the-giant-pool-of-money - a great radio documentary, including first hand accounts of what was happening on the ground (i.e. people making money tons of money) when the whole bubble exploded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis - all the details you could want.

I agree with a lot of what you say, but in the interest of correcting a misconception for those with short memories, Google created AdSense LOOONG before they bought DoubleClick (apparently 2003 vs. 2007). In fact, the US and EU governments had to analyze and approve the deal for fear of a monopoly, since Google was already an advertising behemoth (IIRC, the number one internet advertising company) by the time they became interested in DoubleClick. In other words, DoubleClick would just serve as icing on their AdSense advertising cake.

They have a "free enterprise and antitrust act" in their state's laws that appears to me to cover exactly this kind of situation:

http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/BC/htm/BC.15.htm

CHAPTER 15. MONOPOLIES, TRUSTS AND CONSPIRACIES IN RESTRAINT OF TRADE [emphasis mine]
[...]
SUBCHAPTER A. GENERAL PROVISIONS AND PROHIBITED RESTRAINTS
[...]
Sec. 15.04. PURPOSE AND CONSTRUCTION. The purpose of this Act is to maintain and promote economic competition in trade and commerce occurring wholly or partly within the State of Texas and to provide the benefits of that competition to consumers in the state. The provisions of this Act shall be construed to accomplish this purpose and shall be construed in harmony with federal judicial interpretations of comparable federal antitrust statutes to the extent consistent with this purpose.

Learning about business is probably a good idea for anyone who works for a living, and possibly others.

I decided to this recently and went back and forth with the idea of going for an MBA, but realized that the return on my investment of money and time to get it would not be worth it, so I decided to learn on my own.

The first book that I'm reading for that purpose, and I'm glad that it is, is "The Personal MBA: Master The Art of Business" by Josh Kaufman. This has been excellent so far, giving a concise introduction from scratch to what seems to me like a complete A to Z of business topics, and providing pointers to where to learn more. The writing is clear, and I have actually been enjoying reading it.

After reading that, you can branch out into more specialized books on topics about which you would like to learn more. The author of the book above has read thousands of books on business and other related topics and points you to the ones that he believes are worth your time.

Good luck!

Hmmm... this once in a lifetime journalistic opportunity wouldn't happen to require him to take a quick little trip to the US or to some other US-associated (most of the developed world) country, would it? I'm thinking of the "you've won a prize!" traps that the police sets up once in a while to trap people that have arrest warrants.