Studies have shown that beginning therapy at a young age can help many people with autism. It's not a cure, but it helps them cope with the neurotypical world. I like to think of it as everyone else running the "social rules application" natively while those on the autism spectrum need to emulate it. Anyone who has used an emulator will attest that these always run slower and use more processor power than native applications. This leads to the person with autism being overwhelmed and needing to decompress. Early therapy can essentially help write a better emulator for the person and help them react better to the neurotypical world.
As far as advantages, people with Asperger's Syndrome/High Functioning Autism think in terms of If-Then. I credit this for being why I do so well with computers. What is programming if not, at its core, a series of If-Then statements? If this input is there, then do that. If this event occurs, then take that action. If that button is clicked, then show this screen. It's probably no wonder why the computer industry seems to be a magnet for people with Asperger's Syndrome/High Functioning Autism.
But what if you felt like my example in normal, day to day talking with people? In other words, shift my example from giving a speech to just talking with somebody while having a spot light in your eyes, with five speakers playing five completely different songs very loudly, and with people poking you in random locations. Meanwhile, the person you were talking with couldn't see/hear/feel any of that. You'd likely find it very hard to carry on the conversation and the person you were talking with might make a poor judgement call on your intelligence.
Add in the fact that people on the autism spectrum have a hard time telling what the social rules are and need the "emulate" these on the fly (whereas neurotypicals have the socials rules as "native applications") and it's easy to see how those with autism can be overwhelmed and shut down when they attempt to socialize.
Not to mention that that single flawed study wasn't even anti-vaccine itself. Wakefield's original intentions were to sell his own MMR replacement vaccines so he tried branding the MMR as causing vaccines. Had he gotten his way, the MMR would have been banned, everyone would have used his replacement vaccines, and he would have gotten very rich.
Instead, he has had his medical license revoked but he came to America where he is practicing some highly suspect procedures on people and is hailed as a hero by a group of conspiracy nuts for "standing up to Big Pharma."
It's not that the problems are "cultural not medical", but that the cultural response exasperates the medical issue. Before my son was diagnosed, his principal convinced us that he was purposefully being defiant and disruptive. On the principal's suggestions, we had a regime of punishments put in place. My son's behavior got worse, not better. Once we got he diagnosis, we stopped those punishments immediately and put a program in place to help him based on our better knowledge of what was happening with him. (Unrelated note: That principal later threatened us when we tried to get an IEP because we "went over his head." Thankfully, he was removed albeit due to an unrelated scandal.)
So, yes, Autism is a medical condition (a developmental disorder) but a cultural mis-understanding of it and wrong responses to it can lead to the condition worsening. Thankfully, people are getting better informed about what Autism is. Unfortunately, not everyone is well informed and too many people make judgments about what Autism is based on little to no information/personal experience. (Sadly, judging by some of the comments here, there are many people on Slashdot who fall into that category. And I wasn't talking about the commenter I just replied to.)
Actually, they've now found that the origins of ASD start in the womb: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/for-children-with-autism-brain-abnormalities-may-begin-in-utero/
(Sadly, now the anti-vax folks will likely try claiming that vaccines the mother had when she was a kid cause autism in her children.)
^^^ This is exactly true. The problem that many on the autistic spectrum face is that they can't figure out how to communicate their thoughts with neurotypical people or they get overwhelmed by sensory input. In the case of the latter, imagine trying to give a speech while five speakers play different genres of music turned up to 11, with spotlights aimed right at your eyes, and a team of people poking you with sticks. Now imagine that there was someone in the audience for whom the music and lights appeared normal. How articulate would you appear to this person? Probably not very. Autistic people get written off as "dumb" when the real description is often "has a hard time communicating."
Actually, as someone likely on the autism spectrum* - albeit high functioning, I find it easier to communicate via social networking (and online in general) than face-to-face. With face-to-face, there are problems like needing to think of the appropriate thing to say in the appropriate manner, keeping appropriate levels of eye contact, getting the tone right, blocking out distractions like other conversations, and doing all of this on-the-fly in a short enough period of time. Often I have exactly the right words in my head, but they come out of my mouth all wrong (if they come out at all). With online communication, I can type out my reply, correct it five times to hone my message before sending it. (Like I've done with this one.) If anything, I've found that online communication has helped me with face-to-face communication, not "increased my autism."
* My son was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and everything that I read seems to describe me as well. I could seek a diagnosis but it would spend money we don't have and wouldn't help my son out. So I'm comfortable being "likely" instead of "definitely."
There are actual conservatives out there who still are conservative in values. Sadly, the Republican party seems to have pushed all of them out in favor of the bible thumping, anti-science, stuck-in-the-1950's type of candidate. If the Republican party went away and a Really Truly Conservative party took their place, this country would be much better off. (This is coming from someone who usually votes Democrat.)
1) Each party is actually in favor of reducing government but in different areas. So Party A decries Party B's expansion of government into area X while themselves increasing government in area Y. And vice versa.
2) When someone is trying to get into government, they rail about how government is the problem. Once they get into the government, though, they don't want to give up that power. So they instead try to use that power to "solve problems." Thus more government intrusion in our lives. (Which they will continue to campaign against. See #3.)
3) What a politician campaigns for/against and what they are actually going to do when the vote rolls around are two very different things. Sometimes they might align, but all too often they will be highly different.
That's how I see it too. I run a computer help forum and have a off-topic forum area for non-computer-help issues. Still, we'll delete posts and ban users based on posting spammy content (e.g. first time poster coming in making 5 posts trying to sell a product), bad behavior (trolling comments/racist comments/etc), posting illegal items (if you post a link to some warez site, your post will be removed), etc. I'm not infringing on these posters' free speech rights because they are essentially guests on my site and are required to follow my rules. If they don't like it, they can go post their spam/warez/trolling comments on some other site.
ISPs are in a position where they are often the only provider in the area.
In my case, Time Warner Cable is my only wired broadband possibility. If Time Warner Cable decided tomorrow that Netflix would be blocked, they wouldn't have a massive exodus since we wouldn't have anywhere to go. What they would have, however, would be a PR and legal disaster. They could be sued by subscribers and would have many, MANY negative article written about their actions. The combination would lower their stock price and could force them to change course. They could also get in trouble from governmental agencies for abusing their Internet access monopoly position in an attempt boost their VOD sales by blocking Netflix. They could try claiming this is their "first amendment right" but they'd find that "right" to be very limited in this regard.
Even worse, every spam comment ever submitted anywhere would need to be kept online lest you infringe on the submitter's freedom of speech. What's that? Some porn site managed to post a comment on your "family friendly - just for kids" blog? Sorry, but you need to keep the link to nasty-horrible-retina-burning-stuff.com because you can't infringe the commenter's freedom of speech.
Imposing the government's freedom of speech obligations on people would be a huge disaster.
Something's been troubling me recently about the whole "corporations are people" thing. If corporations are people, what's to prevent corporations from running for public office? Suppose a corporation was founded in the US at least 35 years ago, could that corporation run for President? It's the logical (and frightening) conclusion to the "corporations are people" argument. How long until the companies stop merely buying candidates and instead BECOME the candidates?
The key word here is "government." Companies and individuals can restrict this right on their systems as they see fit. For example, spammers used to claim that they had a "right to be heard" which (in their opinion) meant that you had to allow any comment or e-mail get through. In their view, spam filters and the like infringed on their First Amendment rights. The big hole in their argument, though, was that it wasn't government that was blocking them, but companies and individuals. These entities have a right to block whatever they want.
I should note that when I say companies blocking items, I mean something along the lines of Slashdot taking posts down for spammy content, not Time Warner Cable blocking Netflix to promote their VOD services. The latter gets into a different territory than merely filtering out a type of speech.
Just because you have a right to free speech doesn't mean you have a right to be heard. To use a non-Internet-based analogy, you can stand on the street corner passing out flyers to promote your cause, but I'm under no obligation to take a flyer or to read it. If I take a flyer and throw it - unread - into a trash can right away, you would have no grounds to sue me for violating your Right To Free Speech.
Add in some force-feedback and pop-up ads can not only jump right in front of you, but they can slap you in the face if you don't pay attention to them.
(Somewhere, some marketing guy just began drooling at the thought of this.)
My case wasn't one of my card details being stolen but of my name/address/SSN/DOB being stolen and used to open a new credit card in my name. How the thieves got my personal information I'll never know. It could have been from some credit agency, a doctor's office, my employer, or a dozen other places. It could have been a breach or an inside job. The identity thieves who opened the card in my name could be the ones who stole my information or the person who stole my information could have sold the information to the thieves. The only thing I know for sure is that these people got my information somehow and opened a card in my name.
Honestly, having your credit card number stolen isn't a big deal. You report it as soon as you figure it out and you aren't responsible for any of the fraudulent charges on it. Your credit card company will issue you a new card and cancel all the bad charges. (Yes, we've had this happen too. My wife's card was compromised in the Target breach though no bad charges went on it.)
Having your identity stolen, like I had, is much worse. You can't just "cancel" your SSN* and DOB. Instead, you need to fight with the credit agencies to prove you actually didn't open that account ten states over to purchase a ton of electronics. They start from the position that all the information they have on you is accurate no matter how ridiculous it is and you'll need to spend a lot of time and money to fix your credit file. And then the thieves can take your information, open a loan somewhere else, and mess it up all over again.
Don't confuse "my card number was leaked" with "a credit card was opened in my name with my personal information." They are definitely not the same.
* You actually can get a new SSN but it's a horribly complicated process.
Snowden has said that he tried option 2 and was told to keep quiet. Add in that others who tried Option 2 a bit louder found themselves not only fired but with trumped up charges brought against them. This left Snowden's only real options as 1 (Keep quiet) and 3 (release the information). He chose 3 and, rightfully so, decided that doing this meant he'd need to go on the run.
A credit freeze means that nobody is allowed to access my credit file at all without the file being thawed. (Unless they have a pre-existing line of credit and even then they can only update that line, not open a new one.) If Experian, Transunion, or Equifax allowed someone to access the file without me thawing it, they could get in some serious legal trouble.
The Fraud Alert is the item that's only good if the issuing company checks. Credit agencies like to bill it as a "solution" but it prevents identity theft about as well as a "Beware of Dog" sign (with no dog backing it) prevents burglary.
I was a victim of identity theft. Someone obtained my name, address, date of birth, and social security number and opened up a credit card in my name. (Apparently, Capital One doesn't care if you get Mother's Maiden Name wrong. So much for that being a "security question!") My only saving grace was that the criminals paid for rush delivery of the card and THEN changed the address. The card got sent out before the change of address was processed and it came to me instead of to them. Otherwise, I would have found out when the collection agencies banged on my door demanding I pay the thousands of dollars that I would have "owed."
Unfortunately, the thieves weren't caught. The local police were woefully undertrained on technology. (They had an IP address of the web form filled out and the time submitted and I needed to show them how to find the ISP and what the next step should be.) They also weren't highly motivated. After all, I didn't lose any money and chances are they would do some legwork and then the case would need to be transferred to some agency out of state. The feds were completely uninterested as this was too small-time to warrant their attention.
Even if the thieves had been arrested, though, who knows how many other people have my information. I did research on how to keep this from happening again and turned up three things:
1) The Fraud Alerts are garbage. They are a voluntary note on your credit that credit issuers are supposed to check but sometimes don't. Plus, they only last 90 days. Once your information is out there, it's out there for good. Thieves aren't going to delete it after 90 days, why should the fraud alert end there.
2) You can freeze your credit. It can be a pain because you'll need to pay to thaw it if you want to get a loan/credit card/etc, but it means that no thief can add a line of credit in your name. Period. Of course, credit agencies hate it when you freeze your credit since this means you won't be opening tons of store cards and the like which means they can't make money off of you by selling your name to those "you've been pre-approved!" card issuers. To a consumer, though, this is an additional benefit.
3) Get your free credit reports and closely examine them, but don't get them all at once. You get one from each of the three major credit agencies each year, but for the most part they'll be the same. For maximum coverage, stagger them. For example, you could get Experian in January, Transunion in May, and Equifax in September. Then you could start back at Experian once January rolls around again.
None of this is fool-proof, of course. No security ever is. But this does offer as good of a protection as you can get and there's no reason to make it easy on the criminals. Trust me: Even if you catch it before any damage is done, having your identity stolen is EXTREMELY stressful!
I blog and I never simply republish someone else's article (or some company's press release). That's lazy blogging. I always write my own articles in my own words. I'll pull from sources, yes, but those sources are credited and that never constitutes the majority of my writings. Most of the bloggers that I know work in a similar fashion.
I will freely admit, though, that the "copy-paste" folks give the rest of us a bad name. They're also the reason that PR folks think they can e-mail me with a press release for their "great new product" that my readers would "love" to hear about and then assume that I'll post it on my site as is and use what influence I have to promote their product with no compensation whatsoever.
The problem here is that the range of bloggers is the same as the range of the population. There are people who are highly intelligent out there - even if they have no higher educational degree - and people who aren't. In "professional journalism", most of the bottom range is not hired at all or moved to the weirder tabloids. (In the latter case, they're free to print that Flight 370 was actually taken by aliens or some other garbage while we ignore them as "professional journalists.")
Unfortunately, "professional journalists" nowadays can find themselves restrained from doing any real reporting because the corporate parent doesn't like it or because there will be political repercussions. Want to ask the President a hard hitting question? No problem but you might not get another interview with anyone in his party again. Want to look into a scandalous story? Sorry, but your corporate home office has ties to the company involved so at best you'll be allowed to do a three second blurb that implies that maybe something bad happened.
We have a trade-off in either case. "Professional journalists" are less likely to be the conspiracy nut type, but are more likely to be under the corporate thumb. Bloggers can vary between great and awful but are harder for corporations/politicians to control. This is why I try to evaluate how well someone's journalism is based on what they report and how they report it, not based on "professional" or "blogger" status.
Why does someone need a college degree in communications to be a journalist? I would think that the only prerequisites to being a good journalist would be the ability to research a subject and the ability to communicate your findings in a clear and informative manner.
I'm not going to pretend that every blogger is the equal to every journalist, but there are definitely some bloggers (of which few have communications degrees) who are superior to many "professional" members of the press. There are also bloggers whose content is pure fluff or worse. (I'm not even thinking of the "conspiracy theory" blogs here, but the ones that take press releases from PR folks and directly publish them thinking it'll help the blogger's stature. All that results is that PR folks think we bloggers will do their work for them for free.)
The problematic word really IS "verified". No journalist should ever have to be "verified". Want to be a member of the press? Just print a card with the word "PRESS" in bold letters. Did Thomas Paine carry a press card? Was Ben Frankiin "verified"? Screw any member or agency of gubbermint that wants to "verify" a journalist!
Exactly. Once you require that press members be "verified" by some outside agency, you've brought the press under political control. All someone would need to do to control the press would be to gain control of the verification agency (whether governmental or private). Then, any members of the press that didn't fall in line would find themselves "un-verified."
So what separates John Been-Filing-Reports-For-Twenty-Years and Joe Just-Opened-A-Blog-Yesterday? Reputation. If you've been working at this long enough, you should build up a reputation for being trustworthy and people will be more inclined to listen to you versus someone who is just entering. This doesn't mean that someone who is just entering should be locked out for being a "press newbie" though. Just that any reports they release should be verified (as in researched and corroborated, not as in issued a license) instead of being blindly trusted. (Ideally, all reports would be verified like this, but someone who has a good track record will likely just wind up being quoted directly.)
Slashdot Mirror
Studies have shown that beginning therapy at a young age can help many people with autism. It's not a cure, but it helps them cope with the neurotypical world. I like to think of it as everyone else running the "social rules application" natively while those on the autism spectrum need to emulate it. Anyone who has used an emulator will attest that these always run slower and use more processor power than native applications. This leads to the person with autism being overwhelmed and needing to decompress. Early therapy can essentially help write a better emulator for the person and help them react better to the neurotypical world.
As far as advantages, people with Asperger's Syndrome/High Functioning Autism think in terms of If-Then. I credit this for being why I do so well with computers. What is programming if not, at its core, a series of If-Then statements? If this input is there, then do that. If this event occurs, then take that action. If that button is clicked, then show this screen. It's probably no wonder why the computer industry seems to be a magnet for people with Asperger's Syndrome/High Functioning Autism.
But what if you felt like my example in normal, day to day talking with people? In other words, shift my example from giving a speech to just talking with somebody while having a spot light in your eyes, with five speakers playing five completely different songs very loudly, and with people poking you in random locations. Meanwhile, the person you were talking with couldn't see/hear/feel any of that. You'd likely find it very hard to carry on the conversation and the person you were talking with might make a poor judgement call on your intelligence.
Add in the fact that people on the autism spectrum have a hard time telling what the social rules are and need the "emulate" these on the fly (whereas neurotypicals have the socials rules as "native applications") and it's easy to see how those with autism can be overwhelmed and shut down when they attempt to socialize.
Not to mention that that single flawed study wasn't even anti-vaccine itself. Wakefield's original intentions were to sell his own MMR replacement vaccines so he tried branding the MMR as causing vaccines. Had he gotten his way, the MMR would have been banned, everyone would have used his replacement vaccines, and he would have gotten very rich.
Instead, he has had his medical license revoked but he came to America where he is practicing some highly suspect procedures on people and is hailed as a hero by a group of conspiracy nuts for "standing up to Big Pharma."
It's not that the problems are "cultural not medical", but that the cultural response exasperates the medical issue. Before my son was diagnosed, his principal convinced us that he was purposefully being defiant and disruptive. On the principal's suggestions, we had a regime of punishments put in place. My son's behavior got worse, not better. Once we got he diagnosis, we stopped those punishments immediately and put a program in place to help him based on our better knowledge of what was happening with him. (Unrelated note: That principal later threatened us when we tried to get an IEP because we "went over his head." Thankfully, he was removed albeit due to an unrelated scandal.)
So, yes, Autism is a medical condition (a developmental disorder) but a cultural mis-understanding of it and wrong responses to it can lead to the condition worsening. Thankfully, people are getting better informed about what Autism is. Unfortunately, not everyone is well informed and too many people make judgments about what Autism is based on little to no information/personal experience. (Sadly, judging by some of the comments here, there are many people on Slashdot who fall into that category. And I wasn't talking about the commenter I just replied to.)
Actually, they've now found that the origins of ASD start in the womb: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/for-children-with-autism-brain-abnormalities-may-begin-in-utero/
(Sadly, now the anti-vax folks will likely try claiming that vaccines the mother had when she was a kid cause autism in her children.)
^^^ This is exactly true. The problem that many on the autistic spectrum face is that they can't figure out how to communicate their thoughts with neurotypical people or they get overwhelmed by sensory input. In the case of the latter, imagine trying to give a speech while five speakers play different genres of music turned up to 11, with spotlights aimed right at your eyes, and a team of people poking you with sticks. Now imagine that there was someone in the audience for whom the music and lights appeared normal. How articulate would you appear to this person? Probably not very. Autistic people get written off as "dumb" when the real description is often "has a hard time communicating."
Actually, as someone likely on the autism spectrum* - albeit high functioning, I find it easier to communicate via social networking (and online in general) than face-to-face. With face-to-face, there are problems like needing to think of the appropriate thing to say in the appropriate manner, keeping appropriate levels of eye contact, getting the tone right, blocking out distractions like other conversations, and doing all of this on-the-fly in a short enough period of time. Often I have exactly the right words in my head, but they come out of my mouth all wrong (if they come out at all). With online communication, I can type out my reply, correct it five times to hone my message before sending it. (Like I've done with this one.) If anything, I've found that online communication has helped me with face-to-face communication, not "increased my autism."
* My son was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and everything that I read seems to describe me as well. I could seek a diagnosis but it would spend money we don't have and wouldn't help my son out. So I'm comfortable being "likely" instead of "definitely."
There are actual conservatives out there who still are conservative in values. Sadly, the Republican party seems to have pushed all of them out in favor of the bible thumping, anti-science, stuck-in-the-1950's type of candidate. If the Republican party went away and a Really Truly Conservative party took their place, this country would be much better off. (This is coming from someone who usually votes Democrat.)
For three reasons:
1) Each party is actually in favor of reducing government but in different areas. So Party A decries Party B's expansion of government into area X while themselves increasing government in area Y. And vice versa.
2) When someone is trying to get into government, they rail about how government is the problem. Once they get into the government, though, they don't want to give up that power. So they instead try to use that power to "solve problems." Thus more government intrusion in our lives. (Which they will continue to campaign against. See #3.)
3) What a politician campaigns for/against and what they are actually going to do when the vote rolls around are two very different things. Sometimes they might align, but all too often they will be highly different.
That's how I see it too. I run a computer help forum and have a off-topic forum area for non-computer-help issues. Still, we'll delete posts and ban users based on posting spammy content (e.g. first time poster coming in making 5 posts trying to sell a product), bad behavior (trolling comments/racist comments/etc), posting illegal items (if you post a link to some warez site, your post will be removed), etc. I'm not infringing on these posters' free speech rights because they are essentially guests on my site and are required to follow my rules. If they don't like it, they can go post their spam/warez/trolling comments on some other site.
Actually, you might not for one important reason:
ISPs are in a position where they are often the only provider in the area.
In my case, Time Warner Cable is my only wired broadband possibility. If Time Warner Cable decided tomorrow that Netflix would be blocked, they wouldn't have a massive exodus since we wouldn't have anywhere to go. What they would have, however, would be a PR and legal disaster. They could be sued by subscribers and would have many, MANY negative article written about their actions. The combination would lower their stock price and could force them to change course. They could also get in trouble from governmental agencies for abusing their Internet access monopoly position in an attempt boost their VOD sales by blocking Netflix. They could try claiming this is their "first amendment right" but they'd find that "right" to be very limited in this regard.
Even worse, every spam comment ever submitted anywhere would need to be kept online lest you infringe on the submitter's freedom of speech. What's that? Some porn site managed to post a comment on your "family friendly - just for kids" blog? Sorry, but you need to keep the link to nasty-horrible-retina-burning-stuff.com because you can't infringe the commenter's freedom of speech.
Imposing the government's freedom of speech obligations on people would be a huge disaster.
Something's been troubling me recently about the whole "corporations are people" thing. If corporations are people, what's to prevent corporations from running for public office? Suppose a corporation was founded in the US at least 35 years ago, could that corporation run for President? It's the logical (and frightening) conclusion to the "corporations are people" argument. How long until the companies stop merely buying candidates and instead BECOME the candidates?
The key word here is "government." Companies and individuals can restrict this right on their systems as they see fit. For example, spammers used to claim that they had a "right to be heard" which (in their opinion) meant that you had to allow any comment or e-mail get through. In their view, spam filters and the like infringed on their First Amendment rights. The big hole in their argument, though, was that it wasn't government that was blocking them, but companies and individuals. These entities have a right to block whatever they want.
I should note that when I say companies blocking items, I mean something along the lines of Slashdot taking posts down for spammy content, not Time Warner Cable blocking Netflix to promote their VOD services. The latter gets into a different territory than merely filtering out a type of speech.
Just because you have a right to free speech doesn't mean you have a right to be heard. To use a non-Internet-based analogy, you can stand on the street corner passing out flyers to promote your cause, but I'm under no obligation to take a flyer or to read it. If I take a flyer and throw it - unread - into a trash can right away, you would have no grounds to sue me for violating your Right To Free Speech.
Add in some force-feedback and pop-up ads can not only jump right in front of you, but they can slap you in the face if you don't pay attention to them.
(Somewhere, some marketing guy just began drooling at the thought of this.)
Wait... You mean all the time I spent playing Simple Rockets on my Android smartphone doesn't qualify me to build rockets?
My case wasn't one of my card details being stolen but of my name/address/SSN/DOB being stolen and used to open a new credit card in my name. How the thieves got my personal information I'll never know. It could have been from some credit agency, a doctor's office, my employer, or a dozen other places. It could have been a breach or an inside job. The identity thieves who opened the card in my name could be the ones who stole my information or the person who stole my information could have sold the information to the thieves. The only thing I know for sure is that these people got my information somehow and opened a card in my name.
Honestly, having your credit card number stolen isn't a big deal. You report it as soon as you figure it out and you aren't responsible for any of the fraudulent charges on it. Your credit card company will issue you a new card and cancel all the bad charges. (Yes, we've had this happen too. My wife's card was compromised in the Target breach though no bad charges went on it.)
Having your identity stolen, like I had, is much worse. You can't just "cancel" your SSN* and DOB. Instead, you need to fight with the credit agencies to prove you actually didn't open that account ten states over to purchase a ton of electronics. They start from the position that all the information they have on you is accurate no matter how ridiculous it is and you'll need to spend a lot of time and money to fix your credit file. And then the thieves can take your information, open a loan somewhere else, and mess it up all over again.
Don't confuse "my card number was leaked" with "a credit card was opened in my name with my personal information." They are definitely not the same.
* You actually can get a new SSN but it's a horribly complicated process.
More generically: Politicians are quick to say things but few will go out on a limb politically to actually fix things that need fixing.
Snowden has said that he tried option 2 and was told to keep quiet. Add in that others who tried Option 2 a bit louder found themselves not only fired but with trumped up charges brought against them. This left Snowden's only real options as 1 (Keep quiet) and 3 (release the information). He chose 3 and, rightfully so, decided that doing this meant he'd need to go on the run.
A credit freeze means that nobody is allowed to access my credit file at all without the file being thawed. (Unless they have a pre-existing line of credit and even then they can only update that line, not open a new one.) If Experian, Transunion, or Equifax allowed someone to access the file without me thawing it, they could get in some serious legal trouble.
The Fraud Alert is the item that's only good if the issuing company checks. Credit agencies like to bill it as a "solution" but it prevents identity theft about as well as a "Beware of Dog" sign (with no dog backing it) prevents burglary.
I was a victim of identity theft. Someone obtained my name, address, date of birth, and social security number and opened up a credit card in my name. (Apparently, Capital One doesn't care if you get Mother's Maiden Name wrong. So much for that being a "security question!") My only saving grace was that the criminals paid for rush delivery of the card and THEN changed the address. The card got sent out before the change of address was processed and it came to me instead of to them. Otherwise, I would have found out when the collection agencies banged on my door demanding I pay the thousands of dollars that I would have "owed."
Unfortunately, the thieves weren't caught. The local police were woefully undertrained on technology. (They had an IP address of the web form filled out and the time submitted and I needed to show them how to find the ISP and what the next step should be.) They also weren't highly motivated. After all, I didn't lose any money and chances are they would do some legwork and then the case would need to be transferred to some agency out of state. The feds were completely uninterested as this was too small-time to warrant their attention.
Even if the thieves had been arrested, though, who knows how many other people have my information. I did research on how to keep this from happening again and turned up three things:
1) The Fraud Alerts are garbage. They are a voluntary note on your credit that credit issuers are supposed to check but sometimes don't. Plus, they only last 90 days. Once your information is out there, it's out there for good. Thieves aren't going to delete it after 90 days, why should the fraud alert end there.
2) You can freeze your credit. It can be a pain because you'll need to pay to thaw it if you want to get a loan/credit card/etc, but it means that no thief can add a line of credit in your name. Period. Of course, credit agencies hate it when you freeze your credit since this means you won't be opening tons of store cards and the like which means they can't make money off of you by selling your name to those "you've been pre-approved!" card issuers. To a consumer, though, this is an additional benefit.
3) Get your free credit reports and closely examine them, but don't get them all at once. You get one from each of the three major credit agencies each year, but for the most part they'll be the same. For maximum coverage, stagger them. For example, you could get Experian in January, Transunion in May, and Equifax in September. Then you could start back at Experian once January rolls around again.
None of this is fool-proof, of course. No security ever is. But this does offer as good of a protection as you can get and there's no reason to make it easy on the criminals. Trust me: Even if you catch it before any damage is done, having your identity stolen is EXTREMELY stressful!
I blog and I never simply republish someone else's article (or some company's press release). That's lazy blogging. I always write my own articles in my own words. I'll pull from sources, yes, but those sources are credited and that never constitutes the majority of my writings. Most of the bloggers that I know work in a similar fashion.
I will freely admit, though, that the "copy-paste" folks give the rest of us a bad name. They're also the reason that PR folks think they can e-mail me with a press release for their "great new product" that my readers would "love" to hear about and then assume that I'll post it on my site as is and use what influence I have to promote their product with no compensation whatsoever.
The problem here is that the range of bloggers is the same as the range of the population. There are people who are highly intelligent out there - even if they have no higher educational degree - and people who aren't. In "professional journalism", most of the bottom range is not hired at all or moved to the weirder tabloids. (In the latter case, they're free to print that Flight 370 was actually taken by aliens or some other garbage while we ignore them as "professional journalists.")
Unfortunately, "professional journalists" nowadays can find themselves restrained from doing any real reporting because the corporate parent doesn't like it or because there will be political repercussions. Want to ask the President a hard hitting question? No problem but you might not get another interview with anyone in his party again. Want to look into a scandalous story? Sorry, but your corporate home office has ties to the company involved so at best you'll be allowed to do a three second blurb that implies that maybe something bad happened.
We have a trade-off in either case. "Professional journalists" are less likely to be the conspiracy nut type, but are more likely to be under the corporate thumb. Bloggers can vary between great and awful but are harder for corporations/politicians to control. This is why I try to evaluate how well someone's journalism is based on what they report and how they report it, not based on "professional" or "blogger" status.
Why does someone need a college degree in communications to be a journalist? I would think that the only prerequisites to being a good journalist would be the ability to research a subject and the ability to communicate your findings in a clear and informative manner.
I'm not going to pretend that every blogger is the equal to every journalist, but there are definitely some bloggers (of which few have communications degrees) who are superior to many "professional" members of the press. There are also bloggers whose content is pure fluff or worse. (I'm not even thinking of the "conspiracy theory" blogs here, but the ones that take press releases from PR folks and directly publish them thinking it'll help the blogger's stature. All that results is that PR folks think we bloggers will do their work for them for free.)
Exactly. Once you require that press members be "verified" by some outside agency, you've brought the press under political control. All someone would need to do to control the press would be to gain control of the verification agency (whether governmental or private). Then, any members of the press that didn't fall in line would find themselves "un-verified."
So what separates John Been-Filing-Reports-For-Twenty-Years and Joe Just-Opened-A-Blog-Yesterday? Reputation. If you've been working at this long enough, you should build up a reputation for being trustworthy and people will be more inclined to listen to you versus someone who is just entering. This doesn't mean that someone who is just entering should be locked out for being a "press newbie" though. Just that any reports they release should be verified (as in researched and corroborated, not as in issued a license) instead of being blindly trusted. (Ideally, all reports would be verified like this, but someone who has a good track record will likely just wind up being quoted directly.)